#Robert Hoatson

[zoranphoto]

Donald Trump stigao u New York na čitanje optužnice, evo što ga sada sve očekuje

  Bivši američki predsjednik Donald Trump došao je u ponedjeljak privatnim zrakoplovom u New York iz Floride kako bi se suočio s optužbama da je novcem iz prve predsjedničke kampanje kupio šutnju porno zvijezde dok se njegovi odvjetnici protive kamerama u sudnici     Trump se u utorak treba predati okružnom tužitelju Manhattana Alvinu Braggu, gdje ću mu vjerojatno uzeti otiske prstiju prije no što se pojavi pred sucem na čitanju optužnice, na kojem će se izjasniti kao nevin. Sedamdesetšestogodišnji republikanac Trump, koji želi ponovno postati predsjednik 2024., prvi je bivši američki šef države koji se suočava s kaznenom optužbom. Trumpov odvjetnik Todd Blanche i drugi njegovi advokati su u ponedjeljak od suda zatražili da ne dopusti snimanje, fotografiranje ili radio prijenos s čitanja optužnice. Odvjetnici su u svom pismu sudu rekli da bi takvo što "pogoršalo atmosferu koja je već gotovo nalik na cirkus što se tiče ovog slučaja" i "umanjilo dostojanstvo i pristojnost postupka i sudnice". Porota u Manhattanu je prije podizanja optužnice čula dokaze o isplati 130.000 dolara pornoglumici Stormy Daniels pred kraj predizborne kampanje za predsjedničke izbore 2016. Daniels je rekla da joj je plaćeno kako bi šutjela o odnosu s Trumpom u hotelu pored jezera Tahoe 2006. Trump poriče da je ikada imao bilo kakav odnos s njom.

'Lov na vještice'

Točke optužnice još uvijek nisu poznate. Trump je rekao da je nevin, a on i njegovi saveznici optužbe prikazuju kao politički motivirane. "LOV NA VJEŠTICE, dok naša nekoć velika zemlja ide kvragu!", napisao je Trump na društvenim mrežama prije nego što je otputovao prema New Yorku. Trumpova predizborna kampanja prikupila je sedam milijuna dolara u tri dana nakon što su objavljene vijesti o optužnici prošlog četvrtka, rekao je viši savjetnik Jason Miller. Sudski dužnosnik je rekao da je čitanje optužnice predviđeno za 19.15 u utorak (14.15 po lokalnom vremenu). Bivši američki predsjednik će se potom vratiti u Floridu gdje će dati izjavu sa svog imanja Mar-a-Lago u sat i 15 minuta iza ponoći u srijedu (20.15 u utorak po lokalnom vremenu), najavio je njegov ured. Njujorški proces je tek jedna od nekoliko istraga s kojima se Trump suočava.

Nema sigurnosne prijetnje

Nekoliko desetaka simpatizera pozdravljalo ga je na floridskoj zračnoj luci noseći zastave i transparente. "Naša ga država treba. On je za Boga, za obitelj i za zemlju", rekla je 65-godišnja Cindy Falco, koja misli da će biti oslobođen optužbi. Sedamdesetjednogodišnji građanin New Yorka Robert Hoatson se ispred Trumpova tornja zapitao "nije li ironično" da Trumpa ni zbog čega drugoga "nisu ulovili, osim zbog plaćanja porno zvijezdi". "Uvijek sve se sve svodi na najmanje optužbe. Odličan je dan. Nadam se da će proći dobro i da će se s vremenom pokazati da je kriv", dodao je Hoatson. Njujorška policija je tijekom vikenda počela podizati barikade u blizini Trumpovog tornja i zgrade kaznenog suda u Manhattanu, gdje se u utorak očekuju demonstracije. Demokratski gradonačelnik Eric Adams je rekao da nije poznata nikakva sigurnosna prijetnja. "Kao i uvijek, nećemo dozvoliti nasilje ili vandalizam bilo koje vrste. Ako se nekoga uhvati kako sudjeluje u bilo kakvom činu nasilja, bit će uhićen i smatrat će se odgovornim neovisno o tome tko je", rekao je Adams, posebno spomenuvši republikansku zastupnicu u Kongresu Marjorie Taylor Greene, koja je najavila da će doći na prosvjed. Tportal.hr Read the full article

[simchafisher]

Did Fulton Sheen witness and cover up the sexual assault of a child?

Did Fulton Sheen witness and cover up the sexual assault of a child?

Did Fulton Sheen witness and cover up the sexual assault of a child?

Less than a week after Sheen’s beatification was announced,  Rebecca Bratten Weiss’ Patheos blog echoed recent chatter on Twitter, sharing text that alleges Sheen saw a priest sexually abusing a child.The text claims Sheen walked in as the abuse happened, but he merely told the priest to put his pants back on, called the victim…

[acapulcopress]

Pope removes shroud of secrecy from clergy sex abuse cases

VATICAN, City. * 17 de diciembre de 2019. ] AP. Pope Francis abolished the use of the Vatican’s highest level of secrecy in clergy sexual abuse cases Tuesday, responding to mounting criticism that the rule of “pontifical secrecy” has been used to protect pedophiles, silence victims and prevent police from investigating crimes. Victims and their advocates cheered the move as long overdue, but cautioned that the proof of its effectiveness would come when the Catholic hierarchy is forced to respond to national inquiries, grand jury subpoenas and criminal prosecutors who are increasingly demanding all internal documentation about abusers. “The carnival of obscurity is over,” declared Juan Carlos Cruz, a prominent Chilean survivor of clergy abuse and advocate for victims. In a new law, Francis decreed that information in abuse cases must be protected by church leaders to ensure its “security, integrity and confidentiality.” But he said the rule of “pontifical secrecy” no longer applied to abuse-related accusations, trials and decisions under the Catholic Church’s canon law. The Vatican’s leading sex crimes investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, said the reform was an “epochal decision” that will facilitate coordination with civil law enforcement and open up lines of communication with victims. While documentation from the church’s in-house legal proceedings will still not become public, Scicluna said, the reform now removes any excuse to not cooperate with legitimate legal requests from prosecutors, police or other civil authorities. Francis also raised from 14 to 18 the cutoff age below which the Vatican considers pornographic images to be child pornography. The reform is a response to the Vatican’s increasing awareness of the prolific spread of online child porn that has frequently implicated even high-ranking churchmen. The new laws were issued Tuesday, Francis’ 83rd birthday, as he struggles to respond to the global explosion of the abuse scandal, his own missteps and demands for greater transparency and accountability from victims, law enforcement and ordinary Catholics alike. “The reforms are long overdue but symbolize an important step in the right direction,” said SNAP, the victims advocacy group. “Still right now they are only words on paper and what needs to happen next is concrete action.” The new norms are the latest amendment to the Catholic Church’s in-house canon law — a parallel legal code that metes out ecclesial justice for crimes against the faith — in this case relating to the sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable people by priests, bishops or cardinals. In this legal system, the worst punishment a priest can incur is being defrocked, or dismissed from the clerical state. When he was a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI had persuaded St. John Paul II to decree in 2001 that these cases must be handled by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and be dealt with under the “pontifical secret” rule. The Vatican had long insisted that such confidentiality was necessary to protect the privacy of the victim, the reputation of the accused and the integrity of the canonical process. However, such secrecy also served to keep the scandal hidden, prevent law enforcement from accessing documents and silence victims, many of whom often believed that the “pontifical secret” rule prevented them from going to the police to report their priestly abusers. While the Vatican has long tried to insist this was not the case, it also never mandated that bishops and religious superiors report sex crimes to police, and in the past it has also encouraged bishops not to do so. According to the new instruction, which was signed by the Vatican secretary of state but authorized by the pope, the Vatican still doesn’t mandate reporting the crimes to police, saying religious superiors are obliged to do so where civil reporting laws require it. But it goes further than the Vatican has gone before, saying: “Office confidentiality shall not prevent the fulfillment of the obligations laid down in all places by civil laws, including any reporting obligations, and the execution of enforceable requests of civil judicial authorities.” The Vatican has been under increasing pressure to cooperate more with law enforcement, and its failure to do so has resulted in unprecedented raids in recent years on diocesan chanceries by police from Belgium to Texas and Chile. But even under the threat of subpoenas and raids, bishops have sometimes felt compelled to withhold canonical proceedings given the “pontifical secret” rule, unless given permission to hand documents over by the Vatican. The new law makes that explicit permission no longer required. “The freedom of information to statutory authorities and to victims is something that is being facilitated by this new law,” Scicluna told Vatican media. Robert Hoatson, a survivor and founder of the clergy abuse advocacy group Road to Recovery, said the change was long overdue and a “hopeful sign that the church will finally hold itself accountable for the centuries-old scandal.” The Vatican in May issued another law explicitly saying victims cannot be silenced and have a right to learn the outcome of their canonical trials. The new document repeats that and expands the point by saying not only the victim, but any witnesses or the person who lodged the accusation cannot be compelled to silence. “Excellent news,” tweeted prominent Irish survivor Marie Collins, a founding member of Francis’ sex abuse advisory commission who noted that the reform was one of the first proposals of the commission. “At last a real and positive change,” she wrote. Lawyers for victims and accused priests have also advocated for a change to the pontifical secret rule, since it restricted their access to documentation from the case. Scicluna said the reform now facilitates making documents available to “interested parties” in a penal case, although it is not clear if these lawyers will still only be able to view the documents — as is currently the case — or can now make and keep copies of them, under the understanding that they remain confidential. In recent years, individual abuse scandals, national inquiries, grand jury investigations, U.N. denunciations and increasingly costly civil litigation have devastated the Catholic hierarchy’s credibility across the globe, and Francis’ own failures and missteps in dealing with particular cases have emboldened his critics. In February, he summoned the presidents of bishops’ conferences from around the globe to a four-day summit on preventing abuse, where several speakers called for a reform of the pontifical secrecy rule. Francis himself said he intended to raise the age for which pornography was considered child porn. The move is significant and an indication that Francis has learned a lesson after one of his Argentine proteges, Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, was accused of inappropriate conduct with seminarians after gay porn — said to involve youngsters but not boys — was found on his cellphone. “To date, the church has been especially lenient towards priests who offend against older children” with pornography, said Anne Barrett Doyle of the online resource BishopAccountability. “Extending the pornography ban sends a message that this vulnerable group of minors must be protected too.” The Vatican’s editorial director, Andrea Tornielli, said the new law is a “historical” follow-up to the February summit and a sign of openness and transparency. “The breadth of Pope Francis’ decision is evident: The well-being of children and young people must always come before any protection of a secret, even the ‘’pontifical secret,’” he said in a statement. Also Tuesday, Francis accepted the resignation of the Vatican’s ambassador to France, Archbishop Luigi Ventura, who is accused of making unwanted sexual advances to young men. Ventura turned 75 last week, the mandatory retirement age for bishops, but the fact that his resignation was announced on the same day as Francis’ abuse reforms didn’t seem to be a coincidence. Read the full article

[washnews-blog1]

Catholic bishops' meeting nears end, no vote on abuse plan

Catholic bishops' meeting nears end, no vote on abuse plan Robert Hoatson, of West Orange, N.J., holds protest signs outside of a hotel hosting http://2uwash.com/2018/11/14/catholic-bishops-meeting-nears-end-no-vote-on-abuse-plan/

[theconservativebrief]

Everybody in James’s family called him “Uncle Teddy.”

Father Theodore McCarrick was a New Jersey priest, whose charisma and intelligence had already set him on a clear course to rise in the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy. But at age 11, to James, whose story the New York Times reported last week (using only his first name), “Teddy” was a close family friend, an advisor, and a mentor.

He was also, James said, the man who exposed himself to James for the first time when he was 11. The man, James said, who first molested him when he was 12. And the man, James said, who got him drunk, took him to a hotel room, and assaulted him when James was 15. According to the Times report, James attempted to tell his family of the persistent abuse, only to be met with denial and disbelief.

Since then, McCarrick’s career continued to rise. In 1986, Father McCarrick became the Archbishop of Newark. In 2000, he became the Archbishop of Washington, DC, a particularly prestigious post. In 2001, he was promoted to cardinal, elevating him to the very highest ranks of Vatican officials. Even after his retirement in 2006 (archbishops must take mandatory retirement at the age of 75), McCarrick, now 88 remained a valued and vocal member of the Catholic community, often representing the Catholic perspective in global policy debate.

But on Friday, Pope Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the college of cardinals over allegations that he had sexually harassed and abused both minors and young seminarians over the past several decades. According to a statement released by the Vatican, McCarrick has been instructed to live out a “life of prayer and penance,” and will have to remain in seclusion pending an ecclesiastical trial. A resignation by a cardinal is exceedingly rare. The New York Times reports that the last time a cardinal resigned was in 1927, over political disagreements with the Vatican, suggesting that the Vatican is taking the allegations of McCarrick’s abuse seriously.

Last month, McCarrick was removed from ministry over the allegation that he had abused an unnamed 16-year-old altar boy in 1971. A preliminary Vatican investigation found the allegation to be credible. He currently faces no criminal charges, because the alleged acts are beyond the statute of limitations.

It’s unclear exactly how many people McCarrick is alleged to have abused or harassed in total. The archdiocese of New Jersey settled with two alleged adult victims, who were both seminarians under his tutelage. Victims’ statements in the settlement documents attest to McCarrick’s habitual sexual relationships with multiple seminarians. Currently, the altar boy from the 1971 incident and James are the only two accusers who were minors at the time of the alleged abuse.

What makes the McCarrick case particularly striking is the degree to which his sexual harassment of adult seminarians (not his abuse of minors) appears to have gone largely unchecked despite documented complaints. And despite widespread awareness of his behavior, McCarrick advanced to the highest echelons of the Catholic hierarchy. Action against McCarrick appears to have only been taken once his child victims came forward.

“Someone, or indeed many someones, needs to be held accountable for this disaster,” Catholic commentator Ross Douthat wrote in the New York Times earlier this week, “And that accountability requires more than self-exculpating statements from the cardinals involved. It requires judgment — which requires more certain knowledge — which requires investigation — which probably requires an investigator with a mandate from the pope himself.”

According to the New York Times, which reported on McCarrick last week, two separate New Jersey dioceses paid settlements to adult victims, in 2005 and 2007, over allegations against McCarrick. Robert Ciolek, who received one of the settlements, told reporters that, throughout the 1980s, when McCarrick was the Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, he would frequently take seminarians to his beach house, during which one student would be chosen to share a bed with McCarrick. In bed, McCarrick would massage their shoulders, or otherwise engage in unwanted touching. A second seminarian, who asked not to be named in the Times, described not only explicit sexual contact with McCarrick, but also witnessing McCarrick frequently engaged in sexual behavior with other seminarians and priests under his authority.

“My observations were that people were disgusted by it,” Ciolek told the Times. “There were some who gloried in the attention it brought on them, even if it was screwed-up attention. But I don’t remember anyone welcoming it and hoping they would be touched.”

By all accounts, McCarrick’s behavior — with adult seminarians, if not with minors — seems to have been widely known at the top of the church hierarchy, even as McCarrick continued to progress in the ranks. In 1994, one of the priests who would later receive a settlement wrote to Edward Hughes, then bishop of Metuchen, McCarrick’s old post, recounting McCarrick’s earlier abuse. That unnamed priest, who then also faced accusations of abusing teenagers, was given therapy and transferred. No action against McCarrick appears to have been taken.

That same year, the Times reports, another religious brother, Robert Hoatson, expressed concerns to an unnamed official in the diocese of Newark about rumors he had heard about McCarrick’s behavior with seminarians. At that point, McCarrick was archbishop. According to Hoatson, the official appeared to confirm the rumors’ veracity, saying “Oh no, that ended.” He claimed McCarrick had ceased his abusive behavior after being asked by Bishop James McHugh, an auxiliary bishop at the time, and by the papal nuncio (Vatican officials who function like an ambassador).

On several occasions, priests and Catholic laypersons contacted the Vatican directly to express their concerns about McCarrick’s behavior with his seminarians. In 2000, before McCarrick’s promotion to the Archdiocese of Washington, a concerned bishop, Father Boniface Ramsey contacted the papal nuncio, Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, directly. He said he received no reply to his letter. Again, no direct action was taken against McCarrick.

A number of journalists, including the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher and GetReligion’s Julia Duin, say they have written about attempting to report on McCarrick’s behavior in the early 2000s only to run up against a series of obstacles.

Dreher told Vox about another effort by prominent Catholic leaders to alert the church to McCarrick’s behavior in advance of his nomination to the Diocese of Washington. As Dreher told me in an email, two well-known Catholic laymen had gone to Rome in 2000 to warn the Vatican directly about McCarrick’s treatment of seminarians and young priests.

“I phoned the first of the two men. He confirmed that he had been on this trip, but wouldn’t talk about it,” Dreher, who was writing for the New York Post at the time, told Vox. “When I called the second, he said [referencing a story in the Biblical book of Genesis], ‘If that were true, I wouldn’t tell you for the same reason Noah’s sons covered their father in his drunkenness.’ In other words,” Dreher adds, “he believed that loyalty to the institution required him to cover up for McCarrick.”

Julia Duin has written publicly about what she saw as the persistent threat of lawsuit from the Church, which rendered some of her editors at the Washington Times excessively cautious in encouraging her to go after the story.

In his conversation with Vox, Dreher also highlighted what he believed to be a reluctance on the part of newspapers he worked for to pursue stories about McCarrick. He believes that some of this reluctance was due to “fear of giving aid and comfort to anti-gay bigots” by appearing to criticize behavior that, at that time, might have been perceived as consensual since it was between two adults.

But perhaps the biggest obstacle to bringing McCarrick’s actions to light was the reticence of victims themselves to come forward or go on the record: a point both Duin and Dreher raised.

According to Father James Martin, SJ, an author and Jesuit priest, one of the most difficult parts about seeking accountability for McCarrick’s actions with adults is that these seminarians and young priests remain professionally, spiritually, and financially beholden to the Catholic Church, which may make them reluctant to come forward, even while the wider Catholic child sex abuse scandals rocked the church.

“In the corporate world,” Martin told Vox, “let’s say the harassment happened 10 years ago — the person’s in another company now, right? Well, if you’re still a priest, you’re still in the in the archdiocese, for example. You’re afraid to come out against someone who is so powerful. You wonder what’s going to happen. Will you be labeled as a complainer, a storyteller? So I think that’s very difficult for people.”

Only after the revelations that McCarrick had allegedly abused the 16-year-old became public did McCarrick’s adult accusers go public.

According to Martin, multiple factors contributed to McCarrick’s ability to operate with impunity for so long. For starters, there was the unwillingness of any of his alleged victims — minor or adult — to go directly on the record, out of fear of losing their jobs and careers. In addition, he says, within church culture, McCarrick’s alleged harassment — especially because it was of adults — was not necessarily seen as meriting immediate punishment.

As Martin puts it, “This [kind of harassment] was often seen as a moral problem, right? Not a sickness or a crime. And so there was this, you know, sort of misplaced emphasis on forgiveness [rather than punishment].”

Initial responses to the allegations against McCarrick seemed to place the blame for McCarrick’s continued career advancement, at least in part, on procedural failings in the ecclesiastical system. A parish priest can easily be removed from ministry, but the process of disciplining a senior member like a cardinal, bishop or an archbishop is much more difficult.

In an open letter released earlier this week, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston wrote, “While the Church in the United States has adopted a zero tolerance policy regarding the sexual abuse of minors by priests we must have clearer procedures for cases involving bishops. Transparent and consistent protocols are needed to provide justice for the victims and to adequately respond to the legitimate indignation of the community.”

Pope Francis’s response to the McCarrick case has been direct. McCarrick has been functionally stripped of his status as cardinal, and will remain in seclusion pending trial. The response suggests that Francis intends to make an example of McCarrick, and signal a much more robust policy against sexual offenders of all ranks.

Pope Francis has not spoken directly on McCarrick’s case. But while Pope Francis has been criticized in the past for his insufficient handling of child sex abuse cases, in recent months he has been taking a more active role in combatting clerical sex abuse more widely. In May, for example, every single bishop in Chile resigned after a contentious summit with Francis, during which Francis made it clear that he held the entire community accountable for covering up child sex offenses there.

Original Source -> A Catholic cardinal has weathered sex abuse allegations for years. Now they’re finally public

via The Conservative Brief

[westernmanews]

WARE, Mass. (WPRI) – Former priest and convicted pedophile Paul Shanley settled into his new home in Ware, Mass. Friday night as a free man.

Shanley was released Friday morning from the Massachusetts Old Colony Correctional Facility in Bridgewater after serving 12 years of a 15-year sentence for raping a boy in the 1980’s. Dozens of men came forward decades later saying Shanley had molested or raped them too.

Paul Shanley, priest convicted of rape, moving to Ware

Shanley, now 86, first had to register with local police as a Level 3 sex offender, which is the highest level and considered the most likely to re-offend.

“It’s their decision where they can live,” Ware Police Chief Shawn Crevier said.

“We’re definitely concerned about this,” said Liz Pelletier, a mother who lives in Shanley’s new neighborhood.

Several of Shanley’s alleged victims and other victim advocates have also voiced concerns, saying they believe he will re-offend.

Sex abuse victims seek help to track ex-priest’s whereabouts

“This is a man I don’t think will stop abusing,” Dr. Robert Hoatson said. “He’s a very dangerous person.”

Hoatson showed up in Ware Friday morning to protest, holding signs and saying he was acting as a voice for many.

Just across the street from Shanley’s new home is a new dance studio for children that will be opening up in September. The studio’s owner, Arielle Lask, wasn’t happy to hear the news but she promised safety for her students.

“We’re going to have spotlights, surveillance cameras,” she said. “We’re going to have panic buttons and alarm systems.”

Two psychologists determined Shanley was not sexually dangerous. The defrocked priest will not be required to wear a GPS monitor.

“The public is safe and I’m sure he’ll abide by his requirements,” Crevier added.

Neighbors said they’ll make sure of that.

“I’m going to cling to my granddaughter, you know, and just keep an eye on all the kids,” one grandmother said.

“I hope that everyone in the town can band together with me and we’re going to make sure that every child, whether they are a student of mine or not, is safe from him and all the evil in the town,” Lask said.

According to the sex offender registry, Shanley will be the 20th Level 3 sex offender to move to Ware. Several others already live on his street.

Find sex offenders in your community

Crevier said Shanley’s neighborhood is one of the most heavily patrolled in town.

Copyright 2017 WPRI

[washnews-blog1]

Bishops angered by scandal involving ex-Cardinal McCarrick

Bishops angered by scandal involving ex-Cardinal McCarrick Robert Hoatson, of West Orange, N.J., holds protest signs outside of a hotel hosting http://2uwash.com/2018/11/14/bishops-angered-by-scandal-involving-ex-cardinal-mccarrick/