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fullspectrum-cbd-oil · 5 years ago

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Seventeen Democrats, Three Republicans in U.S. Presidential Race

The historically large field of Democratic presidential candidates vying to take on Republican President Donald Trump in next November’s U.S. election was reduced by one on Wednesday when Wayne Messam dropped out of the race.

Messam, 45, the mayor of Miramar, Florida, announced via Twitter that he was suspending his campaign. His withdrawal brings the number of Democrats still in the race to 17, with former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg also considering a White House bid as a Democrat.

TOP DEMOCRATIC CONTENDERS

There are four candidates who have separated themselves thus far from the rest of the field among Democratic voters.

JOE BIDEN

Biden, the early Democratic front-runner in opinion polls, waited until April to enter the race, launching his bid with a direct swipe at Trump. Biden, 77, served eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president and 36 years in the U.S. Senate. He stands at the center of the Democratic debate over whether the party’s standard-bearer should be a veteran politician or a newcomer, and whether a liberal or a moderate has a better chance of defeating Trump. Biden, who frequently notes his ‘Middle-Class Joe’ nickname, touts his working-class roots and ability to work in a bipartisan fashion. Some fellow Democrats have criticized him for his role in passing tough-on-crime legislation in the 1990s.

ELIZABETH WARREN

The 70-year-old U.S. senator from Massachusetts is a leader of the party’s liberals and a fierce critic of Wall Street. She was instrumental in creating the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the 2008 financial crisis. Her campaign has surged in recent months, equaling Biden in some polls. She has focused her presidential campaign on a populist anti-corruption message, promising to fight what she calls a rigged system that favors the wealthy. She has released an array of policy proposals on everything from breaking up big tech companies to implementing a wealth tax on the richest Americans. Warren has sworn off political fundraising events to back her campaign.

BERNIE SANDERS

The U.S. senator from Vermont lost the Democratic nomination in 2016 to Hillary Clinton but is trying again. For the 2020 race, Sanders, 78, is fighting to stand out in a field of progressives running on issues he brought into the Democratic Party mainstream four years ago. Sanders suffered a heart attack while campaigning in Nevada in October, but there has been little impact so far on his support. His proposals include free tuition at public colleges, a $15-an-hour minimum wage and universal healthcare. He benefits from strong name recognition and an unmatched network of small-dollar donors.

PETE BUTTIGIEG

The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, emerged from virtual anonymity to become one of the party’s brightest stars, building momentum with young voters. A Harvard University graduate and Rhodes scholar, he speaks seven languages conversationally and served in Afghanistan with the Navy Reserve. He touts himself as representing a new generation of leadership needed to combat Trump. Buttigieg would be the first openly gay presidential nominee of a major American political party. Recent polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold the first nominating contests in February, put him ahead of the other leading candidates, even though his national standing is lower.

TRYING TO BREAK THROUGH

The rest of the Democratic field is a mix of seasoned politicians, wealthy business people and others still looking to break into or regain their toehold in the top tier of contenders.

KAMALA HARRIS

The first-term U.S. senator from California would make history as the first black woman to gain the nomination. Harris, 55, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, announced her candidacy on the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. She supports a middle-class tax credit, the Green New Deal and marijuana legalization. Her track record as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general has drawn scrutiny in a Democratic Party that has grown more liberal in recent years on criminal justice issues. She saw a significant bounce in the polls after a high-profile clash with Biden over racial issues during the first Democratic debate in June but has since seen her numbers drop back down.

ANDREW YANG

The New York entrepreneur and former tech executive is focusing his campaign on an ambitious universal income plan. Yang, 44, wants to guarantee all Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 a $1,000 check every month. The son of immigrants from Taiwan, Yang supports the Medicare for All proposal, which is based on the existing government-run Medicare program for Americans aged 65 and older, and has warned that automation is the biggest threat facing U.S. workers. His campaign has released more than 100 policy ideas, including eclectic proposals like creating an infrastructure force called the Legion of Builders and Destroyers.

AMY KLOBUCHAR

The U.S. senator from Minnesota was the first moderate in the Democratic field vying to challenge Trump. Klobuchar, 59, gained national attention when she sparred with Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination hearings last year. On the campaign trail, the former prosecutor and corporate attorney has said she would improve on the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, by adding a public option, and is taking a tough stance against rising prescription drug prices.

CORY BOOKER

Booker, 50, a U.S. senator from New Jersey and former Newark mayor, gained national prominence in the fight over Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Booker, who is black, has made race relations and racial disparities in the criminal justice system a focus of his campaign. He embraces progressive positions on healthcare coverage for every American, the Green New Deal and other key issues, and touts his style of positivity over attacks.

TULSI GABBARD

The Samoan-American congresswoman from Hawaii and Iraq war veteran is the first Hindu to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and has centered her campaign on her anti-war stance. Having previously worked for her father’s anti-gay advocacy group and drafting relevant legislation, she later apologized for her past views on same-sex marriage. Gabbard’s populist, anti-war approach has won her fans among the far left and the far right, and she recently engaged in a Twitter war with Hillary Clinton, whom she called the “personification of the rot” after Clinton suggested Gabbard was being groomed for a third-party run at the presidency. Gabbard, 38, slammed Trump for standing by Saudi Arabia after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

JULIAN CASTRO

Obama’s secretary of housing and urban development would be the first Hispanic to win a major U.S. party’s presidential nomination. Castro, 45, whose grandmother immigrated to Texas from Mexico, has used his family’s personal story to criticize Trump’s border policies. Castro advocates universal prekindergarten, supports Medicare for All and cites his experience to push for affordable housing. He announced his bid in his hometown of San Antonio, where he once served as mayor and as a city councilman. In the third Democratic debate in September, Castro drew jeers from the audience for an attack on Biden that was perceived as questioning the former vice president’s memory as a way to draw attention to his age.

TOM STEYER

A billionaire environmentalist and force in Democratic fundraising over the past decade, Steyer said in January he was focusing on his efforts to get Trump impeached and Democrats elected to Congress. Steyer, 62, reversed course in July, saying other Democrats had good ideas but “we won’t be able to get any of those done until we end the hostile corporate takeover of our democracy.”

JOHN DELANEY

The former U.S. representative from Maryland became the first Democrat to enter the 2020 race, declaring his candidacy in July 2017. Delaney, 56, says that if elected, he would focus on advancing only bipartisan bills during the first 100 days of his presidency. He is also pushing for a universal healthcare system, raising the federal minimum wage, and passing gun safety legislation. A former business executive, Delaney is self-funding much of his campaign.

MICHAEL BENNET

Bennet, 54, a U.S. senator for Colorado, has based his political career on improving the American education system. He previously ran Denver’s public schools. Bennet is not well known nationally but has built a network of political operatives and donors helping elect other Democrats to the Senate. During the partial U.S. government shutdown in January, he garnered national attention criticizing Republicans for stopping the flow of emergency funds to Colorado.

STEVE BULLOCK

Montana’s Democratic governor, re-elected in 2016 in a conservative state that Trump carried by 20 percentage points, has touted his electability and ability to work across party lines. Bullock, 53, has made campaign finance reform a cornerstone of his agenda. He emphasizes his success in forging compromises with the Republican-led state legislature on bills to expand the Medicaid healthcare funding program for the poor, increase campaign finance disclosures, bolster pay equity for women, and protect public lands.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

The 67-year-old best-selling author, motivational speaker and Texas native believes her spirituality-focused campaign can heal the United States. A 1992 interview on Oprah Winfrey’s show led Williamson to make a name for herself as a ‘spiritual guide’ for Hollywood and a self-help expert. She is calling for $100 billion in reparations for slavery to be paid over 10 years, gun control, education reform, and equal rights for lesbian and gay communities.

JOE SESTAK

The retired three-star Navy admiral and former congressman from Pennsylvania jumped into the race in June. Sestak, 67, highlighted his 31-year military career and said he was running to restore U.S. global leadership on challenges like climate change and China’s growing influence. Sestak said he had delayed his entry in the race to be with his daughter as she successfully fought a recurrence of brain cancer.

DEVAL PATRICK

Patrick is a late entry, launching his candidacy just days before early state filing deadlines. The 63-year-old African American and former Massachusetts governor said he was seeking to draw in Americans who felt left behind and to bridge a party he saw split between “nostalgia” or “big ideas” that left other voices out. The state’s first African American governor, Patrick was credited with implementing Massachusetts’ healthcare reform plan and tackling pension reform, transportation and the minimum wage. In 2014, Obama said Patrick would make “a great president or vice president,” although Patrick has said the former president was remaining neutral in the current race.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

Former New York City Mayor and billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg, 77, has filed as a candidate in Alabama and Arkansas, but has not yet decided whether to run.

THE REPUBLICANS

Trump is the clear favorite to win the Republican nomination, and there has been criticism among his opponents that party leadership has worked to make it impossible for a challenger. Still, the incumbent will face at least two rivals.

DONALD TRUMP

The 73-year-old real estate mogul shocked the political establishment in 2016 when he secured the Republican nomination and then won the White House. His raucous political rallies and prolific use of Twitter were credited with helping him secure victory. After running as an outsider, Trump is now focusing his message on the strong economy, while continuing the anti-immigration rhetoric that characterized his first campaign as he vies for re-election.

JOE WALSH

A former congressman, Walsh, 57, has become a vocal critic of Trump, who he argues is not a conservative and is unfit for public office. Walsh won a House seat from Illinois as a candidate of the Republican Party’s fiscally conservative Tea Party movement in 2010, but was defeated by Democrat Tammy Duckworth in his 2012 re-election bid. After leaving Congress, he became a Chicago-area radio talk-show host.

BILL WELD

The 74-year-old former Massachusetts governor ran unsuccessfully for vice president in 2016 as a Libertarian. He has been a persistent critic of Trump, saying when he launched his 2020 campaign that “the American people are being ignored and our nation is suffering.”

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson, Joseph Ax, Tim Reid, Sharon Bernstein, Amanda Becker and Susan Heavey, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

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thewebofslime · 6 years ago

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Jennifer’s memories were scattered and fleeting. They came suddenly, triggered by a smell or a glimpse of light dappled through stained glass. The aroma of freshly baked mince pies repulsed her nostrils. Scented candles, like the ones in the small San Antonio, Texas church she attended as an elementary school girl, made her gag with disgust. Credit: Jimmy Chalk Jennifer’s mother couldn’t understand these abrupt fits of revulsion, or the angry outbursts that accompanied them. For years, her daughter had been slipping into chaos, flunking classes, running with a bad crowd. The once happy-go-lucky child had changed beyond all recognition. Then, one day, years after her life began unraveling, it all came pouring out. “She finally came and told me that he had raped her,” the girl’s mother told GlobalPost. Therapy had dragged up Jennifer’s memories: a sudden blacking out, possibly from a drug she had been slipped, then dizzily regaining consciousness on a bed in the rectory. “I remember when I came to, it was just him and me and he was on top of me and I remember that stained-glass window and he did it in front of the Blessed Sacrament,” Jennifer told her mother. ***** Jennifer — who is identified only by her first name because she still suffers trauma from the alleged incident — is by no means the only parishioner to accuse Father Federico Fernandez Baeza of abuse. Fernandez arrived in San Antonio in the early 1980s. By 1983, prosecutors had charged him with exposing himself to two young girls in a local swimming pool. A year later, he had begun ritually abusing and raping two young boys in his care, according to a 1988 lawsuit filed by a local family. The abuse continued for two years, the lawsuit claimed. The priest was never convicted of a crime. Instead the church negotiated a large cash settlement, and Fernandez promptly relocated to Colombia, where he continued working for the Catholic Church. In May, GlobalPost traced him to the picturesque seaside city of Cartagena. He’s currently a senior administrator and priest at a prestigious Catholic university, enjoying all the privilege, respect and unfettered access to young people that comes with being a member of the clergy. ***** Fernandez is just one of scores of Catholic priests who have been accused of abusing children in the United States and Europe, but who have avoided accountability simply by moving to a less-developed country. Boats bob next to the tiny fishing village of Puerto Huarmey, Peru. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost Even as Pope Francis has touted reform of the Vatican’s safeguards against child abuse, GlobalPost has found that the Catholic Church has allowed allegedly abusive priests to slip off to parts of the world where they would face less scrutiny from prosecutors and the media. In a yearlong investigation, we tracked down and confronted five such priests. All were able to continue working for the church despite serious accusations against them. When we found them, all but one continued to lead Mass, mostly in remote, poor communities in South America. Some of these men faced criminal investigations, but went abroad without charges being brought against them. One of the priests admitted to GlobalPost that he had molested a 13-year-old boy, and acknowledged that he can never work again in the US. He continues to preach in a small Peruvian fishing village. Another is currently under investigation by authorities in Brazil for a string of alleged molestations, including accusations in the poor neighborhoods where for two decades he ran a home for street children — with the support of the Catholic Church. Inside the office of Vicar General Juan Roger Rodriguez Ruiz, the one diocese leader who agreed to an interview. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost GlobalPost interviewed one diocese leader in these communities, but was otherwise not granted interviews with local church officials. And despite protracted efforts and discussions with church press officers, neither the Vatican nor the chairman of a new papal commission set up specifically to tackle church child abuse would speak with us. For advocates and attorneys who have studied abusive Catholic priests for decades, the flight of these fathers overseas represents just the latest chapter in a long story of deceit, collusion and church-sponsored impunity for child abusers. “As developed countries find it tougher to keep predator priests on the job, bishops are increasingly moving them to the developing world where there’s less vigorous law enforcement, less independent media and a greater power differential between priests and parishioners,” said David Clohessy, national director and spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. “This is massive, and my suspicion is that it’s becoming more and more pronounced.” “I’m a pedophile, in the real sense” The boy runs along the trash-strewn potholed dirt street, his long copper-colored hair flowing behind him. Father Jan Van Dael, 76, reaches out to touch his arm, moving close. “He reminds me of a boy who was in my house in Rio de Janeiro,” Van Dael says, referring to the orphanage he used to run in the 1980s. The boy wriggles free and lines up to fill his pot from the containers of soup that Van Dael and his volunteers have brought to this small slum just outside the rough-and-tumble city of Caucaia, in Brazil’s northeast. Van Dael, an avuncular, slightly doddery Belgian priest, seems deeply affectionate toward pre-adolescent boys. He loves to take their photographs. He reaches for children he barely knows, like a father hungry for attention. Back in the late 1980s, Van Dael moved from Europe to Brazil, first settling in Rio de Janeiro. After a falling out with the local diocese (Van Dael says church officials objected to his working with poor street children whom they deemed criminals), the Belgian was asked to leave, and ended up in windswept Caucaia, a few miles from the crime-ridden city of Fortaleza. Taking advantage of Brazil’s extraordinary exchange rates at the time, which greatly favored the US dollar and European currencies, the “gringo priest” set up a new orphanage for abandoned and troubled street kids. He called it “Esperança da Criança,” or Children’s Hope. But the home's whitewashed walls — which Van Dael hung with dozens of photographs he took of young boys — appear to have borne witness to plenty of misery, along with any hope. According to Brazilian prosecutors, Van Dael is currently under investigation by both the Belgian and Brazilian federal authorities, an inquiry that adds to a litany of child abuse accusations against Van Dael on two continents. Last year, a Dutch television station interviewed two men who claimed Van Dael fondled them at church and at a Catholic summer camp in Belgium in the early 1970s. A federal prosecutor in Fortaleza told the station that there had also been several complaints of sexual abuse against Van Dael over the last 10 years. Father Jan Van Dael shows off his collection of portraits — most of young boys — on the veranda outside his home. The building once housed orphans, but Van Dael closed that operation down two years ago. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost In 2011, two former interns at Van Dael’s orphanage told the Belgian media that children there said the priest had abused them. And the head of a local government child protection agency in Caucaia told GlobalPost he had received a complaint about Van Dael back in 2008. The complaint languished, the official said, because the agency didn’t have the staff or resources to investigate it. Van Dael has been suspected of pedophilia for years. Meanwhile, his career as a priest has flourished in the Archdiocese of Fortaleza. His services are in constant demand. He said he sometimes celebrates Mass six times a weekend in the poor neighborhoods of Caucaia. When we visited, Van Dael led services at two different churches and handed out soup to children, something he said he does every day. Everywhere he went, Father Jan was met with reverence and respect. In a lengthy interview, he told GlobalPost he has never been sexually attracted to children. He said all the accusations against him are lies, drummed up by abusive parents, envious competitors, or university students who don’t understand the world. He compared himself to Jesus Christ, saying he was a rebel, a trailblazer and a true humanitarian. “Literally, pedophilia comes from the Greek, 'pidos' meaning child and 'philia' meaning friendship with children,” Van Dael said. “In the real sense of the word I’m a pedophile.” The archbishop of Fortaleza, who has control over which priests celebrate Mass within the archdiocese, initially agreed to an interview. But after we confronted Van Dael about the accusations against him, the archbishop said he couldn’t meet with GlobalPost. The Catholic Church has a long history of secrecy in matters related to sex abuse allegations, reaffirmed by a 2001 confidential apostolic letter written by Pope John Paul II. The letter clarified that all cases of sexual abuse by priests were to be handled by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, an internal affairs unit of the Catholic Church, which was then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who became pope in 2005). The letter also reasserted that all such cases must be kept strictly confidential under the “pontifical secret,” a move that has been heavily criticized ever since. In August, Livia Maria de Sousa, a federal prosecutor in Fortaleza, told GlobalPost that her staff had interviewed three people who formerly lived in Van Dael’s orphanage, as part of an ongoing investigation against the priest. She said the interviews had uncovered no new evidence against Van Dael, and added that investigators were also scheduled to interview the priest in September. De Sousa lamented that abusive priests too often come to Brazil in search of prey. She said investigating child sex abuse within the church can be frustratingly slow and difficult — especially when suspects are revered as moral icons, and victims are too young to understand sexual contact. Children play soccer outside the city of Caucaia, in northeastern Brazil. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost “Brazil is a country where Catholicism is very strong and present, and where the people really respect the church, priests, bishops and all religious authorities,” she said. “So it’s very difficult for a child to understand an act, a touch, that might have a sense of exploitation and abuse, and that is in fact abuse.” Van Dael closed down Esperança da Criança a couple of years ago, when the Brazilian authorities changed their policies for housing troubled children. But he continues to come into daily contact with vulnerable children. In doing so, Van Dael draws his legitimacy from the Archdiocese of Fortaleza and, ultimately, the Vatican. Despite years of accusations and investigations, Van Dael said he has never faced a formal investigation by the church. Zero tolerance, double standard Father Paul Madden is an admitted child molester. In the 1970s, Madden, who was then a priest in the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi, took a trip to Ireland with a 13-year-old boy in his parish. During that trip, according to a lawsuit filed by the victim in 2002, Madden “repeatedly molested and raped” the boy. Father Paul Madden offers communion to a congregant in Puerto Huarmey, Peru. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost An earlier lawsuit, in 1994, ended with a $50,000 payout from the diocese and an apology letter to the victim’s parents, signed by Madden. “Since 1973 I have been plagued with remorse and guilt for my molestation of your son,” reads the letter. “There is no excuse for my actions and I assume responsibility for them as a humble penitent.” In 2003 — soon after the victim’s second lawsuit was dismissed because too much time had passed — Madden joined the Diocese of Chimbote, Peru. In April, GlobalPost found him celebrating his weekly Mass in the tiny, scruffy fishing village of Puerto Huarmey. Approached after the service, Madden again admitted the abuse, though he wouldn’t elaborate on what occurred. “Something happened, I was drunk, and I had never drank before in my life, it was the first time ever, and I woke up in the middle of the night, and … yeah, well, something happened,” he told GlobalPost. Madden expressed remorse for his actions, but said that, in keeping with church teachings, God has forgiven him for his sins. “I feel quite confident in the mercy of God, and I feel quite confident that God forgives all sin,” he said. “If I’m guilty, I’m forgiven.” Still, he’s under no illusions that he’s been pardoned in the eyes of the American public, or even the American Catholic Church. Asked if he could return to work as a priest in the US, Madden, who is originally from Ireland, was clear. “I don’t think so, no, because of this ‘zero policy.’ And this was before — that’s not just from Pope Francis, this came out years before in the US.” Madden was referring to a “zero tolerance” policy on child sex abuse that was approved by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002. The policy aimed to remove any and all priests who have abused children, no matter how long ago. The small fishing village of Puerto Huarmey, Peru, a few hours drive north of Lima. The church where Father Paul Madden celebrates mass is on the right. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost “When even a single act of sexual abuse by a priest or deacon is admitted or is established after an appropriate process in accord with canon law, the offending priest or deacon will be removed permanently from ecclesiastical ministry,” reads one of the rules approved by the Vatican after the conference. Last year, Pope Francis ostensibly took the US church’s policy global when he wrote a letter to every Catholic bishop in the world stating that they must abide by the zero tolerance rules. But victim advocates say the pope’s message was an exercise in public relations, and that meaningful change is still a long way off. Anne Barrett-Doyle is a founder of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks abusive priests around the world. She said that despite the pope’s letter, it’s still entirely unclear what standards bishops worldwide are now being held to. She said the rules in the US, though far from perfect, remain much more stringent than church doctrine elsewhere. “It’s a lie, it’s absolutely false that there’s anything approaching zero tolerance in the emerging abuse policies around the world,” Barrett-Doyle said. In Peru, Madden’s church superior acknowledged that the new zero tolerance paradigm requires the diocese to act in this case. The church where Father Paul Madden celebrates Mass, in Puerto Huarmey, Peru. Father Madden admitted to molesting a 13-year-old boy, and told GlobalPost he could never again work in the US. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost Interviewed in the city of Chimbote, Vicar General Juan Roger Rodriguez Ruiz, the diocese' second-in-command, said that Bishop Angel Simon Piorno was shocked to learn from GlobalPost about Madden’s past, and would scrutinize the priest in light of the zero tolerance policy. “Some may find it hard, even painful, that the bishop has to investigate a priest, but it has to be done,” Rodriguez said. He added that Madden would be suspended if necessary. However, in mid-August a member of Madden’s parish confirmed to GlobalPost by phone that the priest continued to preach every Sunday. We attempted to confirm this with Rodriguez, but our email and phone calls went unreturned. Disgraced in Minnesota, welcomed back to Ecuador To find Father Francisco “Fredy” Montero, one has to negotiate a deadly, precipitous mountain pass — so high that wisps of cloud sweep past — searching for a village that locals describe vaguely as “very remote” and “out there somewhere in the tropics.” The road, gouged in places by great landslides, weaves down from chilly highlands to the steamy, banana-stuffed interior of central Ecuador’s Bolivar province. Here, an hour’s drive from the nearest small town and several hours from the nearest big city, is the hamlet of Las Naves. The road to Las Naves snakes through unpaved mountain passes littered with rocks. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost On Google Maps, Las Naves appears as a ring of green jungle. There are no streets, landmarks or homes. It’s wildly different from the broad avenues of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where not long ago Montero made a name for himself as a gregarious priest, church journalist, part-time radio DJ and accused child molester. Montero, then in his mid-30s, had been a popular addition to the Archdiocese of Minneapolis. A quick talker with an easy smile, he charmed the local Hispanic population, helped to found a Spanish-language church newspaper and installed himself as a fixture in his adopted homeland. Father Francisco “Fredy” Montero's mugshot. Credit: Courtesy of Global Post But five years after arriving in a Minnesota blizzard, Montero’s cheerful façade fell apart. In 2007, an official at the archdiocese reported to the Minneapolis Police Department that Montero had been accused of abusing a 4-year-old girl. Detectives arrested the young priest, seizing his computer and other possessions. “Father Fredy,” as he was known to parishioners, was hardly the archetypal pious priest. For months, according to a police report, he had been sleeping with at least one adult churchgoer — a witness to the abuse — who later told police she and the priest would have sex on Montero’s desk on a daily basis. The little girl, who is not being identified at the request of her mother, was interviewed by a forensic psychologist and by other experts with the Hennepin County Child Protection Services. They concluded Montero had, indeed, abused the girl. Later, when Montero appealed that finding, the agency upheld it, according to a diocese document obtained by GlobalPost. Police investigators searched through Montero’s computer, looking for evidence of child pornography. But prosecutors eventually decided there simply wasn’t enough evidence to charge the priest with a crime. Almost immediately, Montero flew back to Ecuador. Sgt. Darren Blauert, the Minneapolis detective who investigated Montero, said although there were no charges brought, something happened to the child that was “very inappropriate.” He expressed serious concern that Montero had been allowed to continue to work with children. “There was enough that I would be very concerned that this person was continuing what he was doing,” Blauert said. GlobalPost's trip to far-flung Guaranda, where Montero is now based, serves as a reminder of what a huge, sprawling institution the Catholic Church is, and how challenging it might seem to police priests who span the globe. The city of Guaranda, Ecuador, the capital of the mountainous Bolivar Province. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost But thanks to the internet, for many priests a background check is only a few clicks away. BishopAccountability.org maintains a database of more than 6,400 clerics who have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse in the United States. The database contains extensive information about Montero, Madden, Van Dael and many other priests who have avoided scrutiny by simply getting on a plane and flying to a new country. In Montero’s case, there was no need to even double-check the priest’s background in those online records. Court documents show that the Minnesota accusations followed him to Ecuador. A dossier sent from the Archdiocese of Minneapolis to Guaranda warned the South American diocese of Montero’s past. Archdiocese officials also reported the alleged abuse to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s internal investigators. But Montero was apparently able to shrug off his past once he arrived back in his native Ecuador. After a brief hiatus, during which he said he was employed as a journalist, Montero was placed in a succession of remote local parishes in the diocese of Guaranda, where he continued to celebrate Mass and interact extensively with young people. He eventually stopped working as a priest a couple of years ago — not because of the accusations against him or the potential harm he might inflict on children, but because he decided to run for mayor of Las Naves. The local bishop decided politics and priesthood weren’t a good mix, he said. One of the main streets of Guaranda, a city in central Ecuador and the home diocese of Father Montero. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost Bishop Angel Sanchez, who welcomed Montero back to Guaranda, now heads a different diocese in Ecuador. He said in a telephone interview that at the time Montero returned to Ecuador he was aware of the accusations against the priest in the US. But Sanchez said he was confident of Montero’s innocence, since the case against him was “not concrete,” and the priest was never criminally charged. The bishop also confirmed that, to his knowledge, Montero was not investigated further by the Vatican after arriving in Ecuador. Victim advocates say Montero’s case is a textbook example of how the Catholic Church is shirking its responsibility to protect children. Zero tolerance policies are one thing, but without meaningful implementation by local bishops — the Vatican’s footmen and enforcers in communities — church doctrines make little difference, according to Clohessy, the director of SNAP. “There’s no checks and balances,” Clohessy said. “It’s like having speed limits with no cops.” A reporter confronts Montero after spotting him driving by with a truck full of young people. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost Minneapolis attorney Jeff Anderson agrees. Anderson, who has spent three decades suing priests and church officials for covering up child abuse, brought a lawsuit against Montero in 2007 and has kept track of the Ecuadorean priest in recent years. Anderson said the onus to protect children was on the bishops of Guaranda and Minneapolis, whom he claims let Montero flee to Ecuador without being held accountable. And the ultimate responsibility for protecting children from predator priests, he says, lies with the Vatican. “Until this pope removes top officials in these crimes and sends a message that he is serious, nothing seems to change,” Anderson said. “Until this pope turns over all the documents and all the offenders who they know are offenders and are in ministry and turn them over to law enforcement across the globe, there seems to be little that is being done or changed.” David Joles, the father of the young girl whom Montero allegedly abused, finds it hard to talk about his disgust for the Catholic Church, and the pain Montero’s actions brought him and his family. David Joles. Credit: Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost “Sometimes she would bring him up out of the blue,” he said. “She’d be riding in the car, sitting in the back seat and say things like, ‘Father Fredy kissed me on the lips.’” In 2011, Joles’ daughter died from an inoperable brain tumor. She was 8 years old. In the pain and anguish he’s had to endure since her passing, Joles is sickened that the man he says so bruised his daughter’s short life is still walking free, and could return to the pulpit at any time. “I began to see the way [church officials] operate,” Joles said. “It was big business and from their point of view it seemed like the individual was always secondary to the business, and [my daughter] was just but one kid, one individual who had been harmed by a priest, but that Catholicism and the church was more important than people like [her].” Back in Ecuador, GlobalPost confronted Montero. After waiting for hours in Las Naves, we eventually spotted him on the narrow road leading into town. His Chevy pickup truck was overflowing with children, whom he had just taken to a local soccer tournament. Initially reluctant, Montero eventually agreed to an interview on the side of the street in Las Naves. He stressed that he wasn’t hiding from anyone, and said he’d spent years working with children without any other accusations. He denied that the alleged abuse took place. “There was an accusation, but there was no evidence,” he said. A shady departure, a new commission, and a new tribunal The Catholic Church has suffered grievously from the child sex abuse crisis in the US. The scandal has coincided with a decline in US Catholics' Mass attendance, and church officials acknowledge that it has contributed to a sharp global decline of young people joining the ministry. While the portion of Americans identifying themselves as Catholic has remained relatively stable, these days only about 27 percent say they are “strong” Catholics, down more than 15 points since the mid-1980s. Over the past 50 years, the number of US priests has also declined by about a third, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a Georgetown University-affiliated research center. In contrast, the worldwide Catholic population has remained consistent at about 17 percent. Early in Pope Francis’s papacy, there’s hope that the church is ready for meaningful change to protect children. Still, there’s already evidence that the pope appears unwilling to publicly confess to the church’s sins. Consider the case of Father Carlos Urrutigoity, once one of the four most powerful churchmen in Paraguay. Urrutigoity had a big problem: He’d been accused of sexually abusing young men in two different dioceses in the US. In 2014, following reports by BishopAccountability.org, GlobalPost traveled to Paraguay to confront Urrutigoity, who had been promoted to second-in-command of the diocese of Ciudad del Este in the country's east. GlobalPost found Urrutigoity celebrating Mass in the lavish surroundings of a major church there. He answered questions without hesitation, claiming that the accusations in his past were all lies. The enigmatic vicar general shrugged off with a smile the public claim by the bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania that he posed a “serious threat to young people.” One month after GlobalPost published its investigation on Urrutigoity, the Vatican sent a cardinal and a bishop to Paraguay on a well-publicized visit. The purpose of the trip was shrouded in secrecy, but a few weeks later, both Urrutigoity and the bishop of Ciudad del Este who had sheltered and promoted him were removed from the diocese by the Vatican. Occurring just a year after Pope Francis rose to power, the move gave observers hope that the Vatican was finally getting serious about condemning and stamping out child abuse across the Catholic Church. South American activists in particular were hopeful that the Argentine pope was sending a signal by dismissing Urrutigoity, a fellow Argentine. But a Vatican spokesman was quick to tell reporters that these dismissals had more to do with internal church politics than cleaning up abuse. Urrutigoity’s apparent wrongdoing has so far gone unacknowledged by the church, and his alleged victims continue to suffer without the solace of justice. There have been some positive steps, however. Last year, in addition to holding a well-publicized meeting with victims of abuse by priests, Pope Francis announced the creation of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. And in June the Vatican announced it was setting up a new system of tribunals to hear cases of bishops accused of protecting or covering up child abuse by priests. GlobalPost tried for weeks to interview Boston’s Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, who chairs the commission and proposed the new tribunals to the pope. His staff insisted that our story was outside the cardinal’s, and the commission’s, purview. Numerous calls and emails to the Vatican press office went unreturned. Pope Francis talks with Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley as they arrive at the Vatican on Feb. 13, 2015. Credit: Tony Gentile/Reuters Peter Saunders, a lay member of the new pontifical commission and an advocate for victims of sexual abuse by priests, said the priests GlobalPost tracked down are exactly the sort of cases the Catholic Church, and new commission, need to be focusing on. “Zero tolerance is meaningless unless it applies to the whole institution,” he said. “Arguably, some of the biggest problems are in the less well-off parts of the world, South America, Africa, the Far East. This is where we know many priests flee to in order to carry on their abuse, which is an absolute outrage.” Saunders acknowledged that the commission’s remit is still a little fuzzy. “We’re all scratching our heads a bit,” he said. But he also expressed new optimism that a crisis he’s been sounding the alarm about for decades will be addressed. “I have to remain hopeful until my hopes are dashed,” he said. “This is a new future for the church.” When the church does nothing: “I wanted to kill him” Throughout her early adulthood, Jennifer had terrible nightmares. “She just kept dreaming of this man chasing her and chasing her. She kept spiraling down into a black hole,” her mother recalled in a recent interview with GlobalPost in San Antonio, Texas. The man hunted her down, into the depths of the hole, until she woke up screaming, Jennifer’s mother said. Eventually, the mother told her daughter to try to keep the dream going, and to spin around inside it and confront the man who chased her through her nights. Then the daughter had a startling revelation. The man in the dream was the same man she says sexually abused her in front of a stained glass window years before. “She said it was Father Fred,” the mother said: Federico Fernandez Baeza. Federico Fernandez Baeza. Credit: Universidad de San Buenaventura Cartagena In 1987, Fernandez was indicted by a grand jury on two second-degree felony charges of indecency with a child. The charges stemmed from his alleged abuse of two boys over two years. A year later, Fernandez was negotiating a plea bargain with prosecutors, the family’s lawyer told local media. He had offered to plead guilty to the two counts of indecency in exchange for a 10-year suspended sentence and the promise that he would stay away from children and seek psychiatric help, the attorney told reporters. But Fernandez and the Diocese of San Antonio’s lawyers were also negotiating a cash settlement with the family on the side, for more than $1 million, according to media reports. Just before the plea bargain was to be heard in court, the cash settlement was finalized. Its terms were sealed and remain a secret. A few days later, a district judge rejected Fernandez’s plea bargain. She told reporters that she rejected the deal because she did not believe the defendant should get special treatment because he was a priest. But Fernandez never faced a trial. After his plea deal was rejected, the San Antonio prosecutors suddenly dropped their case against him. The United Press International news agency quoted Bexar County District Attorney Fred Rodriguez as saying that prosecutors were looking out for the best interests of the victims, and that their family “had already been victimized once.” In asking for a dismissal, prosecutors told the judge that a trial would have been too traumatic for the children, the agency reported. Fernandez, so close to pleading guilty to child sexual abuse, was free. This judicial snafu so incensed one Texas state legislator that he introduced a bill that would bar victims of sexual abuse who receive cash settlements from later refusing to testify in criminal cases. "State laws need to be changed so the guilty offender will not be able to buy off the victim and go free," state Rep. Jerry Beauchamp told a San Antonio newspaper in 1989. But the bizarre story of Federico Fernandez Baeza wasn’t yet over. In 2011, Humberto Leal, a Mexican national on death row in Texas for raping and bludgeoning to death a 16-year-old girl in 1995 (a crime he denied committing), suddenly told his attorneys he had been molested as a child by Fernandez. Leal told a forensic psychologist that the abuse began with inappropriate touching, and ended with anal rape when he was in 5th grade. The abuse revelations inspired a campaign for clemency from others who said Fernandez had abused them as well. Leal’s legal team then found several more alleged victims of the priest. One was Jennifer. Months later, Leal was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas. In GlobalPost’s investigation, finding Fernandez wasn’t particularly difficult. We tracked him down at the Universidad de San Buenaventura in Cartagena, where he holds the position of secretary, the second-highest administrative rank according to the university’s website. Fernandez had been serving as a high-profile priest in Colombia since leaving the US in disgrace. He regularly posts “Sunday Reflections” on the website of a large church in Bogota, and when he joined the university in 2014, the appointment was announced online, complete with a photo of a grinning Fernandez. After flying to Cartagena to meet him, GlobalPost discovered that speaking to Fernandez would be far harder than finding him. This map shows the paths traveled by the priests we tracked after sex abuse allegations were made against them in US and European dioceses. Credit: GlobalPost A guard at the university’s front gate called someone in Fernandez’s office, then informed us the priest was traveling, and prevented us from entering. During a game of cat-and-mouse that lasted several days and included hours of staking out the university entrance, three university officials confirmed that the priest had indeed been there when we asked to interview him. One of those officials, University Vice President Jorge Valdez, informed us the priest had not left town until the second morning. We also received several anonymous emails and phone calls from someone identifying themselves as “Limpieza Unidos” (which translates roughly to “Cleaning Together”) who claimed to be a university employee. The messages started arriving shortly after GlobalPost emailed Fernandez’s colleagues at the university. “I understand that you’re looking for Father Federico Fernandez and he’s hiding from you,” one email read. “I can tell you that he’s here at the university.” After two brief phone conversations, Limpieza Unidos stopped answering the phone or responding to emails. Calls to the cellphone number for Fernandez that the source provided were also not picked up. Outside the university gates, students expressed disgust and disbelief that an accused child abuser was employed as a top administrator at their school. “Just like in the United States, that’s a crime here too. Sadly, they haven’t told us any of this, they’re showing us a different façade,” said 21-year-old microbiology student Jessie Palomino. “It just makes you think, what is the church doing about these cases?” added her friend, 20-year-old Ena Acosta. Back in San Antonio, other Catholics were wondering the same thing. Jennifer’s father told GlobalPost he remains deeply distressed by the nightmares that haunted his daughter. He said his family life has long revolved around the local church. (He asked not to be identified out of concern about backlash from parishioners.) A former military man, he said he thought many times about taking matters into his own hands. He said he had tried to get postings near Fernandez, so he could slip across the border into Colombia in pursuit of the priest. “I was going to kill him,” Jennifer’s father said. “I think the whole Catholic Church has failed us, especially around this community. And I’m talking about the orders, the bishops, the cardinals, everybody involved in the Church. They know they have a problem, but they continue to let these things happen.”

#TheWebOfSlime

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lindamcsherry · 6 years ago

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Investigation Finds Hundreds Of Sex Offenders In Southern Baptist Church Leadership Roles

Hundreds of sex offenders and sexual predators work in Southern Baptist Churches, including many who hold leadership positions, according to the findings of a recent investigative report that highlights the risk of church sexual abuse that has long gone under-recognized in the United States.

On Sunday, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express published the first of a three-part special report that indicates more than 220 Southern Baptist Church leaders, pastors, ministers, Sunday School teachers and volunteers have been convicted of sex crimes since 2008. Many still work at the churches, according to the report.

According to the findings, nearly 400 Southern Baptist Church leaders and volunteers have been charged with sexual misconduct since 1998, involving more than 700 victims. More than 100 are currently behind bars nationwide, and about 100 are registered sex offenders. However, many reached plea agreement deals and served no time.

According to the data and how the church has approached the sexual abuse problems, the issues do not appear likely to change any time soon, critics say.

The report details how victims asked the Southern Baptist Church to at least track sexual predators who worked in the church in 2008, and to act against churches that covered up sexual abuse and protected predatory pastors, ministers, deacons and youth leaders. However, the proposals were resoundingly rejected by church leadership.

Since that rejection, at least 250 additional volunteers and workers have been charged with sex crimes, according to the investigation. Many of the individuals who work in various positions in the church are convicted sex predators, and are sometimes even on sex offender registries, yet are given nearly unfettered access to children and other potential victims through the church activities.

The investigative reporters have constructed a database of Southern Baptist Church leaders convicted of sex crimes. At least 35 workers, including pastors and other employees, who were accused of sexual predation were allowed to continue working at the church, and in some cases the incidents of abuse were never reported.

The report also found that some never stopped preaching, and continue to lead congregations to this day.

Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders who responded to the article said that the church’s structure makes oversight difficult, as the SBC has no power over individual churches, so it could not enforce the proposals made in 2008.

In March, SBC President, Frank Page, resigned for having a “morally inappropriate relationship” in the recent past, but the details of that relationship were not made public.

The investigation comes amid similar concerns regarding sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

In August 2018, a grand jury report highlighted cases involving at least 90 Catholic priests accused of sex abuse in the Pittsburgh area, involving allegations and cover-ups that spanned decades.

That report indicated that the Catholic Church of Pennsylvania covered up abuse involving priests who abused more than 1,000 victims, mostly children, over the course of 70 years. After 90 of those priests were identified, it sparked investigations by the Justice Department and states’ attorneys general nationwide.

The spotlight on the issue has renewed some efforts to level sex abuse litigation against the Church. Last month, an attorney representing a number of victims announced that the Catholic Church had agreed to settle at least five sexual abuse lawsuits brought against a former priest in New Jersey.

The post Investigation Finds Hundreds Of Sex Offenders In Southern Baptist Church Leadership Roles appeared first on AboutLawsuits.com.

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newstfionline · 6 years ago

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Deported parents may lose kids to adoption

AP, Oct. 8, 2018

As the deportees were led off the plane onto the steamy San Salvador tarmac, an anguished Araceli Ramos Bonilla burst into tears, her face contorted with pain: “They want to steal my daughter!”

It had been 10 weeks since Ramos had last held her 2-year-old, Alexa. Ten weeks since she was arrested crossing the border into Texas and U.S. immigration authorities seized her daughter and told her she would never see the girl again.

What followed--one foster family’s initially successful attempt to win full custody of Alexa--reveals what could happen to some of the infants, children and teens taken from their families at the border under a Trump administration policy earlier this year. The “zero-tolerance” crackdown ended in June, but hundreds of children remain in detention, shelters or foster care and U.S. officials say more than 200 are not eligible for reunification or release.

Federal officials insist they are reuniting families and will continue to do so. But an Associated Press investigation drawing on hundreds of court documents, immigration records and interviews in the U.S. and Central America identified holes in the system that allow state court judges to grant custody of migrant children to American families--without notifying their parents.

And today, with hundreds of those mothers and fathers deported thousands of miles away, the risk has grown exponentially.

States usually seal child custody cases, and the federal agencies overseeing the migrant children don’t track how often state court judges allow these kids to be given up for adoption. But by providing a child’s name and birthdate to the specific district, probate or circuit court involved, the AP found that it’s sometimes possible to track these children.

Alexa’s case began in November 2015 under the Obama administration, years before Trump’s family-separation policy rolled out. Her 15-month separation from her mother exposes the fragile legal standing of children under the care of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and a flawed, piecemeal system that can change the course of a child’s life.

It took 28 minutes for a judge in a rural courthouse near Lake Michigan to grant Alexa’s foster parents, Sherri and Kory Barr, temporary guardianship. Alexa’s mother and the little girl’s immigration attorney were not even notified about the proceedings.

Based on their experiences with Alexa, the Barrs had become convinced that Alexa’s mom was a bad mother and that the little girl would be abused if she were reunited with her.

“My wife and I are sick over this,” Kory Barr told the judge, who wished him good luck as he granted the foster parents’ request two days after Christmas.

The federal system that had custody of Alexa says the state courts never should have allowed foster parents to get that far, no matter how good their intentions. But each state court system, from New York to California, runs wardship and adoption proceedings differently--and sometimes there are even variations between counties.

In Missouri, an American couple managed to permanently adopt a baby whose Guatemalan mother had been picked up in an immigration raid. That seven-year legal battle terminating the mother’s parental rights ended in 2014. In Nebraska, another Guatemalan mother prevailed and got her kids back, but it took five years and over $1 million in donated legal work.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement and Bethany Christian Services, the agency that placed Alexa in foster care, would not comment on her case. But Bethany said foster parents are informed they’re not allowed to adopt migrant children.

Since the 1980s, however, Bethany acknowledged that nine of the 500 migrant children assigned to its foster program have been adopted by American families. The children, ages 3 to 18, were adopted after it was determined it wouldn’t be safe or possible for them to go back to their families; at least one asked to be adopted by his foster parents, and another was a trafficking victim, Bethany said.

“We never want families to be separated,” Bethany CEO Chris Palusky said. “That’s what we’re about, is bringing families together.”

John Sandweg, who headed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Obama administration, said he worries that many more migrant children recently taken from their families may never see them again.

“We have the kids in the U.S. and the parents down in Central America, and now they’ll bring all these child welfare agencies into play,” Sandweg said. “It’s just a recipe for disaster.”

In Ramos’ darkest days, she would lay on her bed, stare at the ceiling and sob, her hand on her stomach.

“This girl, she was here, in my womb,” she said. “We are meant to be together. Always.”

Alexa’s mother was born in the middle of a bloody civil war in El Salvador that gave way to violent street crime. She was pregnant at 13; that daughter was raised by grandparents.

Starting at age 19, Ramos had four sons with another man over the course of a decade, followed by the arrival of Alexa in 2013. She and her daughter looked alike--both bright-eyed, with dark hair framing their smooth skin.

It was after the children’s father found another woman that the abuse began, Ramos said.

“The worst time was when he kicked me so hard it left a bruise and it never went away,” she later told an asylum officer. Without makeup, a dent in the center of her forehead is apparent.

Ramos went to a shelter, but said she became increasingly convinced that her former partner would track her down and kill her. She applied for a U.S. visa, she said, but got nowhere.

During a custody battle in their home city of San Miguel, Ramos said her children’s father filed false police reports, including one alleging that she encouraged a 17-year-old girl to have sex with an adult. With the help of his own mother, who told authorities her son had made up the accusations, she successfully cleared her name and the cases were dropped.

Yet it was that information--later deemed “outdated and unsubstantiated” by the U.S. Justice Department--that was used in a Michigan court as support for the argument that Alexa should be permanently separated from her mother.

Ramos scraped together $6,000 to pay a smuggler who could help her escape from the man she said warned her she’d “never be at peace.” On the monthlong, 1,500-mile pilgrimage, she carried Alexa, a change of clothes, diapers, cookies, juice and water.

The toddler was exhausted by the journey. She slumped for days in a backpack carrier when they walked, and dozed and fidgeted when they traveled by car. When she was sleepy and agitated, she insisted on being cradled in her mother’s arms.

After crossing the Rio Grande near Roma, Texas, Ramos and her 2-year-old were arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Their ordeal appeared nearly over, since domestic violence was then considered grounds for asylum.

In El Salvador, Ramos might earn $5 a day selling clothes or waitressing. In the U.S., she could earn more than that in an hour. Ramos yearned for a new beginning.

It took less than an hour for her hopes to shatter. The border agent screening her records spotted a red flag: She was a criminal, he said, charged in El Salvador. Alexa, crying, was pulled from her mother’s arms.

“They told me I would never see her again,” Ramos recalled.

Ramos said she begged agents to send Alexa to friends in Texas, but said they gave up when two calls went unanswered.

The departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services have not disputed that events could unfold that way in the federal system.

Three days after Ramos’ separation from her daughter, court records show, the U.S. government labeled Alexa an “unaccompanied minor,” which meant she entered the bureaucracy for migrant youth, typically teens, who arrive in the U.S. alone. The toddler was issued a notice to appear on “a date to be set, at a time to be set, to show why you should not be removed from the United States.”

At 28 months, Alexa was intelligent and engaging, but her vocabulary was limited to Spanish words for colors, some numbers and her favorite foods.

She initially was placed with a Spanish-speaking foster family in San Antonio, Texas, who would call Ramos in the detention center and put Alexa on the phone. “Each time they called, I could not stop crying,” Ramos said. “Crying and crying, because I wanted to be with her.”

More than two weeks after their separation, ICE agents moved Ramos seven hours away to a rural Louisiana facility surrounded by high fences topped with coiled razor wire. While Alexa and her foster family decorated a Christmas tree, Ramos slept in a pod of bunkbeds.

Two months after her arrival there, Ramos used a translator to speak on the phone with an asylum officer who asked about her family, why she left El Salvador and what her children’s father might do if she went back. Alexa was safe, Ramos told the officer, but “I think he will kill me.”

The next day, Ramos got word that she had “demonstrated a credible fear of persecution or torture,” according to the asylum supervisor at the DHS.

Her case was assigned to Oakdale Immigration Court in Louisiana, where the three judges had denied 95 percent of all asylum requests that year, compared to the national average of about 50 percent. She said she called the list of pro bono lawyers she was provided, to no avail.

Without a lawyer, her chance at asylum slipped away. Like everyone else around her, she was being deported.

The federal government offers all deported parents the chance to take their children with them, but Ramos said she was ordered to sign a waiver to leave Alexa behind. “The agent put his hand on mine, he held my hand, he forced me to sign,” she said.

Immigration agents then handcuffed Ramos and put her on a plane south, soaring over the volcanos and jungles of Central America.

At the time, it was unusual for parents to be deported while their children remained behind in federal foster care, but that occurred again and again this summer. More than 300 parents were deported to Central America without their children this summer, many of whom allege they were coerced into signing paperwork they didn’t understand, affecting their rights to reunify with their children. Some parents also contended that U.S. officials told them their children would be given up for adoption.

“And the reality is that for every parent who is not located, there will be a permanent orphaned child, and that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration,” U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said in August while overseeing a lawsuit to stop family separations.

The AP asked the State Department, as well as embassy officials in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, whether they were working with deported parents to find their children in the U.S.

The State Department deferred to the DHS, which said in a statement: “DHS is not aware of anyone contacting embassy or consulate in a foreign country to be reunified with a child. This is unsurprising given the fact that these parents made a knowing decision to leave their child in a foreign country.”

By April 2016, Alexa was transferred to the care of Bethany Christian Services, one of the nation’s largest adoption agencies. As thousands more Central American children crossed the border alone during President Barack Obama’s second term, the nonprofit agency’s work providing temporary and long-term foster care to unaccompanied children had begun to grow.

As the agency started receiving more Central American children, several former Bethany social workers said they were encouraged to recruit new foster families at the agency’s traditional base, the Christian Reformed Church, and other local churches.

Among the families who stepped up to help were the Barrs--Kory, a physical therapist at a nearby rehabilitation hospital, and his wife, Sherri, who ran a home-organization business. The Barrs had three daughters who were raised in a devout home and already had fostered two Salvadoran sisters in 2013.

Bethany’s outreach to local families was part of a rising Christian movement to mobilize support to address what Bethany has called the “global refugee crisis.” The movement emphasizes that fostering is aligned with spiritual beliefs, and urges families to approach the role with open hearts.

When Bethany placed Alexa in the Barrs’ home, the couple signed a form promising they would not try to seek custody because the Office of Refugee Resettlement was legally responsible for the child. But eight months later, fearing for the girl’s safety, that is exactly what they did.

On June 5, 2016, Alexa celebrated her third birthday 3,000 miles away from her mother. The next month, a social worker sent Ramos Facebook photos showing Alexa wearing an American flag tank dress, drawing outside in the Michigan sunlight. In another shot, the girl appears at the Barrs’ front door clad in a hot pink ensemble, next to a little red wagon and the family dog.

Around this time, Alexa began meeting with a play therapist and, based on their observations of the girl, the Barrs became deeply suspicious that she had been exposed to abuse before she reached their home. Ramos said they then began limiting her phone contact with her daughter.

The foster program notified the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which opened an investigation but decided the complaint lacked sufficient evidence.

Ramos had cried when social workers approached her about the abuse allegations and insisted that Alexa had always been safe in her care. Because Alexa had spent nearly a third of her life away from her mother, she then grew distressed at the thought that her daughter might have been harmed during their separation.

In August, the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, which has a federal contract to advocate for the best interests of immigrant children navigating the legal system, began investigating whether Alexa could safely be returned to her mother. An evaluator repeatedly visited Ramos and interviewed her family, neighbors and employer.

Meanwhile, Salvadoran diplomatic officials began making periodic visits to Grand Rapids to check on Alexa and advocate for her release.

“The foster family started putting up barrier after barrier to delay her departure,” said Patricia Maza-Pittsford, El Salvador’s consul general in Chicago.

Finally, the girl’s immigration attorney, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. immigration courts all reached agreement: It was past time for Alexa to be back with her mother.

Just days before Christmas 2016, a federal immigration judge ordered her deported. The Barrs were told to pack up Alexa’s things and have her ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Alexa had learned to speak English, bonded with her foster sisters and captured their hearts. The Barrs were certain she had been abused and remain so to this day. So they hired a lawyer and went to court.

During an emergency hearing, Kory Barr pounded on the judge’s bench as he begged him to help them keep the girl in Michigan and insisted that child-welfare experts needed more time to investigate.

Responding to their concerns that Alexa’s life could be in danger, Judge Mark Feyen granted the Barrs temporary custody after their attorney, Joshua Mikrut, asserted he had a “loose understanding” that a prior order had been issued suspending Ramos’ parental rights, though he didn’t know where. The judge asked him to return with proof, and also scheduled a full guardianship hearing for a few weeks later.

Within days, a federal immigration judge granted an emergency motion to stay Alexa’s departure.

When state courts gain control of a child being detained by the federal government, that child can become invisible in the system. Alexa and her mother were held in federal custody. But states--not the federal government--typically run child-welfare systems.

Alexa’s mom didn’t know where to turn, and she didn’t have the money to hire an attorney. But she did have Facebook.

In El Salvador, in the days surrounding the Michigan guardianship hearing, she posted a series of increasingly desperate videos--which went viral in Central America and in one case attracted 2.5 million views--speaking directly to the Barrs, to her daughter, to anyone who might help her get Alexa back.

“I’m the girl’s mother. You aren’t anything to her--you just met her because I traveled with her,” she sobbed in one video, her voice breaking as she addressed the Barrs. “Look inside your hearts. I had her in my belly for nine months. I’m the mother and I’m waiting for her.”

In another video, she cried as she displayed dolls modeled on the Disney movie “Frozen” that she bought to give Alexa for Christmas.

Outraged and sympathetic comments poured in and word reached Salvadoran government officials in El Salvador and the Chicago consul’s office. Pressure mounted.

A month after the Barrs were granted guardianship of Alexa, the Justice Department weighed in sharply.

“The Barrs obtained their temporary guardianship order in violation of federal law,” U.S. prosecutors argued. The Barrs’ attorney and the Michigan judge also violated federal law by seeking and granting guardianship, and failed to inform Ramos or Alexa’s lawyers about the proceedings, they wrote.

More than a month after they had petitioned to keep Alexa, Sherri and Kory Barr despairingly gave up.

A few days later, the Barrs sent Alexa home with a huge bag of toys and clothes and a letter from “Papa Foster,” as Kory Barr called himself.

Alexa was stunned when she landed in El Salvador in February 2017. Her mother sobbed and clung to her, but the girl barely recognized this woman who called herself Mama. When could she go home to “Mama Foster, Papa Foster” and her three blonde, blue-eyed sisters? And what was this woman saying?

Alexa had lost all her Spanish and spoke English to her mother, using words like “water” and “chicken.” Ramos, who spoke almost no English herself, had to point to pictures or call friends to translate.

The Ramos’ small brick home, shared with two of Alexa’s brothers, is on a quiet dirt street a few blocks from the main drag, a colorful and chaotic mix of shops and services.

Alexa pined for her house in suburban Grand Rapids, its green lawn, her pink room. She rarely giggled and didn’t want to play or eat.

Children traumatically separated from their parents are more likely to suffer from emotional problems throughout their lives, according to decades of scientific research. And some more recent studies have found that separation can damage a child’s memory.

Ramos showed Alexa baby pictures to help her relearn their relationship.

“I am your mother. I love you so very much,” she told her in Spanish, over and over.

Slowly, over time, Alexa began to smile and understand her native tongue. She bonded again with her mother and brothers. Bright and energetic, she now often winds her small arms around her mother’s waist and neck. When she wants attention, she whispers in her mother’s ear.

Ramos still struggles with the pain of the separation, and to support her family on the few dollars a day she earns at a pizzeria. She often posts Facebook photos and videos of herself with her daughter, a visual assertion of their bond.

She fears for parents who were separated from their children under the zero-tolerance policy and has taken to Facebook to urge them to fight to get their kids back.

“If they give our children up for adoption without our permission, that isn’t justice,” she said during a recent interview in a park. “They are our children, not theirs.”

For months after she came home, Alexa asked if she could talk to the Barrs but Ramos wasn’t ready. She had a change of heart when she learned Sherri Barr was ill and now lets them talk every so often.

“I do not feel resentment for them because they also love her and because the family is going through a bad time,” Ramos said. “We all deserve an opportunity.”

The Barrs worry about Alexa’s safety in El Salvador, but say they also worry about Ramos’ well-being. They now consider their relationship with mother and daughter part of God’s plan.

“No one wins in this one,” Sherri Barr said.

#family separation #Araceli Ramos Bonilla #migrant children #deported parents

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jasonheart1 · 6 years ago

Text

Deported parents may lose kids to adoption

As the deportees were led off the plane onto the steamy San Salvador tarmac, an anguished Araceli Ramos Bonilla burst into tears, her face contorted with pain: "They want to steal my daughter!"

What followed — one foster family's initially successful attempt to win full custody of Alexa — reveals what could happen to some of the infants, children and teens taken from their families at the border under a Trump administration policy earlier this year. The "zero-tolerance" crackdown ended in June, but hundreds of children remain in detention, shelters or foster care and U.S. officials say more than 200 are not eligible for reunification or release.

And today, with hundreds of those mothers and fathers deported thousands of miles away, the risk has grown exponentially.

States usually seal child custody cases, and the federal agencies overseeing the migrant children don't track how often state court judges allow these kids to be given up for adoption. But by providing a child's name and birthdate to the specific district, probate or circuit court involved, the AP found that it's sometimes possible to track these children.

Alexa's case began in November 2015 under the Obama administration, years before Trump's family-separation policy rolled out. Her 15-month separation from her mother exposes the fragile legal standing of children under the care of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and a flawed, piecemeal system that can change the course of a child's life.

It took 28 minutes for a judge in a rural courthouse near Lake Michigan to grant Alexa's foster parents, Sherri and Kory Barr, temporary guardianship. Alexa's mother and the little girl's immigration attorney were not even notified about the proceedings.

Based on their experiences with Alexa, the Barrs had become convinced that Alexa's mom was a bad mother and that the little girl would be abused if she were reunited with her.

"My wife and I are sick over this," Kory Barr told the judge, who wished him good luck as he granted the foster parents' request two days after Christmas.

The federal system that had custody of Alexa says the state courts never should have allowed foster parents to get that far, no matter how good their intentions. But each state court system, from New York to California, runs wardship and adoption proceedings differently — and sometimes there are even variations between counties.

In Missouri, an American couple managed to permanently adopt a baby whose Guatemalan mother had been picked up in an immigration raid. That seven-year legal battle terminating the mother's parental rights ended in 2014. In Nebraska, another Guatemalan mother prevailed and got her kids back, but it took five years and over $1 million in donated legal work.

Since the 1980s, however, Bethany acknowledged that nine of the 500 migrant children assigned to its foster program have been adopted by American families. The children, ages 3 to 18, were adopted after it was determined it wouldn't be safe or possible for them to go back to their families; at least one asked to be adopted by his foster parents, and another was a trafficking victim, Bethany said.

"We never want families to be separated," Bethany CEO Chris Palusky said. "That's what we're about, is bringing families together."

"We have the kids in the U.S. and the parents down in Central America, and now they'll bring all these child welfare agencies into play," Sandweg said. "It's just a recipe for disaster."

In Ramos' darkest days, she would lay on her bed, stare at the ceiling and sob, her hand on her stomach.

"This girl, she was here, in my womb," she said. "We are meant to be together. Always."

---

Alexa's mother was born in the middle of a bloody civil war in El Salvador that gave way to violent street crime. She was pregnant at 13; that daughter was raised by grandparents.

Starting at age 19, Ramos had four sons with another man over the course of a decade, followed by the arrival of Alexa in 2013. She and her daughter looked alike — both bright-eyed, with dark hair framing their smooth skin.

It was after the children's father found another woman that the abuse began, Ramos said.

"The worst time was when he kicked me so hard it left a bruise and it never went away," she later told an asylum officer. Without makeup, a dent in the center of her forehead is apparent.

Ramos went to a shelter, but said she became increasingly convinced that her former partner would track her down and kill her. She applied for a U.S. visa, she said, but got nowhere.

During a custody battle in their home city of San Miguel, Ramos said her children's father filed false police reports, including one alleging that she encouraged a 17-year-old girl to have sex with an adult. With the help of his own mother, who told authorities her son had made up the accusations, she successfully cleared her name and the cases were dropped.

Yet it was that information — later deemed "outdated and unsubstantiated" by the U.S. Justice Department — that was used in a Michigan court as support for the argument that Alexa should be permanently separated from her mother.

Ramos scraped together $6,000 to pay a smuggler who could help her escape from the man she said warned her she'd "never be at peace." On the monthlong, 1,500-mile pilgrimage, she carried Alexa, a change of clothes, diapers, cookies, juice and water.

In El Salvador, Ramos might earn $5 a day selling clothes or waitressing. In the U.S., she could earn more than that in an hour. Ramos yearned for a new beginning.

"They told me I would never see her again," Ramos recalled.

Ramos said she begged agents to send Alexa to friends in Texas, but said they gave up when two calls went unanswered.

The departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services have not disputed that events could unfold that way in the federal system. DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman said Tuesday that the agency had not yet been able to investigate Ramos' claims, but "takes seriously our responsibility for those in our custody."

Three days after Ramos' separation from her daughter, court records show, the U.S. government labeled Alexa an "unaccompanied minor," which meant she entered the bureaucracy for migrant youth, typically teens, who arrive in the U.S. alone. The toddler was issued a notice to appear on "a date to be set, at a time to be set, to show why you should not be removed from the United States."

At 28 months, Alexa was intelligent and engaging, but her vocabulary was limited to Spanish words for colors, some numbers and her favorite foods.

She initially was placed with a Spanish-speaking foster family in San Antonio, Texas, who would call Ramos in the detention center and put Alexa on the phone. "Each time they called, I could not stop crying," Ramos said. "Crying and crying, because I wanted to be with her."

Two months after her arrival there, Ramos used a translator to speak on the phone with an asylum officer who asked about her family, why she left El Salvador and what her children's father might do if she went back. Alexa was safe, Ramos told the officer, but "I think he will kill me."

The next day, Ramos got word that she had "demonstrated a credible fear of persecution or torture," according to the asylum supervisor at the DHS.

Without a lawyer, her chance at asylum slipped away. Like everyone else around her, she was being deported.

The federal government offers all deported parents the chance to take their children with them, but Ramos said she was ordered to sign a waiver to leave Alexa behind. "The agent put his hand on mine, he held my hand, he forced me to sign," she said.

Immigration agents then handcuffed Ramos and put her on a plane south, soaring over the volcanos and jungles of Central America.

At the time, it was unusual for parents to be deported while their children remained behind in federal foster care, but that occurred again and again this summer. More than 300 parents were deported to Central America without their children this summer, many of whom allege they were coerced into signing paperwork they didn't understand, affecting their rights to reunify with their children. Some parents also contended that U.S. officials told them their children would be given up for adoption.

"And the reality is that for every parent who is not located, there will be a permanent orphaned child, and that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration," U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said in August while overseeing a lawsuit to stop family separations.

The AP asked the State Department, as well as embassy officials in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, whether they were working with deported parents to find their children in the U.S.

The State Department deferred to the DHS, which said in a statement: "DHS is not aware of anyone contacting embassy or consulate in a foreign country to be reunified with a child. This is unsurprising given the fact that these parents made a knowing decision to leave their child in a foreign country."

___

By April 2016, Alexa was transferred to the care of Bethany Christian Services, one of the nation's largest adoption agencies. As thousands more Central American children crossed the border alone during President Barack Obama's second term, the nonprofit agency's work providing temporary and long-term foster care to unaccompanied children had begun to grow.

Over the years, the Michigan-based agency has received support from local donors that include Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her family members, who have contributed more than $3.1 million. One DeVos relative worked for Bethany, and another served on its board.

As the agency started receiving more Central American children, several former Bethany social workers said they were encouraged to recruit new foster families at the agency's traditional base, the Christian Reformed Church, and other local churches.

"All of a sudden when we had these younger kids to place, everyone was really excited about that," said Sarah Zuidema, a former Bethany supervisor who grew up within the denomination. "They just felt that if these kids could know Jesus, everything would be OK."

Among the families who stepped up to help were the Barrs — Kory, a physical therapist at a nearby rehabilitation hospital, and his wife, Sherri, who ran a home-organization business. The Barrs had three daughters who were raised in a devout home and already had fostered two Salvadoran sisters in 2013.

Bethany's outreach to local families was part of a rising Christian movement to mobilize support to address what Bethany has called the "global refugee crisis." The movement emphasizes that fostering is aligned with spiritual beliefs, and urges families to approach the role with open hearts.

When Bethany placed Alexa in the Barrs' home, the couple signed a form promising they would not try to seek custody because the Office of Refugee Resettlement was legally responsible for the child. But eight months later, fearing for the girl's safety, that is exactly what they did.

On June 5, 2016, Alexa celebrated her third birthday 3,000 miles away from her mother. The next month, a social worker sent Ramos Facebook photos showing Alexa wearing an American flag tank dress, drawing outside in the Michigan sunlight. In another shot, the girl appears at the Barrs' front door clad in a hot pink ensemble, next to a little red wagon and the family dog.

The foster program notified the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which opened an investigation but decided the complaint lacked sufficient evidence.

In August, the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights, which has a federal contract to advocate for the best interests of immigrant children navigating the legal system, began investigating whether Alexa could safely be returned to her mother. An evaluator repeatedly visited Ramos and interviewed her family, neighbors and employer.

Meanwhile, Salvadoran diplomatic officials began making periodic visits to Grand Rapids to check on Alexa and advocate for her release.

"The foster family started putting up barrier after barrier to delay her departure," said Patricia Maza-Pittsford, El Salvador's consul general in Chicago.

Finally, the girl's immigration attorney, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. immigration courts all reached agreement: It was past time for Alexa to be back with her mother.

Just days before Christmas 2016, a federal immigration judge ordered her deported. The Barrs were told to pack up Alexa's things and have her ready to go at a moment's notice.

"The Office of Refugee Resettlement is planning to put Alexa on a plane back to her abuser," the couple said in a handwritten application seeking guardianship. Alexa's mother, they wrote, "has not owned her crimes, not been rehabilitated."

During an emergency hearing, Kory Barr pounded on the judge's bench as he begged him to help them keep the girl in Michigan and insisted that child-welfare experts needed more time to investigate.

"Every day they are telling us this could happen very fast," he said. "We have her bags packed."

Judge Mark Feyen confessed he wasn't familiar with the federal agencies involved, saying, "This is kind of hard to pin down exactly who the interested parties are."

Responding to their concerns that Alexa's life could be in danger, Feyen granted the Barrs temporary custody after their attorney, Joshua Mikrut, asserted he had a "loose understanding" that a prior order had been issued suspending Ramos' parental rights, though he didn't know where. The judge asked him to return with proof, and also scheduled a full guardianship hearing for a few weeks later.

"Every time I get one of these, I learn a little more," the judge said.

Within days, a federal immigration judge granted an emergency motion to stay Alexa's departure.

___

When state courts gain control of a child being detained by the federal government, that child can become invisible in the system. Alexa and her mother were held in federal custody. But states — not the federal government — typically run child-welfare systems.

Alexa's mom didn't know where to turn, and she didn't have the money to hire an attorney. But she did have Facebook.

In El Salvador, in the days surrounding the Michigan guardianship hearing, she posted a series of increasingly desperate videos — which went viral in Central America and in one case attracted 2.5 million views — speaking directly to the Barrs, to her daughter, to anyone who might help her get Alexa back.

"I'm the girl's mother. You aren't anything to her — you just met her because I traveled with her," she sobbed in one video, her voice breaking as she addressed the Barrs. "Look inside your hearts. . I had her in my belly for nine months. I'm the mother and I'm waiting for her."

In another video, she cried as she displayed dolls modeled on the Disney movie "Frozen" that she bought to give Alexa for Christmas.

Outraged and sympathetic comments poured in and word reached Salvadoran government officials in El Salvador and the Chicago consul's office. Pressure mounted.

A month after the Barrs were granted guardianship of Alexa, the Justice Department weighed in sharply.

"The Barrs obtained their temporary guardianship order in violation of federal law," U.S. prosecutors argued. The Barrs' attorney and the Michigan judge also violated federal law by seeking and granting guardianship, and failed to inform Ramos or Alexa's lawyers about the proceedings, they wrote.

More than a month after they had petitioned to keep Alexa, Sherri and Kory Barr despairingly gave up. The federal government, they wrote the judge, "seems to have us painted into a corner with no way out."

While Mikrut acknowledges the Barrs sometimes were blinded by their passion, he said the federal system should allow challenges to its decisions about the welfare of children in its care.

A few days later, the Barrs sent Alexa home with a huge bag of toys and clothes and a letter from "Papa Foster," as Kory Barr called himself.

"Mi querida Alexa," he began, or "my dear Alexa." He wrote about how she loved her first snow, how they pretended to hold wrestling matches, how he cried at the thought of life without the "baby" of their family.

"I hope this is not the last time we see you, but if it is, I want you to know that I will keep you in my heart forever," he wrote.

___

Alexa was stunned when she landed in El Salvador in February 2017. Her mother sobbed and clung to her, but the girl barely recognized this woman who called herself Mama. When could she go home to "Mama Foster, Papa Foster" and her three blonde, blue-eyed sisters? And what was this woman saying?

Alexa had lost all her Spanish and spoke English to her mother, using words like "water" and "chicken." Ramos, who spoke almost no English herself, had to point to pictures or call friends to translate.

The Ramos' small brick home, shared with two of Alexa's brothers, is on a quiet dirt street a few blocks from the main drag, a colorful and chaotic mix of shops and services.

Alexa pined for her house in suburban Grand Rapids, its green lawn, her pink room. She rarely giggled and didn't want to play or eat.

Ramos showed Alexa baby pictures to help her relearn their relationship.

"I am your mother. I love you so very much," she told her in Spanish, over and over.

Slowly, over time, Alexa began to smile and understand her native tongue. She bonded again with her mother and brothers. Bright and energetic, she now often winds her small arms around her mother's waist and neck. When she wants attention, she whispers in her mother's ear.

She fears for parents who were separated from their children under the zero-tolerance policy and has taken to Facebook to urge them to fight to get their kids back.

"If they give our children up for adoption without our permission, that isn't justice," she said during a recent interview in a park. "They are our children, not theirs."

For months after she came home, Alexa asked if she could talk to the Barrs but Ramos wasn't ready. She had a change of heart when she learned Sherri Barr was ill and now lets them talk every so often.

"I do not feel resentment for them because they also love her and because the family is going through a bad time," Ramos said. "We all deserve an opportunity."

The Barrs worry about Alexa's safety in El Salvador, but say they also worry about Ramos' well-being. They now consider their relationship with mother and daughter part of God's plan.

"No one wins in this one," Sherri Barr said.

from Local News https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/ap-investigation-deported-parents-may-lose-kids-to-adoption

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