Wolves Among the Sheep > France investigating CSA at prestigious Catholic school; Former Church of Wales Bishop admits historic CSA

 

French prosecutors open rape investigation in Catholic school abuse scandal

France

A judicial investigation into charges of rape and sexual assault at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram school in southwestern France was opened against a former school employee Friday. French PM François Bayrou, whose children attended the school, has come under increasing scrutiny after a former teacher accused him and his wife of having turned a blind eye to years of abuse.

A judicial investigation was opened on Friday into charges of rape and sexual assault against one of the three men held in custody in connection with allegations of widespread physical and sexual abuse at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram school in southwestern France, the Pau public prosecutor's office announced on Friday.

The suspect, a former monitor, was working at the school last year before being dismissed following the opening of the judicial investigation.

The other two men who were taken into custody on Wednesday were let go as the charges against them fell outside the statute of limitations, the public prosecutor said. 

France's prime minister was under increasing pressure Friday after a former teacher at Bétharram claimed François Bayrou was aware of claims of sexual abuse of young boys there in the 1990s but did not act on them.

The embattled prime minister has in recent days faced accusations from the opposition that he knew of widespread physical and sexual abuse at the Catholic boarding school, which several of his own children attended.

Prosecutors have been investigating around 100 complaints of alleged violence, sexual assault and rape committed at Bétharram over several decades.

Bayrou, who served as the country's education minister between 1993 and 1997, has repeatedly denied any wrong-doing.

French PM faces scrutiny over sexual abuse claims at Catholic school

On Thursday, a former teacher at the boarding school told French investigative website Mediapart that Bayrou, 73, and his wife, who taught religious studies there, had ignored her warnings about the "systemic violence" against the boarders.

Françoise Gullung taught mathematics at the school between 1994 and 1996, Mediapart said.

Bayrou insisted both he and his wife were innocent.

"There is nothing more shameful than targeting someone's family in order to get to them politically," he told journalists.

"Those who whip up these scandals are not interested in the victims, they are not interested in justice," he said.

"What interests them is whether they could stir up a scandal that would have political repercussions for the government and the prime minister."

Bayrou, a veteran centrist named by President Emmanuel Macron in December to end months of political crisis after inconclusive snap polls, does not have a majority in a divided parliament and depends on the support of the Socialists.

He has survived multiple no-confidence motions, including over his budget, partially due to support from the Socialists. Losing their backing over the school sexual abuse scandal would be a major blow.

Former bishop admits to a series of sickening child sex offences

2 weeks ago

3 Min Read

ANTHONY PIERCE COMMITTED HISTORIC INDECENT ASSAULTS ON BOY UNDER 16

A DISGRACED former bishop has admitted to a series of sickening child sex offences, The Herald can reveal. Anthony Pierce, once a trusted figure in the Church in Wales, appeared before Swansea Crown Court on Friday and pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault on a male child under 16.

Pierce, who served as the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon between 1999 and 2008, carried out the vile acts between 1985 and 1990 while working as a parish priest in West Cross, Swansea. The Church in Wales has confirmed the offences, branding them “shocking crimes” and expressing “profound shame.”

The court heard that the allegations only came to light last year when the survivor bravely disclosed the abuse to the church’s safeguarding officer. The information was immediately passed to the police, leading to Pierce’s arrest and subsequent charges.

Pierce has been released on bail, with sentencing set for March 7 at Swansea Crown Court.

Church under scrutiny

The case has sent shockwaves through the Church in Wales, raising serious questions about its handling of past allegations. The church has admitted that some members may have been aware of a previous allegation against Pierce in 1993 but failed to act decisively. An urgent review has now been launched into how that complaint was handled.

In a statement, the Church in Wales said: “We are appalled at the offences which have been revealed in this case and express our deepest sympathy with the victim for the abuse they have suffered. It is a cause of the most profound shame that a priest in the Church in Wales should have been convicted of such shocking crimes.”

The current Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, the Right Reverend John Lomas, addressed parishioners in a letter, acknowledging the deep betrayal felt by those who knew Pierce. “Tony Pierce was your parish priest, your archdeacon, your bishop. The Diocese is full of people baptised, confirmed or ordained by him. This case will be deeply shocking to so many of you.”

Calls for accountability

Victims’ groups and campaigners are now calling for greater accountability within the Church in Wales, urging transparency in dealing with allegations of abuse.

The Church in Wales Disciplinary Tribunal has confirmed it will take further action following Pierce’s sentencing.

This latest scandal adds to a growing list of historic abuse cases that have rocked religious institutions across the UK, once again highlighting the urgent need for rigorous safeguarding measures and accountability for those in positions of trust.

One of the Worst Murderers and Rapists in American History

By Melissa Pandika
THE DAILY DOSE



Carl Panzram — a tattooed, 6-foot-tall giant of a man with cold gray eyes — stowed away on a ship bound for Angola around 1920 to work as a merchant seaman. After arriving in Lobito Bay, he hired a half-dozen local guides for a crocodile-hunting expedition. But Panzram had other prey on his mind. As their canoe wended its way down the river, he shot each crew member dead before feeding their corpses to the hungry crocodiles lurking below.

That was just one of many crimes, including 21 murders and more than 1,000 rapes of young boys and men, Panzram admitted to committing. Unlike charming and cunning serial killers Ted Bundy or Rodney Alcala, Panzram remained brutally honest. “For all of these things, I am not the least bit sorry,” he seethed in his autobiography, penned from his prison cell. “I hate the whole damned human race including myself.”

But could he really be that bad? Yes, at least according to experts who have studied him and found that the roots of his evil could be traced back to his childhood. Born in 1891 to a poor farming family in Minnesota, Panzram’s father abandoned his family when he was about 8 years old. Soon after, Panzram landed in a reform school called Red Wing for a string of burglaries. Red Wing schooled Panzram in sadism, punishing him with beatings and rapes, which led him to a realization: “‘The world is this shithole, and I’m going to go through the world and wreak havoc in it,’” said Harold Schechter, a true-crime writer specializing in serial killers.

After graduating, he spent years sleeping on freight trains. During one ride in a boxcar, he was gang raped by transients — leaving him “a sadder, sicker but wiser boy,” Panzram wrote. In 1915, he traveled through Idaho, California and other states along the Columbia River, burning and burglarizing buildings and raping countless young men and boys. Around the same time, Panzram was sentenced to seven years at the Oregon State Penitentiary for burglary. To punish his unruliness, the wardens hung him from the rafters for hours, turned a hose on him, and kept him in solitary confinement for weeks, leaving him to feed on cockroaches.

According to Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, conscience is attached to the highest that you know. Panzram's dad, having deserted his family in the most dire conditions, could not have taught Carl much in the way of moral character. Neither could anyone in the reform school, the freight trains, or the prisons he frequented. Consequently, Panzram was completely devoid of conscience.

Add to the lack of conscience a seething anger from all the abuse he suffered and you have the makings of a real psychopath. But, Panzram, it appears was more than that. A 2012 documentary 'Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance' may be more accurately named than even the author knows. Trauma opens one up to spiritual invasion; repeated, brutal trauma almost guarantees a welcoming home for the demonic. 

It was that evil in him that allowed him to murder so many people without the least regret. It was also that evil that caused him to defile roughly 1000 boys, destroying their innocence. Evil hates innocence and cannot touch it without some dreadful event making it possible. Defiling innocence is a demonic act of defiance against God.

Not long after escaping in 1918, Panzram committed his first murders. In New York, he hired sailors to work on a yacht bought with his robbery bounty, lulled them to sleep with alcohol and shot­­­­­ them dead — all 10 of them. Soon after, he set sail for Angola, raping and killing a young boy before the crocodile-hunting expedition. About a year later, he hid aboard a Lisbon-bound ship, only to find that the police there were on the lookout for him, aware of his crimes in Africa. So, soon after, he stowed away on a ship to the U.S.

In 1928, Panzram was arrested for a series of burglaries and jailed in Washington, D.C. After a warden found out that he had tried to escape, the guards handcuffed and suspended him from a beam, beating him unconscious. Feeling sorry for Panzram, 26-year-old prison guard Henry Lesser handed him a dollar to buy food and cigarettes. “No one had ever been kind to him in his life,” said John Borowski, who directed the 2012 documentary Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance. Over time, the two became friends. Each day, Lesser slipped him a pencil and a few sheets of paper, convincing him to write his life story.

Panzram was sentenced to 25 years at United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth in Kansas. There, he crushed laundry foreman Robert Warnke’s skull with an iron bar, landing a spot on death row and refusing human rights groups’ efforts to spare him from the gallows. After years of abuse, “it was his form of suicide,” Borowski said. Panzram got the death he craved in September 1930. “Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard!” he seethed at the executioner — “rage personified,” as he referred to himself, until the end. “I could kill 10 men while you’re fooling around!”

Lesser kept Panzram’s writings, but publishers weren’t comfortable with the graphic manuscript until 1970, when it was published as Killer: A Journal of Murder. “The guy was really quite an amazing writer,” said Joe Coleman, who painted the cover art for the book, and who was “struck by the intelligence and the things [Panzram] could have been capable of.”

'Killer: A Journal of Murder' - nothing much has changed in 46 years. The rape of 1000 boys is not even mentioned in the title, while he murdered only 21 men. 1000 boys rapes probably means 1000 lives destroyed, and who knows how many in the next generation, and the next. Sexually abused boys often become sexual abusers of children themselves. That one man may have been responsible for creating tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pedophiles.

Beyond helping criminologists better understand the minds of killers like Panzram, Borowski said the autobiography serves as a lesson — one that still holds relevance amid recent reports of inmate abuse at Rikers Island and other prisons. “He tries to teach our future generations not to create more monsters like him,” he said, adding that Panzram, “above anybody else, should be listened to.”

And what is he teaching us? Is it that bad behaviour cannot be corrected by traumatic punishment? When I was 3, my grandmother corrected my bed-wetting by holding my face down in the puddle of urine until I either fainted or just gave up trying to breathe. It definitely cured my bed-wetting, but I have had precious few good night's sleep without medication in the 65 years since. And, I lived with a spirit of fear for the next 55 years. Trauma is not a teacher; it's a destroyer.

OZY AUTHOR
MELISSA PANDIKA

FBI Rescues 149 Children, Arrests 153 in Operation Targeting Sex-Traffickers

Excellent work by FBI and other law enforcement agencies

Working with state and local authorities, the FBI has rescued 149 sexually exploited children and arrested 153 pimps and sex traffickers in a coordinated action across 135 US cities dubbed ‘Operation Cross Country IX.’

The ninth Operation Cross Country effort took place from October 6-10, and was the largest such coordinated action against sex trafficking to date, the FBI said. The operation, part of the FBI's Innocence Lost National Initiative, was aided by other federal law enforcement agencies and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

More than 500 law enforcement agents took part in the operation, which targeted frequent spots for child trafficking dealings, including casinos, hotels, and truck stops. The youngest of the 149 victims recovered was 12 years old. Three victims were transgender, and three were male.

“Our mission is to protect the American people – especially our children – from harm,” said FBI Director James Comey. ”When kids are treated as a commodity in seedy hotels and on dark roadsides, we must rescue them from their nightmare and severely punish those responsible for that horror. We simply must continue to work with our partners to end the scourge of sex trafficking in our country.”

Of the 135 cities involved in this year's Operation Cross Country, Denver had the most recovered victims, with 20 rescued, while seven pimps were arrested in Colorado's largest city.

"This is the second year in a row the local operation recovered more juveniles than any other city in the country," said Denver FBI spokeswoman Deborah Sherman, according to KMGH.

Among the major cities involved in the sting, Detroit had the second-most victims recovered (19). Officials in Jacksonville, Florida, announced 25 arrests, according to WJXT.

Nearly 100 specialists from the FBI's Office for Victim Assistance provided immediate services to recovered victims, including crisis counseling, food provisions, and medical attention, the FBI said.

“Human trafficking is a monstrous and devastating crime that steals lives and degrades our nation,” said US Attorney General Loretta Lynch. “As a result of the FBI’s outstanding coordination and exemplary efforts alongside state and local partners during Operation Cross Country, more children will sleep safely tonight, and more wrongdoers will face the judgment of our criminal justice system.”

The Innocence Lost initiative has recovered around 4,800 children since 2003, resulting in more than 2,000 convictions of pimps, customers, and others involved in sex trafficking.

My heroes this week - all 500 law enforcement agents who took part in Operation Cross Country, especially those in Denver and Detroit. God bless you. You make my heart sing.

Please pray for these 149 children to fully and quickly recover.