Britain’s 'Finest WWII General' Accused of Child Sex Abuse in Australia

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Viscount Slim has been accused of molesting multiple children at Fairbridge Farm School in rural New South Wales while representing the Queen in Australia

One of Britain’s greatest military commanders, Viscount Slim, has been accused of molesting children at a school for underprivileged youths while serving as the Queen’s representative in Australia.

Bob Stevens, a claimant in a lawsuit against Fairbridge Farm, a school in Australia for mostly British child migrants, said Viscount Slim would arrive in his Rolls Royce and the “next minute we were sitting on his knee and he's got his hands up our trousers”. » | Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney | Thursday, March 13, 2014

Vatican Goes Into Battle for Benedict as Sexual Abuse Crisis Deepens
THE INDEPENDENT: Spokesman says Pope knew nothing about reassigning paedophile priest

battle to defend Pope Benedict from the latest child abuse scandal after reports linked him directly to a decision to allow a paedophile priest to take up a pastoral role in his former diocese.

Officials launched their second strident defence of the Pope in two days over separate episodes in Germany and the US as the tide of allegations moved closer to the pontiff himself. Senior Italian politicians also stepped in to defend the Pope over claims that he had failed to act strongly enough against child abuse by the clergy before he took on leadership of the church.

In the latest controversy, The New York Times reported that Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was kept closely informed of the case of Father Peter Hullerman, who was suspended from his duties in the northern German town of Essen in 1979 after several parents accused him of child sex attacks. >>> Michael Day in Milan | Saturday, March 27, 2010

Vatican Denies Pope Was Involved in Sex Abuse Cover Up
THE TELEGRAPH: The Vatican has denied claims that Pope Benedict XVI failed to defrock a US priest who was accused of molesting up to 200 deaf boys over several years.

A Vatican newspaper editorial said the claims were an "ignoble" attack on the Pope and that there was no "cover-up", the BBC reports.

Archbishops had complained about Fr Lawrence Murphy in the 1990s to a Vatican office led by the future pope, but apparently received no response.

But the Pope's spokesman defended him, saying the Vatican department which the future pontiff was in charge of had not been informed of these latest allegations until 1996 - 20 years after the priest's victims first informed the police. >>> | Friday, March 26, 2010

Related:

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys >>> Laurie Goodstein | Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Pédophilie: le pape au cœur du scandale
LE TEMPS: Joseph Ratzinger, lorsqu’il était cardinal, n’a pris aucune sanction contre un prêtre américain ayant avoué quelque 200 abus sexuels sur des enfants sourds

Le scandale des abus sexuels éclabousse toujours davantage le sommet de l’Eglise. Le New York Times a révélé, preuves à l’appui, que Joseph Ratzinger, alors qu’il était en charge de la Congrégation pour la doctrine de la foi (CDF), n’a pas relevé de ses fonctions un prêtre américain qui avait commis des abus sexuels sur au moins 200 enfants malentendants. Et cela bien qu’un évêque ait personnellement adressé au futur pape un courrier en 1996 présentant la gravité des faits. Courrier auquel Joseph Ratzinger n’aurait jamais répondu. En revanche, il a été sensible à une lettre du prêtre abuseur, qui l’implorait de le laisser en paix.

Le New York Times a eu accès à des documents confidentiels grâce à deux avocats, Jeff Anderson et Mike Finnegan, représentant cinq hommes qui ont intenté quatre actions en justice contre l’archidiocèse de Milwaukee, où se sont déroulés les abus. Ces documents comprennent la correspondance entre différents évêques et le Vatican, les déclarations sous serment des victimes, les notes écrites d’un expert des troubles sexuels ayant examiné le prêtre abuseur, ainsi que les notes d’une rencontre finale au Vatican concernant ce cas. >>> Patricia Briel | Vendredi 26 Mars 2010

Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys
The Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, with hands together, at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Wisconsin in 1960. Photograph: The New York Times
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations.

“I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,” Father Murphy wrote near the end of his life to Cardinal Ratzinger. “I ask your kind assistance in this matter.” The files contain no response from Cardinal Ratzinger. >>> Laurie Goodstein | Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Pope Archdiocese Faces 'Tsunami' of Abuse Claims
THE TELEGRAPH: The head of new taskforce set up to deal with sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the Pope's former archdiocese in Germany said the group had been overwhelmed by a "tsunami" of claims.

New reports have emerged almost daily of sex abuse cases involving Catholic clergy in several European countries. The spreading controversy threatens to overshadow a letter the Pope is expected to release on Saturday about the scandals that wracked Ireland.

Fresh claims emerged that Benedict XVI failed to do enough to safeguard children from paedophile priests when, as Joseph Ratzinger, he was the archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.

"It's like a tsunami," said Elke Huemmeler, the head of the diocese's newly established Task Force on Sexual Abuse Prevention, the first of its kind in the German Catholic Church.

The body, which started work yesterday, will review about 120 cases of alleged sexual abuse – among the 300 reported across Germany since January.

Around 100 of the claims involve a boarding school run by Benedictine monks at Ettal, in the foothills of the Alps in southern Bavaria.

"It is all really terrible, but we are going to listen to everything," said Mrs Huemmeler. >>> Nick Squires in Rome | Friday, March 19, 2010

Sex Abuse Rife in Other Religions, Says Vatican
THE GUARDIAN: The Vatican has lashed out at criticism over its handling of its paedophilia crisis by saying the Catholic church was "busy cleaning its own house" and that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger.

In a defiant and provocative statement, issued following a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva, the Holy See said the majority of Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not paedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males.

The statement, read out by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent observer to the UN, defended its record by claiming that "available research" showed that only 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse.

He also quoted statistics from the Christian Scientist Monitor newspaper to show that most US churches being hit by child sex abuse allegations were Protestant and that sexual abuse within Jewish communities was common.

He added that sexual abuse was far more likely to be committed by family members, babysitters, friends, relatives or neighbours, and male children were quite often guilty of sexual molestation of other children.

Nor did The [sic] statement said [sic] that rather than paedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males.

"Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."

The statement concluded: "As the Catholic church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it."

The Holy See launched its counter–attack after an international representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, Keith Porteous Wood, accused it of covering up child abuse and being in breach of several articles under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Porteous Wood said the Holy See had not contradicted any of his accusations. "The many thousands of victims of abuse deserve the international community to hold the Vatican to account, something it has been unwilling to do, so far. Both states and children's organisations must unite to pressurise the Vatican to open its files, change its procedures worldwide, and report suspected abusers to civil authorities."

Representatives from other religions were dismayed by the Holy See's attempts to distance itself from controversy by pointing the finger at other faiths. >>> Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent, and Anushka Asthana | Monday, September 28, 2009