Tag: current-events

Of Cultures Destroyed by Western Sexual Exploitation and Violent Religious Prudery

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religious Prudery, Religious Violence, Sexual Exploitation

Of Cultures Destroyed by Western Sexual Exploitation and Violent Religious Prudery

By Jesse Bering |

 

In working on my latest book Perv, some of the saddest material I came across involved the stormy cross-cultural conflicts erupting between Western ideals of sex and those discovered among other “exotic” societies. The field of cultural anthropology has its own dark history in this regard. For an embarrassingly long time, in fact, some unethical scholars were in the dubious business of publishing thinly veiled “ethnopornographies” of their trusting subjects.

With revealing titles such as Untrodden Fields of Anthropology (1898), Neger-Eros (1928), and Erotikon (1966), these researchers seemed far less concerned about educating Western audiences than they were in titillating readers with lurid true stories of savage lust. Some of these scandalous volumes even included explicit “photodocumentation” of the subjects at hand, which arguably involved the production of sexually exploitative images of indigenous people.

It’s disturbing stuff. Yet in terms of the sheer amount of damage that Westerners have done to other cultures in response to their simply having different (and usually harmless) sexual customs from our own, religious missionaries definitely take the cake. In a distressingly large number of cases, the Church’s historical encroachment into far-flung corners of the globe has served to level whole societies through its many aggressive campaigns to save “savage” souls from their carnal “sins.”

The Gikuyu of Kenya, who had very rigid codes of sexual convention, thought the public displays of affection among Europeans were unspeakably vulgar. Ironically, however, early 20th century missionaries punished these conservative people for their timeless tradition of encouraging adolescents to be sexually responsible by experimenting with romantic relationships through a cuddling ritual. In this tightly regulated Gikuyu practice of ngweko, which was primarily used to assess a young couple’s lifelong compatibility in possible matrimony, the young lovers would lie together with their legs intertwined, which kept them from thrusting. “The chief concern in this relationship,” explained the native anthropologist Jomo Kenyatta, “is the enjoyment of the warmth of the breast … and not the full experience of sexual intercourse.” The rules were strict and clear: the girl must wear a leather apron covering her groin, the boy must tuck his organ between his legs, the girl couldn’t touch said organ, and neither party could sleep with their back turned to the other. Instead, they’d simply coo and fondle each other’s bodies, rubbing their chests together, talking until falling asleep. Yet zealous missionaries couldn’t be persuaded that coitus wasn’t, in fact, occurring, and so they forced any teenagers who’d engaged in ngweko to repent for what they saw as the sin of premarital relations.

H. Laval (1807-1880)

Among the most despicable of prudish missionaries was a dogmatic French priest named Honoré Laval, who managed to nearly wipe out the entire Mangareva culture of French Polynesia in the mid-19th century. When he and his fellow clergymen first set foot onto the Gambier Islands in January, 1834, the free-spirited Mangarevans (whom, Laval assured the bishops in Bordeaux, were ignorant pagans seething with lasciviousness and therefore in desperate need of salvation) numbered at over nine thousand. After a few short decades of his unbridled theocratic rule on the islands, in which he banished anyone who dared to question his sacred cause, it numbered at just a few hundred. During this time, Laval destroyed every last Mangarevan idol and artifact and replaced the ancient temples with cathedrals and convents. The latter he stocked with young native women, whom he saw as being especially vulnerable to the Devil’s lewd temptations. Instead of swimming bare-chested in the azure waters of the archipelago as their ancestors had done since time immemorial, they could now only wander aimlessly along the convent halls while fingering their rosaries, draped in the suffocating habits of old French nuns.

Lazal’s religious tyranny ended in 1871, when a traveling merchant doing business on the islands, shocked by the conditions he saw, smuggled word of the priest’s isolated demagogic regime to the governor in Tahiti. When a special French envoy finally liberated the Mangarevans that year, two little native boys were said to have stumbled out of Laval’s overflowing prison, explaining that they’d been ordered jailed by the priest for the grievous offence of having giggled during Mass.

Should we forgive Laval and the many other missionaries who’ve since come and gone, and in fact continue largely unabated to this day, foisting their biblical sexual ethics on other cultures? After all, they’ve only been doing their evangelical duties. Frankly, I see little evidence of their love and benevolence, only tragic tales of cultures forever lost to the ideological bulldozer of Christian homogenization, the self-righteous flag of original sin waving arrogantly in the breeze. I’m reminded of the Eskimo’s famous lament in Annie Dillard’s remarkable book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. “If I did not know about God and sin,” the Eskimo asked the priest, “would I go to hell?” “No, not if you did not know,” replied the priest. “Then why did you tell me?” responded the Eskimo.

Jesse Bering

About the Author: Jesse Bering is the author of The Belief Instinct (2011), Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? (2012) and Perv (October, 2013). He began his career as a psychology professor at the University of Arkansas and is the former director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University Belfast. Bering now lives in Ithaca, New York with his partner, Juan, along with a very big cat and two pathologically friendly border terriers. In addition to his books, Bering is also a regular contributor to many popular magazines, including Scientific American, Slate, New York Magazine, The Guardian, The New Republic, Discover, and more. Follow on Twitter @JesseBering.
Related articles

Jury finds ‘psychic’ Rose Marks guilty on all 14 fraud charges, faces possible 20 years in prison

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Psychic, Rose Marks

Jury finds ‘psychic’ Rose Marks guilty on all 14 fraud charges, faces possible 20 years in prison

Average storefront palm-reader or psychic ringleader who bilked clients for millions? Fort Lauderdale psychic on trial photo
Rose Marks, a Fort Lauderdale woman who claims to be a psychic, waves to the media as she leaves the federal courthouse Tuesday Aug. 27, 2013 after the first day of her trial. (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)

marks photo
Family members hustle Rosie Marks, who was distraught after the conviction of her mother Rose Marks, into a car after the verdict Thursday afternoon, September 26, 2013.

Jury finds ‘psychic’ Rose Marks guilty on all 14 fraud charges, faces possible 20 years in prison photo
Family members hustle Rosie Marks, who was distraught after the fraud conviction of her mother Rose Marks, into a car after the verdict Thursday afternoon. (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)

By Jane Musgrave

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

WEST PALM BEACH —

Even before the jury’s first guilty verdict was read, stifled sobs filled the courtroom. As the clerk repeated “guilty” 14 times, the quiet sobbing crescendoed.

“Psychic” Rose Marks turned to members of her family and put a finger to her lips, telling them to hush.

But it didn’t help.

Seeing the 62-year-old matriarch convicted of 14 fraud-related charges and immediately slapped in handcuffs on Thursday was too much for family members who were part of and benefited from the multi-million-dollar fortune-telling business that collapsed under the weight of a federal investigation.

Some reached out, trying to touch her. One threw a Bible. One called out to the lead investigator, mocking him. When they realized their beloved mother, grandmother and sister was about to walk through an open door and be taken to jail, shouts rang out.

“Mom, I love you!” one called. “Don’t be afraid!” yelled another.

“I’m not afraid,” Marks responded, as U.S. Marshals surrounded her. “I love you, too.”

The emotional end to the monthlong trial was not as unexpected as the verdict. When the trial began, cynics scoffed at the notion that a psychic could be charged with separating a fool and his money.

But, prosecutors methodically built a case, showing how Marks, her daughters-in-law and even her granddaughter preyed on broken people who came to their storefronts in midtown Manhattan and Fort Lauderdale to deal with tragedies life had handed them. Instead of solace or guidance, they told clients the only way out was to give them money — lots of it — with the promise it would one day be returned.

Instead, the psychics amassed a roughly $25 million fortune.

“I’ll be the voice of the victims. Justice has been served,” said Charles Stack, who began what appeared to be a quixotic investigation in 2008 before he retired from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department.

People understood the agony of those who trusted epic Ponzi schemers Scott Rothstein and Bernie Madoff, Stack said.

In many ways, Marks’ victims were more sympathetic. Unlike those who fell prey to Rothstein or Madoff, the psychic’s clients weren’t looking for money. “In this case, the victims were praying for hope, and hope is the unwavering belief in the unseen,” Stack said.

Stack, who said he understood why Marks’ family lashed out at him, is a hero to the victims, including best-selling romance novelist Jude Deveraux. He befriended the writer, helping her get over the shock of learning that her nearly 20-year relationship with Marks was a sham and she was unlikely to ever recover the $20 million she had given the psychic “to cleanse.”

“I’m glad she’s going to be taken off the streets and out of the business and she won’t hurt anyone else,” said Deveraux, 66, who splits her time between New York City and Southwest Ranches near Fort Lauderdale.

Deanna Wolfe, who lost nearly $1 million during her three-decade relationship with Marks, expressed mixed feelings about the verdict. “I don’t know if she started out meaning to do this or if the greed and the money just took over,” said Wolfe, 72, who lives in Virginia. “It’s a sad thing for everyone involved, including her family.”

Deveraux, who sought Marks’ help to deal with an abusive husband and the death of an 8-year-old son in a 2005 ATV accident, expressed no such ambivalence. “It was never a friendship,” she said. “There’s no sadness. None.”

Unlike other victims, she said she doesn’t care if she gets back any of the money she lost. Wolfe, who ran up huge credit card debts and borrowed money from a wealthy friend, said she is hopeful some of the money will be returned.

Attorney Fred Schwartz, who defended Marks, said the government seized all of Marks’ assets — including cars, a boat, motorcycles, jewelry, gold coins and a home near the Intracoastal Waterway. During the trial, he portrayed the victims as satisfied customers who were improperly convinced they were victims by Stack. He said he plans to appeal based on improper investigative procedures by government agents who he said kept key evidence from him.

He tried to prepare Marks for the possibility that, if convicted, she would be taken immediately to jail. He said she expects to die behind bars. While the punishment for the convictions on 14 charges carry a maximum punishment of roughly 250 years, realistically she faces of 10 to 15 years, he said.

“Rose believes that even with a 4- or 5-year sentence, given the wear and tear on her body from working since she was 8 or 9 years old, she would die in jail,” Schwartz said. During the trial she used a cane to deal with knee problems and experienced chest pains when the verdict was announced.

Her daughter and son-in-law, her two sons and their wives, her sister and granddaughter also each pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire/mail fraud. They will be sentenced before Marks learns her fate on Dec. 9.

THE CHARGES

The 14 federal charges Rose Marks was convicted of on Thursday:

  • 1 count of conspiracy to commit mail/wire fraud
  • 1 count of conspiracy to commit money-laundering
  • 2 counts of mail fraud
  • 2 counts of money laundering
  • 6 counts of wire fraud
  • 2 counts of filing false income tax returns

 

Source: U.S. court documents.

Related articles

Crazy Conspiracy Nut Alex Jones Claims Gays are a Government Plot!

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Alex Jones, Alex Jones Is A Kook, Alex Jones Is a Nutcase, Alex Jones Uber Crazy

Alex Jones: Gay marriage truther?

The conspiracy theorist said the government is turning people gay through chemical warfare                       

By Alex Seitz-Wald

[Alex Jones, it ought be noted is a shill for the far Right Wing political cult, known as the John Birch Society. Jones is also a rabid god nut, Christian fundamentalist, end times promulgator. Jones almost makes Uber crazy Glenn Beck seem same.]

See here:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw1hDi6pxeU

Alex Jones insane Christian Idiocy

 

Alex Jones: Gay marriage truther?

 

Long before the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones was warning his viewers that the government was turning people gay by putting chemicals in their juice boxes, water bottles and potato chip bags that feminized men.

“The reason there are so many gay people now is because it’s a chemical warfare operation,” Jones said in a June 2010 clip that has gained renewed attention since the DOMA ruling. “I have the government documents where they said they’re going to encourage homosexuality with chemicals so people don’t have children.”

Cutting open a juice box to reveal the nefarious plastic lining laced with “estrogen mimickers,” Jones continued, “After you’re done drinking your little juices, you’re ready to go out and have a baby. You’re ready to put makeup on, you’re ready to wear a short skirt.” While there is some research that suggests plastics leach hormone-like chemicals, there’s no evidence that they’re harmful to one’s health or that the government is involved in a secret plot to turn the country gay.

It’s typical Jones conspiracy fare: globalists secretly working to depopulate the planet so they can seize control. But it’s also typical of a vicious homophobic vein in Jones’ worldview, which is often overlooked and seems to run in direct contradiction to his proclaimed support for individual liberty. It’s not a central theme of Jones’ broadcasts, but a potent undercurrent.

For instance, while hosting Minnesota-based radical anti-gay pastor Bradlee Dean in 2011, Jones said that “all over the country, it is a fact” that gay people are “recruiting 7-year-olds.” “They teach children sexual acts that can kill you,” he added. Later, Jones defended Chick-fil-A’s donations to anti-gay groups, and gave Dean a platform on InfoWars.com to attack the “homosexual agenda.”

In October of 2011, Jones warned that “nellies,” a derogatory term for gay people, are snatching children away from straight couples. “It’s not that – I don’t even dislike gay people or hate them. It’s that I’ve been to these events and a lot of times it’s the specialized homosexuals who are collecting everybody’s kids that run them, so then it’s like they’re persecuting us and I’m tired of it,” he said.

Jones added that he’s seen “female judges with butch haircuts who usually have a whole string of kids they’ve taken from people themselves.” Responding to a caller from Wisconsin, Jones said, “You’re up in Wisconsin, a very wicked nelly command base,” and asked if the “nelly creature” in question was female or male. “I’m going to be honest about this because the kids come first. If the homosexual lobby attacks me, I don’t care,” he added, also saying that many gay people he’s seen at pride events are pedophiles.

Then there was his row with Rachel Maddow, who mocked his theory that the government used a weather weapon to unleash tornados in the Midwest. Jones responded in the classiest way possible: “Mr. Maddow, I mean Janet Reno — Janet Napolitano! I get them all confused. Pat from Saturday Night Live? No, no … Ron Maddow?”

“I’m gonna be honest with everybody,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect, “I’m attracted to Mr. Maddow … I always thought of myself as a heterosexual, but … I wonder if Mr. Maddow is gonna join the Boy Scouts as a troop leader,” Jones said, cracking himself up.

The anti-gay sentiment is surprising, perhaps, coming from a libertarian defender of individualism, but vicious homophobia has a long history in the anti-communist John Birch Society, where Jones rips off most of his best work.

 

Alex Seitz-WaldAlex Seitz-Wald is Salon’s political reporter.

 

 

Related articles

Conspiracy Crackpot Glenn Beck Whines He’s ‘Embarrassed’ That He Voted For Mitt Romney

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Conspiracy Crackpots, Conspiracy Loons, Conspiracy Nut, Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck Crazy, Glenn Beck Cult Brainwashing, Glenn Beck Mormon Buffoon, Mitt Romney

Glenn Beck Now Says He’s ‘Embarrassed’ That He Voted For Mitt Romney                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

by Kyle Mantyla

 

As we noted earlier this month, Glenn Beck has completely turned against Mitt Romney, claiming that he was nothing more than a progressive as he now asserts that he only voted for him because he had no other option.

On his radio program today, Beck and his co-hosts were declaring that never again will they support a Republican presidential nominee that they don’t agree with simply because they dislike that candidate less than the Democratic candidate, saying they’ve had to do so with every GOP nominee since Ronald Reagan, including Mitt Romney.

Beck said that while he is not embarrassed to have voted for Romney “because of the decorum that he would have brought back” to the Oval Office, he is “embarrassed that that’s what I cast my vote for because I’m convinced he would have been going into Syria at this point.”

He went on to declare, 2:00 minutes in, that Romney would have “really let us down” because he would have refused to repeal President Obama’s health care reform “even though he ran on it.”

Let us point out that during the campaign, Beck spent every day telling his audience that Romney was a modern-day George Washington and Abraham Lincoln: If Glenn Beck had any credibility left, this absurdly self-serving rewriting of his passionate support for Mitt Romney would have probably destroyed it for good.

 

 

More here:-

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/glenn-beck-now-says-hes-embarrassed-he-voted-mitt-romney

Related articles

Tiny North Dakota town braces against neo-Nazi plans for all-white community

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American National Socialist Movement, Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi

Tiny North Dakota town braces against neo-Nazi plans for all-white community

Town of Leith, population 24, has sought outside help amid news that a white supremacist group plans to call it home

nazi flag new crop

Allies with the National Socialist Movement are also involved in the proposed neo-Nazi community. Photograph: Sandy Huffaker/AP

The tiny town of Leith in North Dakota is bracing itself for a potentially turbulent weekend. Its 24-strong population is set to be overrun by opposing busloads of neo-Nazis attempting to create a white supremacist community there and their anti-racist detractors.

Jeff Schoep, commander of the American National Socialist Movement (NSM), is preparing to travel from Detroit to Leith to hold a town-hall meeting and press conference on Sunday afternoon. On the NSM website, he describes the trip as a “gesture of goodwill”, but goes on to say ominously that the aim is to “plant the seeds of National Socialism in North Dakota”.

Anti-racist activists are also expected to descend on Leith from other parts of North Dakota and neighbouring Minnesota. “We cannot accept this racist hatred they are bringing here – Leith is in crisis and is crying out for help,” one of the organisers, Jeremy Kelly, told the Bismarck Tribune.

For the residents of Leith, the prospect of a weekend filled with white supremacist grandstanding is highly unwelcome. The town mayor, Ryan Schock, told the Guardian “people are very concerned. They do not want people to come to this town who have hate in them.”

Leith’s conundrum began when a newcomer called Paul Craig Cobb began buying up deserted plots of land two years ago, accumulating 12 plots in total. Last month it was revealed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors right-wing extremism, that Cobb, 61, is in fact a white supremacist wanted in Canada for promoting hatred in a blog.

It was also disclosed that he had moved to Leith in the hope of quietly constructing a neo-Nazi community along with allies in the National Socialist Movement and White Aryan Resistance (WAR). He is in the process of transferring some of the properties to Schoep, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard called Tom Metzger, and to April Gaede, founder of the neo-Nazi group National Vanguard.

Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center said Cobb’s attempt to form an extremist community was in line with previous efforts to set up such collectives in Idaho and Montana. “Cobb has probably gone further than anyone before him in pursuing this white supremacist dream,” she said.

The publicity surrounding Cobb’s plans in Leith is likely to put a stop to his acquisition of any further land in the area, as local property owners are now wary of dealing with him. But there is little that can be done, Beirich said, to force him to give up the plots he already owns.

Leith residents are trying a variety of different moves to encourage him to leave town and have created a defence fund to pay for legal fees. One potential tactic is to have his house condemned under local amenity laws – Cobb’s property is not linked up to water or sewer services.

A more extreme move that is being discussed would be to abandon Leith’s status as a town before neo-Nazi supporters get close to outnumbering the other residents and thus controlling the town hall.

In a statement, Schoep accused “far left extremists” of trying to drive Cobb from his home. “Craig Cobb is not alone,” he said, “and will not be driven out, or forced to leave. Legal paperwork is being drafted to insure the civil rights of Mr Cobb, and other new residents of Leith will not be violated.”

Related articles

Republican Hypocrite Whose Family Takes Government Farm Subsidies, Mocks Food Stamp Recipients

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religious Nutcase, Republican Hypocrite

Rep. Huelskamp, Whose Family Takes Government Farm Subsidies, Mocks Food Stamp Recipients

by Brian Tashman
Religious nutcase Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), who bravely opposed federal aid to all those greedy Northeasterners affected by Hurricane Sandy, is now boasting about his support for a House GOP plan to kick four to six million people off the food stamp program.

As Jonathan Chait details, the GOP’s draconian food stamp cuts were coupled with a push to preserve excessive subsidies for farmers and agribusinesses, which the GOP refused to cut as much as the Obama administration proposed. And, surprise surprise, Huelskamp’s family has greatly benefited from such government aid:

Huelskamp has been able to see a need for federal relief closer to his home. His brother’s farm received $1.6 million in federal subsidies from 1995 to 2011. The federal payouts included more than $30,000 for disaster subsidies.

Huelskamp’s parents’ farm has also received subsidies. Politico reported in 2011 that the farm took in $1.1 million in federal farms subsidies from 1995 to 2009.

While speaking to right-wing talk show host Steve Deace yesterday, Huelskamp had fun sticking it to all those whiney poors trying to receive food assistance for their families.

Huelskamp pointed to Jason Greenslate, a California surfer who has been all over Fox News, as the face of American food stamp recipients. Media Matters points out that “labeling Greenslate a representative of SNAP recipients flies in the face of readily available data, which shows that the fraud and waste rate in the SNAP program is less than 1 percent and that 41 percent of food stamp recipients live ‘in a household with earnings.’”

Huelskamp joked that his two kids always feel “starved” under his watch, but that with his vote to cut food assistance, he only “decided to starve a surfer by the name of Jason in California who has decided that he’s not going to get a job in life because he gets food stamps.”

“Go pick up trash in a road ditch,” Huelskamp said, “you got to do something. There are 3.5-4 million American adults who are able-bodied, have no dependence and what do we require them to do to get a free check for food? Nothing.”

Huelskamp went on to call the food stamp program “out of control” because of its growth in size. Gee, it’s not like America has faced a recession or high unemployment rates or anything that might have driven up enrollment. Maybe all these working families struggling to put food on the table can just buy a big farm and get government welfare that way!

Related articles

Religious Siblings Kept Dead Mother, Claimed She Was God

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religious Lunatics

Siblings kept dead mother, claimed she was god
Via The West Australian
Three adult siblings have been arrested after police found they had kept their mother’s body in their house for three years after her death.

The Daily Mail website in Britain reports that the trio, aged in their 50s and 60s, had initially refused entry to police who wanted to check on the elderly mother because they believed she was being abused.

Instead, they found she had been dead for years. Police arrested them after finding the skeleton of an elderly woman at their home in Usa in the country’s south-west, according to Jiji Press.

The Daily Mail reports that the Japanese sisters and brother insist that they have done nothing wrong – and say the reason they wanted to stay with their parent was that she had become a god.

The 65-year-old man and two women aged 59 and 52 are accused of conspiring to abandon a body.

When officers visited the home in order to investigate the possibility that the elderly woman was being abused, the siblings tried to refuse them entry.

One of the sisters told police: ‘There’s no need to let you see her. Get off our property,’ according to Asahi News.

When they managed to enter the house, they found Mrs Ishigai’s body lying face up on a futon – which the siblings said was ‘for religious reasons’.

Related articles

Amish Religious Fanatics Jailed for Hate Crimes

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Amish, Amish Hate Crimes, Religious Fanatics

16 Amish men, women face unfamiliar life in federal prison for hate crimes
Prison sentences range from one to 15 years

CLEVELAND – Sixteen Amish men and women who have lived rural, self-sufficient lives surrounded by extended family and with little outside contact are facing regimented routines in a federal prison system where almost half of inmates are behind bars for drug offenses and modern conveniences such as television will be a constant temptation.

The defendants, all members of the same Amish sect, were convicted in September of hate crimes in 2011 attacks meant to shame fellow Amish they believed were straying from the strict religious interpretations espoused by the sect’s leader. Fifteen of them received sentences ranging from one to seven years; the ringleader, Samuel Mullet Sr., got 15 years.

Prison rules will allow the 10 men convicted in beard- and hair-cutting attacks on fellow Amish in eastern Ohio to keep their religiously important beards, but they must wear standard prison uniforms instead of the dark outfits they favor. Jumper dresses will be an option for the six Amish women, who will be barred from wearing their typical long, dark dresses and bonnets.

It’s unclear where the Amish will serve their sentences, but some of the nearest options include men’s prisons in Elkton, a 90-minute drive southeast of Cleveland, and in Loretto, Pa., and women’s prisons in Lexington, Ky., and Alderson, W.Va. The dates they have to report could come any day.

Visits from family members might be difficult since they don’t drive modern vehicles. During the trial, relatives hired van drivers to take them more than 100 miles to the trial in Cleveland, where they often filled most courtroom seats.

“Amish people grow up with very strong communal connections and large extended families and participating in community activities, so being suddenly severed from that and isolated would certainly be a major change,” said Donald Kraybill, a longtime Amish researcher and professor at Elizabethtown College in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Amish country.

They all rejected plea deals that offered leniency, with some young mothers turning down possible chances for probation.

Amish communities have a highly insular, modest lifestyle, are deeply religious and believe in following the Bible, which they believe instructs women to let their hair grow long and men to grow beards and stop shaving once they marry.

Prosecutors say the 16 defendants targeted hair because it carries spiritual significance, hence the hate crime prosecution. The defendants had argued that the Amish are bound by different rules guided by their religion and that the government had no place getting involved in what amounted to a family or church dispute.

Most of the men were locked up, often in less strict local jails, after their arrests and will have some idea of what to expect in prison. The women remained free during the trial, and several have asked to stay out of prison during their appeals. The judge has rejected at least one such request, and more are pending.

The timing for moving those locked up to federal prisons and for those still at home to report to begin serving terms will be up to the prison system. When they report, they will be in the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

The beard-cutting defendants aren’t likely to see many fellow Amish in prison. In the Amish region east of Cleveland where one of the attacks took place, Trumbull County Sheriff Thomas

Altiere has seen only one Amish inmate in his 20 years as sheriff, and Kraybill, the researcher, knows of just one current Amish inmate.

Attorney John Pyfer, who has represented hundreds of Amish in Pennsylvania in the past 40 years, said: “I just don’t think there’s a lot of Amish that go to prison, and certainly not federal prison.” The federal prisons bureau doesn’t keep figures of how many Amish inmates it has held over the years.

The federal system doesn’t prohibit locking up relatives in the same facility, so the defendants could wind up at some of the same locations. The defendants include Mullet Sr., four of his children, his son-in-law, three nephews and the spouses of a niece and nephews.

The response to the jailing of one beard-cutting defendant highlighted the closeness of Amish families, said Altiere, the sheriff. While two relatives visited the defendant, more than a dozen more prayed behind a glass partition.

Andy Hyde, a defense attorney for two decades in the Amish area around Holmes County south of Cleveland, has represented about 40 Amish defendants over the years and said how they handle lockup varies, much like non-Amish prisoners.

“They don’t all think alike,” he said. “They are as individual as we are, so it’s easy to lump them all together. There are bold, there are aggressive Amish. They are quiet; they are shy.”

Some low-key Amish won’t stand up when threatened in prison, Hyde said, but Mullet Sr. has encouraged a tough outlook.

“Grow up,” he said in a recorded phone call to a jailed son who was among the first arrested in the case. “You can take more than that. I know it’s rough.” Mullet

Sr. wasn’t as confident about his own ability to handle prison. “You’re in there like that — I can understand that real good,” he told his son. “I don’t know if I could handle it.”

The prison system allows an array of religion-dictated head coverings for inmates, including scarves for Jewish women and hijabs for Muslim women and, for men, turbans for Sikhs, headbands for Native Americans and yarmulkes for Jews. Baggy pants and full-length robes mandated by some faiths are prohibited.

Inmates can buy clothing items from a small selection, mostly white T-shirts and gray sweat suits, federal prison system spokesman Chris Burke said.

As for the beards, “That’s not an issue, as long as it doesn’t present some sort of security risk or security hazard, and I’m not aware of any case where that’s happened,” he said.

There’s also the danger of Amish being offended, or even damaged, by access to technology, though some Amish don’t eschew modern conveniences altogether, Kraybill noted. He wrote in his book “The Riddle of Amish Culture” that some Amish have selectively adopted technology, including generators to power farm equipment and refrigerated milk holding tanks.

Kraybill knows one Amish man whose prison job taught him to work with audio equipment. In 1999, four Amish serving time in Iowa for vandalizing a neighbor’s farm were released from jail early in part because officials worried they were being spoiled by television, electric lights and telephones.

Amish may have seen television at a neighbor’s home or in a public area like a restaurant, Kraybill said, “but to have it available constantly would create a whole new temptation for them.”

Related articles

Jewish Theist Superstition Leads To Genital Mutilation, Lawsuit and Reconstructive Surgery

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Baby Penis, corrective surgery, Genital Mutilation, Jewish Superstition

Jewish Theist Superstition Leads To Genital Mutilation, Lawsuit and Reconstructive Surgery

Bris Milah Circumcision Metzitzah B'peh closeup

Rabbi Mordechai Rachminov allegedly sliced off part of a baby boy’s corona glandis, the circumference of the base of the head of the penis in human males which forms a rounded projecting border, during the boy’s brit milah in the Bukharian Jewish Community Center in Forest Hills, Queens on October 16, 2011.

Bris Milah Circumcision Metzitzah B'peh closeup

A brit milah, circumcision – file photo

Botched Circumcision Leads To Lawsuit

Shmarya Rosenberg at FailedMessiah.com

Rabbi Mordechai Rachminov allegedly sliced off part of a baby boy’s corona glandis, the circumference of the base of the head of the penis in human males which forms a rounded projecting border, during the boy’s brit milah in the Bukharian Jewish Community Center in Forest Hills, Queens on October 16, 2011 DNAinfo reported.

When the baby’s father, Gavriel Barukh, questioned Rachminov about the damage to his son’s corona, Rachminov told Barukh that the circumcision was valid, and that he had done an acceptable job.
Rachminov claimed the brit milah was “performed appropriately and that his conduct was within the standard of care and skill required of Jewish mohelim and circumcisers,” the lawsuit against him reportedly states.

The suit also alleges that Rachminov told the baby’s father that it wasn’t necessary to call a doctor. Later, after it became clear that the circumcision had gone wrong, Rachminov and the community center staff still allegedly failed to call a doctor, the suit claims.

The baby required corrective surgery.

Barukh claims that the delay in getting medical treatment for his son resulted in greater permanent damage to his son’s penis than otherwise would have been the case. The boy had to undergo one corrective surgery under general anesthesia so far, and he may need even more surgical procedures as he grows older, the lawsuit says.

The Bukharian Jewish Community Center, which is also named in the lawsuit, claims Rachminov no longer works there.
It declined to comment on the lawsuit as did the father’s attorney. A woman at Rachminov’s home told DNAinfo that she had not heard about any of the allegations against Rachminov and the community center.

 

Related articles

Derren Brown Exposing Theist Faith Healing Scams

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Derren Brown, Faith Healing, Miracles for Sale, Religious scammers, Theist Faith Healing Scams

Derren Brown Exposing Theist Faith Healing Scams

Derren Brown recently did a show called “Miracles for Sale” where he debunks and exposes common faith healing tricks used to con believers into coughing up donations.  Scams like this run rampant in America and believers are too busy believing to stop and question anything.  Knowledge is power, but often times, it is also a vaccine.

This clip is protected by the educational exemption of the Fair Use clause within the Digital Millennium Copyright Agreement.

Look for Derren Brown’s “Miracles for Sale”

Related articles

Satanic Panic Reemerges In Jimmy Savile Scandal

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Christian Fundamentalists, Religious Frauds, Satanic Panic, Scam Artists

Satanic Panic Reemerges In Jimmy Savile Scandal

By Keelan Balderson

A dubious psychotherapist who helped stoke the fire of “Satanic Panic” in the 90s, appears to have jumped on the bandwagon of the Jimmy Savile scandal in order to peddle her Christian-rooted paranoia.

Valerie Sinason, a Trustee of the Institute for Psychotherapy and Disability and former lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic, was uncritically quoted in last week’s Sunday Express, claiming two of her patients were victims of “Satanic Ritual Abuse” at the hands of the now deceased celebrity.

“She had been a patient at Stoke Mandeville in 1975 when Savile was a regular visitor,” Sinason told the Express about a girl who was allegedly 12 years old at the time.

“She recalled being led into a room that was filled with candles on the lowest level of the hospital, somewhere that was not regularly used by staff. Several adults were there, including Jimmy Savile who, like the others, was wearing a robe and a mask.

“She recognised him because of his distinctive voice and the fact that his blond hair was protruding from the side of the mask. He was not the leader but he was seen as important because of his fame.

“She was molested, raped and beaten and heard words that sounded like ‘Ave Satanas’, a Latin­ised version of ‘Hail Satan’, being chanted. There was no mention of any other child being there and she cannot remember how long the attack lasted but she was left extremely frightened and shaken.”

Dr. Sinason continues with another extraordinary allegation from a woman who was 21 years old during the alleged ordeal:

“A second victim approached me in 1993. She said she had been ‘lent out’ as a supposedly consenting prostituted woman at a party in a London house in 1980.

“The first part of the evening started off with an orgy but half-way through some of the participants left.

“Along with other young women, the victim was shepherded to wait in another room before being brought back to find Savile in a master of ceremonies kind of role with a group wearing robes and masks. She too heard Latin chanting and instantly recognised satanist regalia. Although the girl was a young adult, who was above the age of consent, she had suffered a history of sexual abuse and was extremely vulnerable.”

WideShut Analysis:

While the nature of the long overdue Jimmy Savile scandal invariably means that discovering tangible evidence is unlikely (this thanks to the culture of cover-up and inaction within some of Britain’s most respected institutions), it can also give rise to fabricated and distorted claims. At this point anyone could literally say anything about Savile for an infinite number of dubious or delusional reasons. The truth lies in the overall body of allegations, their consistency and their corroboration.

Because of this I for one am airing on the side of caution when it comes to sensational topics like “satanic ritual abuse”. Those who have made claims of its existence in the past (Dr. Sinason herself included) have never provided tangible proof. There are no hordes of dead bodies, despite claims of babies being secretly bread for ritual sacrifices. There are no credible former Satanists who have provided evidence against their so called brothers. Locations where these events are supposed to have taken place are either unknown or void of any physical evidence upon insepction. There is literally nothing empirical beyond accusations.

If Jimmy Savile was considered “important” in these rituals or even a “master of ceremonies” where are all the other victims that would have seen him? Where are all the witnesses that were wittingly or unwittingly involved? Where exactly are the locations where this abuse was supposed to have taken place and do they match the allegations? And what exactly is “satanist regalia” that can be easily recognizable?

We definitely know that Savile is guilty of abuse and used his high position in society to gain access to the most vulnerable. We know this because hundreds of alleged victims and witnesses have come forward, each with similar stories. Out of these hundreds the only sign of “satanic ritual abuse” comes from Dr. Sinason, and she has not provided any evidence for the allegations. Instead they boil down to two stories her patients told her during psychotherapy sessions. Assuming these patients even exist (we’ve heard nothing directly from them), just because somebody supposedly said something in a therapy session does not make it true. Yet sectors of the media have swallowed Sinason’s account hook line and sinker.

Satanic Panic:

Stories of horrific rituals and sacrifices at the hands of so called Satanists are nothing new. They’ve been so common at certain periods in history that the term “Satanic Panic” was coined to explain the phenomenon. The last time this panic set in was during the 90s, primarily among Christians in America, although Dr. Sinason and others also promoted the idea in the UK.

An example of the absurdity of this time was a TV special hosted by Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera. Exposing Satan’s Underground which can be viewed on Youtube features ambiguous and outright sensational documentary footage, spliced with a live studio audience, as the mustachioed hack went on the hunt for the Devil. Looking back at it now I’m just as bewildered as poor Ozzy Osbourne, who was paraded out to answer for his evil song lyrics.

The problem with the type of allegations that involve “satanists” is that they are often presented from an ignorant, religious or sensationalist perspective, with all the themes and theatrics of a Horror movie. They rarely acknowledge what Satanism actually is.

According to believers of “satanic ritual abuse” Satanism is when scary people dress in robes, chant Latin, drink blood and play with pentagrams. Unfortunately in reality such a concept lives only in the minds of those making the claims.

While there have been lone-nut “satanists” or “pseudo-satanists” in the past who have acted on imagery from religion and pop culture as part of their deranged crimes, or ridiculous ceremonies such as the Cremation of Care annually partaken by some of America’s corporate and political elite, you’d be hard pressed to find an organization, group or “ring” of satanists that actually dress in robes, chant for Satan of the bible and commit real sacrifices. In my opinion Satanism in this context is a paranoid projection of Christianity, an entertaining theme of Hollywood, and the goofing off of powerful people, who are probably quite thankful that the sensationalism of their yearly past-time obscures their corrupt closed-door dealings.


Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, of which I’m obviously a big fan.

Most Satanists don’t actually believe in Satan or God, they adopt Satan as a symbol for human nature, freedom, and to rebel against dogmas like that of the Church. Even Theistic Satanists, who revere Satan as an actual Deity/God, do not worship evil, they worship knowledge and self improvement. They believe that the Serpent in the Bible set man free from a God who was pulling the wool over their eyes.

It is of course theoretically possible that a group of sick criminals and child abusers have chosen to adopt a mish-mash of sensationalized pseudo-satanic themes and the garb of aristocratic Masquerade parties, as part of their criminal activity, but to call that Satanic would be unfair to Satanists. And if this is supposed to be taking place, victims and believers perhaps need to start gathering evidence, or at least offer coherent and corroborative allegations that can be taken seriously.

The Hollie Greig Hoax:

A lesser known story that fizzled out just prior to the Jimmy Savile scandal was the Hollie Greig Case. The plight of a Downs Syndrome girl said to have been raped by a gang of paedophiles, reaching the top levels of the Scottish establishment captured the hearts of many. Well-meaning internet activists launched the “Google Hollie Greig” campaign and some even took to the streets to protest the stomach churning crimes of the elite.

The story, which is all it seems to have turned out to be, morphed in to whatever the current alternative media celebrity wanted it to. Satanists, Freemasons, or in the case of David Icke, Satanic-Freemasons controlled by Reptilian entities outside our visible spectrum of light.

Wading through the nonsense to find the original allegation, it turns out that even some of the named members of this paedophile ring that had supposedly operated for over a decade in Aberdeen, Scotland, have left no record of even existing! Other alleged victims unashamedly named by Hollie’s mother Anne and her Spokespeople Robert Green and UK Column chief Brian Gerrish, were either not yet born or were adults before they even met Hollie, publicly denying they were harmed in any way!

In spite of claims about documentation and medical reports, when these were made available to the public they revealed that there were “no signs of inappropriate sexual experiences,” and certainly nothing to suggest a 22 strong gang of abusers had damaged Hollie for years on end. If an isolated incident of abuse had taken place at some point, the rabble that ran with the story have well and truly buried it deep beneath a mound of complete hogwash.

Hollie was found to be an unreliable source of information by the Police Complaints Commissioner and after questioning the accused, investigators found nothing to substantiate the allegations.

I interviewed a group of disaffected members of the campaign and two of the alleged abusers on the WideShut Webcast:

TheHollieGreigCoverUp.net thoroughly documents the rise and fall of this terrible hoax, or perhaps more accurately mass delusion.

Dr. Valerie Sinason and Satan’s Psychotherapists:

Valerie Sinason the “doctor” peddling the Savile Satanic stories, is part of a grouping of Christians, politicians and psychotherapists (the Committee on Ritual Abuse) that actively promote the idea of “satanic ritual abuse”, although they have yet to substantiate this beyond claims from the shrink couch. In 1994, as “Satanic Panic” was on the upswing in the United States, Sinason edited a collection of essays entitled Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse which claimed she had unearthed a pattern of similar abuse in her patients in Britain.


Dr. Sinason.

Due to Sinason’s and similar claims a three-year Department of Health inquiry was undertaken by the anthropologist Prof Jean La Fontaine. 84 alleged cases of ritual abuse were examined, and not one turned out to be anything of concern.

Regardless of the inquiry and similar conclusions in the US, by 2002 the panic created by the CRA had infected elements of Westminster. A private meeting chaired by Lord Alton and evangelical Christian Wilfred Wong, promoted the idea that “ritual abuse” should be enshrined in law so that “hundreds, if not thousands” of crimes could be brought to justice. Of course if real abuse had taken place in any of these instances current laws were quite capable of serving justice if the evidence was brought forward.

According to research by TheHollieGreigCoverUp.net, in 2011 Sinason, Wong, MP Russell Brown and other members of the CRA invited Robert Green, the mouthpiece for the Hollie Grieg fantasy, to one of their meetings at the Houses of Parliament. In subsequent alternative media coverage Green then began to promote a ritual abuse element to the Hollie Greig story, a sort of satanic “sexing up” of the original allegations. Perhaps Green thought if he won the support of the looney pyschobabble Christian lobby (CRA) the case would get more publicity. Fortunately the only people left clinging on to the tale are the pseudo-celebrities of the online conspiracy theory community, such as the UK Column and Belinda McKenzie, the former landlady of ex-MI5 agents Annie Machon and David Shayler. Even David Icke, who includes “satanic ritual abuse” as one of the central themes in his books has stopped publishing stories about the…story.

Prof La Fontaine’s verdict on Valerie Sinason and co goes to the heart of the problem, writes the author of a 2002 Telegraph article.

“It’s depressing to find someone who has a position at leading London hospitals who is so cut off from what research methodology is, and what rational evidence is,” she says.

The article continues: When Miss Sinason announces that she has “clinical evidence” of infanticide and cannibalism, she means that her patients have told her stories about them. The implication is that, because the suffering of these people is real, their “memories” must be accurate.

Naturally this has given rise to the idea that some psychoanalysts, rather than uncovering cases of satanic abuse, are actually implanting the idea in to their patients minds, or at least nurturing and encouraging them during sessions. Rather than helping vulnerable people to work through their psychosis, the likes of Sinason might be making the situation worse.

The tragic case of Carol Myers may be an example of this. Myers, a 41 year old former patient of Sinason was found dead in 2005, leaving behind a statement saying she had suffered Satantic child abuse at the hands of her parents. It was discovered that she had spent years in and out of psychiatric hospitals and private clinics after she’d estranged herself from her family in her 20s. Upon hearing about her death the family felt shattered about the claims she’d made in her life assessment – and confused reports a 2011 Guardian article.

She said she’d been abused [by her parents], who were the high priest and priestess of a satanic cult, and that during her teens she’d had six children – some fathered by Joseph [her father] – that she’d been forced to kill. She also said she had an implant in her eye that would explode if she spoke of the satanists, and that a friend she’d confided in was murdered in front of her.

Just like the Hollie Greig story, Carole’s charges were easily proven to be false, continues the report. The sister, whose murder she’d apparently witnessed, actually died of heart problems two years before Carole was born. The house fire, too, predated Carole’s birth….It seemed the mental-health professionals rarely challenged these impossible horrors. Worse, they’d concluded that Carole’s psychological problems came as a result of this fictitious abuse.

Though it’s not clear the methodology used by Sinason on her patients, if such abuse was regularly taking place, one would assume a large cross-section of therapists would have had similar cases. The fact that only Sinason and a handful of others have unearthed allegations of satanic abuse, suggests they are in some way creating them.

Today the Satanic hysteria of the 80s and 90s is considered a moral panic [1], and the majority of mental health experts and accredited psychotherapists dismiss these early and subsequently discredited claims of “ritual satanic abuse”. Various methods originating in the United States for dealing with (or some might say implanting) satanic allegations, which were often practiced and expanded by amateurs such as preacher and conspiracy theorist Fritz Springmeier, are rejected by experts.


Fritz Springmeier, author of The Illuminati Formula Used to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave.

Recovered-memory therapy, a lose term that refers to unproven methods of recovering alleged buried memories, has been explored in many successful lawsuits against therapists who encouraged false allegations in their patients.

As the Savile scandal races forward, it is important to address each claim on its own merit and apply it to the overall body of allegations. Uncritically promoting the currently baseless allegations of “satanic ritual abuse” gives undue legitimacy to its proponents and may end up discrediting legitimate allegations by association.

Related articles

Satanic Ritual Abuse

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Christian Fundamentalism, Hoax, Moral Panic, Pseudo Therapists, Satan Ritual Abuse

Satanic Ritual Abuse
Sacrifice of a Christian Child
Sacrifice of a Christian Child (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Sacrifice of a Christian Child (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The flyers were all over the psychology building. Dr. Richard Ofshe, a renowned professor at the University of California at Berkeley who had won a Pulitzer years earlier, was delivering a lecture on the use of recovered memories in psychotherapy. It was the mid-1990s, and I was in graduate school at the time. I knew that Ofshe had become a controversial figure due to his evidence-based criticism of attempts by therapists to recover client’s memories of childhood sexual abuse during therapy. I rearranged my schedule so I could attend his lecture. I had no idea just how controversial it was going to be.

I assume that my readers are generally familiar with the term moral panic. Notorious examples of moral panics in the U.S. include the Red Scare, Salem witch trials, and the so-called “Satanic panic” that emerged during the 1980s over fears of Satanic ritual abuse. The idea that there were Satanic cults operating in nearly every town throughout the U.S. caught on in a big way and would not really begin to fade away until the late 1990s. It was a fascinating period to have lived through, and I sometimes have a difficult time believing that it happened at all.

The connection between fears of Satanic ritual abuse and efforts by therapists to recover repressed memories of child sexual abuse was critical to understanding the phenomena. Some of the key developments included the following:

  • The publication of self-help books that told readers “If you ever suspect that you might have been abused as a child, you were abused as a child.” The most notorious example of such a book and one with which I am unfortunately quite familiar was The Courage to Heal.
  • The reliance on outdated, unsupported, and even thoroughly discredited theories of human memory by many therapist-training programs.
  • Widespread use of hypnosis and other methods known to distort memory and even create false memories among suggestible individuals by poorly trained therapists.

Efforts by well-intentioned but misguided therapists during this time ruined many families, sent innocent people to prison, and fueled the panic over Satanic ritual abuse. Dr. Ofshe was one of the leading skeptics in psychology, and his research helped to end some of the worst abuses by therapists. His influential book at the time, and one still occupying a place on my bookshelf, was Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, And Sexual Hysteria.

Dr. Ofshe’s lecture was held in one of the larger rooms on campus, but it was overflowing with attendees. The campus community was well-represented, but there seemed to be even more people there from the surrounding community. Clearly, someone had done an excellent job of publicizing the event. I listened eagerly to one of the most interesting presentations I had heard in some time.

Nothing could have prepared me for the hecklers. Person after person in the audience stood up and angrily yelled at Dr. Ofshe. Many identified themselves as therapists from the community, people who were still using some of the methods he was advising against. But the most heartbreaking part of the spectacle were those who were in therapy at the time or who had already been convinced by their therapists that they had been sexually abused. They screamed, they cried, and they called Dr. Ofshe every name in the book. How he remained so composed is beyond me.

Critics of recovered memory therapy and Satanic ritual abuse never claim that child sexual abuse is not real. It is very real, and part of the problem with the recovered memory stuff is that it ends up harming those who were really abused by convincing countless more who were never abused that they were abused. Scariest of all, the memories created in the process are indistinguishable from the real thing.

When I think of Dr. Ofshe and those like him who have had the courage to use science and skepticism to take on some of the “sacred cows” of the psychotherapy profession and a destructive moral panic, I am deeply grateful for their presence. They have saved many people from unimaginable harm, and they should be celebrated.

Related articles

Crazy Pamela Geller Not Invited To Crazy People Fest

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Pamela Geller, Pamela Geller Corruption Money, Pamela Geller Hatemonger, Pamela Geller Jewish Fascist, Pamela Geller Right Wing Lunatic

Horrible Woman Too Horrible To Attend Conference Of Horrible People

by Jesse Berney

Muslim Slayer

If you’ve noticed the acrid smell of gelled hair burning today, that’s the scent of the conservative world en fuego. The battle for the hearts and minds of the worst Americans is on, and it pits the terrible against the even more terrible. At the center of the fight is Pamela Geller, who can most charitably be described as an anti-Islam activist and can most accurately be described as a racist shitbag who thinks Muslims cause cavities. As a looney-tunes piece of human garbage who wants Muslims exterminated, Geller has been one of the perennial stars of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of horrible human beings and future Republican presidential candidates. (Yes, we’re aware the circles intersect in that Venn diagram.)

But Geller won’t be attending CPAC in 2013. It isn’t because she doesn’t want to go. She filled out an application and everything. But — and even your Wonkette has to admit this is pretty mean — they ignored her. Completely. Didn’t even send her a letter telling her she wasn’t invited, although her previous events had been standing room only (according to noted Pamela Geller expert Pamela Geller).

Why did they spurn Geller? What could make her too conservative for CPAC, the conference that turned away noted union-puncher Chris Christie for getting within 20 feet of Obama and not spitting in his face?

Gellar committed the cardinal sin of conservative Republicans: she criticized Grover Norquist.

Norquist, of course, is the bearded anti-tax zealot who wants to drown your government in the bathtub (which is a lot of murder). He’s also enormously powerful; virtually every Republican elected to federal office has signed his nonsensical pledge never to raise taxes under any circumstances. And while he ranks high on the list of terrible people, he has provided a small voice of reason in the conservative community when it comes to Muslims, i.e., he doesn’t think that all of them (including his wife) should be put to death.

Geller has criticized Norquist for this record, claiming he has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood because why else wouldn’t he be willing to call for the destruction of an entire people? First she was fired from her column at Newsmax for daring to call out a fellow columnist, and now the good (no wait, terrible) people at CPAC have denied her a speaking slot.

At least now she’ll have more free time, which she’ll presumably spend running subway ads so racist even Fox News calls her out on them, accusing President Obama of ordering the military not to kill Osama bin Laden, or accusing President Obama of being Malcolm X’s secret love child.

[Salon.com]

 

Related articles

Faith and Foolishness: When Religious Beliefs Become Dangerous

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religion, Religious beliefs

Cover Image: August 2010 Scientific American Magazine
Faith and Foolishness: When Religious Beliefs Become Dangerous

Religious leaders should be held accountable when their irrational ideas turn harmful

By Lawrence M. Krauss

A church tower in Budva, Montenegro.

Image: iStockphoto

Every two years the National Science Foundation produces a report, Science and Engineering Indicators, designed to probe the public’s understanding of science concepts. And every two years we relearn the sad fact that U.S. adults are less willing to accept evolution and the big bang as factual than adults in other industrial countries.

Except for this time. Was there suddenly a quantum leap in U.S. science literacy? Sadly, no. Rather the National Science Board, which oversees the foundation, chose to leave the section that discussed these issues out of the 2010 edition, claiming the questions were “flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs.” In short, if their religious beliefs require respondents to discard scientific facts, the board doesn’t think it appropriate to expose that truth.

The section does exist, however, and Science magazine obtained it. When presented with the statement “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” just 45 percent of respondents indicated “true.” Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that “the universe began with a big explosion.”

Consider the results of a 2009 Pew Survey: 31 percent of U.S. adults believe “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” (So much for dogs, horses or H1N1 flu.) The survey’s most enlightening aspect was its categorization of responses by levels of religious activity, which suggests that the most devout are on average least willing to accept the evidence of reality. White evangelical Protestants have the highest denial rate (55 percent), closely followed by the group across all religions who attend services on average at least once a week (49 percent).

I don’t know which is more dangerous, that religious beliefs force some people to choose between knowledge and myth or that pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo. To do so risks being branded as intolerant of religion. The kindly Dalai Lama, in a recent New York Times editorial, juxtaposed the statement that “radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold religious beliefs” with his censure of the extremist intolerance, murderous actions and religious hatred in the Middle East. Aside from the distinction between questioning beliefs and beheading or bombing people, the “radical atheists” in question rarely condemn individuals but rather actions and ideas that deserve to be challenged.

Surprisingly, the strongest reticence to speak out often comes from those who should be most worried about silence. Last May I attended a conference on science and public policy at which a representative of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences gave a keynote address. When I questioned how he reconciled his own reasonable views about science with the sometimes absurd and unjust activities of the Church—from false claims about condoms and AIDS in Africa to pedophilia among the clergy—I was denounced by one speaker after another for my intolerance.

Religious leaders need to be held accountable for their ideas. In my state of Arizona, Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, recently authorized a legal abortion to save the life of a 27-year-old mother of four who was 11 weeks pregnant and suffering from severe complications of pulmonary hypertension; she made that decision after consultation with the mother’s family, her doctors and the local ethics committee. Yet the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olm­sted, immediately excommunicated Sister Margaret, saying, “The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s.” Ordinarily, a man who would callously let a woman die and orphan her children would be called a monster; this should not change just because he is a cleric.

In the race for Alabama governor, an advertisement bankrolled by the state teachers’ union attacked candidate Bradley Byrne because he supposedly supported teaching evolution. Byrne, worried about his political future, felt it necessary to deny the charge.

Keeping religion immune from criticism is both unwarranted and dangerous. Unless we are willing to expose religious irrationality whenever it arises, we will encourage irrational public policy and promote ignorance over education for our children.

This article was originally published with the title Faith and Foolishness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist and science commentator, is Foundation Professor and director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University (www.krauss.faculty.asu.edu).

Related articles

The Mafia Has Higher Standards Than the Catholic Church

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Catholic Church, Mafia

Non-theistic State Senator Says the Mafia Has Higher Standards Than the Catholic Church
By Hemant Mehta
Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers is one unique politician. After being the longest-serving senator in the state’s history (serving for 38 years, starting in 1970), he was term-limited out and left office in 2008. This past November, he was eligible to run for office again and took advantage of that opportunity, winning his race fairly comfortably.

Chambers 

Chambers is one of the few non-theistic, high-ranking politicians in the country. He’s also African-American and a powerhouse legislator.

He’s making headlines again for filibustering a bill that would “expand a prison work program.”

How is that news? Well, his filibuster included lots of unrelated remarks about religion:

Then, while burning up time trying to talk [Sen. Mark] Christensen’s bill to death, Chambers talked about attending a fundamentalist church where, as a child, he claimed children were terrorized and made to feel they were headed for Hell. He called Bible stories “fairy tales” that he outgrew.

Chambers sounded more like a preacher — albeit an unconventional and blasphemous one — than a senator, but he blamed the Legislature for that, too, noting that the body “invites religion into the chamber every morning” with a prayer. He said preachers who enter the legislative chambers are entering “my territory” to “do their damage.” He accused senators of not heeding those preachers’ calls to “do the right thing,” which he said “brings condemnation on you.”

While on the subject of Christianity, Chambers noted that Jesus “looked more like me than you all.” Despite his claims he doesn’t believe in God (though he sued God once), Chambers demonstrated that he knows the Bible (which he derisively calls the “Holly Bibel”) well, telling his fellow senators that you can judge a society by how it treats its children, elderly and enemies.

…

Finally, Chambers said the Mafia has higher standards than the Catholic Church hierarchy because if their members were “raping children, they’d off them.”

After three hours of talking on Wednesday, the Legislature closed up shop for the day. But Chambers is expected to continue where he left off this Monday.

Related articles

Conspiracy Crazies United | Rand Paul on Glenn Beck Show: “Something Really Depraved Is Rising in the Country”

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Glenn Beck, Ran Paul, Right Wing Nuts

Rand Paul on Glenn Beck Show: “Something Really Depraved Is Rising in the Country”
Fear-mongering Right Wing Nuts!

“I think that our country needs a spiritual cleansing. I really think we need a revival in this country — and I do need your prayers and I do need the strength to go on with this, because this isn’t always easy.

[…]

I think our country’s problems are deeper than political — that we need spiritual leaders to come forward. We need something beyond just the politics of the day and, you know, I see it everywhere — something really depraved is rising in the country.”

Related articles

Nazi Pope Resigns | The Pope, Pregnant Children, and Violence Against Girls and Women

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Nazi Pope, Pope Resigns

The Pope, Pregnant Children, and Violence Against Girls and Women
Soraya Chemaly

by Soraya Chemaly

Pope Benedict XVI.
Pope Benedict XVI. (Vibe)

I find it strange that Pope Benedict XVI chose a week that will culminate in a global strike to protest violence against women toretire. And for health reasons no less. Orange smoke and irony and all that. On Thursday of this week, all over the globe, people will gather and dance for One Billion Rising, a day dedicated to striking against violence against women. As Eve Ensler, the founder of  V-Day which has organized the strike knows better than most, “violence against women is a global, patriarchal epidemic.“

Part of that epidemic is compulsory pregnancy. The Pope’s rationale is that his “age means he lacks strength to do job.” You could use the exact words to describe the nine-year old girl  whose family the Pope excommunicated for having a life-saving abortion after being raped and impregnated, with twins. It seems to me that her age meant she lacked strength to do the job, too. Actually, the job would have killed her.  These things happen. She and 16 million other pregnant adolescent girls a year, two million of whom are under age 15, strike me as 16 million good reasons to rise.

As does this girl: last Thursday a friend posted a story on Facebook, ”Dafne, 9-Year-Old Girl, Gives Birth To Baby Girl In Mexico.” Millions read and shared it over the weekend.  The link appeared with this caption: “The girl reportedly delivered a 5.7 pound baby by Caesarian section on January 27. She was 8-years old when she became pregnant.” Picky, picky feminist wordsmithy me thinks the caption should read, “The girl underwent a dangerous Caesarian surgery to delivery a 5.7 pound baby on January 27. She was 8-years old when a 17-year old boy forcibly inseminated her.”  Eight-year olds cannot consent to sex. They also cannot consent to having contraceptives implanted in their arms, but that’s now happened too. Just in case she gets ideas. On the same day, by coincidence, a 12-year old in Argentina gave birth to twins after she “fell pregnant.” Like she tripped by accident.

While nine is very young, girls this age having babies is not as rare as we’d like to think. The United States has more “teen” births than any industrialized nation, including girls as young as 10,  and our rates have been climbing.  However, 95 percent of teen births take place in poorer countries. According to W.H.O., “Half of all adolescent births occur in just seven countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and the United States.” Many girls die because they do not have control over their bodies and their own reproduction.

Last year, after a 10-year old in Columbia gave birth, experts blithely explained that “a C-section delivery for such a young mother is not unusual.” Given global trends (researchers, armed with competing theories, have noted that the average age of the onset of menstruation for girls has been steadily declining for decades) we can reasonably expect to see instances involving younger and younger girls. Little girls, and women who find themselves raped and pregnant often “want to die.” It’s only one reason why raped people shouldn’t be forced to carry pregnancies to term. Guess what else, besides the Papacy, of course, is a “job or life with no retirement age?” Whereas the Pope is retiring to “go back to his priesthood,” girls who are raped, pregnant and give birth or die cannot go back to their childhoods.

This was the conclusion reached by a doctor last year in the case a mentally-disabled girl, 10-years old, in Kansas, who had to have an abortion after becoming pregnant as a result of rape.  The Kansas medical review board that revoked the girl’s doctor’s license.

In Mexico, authorities “don’t know if [the girl] is being entirely truthful.” Mainly because of her age, but interesting choice of words. Is she saying she was raped? Or is she saying she wasn’t? The article linked to doesn’t say which. Turns out she’s saying that the boy was her “boyfriend.” As one commenter speculated, the child “may have even had feelings for” her rapist.  Authorities, in a perverse game of “he said/she said,” acknowledge that they are looking for the missing father, a 17-year old boy, “to acquire his own account of what occurred between the two.” In case he reveals that she was wrong in her assessment and wants to make it clear that he raped her?

Besides, it’s probably her parents fault, not his. “The new mother is one of 11 children… and her parents were unable to watch her while they worked.”  It wouldn’t have mattered, as her mother explained that her daughter had sex willingly and she “didn’t report it because she was not aware” it was a crime.

“Who has 11 children, anyway?” many people wondered. This is perhaps the most important question because another way of asking it is, “Who insists on compulsory pregnancy that impoverishes millions?” Globally, historically, that has been been the Catholic Church, which continues to put girls and women at risk worldwide through bullying policies that ensure that they will be poor and unhealthy as the result of unregulated childbearing and rearing.  This is the same Church that excommunicated a mother and doctors for saving a 9-year old victim’s life by when they ended her pregnancy with twins. Guess who the Church didn’t excommunicate? That’s right,her rapist stepfather.

Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, the retiring Pope of the Catholic Church, should be tried in the International Criminal Court of law for human rights abuses, not only for being head of an organization that has shielded and enabled child rapists, but for the deadly and systematic global obstruction of girls’ and women’s rights to life and health.

In the hospital where Dafne gave birth, 25 percent of the births are to teenage girls.  She lived, but pregnancy is THE leading cause of death for girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide.  A thoroughlyunholy international alliance between American evangelicals and the Vatican has resulted in the death of millions. While President Obama quickly repealed the “global gag rule” put into place by George Bush, which prohibited even the mention of abortion where US funds were being used for women’s health care abroad, the Helms Amendment, which restricts the use of US aid for the purposes of providing abortions, even in conflict zones where rape is endemic, still stands. It is in no small measure the result of this policy and the influence of the Catholic church that 150 million women cannot get the birth control they need or safe abortions that would save their lives.  We know how to stem these deaths— family planning, including both.

Meanwhile, here in the US, where Catholic Bishops and friends refuse to comply with the law and religiously-inspired Republican legislators spew venomous mythologies about rape, race, poverty, and women, the rate of maternal mortality has DOUBLED in 25 years. We now rank 50thin the world for pregnancy related morbidity.  In New York City, black girls and women, are eight times more likely than white ones to die from pregnancy related causes. The girls and women dying globally often our poorest, darkest, young girls, regardless of what country they live in.

“Someone’s 10 years old, and they were raped by their uncle and they understand that they’ve got a baby growing in their stomach and they don’t want that,” explains the doctor in the Kansas case, Dr. Ann Neuhaus. Here, we don’t excommunicate people, we harass them and terrorize them, in some cases, we kill them. Have you seen The Assassination of Dr. Tiller?  Abortion clinic violence wrought by anti-abortion groups is constant and debilitating to those who do this work. In what can only be described as an archaic witch hunt, Kansas revoked Neuhaus’ medical license last year.  They had to take a break from praying that the Violence Against Women Act won’t pass to do it.

When these religious beliefs conspire with political ambition, it’s girls and women who pay the highest price.  Consider the eight men who all voted to block passage of the Violence Against Women Act on Monday. Every woman in the Senate with the exception of Sen. Deb Fisher (R-NE) co-sponsored the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which is now being held up byconcerns  that largely hinge on the color of the people involved in cases of abuse and the color of the authorities with jurisdiction over them.  Which is interesting, because in the case of the young girl who gave birth last week, many people think it’s a “Mexican” problem. Hmm.

“What kind of person would sleep with an 8-year old?” (No one was sleeping.)  The kind that has created what Mia Fontaine recently called, “America’s Incest Problem.”  Fontaine rightfully and cogently suggests how it is possible that our institutional rape tolerances have their roots in family and household rape tolerances.  No one wants to model our government more on an abusive, father-knows-best, privacy of the family, patriarchal unit than conservative Republicans using proxies like “states rights” and “lying bitches.” It’s not a random coincidence that people who obstruct the reauthorization of VAWA are those who object to family planning and women’s abilities to control their own bodies and fates.

Just a little more than a month after Governor Rick Scott of Florida held a lovely party at the Governor’s Mansion celebrating the passage of four new abortion restriction laws in that state (a state dedicated to faith-based abstinence programs), a 14-year old girl stuffed a towel into her own mouth, gave birth in her bathroom, feared her parent’s reaction, strangled her newborn, hid it in a shoe box, was discovered and charged with murder as an adult. She faces life imprisonment. She apparently didn’t know she was pregnant when she went into labor.  Before you laugh and think that’s impossible, one study found that in one out of every 7,225 pregnanciesa woman is in this situation until the moment of birth.  There are many reasons a woman might be in “pregnancy denial.”

As in Mexico, no one knows where the boy or man involved is either. He does not face murder, nor do the parents, teachers, state legislators or others who failed her.  The girl may, like many kids in abstinence-only situations, not even have known how she got pregnant.  Even if she did she may have taken this to heart:  As one abstinence teacher put it in a Texas classroom, “Go ahead and use a condom. You’ll still be known as a slut.”  If her tragic case isn’t a clear enough example of girl hatred, degradation and misogynistic abuse wrought by a system of oppression, I don’t know what is. And she’s white. And in a wealthy country.

For girls and women, the Pope represents an inconvenient morality.

Related articles

The Tea Party and the John Birch Society: Two peas in a pod?

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Assassination, John Birch Society, Tea Party, Wingnuts

The Tea Party and the John Birch Society: Two peas in a pod?

Even JFK was branded as being a Communist sympathizer and a traitor or America by the John Birch Society

In the days and hours prior to his assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was the subject of an extremely vitriolic hate campaign organized by the Dallas based American Fact Finding Committee. That group, an extremist right wing outfit with ties to the John Birch Society, even went so far as to sponsor a full page ad entitled “Welcome Mr. President” in the Morning News (Dallas paper) on the day of his assassination. The ad expressed hostility to Kennedy and his administration’s policies. Also distributed during that time were pamphlets and posters designed to resemble FBI wanted posters, with Kennedy displayed as the criminal in question.
The portrait of Kennedy is above the red printed words “Wanted For Treason.” Below that are listed Kennedy’s seven treasonous “crimes” against the people of United States. The reverse features the same exact photos of Kennedy and is printed in Spanish. The poster displays normal folds, minor toning, a few staple holes and some tape reinforcement on the reverse (Spanish side) fold lines.
John F. Kennedy Wanted for Treason Poster From The Day He Was Assassinated

The image the JBS would like to project to the unknowing

The image the JBS would like to project to the unknowing

The "Children of Corn" - How the JBS and the Tea Partiers have morphed into one body

The “Children of Corn” – How the JBS and the Tea Partiers have morphed into one body

A Supreme Court Justice was attacked by the JBS for ruling for the Civil Rights amendment

A Supreme Court Justice was attacked by the JBS for ruling for the Civil Rights amendment

Martin Luther King Jr. was branded as being a Communist by the John Birch Society

Martin Luther King Jr. was branded as being a Communist by the John Birch Society

The oh so obvious contradictions of the Tea Party. Selective Memory?

The oh so obvious contradictions of the Tea Party. Selective Memory?

The Tea Party fringe groups who aren't fearful of a violent confrontation with the government

The Tea Party fringe groups who aren’t fearful of a violent confrontation with the government

Sarah Palin: Queen of the Tea Partiers?

Sarah Palin: Queen of the Tea Partiers?

The Tea Party doing what they do best...which is what again? Oh...spreading fear

The Tea Party doing what they do best…which is what again? Oh…spreading fear

Related articles

Red Brain, Blue Brain: Republicans and Democrats Process Risk Differently, Research Finds

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Process Risk, Red Brain Blue Brain, Risk Process

Red Brain, Blue Brain: Republicans and Democrats Process Risk Differently, Research Finds

A team of political scientists and neuroscientists has shown that liberals and conservatives use different parts of the brain when they make risky decisions, and these regions can be used to predict which political party a person prefers. The new study suggests that while genetics or parental influence may play a significant role, being a Republican or Democrat changes how the brain functions.

Republicans and Democrats differ in the neural mechanisms activated while performing a risk-taking task. Republicans more strongly activate their right amygdala, associated with orienting attention to external cues. Democrats have higher activity in their left posterior insula, associated with perceptions of internal physiological states. This activation also borders the temporal-parietal junction, and therefore may reflect a difference in internal physiological drive as well as the perception of the internal state and drive of others. (Credit: From: Darren Schreiber, Greg Fonzo, Alan N. Simmons, Christopher T. Dawes, Taru Flagan, James H. Fowler, Martin P. Paulus. Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (2): e52970 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052970)

Dr. Darren Schreiber, a researcher in neuropolitics at the University of Exeter, has been working in collaboration with colleagues at the University of California, San Diego on research that explores the differences in the way the brain functions in American liberals and conservatives. The findings are published Feb. 13 in the journalPLOS ONE.

In a prior experiment, participants had their brain activity measured as they played a simple gambling game. Dr. Schreiber and his UC San Diego collaborators were able to look up the political party registration of the participants in public records. Using this new analysis of 82 people who performed the gambling task, the academics showed that Republicans and Democrats do not differ in the risks they take. However, there were striking differences in the participants’ brain activity during the risk-taking task.

Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, a region associated with social and self-awareness. Meanwhile Republicans showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala, a region involved in the body’s fight-or-flight system. These results suggest that liberals and conservatives engage different cognitive processes when they think about risk.

In fact, brain activity in these two regions alone can be used to predict whether a person is a Democrat or Republican with 82.9% accuracy. By comparison, the longstanding traditional model in political science, which uses the party affiliation of a person’s mother and father to predict the child’s affiliation, is only accurate about 69.5% of the time. And another model based on the differences in brain structure distinguishes liberals from conservatives with only 71.6% accuracy.

The model also outperforms models based on differences in genes. Dr. Schreiber said: “Although genetics have been shown to contribute to differences in political ideology and strength of party politics, the portion of variation in political affiliation explained by activity in the amygdala and insula is significantly larger, suggesting that affiliating with a political party and engaging in a partisan environment may alter the brain, above and beyond the effect of heredity.”

These results may pave the way for new research on voter behaviour, yielding better understanding of the differences in how liberals and conservatives think. According to Dr. Schreiber: “The ability to accurately predict party politics using only brain activity while gambling suggests that investigating basic neural differences between voters may provide us with more powerful insights than the traditional tools of political science.”

Related articles

Anti-Choicers Admit They Want to Imprison Women for Abortion

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Abortion, Abortion Politics, Anti Choice

Iowa Anti-Choicers Admit They Want to Imprison Women for Abortion
Amanda Marcotte

by Amanda Marcotte

Rep. Rob Bacon of IowaRep. Rob Bacon of Iowa

A little over a month into 2013, and one thing is absolutely certain: Anti-choice legislators aren’t going to let the damage that their war on women did to their fellow conservative politicians’ electoral prospects slow them down from competing with each other to show who can concoct the most vile schemes to undermine women’s rights. Now Iowa Republicans are flexing their muscles, trying to show that they hate the ladies even more than the forced-transvaginal-ultrasound folks in Michigan, Texas, and Virginia, or the women-can’t-think-on-weekends-and-holidays nuts in South Dakota.

Nine state representatives in Iowa have introduced a bill that would define killing a fertilized egg as “murder”.

707.1 Murder defined.

1. A person who kills another person with malice aforethought either express or implied commits murder.

2. “Person”, when referring to the victim of a murder, means an individual human being, without regard to age of development, from the moment of conception, when a zygote is formed, until natural death.

Murder includes killing another person through any means that terminates the life of the other person including but not limited to the use of abortion-inducing drugs. For the purposes of this section, “abortion-inducing drug” means a medicine, drug, or any other substance prescribed or dispensed with the intent of terminating the clinically diagnosable pregnancy of a woman, with knowledge that the drug will with reasonable likelihood cause the termination of the pregnancy. “Abortion-inducing drug” includes the off-label use of drugs known to have abortion-inducing properties, which are prescribed specifically with the intent of causing an abortion, but does not include drugs that may be known to cause an abortion, but which are prescribed for other medical indications.

The point of this bill is, simply put, to throw women in jail for “murder” for deliberately ending pregnancies—and quite possibly for trying to prevent them, as many anti-choicers continue to insist, despite the evidence against them, that the pill and emergency contraception work by “killing” fertilized eggs. (They work by suppressing ovulation and preventing fertilization.) The language of this is quite expansive. They’re not only counting women who reach out to legal providers for abortion as “murderers,” but also women who go online and buy drugs for this purpose. The broadness of this suggests that they may even try to snag women for “murder” for taking common rue, a herbal medication women use to kick start their period (and potentially end an unwanted pregnancy) if they’re late.

This is a dramatic shift in the traditional anti-choice approach to discussing the issue of how to handle women who seek abortion. While I personally have no doubt that many to most anti-choicers fully intend and have always intended to get to a place where women are being jailed for abortion, the official stance of anti-choice legislators and activists is generally to deny believing that nearly a third of American women should go to jail for “murder.” Maintaining the illusion of disinterest in punishing women for abortion with jail is so important that after Rep. Cathrynn Brown of New Mexico was caught proposing jail for rape victims who get abortion, she rewrote the bill specifically to avoid the accusation.

Claiming they don’t believe that women who get abortions are murderers even while calling abortion “murder” has been a huge part of the anti-choice movement for years. (See discussions about it from 2006, 2007, and 2010, for instance. There’s also this fun video that makes the rounds periodically that demonstrates how inane this little dance really is.) This giant failure of logic stems from a couple of things, but mainly because it’s well-understood that anti-choicers don’t actually think abortion is murder, and just want to punish women for sex. And jail time for sex is just going to strike most people as inhumane in the extreme. So they’ve split the difference and said they intend to jail doctors but not women—a position, that while illogical in its rationale at least made them seem slightly less malevolent towards women.

So what’s changed that some anti-choicers, in Iowa at least, are coming out and not only admitting they want a third of women to go to jail for abortion, but are aggressively pushing for it? A huge chunk of it is the result of the overall shift rightward amongst conservatives in the past few years, a shift that is increasing extremism on many fronts, such as more overt racism and, as we’ve seen in recent weeks, an absolutist stance against gun control that resists even the most common sense measures.

But it’s probably also partially a reaction to the changing landscape of abortion. The growing popularity of medication abortion plus an abundance of illegal pharmacies selling all manner of drugs online and the increasing restrictions on legal abortion have created a situation where everyone believes—even though hard evidence is elusive—that more women are taking matters into their own hands when it comes to abortion. As Ada Calhoun of the New Republic explained:

Online, however, these drugs are readily available, often via suspicious-sounding sites that make claims like: “The Affordable Abortion Pill Will Safely, Quickly Terminate Your Undeveloped Fetus In The Privacy Of Your Home, Save You Time And Hundreds Of Dollars. It Is 100% Clinically Safe, Very Effective And The Most Affordable Abortion Pill You Will Get Your Hands On For Now!!!”

Determining how many American women have had home abortions is exceedingly difficult: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not track illegal abortions. There is no blood test for drugs like Cytotec, and so such an abortion is indistinguishable from a natural miscarriage, even to a doctor. However, the proliferation of online dispensers suggests a rising demand. There are thousands of websites selling Cytotec for as little as $45 to $75 (compared with $300 to $800 for a legal medicated abortion in a clinic). Some claim to offer the harder-to-come-by Mifeprex, but may in fact be peddling Cytotec, or aspirin, or nothing at all. (Possible sources for the drugs include Mexico, where Cytotec is available over the counter, or even the United States, since it’s also prescribed here as an ulcer medication.)

The traditional anti-choice stance of blaming the provider while pretending the patient is a mindless baby machine and not a choice-making person is harder to maintain in the face of women acting as their own providers. It’s common for anti-choicers to paint an image of an abortion patient as a woman who simply hasn’t thought about it—this also helps justify waiting periods to “think” it over—and who is a victim of greedy doctors and evil feminists who are somehow tricking women (who they clearly imagine are very, very stupid) into getting abortions. But even anti-choicers with the most active imaginations have to struggle with explaining how a woman can fire up a computer, search around for black market abortion-inducing drugs, and order them without being capable of making a decision and therefore being held accountable to the laws regarding that decision.

So this is where we’re at: Iowan anti-choicers admitting they want to throw women in jail for abortion. It’s an unpopular stance precisely because it lays bare the misogyny of the anti-choice movement. Instead of dithering around with more waiting periods and humiliating mandatory ultrasounds, I sort of hope more anti-choicers start demanding jail time for a third of American women. That sort of thing can offer clarity for people who had any doubt left that the anti-choice movement is, indeed, nothing but a war on women.

Related articles

Urban Legends vs. The Pill: How the Christian Right Uses Propaganda Against Reproductive Rights

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religious Laws, Religious Lunatics, Religious Propaganda, Religious Reich, Religious Right

Urban Legends vs. The Pill: How the Christian Right Uses Propaganda Against Reproductive Rights
Author image

by Amanda Marcotte

Conservative fundamentalist Christian culture has always had a tradition of showing one face to the outside world and one face to each other, and negotiating how much of the latter can inform the former has always been a complex task. It’s only grown more confusing in the age of the internet. On one hand, the internet makes it very easy for people to create their own media bubble, which means conservative Christians can and often do only consume media made with them specifically in mind. On the other hand, the internet means that it’s easier than ever for outsiders to have access to media materials that are intended for Christian right insiders only, which is the bread and butter for websites such as Right Wing Watch.

The result is becoming a problem for the Christian right. Their insular culture encourages ever more bizarre flights of fancy, competitive demonstrations of misogyny, and making up of their own facts—and then all that is transmitted in a way where outsiders can tune in and expose the inner workings of the Christian right to the outside world. Kevin Swanson of Generations Radio is simply the latest person to fall into the trap of speaking to insiders where outsiders can hear. And outsiders are astounded at what Christian right culture looks like on the inside.

Right Wing Watch has started monitoring Swanson, who used to broadcast in multiple radio stations in Colorado but now prefers to reach out over the internet. They claim to have over a million downloads of their program. And while the official outward face of the Christian right claims to oppose reproductive rights because of “life,” the glimpse that Swanson gives of the internal Christian right culture makes it extremely clear that the objection has much more to do with the belief that women should be uneducated, dependent on men, and servile.

Now Swanson’s show got another round of media coverage for his claim that the birth control pill turns a woman’s uterus into a “graveyard” full of “dead babies”.

I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.

As our own Robin Marty noted, this is the sort of thing that doesn’t really need comment to refute. Still, as she points out, this is ignorance of biology on the level of believing women don’t poop or something: “[E]ven if somehow there were tiny mini babies stuck in your uterus, they would come out when you menstruate since THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF MENSTRUATION.” Swanson is married to a bona fide uterus-haver, who, having only had five children, clearly did not spend her entire reproductive life pregnant. Which, in turn, means some kind of menstrual product probably came into his home at some point. So I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think Swanson isn’t actually ignorant of menstruation and probably not ignorant of the fact that zygotes aren’t actually miniature babies.

That’s because what Swanson is doing here is something that’s very typical to intra-Christian right culture, which using a lurid urban legend as the basis of a political argument. All cultures have urban legends, butthe Christian right does tend to traffic in more lurid and more political ones. (Think: Satanic messages in rock songs.) Fred Clark claims, in fact, that Christian right culture is rife with propagandistic urban legends.

These other kinds of urban legends can’t really be considered fiction — they’re more like simple lies. Such stories are not told in the hopes of eliciting delight, but usually in order to create or to foster a sense of aggrieved victimhood and resentment.

Such stories, in other words, are propaganda. They are about sowing division, heightening the antipathy between groups or factions. They are about creating and enforcing and sustaining tribal conflict.

Swanson is clearly doing this: Telling an urban legend of vague “doctors” and “scientists” finding teeny-weeny “dead babies” in the uteruses of women that they’re opening up for some unknown reason. The anti-choice movement basically lives off these urban legends, telling themselves lurid, propagandistic stories about everything from what’s supposedly going on in abortion clinics to a laundry list of claims of all the ills that will befall you if you defy the patriarchal God’s orders and use contraception. This “dead babies” thing is a classic example of this.

Of course, nowadays a lot of these urban legends are being passed off in the mainstream as if they were the same thing as arguments, instead of weird stories that Christian conservatives tell to titillate each other. The “dead babies” weirdness stems from an equally absurd anti-choice urban legend that claims that the birth control pill and emergency contraception work by “killing” fertilized eggs; in reality, they work by suppressing ovulation. This propagandistic urban legend—or what Fred Clark would call a “simple lie”—is used to make their opposition to female-controlled birth control sound less misogynist than it is. This bit of nonsense has, sadly, become part of the basis for attacks on insurance coverage of contraception, even though it makes about as much sense as arguing that there are teeny-weeny baby skeletons lurking in the uteruses of women who’ve used the birth control pill.

Related articles

Terrified Glenn Beck: Technology Leads To ‘Transhumanism’ And Nazi Atrocities (Video)

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Clown Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck, Transhumanism

Terrified Glenn Beck:  Technology Leads To ‘Transhumanism’ And Nazi Atrocities (Video)
Glenn Beck Idiot AATTP

 Glenn Beck is the king of fear-mongering and he routinely instills irrational and paranoid delusions and fears into his listeners as well. Of course, he does this because his idiot disciples will buy gold, and seeds and other snake oil garbage from his worthless website. He’s a charlatan, a fraud. A freak.

So what is terrifying Beck now? Something called “Transhumanism” brought on by a technological singularity. The “Singularity” is the moment when the exponential growth of technology intersects and surpasses the processing of the human brain. This is an idea conceived by Ray Kurzweil and others.

Transhumanism, abbreviated as H+ or h+, is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. SOUNDS TERRIFYING!!!! We think the reason Beck is so scared is that he counts on his audience NOT using their brains.

Here are the psychotic ramblings of Glenn Beck on the subject.

 

Related articles

Granddaughter Of God Hates Fags Founder Defects From Hate-Cult

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Fred Phelps, God Hates Fags, Westboro Church

Granddaughter Of Westboro Baptist Church Founder Defects From Hate-Cult To Speak Out (VIDEO)
Posted by Lorraine Devon Wilke

Libby Phelps Alvarez, before and after; photo courtesy of Capital Bay

Libby Phelps Alvarez, before and after; photos courtesy of Capital Bay

A cult has a way of ensnaring its members with promises of spiritual freedom, the seductions of power and charisma, and in some cases, just the sheer influence gained by tapping into the fears, biases and bigotry of potential recruits. Scientology has used those many tools in attracting followers, as has every cult from Jim Jones with his People’s Temple mass suicide tragedy in Jonestown, Guyana; David Koresh and the Branch Davidians of Waco notoriety, Warren Jeffs of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints and its polygamous sexual abuses; right up to the Westboro Baptist Church and their pervasive and media-savvy mission statement of hate and bigotry.

While it’s one thing for adults to be ensnared, willingly or otherwise, it’s another for the children of cult members to be held captive simply for being unfortunate enough to be raised by a cult member. Such was the case with Libby Phelps Alvarez, the granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, whose particularly toxic view of gays and Jews–and anyone who supports either–is well-known and much vilified (you have to see Brit comedian, Russell Brand, take on a few of his henchmen!).

Libby had no choice but to tag along with her family of religious zealots when their “life’s work” demanded that they express hate in the “name of God” by protesting funerals and screaming vile insults at grieving families. Now, after having ultimately escaped the clutches of her nefarious family, she is publicly speaking out about their malignant world view and its impact on her while growing up.

In an interview with Andrea Canning from the Today Show:

She said she first began to question church activities after a friend’s husband died while serving in the military. Her family picketed the funeral. She stayed behind.

“There was a point when we started praying for people to die,” she said. “I didn’t actually do that, but I was around when they did it.”

In addition to disrupting military funerals, Westboro church members also are known for extreme anti-gay and anti-Semitic rhetoric, targeting both groups in their protests. But they shocked the nation when they announced plans to protest the funerals of the children killed in the Newtown, Conn., mass shooting.

“Westboro will picket Sandy Hook Elementary School to sing praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgment,” the church announced in a tweet.

“They think that they are the only ones who are going to heaven and if you don’t go to that church you’re going to hell,” Alvarez said.

Religious narcissism is not new and certainly not specific to this controversial branch of the “Christian” faith. Most of the more fundamentalist religions believe their way is the only way to get to Heaven, making that promise–and threat–a significant part of their pitch. It’s the depths to which the Westboro group takes this philosophy that separates them from the more benign interpreters of that zeal, however. There is a sociopathic thread that weaves through their hate-based doctrine that goes far beyond the standard “we’re the only way you can get to Heaven” message, as demonstrated by their “God hates fags” signs and comments, and their suggestion that everyone should “sing praise” in response to the Sandy Hook massacre.

Given the sheer saturation and public demonstration of that level of hate, it’s not hard to extrapolate that some of those raised in the church–ones who may have had the good fortune of holding on to their individual thought processes and seeing the malevolence being sold–would find themselves repulsed by the group’s principles. Alvarez was one of the lucky ones in that regard.

She decided to leave the church four years ago, slipping away while her parents attended a protest.

“I was terrified I was never going to see my family again,” she said, still tearful at the memory.

Alvarez still aches to see her parents, but “my aunt emailed me and said that nobody wants to talk to me anymore.” [Source]

wed_phelps_alvarez_t640

Still, the pain of leaving her family, who, despite the toxicity of their faith, remain her family, was sharp. She remains close by: only 30 miles from the church. While she has sorrow for any hurt she may have caused them on a personal level, she’s firm in her own decision to leave, and even hopeful that her courageous move will encourage and inspire others to do the same.

“I would tell them I love them and that people aren’t evil like we were taught,” she said. “And even though I am crying right now, life isn’t full of sadness and sorrow and disease and heartache like they told us. You can lead a happy and good life.” [Source]

Like many “apostates” who managed to find their way out of other cults to reach back to help others do the same, here’s hoping Libby is successful in her goal. Thinning the ranks of the Westboro Baptist Church can only be a good thing for everyone.

See video of Today Show interview:

 

Related articles

The ‘Obama Faked Newtown to Take Our Guns’ Theory

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Conspiracy Theories, Mass Murder, Newtown

The ‘Obama Faked Newtown to Take Our Guns’ Theory
Cover of
Cover via Amazon
Cover via Amazon
One of the points Charles Pierce made in his excellent book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, was that we in the U.S. love our conspiracy theories. He traced several such theories over the course of our nation’s history, and I suspect we can all think of a few in our present and recent past. One of the newest and most disturbing concerns the mass murder that took place in Newtown, CT, late last year. Evidently, some on the right are now pushing the theory that President Obama faked the entire thing, hiring actors to make it look convincing. And why would he do such a thing? To provide false justification for taking our guns, of course.

This particular theory, like so many others on the right, starts with the conviction that black helicopters filled with ATF agents are going to show up on our property any day now in order to disarm us. “It will be like Waco but on a larger scale!” Sure it will. From the belief that this outcome is inevitable, they work backwards to provide a way in which it could come about. And somehow the UN will be involved. They always are.

When I first saw bits and pieces of this theory emerging on Twitter and assorted websites, I was disgusted. That initial reaction has largely passed and been replaced by one of disappointment. You see, it occurs to me that this is precisely the sort of thing our reality-based community ought to love smacking down. With our professed love of skepticism, critical thinking, reason, debunking myths, and the like, this sort of garbage should be drawing us together. We could be the ones taking the lead on providing reasonable voices to counter this stuff.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that we all support gun control or that we should do so. I’m rather conflicted on that subject myself. I just wish I believed that we are all capable of setting aside our petty squabbles for awhile to focus on dismantling this theory and those like it before they do additional harm. If the atheist community is not going to be at the forefront of debunking this sort of delusion with the same vehemence with which we approach religion, disappointment seems to be the appropriate reaction.

Related articles

Loony Donald Trump Sues Bill Maher

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Bill Maher, Donald Trump

This Bitch Again: Donald Trump Sues Bill Maher For $5 Million
Posted by: Michael K

When the talking fart bubble out of Jabba the Hutt’s ass known as Donald Trump publicly told President Obama that he’d give $5 million to the president’s charity of choice if the president produced his college records and shit, Bill Maher jokingly threw a proposition at Trump. On The Tonight Show last month, Bill Maher said that he’d give $5 million to Trump’s charity of choice if Trump proved that his mother didn’t make him by screwing an orangutan bareback-style. Bill Maher basically said that Trump’s hair looks like an orangutan’s dirty ass, so he wouldn’t be surprised if his biological father was an ape. Makes sense to me!

Donald Trump says that he has coughed up a copy of his birth certificatethat says he is the father of Fred Trump, a human person, and Bill Maher hasn’t paid up. So Trump filed a lawsuit in L.A. today to get that $5 million. Trump queefed out this statement to Politco:

“I don’t know whether this case will be won or lost, but I felt a major obligation to bring it on behalf of the charities. Bill Maher made an unconditional offer while offer while on The Jay Leno Show and I, without hesitation, accepted his offer and provided him with the appropriate documentation. Prior demands for payment went ignored by Mr. Maher despite the fact that the beneficiaries of this suit will ultimately be the charities […] who would share equally the $5 million — something I am certain they can desperately use.”

Trump wants to donate the money to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, Hurricane Sandy Victims, March of Dimes and the Police Athletic League. Trump also said on Fox & Friends this morning that he doesn’t think Bill Maher was joking when he made the bet. Trump’s lawyers couldn’t be reached for comment, because their mouths were otherwise occupied with the act of laughing at how he keeps throwing stupid money at them.

In related news, orangutans everywhere have filed a class action lawsuit against Bill Maher for defamation for saying that Donald Trump is part their species. Gloria Allred is representing them and they will win.

Related articles

NONBELIEVERS SECOND LARGEST ‘DENOMINATION’ IN AMERICA

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Freedom From Religion

NONBELIEVERS SECOND LARGEST ‘DENOMINATION’ IN AMERICA

“Nones” climb to 19%

America’s “Nones” — the nonreligious — are at an all-time high, now comprising nearly one in five Americans (19%), according to a new study by the Pew Center for the People and the Press. The 19% count is based on aggregated surveys of 19,377 people conducted by the Pew Research Center throughout 2011 and reported by USA Today.

“This means great news for progress, for reasoned debate, for the status of nonbelievers in our nation,” said FFRF Co-President Dan Barker. “The freethought movement and FFRF are growing rapidly. There is an explosion of local and campus freethought groups, activities and conferences.”

“Nones” were already the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population, according to the definitive American Religious Identification Survey, whose 2008 study showed adult Nones up to 15% from 6% in 1990. ARIS, released in 2009, actually estimated “Nones” at 20% if responses to broader questions about religious practices were included.

Freethinkers have been highly marginalized, in part for being perceived as making up a small segment of the U.S. population. Actually, there have always been many more nonreligious than Jews, Muslims, Mormons or Eastern religions’ adherents, currently respectively at 1.2%, 0.6%, 1.4% and 0.9% of the U.S. population, according to ARIS. “Most minority religions, however tiny in numbers, are treated with respect, inclusion and sometimes deference. It’s time public officials and the American public wake up to the changing demographics and stop treating atheists and agnostics as outsiders,” added Annie Laurie Gaylor, who co-directs FFRF with Barker.

“With nonbelievers at about 20% of the population, there is no longer any excuse for leaving us out of the equation. Public officials cannot continue to assume ‘all Americans’ believe in a deity, or continue to offend 20% of the population by imposing prayer at governmental meetings or government-hosted events. These surveys now show that ‘In God We Trust’ is a provenly inaccurate motto. Nonbelievers should not be treated as political pariahs,” Gaylor said.

“ ‘Nones’ in fact were at the time of the last ARIS survey, the second-largest ‘denomination’ in the nation,” Barker said, “following Catholics at 25% and tied with Baptists at 15%. According to the new PEW study, nonbelievers now outrank Baptists.”

  The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational charity, is the nation’s largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics), and has been working since 1978 to keep religion and government separate.
Related articles

Chris Wallace to LaPierre: You’re “ridiculous” (updated with video)

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Fox News, Gun Laws, Guns, NRA

Chris Wallace to LaPierre: You’re “ridiculous” (updated with video)

Posted by coolelegans

Just to show how much LaPierre has been boxed into the fringe, Fox News host Chris Wallace destroys him on his show, watch the whole thing, it’s great!

Wallace pointed out that the president’s children face a larger threat than most.”Tell that to the people at Newtown,” LaPierre replied, referring to the town where an armed shooter killed 20 young children at an elementary school in December.

“Do you really think that the president’s children are the same kind of target as every schoolchild in America?” Wallace asked. “It’s ridiculous, and you know it, sir.”

For LaPierre to justify his abhorrent political ad by bringing up the children of Newtown is just despicable, and Chris Wallace rightly put him in his place.LaPierre also lies about gun registry and Chris Wallace smacks him down:

He predicted a universal gun registry is next — a measure that, as Wallace reminded him, has not been proposed.”Forgive me, sir, but you take something that is here and you say it’s going to go all the way over there,” Wallace said. “There’s no indication — I mean, I can understand your saying that’s the threat, but there’s nothing that anyone in the administration has said that indicates they’re going to have a universal registry.”

“And Obamacare wasn’t a tax until they needed it to be a tax,” he said.

The argument that Obamacare is a tax was made, primarily, by the conservative Justice John Roberts, so LaPierre is using a conservative argument to show that Obama is a liar. My mind is officially blown at this man’s insane logic. Many Kossacks have also pointed out that Obamacare has nothing to do with guns, so now he is just reduced to parroting Tea Party talking points. And look at how fast Wallace points out

“well it was the supreme court that said that [Obamacare is a tax]”.

Chris Wallace is not having this nonsense on his show! And all LaPierre can do, is ignore that statement, since he doesn’t have a retort, and say  “I don’t think you can trust these people.” He then tries to pivot to his talking points, but Wallace says “forgive me sir, I’m going to conduct this interview”. Wow. Brilliant stuff!When, Chris Wallace says that Obama “is not taking away shotguns”, LaPierre, lies and says that the Feinstein bill does include such a clause. NO ONE is taking away shot guns or hand guns. This man is LYING.

And finally, offered without comment, since it’s been beaten into the ground:

“If you limit the American public’s access to semi-automatic technology, you limit their ability to survive,” LaPierre said.

But I would also like to point out that with main stream conservatives like Chris Wallace distancing themselves from this nonsense, we may be winning the debate.

Related articles

Bullshit! On Mother Teresa

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Bullshit!, Catholic Frauds, Christopher Hitchen's, Mother Teresa, Penn and Teller

Calling BS on Mother Teresa

            Submitted by Marcel Gagne

Penn and Teller, with a little help from Christopher Hitchens, show us how you can take a culture of pain, misery, poverty, and suffering, and make it sound so good, you reward it with sainthood.

It’s amazing to think that a person like Mother Teresa can be seen as a force for good. Sort of like making pedophile priest sound like a force for good.

Of Islamists beheading people in god’s name sound like a good thing. The latter is relatively fast and brutal, the former takes time and stretches the suffering out over many years.

Which do you like best?

Related articles

Boy Scouts Consider Ending Policy Banning Gay Members and Troop Leaders

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Boy Scouts, Gay, Hate Mongers, Religious Hatred

Boy Scouts Consider Ending Policy Banning Gay Members  and Troop Leaders
By Madison  Gray
Image: Scouts Salute
KENZO  TRIBOUILLARD / AFP / GettyImagesBoy Scouts salute while listening to the national  anthem

The organization said Monday it was considering dropping its national policy  on sexual orientation and leaving some of the decisionmaking to local troops,  sponsors and families.

(MORE: Was  a Boy Scout Denied an Award Because He’s Gay?)

“The policy change under discussion would allow the religious, civic or  educational organizations that oversee and deliver scouting to determine how to  address this issue. The Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a  position to units, members or parents,” said BSA spokesman Deron Smith in a  statement to TIME. “Under this proposed policy, the BSA would not require any  chartered organization to act in ways inconsistent with that organization’s  mission, principles or religious beliefs.”

The group’s long-standing ban on gay membership, while it has faced several  legal challenges, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2000 case. But  the Scouts have come under mounting pressure on the issue in recent months. In  October, Ryan Andresen, a then 17-year-old scout who had completed all the  qualifications for earning his Eagle badge, learned from his troop leader that  he could  not be awarded the merit because he was gay. At the time, the Scouts  released a statement saying that Andresen “did not meet the organization’s  standard on sexual orientation” and was told he was no longer eligible for  membership, prompting widespread condemnation. Earlier this month, after  Andresen’s mother posted  a Change.org petition in his support that got more than 468,000  signatures, local Boy Scout leaders approved his Eagle ranking, despite the  judgment of the national organization.

Smith said the decision is likely to be discussed next week at the  organization’s national executive board meeting, which will be closed to the  public. If the ban is dropped, it would eliminate any national policy on sexual  orientation within the Boy Scouts of America.

MORE: Eagle  Scouts Return Badges in Protest of Gay Ban

MORE: Will  Boy Scouts Reverse Anti-Gay Policy?

Related articles

Priests and Other Catholic Sadists | “Black-collar crime” — List of names

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Catholic Abuse, Catholic Child Abuse, Catholic Child Molestation, Catholic Child Rapists, CATHOLIC PEDOPHILES, Catholic Perverts, Catholic Predators, Catholic Priest, Catholic Priests, Catholic Sadism

“Black-collar crime” — List of names
Here are some Catholic priests and religious brothers in Australian cases, researched by Broken Rites

  Main Page
Contact Us
Our top stories
Black Collar Crime
Current court cases
What’s new
Donations
This page of Catholic cases was compiled by Broken Rites Australia researchers and was last updated on 24 Janauary 2013.
Broken Rites Australia helps victims of church-related sex abuse to obtain justice.
Our complete database of Broken Rites cases is NOT available on the internet. On this web page, we give merely a few examples of Broken Rites cases.
This webpage is divided into sections:

    A: Criminal court cases B: Out-of-court civil cases C: Currently before the criminal courts D: Church people failed to help the police E: Court cases ending with no conviction F: Lay teachers in church schools

If a particular offender is not listed on this webpage, this does not mean that this person is not an offender. Many church-abuse victims remain silent for years or forever. Only a few victims have consulted the police; some victims eventually contact Broken Rites; and some victims (often unwisely) merely tip-off the church’s internal Professional Standards Office (also called “Towards Healing”), whose main purpose is to protect the church and the perpetrator. It is a wise move to contact Broken Rites first, for advice about options for obtaining justice.
Section A: Criminal prosecutions, researched by Broken Rites
Here are some examples of criminal prosecutions, researched by Broken Rites Australia (since 1993), involving Catholic priests and religious brothers. Broken Rites Australia gives support to victims, either before or after the prosecutions. The actual court proceedings are handled by specialist police from sex-crime investigation squads. This list is confined to Broken Rites cases.

  1. Fr Michael Aulsebrook
    In the Melbourne County Court on 22 August 2011, Father Michael Scott Aulsebrook (a member of the Catholic religious order Salesians of Don Bosco) was sentenced to two years’ jail (with 15 months suspended, serving nine months behind bars) for indecent assaults of a boy, aged 12, at Salesian College “Rupertswood” (a boarding school) in Sunbury, Victoria, in 1983. This boy was not Aulsebrook’s only victim. See more from Broken Rites here.
  2. Fr Wilfred Baker
  3. After action by Broken Rites, Father Wilfred James Baker (also known as Father Bill Baker or Fr Billy Baker), Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to 4 years jail (eligible for parole after 2 years) for offences against boys. See the Broken Rites story here.
  4. Fr Charlie Barnett
    Charles Alfred Barnett, who ministered for the Vincentian order in Catholic parishes around Australia for 20 years until the mid-1990s, was sentenced in South Australia in August 2010 to at least four years for sexual offences against boys in that state. He is also facing complaints in other Australian states. See more from Broken Rites here.
  5. Father Roger Michael Bellemore
  6. This Marist priest was sentenced in Tasmania in 2006 to five years’ jail (with parole after 3 years) for offences against schoolboys. After he had spent nine months in jail, the appeal court granted him a re-trial. In February 2008, another jury found Bellemore guilty and he was sentenced to four years’ jail.  See the Broken Rites story here.
  7. Br Robert Best
  8. Christian Brother Robert Charles Best (also known as Brother Bob Best) was convicted in Melbourne in 1996 for sexual offences committed against one of his schoolboy victims. On 8 August 2011, after being convicted again for multiple offences (including buggery) against some more of his victims, he was sentenced (at the age of 70) to 14 years and nine months (eligible for parole after serving 11 years and three months). See the Broken Rites story here.
  9. Warren Booth
  10.     Warren Douglas Booth was training to become a priest when he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old boy in the showers at a public pool in Campbelltown in Sydney’s south-west. Booth was sentenced in 1996 to 12 months jail.
  11. Fr Tom Brennan, Newcastle, NSW
    In August 2012, police charged Father Thomas Brennan (of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese) with 10 counts of sexually assaulting a young male while Brennan was the parish priest (in the early 1980s) at Waratah, in Newcastle, north of Sydney. He was also charged with having failed to report the sex-crimes (in the 1970s) of another priest who was under Brennan’s supervision. Brennan was ordered to appear in court on 25 September 2012 on all these charges but he failed to appear and he died five days later. See more from Broken Rites here.
  12. Fr Desmond Brown
    Father Desmond Joseph Brown, Redemptorist order, Victoria and NSW,  non-custodial sentence, for indecent assault of a female.
  13. Fr Rex Brown
    Father Paul Rex Brown (once a senior priest in the Lismore Catholic diocese in New South Wales) was convicted in Queensland in 1996 for possessing child pornography. Police could have charged Brown with serious child sexual-assault offences but he chose to plead guilty to the lesser charge of child pornography. See the Broken Rites full story here.
  14. Fr Neil Byrne
  15. In Brisbane on 7 March 2012, the Very Rev Dr Neil Joseph Byrne was sentenced to nine months in jail (suspended for two years) after he pleaded guilty to possessing and making child-exploitation material. As a lecturer in a seminary, Byrne has been involved in the training of Australian Catholic priests. See more from Broken Rites here.
  16. Gerard Vincent Byrnes
    Gerard Byrnes (born in 1948) originally trained as a Christian Brother before becoming a lay teacher in Catholic schools in Queensland and New South Wales. On 4 October 2010, he was jailed for 8-10 years after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting girls at a Catholic primary school in Toowoomba, Queensland. He was the school’s designated “child protection officer”. See more from Broken Rites here.
  17. Brian Cairns, former Christian Brother
  18. Brian Dennis Cairns taught primary students (as Brother Cairns) at Catholic schools in Brisbane until 1974. Then, after becoming a lay teacher, he taught at other Brisbane Catholic schools (as Mister Cairns) until 1984. In 1985, he was jailed for seven years for committing serious sexual offences against schoolboys over several years. Brian Dennis Cairns’s name has sometimes been mis-printed as “Brian David Cairns”. See more from Broken Rites here.
  19. Br Greg Carter,
  20. Marist Brother Gregory James Carter (born 4 July 1957) was sentenced in Queensland in 1997 to 18 months jail (with release after six months served) after pleading guilty to multiple charges of indecent treatment of a 15-year-old boy who was a boarder at St Augustine’s Marist Brothers’ College in Cairns, north Queensland. See our story here.
  21. Fr Richard Cattell
  22. Father Richard St John Cattell, of the Parramatta diocese, NSW, was sentenced in 1994 to 3 years jail (2 years minimum), after pleading guilty to five counts of indecently assaulting a boy. The boy had gone to Cattell to complain about having been molested by a teacher. Cattell, who was the vicar-general of the diocese, was the administrator whose role it was to receive  complaints about sexual abuse in the diocese. See more about Cattell in a Broken Rites story about the Parramatta diocese here.
  23. Fr Peter Chalk
    This priest (a member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart religious order) ministered in Melbourne in the 1970s (around Croydon, Park Orchards and Warrandyte). Melbourne police later accumulated evidence which could enable them to prosecute Father Peter Gerard Chalk for sexually abusing children (as young as 12) in Melbourne. But Chalk’s religious superiors allowed him to stay out of Australia (and out of reach of the Australian police), working in Japan, where he changed his surname to a Japanese one. In 2010, Chalk suddenly died (in Japan), thus closing the Melbourne police file. See more here.
  24. Br Bob Chambers, Queensland
    The Brisbane Courier Mail has reported that in the Brisbane District Court on 10 October 2002, Christian Brother Robert George Chambers (then aged 60) pleaded guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm on a boy, aged 12, in 1968 while Chambers was teaching at  St Joseph’s Christian Brothers College in Rockhampton, central Queensland. Brother Chambers, who was standing at a window in the Brothers’ residence, fired an air rifle at the boy in the school yard, hitting him twice in the back of his legs as the boy drank from a water fountain. Judge Julie Dick placed Chambers on a $100, six-month good-behaviour bond. The prosecutor said that the Crown had elected not to proceed with another charge against Chambers. In the 1980s, Brother Chambers taught at Ignatius Park College in Townsville.
  25. Br David Christian
    Marist Brother David Austin Christian (born 3 December 1942), formerly principal of Marist Brothers’ Newman College, Perth, Western Australia, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of aggravated indecent assault against two boys (aged 10 and 11) in the principal’s office. When charged in 1994, Br Christian had been teaching at Port Hedland, W.A. In 1995, Christian was fined $10,500 ($1,500 per incident) but the Marist Order said it would pay the fine for him. Brother Christian moved to live with the Marist Brothers in Templestowe, Melbourne. According to Marist websites (accessed in 2011), Brother David Christian continued to be accepted by his superiors and colleagues as a member of the Marist order.
  26. Christian Brothers, Goulburn NSW.
    In the Goulburn Local Court in southern New South Wales in 1989, a Christian Brother was convicted (and was given a suspended jail sentence) for sexually abusing a boy at St Patrick’s College, Goulburn (this school later became Trinity College, Goulburn). Other victims of this Brother did not contact the police but they later demanded (and obtained) an apology from the Christian Brothers Order. Despite his offences. this Brother continued to be accepted as a member of the Christian Brothers (in an office position). See more here.
  27. Fr Bob Claffey
    Father Robert Claffey, Ballarat diocese, Victoria, was given a non-custodial  sentence after pleading guilty to offences involving boys. See our story here.
  28. Fr Patrick Cleary
  29. Father Patrick Joseph Cleary, Brisbane archdiocese, 5-15 months jail for offences against boys.  See our story here.
  30. Fr Bryan Coffey
    Father Bryan Desmond Coffey, Ballarat diocese, Victoria, was sentenced to 3 years jail (suspended) for offences against children, mostly boys. See our story here.
  31. Gregory Coffin (alias Coffey)
    Gregory Vincent Coffey (birth-name Coffin) was originally a priesthood trainee in the Salesian order. Brother Greg Coffin taught at Salesian College (“Rupertswood”), Sunbury, Victoria, in 1969-1970, and at St Mark’s College, Port Pirie, South Australia, in 1971. In February 1972, he was sentenced to 12 months jail (suspended) for sexual abuse of a boy at the Port Pirie school. Despite this, he was still accepted as a lay teacher (Mr “Coffey”) in Catholic schools. Coffey was sentenced to a 2-year good behaviour bond in Victoria in 1994, plus 30 months jail (suspended) in Victoria in 1997 for offences against boys at Redden College, Preston, Melbourne, in the 1970s.  See our story here.
  32. Fr Peter Colley
    Father Peter James Colley, of the Ballarat diocese in Victoria, pleaded guilty in the Moonee Ponds Magistrates Court, Melbourne, on 11 March 1993 to two charges — one indecent assault of an adult male in a public toilet at Moonee Ponds and one charge of escaping from legal custody. Court records gave Colley’s occupation as “priest”, living in at an address in Morriss Road, Warrnambool West, which is the address of the St Pius X Catholic presbytery. Colley was sentenced to a 12-months good behaviour bond. Peter Colley was born in Melbourne on 12 April 1948 and went to school at Parade Christian Brothers College, Melbourne. Originally he worked as a layman with the Pallottine religious order, including (he has said) among Aboriginals at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. In the early 1970s he was living at Pallotti College, Millgrove, Victoria, seeking to be accepted as a Pallotine lay Brother  but did not complete the training. Also in the 1970s, he is believed to have spent time at a Redemptorist seminary in Galong, south-western New South Wales. During the 1970s, Colley applied to Bishop Ronald Mulkearns of Ballarat to sponsor him as a Ballarat candidate for the priesthood. Thus, Colley was ordained at St Paul’s Seminary for Late Vocations in Sydney in 1979 and then joined the Ballarat diocese, where his parishes included Terang, Horsham, Bungaree (near Ballarat) and Warrnambool East. In early 2000, when his court appearance was becoming known, Colley left the Ballarat diocese and his name then disappeared from the annual Australian Catholic Directory.
  33. Fr Peter L. Comensoli
  34. In 1994, Father Peter Lewis Comensoli (then aged 55, of the Wollongong diocese, south of Sydney) was sentenced to a minimum of 18 months jail after pleading guilty to indecent assaulting altar boys. Comensoli’s abuse was reported to the Wollongong diocese in 1989 but the church authorities allowed him to continue ministering. Finally, two victims got him convicted. Despite this, Comensoli was not laicized or defrocked. As late as 2008, Father Peter L. Comensoli was still listed as a “supplementary priest” of the Wollongong diocese “on leave” or “retired”. See more from Broken Rites here. This Father Comensoli is not to be confused with another clergyman, Auxiliary Bishop Peter A. Comensoli.
  35. Fr Doug Conlan
    Father Douglas Conlan began ministering in Western Australia’s Bunbury diocese in the 1970s. In 1999, aged 52, he was sentenced to 3 years jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to offences of gross indecency committed (in 1976) against a 16-year-old male. The court was told that the boy’s family trusted the priest who took the boy on a trip for services in country parishes. The offences occurred during an overnight stay in church accommodation.
  36. Fr Paul Connolly
  37. Father Paul Anthony Connolly, Hobart archdiocese, was sentenced in 2001 to eight months jail (suspended after serving four months) for multiple indecent assaults of a girl aged about 14. After the jailing, the Hobart archdiocese continued to list Connolly as a “supplementary” priest of the archdiocese. See our story here.
  38. Fr Kevin Nicholas Cox
    A Sydney jury convicted  this priest of sexual crimes against a girl aged 11 to 13. Church leaders and priests then submitted “good-character” references for Cox, asking the court for a lenient sentence. A judge imposed a part-time jail sentence but church lawyers appealed to a higher court against the conviction and won the appeal on technical grounds. Privately, a church leader later apologised to the girl’s family for what Cox had done to her. See more from Broken Rites here.
  39. Fr Neville Creen
  40. Father Neville Joseph Creen molested young girls while he served as a priest at Mount Isa, north-west Queensland (in the Townsville diocese), from 1973 to 1981. In Brisbane District Court in 2003 and 2004, Creen admitted to  indecently dealing with 20 girls under the age of 13. One girl was aged just five when Creen abused her at a youth camp and later at the home of her grandparents. Creen was sentenced to three-and-half years’ jail (suspended after 14 months). Judge Ian Wylie said Creen had used his position as a priest and his standing in the community to intimidate the girls into remaining silent about their ordeals. See our story here.
  41. Fr David Daniel
  42. In July 2000, Melbourne Catholic priest Father David Daniel was sentenced to six years’ jail, with parole after 4.5 years, for offences against four boys, a girl and an adult male. This priest’s last parish was St Brigid’s, Healesville. See our story here.
  43. Chris D’Astoli, former priesthood trainee
    Press and radio and TV news reports in May 1994 stated that a former trainee Catholic priest, Christopher D’Astoli, appeared in Oakleigh Magistrates Court (Melbourne) on 25 May 1994. D’Astoli (aged 50 in 1994) pleaded guilty to gross indecency and indecent assault against a 13-year-old Catholic school boy in the Oakleigh area in 1969-70, when D’Astoli was completing six years as a trainee priest at the Melbourne Catholic seminary (Corpus Christi College in Glen Waverley). The court was told that the boy reported the assault to his school and D’Astoli left the seminary a few days before he was due to be ordained. However, the court was told, the boy’s school (Salesian College, Oakleigh) persuaded the boy not to tell his parents or the police, and the police did not learn about the matter until 23 years later. Magistrate Susan Blashki placed D’Astoli on a three-year good-behaviour bond, and ordered him to pay $750 into the court fund. The information for this case was prepared by Sergeant Brendan Harper of Oakleigh Criminal Investigation Branch.
  44. Father Albert Davis
    This Catholic priest (a member of the Dominican Fathers, the Order of Preachers) was charged in 2006 with 17 incidents of indecent assault involving seven boys at Blackfriars Priory School (conducted by the Dominican Fathers) in Prospect, Adelaide, between 1956 and 1960. A magistrate ruled that there was enough evidence for a jury to convict Davis. The magistrate committed him to stand trial in the Adelaide District Court. But Davis died in Canberra in March 2007 before the trial could be held. See our story here.
  45. Monsignor John Day, Victoria
    A detective gathered enough evidence to prosecute Monsignor John Day, who sexually abused many boys and girls in the Mildura parish in north-western Victoria. Influential church people blocked the prosecution. In 1997, after Broken Rites exposed the cover-up, the church authorities reluctantly admitted Day’s offences and apologised to his victims. See the Broken Rites story here.
  46. Father Adelrick D’Cruz
    This priest, aged 78, was convicted in the Victorian County Court at Shepparton on 22 May 2008 after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting a teenage girl in a north-eastern Victoria parish 24 years previously. D’Cruz had ministered in the Sandhurst diocese in northern Victoria and later did freelance ministry in the Anglo-Indian community in Melbourne. See our story here.
  47. Fr Ray Deal
    Father Raymond Deal, Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to four months jail (suspended) for an offence against a male who was under his supervision. See our story here.
  48. Fr John Denham
    On 2 July 2010 Father John Sidney Denham, of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese, was sentenced to a 19 years and 10 months in jail (with parole possible after 13 years and 10 months) for offences (including buggery) committed against boys in the 1970s and 1980s. See a comprehensive background article from Broken Rites here and the judge’s sentencing remarks here and another family’s complaint here.
  49. Fr Francis Derriman
  50. Francis Edward Derriman was sentenced in Brisbane in 1998 to 12 months jail (suspended after serving four months) after being found guilty of indecently dealing with a teenage girl while Father Derriman was a priest in Brisbane in 1968. The court was told that Derriman left the priesthood in 1970, became a social worker and moved interstate. In the 1990s, the victim went to the church’s “Towards Healing” program in Brisbane, expecting some “healing”, but she later told Broken Rites that church officials at “Towards Healing” in Brisbane were evasive and dismissive towards her.
  51. Br Gerard Dick
  52. In 1995, Christian Brother Gerard William Dick (then aged 67) was sentenced to three and a half years jail in  Perth, Western Australia, after pleading guilty to ten incidents of indecently dealing with boys aged eight to ten at a Christian Brothers orphanage, Castledare, in W.A. in the 1960s. Dick was just one of many Christian Brothers who abused boys in W.A. orphanages but most of the others were never brought to justice.
  53. Br Edward Dowlan
  54. Christian Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan (known as Ted Dowlan), Victoria, 1996, was jailed in 1996 with an eventual sentence (after appeal) of 6.5 yrs jail (with parole after 4 yrs) for offences against boys. See our story here.
  55. Br “David” Down
  56. Christian Brother Graeme James Down (known in the Christian Brothers as “Brother David Down”) indecently touched boys aged 10-12 from St Mark’s College in Bedford, Western Australia, in the 1980s; he left the Christian Brothers in 1999; was convicted in 2007 (pleaded guilty); received a 30-months jail sentence, with parole after one year. Later in 2007, Broken Rites received further complaints about Brother Down at the same school in the 1980s. This resulted in Down being given additional jail time in 2008. See our story here.
  57. Fr Reginald Durham
  58. Father Reginald Basil Durham, Rockhampton diocese, Queensland, 4-18  mths jail (for indecent assault of a girl at Neerkol orphanage). See our story here.
  59. Br John Dyson
    Marist Brother John Desmond Dyson (born 21 March 1950), who taught at Assumption College, Kilmore, Victoria, was sentenced to 12 months jail after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting three boys, aged 12 to 14. The sentence was served in community work. See our story here.
  60. Fr Anthony Eames
    Father Anthony Eames, Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to six months jail (suspended) for offences against girls. See our story here.
  61. Fr Michael Endicott
    On 25 June 2010 in Brisbane, Father Michael Ambrose Endicott was given a one-year jail sentence (suspended) after pleading guilty to indecent treatment of a schoolboy. See more from Broken Rites here.
  62. Br Rex Elmer
  63. Christian Brother Rex Ignatius Elmer, Victoria, was sentenced in 1998 to five years jail (with parole after 3 years 4 months) after pleading guilty to indecent assault of 12 boys at St Vincent’s Boys’ Home in South Melbourne. See the full Broken Rites story  here.
  64. Br Michael Evans, New South Wales
    By December 1994, New South Wales police had gathered sufficient evidence to charge Christian Brother Michael Evans with multiple sexual crimes against Catholic schoolboys. But Evans committed suicide, thereby evading the justice process. His victims included pupils at Edmund Rice College (Wollongong) and St Patrick’s College (Strathfield, Sydney). The Christian Brothers Order has apologised to Evans’s victims.
  65. Fr Paul Evans, Boys’ Town, NSW
    On 3 October 2008 Father Paul Raymond Evans (born 20 October 1951) was sentenced to 15 years’ jail (with parole possible after nine and a half years) after a Sydney jury found him guilty of multiple sex offences against boys in the 1970s and 1980s, while he was a dormitory master at Boys’ Town (a Catholic institution for troubled teenagers) in Engadine, south of Sydney. After 1988, Evans worked in parishes in the Broken Bay diocese in Sydney’s north. See our story here.
  66. Br Stephen Farrell, Christian Brother
    Brother Stephen Francis Farrell (a member of the Victoria-Tasmania province of the Christian Brothers) was a teacher at St Alipius Catholic primary school in Ballarat East, Victoria, in 1973-74 but later left the order. In the Ballarat Magistrates Court on 17 January 1997, Farrell (then aged 45) pleaded guilty to nine counts of indecently assaulting two boys at St Alipius. He was sentenced to two years’ jail, suspended for two years. After leaving the Christian Brothers, Farrell married three times. Jesuit Father Michael McGirr, who conducted Farrell’s third wedding, gave character evidence in court for Farrell. This Stephen Farrell is not to be confused with a Marist Brother of the same name.
  67. Fr Nazzareno Fasciale, Melbourne
    Victoria Police charged Father Nazzareno Fasciale (pronounced “Fah-SHAH-Lay”) with numerous indecent assaults of boys and girls. Fasciale admitted these crimes in a police interview which was to be tabled in court. He was absent from his first scheduled court appearance and died before the second scheduled court date. The Melbourne Catholic archdiocese has since apologised to Fasciale’s victims. See the Broken Rites story here.
  68. Fr Gregory Ferguson
  69. Father Gregory Laurence Ferguson, of the Marist Fathers, was sentenced on 15 May 2007 to two years jail (eligible for parole after 12 months), for offences in 1971 against two boys aged 13 at Marist College, Burnie, Tasmania.  On 13 December 2007, he was sentenced to an additional three years’ jail for offences against a third boy, making a total of five years’ jail (but he can apply for parole after two and half years). See our story here.
  70. Fr James Fletcher
  71. Father James Patrick Fletcher, Maitland-Newcastle diocese, NSW, 7.5 years to 10  years jail for sexual penetration of an altar boy. Fletcher died in jail.  See our story here.
  72. Br Michael Folli
    In the New South Wales District Court, after lengthy proceedings (including an appeal by the accused), Marist Brother Michael Anthony Folli (born 4 January 1945) has been sentenced to four and a half years’ jail for sexual offences against two boys during four years from 1980 to 1983 when the boys were aged 12 to 15. The prosecution said the two siblings met Brother Folli through their Marist Brothers school at Auburn, in Sydney’s west.  Folli befriended the family and became a frequent visitor to their house, where the alleged incidents occurred.
  73. Br Raymond Foster
    Marist Brother Raymond Sidney Foster (born 26 November 1931) was originally called “Brother Celestine“. He taught at Catholic schools in Queensland and New South Wales.  In 1999, police interviewed Foster (then aged 67) at a Marist Brothers retirement home in Mittagong, NSW) and charged him with indecent assaults against boys, committed at Chanel College, Gladstone, Queensland, in the 1970s. On 23 March 1999 he was found, hanged, just hours before he was due to appear in a New South Wales court to be extradited to Queensland.
  74. Fr Rob Fuller
  75. Father Robert Macgregor Fuller, 54, a priest of the Sydney Catholic archdiocese, was jailed in February 2010 for seeking to procure a child under the age of 16 via internet chat sites. See more from Broken Rites here.
  76. Fr Des Gannon
  77. Father Desmond Laurence Gannon, Melbourne archdiocese, was jailed in 1995 for 12 months, plus suspended sentences in 1997, 2000 and 2003, and was sentenced in 2009 to another 14 months behind bars, for offences against boys. See the full story from Broken Rites here.
  78. Br Terry Gilsenan,
  79. In 2001, Marist Brother Terence Joseph Gilsenan (born 18 October 1955) was sentenced to three years jail (with parole after 21 months) after pleading guilty to one incident of homosexual intercourse and three incidents of gross indecency, committed against a 12-year-old boarder, from a country area, at St Gregory’s College, Campbelltown, New South Wales. The offences occurred in 1987-89 when Gilsenan, then in his early thirties, was the assistant boarding supervisor, a trainee brother and a teacher at the college. Gilsenan is still a Marist Brother. He should not be confused with a Christian Brother who has a similar (but not identical) name.
  80. Brother J.G. Gladwin
    In 1998, Queensland detectives were ready to prosecute Gladwin for committing sexual crimes against schoolboys while he worked (as Christian Brother Gerard Gladwin) in Queensland in the 1960s and ’70s. But, before court proceedings could begin,  Gladwin (aged 65) was found dead, gassed in his car, near Brisbane. He left a suicide note. Thus, he avoided the justice process. Brother Gerard Gladwin’s schools included: a school in Gympie between 1957 and 1962; St Mary’s College, Toowoomba in the 1960s; St Joseph’s Nudgee College, Brisbane, in 1970-71; and St Columban’s College, Brisbane, in the mid 1970s.  See more from Broken Rites  here.
  81. Fr Michael Glennon
  82. Father Michael Charles Glennon, Melbourne archdiocese, was jailed in 1978, again  in 1991 and 2003, serving a total of 10.5 years minimum to 14.5 years  maximum for multiple offences (including rape and indecent assault), mostly against boys. He committed many of his crimes while on bail awaiting trial for other sex offences. See our story here.
  83. Paul Goldsmith
  84. Former trainee priest Paul Ronald Goldsmith, Tasmania, was jailed for six and a half years (with parole possible after four years) for  offences against 20 boys, aged 13 to 16.  See our story here.
  85. Fr Terence Goodall
    Father Terence Norman Goodall, Sydney archdiocese, pleaded guilty to indecent assault of a Catholic layman and was placed in custody until the rising of the court. See our story here.
  86. Br Brian Gordon
  87. Marist Brother Brian Robert Gordon (born 15 December 1942) sexually abused boys while teaching at a Marist Brothers primary school in Dundas, Sydney, in 1969-71. The Marists kept quiet about Gordon’s behaviour and he eventually became the Brisbane diocese’s deputy directory of Catholic Education. In 1998 he was sentenced to a minimum of  12 months jail for eight sexual offences committed in 1969-71 against four boys, aged about 11, at the Sydney school.  See our story here.
  88. Br Thomas Grealy
  89. Brother Thomas William Grealy, alias Brother “Augustine”, of the  Patrician Brothers order, was sentenced in 1997 to seven years jail (parole after four years) after pleading guilty to repeated indecent assaults of two young boys while he was the principal of the primary section of a Patrician Brothers school in Grimwood Street, Granville, in western Sydney, in the 1970s. Before molesting a boy in his office, Brother Augustine would cover a statue of the Virgin Mary with a raincoat to hide his shame. See more from Broken Rites here.
  90. Monsignor Philip Green
    Monsignor Philip Richard Green, Hobart archdiocese, was sentenced to three months jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting a young man who was mourning the death of a sibling. See our story here.
  91. Fr Jack Gubbels
    On 18 August 1995, Victorian detectives went to Queensland to arrest Father Jack William Gubbels for sexual crimes crimes against Melbourne boys. But, expecting the arrest, Gubbels was found dead in bed. Thus he avoided the justice process. Gubbels had worked as a priest in the Melbourne and Townsville (Queensland) dioceses. See the Broken Rites story here.
  92. Fr Barry Gwillim
    Father John Barry Gwillim, Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to 32 months jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to offences against a boy. See our story here.
  93. Fr John Haines
    In the Victorian County Court on 4 November 2008, Father Edmund John Haines (of the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese, based in the Geelong district) was sentenced to four years and three months jail (with a non-parole period of two years six months) after he pleaded guilty to six counts of an indecent act with a boy under 16, procurement of a minor for child pornography and possessing child pornography. Haines was previously a priest in Papua New Guinea. See our story here.
  94. Br “Malcolm” Hall
    Marist Brother Philip Stanley Hall (born 12 November 1925, alias Brother Malcolm) worked in Catholic schools in Mount Gambier (Sth Aust.), Parkes and Forbes (NSW) and Warragul (Victoria). In 1998, police arrested him (and gave him a summons to appear in court) for sexual crimes against boys and girls in Victoria. But he died just before the scheduled court date, so the court case had to be cancelled. See more from Broken Rites here.
  95. Bede Hampton, Queensland, ex-Marist Brother
    In December 2010 a former Catholic Marist teaching brother, now living in Australia — Bede Hampton, aged 62 — was sentenced in New Zealand’s High Court to jail for two years and six months for indecent assaults committed against boys in a New Zealand Catholic boarding school (St Joseph’s College in Masterton) in the early 1970s. Hampton left the Marist Brothers when he was 29. He has become an interior decorator based in Queensland. One of his victims now also lives in Australia. See more from Broken Rites here.
  96. Phillip Hardy, trainee priest
  97. In 1990, Phillip John Hardy began training for the Catholic priesthood with the Divine Word Missionaries at Box Hill in Melbourne but he did not reach ordination. In Sydney District Court in 1995, aged 41, he was sentenced to 11 years’ jail (with a minimum of seven years before parole) for sexual offences committed against a boy during an eight-year period, in 1978-1986, when the boy was aged from 8 to 16. During the time of the offences, Hardy was teaching at Marist Brothers College, Eastwood, Sydney, where he was in charge of “religious studies”.
  98. Br Francis Hesford
    Marist Brother Hesford (born 1 February 1914), formerly of Assumption College, Kilmore, Victoria (later moved to  Western Australia), was given a non-custodial sentence in 1997 after pleading guilty to offences against two girls at Kilmore. The offences were committed in 1970, when Hesford was aged 56. See our story here and another story here.
  99. Fr Ted Hewitt
    Father Edward Patrick Hewitt, of the Perth diocese, Western Australia, pleaded guilty in a Perth court on 2 April 1996 to a charge of wilful exposure. The prosecution alleged that Hewitt (then aged 50) had stood naked in the back yard of his home, exposing himself to children as they walked past, through an adjoining park, on their way to school. At the sentencing, in May 1996, the court fined Fr Edward Hewitt $1,000.
  100. Br Bill Hocking
    0n 31 October 1992 Christian Brother William Hocking was sentenced to 150 hours of community service  after being convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage boy at a Catholic Church youth refuge, “Eddy’s Place”, in Wollongong, New South Wales.
  101. Ronald Hopkins
  102. Ronald William Hopkins originally trained to be a Christian Brother but ended up as a lay teacher in Catholic schools. In 2005, Hopkins pleaded guilty to offences (five counts of unlawful sexual intercourse by a teacher, five of indecent assault and one of gross indecency) against  five schoolboys, aged 12 to 16, between 1975 and 1991 while he was a teacher at two Adelaide schools — St Bernadette’s in a suburb called St Mary’s and Blackfriars Priory School at Prospect. In the S.A. Supreme Court in 2006, Hopkins (then aged 70) was sentenced to ten years’ jail. See our story here.
  103. Fr Dan Hourigan, Victoria
    On 18 September 1995, Victoria Police charged Father Daniel Dominic Hourigan, (of the Sale diocese) with sexual crimes against boys. Three days later, he died unexpectedly, thereby avoiding a court appearance. Thus the court case had to be cancelled. See the Broken Rites story here.
  104. Fr John Houston, visiting New South Wales
    A Catholic priest, John Charles Houston (born 3 March 1955), has appeared in a court near Newcastle in New South Wales, accused of filming boys showering during a surf lifesaving carnival. The magistrate ordered that Houston be supervised by mental health workers, continue to take his medication and not loiter near public pools or beaches. See more here.
  105. Fr Kevin Howarth
    Father Kevin Howarth, Sandhurst diocese in north-eastern Victoria, sexually abused young girls and was sentenced to three months jail. The sentence was to be served in community work. See our story here.
  106. Fr Bill Irwin
    William Stanley Irwin was originally a Brother (and then a priest) in the Catholic Vincentian order. A Sydney court heard how the church authorities protected Irwin, concealing his criminal behaviour in a church file marked “Strictly Confidential”. In 2011 a jury found Irwin guilty of two incidents of gross indecency against a youth whom he was “counselling”. The judge imposed two six-months jail sentences, which were suspended upon Irwin undertaking a six-months good-behaviour bond. See more here.
  107. Br Fabian Jordan
    Christian Brother John Joseph Jordan (alias Brother “Fabian” Jordan, born 23 October 1927), worked at St Augustine’s boys home and St Vincent’s boys’ home in Victoria; he later left the Christian Brothers and retired to South Australia. In 1999 he was sentenced to a 12-months good behaviour bond for indecent assault (i.e, touching) of a 13-year-old boy at St Augustine’s in the early 1960s. This was not the only complaint about Jordan.
  108. Fr John Keane, western Victoria
    The Adelaide Advertiser reported on 6 January 1990 (page 2) from Melbourne: “A Catholic priest pleaded guilty in Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday to offensive behaviour in a public toilet. John Keane, 52, who gave his address as St Michael’s Church, Wycheproof, was given a 12-month good behaviour bond. The prosecutor said plainclothes police saw Keane expose himself on April 13 last year.”
  109. Frank Keating
  110. De La Salle Brother Frank Terrence Keating (alias Brother “Ibar” Keating) was sentenced to 8 to 36 months jail in Victoria in 1998, plus 12 months jail (suspended) in Queensland in 2000, all for multiple indecent assaults of boys in Catholic schools. Keating also taught in Western Australia and South Australia. See our story here.
  111. Fr Terrence Keliher
  112. Father Terrence Thomas Keliher, aged 62, was sentenced in Brisbane in 2000 to 30 months jail (eligible for parole after 8 months) for indecently dealing with a girl, aged about 11. Keliher was friendly with the girls’ parents, who were intellectually impaired, and he had officiated at the parents’ wedding. In 1999 the victim phoned Broken Rites, which put her in contact with the Queensland Police child-protection unit.
  113. Fr Vincent Kiss
  114. Father Vincent Keiran Kiss belonged to the Wagga Wagga diocese (NSW) but also worked and played in other areas, including Melbourne and the Philippines. In Sydney in 2002, then aged 70, he  was sentenced to ten and a half years in jail (eligible for parole after seven years) for sex crimes against four teenage boys.  He pleaded guilty to three charges of buggery and ten of indecent assault. See our story here.
  115. Fr Frank Klep
  116. Father Frank Gerard Klep, of the Salesian order, Victoria, 5 years 10 months jail, with parole after 3 years 6 months (after an appeal by the prosecution on behalf of the victims, April 2006, replacing previous sentence in 2005 of 1-3 yrs jail); also had a 9-months jail sentence in 1994, which he served in community work.  See our story here.
  117. Marist Brother Kostka
    In the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court on 23 June 2008, Marist Brother John William Chute (born 13 June 1932), whose religious name is “Brother Kostka” (in honour of a 16th Century saint), was jailed after pleading guilty to sexually molesting four students when they were aged 13 and 14 at Canberra’s Marist College in the 1980s. See our story here.
  118. Michael Lannen, ex-trainee priest
  119. Michael William Lannen spent two years in the 1980s as a trainee priest at the Catholic seminary in Banyo, Brisbane. He later became a senior psychologist for Queensland’s prison system. In 1996, aged 49, he was sentenced to four years jail after being found guilty of corruptly intimidating prisoners into engaging in oral sex with him in return for favourable reports regarding the prisoners’ future. The prosecution said that Lannen held considerable power over the prisoners, regarding their early release or whether they were given leave of absence or home detention or were accepted into work-release schemes. Lannen’s conviction relates to a period after he ceased being a trainee priest but the conviction is being included in this list, as a matter of public record, for the information of anybody who encountered Lannen in a church-related situation.
  120. Fr Leo Leunig,
  121. Father Leo St Clair Leunig, then aged 66, of the Perth diocese, Western Australia, was sentenced to six years jail in 1994 after pleading guilty to 46 offences against three young boys between 1965 and 1969; and he was sentenced in 1995 to another 12 months jail for offences against another boy. The offences included indecent touching, oral sex and sodomy. The church authorities had known since 1979 about Leunig’s criminal behaviour, but they retained him in the ministry and merely moved him from a one-parish appointment to a multi-parish role as a relieving priest. This meant that he had access to boys in the new parishes where he would be relieving. While he was relieving, Leunig lived for many years at the South Perth presbytery, which is adjacent to a primary school, but the church authorities did not warn the school’s principal or parents about him. While Leunig was serving his jail sentence (and also after he was released), the Perth diocese defiantly continued to list him for years in the annual Australian Catholic Directories as a “supplementary” (relieving) priest of the Perth diocese.
  122. Fr Bruce Little
    In the Southport District Court (Queensland) on 2 February 1996, Father Bruce Francis Little (then aged 50) was fined $750 after pleading guilty to engaging in an indecent act in a public place. Little admitted to having oral sex performed on him by a man in a public toilet block at Pizzey Park, Miami, on the Queensland Gold Coast. The court was told that police arrested Little one afternoon as they patrolled the park, a popular playground for children. (Case reported in the Brisbane Courier Mail, the Gold Coast Bulletin and the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, 3 February 1996.) Little, who was then a priest of the Brisbane archdiocese, later transferred to the Rockhampton diocese.
  123. Br “Nestor” Littler
    Marist Brother John Aloysius Littler (alias Brother “Nestor”, born 17 June 1926) worked at St Vincent’s boys’ home, Westmead, in  Sydney’s west, from 1955 to 1964. In Sydney District Court in 1993, Littler pleaded guilty to three charges of indecently assaulting a boy, aged 15, at St Vincent’s in 1962. Judge Phelan sentenced Littler to a $500 five-year good behaviour bond. Judge Phelan said he was taking into account that, as a Marist Brother, Littler had a “high standing” in the community. In 1997, Littler (then aged 71) was committed for trial on 29 counts of sexual assault (including buggery) of five other boys at St Vincent’s in the 1950s and ’60s but he eventually managed to get the trial cancelled on health grounds. Brother “Nestor” is also believed to have taught at the Marist Brothers’ St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill, Sydney, in 1965-70. The name “Nestor”, which was the religious alias adopted by Littler when he joined the Marist Brothers, was the name of an ancient “saint”.
  124. Br Ray Logan
  125. De La Salle Brother Raymond Logan (alias Brother Pius Bernard), NSW,  W.A. and Victoria, was sentenced in 2000 to three years jail (to be served as periodic weekend detention) for offences against boys. See our story here.
  126. Kevin Lynch
    Kevin John Lynch was originally a Christian Brother, teaching in Catholic schools in Queensland. One of these schools is believed to have been St Brendan’s College, Yeppoon. After leaving the Christian Brothers, he worked as a school counsellor at Brisbane Boys’ Grammar School (Anglican) in the 1980s and at St Paul’s School (Anglican), Bald Hills, Brisbane, in the early 1990s. In 1997, police charged him with committing sexual crimes against boys while working as a counsellor. During prosecution, he committed suicide, thereby failing to clear his name.
  127. Fr Daniel Lyne, CP
    In 2002, New South Wales police were about to prosecute Father Daniel Lyne in court for sexual offences against young males but suddenly he died and the court case could not proceed. Lyne (born 1937) was a Catholic priest in the Congregation of the Passion religious order (the Passionist Fathers). Originally, Father Lyne had taught in a Passionist “juniorate” at St Ives, Sydney (this was a secondary school for boys who were “aspiring” to become priests in the Passionist order). He later worked in Africa and India. See more from Broken Rites here.
  128. Br Edward Mamo, MSC religious order
    A Catholic former religious Brother, Edward Mamo (born in 1944), has pleaded guilty to having committed multiple sexual offences against boys at Monivae College, a Catholic secondary school, at Hamilton, Victoria, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mamo also worked at Chevalier College (Bowral, NSW) and in accommodating Vietnamese refugees in Sydney. See more from Broken Rites here.
  129. Br William Marchant
    Christian Brother William Edwin Marchant, Tardun Boys’ Home, Western  Australia, non-custodial sentence.
  130. Fr Denis McAlinden
    This Irish-born priest belonged to the Maitland-Newcastle diocese in New South Wales, where he molested girls and women. This diocese then lent him to other dioceses around Australia (and in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea), keeping him out of the reach of the police as he committed to commit offences. Police accumulated evidence to prosecute McAlinden in court but when they finally caught up with him in 2005, he was in a church-run aged-care centre in Western Australia, where he died one month later. Since then, the Maitland-Newcastle diocese has been paying compensation to some of McAlinden’s victims. See the Broken Rites story here.
  131. Fr Michael McArdle,
  132. Father Michael Joseph McArdle, of the Rockhampton diocese in Queensland, was sentenced in 2003 to six years jail (with parole possible after two years) after pleading guilty to 62 incidents of indecent dealings against 14 boys and two girls between 1965 and 1987. McArdle told a journalist that the church was aware of his offences but it never alerted police or parishioners.
  133. Fr Charles McCann
    A young woman made a sworn statement to Victoria Police in 1993 that Fr Charles McCann, of St Kevin’s parish, Templestowe, in Melbourne’s north-east, had invasively mauled her breasts while she was asleep in bed in her family home when she was a teenager in 1983. McCann, who was a friend of the girl’s family, was making a “home visit”. Police interviewed McCann in 1993 and, as a result, of this interview, they gave him a summons to appear in court in March 1994 to answer a charge of indecent assault. However, the girl’s parents and grandparents feared that the case would embarrass the church, so they pressured the young woman to withdraw the charge, threatening to disinherit her if she proceeded. Feeling defeated, the young woman withdrew the charge two days before the court hearing. The church authorities then felt justified in retaining McCann in the priesthood until he retired nine years later, in 2003.
  134. Br Bernard McGrath
  135. St John of God Brother Bernard Kevin McGrath was jailed in New Zealand in 1993, was jailed in Sydney in 1997, and was in jail again in New Zealand from 2006 to 2008. Any Australian victims of McGrath should have a chat with the Lake Macquarie detectives office in New South Wales, telephone 02-49429909. See the Broken Rites story about McGrath and the St John of God Brothers here.
  136. Fr Ron McKeirnan
  137. Father Ronald McKeirnan, of the Brisbane archdiocese, was sentenced to three years jail (one year minimum) in 1998, plus 3 yrs jail (suspended) in 2003, for offences against boys. See our story here.
  138. Fr Paul McLachlan
  139. Father Paul McLachlan, of the Brisbane archdiocese, was sentenced to 3 yrs 8 months jail in 2000, plus 18 months jail in 2001, for offences against boys. McLachlan was formerly the head of Brisbane’s Catholic Media Office for 19 years and appeared on television religious programs. See our story here.
  140. Br Gerard McNamara
    Marist Brother Gerard Joseph McNamara (born 9 March 1938) was sentenced in Melbourne to three years jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting six boys. McNamara, who taught mainly in Victoria, was originally known as “Brother Camillus” (not to be confused with another Marist Brother “Camillus” in Sydney). See the Broken Rites report here.
  141. Br “Ossie” McNamara
  142. Marist Brother Hugh Michael McNamara (born 7 March 1933) taught at St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill in Sydney as Brother “Oswald” McNamara until about 1978. He ceased being a Brother and then taught as a lay teacher at the Marist Brothers college at Ashgrove in Brisbane, where he  was jailed in 1995 for indecently dealing with a boy. In Sydney in 1999, he was convicted of physical assault of a boy at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill in 1970; and a charge of indecently assaulting the same boy was dismissed because of lack of witnesses.
  143. Rick McPhillamy, cathedral acolyte
    In 2011, Richard John McPhillamy (who has been an acolyte at the Bathurst Catholic Cathedral and who is a former assistant dormitory master at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst) was sentenced to a minimum of 12 months jail after he was found guilty of sexual crimes against two boys while he was working as an assistant housemaster at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst in the mid-1980s. See more from Broken Rites here.
  144. Fr Terence Merivale
  145. Father Terence Michael Merivale was a priest in the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese but left the priesthood. Later, in 2000, he was sentenced to six months jail after pleading guilty to seven charges of indecent assault (including one of digital penetration) on three young  girls when he was ministering in St Bernard’s parish, Belmont, Geelong, between 1969 and 1975.
  146. Fr Murray Moffat
    In August 2010, Father Murray Alexander Moffat, of Brisbane, was sentenced to 18 months jail, with the first three months to be spent behind bars and the remainder suspended for three years. He pleaded guilty to indecent treatment of a 12-year-old girl between 1977 and 1981. See the Broken Rites story here.
  147. Br Rodger Moloney
    This member of the St John of God Brothers has worked in Australia and New Zealand. In August 2008 in New Zealand, Rodger William Moloney, 73, was jailed for sexually abusing educationally-disadvantaged boys in Christchurch, N.Z., in the 1970s. He was released from jail in September 2009. The court was told that, after completing his sentence, he would be deported to Australia.  Any Australian victims of Moloney should have a chat with the police sexual offences units in Australia. See our Moloney story here. And see our background story about the St John of God Brothers in Australia here.
  148. Br Terry Mulligan
  149. Marist Brother Terence Mulligan was sentenced in Sydney in 2000 to 6 months periodic detention for indecent assaults against two boys. Mulligan met the two siblings through their Marist Brothers school at Auburn, in Sydney’s west. He assaulted the boys in the family’s house. One of the victims, “Ricky” (aged 32 in 2000), said outside the court that the sexual abuse devastated his personal development. His life became a blur of drugs, alcohol and rage. Ricky’s wife said the effect of the abuse was being felt by her and the whole family.
  150. Fr Gerard Mulvale
  151. Father Gerard Joseph Mulvale, born 17 July 1948, from Western Australia, jailed 18-36 mths in Melbourne 1995 while he was a priest in the Pallottine order.  See our story here.
  152. Br Lawrence Murphy
    Christian Brother Lawrence Denis Murphy worked in Catholic boys’ orphanages at Tardun, Castledare and Clontarf in Western Australia in the 1940s and ’50s. In May 1997, he was arrested in Adelaide and extradited to Western Australia on charges of unlawful carnal knowledge and indecent dealing at the orphanages. In 1998 a West Australian magistrate ruled that there was indeed sufficient evidence for a jury to convict Murphy (then aged 80) but Murphy died before the the trial could be held.
  153. Monsignor James Murray
    In June 2000, Monsignor James William Murray, Geelong, Victoria (Melbourne archdiocese), was convicted and fined $500 after pleading guilty to having indecently assaulted a 25-year-old woman who had requested his pastoral care. See our story here.
  154. Fr “Max” Murray
  155. After Father Magnus William Murray committed child-sex offences in New Zealand, he was transferred to Sydney, where he was allowed to minister in the Woollahra parish in 1972-76. His past was concealed from Sydney parishioners. He later returned to New Zealand, where he was sentenced in 2003 to five years jail after pleading guilty to ten representative charges of committing indecent assaults and indecent acts on four boys in New Zealand between 1962 and 1972. The Sydney archdiocese now denies that it breached its duty of care in allowing Murray to minister in Australia because (it claims) Murray was New Zealand’s responsibility, not Sydney’s.
  156. Br Ross Murrin
  157. On 10 March 2008, Marist Brother Ross Francis Murrin (born 10 June 1955) was sentenced to 39 months’ jail, with a non-parole period of 18 months, after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting Catholic primary school boys in the 1970s. In February 2010, he received additional jail time after pleading guilty to sexually abusing another boy at a later school. See our story here.
  158. Brother Robert John N*****
  159. This former De La Salle Brother, received a ten-year jail sentence in NSW in February 2002 (when aged 55), eligible for parole after 6 yrs (the judge granted the offender a name-suppression order). See our story here.
  160. Fr Ross O’Brien
    In Glen Innes Local Court in New South Wales in May 1993, Father Thomas Ross O’Brien (then aged 57) was charged with indecent assault of a hitch-hiker, whom he had picked up between Lismore and Casino on 22 October 1992. Magistrate Chris Bone found the offence proved and placed Father O’Brien on a $100 good-behaviour bond for 18 months. (Reported in the Glen Innes Examiner  28 May 1993 and mentioned again in the Sydney Sunday Sun-Herald 19 March 2000.) Father O’Brien belongs to the Armidale diocese. When in court in 1993, he was ministering at the Glen Innes parish. He was later located at the Armidale Cathedral and then in the Quirindi parish. In several editions of the annual Australian Catholic Directory (e.g., the editions from 1997 to 2004), he was listed as the contact person for the “Continuing Education of Clergy” in the Armidale diocese — that is, he has been involved in the training of priests.
  161. Br Damien O’Dempsey
  162. In Brisbane in 1994, Christian Brother Damien John O’Dempsey (then aged 46) was sentenced to 18 months’ jail (with parole after four months) after pleading guilty to six counts of indecently dealing with a 15-year-old boy at St Mary’s Christian Brothers College, Toowoomba, Queensland, in 1987. In 1998, O’Dempsey was summoned to a magistrates’ court again, facing 22 charges (indecent dealing and carnal knowledge) involving another boy at a Townsville school in 1981-84. The magistrate ordered O’Dempsey to stand trial, which was listed for 1999. However, a tragedy occurred in the family of the alleged victim and the trial was abandoned. See the Broken Rites report here.
  163. Fr Kevin O’Donnell
  164. Father John Kevin O’Donnell, Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to 15 months jail for offences against children, mainly boys. Broken Rites helped O’Donnell’s victims to obtain justice. See our story here.
  165. Fr John O’Regan
    This priest ministered with the Catholic order of Oblate Fathers, in Queensland and Western Australia and possibly elsewhere. In September 1998, Queensland detectives began investigating O’Regan regarding indecent assaults of girls at Nazareth House girls’ home, Wynnum North, Brisbane, in the 1950s and ’60s. But O’Regan died during this prosecution process. See the Broken Rites story here.
  166. Fr Paul Pavlou
  167. On 29 June 2009, Melbourne diocesan priest Father Paul Pavlou (then aged 50) pleaded guilty to committing an indecent act with a 14-year-old boy and another charge of possessing child pornography. He was given an 18-months jail sentence (suspended) plus a two year community-based sentence (to be served by doing community work). See the full Broken Rites report here.
  168. Pending. Matter appealed – further investigation.
  169. Fr Dave Perrett
    Father David Perrett, who was a “chaplain” to Aborigines in the Armidale diocese in northern New South Wales, pleaded guilty in Orange District Court to indecent assault of two young Aboriginal boys at the Walgett parish and another Aboriginal boy at the Guyra parish. On 1 November 1996, Judge Shillington sentenced Perrett, then aged 59, to a three-year good-behaviour bond.  The Catholic directories continued to list Perrett as a priest of the Armidale diocese (“on leave”) until his name was removed in 2001. Another complaint against Perrett was aired on ABC-TV’s “Four Corners” on 11 November 2002. The program featured a statutory declaration by a young Aboriginal named Edward, who said he was raped by Perrett at Walgett; however, this complaint never reached a court. Edward, who had an intellectual disability and was partially deaf, had a traumatic adolescence. He ended up in jail, where he committed suicide.
  170. Fr Kevin Phillips
  171. In Sydney on 21 April 2011, Fr Kevin Francis Phillips (of Mackay in the Rockhampton diocese in Queensland) was jailed after pleading guilty to offences against a boy at St Stanislaus College (a boys’ boarding school) in Bathurst, New South Wales, in 1990. See the Broken Rites story here.
  172. Fr Ron Pickering
  173. For years, Father Ronald Dennis Pickering was protected by the Melbourne Catholic hierarchy. In late 1993 he suddenly fled from Australia to England, fearing that one of his victims would talk to police. The police eventually obtained enough evidence for a prosecution but were discouraged by the problem of locating Pickering in England (although the Melbourne archdiocese secretly knew his England address) and also the problem of extraditing him to Australia for the court proceedings. The Melbourne Catholic Archdiocese, which had long known about Pickering’s liking for boys, admitted that Pickering was an offender and it made civil settlements with some of his victims, so as to limit the church’s financial liability. See the full Broken Rites article here.
  174. Fr Terry Pidoto
  175. On 17 September 2007, Father Terrence Pidoto, of the Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to seven years and three months’ jail (with a minimum of five years before becoming eligible for parole) on charges of buggery and indecent assault against boys. See our story here.
  176. Priest #1, Adelaide
    In Adelaide in 1989, Catholic Church authorities tried to conceal a priest’s court case. In Holden Hill Magistrates Court, Adelaide, on 21 July 1989, this diocesan priest and another man were found guilty of indecent behaviour and were each fined $100. Late on a summer’s night, police had found the pair lying under bushes near Walkerville oval, engaging in sexual activity. The priest also was originally charged with giving a false name and address. Church lawyers persuaded the court to prohibit the media from publishing the priest’s name but media lawyers contested this application. The Supreme Court lifted the suppression order and the case was reported fully, with names, in the Adelaide “Advertiser” and “Sunday Mail” during July 26-30, 1989. Archbishop Leonard Faulkner wrote in a letter to all priests on 7 June 1989: “In reflecting my decision that [this priest] continue his ministry at [his parish], I remembered my own shortcomings and those of a number of our brother priests.” The priest is still in charge of an Adelaide parish.
  177. Priest #2, Adelaide and northern Sydney
    This priest was a mature-age entrant to the priesthood. He was recruited by (and was trained for) the Adelaide diocese, where he worked in parishes in the 1970s and ’80s. While visiting Cairns, Queensland, he was caught wilfully exposing himself on a beach. In a Cairns court on 27 July 1987, he pleaded guilty and was fined $100. After this, the church authorities transferred him to the Broken Bay diocese, in the northern suburbs and outskirts of Sydney, where he was put in charge of parishes, including parish schools. In February 1995, the Cairns court case was revealed in the “Manly Daily”, Sydney (circulating in the Broken Bay diocese), in an article headed “Shock of priest’s past: Parents stunned at exposure case”. The priest verified this report.
  178. Fr “Joseph” Pritchard
  179. Father Peter Harold Pritchard (alias Fr “Joseph” Pritchard), of the St Gerard  Majella religious order in the Parramatta diocese, NSW, was sentenced in 1997 to 6 years jail (four years minimum) after pleading guilty to charges of buggery, intent to commit buggery, and indecent assault involving seven trainee Brothers and another young male, all aged 16 to 21, over a 19-year period. See our story here.
  180. Fr David Rapson
  181. Father David Edwin Rapson (born 30 July 1953), who was then a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco, was sentenced in 1992 to two years jail after pleading guilty to five incidents of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old boy at Salesian College, “Rupertswood”, in Sunbury (in Melbourne’s north-west), where Rapson was a vice-principal. In a newspaper report in 1992, Rapson’s name was given (apparently wrongly) as David Edward Rapson. See more here.
  182. Fr Michael Reis, MSC religious order
    Father Michael Francis Reis (known as Mick Reis), who has taught at Monivae College in Victoria and Downlands College in Queensland, was sentenced in Brisbane on 6 November 2008 to 18 months jail (with a minimum of six months) for offences against two young girls in the 1980s and 1990s. See our story here.
  183. Fr Gerry Ridsdale
  184. Father Gerald Francis Ridsdale, Ballarat diocese, Victoria, has pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a total of 40 children (comprising 39 boys and one girl). He is serving a jail sentence of 19 years (minimum), with parole possible in the year 2013. See our story here.
  185. Br Gregory Riley
  186. Christian Brother Francis Riley (known as Brother Greg Riley), New South Wales, was sentenced in 1999 to three years jail after pleading guilty to 17 counts of indecent assault against boys.
  187. Fr Stephen Robinson
  188. In 1998, Father Stephen Joseph Robinson (then aged 51), who was then a Catholic priest in the St Gerard Majella order in the Parramatta  diocese, NSW, was sentenced to a minimum of 18 months’ jail for acts of indecency on two trainee Brothers.  See our story here.
  189. Fr Victor Rubeo
    Father Victor Gabriel Rubeo, Melbourne archdiocese, pleaded guilty in 1996 to having indecently assaulted two boys in a previous parish (Laverton in the 1960s). On 28 October 2011, Rubeo appeared in court again, charged with additional incidents from the 1960s and was ordered to re-appear on 16 December 2011 for a full hearing but he died (aged 78) before this next hearing date. See the Broken Rites story here.
  190. Fr Paul-David Ryan
  191. Father Paul David Carl Ryan, Ballarat diocese, Victoria, was sentenced in 2006 to 18 months jail (12 months minimum) for offences against boys. See our story here.
  192. Fr Vince Ryan
  193. Father Vincent Gerard Ryan, of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, NSW, was sentenced in 1996-97 to 16 years (minimum of 11) for offences against boys. See the Broken Rites story here.
  194. Fr Peter Searson
    This Melbourne diocesan priest pleaded guilty in a magistrates’ court in 1997 to physically assaulting a 12-year-old altar boy. The police also had evidence of sexual abuse committed by Searson, but Searson chose to plead guilty to the physical abuse, thereby ensuring a more lenient sentence. The court ordered Searson to observe a good-behaviour bond. Also in 1997, the Melbourne archdiocese’s Commissioner on Sexual Abuse investigated certain other allegations about Fr Searson, involving a number of women, boys and girls. See the Broken Rites report here.
  195. Fr Kelvin Sharkey
  196. On 29 April 2010, Father Kelvin Gerald Sharkey (a priest of the Wollongong Catholic Diocese in New South Wales) was sentenced to a minimum 15 months in jail after pleading guilty to buggery and indecent assault of an altar boy. See the Broken Rites story here here.
  197. Jack Shea
  198. John Rowan Shea was originally a priesthood trainee in Melbourne archdiocese and was later a prominent layman in Melbourne parish affairs and in the St Vincent de Paul Society. In 1996, aged 73, he was sentenced to three years jail (minimum of one year) for offences against boys in his “care” in the 1970s. Shea’s conviction relates to a period after he ceased being a trainee priest but the conviction is being included in this list, as a matter of public record, for the information of anybody who encountered Jack Shea in a church-related situation.
  199. Br Terence Simpson,
    former Christian Brother Terence Simpson, Brisbane, was sentenced to two years jail (suspended) for offences against boys. See our story here.
  200. Fr Michael Slattery
    On 9 August 2007 a Catholic priest from Western Australia, Father Michael Slattery, was sentenced in Sydney District Court to an 18-months jail sentence (suspended, with a good-behaviour bond) after he pleaded guilty to committing three acts of indecency (masturbation) in the presence of a schoolgirl, who was aged 14 to 15. The offences occurred in 1981-82 while Slattery was a lay teacher at a North Sydney Catholic girls school before becoming ordained as a priest for Western Australia. See more from Broken Rites here.
  201. Fr Brian Spillane
  202. On 19 April 2012, a Sydney court sentenced Brian Joseph Spillane to nine years jail (with parole after five years) for indecently assaulting three young girls when he was working as a Catholic priest (in the Vincentian religious order) in New South Wales in the 1970s and ’80s. He is awaiting  further court proceedings for alleged sexual offences against boys. See the Broken Rites story here.
  203. Br Peter Spratt
    Marist Brother Peter Richard Spratt (born 2 August 1937) used to work at Marist College in Canberra. In 1996 he pleaded guilty to two acts of indecency against a 14-year-old boy from the school. The incidents occurred in 1979 at a Marist Brothers’ residence at Wategoes Beach, Byron Bay, NSW, and at a holiday centre in Jindabyne, NSW. A magistrate at Cooma Local Court placed Spratt on a $2,000, two-year good-behaviour bond. Brother Spratt also taught at Marist Brothers, Pagewood, Sydney. It is believed that in the 1960s he taught with the Marist Brothers at Lismore, NSW. In those years he was probably known by a “religious” name, rather than his real name. It was common for Marist Brothers to adopt a “religious” name such as Bartholomew, Ignatius, Aloysius, Xaverius, etcetera.
  204. Br Gregory Sutton
  205. Marist Brother Gregory Joseph Sutton (born 19 March 1951) taught in the 1980s at Catholic primary schools in New South Wales, where he has admitted committing numerous serious offences, including rapes of young girls and indecent assaults of young boys. He fled to the USA, where he became  principal of a Catholic school. He was extradited back to Australia, where he was jailed in 1996 for a maximum of 18 years (with parole possible after 12 years). See our story here.
  206. Fr John Sweeney
  207. Father John Gerard Patrick Sweeney, St Gerard Majella order, Parramatta  diocese, NSW, 18-27 months jail.  See our story here.
  208. Fr Tadeusz Swiatkowski
    Father Tadeusz Swiatkowski, of the Society of Christ (a Polish religious order in Australia), appeared in a Brisbane court in 1994 for soliciting a prostitute (he later moved to Mayfield West, Newcastle, NSW).
  209. Alan Swingler
  210. Alan Edward Swingler (born in September 1941) was originally a Marist Brother but left the Marist order and became a lay teacher of religious studies at St Joseph’s Christian Brothers’ College, Geelong, Victoria, where he stayed for 18 years. In 1996 Swingler, aged 54, was sentenced to seven years jail (minimum of five years) on one incident of buggery, three incidents of gross indecency and nine of indecent assault of boys. Outside the court, the mother of one victim said that, even after the family complained to the school about the crimes, the school kept Swingler on its staff.
  211. Br Colgan Taylor
  212. In Brisbane District Court on 29 November 2002, Marist Brother Colgan Taylor (then aged 80 and living in Sydney) was sentenced to 18 months’ jail after pleading guilty to four counts of indecent dealing with two young girls in central Queensland between 1979 and 1983. One girl was aged five or six when abused. The second victim was intellectually disabled and aged between eight and 11 when abused. The abuse was not reported until the youngest victim came forward in May 2002. Taylor was ordered to serve four months of the sentence, with the remainder suspended.
  213. Br George Taylor, De La Salle
    After one of his victims finally contacted the police, Albert Matthew Taylor (known as “Brother George“) pleaded guilty in the Sydney District Court on 8 August 1995 to two incidents of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old boy. The assaults occurred in 1967 at De La Salle College, Revesby, Sydney. Taylor, aged 79 in 1995, was placed on a three-year good behaviour bond. Taylor’s other schools included De La Salle College, Orange, NSW. See the Broken Rites story here.
  214. Br Peter Toomey
  215. Christian Brother Peter John Toomey pleaded guilty in 2005 to offences against 10 boys at Trinity Regional College in Brunswick, Melbourne, in the 1970s. He was finally sentenced to  4 years 3 months jail, with parole after 2 years 6 months. Originally the sentence was 27 months jail (with parole after six months) but this was increased after an appeal by the prosecution, on behalf of the victims. See our story here.
  216. Fr John Treacy
    Father John Leslie Treacy (born 30 October 1943) was ordained on 19 May 1972 and belongs to the Sandhurst diocese in northern Victoria, where his original parishes included Tatura, Beechworth, Tallangatta, Wodonga and Rushworth. In 1993 he pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a boy from one of his parishes and was given a non-custodial sentence (good-behaviour bond). The Sandhurst diocese later arranged for Treacy to move to Queensland, where Queensland bishops accepted him to minister in parishes and as a hospital chaplain, while he continued to be officially listed as a priest of the Sandhurst diocese.
  217. Fr Adrian Van Klooster
  218. Father Adrian Richard Van Klooster, Western Australia and NSW, was sentenced in 2003 in W.A. to 8 yrs jail for offences against boys and girls. He is eligible for parole but no minimum period was specified. See our story here.
  219. Paul Van Ruth, a former Brother
  220. On 4 March 2011 Peter Paul VAN RUTH, of Adelaide, was jailed after he pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting two boys in 1969 while he was a religious Brother at Salesian College, “Rupertswood”, Sunbury, Victoria. See the Broken Rites story here.
  221. Br Geoffrey Veness
    Marist Brother Geoffrey Sydney Veness (born 30 September 1953) was sentenced to 12 months  jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to offences against a boy who was a pupil at St Augustine’s College, Cairns, Queensland.
  222. Br Keith William Weston Christian Brother Keith William Weston, Melbourne, was sentenced to 30 months jail (suspended) for offences against boys. See our court story here. Also, see an article by a Weston victim here.
  223. Fr Leo Wright
  224. Father Leo Daniel Wright, Brisbane archdiocese, was jailed for 3 yrs (1995) and 18 months (1997) for offences against girls and a boy. See our story here.

The above list is confined to Broken Rites cases — that is, criminal prosecutions in which Broken Rites Australia gives support to victims either before or after the court proceedings.
For civil out-of-court cases, see Section B, below.
And Sections A and B are confined to priests and religious brothers (including trainees). For lay teachers in church schools, see some examples in Section F, at the bottom of this page.Section B: Out-of-court civil cases, researched by Broken Rites
As well as the above-listed criminal prosecutions (conducted by the police), a victim can take out-of-court civil action against the Catholic Church authorities for having inflicted the offender upon the victim. This can force the church to acknowledge the harm that has been done to the victim’s life (including harm done by the church’s tradition of cover-up). This can give the victim a sense of empowerment. Sometimes this action can force the church to give a written apology to the victim. Perhaps, the church might even offer to reach a private settlement with the victim, as the church often regards this as a cheap way of protecting the church’s public image and its assets.

Here are a few examples of cases (researched by Broken Rites), in which victims could tackle the church authorities for justice.

  1. Fr Bert Adderley
    In February 2005, the Bunbury diocese in Western Australia admitted that it was dealing with complaints that Reverend Dr Bertram Richard Adderley, Ph.D., B.A, sexually abused boys in the 1960s and ’70s. According to Broken Rites research, Bertram Adderley had been a lay teacher at the Christian Brothers’ Aquinas College in Perth in the 1950s before entering the priesthood. He served as a priest in the Bunbury diocese from 1959 to 1974. In the early 1960s (after working as a priest at the Narrogin parish), Dr Adderley oversaw Catholic education in the Bunbury diocese but in 1965, following complaints about sexual abuse, he was relegated, out-of-sight, to parishes at Mannup and Manjimup. In 1975, he left parish ministry, “on leave”. One alleged victim from Manjimup says that Adderlely persisted in seeing him after 1975, visiting him at his Catholic high school and taking him on excursions (including nude bathing) until 1979.
  2. Brother Pascal Alford
    Christian Brother Donald Paschal Alford worked at St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong Victoria. See our story here.
  3. Fr David Anderson
    After action by Broken Rites, the Lismore Catholic diocese in northern New South Wales has apologized to two families who complained about sexual abuse committed by Father Clarence David Anderson (also known as Fr David Anderson). One complaint concerned two brothers, aged 14 and 9, who encountered Anderson while he was ministering in Macksville, including Nambucca Heads (on the mid-north coast), in 1966-68. The boys’ father had died, so their mother allowed this priest to “befriend” the boys, because the boys “needed a father”. Another complaint concerned two brothers, aged 9 and 15, who encountered Anderson when he ministered in the Tweed Heads parish (near the Queensland border) in 1969. These latter two brothers, likewise, were from a fatherless family; and they, too, were “befriended” by Anderson.
  4. Fr John Ayers, Salesian order
    The Catholic religious order of Salesian Fathers has  made an out-of-court settlement with a former schoolboy who encountered Father Jack Ayers while attending Salesian College, “Rupertswood”, near Melbourne, when aged 12 to 13. See more here.
  5. Fr Herbert Balding
    In 1997, after consulting Broken Rites, a Melbourne woman (Noreen) complained to the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese about a hospital chaplain (Father Herbert Balding, a member of the Jesuit order). In 1978, when she was a married woman aged in her thirties, Father Balding targeted Noreen sexually while she was in a vulnerable state, seriously ill, as a in-patient at Melbourne’s Mercy Hospital. The abuse disrupted her recovery and her later life. The archdiocese complaints commissioner (Peter O’Callaghan, QC) accepted the complaint and ruled that Noreen had indeed been sexually abused by Balding.
  6. Br Bede (St John of God order)
    Former inmates of four homes operated by the Hospitaller Order of St John of God have complained to police or the Catholic Church and/or Broken Rites that they were sexually assaulted by Brother Bede Donnellan (real name John Joseph Donnellan). Separate complaints came from four locations — Chelthenham, Greensborough and Lilydale (all in Melbourne) and the Granada Hostel in Ashgrove (Brisbane). Bede Donnellan died in 1995. See more about the St John of God order here.
  7. Br. C. Beedon, Melbourne
    Broken Rites is researching Christian Brother C. Beedon, who taught in the late 1960s and early 1970s at St Mary’s boys’ parish primary school (next-door to Christian Brothers College) in East St Kilda, Melbourne.
  8. Br Luke Beltram, De La Salle
    Two families (one in Victoria and one in New South Wales) have complained about Brother Luke Beltram, a religious teacher in the Catholic order of De La Salle Brothers. Luke Francis Beltram was born about 1947. His teaching appointments included De La Salle schools at Dandenong VIC, Dubbo NSW, Malvern VIC, East Bentleigh VIC and (finally) Castle Hill NSW. He died on 10 March 2000, aged 53. See our story here.
  9. Br Benildus, De La Salle order
    The Catholic order of De La Salle Brothers has accepted and settled  complaints by former students (now elderly) who were sexually abused by “Brother Benildus” at De La Salle’s Oakhill College in Castle Hill (north-west of Sydney) in the 1950s. This senior Brother was born as Laurence de Moulin but adopted the religious name “Brother Benildus Joseph” in emulation of a 19th century “Saint Benildus”. At Oakhill (a boarding school), he taught primary-school boys at Year Six level or thereabouts, and he supervised the boarders, including in their dormitory. Benildus later worked at St Bernard’s Junior College, “Clairvaux” (which was then a boarding school in Katoomba NSW), where (according to former pupils) he was again sexually intrusive.
  10. Br “Bertinus”
    In 2010, Australian Marist Brothers held a ceremony to “praise and congratulate” six long-serving Brothers — including a one who was formerly known as Brother “Bertinus”.  A few months earlier, the Marists’ Australian administration had apologised to three ex-pupils for an encounter which each of them allegedly had with Brother “Bertinus” many years ago in their school days. See the Broken Rites report here.
  11. Fr Tony Bongiorno
    The Melbourne Catholic archdiocese commissioner on sexual abuse, Mr Peter O’Callagahan, QC, has upheld complaints that Father Anthony Salvatore Bongiorno sexually abused boys who were under his supervision. Fr Anthony Bongiorno was the Parish Priest in charge of St Ambrose’s parish, Brunswick, Melbourne, in the 1980s and early ’90s. See our story here.
  12. Fr Glenn Boyd, Wagga Wagga diocese
    In 2004, Father Glenn Boyd left the priesthood of  the Wagga Wagga Catholic diocese in southern  New South Wales after issues had been raised  about aspects of his youth work. See more here.
  13. BoysTown (De La Salle Brothers, Queensland)
    In 2011 the Catholic religious order of De La Salle Brothers agreed to offer an out-of-court settlement to a former pupil, who lived in the 1960s at BoysTown (a Catholic institution for disadvantaged boys) in Beaudesert, Queensland. Similar complaints have come from others who were there in later decades. See more here.
  14. Fr John  Byrne, S.J.
    The Catholic Jesuit order in Australia has acknowledged that a Jesuit priest, Fr John Byrne, engaged in “problematic behaviour” against pupils while he was teaching  at Xavier College, Melbourne, in 1971. See more from Broken Rites here.
  15. Fr Joseph Caldwell
    Two women, who do not know each other, have complained in Western Australia about being molested by Father Joseph Caldwell. He was a member of the Salvatorian order of Catholic priests, which is also known as the Society of the Divine Saviour. One complainant said she was abused in 1977, aged 8, and the other said she was abused in 1984 and 1985, aged 9 and 10. Both women told Broken Rites that the abuse (and the secrecy about it) adversely affected their personal development into their adolescence and adulthood. Born in Ireland, Caldwell had worked as a priest in many countries before coming to  Australia. His parishes in Western Australia in the 1970s and ’80s included Greenmount, Dampier, Wickham and Midland. In 1980-81 he served in Western Australia’s Bunbury diocese. West Australian police have ascertained that Caldwell left Australia in the late 1980s and later died in Ireland.
  16. Br Brendan Carroll
    In 2005 and 2006, after action by Broken Rites, the Australian head of the De La Salle Brothers apologized to two women for sexual abuse by Brother Brendan George Carroll when they were young girls. See our story here.
  17. Fr Tom Carroll, Melbourne
    Broken Rites is researching Father Thomas Carroll, of the Melbourne archdiocese, after complaints by former altar boys who were at Caulfield South (Holy Cross parish) in the 1960s. Carroll’s earlier parishes included Mansfield and Epping, etc. He died in 1975.
  18. Fr Dermot Casey, Brisbane
    Broken Rites is researching Father Dermot Casey, who has ministered in the Brisbane archdiocese. His parishes included Cannon Hill, Beenleigh and Salisbury. See more from Broken Rites here.
  19. Chevalier College, Bowral, NSW
    Some ex-pupils of Chevalier College (a Catholic high school near Bowral in southern New South Wales) are still recalling allegations that a Catholic priest behaved indecently towards young boys at the school in the late 1980s. This school is owned by a religious order, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. See more here.
  20. Br Cleophas
    Broken Rites is researching Marist Brother Cleophas Simmons (born on 26 March 1926), whose real name was John Edward Simmons (known to his family as Eddie). He became a trainee Brother at age 16 and spent his whole working life as a Marist Brother: at North Fitzroy, Bulleen, Templestowe and Sale in Victoria; Mount Gambier in South Australia; and Forbes, Leeton and Griffith in New South Wales.
  21. Br Colmcille, Trappist monk, Melbourne
    Born in Ireland as Thomas Clifford, he adopted the Gaelic “religious” name Colmcille (pronounced Kollum-Kill) in honour of an ancient Irish missionary, Saint Columba (in Gaelic, also spelt as Colum Cille). Until 1974, Colmcille lived at Tarrawarra Abbey in Yarra Glen, east of Melbourne. This is the Australian address of the Cistercian  Monks — also known as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (O.C.S.O.) or the order of Trappist monks. Two women, who do not know each other, have complained (separately) that they were digitally raped, at the age of nine, by Brother Colmcille when their families (and others) used to visit this monastery about 1969-1970. Brother Colmcille later returned to Ireland, leaving damaged victims in Australia. The Cistercian order has apologised for harm done by   Colmcille.
  22. Fr Ernie Conlan, MSC order
    A Tasmanian family has recently learned that three of its daughters were sexually abused by Father Ernest Conlan, a member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC), when they were young girls between 1958 and 1963. Conlan was then the parish priest at Kings Meadows, near Launceston. As Conlan was a “friend” of the family, the young girls felt that they could not tell their parents about the abuse at the time, but they have disclosed the abuse in recent years, five decades after the events. In 1965, Conlan went to Adelaide (at the Sacred Heart parish, Hindmarsh). In the 1970s and 1980s, he was a chaplain at St Vincent’s Boys’ Home, Westmead, in western Sydney.
  23. Monsignor Joseph Conway
    The Port Pirie Catholic diocese, which includes the northern parts of South Australia, has acknowledged that Monsignor Arthur Joseph Conway sexually abused boys. Conway, who was evidently called by his middle name (Joseph), died in 1975 but victims are still feeling the hurt. Conway was given an elaborate grave and victims protested about this. Monsignor A.J. Conway’s later years were spent around Quorn, Orroroo and Carrieton (all east of Port Augusta).
  24. Ronald Conway, Catholic psychologist
    This Melbourne therapist was highly regarded by Catholic Church leaders and he received many of his clients through Catholic hospitals and other Catholic agencies. He allegedly touched some of his young male clients sexually. These clients have grounds for demanding, at least, an apology from the church authorities. Ron Conway also acted for the church authorities in “screening” men who wished to become trainee priests in Victoria. See more from Broken Rites here.
  25. Fr Peter Creede, CM
    Broken Rites Australia is investigating Father Peter Philip Creede, of the Catholic Vincentian order (the “Congregation of the Mission”). Born in Ireland (with seven siblings who became nuns or priests), he was ordained in Sydney. He worked at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst (New South Wales), followed by parishes in Southport and Wandal (Queensland), Ashfield (NSW) and Malvern (Victoria).
  26. Fr Pat Cusack, Canberra
    After action by Broken Rites, the Canberra-Goulburn archdiocese admitted that Father Patrick Cusack sexually assaulted primary school girls in St Matthew’s parish in Page, a Canberra suburb, in the 1970s. See our story here.
  27. Fr Denis Daly
    This Irish-born priest belonged to the Sydney archdiocese, but after he got into trouble with Sydney police, the church transferred him to Western Australia and then allowed him to roam the world, thereby putting more children at risk. One boy victim in Ireland died by suicide. See our story here.
  28. Fr Bernard Day
    Father Bernard Maxwell Day, of the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese, lived in 1961-63 in a flat at St Catherine’s girls’ orphanage (conducted by the Sisters of Mercy) in Geelong, where he acted as the “chaplain”, giving the girls “sex education”. Some of these women are still trying to repair their damaged lives. See our story here.
  29. Br Wilfred De Cruz
    The Catholic religious order of De La Salle Brothers has made amends with two former pupils of a De La Salle secondary school at Scarborough, Queensland (now called Southern Cross Catholic College). The ex-pupils have complained about being indecently assaulted by Brother Wilfred D’Cruz. See our story here.
  30. Fr Mark Devoy
    A number of women, now in mature age, have provided evidence that Fr Mark Devoy SM (from the Society of Mary religious order) committed sexual assaults on them when they were young school girls in the 1950s and 1960s. These victims lived in different parts of Australia; they did not know each other; and the attacks happened in various parishes. Devoy was protected by the Society of Mary while he worked in their parishes in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth (and also, previously,  in New Zealand). One woman says some of the assaults occurred during Confession.
  31. Br Richard Doheny, Sydney
    Broken Rites Australia is investigating this member of the Catholic order of Patrician Brothers in New South Wales. He was born (real name John Doheny) on 3 September 1935 in Ireland (at Balingarry, Thurles, County Tipperary), the third youngest of twelve children. He became a Patrician Brother in Ireland (becoming “Brother Richard”) and arrived in Australia in 1956, aged 21. He lived and worked (at primary and junior secondary levels) in Patrician Brothers schools in western Sydney (at Fairfield, Blacktown and Granville) until 2009.
  32. Fr Patrick Doherty, Armidale Diocese, NSW
    The Catholic Church’s professional standards office in New South Wales has received a complaint from an elderly man who says he is still upset about having been sexually abused by Father P.G. Doherty when the complainant was a schoolboy in the Armidale diocese (in north-western NSW) in 1944-49. The boy was attending a Catholic parish primary school (aged seven to twelve) in Bundeera (between Armidale and Inverell). This school is closed now and the Bundeera parish (St Mary of the Angels) is administered now from Uralla. In 2008, when this complaint was being considered by the Armidale diocese, the diocese was acting evasively, which is a frequent response from church authorities. Father Patrick Doherty’s other parishes included Walcha, Bingara, and Warialda.  This priest died in the 1950s and is said to be buried in the Armidale cemetery. It is common for a church victim to be still upset by childhood abuse many decades many years after the original cover-up, as shown by a similar case here.
  33. Fr Frank Donovan, Redemptorist priest
    The Catholic Church’s Professional Standards Office in New South Wales has “accepted the veracity” of two complaints about Father Francis Donovan, a priest of the Redemptorist Fathers (also called the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer). Two women, acting separately, had complained that Donovan molested them when they were young girls in the late 1970s in buildings attached to  the Sacred Heart parish church in Campbell’s Hill, Maitland. See our story here.
  34. Fr Rex Donohoe
    In 2007, after action by Broken Rites, Archbishop Adrian Doyle of Hobart gave a written apology to a former altar boy of Fr Rex Donohoe. The archdiocese accepted a complaint that Donohue abused this victim in the Kingston parish in Tasmania in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Donohue specialised in the “training” of altar boys and this victim says that he was not the only altar boy who was abused by Donohoe. Donohoe established the Australian “Guild of St Stephen”, an organisation for altar boys. Donohue was later at Tasmania’s Lenah Valley parish and was also the Hobart diocesan master of ceremonies.
  35. Fr Bob Drake
    Broken Rites is researching Father Robert Drake, of the Sandhurst diocese in northern Victoria. In the 1970s his parishes included Wangaratta and Wodonga in Victoria’s north-east. After that, he worked outside the diocese — at a seminary in Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and at the Banyo seminary in Brisbane, Queensland, in the 1990s. Back in Victoria again, he was at the Chiltern parish in 1998 and at St Joseph’s parish, Quarry Hill (in Bendigo) from 1999 to 2006.
  36. Br K.E. Duckworth, Melbourne
    Broken Rites is researching Christian Brother Keith Evin Duckworth, who touched boys inappropriately at the  Parade College junior campus  (for years 7 and 8) in Alphington, Melbourne, in the 1970s.
  37. Fr Aidan Duggan
    A Sydney man (“John”) contacted Broken Rites and also lodged a formal complaint with the Catholic Church’s “Towards Healing” office in 2002. He was a 14-year-old altar boy in the Bass Hill parish (near Bankstown) in Sydney in 1975, when he became a victim of Fr Aidan Duggan. Duggan, a priest of the Benedictine order, had previously been in Scotland. He was recruited by the Sydney archdiocese to work in Sydney parishes. John said Duggan sexually abused him (including oral and anal incidents) frequently throughout his adolescence. The abuse convinced John that he (John) was naturally homosexual and it was many years before he realized that he was really heterosexual. This confusion, he said, disrupted his adolescent development and adversely affected his two marriages. This led to a psychological crisis and the loss of his high-profile job. In 2002, through Towards Healing, the archdiocese offered John an out-of-court settlement of $30,000. John decided, instead, to sue the archdiocese in the New South Wales Supreme Court for a much larger sum for damages to cover his loss of his considerable professional earnings. In 2006 the Supreme Court granted permission for John’s case to proceed in court, but the archdiocese successfully appealed to the NSW Court Appeal. In May 2007 the Appeal Court stopped John’s legal action and ordered him to pay the church’s legal costs. The church paid massive fees to its lawyers to win this legal victory over John but the church regarded these fees as money well spent, expecting that this precedent would help to demoralise other church-abuse victims. According to Broken Rites research, Fr Aidan Duggan’s later parishes in Sydney included Gymea, Camperdown and Drummoyne before he retired in 1995. He died in 2004. John believes that he was not Duggan’s only victim.
  38. Archbishop James Duhig
    Three women, who do not know each other, have complained to Broken Rites that they were sexually abused in Queensland by Archbishop James Duhig when they were young. For example, one woman said she was assaulted by Duhig when she was living in the Brisbane Cathedral parish in 1941 aged six. James Duhig was Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane for 50 years until 1965.
  39. Br Wayne Duncan
    After action by Broken Rites, the Marist Brothers in New South Wales have apologised to a victim of Brother Wayne Duncan. The victim, then aged 12, was a border at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill, in Sydney. Duncan (born in 1956) taught there from 1982 to 1989. Duncan targeted this boy while knowing that the boy was estranged from difficult parents. Duncan’s abuse seriously disrupted the victim’s later life. Duncan taught previously at Marist Brothers in Parramatta and later at Ashgrove (Brisbane), Canberra and Lidcombe (Sydney).
  40. Br Wilfred Eastmure
    Christian Brother Wilfred Eastmure worked at St Augustine’s orphanage and St Vincent’s orphanage in Victoria. See our story here.
  41. Br M.J. Esler
    Broken Rites is researching Brother Maurice Esler, from the Victoria-Tasmania province of the Christian Brothers.
  42. Brother Eunan or “Union”
    The Catholic order of De La Salle Brothers has settled with some victims of Brother John McHugh, whose religious name was “Brother Eunan“, which some of his ex-pupils pronounce as yoon-yon as in “trade union”. (There was once a Saint Eunan in Ireland.) Born in Ireland, Eunan McHugh was one of a significant number of Irish-born religious personnel who surfaced in Australia. In the early 1950s, Eunan McHugh taught and supervised boys at two schools in Katoomba, west of Sydney: “Clairvaux”” (the junior school of St Bernard’s College, Katoomba); and St Canice’s parish primary school, Katoomba. At Clairvaux, a  boarding school, Brother “Union”  was in charge of a dormitory and he himself slept next to the dormitory. Later in the 1950s, he taught at De La Salle College in Cronulla, in Sydney’s south (and this school, too, had boarders).
  43. Br P.T. Farrell, St Virgil’s College, Hobart
    In 2006, the Christian Brothers made a civil  settlement with a former student of St Virgil’s College in Hobart, Tasmania. This ex-student had told Broken Rites in 1993 that, when he was a boarder at St Virgil’s (aged seven to eight) in the mid-1950s, he was sexually assaulted by Brother Patrick Timothy Farrell. This Brother, who was nicknamed “Jacky” Farrell at St Virgil’s, was in charge of the junior dormitory for several years until mid-1957. After that, he worked in various Christian Brothers institutions in Sydney.
  44. Marist Brother Stephen Farrell
    The Marist Brothers head office in Sydney has settled complaints about child-abuse involving Marist Brother Stephen Farrell who died in 2004, aged 81. He taught for many years in New South Wales and Queensland. See more here.
  45. “Father F“, New South Wales
    The church authorities covered up for “Father F” in the Armidale diocese (in northern New South Wales) from the early 1980s onwards after receiving complaints about him abusing children, and in 1989 the church authorised him to transfer to parishes in the Parramatta diocese (near Sydney), giving him access to more children. According to a church document, Father F has admitted that he committed sexual acts upon children. The church has paid compensation to two of these complainants for their damaged lives but the victims’ families are still feeling the hurt. The cover-up continued for 30 years until it was exposed by the media in 2012. Read more here.
  46. Br Fintan, De La Salle schools
    Brother Fintan Dwyer worked in De La Salle schools around Australia. Various ex-pupils have complained that Brother Fintan touched them sexually. His birth name was Louis Victor Dwyer. “Brother Fintan” was his “religious” name. Brother Fintan (not to be confused with a colleague, Brother Finian Allman) toured De La Salle schools, recruiting boys as future Brothers. He died in 1990. See our story here.
  47. Fr Gerry Fitzgerald, Melbourne
    Broken Rites Australia is researching Father Gerard Fitzgerald, who spent 51 years as a priest in the Melbourne Archdiocese before retiring in 2006. In one of his early parishes (Coburg in 1964), there was a police investigation into sexual offences against children. See more here.
  48. Fr Dominic Fitzmaurice
    After action by Broken Rites, the Australian head of the Dominican Fathers apologised to a woman for sexual assaults committed by Father Dominic Fitzmaurice in Our Lady of Graces parish at Carina in Brisbane in 1972, when she was aged 12. See our story here.
  49. Fr Bill Fleming, Boys Town, NSW, 1979
    During the trial of Father Paul Raymond Evans in Sydney District Court in July 2008, one of Evans’s victims (from Boys Town school near Sydney) told the court that, after he was molested by Evans in 1979, the assault was reported to the school administration. The boy said he was later told by the school’s head, Father William Fleming (a member of the Salesian order) to forget about the incident because “men have urges”. The court heard that Father Fleming allegedly assaulted another boy, who had also made allegations against Evans. Fleming was the rector of Boys Town during the 1970s.
  50. Fr Leo Flynn
    The Melbourne archdiocese has apologized to a woman for sexual abuse committed by Fr Leo Flynn, a priest of the Jesuit order. At the time of the abuse, Flynn was working in a parish which the Jesuit Fathers were staffing on behalf of the Melbourne archdiocese. At first, the woman complained to the Jesuit order (the Society of Jesus) but the Jesuit administration ignored her.  Broken Rites then helped the woman to present her case to the Melbourne archdiocese. The archdiocese accepted the woman’s account and apologised (this was reported in the Melbourne “Herald Sun” on 8 May 2000).
  51. Br Greg Fogarty
    Broken Rites is researching Christian Brother Leo Gregory Fogarty (known as Brother GREG Fogarty) who worked at St Augustine’s boys’ orphanage (in Geelong, Victoria) from 1978 to 1985 inclusive; he became the superintendent there in 1979. See some background about St Augustine’s orphanage here.
  52. Fr Julian Fox
    In 2000, a Catholic order of priests in Australia (the Salesians of Don Bosco) made a  settlement with a Melbourne man (Luke, born in 1964). According to the settlement deed (of which Broken Rites has a copy), Luke alleged that “over a period of time between 1978 and 1979, whilst a student at Salesian College, Rupertswood, Sunbury [Melbourne], he was unlawfully sexually and/or physically assaulted by Fr Fox”. In 2006, six years after the settlement, Luke died, aged 42. Father Fox now has a position at the Salesian headquarters in Rome. See our story here.
  53. Fr Laurie Gallagher, Marist Fathers
    Broken Rites is researching Father Lawrence Gallagher, S.M. (a member of a religious order, the Society of Mary), who taught at Marist College in Burnie, Tasmania, in the 1970s and early 1980s. In the late 1980s he was at St John’s College, Woodlawn, in Lismore New South Wales. He was also a relieving minister in parishes around Australia. For example, in 1991, he was the Parish Priest in charge of St Thomas More’s parish at Margaret River (in the Bunbury diocese) in Western Australia. It is believed that he formerly served as a missionary in Japan. This Laurie Gallagher is not to be confused with a former diocesan priest of the same name in Victoria.
  54. Fr Kevin Glover, Western Australia
    Broken Rites is researching Father William Kevin Glover (known as Kevin Glover) who worked in the Bunbury diocese in Western Australia from 1959 to 1979 (including parishes at Esperance in the 1970s and Margaret River in the 1980s). In the 1990s, he worked at a Catholic Mission on the Pacific Island of Niue, situated to the north of New Zealand.
  55. Fr Gerald Goss
    Women in several parts of Australia have complained to Broken Rites that they were indecently assaulted by this priest, who was a member of the itinerant Redemptorist order, visiting countless parishes throughout Australia. His victims included housekeepers in parish presbyteries, as well as women parishioners.
  56. Br Julian Hackett
    Christian Brother Vincent Julian Hackett was the superintendent of St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong, Victoria. See more from Broken Rites  here.
  57. Br “Anselm” Hallam
    This member of the De La Salle Brothers was born as Tom Hallam and adopted the “religious” name Anselm (sometimes also spelt Anselem), which was the name of a medieval “saint”. “Brother Anselm” Hallam taught in the late 1960s at St Joseph’s parish primary school, Malvern, in Melbourne, and also taught middle-school students at the neighbouring De La Salle College. According to numerous victims, he was a notorious molester.  He invasively mauled the genitals of his pupils. He gave “sex lessons” (really just “dirty talk”), while masturbating under his clerical frock. A female teacher, who knew what Anselm Hallam was doing, complained to the school’s head Brothers but they were not interested. Anselm Hallam died in the early 1990s, aged 92. One of his victims, who became a successful professional, has contributed an interview to the oral history collection at the National Library of Australia about his own professional career, and he included an account of his experiences at the hands of Brother Anselm Hallam.
  58. Fr John Harcombe
    Broken Rites is researching Father John J. Harcombe, who was ordained, about 1972, from St Paul’s Seminary for Late Vocations, in Kensington, Sydney. He ministered in the Sydney archdiocese (and also in the Broken Bay diocese, north of Sydney) at parishes in Lewisham, Gosford, Auburn South, Lakemba, Epping, Asquith and Kincumber.
  59. Fr Guy Hartcher
    In March 1994, the Catholic order of Vincentian Fathers (officially called the Congregation of the Mission) signed a civil settlement with a former student of St Stanislaus College in Bathurst, New South Wales. This student was at the school in 1971, when he was aged 14. In the settlement Deed of Release, the Trustees of the Vincentian Fathers state that this agreement is “in full and final settlement” of all or any rights and actions that the ex-student may have “against the Trustees, Father Guy Hartcher or any servant or agent of the Trustees.” See our story here.
  60. Br Bernard Hartman
    A member of the Marianist religious order, Brother Bernard Hartman (born about 1939), has written an apology to an Australian woman (born 1964) who alleged that he sexually abused her when she was a child in Melbourne in the 1970s. In 1985 Hartman moved to the USA, where the Marianists have allowed him to remain in this religious order.
  61. Br Bernard Hayes
    A man, “Roger”, contacted Broken Rites in 2004, stating that he had been sexually abused by Brother Bernard Robert Hayes at the Christian Brothers College preparatory school in Alphington, Melbourne, in 1969. Roger described how the abuse had damaged his psychological development and wrecked his marriage. Broken Rites advised Roger about how to deal with the Catholic Church professional standards office (“Towards Healing”). After much evasiveness, the Christian Brothers’ Melbourne headquarters accepted a report by a church psychologist and  gave Roger a letter of apology and eventually (in 2006) signed a civil settlement with Roger. Brother Hayes’s previous schools were: St Monica’s Boys’ School, Moonee Ponds VIC, 1942-44; St Kevin’s College, Toorak VIC, 1944-55; Rostrevor College, Adelaide, 1955-60; and St Joseph’s College, Pascoe Vale VIC, 1960-66. When Roger was abused at Alphington in 1969, Brother Hayes was aged 47.  The Alphington campus, which comprised Grades 7 and 8, was a preparatory school for Parade College, Bundoora, Melbourne.
  62. Br P.R. Heslin, Melbourne
    The Christian Brothers have acknowledged sexual offences that were committed against boys by Brother Robert Heslin in Melbourne. Heslin’s various schools included: Our Lady of Mount Carmel College, Middle Park; St Joseph’s, Pascoe Vale; and St Bernard’s College, Essendon.
  63. Br “Callixtus” Hogan
    Broken Rites has helped three former schoolchildren (two males and one female)   to extract a settlement from the Marist Brothers regarding incidents that allegedly occurred in New South Wales in the 1960s while Brother Kevin “Calixtus” Hogan was the principal of St Francis de Sales College (in Leeton) and Red Bend Catholic College (in Forbes). See more here.
  64. Marist Br. “Crispin” Hopson
    Broken Rites is investigating Marist Brother Kevin Nicholas Hopson (religious name Brother “Crispin”, called after Saint Crispin). Born on 6 February 1933, he worked at Marist Brothers schools in Sydney (Mosman, Daceyville, Lidcombe, Hunters Hill and Kogarah), as well as at Marist College, Canberra.
  65. Marist Brother Edward Hosey at Coogee NSW
    The Marist Brothers in New South Wales have made a small civil settlement with a former pupil (“Max“), who was at Marcellin Junior College (a primary school for boys in years 5 and 6) in 1973. This campus, which was then at 160 Coogee Bay Road, Coogee (Sydney), was a feeder school for the secondary-level Marcellin College at Randwick. Max made a formal, signed statement to the NSW police on 24 June 2003, alleging that he was mauled sexually by Brother Edward (his mathematics teacher) almost daily during 5th Grade, when he was aged 10. Brother Edward John Hosey (born 4 February 1911) has died and therefore the police cannot charge him. Max says the corrupt circumstances of this church-abuse disrupted his education and his adolescence, leaving him with serious difficulties in adulthood.  In August 2003 the Marist Brothers promptly accepted Max’s complaint and arranged  a civil settlement, although this does not make up for the disruption to Max’s life. Other victims of Hosey have contacted Broken Rites.
  66. Fr Cuthbert Hoy, MSC
    In early 2002, a woman (“Anne”) contacted Broken Rites, complaining that, when she was aged six in 1963, she was sexually assaulted on several occasions by Father Cuthbert Hoy, in the sacristy of “Our Lady of the Sacred Heart” church at Henley Beach in Adelaide. Hoy was a priest of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart order, which conducted the Henley Beach parish, plus some other parishes around Australia. By 1966, Hoy had moved to a Hobart parish, also conducted by the MSC order. Broken Rites advised Anne about preparing a case for the Catholic Church’s “Towards Healing” process. The MSC order gave Anne a written apology and, in 2003, it made a settlement with her.
  67. Fr James Hughes
    This priest (also known as Fr Jamie Hughes or Fr Jim Hughes) was born in Ireland on 15 May 1920 and was ordained in 1946. Father James Hughes ministered briefly in Hobart in 1947-49 and then in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese in New South Wales from 1949 until 1990. In 1977-81, he was a chaplain at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Waratah (a suburb of Newcastle, NSW). In August 2002, a woman notified the New South Wales police that she had been indecently assaulted by Hughes while she was a patient at this hospital in March 1981. After beginning an investigation, detectives found that Hughes had died in 1996 and he therefore could not be prosecuted. Backed by Broken Rites, the woman then approached the Catholic Church’s “Towards Healing” office. A private investigator, hired by the church, confirmed to Towards Healing that evidence “exists to support the complaint.” See our story here.
  68. Fr Kevin Johnston, Western Australia
    Born in Ireland, Father Kevin Daniel Johnston served as a priest in Western Australia’s Bunbury diocese from 1959 until 1997, when he retired to Ireland. The West Australian newspaper (February 16 and 26, 2005) revealed that Johnston was facing child-sex allegations. A man (Alan) alleged that at the age of nine or 10 in the early 1970s, when he was serving as an altar boy in morning Masses at Bunbury’s St Patrick’s Cathedral, the cathedral parish priest Kevin Johnston indecently mauled him on several occasions  in a dressing room. The priest also allegedly forced the boy to indecently touch the priest. Unable to tell his devout parents, the boy became a grumpy and rebellious teenager, ending up with a hard-drug addiction. In his thirties, trying to mend his life, Alan finally complained to the Bunbury diocese. Fr Johnston then gave Alan a written apology, dated 26 August 1997, and soon retired to Ireland.  In November 2004, the Bunbury diocese offered Alan a small payout to settle the complaint but Alan rejected this amount as insufficient to help his recovery. After the February 2005 publicity about Johnston, two more men reported that they were molested by Father Johnston, one during confession and the other more than 20 times as he served as an altar boy at the Bunbury cathedral. Broken Rites research indicates that during the last stages of his career, from the mid-1970s to 1997, Johnston ministered in parishes at Boyup Brook, Manjimup, Narrogin and Leschenhault/Australind.
  69. Monsignor Penn Jones
    After action by Broken Rites, the Melbourne archdiocese apologised in 2005 to two men who were sexually abused by Monsignor Penn Harold Jones (of the Melbourne cathedral parish) while they were schoolboys in the 1960s. Jones, who was an accountant before entering the priesthood, became the Chancellor of the Melbourne archdiocese. See our story here.
  70. Fr Charles Joyce, OFM
    Broken Rites is researching Father Charles Joyce, a member of the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans), who was working  at Padua College (a secondary school conducted by the Franciscan order) in Kedron, Brisbane, in the late 1960s.
  71. Fr Clem Kilby, Tasmania
    The Hobart Archdiocese has accepted and settled a complaint from a woman who said that she was sexually assaulted by Fr Clement Kilby. This priest had enjoyed a prestigious ranking in Tasmania. In the late 1970s, he worked in St Mary’s Cathedral parish in Hobart (where the priest in charge at the time was Rev. Geoffrey Hylton Jarrett, who eventually became the bishop of Lismore, New South Wales). Later, Kilby was given the rank of Episcopal Vicar for Welfare and was director of the Catholic Church’s Centacare Family Services in Hobart during the 1980s and 1990s. Ironically, Kilby also participated in a church committee that dealt with professional standards, including issues of sexual abuse — an obvious conflict of interest. He died in early 2009.
  72. Br Clim Kissane
    The Victoria-Tasmania province of the Christian Brothers has signed a civil settlement with a male former pupil of Brother Clim Kissane. Brother Kissane taught at various schools including: St Joseph’s College in Geelong;  St Virgil’s College in Hobart; St Joseph’s College in Pascoe Vale (Melbourne); Warrnambool Christian Brothers College (now called Emmanuel College) in Victoria; and St Joseph’s Technical College, South Melbourne.
  73. Br P.N. Lennox, Sydney
    In June 2012 the Christian Brothers organisation in Australia signed a settlement with a former pupil of Christian Brothers College, Manly (in Sydney), who attended this school as a 13-year-old boy about 1973.  According to the settlement deed, this ex-pupil alleges that he was “unlawfully assaulted by Brother Peter Norman Lennox, the principal of the school” and that consequently  he “has sustained loss, damage and injuries that may require specialist counselling and/or other therapy”. [The former CBC Manly is now called St Paul’s Catholic College, Manly.]
  74. Marist Br. Leon Mackey
    The Marist Brothers harboured “Brother Leon” (real name Noel Mackey, born on 31 July 1922) while he was sexually abusing Catholic schoolboys in Sydney and Newcastle until he suddenly left the Marist Order in 1955. He then went to Queensland and changed his surname. By 2012, the Marist Brothers had issued private apologies (plus financial settlements) to five of Brother Leon’s victims.
  75. Fr Bernard Mackin
    After action by Broken Rites, the Melbourne archdiocese has apologized to a female victim of this priest. She encountered the priest in the 1970s when she was 16.
  76. Marist Brothers Hamilton, Newcastle, NSW
    In 2011 the Marist Brothers signed a settlement with a former pupil who complained about sexual abuse by  Brother Leon in the junior classes at Marist Brothers Hamilton, Newcastle, NSW, in the early 1950s. Brother Leon (real name Noel Mackey, born 31 July 1922) left the Marist Order in late 1955, changed his name to Noel Desmond Dowling and worked in administration for Mount Isa Mines, Queensland, until 1983.
  77. Br “Norbert” Mathieson
    This Marist Brother (real name Joseph Eric Mathieson), who last taught at Marist schools in Parramatta and Eastwood (in Sydney), died in 1954 but, half a century later, former students still remember him as a sex-abuser. His victims were intimidated into silence but some of the victims (now elderly) have finally told their sons and daughters about this abuse. Thus, these sons and daughters are dismayed and angry that their fathers were secretly harmed in this way. See our story here.
  78. Fr Patrick Maye
    The Melbourne Catholic archdiocese promised to ban this priest after accepting sexual-abuse complaints from several women but it failed to enforce the ban on him completely. See more from Broken Rites here.
  79. Br L.C. McAllen
  80. Former pupils, now advancing in age, still feel the injustice of having been abused by Christian Brother L.C. McAllen at St Patrick’s College, Strathfield, Sydney, in the early 1960s. See more from Broken Rites here here.
  81. Fr Patrick McCarthy, Wollongong NSW, 1960s
    Broken Rites Australia is researching Fr Patrick Thomas McCarthy, who ministered in  the Wollongong diocese in New South Wales until the early 1970s. He was one of a significant number of Irish-born clergy who have surfaced, often unaccountably, in Australia. McCarthy’s parishes included: Corrimal (St Columbkille’s parish); Thirroul (St Michael’s parish), West Wollongong (St Teresa’s); and Helensburgh (Holy Cross parish).
  82. Fr John McCulloch, Sydney region
  83. Broken Rites is researching Fr John McCulloch, who ministered around Sydney (e.g., Katoomba parish in the 1980s). At Toukley and Gwandalan (on the coast, north of Sydney) he conducted “family camps for families in need.”
  84. Br Thomas McGee
    After action by Broken Rites, the Victorian province of the Christian Brothers has apologised to victims of Brother William Thomas McGee. Brother McGee worked at several Christian Brothers’ orphanages: in Bindoon and Castledare in Western Australia; St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong, Victoria; and St Vincent’s boys’ home, South Melbourne. He also worked at St Vincent’s hostel, South Melbourne. See our story here.
  85. Daniel McMahon (Christian Brother, later a priest)
    Broken Rites has learned that the Catholic Church has made settlements with several former pupils who encountered Brother Daniel John Virgil McMahon while he was working with the Christian Brothers in Catholic boys’ schools in Western Australia (from the 1960s to the 1980s). In the early 1990s, Brother Dan McMahon was elevated to the rank of “Father” Dan McMahon and was allowed to minister as a priest in parishes in Tasmania. See more here.
  86. Br “Laetus” Mennie
    Former residents of St Vincent’s Boys’ Home at Westmead (in western Sydney), which was operated by the Marist Brothers, have complained about this Marist Brother (his birth name was Joseph Michael Mennie). Brother Laetus worked at this home in 1947-49 and was the director there in 1965-67.
  87. Fr Gerard Monaghan
    The Canberra-Goulburn Catholic diocese has been forced to apologise to a woman who was sexually abused by a priest (Fr Gerard Monaghan) immediately after the death of her husband. See the Broken Rites story here.
  88. Fr Peter Moore, Wollongong NSW
    Broken Rites is researching Father Peter Moore, who was the vicar-general of the Wollongong Catholic diocese in New South Wales in the 1980s and 1990s, while he was also in charge of St John Vianney’s parish in Fairy Meadow. In the 1970s he had been at St Paul’s parish, Albion Park.
  89. Fr Brian Moran, Toowoomba diocese
    Two women, who do not know each other, have complained that, when they were young girls in the early 1960s, they were sexually abused by Father Brian Anthony Moran, of the Toowoomba diocese, which covers an extensive region in western Queensland. Father Brian Moran, who was born about 1929, was sometimes nicknamed Mick Moran. He ministered until 1995 throughout an area bounded by Toowoomba city, Dalby, St George, Cunnamulla, Mitchell and Miles.
  90. Fr John F. Moran, Rockkhampton & Sydney
    A man (“Tom”) reported to Broken Rites in 1994 that, as a 15-year-old in 1981, he was indecently assaulted by Father John Fabian Moran in the Sacred Heart parish at Yeppoon, in the Rockhampton diocese, in central Queensland. The boy’s parents were away from home and they understood that Father Moran would be supervising him. The parents had been led to believe that their child would be safe under the supervision of a Catholic priest. Father Moran visited the boy and took him on outings. After beginning with playful “wrestling”, Father Moran allegedly mauled the boy’s genitalia on several occasions, and Tom allegedly was required to masturbate the priest. The boy felt intimidated into silence and was not able to tell his Catholic parents about the assaults until he was aged 26 (he contacted Broken Rites at age 27). According to the Crimes Act, an adult who sexually mauls a young person is committing “indecent assault of a child” and the perpetrator is not allowed to claim, as a defence, that the child consented. This crime is regarded as being particularly aggravated when it is perpetrated by a person supposedly in a position of trust, such as a priest. Later in the 1980s and early 1990s, Fr John Moran was a chaplain at Rockhampton’s Emmaus College (a secondary school). About 1994-95, he was on the staff at St Paul’s Seminary for Late Vocations in Sydney and was a part-time school chaplain in Sydney.
  91. Fr Syd Morey
    Father Sydney Morey, a priest in the Ballarat diocese in western Victoria, sexually abused young boys in the 1960s and ’70s, including in the Horsham and Terang districts. However, the police are unable to do anything about Sid Morey now because he has died. Morey (born 9 August 1913) was originally a Marist Brother (in New South Wales) before becoming a priest. See our story here.
  92. Br. “Organ” Morgan, Monivae College, Victoria
    Leaders of a Catholic religious order — the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart — have apologised for sexual acts committed by Brother G.M. Morgan on boys at Monivae College at Hamilton in western Victoria in the 1960s. Students nicknamed this Brother as “Organ” Morgan because of his indecent assaults on boys’ genitals. Broken Rites possesses a written apology , which the MSC leadership gave to one ex-student, dated 22 February 1994. Morgan was not the only such offender on the Monivae College staff.
  93. Fr Gerald Moylan, northern Victoria
    Women have complained that Father Gerald Leo Moylan (of the Sandhurst diocese in northern Victoria) harassed them verbally about “sex” when they were schoolgirls in Wodonga, Victoria, in the 1960s (or when  women were interviewed by Moylan before a church wedding ceremony). In the 1970s and ‘80s, Moylan was in charge of the Numurkah parish and was appointed as the “spiritual director” of the Catholic Women’s League in the diocese. He was promoted to the rank of monsignor.
  94. Br Berchmans Moynahan
    Brother Martin Joseph Moynahan (alias Brother Berchmans), St John of  God order, died during prosecution (indecent assault at an institution  in Melbourne for boys with intellectual disabilities). See our story about the St John of God Brothers here.
  95. Fr Noel Murphy, Sydney
    The Sydney archdiocese has accepted a complaint from a woman about being indecently assaulted in 1974 by Father Nolan Joseph Murphy (known as Fr “Noel” Murphy), a Sydney-born priest, who was the parish priest in charge of St Augustine’s parish, Balmain, in inner-Sydney. Murphy was in that parish from the 1960s until 1988.
  96. Murrumburrah parish, NSW
    A man (“Peter”), born in 1961, made a lengthy, detailed written statement to a clinic of the  New South Wales Health Department in 2002, stating that in 1968-69 he was sexually assaulted by a senior parish priest (a Monsignor) in the “Our Lady of Mercy” parish at Murrumburrah, near Cootamundra, southern New South Wales (within the Canberra-Goulburn diocese). Shortly after the period of alleged abuse, the monsignor died in a road accident. Peter says his devout parents would not let him tell them that this Catholic clergyman had assaulted him. Forced into silence, Peter became estranged from his family. His later life was seriously affected. Peter is wondering if there were other victims in this parish in the late 1960s.
  97. Fr “Jerome” Myszkowski
    A South Australian woman (“Mandy”, born in 1945) says she is still feeling upset about having been sexually assaulted repeatedly by a Polish-born priest, Father Hieronim Myszkowski, when she was a young child in the St Francis Assisi parish in Newton, Adelaide, in 1950-54. This priest, who was known in Australia as Fr Jerome Myszkowski, was a member of the Capuchin Franciscan Friars (the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin). He befriended Mandy’s family and, from when the girl was aged 5, he made weekly visits for meals at their home, where (Mandy says) he would secretly touch Mandy’s genitalia (i.e., the crime of indecent assault). Mandy was unable to tell her parents because they believed that priests could do no wrong. Father Jerome also molested Mandy inside the church (while parishioners, including her father, were attending choir practice) and in his bedroom in the  presbytery. On the church premises, the sexual assaults of Mandy became more invasive and more criminally serious. The attacks continued for four years until Mandy was aged nine, in 1954, when Myszkowski left Adelaide to become a chaplain for the Brisbane Polish community, which was based at “Our Lady of Victories” parish in Bowen Hills, Brisbane. Mandy contacted Broken Rites in October 1993. She had written to the church authorities about Myszkowski but, she said, they were evasive. Broken Rites does not know if Mandy has achieved a successful outcome since then.
  98. Fr Martin Newbold
    Women in Western Australia and Victoria have complained that they were indecently assaulted by this diocesan priest when they were young girls. Newbold began in the Perth diocese but, strangely, was transferred to Melbourne, then to the Bunbury diocese in W.A., leaving victims in various parishes.
  99. Br Nicholas, Marist Brothers, 1948-50
    A man (“Brian”, born in 1938) complained to the Catholic Church “Towards Healing” process in 2003 that he was sexually abused by a Brother “Nicholas” at a Marist Brothers school in Rosewater, South Australia, about 1948 when he was aged 10. Brian said he was forced to remain silent about the abuse at the time but he now realises that this code of silence was unfair, putting more children at risk. The Marist Brothers administration in Melbourne acknowledged to Brian that Brother Nicholas (real name Kevin Stanton, born 6 September 1922) taught at the Rosewater school in 1948, and he transferred to a Marist Brothers school in Thebarton (Adelaide) in 1949. In 2005, the Marist administration in Melbourne apologised to Brian for his unhappy experiences at the Rosewater school, and it made a relatively modest “ex gratia” payment to Brian to settle his complaint. Brian was not Nicholas’s only victim — in 1994 Broken Rites received a complaint from another man (“Daryl”, born 1942), saying that he was sexually abused by Brother Nicholas at the Marists’ Thebarton school, before Nicholas left there in 1950. The Marists say that Brother Nicholas left the Marist order in the early 1950s and has since died.
  100. Br Peter E. Noonan, Victoria
    The Christian Brothers Order has acknowledged that Brother Peter Eymard Noonan (born about 1949) used to sexually abuse young schoolboys who were in his custody. Despite this, it allowed Noonan to remain a Brother until he died in 2004, aged 55. This Noonan (not to be confused with other Noonans in the Order) was offending from the very start of his teaching career — at St Mary’s boys’ school, St Kilda (in inner-Melbourne) in the late 1960s. He later taught at St Kevin’s College (Toorak). In 1985 he went to CBC  St Kilda, where he became the headmaster in 1987.
  101. Fr John O’Callaghan, Adelaide
    After action by Broken Rites, the Adelaide Catholic diocese has made civil settlements with former altar boys of this priest. The incidents occurred in 1969-71 at St Monica’s parish, Walkerville, where O’Callaghan ministered from the mid-1960s till about 1981. Previously, O’Callaghan had been at Adelaide’s Salisbury parish.
  102. Fr John O’Callaghan, Melbourne
    Several people have complained about being abused (when they were youngsters) by Father John Ignatius O’Callaghan, of the Melbourne archdiocese. See more here. O’Callaghan was once a chaplain for the girls’ section of the Young Christian Workers (YCW) movement. He later worked in Melbourne suburban parishes and was a military chaplain.  Father O’Callaghan observed the church’s rule of priestly “celibacy” (that is, he did not get married to anybody); instead, in the 1980s, he had a private relationship with a woman, who gave birth to Father O’Callaghan’s two children.
  103. Fr Bill O’Connor, Parramatta diocese, NSW
    A woman (“Kerry”), born in the 1940s, has complained that she was sexually assaulted, aged 13, by Father William G. O’Connor (then an assistant priest in the Sydney archdiocese) in the presbytery at Springwood (St Thomas Aquinas parish) in the Blue Mountains in the late 1950s. The Catholic culture prevented the girl from telling her mother about having been sexually abused by a Catholic priest. All this disrupted the girl’s development, and Kerry is still suffering the damage today. Subsequently, O’Connor was the Parish Priest in charge of the Seven Hills parish (Our Lady of Lourdes) for thirty years to 1989. Springwood and Seven Hills were originally in the Sydney diocese but by 1989 they became a part of the new Parramatta diocese. William O’Connor rose in the church ranks in the 1970s and was given the title “Very Reverend”. Kerry went through the church’s Towards Healing process. At first the church officials behaved evasively but eventually they signed a settlement with her.
  104. Fr Thomas O’Keeffe
    After action by Broken Rites, the Melbourne archdiocese has apologized to former altar boys of Fr Thomas O’Keeffe (sometimes spelt as O’Keefe). He ministered at parishes in Sandringham (early 1960s), Preston East, St Kilda West and Brighton (late 1960s),  Doveton and Thornbury (1970s). See the Broken Rites story here.
  105. Br J. A. O’Neill
    The Catholic Church’s “Towards Healing” office has accepted some complaints about Christian Brother John Anselm O’Neill, who taught at Catholic schools including: St Gabriel’s school for the deaf, Castle Hill, NSW, in the 1950s; St Joseph’s primary school, Rozelle, Sydney, in the 1960s; and St Patrick’s primary school, Launceston, Tasmania, in the 1970s and 1980s.
  106. Br Theodore O’Shannessy
    The De La Salle Brothers have apologised to (and signed a settlement with) a victim of Brother Theodore O’Shannessy. This Brother, who was born about 1940 (real name Patrick O’Shannessy ), taught in De La Salle schools at Haberfield, Bankstown, Dubbo and Cootamundra (all in New South Wales) and Scarborough (in Queensland).
  107. Padua College, Kedron, Brisbane
    A former pupil of Padua College (a Catholic boys’ school at Kedron, Brisbane) has complained that he was sexually abused in the 1960s by a priest from the Franciscan order (the Order of Friars Minor — OFM).
  108. Brother Paschal, a Franciscan
    This Brother was in charge of the altar boys at the Mary Immaculate Catholic parish in Waverley, Sydney, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The parish, conducted by the Franciscans (the Order of Friars Minor), had a large number of altar boys, some of whom were pupils at the Christian Brothers’ Waverley College. In 2002 a former altar boy, “Pierre” (not his real name), notified the Catholic Church’s professional standards office (“Towards Healing”) in New South Wales that Brother Paschal used to touch Pierre’s genitals when he was aged from 8 to 13; and Brother Paschal used to make Pierre touch Brother Paschal’s genitals. Pierre said that he finally revealed the molestation to his parents when he was 22. Pierre said that three other young male relatives of his were also molested by Brother Pascal. Pierre said he was concerned that this child-abuse had occurred and that it had been hidden from parents and the public. The Franciscans’ Australian headquarters agreed to hold a mediation meeting with Pierre (who was then in his forties) to address his concerns. Brother Paschal’s real name was Ernest Joseph Bartlett. Paschal was his religious name (there was a “Saint Paschal” in the Franciscans in Spain in the 16th century). Paschal Bartlett died in Sydney on 27 April 1994.
  109. Br Mark Payne, a Marist
    Former pupils have complained about sexually abusive behaviour by Marist Brother Mark Donald Payne (born 5 December 1957) who taught at St Augustine’s College in Cairns, Queensland, about 1985.
  110. Fr Leo Perry
    Broken Rites is researching this priest in Australia and New Zealand. Originally, from 1948 to 1956, he was a member of the Jesuit religious order in New Zealand, where he taught young boys at high-school level in the Holy Name minor seminary (staffed by Australian Jesuits) at Riccarton, Christchurch. At this seminary, he invasively mauled the genitals of boys in their dormitory, in his private room and during car trips. In 1957 the church authorities covered up this problem by transferring Perry to the Townsville diocese in north Queensland, where he ministered (as a diocesan priest, not a Jesuit) in unsuspecting parishes: Mundingburra parish in the late 1950s; Ayr parish about 1960-61; and Townsville cathedral parish until 1967.
  111. Fr Dominic Phillips, Vincentian priest
    Some Australian adult women are still complaining about having been abused (when they were children) by Father Dominic Phillips, of the Vincentian Fathers order. See more from Broken Rites here.
  112. Br J.M. Podger, Sydney, 1953
    Broken Rites is researching Brother Ronald John Podger (this surname rhymes with “Roger” or “lodger”) who taught at Christian Brothers Lewisham in 1952-53, using the religious name “John Maximus” Podger (called after an ancient “Saint” Maximus). Podger later left this religious order. A pupil (“Basil”, who was aged eleven in 1953) is still deeply concerned about Br Podger half a century later. The Christian Brothers have accepted (and settled) a complaint from Basil.
  113. Fr Peter Quirk, Maitland-Newcastle diocese
    Broken Rites is researching this priest (born 1 April 1957), who ministered from 1986 to 1991 at: Maitland cathedral; Toronto parish; and Taree parish. He targeted teenage boys. He died on 27 September 1991, aged 34. This Father Peter Quirk is not to be confused with any other priest of the same name in another diocese.
  114. Fr Graham Redfern
    The Melbourne Catholic archdiocese’s Independent Commission into Sexual Abuse found in November, 1997, that Father Graham Redfern had sexually abused a youth in 1976, after conducting the funeral of the youth’s mother. The then archbishop of Melbourne, George Pell, formally apologised in a letter to the complainant in May, 1998, for the “wrongs and hurt you have suffered at the hands of Father Redfern”. The archdiocese then signed a civil settlement with the complainant. See more here.
  115. Br Neil Richards, New South Wales
    After action by Broken Rites, the New South Wales province of the Christian Brothers has made a settlement with a former student, who had lodged a complaint about a Brother Richards.  The settlement deed identified the Brother as “Desmond Eric Richards“, but he was known in the Christian Brothers as Br Neil Richards. He taught in Catholic primary schools in Sydney and country New South Wales until he retired.
  116. Br Bernie Ring
    Broken Rites is researching Christian Brother Bernard Ring (born 22 May 1934). As a child, he lived at St Vincent’s boys’ home in South Melbourne (until 1951) and then, like some other orphanage boys, he became a Christian Brother. Brother B.A. Ring worked in schools at Geelong, Ballarat (St Patrick’s College), East Melbourne and Fiji, and at St Vincent’s boys’ home, South Melbourne.
  117. Fr Robert Rippin
    Broken Rites is researching Father Robert Frederick Rippin, a priest in the  Missionaries of the Sacred Heart order, who taught at MSC secondary schools around Australia: Chevalier College (Bowral, NSW), Downlands College (Toowoomba, Queensland) and Monivae College (Hamilton, Victoria).
  118. Fr A. Kevin Ryan, Melbourne
    In 2003, following action by Broken Rites, the Melbourne archdiocese’s commissioner on sexual abuse (Mr Peter O’Callaghan, QC) accepted a complaint by “James” (born in 1954) that Father Arthur Kevin Ryan (known as Fr Kevin Ryan) sexually abused him as an 11-year-old pupil at St Matthew’s parish school, Fawkner North, about 1965. Ryan’s other Melbourne parishes included Yarraville, Thornbury and Glenhuntly. Mr O’Callaghan ruled that “James” was also sexually abused by a prominent Catholic layman, Robert Charles Blunden (known as Bert Blunden), who lived at Fr Ryan’s Fawkner North presbytery.
  119. Br Innocent Schofield
    The Australian Christian Brothers have accepted a complaint from a man, now elderly, that he was sexually abused by Brother Aloysius Innocent Schofield at St  Augustine’s boys’ orphanage in Geelong, Victoria, in the late 1940s. Schofield adopted the “religious” name Aloysius Innocent when he joined the order (there have been “saints” with those names). Brother A.I. Schofield rose to become the principal of Christian Brothers schools in Queensland: Christian Brothers College in Warwick (1952-57); St Mary’s College in Toowoomba (1964-69); and St Edmund’s College in Ipswich (1972-77).
  120. Fr Peter Searson
    In 1997 the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese finally removed Father Peter Lloyd Searson from parish work, following years of complaints about him touching and sexually harassing boys, girls and women. See more from Broken Rites here.
  121. Fr Bill Shanahan, Victoria, 1960s
    Broken Rites is researching Fr William Shanahan regarding one of his earliest parishes — St Joseph’s parish, Warragul (100km east of Melbourne), in the 1960s, when this priest was aged in his thirties.
  122. Fr Manny Spiteri, Sale diocese, Victoria
    The Catholic Church has settled a sex-abuse complaint involving a Maltese-born priest, Father Emanuel Joseph Spiteri, who spent 35 years ministering in the Sale diocese in the state of Victoria.  See more from Broken Rites here.
  123. Fr Patrick Stephenson, Jesuit
    Broken Rites is researching this priest, who worked at Xavier College, a Jesuit school for boys in Melbourne, in the 1970s and 1980s.
  124. Fr John Stockdale, Victoria
    Father John Peregrine Stockdale used to molest young boys in his parishes in the Sandhurst diocese in northern Victoria. On 31 December 1995, Stockdale died while celebrating New Year’s Eve in a sex-cubicle at a males-only club in Melbourne. See the Broken Rites story here.
  125. Br Loyola Sullivan, Sydney
    Broken Rtes is researching Marist Brother “Loyola” Sullivan, who worked at St Vincent’s Boys Home in Westmead, Sydney, in 1943-1948. He is still remembered by former residents of this institution. This Brother Loyola also taught at Marcellin College, Randwick.
  126. Fr Terence L. Sullivan, Sydney, 1960s
    This Father Terry Sullivan (not to be confused with other priests with a similar name) had numerous victims among boys in their early teens. Many have complained to Broken Rites and to the Catholic Church’s Professional Standards Office in New South Wales. The church has made civil settlements with a number of these victims who demonstrated that Sullivan (and the church’s harbouring of him) had disrupted their adolescent and adult development. Fr Terence Sullivan’s parishes included: Kingsgrove (Our Lady of Fatima parish) in the early 1960s; Penrith (St Nicholas’s parish) and Asquith (St Patrick’s parish) in the mid-1960s and Gosford (St Patrick’s) in 1967.  Sullivan targeted boys at Catholic schools, including De La Salle College at Kingsgrove, St Leo’s College at Wahroonga (this was then was a Christian Brothers boys’ school) and St Edward’s Christian Brothers school at Gosford. He left the ministry “on leave” about 1968 and never returned.
  127. Fr Joseph Sultana, Queensland
    A former altar boy has launched a civil lawsuit against the Catholic Church, alleging years of abuse by a priest, Father Joseph Emmanuel Sultana, in the Australian Catholic diocese of Cairns. See more here.
  128. Br Laurie Sweeney
    An order of Catholic priests, the Salesians of Don Bosco, confirmed in 2004 that it has made a civil settlement with two victims of Salesian Brother Laurence Sweeney — a boy and his sister, who have complained about being sexually abused by Sweeney at a Salesian club in Oakleigh, Melbourne in 1975.
  129. Br Brian Mark Thomas
    The Christian Brothers have settled a complaint about Brother Brian Thomas. This Brother (born 1938) adopted the religious name “Brother Mark Thomas” when he joined the order. He worked in various Catholic institutions including: at St Augustine’s orphanage in Geelong VIC in 1969; at schools in Box Hill VIC, Albury NSW and Balmain NSW in the 1970s; at Chatswood NSW, Strathfield NSW, Toorak VIC and Canberra in the 1980s; and at Waverley NSW in the 1990s.
  130. Br Aubrey Tobin
    In separate incidents, two men committed suicide in the year 2000 after complaining that their lives had been damaged after sexual abuse by Brother Aubrey Tobin while they were pupils at the Marists’ Assumption College in Kilmore, Victoria, in the mid-1980s. The Marist Brothers head office has confirmed that the two complaints were made. See the Broken Rites story here.
  131. Monsignor Maurice Tully
    Broken Rites is investigating this priest who had a long career (until 1975) in the Armidale diocese in northern New South Wales. While working in a parish, he also acted as the diocese’s vicar-general (chief administrator) and this high status protected him from complaints. See more from Broken Rites here.
  132. Br Frank Webster
    The Christian Brothers Australian administration has accepted complaints from victims who were abused, when they were young boys, by Christian Brother Aloysius Francis Webster (also known as Frank Webster or “Lou” Webster) while he was  the superintendent (principal) at St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong, Victoria, from 1954 to 1959. See the Broken Rites story here.
  133. Fr Adrian Wenting
  134. A number of ex-students have complained that Father Adrian Wenting committed offences of indecency against them at the Salesian College boarding school in Brooklyn Park, South Australia, where he was the principal until 1979. Wenting also worked at the Boys Town residential institution in Engadine NSW and at Salesian College Chadstone in Melbourne.
  135. Westmead Boys’ Home, NSW
    Broken Rites is investigating complaints from former inmates of St Vincent’s Boys’ Home, Westmead, in Sydney’s west. This orphanage was operated by the Marist Brothers until it closed in 1991. Broken Rites possesses a printed list, compiled by the Marists, of all Brothers who worked at this institution. The Westmead site is now a campus of the University of Western Sydney.
  136. Fr Dennis Whelan, NSW
    Broken Rites is researching Father Dennis R. Whelan, who ministered in the Bathurst Catholic diocese in north-western New South Wales, notably St Brigid’s parish in Dubbo and St Mary’s in Dubbo North. Dennis Whelan’s middle name was either Redmond or Raymond.
  137. Fr Ray Whitehouse
    After action by Broken Rites, the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese has apologised to (and signed a settlement with) a man who complained that, as an altar boy, he was sexually assaulted by Father Raymond Whitehouse on several Sundays after Mass. See more here.
  138. Fr John Whiting
    Broken Rites is researching Father John Thomas Larmer Whiting. Originally a member of the Redemptorist order, he founded a small Australian society of priests and brothers called the “Confraternity of Christ the Priest”. He established a small seminary at Scoresby, in Melbourne’s east. A man who inquired about joining the order in 1981 (aged 19) says that, during the interview, Father John Whiting inspected the young man’s genitals. Another young aspirant says that he was required to bathe naked, with Fr Jack  Whiting, in a pool. In later years, Whiting’s society also provided seminary training in Wagga Wagga in southern New South Wales.
  139. Fr Murray Wilson
    In 2006, after action by Broken Rites, the Vincentian Fathers’ Australian office apologized to a Victorian man for a serious sexual assault committed by Fr Murray Joseph Wilson in the 1970s, when the victim was aged 13. See our story here.
  140. Bert Zeelen, sacristan, Adelaide cathedral
    Broken Rites is researching Hubertus Zeelen (a Dutch name), who was the full-time sacristan, caretaker and chief altar-server at St Francis Xavier Cathedral, Adelaide, in the 1960s and 1970s. He was in charge of altar-boys. He lived in a dwelling at the cathedral.

Section C: Current court cases Here are some examples of cases that are currently scheduled to come up in the courts:

  1. Armidale court, NSW, re an ex-priest
    A former Catholic priest (now aged 59), who used to work in parishes in north-western New South Wales (comprising the Armidale Diocese), appeared in Armidale Local Court on 18 October 2012 on multiple child-sex charges dating back to two or three decades ago. The case will come up in court again in early 2013 for a further mention in the next step in the prosecution process. For legal reasons, the court prohibited any publishing of the man’s name. See more from Broken Rites here.
  2. Brian Dennis Cairns
    After beginning in the early 1970s as a Christian Brother, Brian Cairns worked as a lay teacher (“Mister” Cairns) in Catholic schools in Queensland. In 1985 he was jailed for sex-crimes against boys. In October 2012, after more of his former male pupils contacted police, the Brisbane Magistrates Court ordered that Brian Cairns must face a judge in the Brisbane District Court (in 2013) on multiple charges involving alleged offences against these additional boys.
  3. Fr John Denham
    Father John Sidney Denham (of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese, New South Wales), who is in jail for  child-sex crimes, is scheduled to be charged again in Newcastle  Court in early 2013 with offences against more boys. See a background article by Broken Rites here.
  4. Fr Finian Egan
    This Catholic priest, who belongs to the Broken Bay diocese in Sydney’s north, appeared in court in 2012, charged with multiple sexual offences against young persons, allegedly committed in the 1970s and 1980s. Further court proceedings are sheduled for 2013. See more here.
  5. Fr Lewis Fenton
    A  retired priest, Father Lewis Fenton, aged 81 (from the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, New South Wales), has become the second Catholic clergyman in Australia charged with concealing someone else’s child-sex crimes. On 4 January 2013, Fr Fenton was ordered to appear in a magistrates court on a later date. See more here.
  6. Br John Gaven
    Brother John Gaven, of the Vincentian religious order, is awaiting court proceedings in Sydney in 2013 regarding sexual offences that were allegedly committed when he worked at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst, NSW. See more here.
  7. Br Bill Houston, Victoria
    In the 1960s, Christian Brother William Stuart Houston worked at St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong, Victoria. In 2010, he appeared in the Geelong Magistrates Court and was ordered to stand trial at the Victorian County Court regarding incidents of buggery and indecent assault, allegedly committed while he was at St Augustine’s in the 1960s. The  County Court process (indictment number Y.03305021) has not yet been completed. See more from Broken Rites here.
  8. Fr Jim Jennings
    James Patrick Jennings was once a Catholic priest in the Vincentian order. In 2012 a Victorian magistrate ordered Jennings to stand trial in the Victorian County Court (in 2013) on child-sex charges relating to when Jennings was a priest working at St Vincent’s College (a boys’ boarding school) in Bendigo, Victoria, in the 1960s. Police investigations (under Senior Sergeant Grant Morris, of Bendigo Police) are continuing. See more Victorian material from Broken Rites here, plus some New South Wales background  here.
  9. Ex-Brother Edward Mamo
    In 2013 the Victorian  County Court is scheduled to announce the details of its sentence for former religious Brother, Edward Mamo, who has pleaded guilty to sexual  offences, which he committed in the late 1970s and early 1980s against boys at Monivae College, a Catholic secondary school in Hamilton, western Victoria. The investigation is continuing, by detectives at the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Unit in Warrnambool, telephone 03 5560 1333. See more from Broken Rites here.
  10. A Marist Brother in Newcastle  court
    New South Wales detectives have charged a retired Marist Brother with having indecently assaulted two students at a school in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, during the 1960s and 1970s. He has been ordered to appear in Newcastle Local Court in 2013.  The detectives (from Strike Force Georgiana, at Charlestown police station, Lake Macquarie) are continuing their investigations and expect to lay further charges.
  11. Fr David O’Hearn
    Legal proceedings are scheduled in the New South Wales District Court for Father David Anthony O’Hearn, of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese in New South Wales, who is charged with child-sex offences. See more from Broken Rites here.
  12. Fr David Rapson, Salesian Fathers
    David Edwin Rapson (born 30 July 1953), who used to be a Catholic priest (in the Salesian religious order), appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court in November 2012, charged with child-sex offences allegedly committed when Fr Rapson was a teacher at Salesian College “Rupertswood”, in Sunbury (in Melbourne’s north-west). A magistrate ordered Rapson to face a trial in the Victorian County Court (in 2013). The Victoria Police investigation is continuing (being conducted by detectives of the Sexual Crimes Squad, Flinders Street, Melbourne). See more from Broken Rites here.
  13. Fr Brian Spillane
    In the 1970s and 1980s Father Brian Joseph Spillane was a priest in the Vincentian Fathers religious order in New South Wales and Queensland. In the Sydney District Court in 2012, Spillane (then aged 69) was sentenced to nine years jail (with a non-parole period of five years) for indecently assaulting three girls aged between six and seventeen. He is also facing future court proceedings regarding alleged offences against boys. See more here.

Section D: Cases where church people failed to help the police
Here are some examples, researched by Broken Rites:

  • Fr Tom Brennan, Newcastle, NSW
    In August 2012, in what is believed to be the first such prosecution in Australia, Father Thomas Brennan (former vicar-general of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese) was charged with failing to report the alleged child-sex crimes of another priest who was under Brennan’s supervision. Brennan was ordered to appear in court on 25 September 2012 but he failed to appear and he died five days later. See more from Broken Rites here. Also see an earlier conviction of Brennan here.
  • Monsignor Patrick Cotter
    Cotter was formerly the vicar-general (chief administrator) of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese in New South Wales. In 1995, detectives discovered that, 20 years earlier, Cotter knew that one of his priests, Father Vincent Gerard Ryan, was sexually assaulting boys in parishes. According to a letter written by Cotter in 1974, Cotter admitted covering up the crimes. Cotter wrote: “I decided to do nothing [about Ryan’s crimes].” This meant that Cotter became complicit in Vince Ryan’s continuing crimes. In 1995-6, police investigated Cotter with a view to charging him with the crime of misprision of a felony — that is, wilfully concealing a serious crime committed by another person. However, as Cotter was aged 82 when police found this letter in 1995, the prosecution did not proceed. See our Cotter story here.
  • The Monsignor John Day case
    Church people, including a police sergeant, discouraged the Victoria Police from prosecuting Monsignor John Day, who sexually abused many boys and girls in the Mildura parish. See the Broken Rites story here.
  • The “Father F” cover-up
    Bishop Henry Joseph Kennedy administered the Armidale diocese in northern New South Wales in the 1980s, assisted by his deputy, Monsignor Francis Joseph (Frank) Ryan. This pair protected a certain priest (Father F) after receiving complaints about him committing child-sex offences. Furthermore, Kennedy and Ryan later arranged for Father F to transfer to parishes in the Parramatta diocese in western Sydney, thereby giving him access to additional children. According to a church document, Father F has admitted that he indeed committed sexual acts upon children. The cover-up continued for 30 years until it was exposed by the media in 2012. Read more here.
  • The Father Ridsdale case
    Catholic church authorities in western Victoria knew that Father Gerald Francis Ridsdale was indecently assaulting children but the church continued giving him access to more victims, until victims (not the church) finally brought him to justice. See the Broken Rites story here.

Section E: Court cases ending with no conviction Sometimes, for various legal reasons, a court case might fail to result in a conviction. For example:

  1. Fr Bernie Connell
    In November 1995, news media outlets in southern New South Wales reported  that a Local Court magistrate committed Father Bernard Connell to stand trial on charges of sexual offences allegedly committed against boys. However, the subsequent trial proceedings did not result in a conviction. Born in 1938, Father Connell was ordained in 1963 as a priest of the Wagga Wagga diocese in southern New South Wales. His postings from early 1964 to late 1991 included: parishes at Junee and Albury in the 1960s; South Wagga Wagga parish in the early 1970s; working as a chaplain at army bases in Puckapunyal (Victoria) and Holdsworthy (NSW) in the 1970s; Lockhart parish in 1978; Albury and Tocumwal parishes in the 1980s; and Leeton parish in 1990-91. In early 1992, he left the Wagga Wagga diocese to minister in the Pacific nation of Kiribati for several years, after which he returned to New South Wales to live at a private address, with no further parish postings.
  2. Fr Dennis Corrigan
    On 9 February 2012 Father Dennis John Corrigan, 68, who worked in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, north of Sydney, was acquitted in the New South Wales District Court on charges of indecent assault on a boy. See more from Broken Rites here.
  3. Br John Coswello
  4. Christian Brother John Francis Coswello, then 70, was sentenced to jail on 22 June 2009 after a jury found him guilty of committing sexual offences against a 12-year-old boy in a Melbourne orphanage. Later, the Victorian Court of Appeal granted him a re-trial, at which another jury (in October 2010) found him not guilty.  See more here.
  5. Br Brendan Crawford, Passionist Order
    A Catholic religious brother, Vincent Crawford (a.k.a. Brother “Brendan” Crawford), of the Passionist Order, appeared in court in 2009, charged with sexual offences against a girl in the late 1970s. The charges were withdrawn after the court was told that Crawford (aged 77 when charged) was medically unfit to undergo the court proceedings. See more here.
  6. Fr Peter Dwyer
    In the New South Wales District Court on 9 May 2011, a jury found Father Peter William Dwyer not guilty of alleged sexual offences, between 1977 and 1992, against four students who attended St Stanislaus College, Bathurst NSW (where Fr Dwyer had been a music teacher and later a headmaster).
  7. Fr Ray Garchow
    Raymond Garchow became a religious brother in the St John of God order in 1964, aged 17, and was upgraded to a priest in 1987, aged 40. In New South Wales in the early 1980s, he worked at “Kendall Grange” boarding institution for educationally disabled boys in Morisset, north of Sydney. In 2006, after he had been living and ministering around Sydney for several years, the Federal Court of Australia ordered that Garchow be extradited to face charges of child-sex abuse in New Zealand, where he had worked at an institution (Marylands special school for educationally disabled boys) in Christchurch in the 1970s. A trial was scheduled for Garchow in Christchurch. On 23 July 2008, the New Zealand prosecutors decided not to proceed with the trial for several reasons: Garchow, aged 61, was too ill; furthermore, one of the two complainants was also unwell; and the second complainant had trouble with a disability, which made the prospect of a trial difficult. The prosecutors entered a permanent stay of proceedings. Garchow’s counsel said afterwards that Garchow maintains his innocence. See our story about the extradition proceedings here.
  8. Br Bill Houston
    On 17 June 1997, a magistrate ordered that Christian Brother William Stuart Houston, then aged 58, should stand trial in the Victorian County Court on charges relating to a twelve-year-old boy at St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong, in 1969-70 (reported in the Melbourne Herald Sun, 18 June 1997). This trial has not yet been held.  See more here.
  9. Fr Jim Jennings
    James Patrick Jennings was once a Catholic priest in the Vincentian order. In  the Sydney District Court, in July 2010, he was charged with indecent assault on four boys (aged about 12) at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst NSW, during 1961. On 5 August 2010 the jury returned a verdict of “not guilty” on all charges See more here.
  10. Br Bill Lebler
    In 1951, aged 29, William John Lebler became among the first Australian-born recruits to join the St John of God Brothers, taking his vows at the order’s “Kendall Grange” institution for intellectually handicapped boys at Morisset, north of Sydney. He later worked with SJOG in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. In 2003, prosecutors sought to extradite him from Australia to face trial in New Zealand on child-abuse charges there, dating back as far as 1955. However, a Sydney magistrate released William Lebler because of his age (82 years) and health and because of the delay in reporting his alleged offences. See our story about the extradition proceedings here.
  11. Br John Maguire
    By July 2004, Marist Brother John Dennis Maguire had faced eight jury trials in the New South Wales District Court, charged with multiple sexual offences involving six boys at St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill, Sydney.  In all, he faced 17 counts of assaulting boys aged between 11 and 13 while he was the year 7 dormitory and form master (in charge of fifty boarders) in the early 1980s. Maguire had a bedroom adjoining the dormitory. The alleged offences ranged from indecently touching the boys through to anal and oral penetration. Unlike in many other similar cases, Brother John Maguire (born 13 December 1943) was not required to face his accusers jointly in a single trial. The church lawyers succeeded in obtaining a separate jury for each complainant, so that each jury was unaware of the other charges. Two juries failed to agree on a verdict and were discharged. The other six juries each returned a verdict of “Not Guilty”. Despite this, any complainants are still able to take civil action against the Marist Brothers regarding Brother Maguire. See “We saw it coming, say ex-students” article in the 2 July 2004 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald.
  12. Br Eddie Mamo, Sacred Heart order
    A Sydney newspaper reported that the Bankstown Local Court on 23 August 1994 dismissed two charges of aggravated indecent assault that had been laid against Edward Mamo, then aged 49. Mamo had been a religious Brother in the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart order, and was associated with the Nguon Song Group Homes, which provided accommodation for Indo-Chinese teenage males in Sydney’s Canterbury-Bankstown area. (In the 1970s and 1980s, Brothers in the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart worked as support staff — such as dormitory supervisors — at prominent Australian boarding schools operated by the MSC order, including Chevalier College in Bowral, New South Wales, and Monivae College in Hamilton, Victoria.) See more here.
  13. Fr Hugh Edward Murray
    This Catholic priest (from the Vincentian order) appeared in court in Sydney in 2010, charged with indecently assaulting boys in the 1960s and ’70s. In July 2011, a judge granted Murray a permanent stay because of his advanced age (81 years) and health problems. See more here.
  14. Br John Parker
    Various news media outlets reported that Christian Brother John David Parker appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on 22 March 1995, charged with sexual assault of a nine-year-old boy in Grade 4 at Parade Christian Brothers College junior school in Alphington (in Melbourne’s inner north-east) in 1958. Brother Parker contested the charge. Magistrate Phillip Goldberg committed Brother Parker (then aged 60) for trial and listed the matter to go to a judge in the Melbourne County Court for 19 June 1995. However, the County Court case did not proceed. The complainant was satisfied with having succeeded in getting his allegation aired in the Magistrates Court. In the Christian Brothers, Parker adopted the religious name John “Neri” Parker (there was once a Saint Neri) and was listed as Brother J.N. Parker. Brother Parker has also taught at other Catholic schools in Victoria, including Ballarat (St Patrick’s primary school, Drummond Street) in the 1970s and Mill Park (St Francis of Assisi primary school) in Melbourne’s north in the 1990s. He also taught with the Christian Brothers in Tasmania.
  15. Fr Phil Robson
    In early 2010, a Sydney magistrate ordered Father Philip John Robson (a member of the Vincentian order of Catholic priests) to stand trial at the Sydney District Court, charged with five sex offences against a 15-year-old boy who was a pupil at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst, New South Wales, in 1991. Robson was accused of one count of attempting to have sexual intercourse with the boy in circumstances of aggravation, and four counts of aggravated indecent assault. On 14 September 2010, a District Court jury found Robson not guilty of all charges. See more here.
  16. Br Lambert Wise, Adelaide
    A South Australian court ruled in 2008 that an elderly former Christian Brother, Francis Lambert Wise, was medically unfit to stand trial on alleged incidents of child-sexual abuse, dating back to 1964 and 1965. However, in 2009 a judge held special hearings, enabling two of Wise’s former pupils to have their allegations aired in court. Thus, the South Australian public was able to learn of the allegations. See more from Broken Rites here.

Section F: Lay teachers in church schools The above lists (Sections A to E) on this website all relate to priests or religious brothers, as distinct from lay teachers.

Many victims have contacted Broken Rites about offences committed by lay teachers in Catholic schools or school youth camps.
The teachers’ cases are too numerous to be all listed on this website. Here are just a few examples to demonstrate the range of cases:

  1. Yvo Gulien Cleyman, at Gosford, NSW, 1970s
    In the New South Wales District Court at Gosford (New South Wales) on 20 April 2004, Yvo Gulien Cleyman (then aged 59) was sentenced to a maximum of six years’ jail over a series of sex offences against two schoolboys in the late 1970s. The case was reported next day in the Central Coast Herald (and the preliminary proceedings had been reported in the Central Coast Express on 26 February 2003). The boys, aged 13 and 14, were attending  St Edward’s Christian Brothers School in East Gosford (north of Sydney), where Yvo Gulien Cleyman was a lay teacher of languages and social studies in the late 1970s. The court was told that, on school camps, on drives to isolated places and out fishing, he forced anal intercourse on the boys as well as forcing them to give and receive oral sex. Cleyman pleaded guilty to six counts of buggery and two counts of indecent assault on the two victims. When charged in 2003, Yvo Gulien Cleyman’s address was given in court as Buccan, Queensland. He was extradited to New South Wales for the court proceedings. After the conviction, the Christian Brothers headquarters in New South Wales began having mediation meetings with victims of Cleyman.
  2. John Coogan, teacher, Geelong, Victoria
    John Patrick Coogan, then aged 61, was sentenced in 1994 to five years jail (minimum of three years) after pleading guilty to seventeen charges of indent assault of boys while he was a lay teacher at St Joseph’s College (Christian Brothers) in Geelong. Outside the court, one of the victims said the St Joseph’s College administration had known that Coogan  was a child-molester but it did nothing about him.
  3. Mark Dean, northern Victoria
    Mark Christopher Dean, a Catholic lay teacher, pretended to be a priest during role-playing sessions with children while he sexually abused them, the Bendigo Magistrates Court was told in July 1992. Dean, then aged 33, of Rochester and Bendigo, who taught in north Victorian Catholic schools, pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting eight schoolboys in three towns during the 1980s. Dean was sentenced to a six-months suspended jail term. The victims’ families told police that Dean had been protected by the church authorities.
  4. John Gahan, lay teacher, NSW
    On 30 October 2007 in the New South Wales District Court, John Stephen Gahan was sentenced to 13 months jail (with a non-parole period of six months), on  three charges of indecent assault of a boy, aged 11 to 13, while Gahan was a lay teacher at St Mary’s Catholic parish primary school in Scone (in the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese), in the late 1970s. Gahan befriended the boy’s family. Gahan admitted that the abuse (masturbating the boy) occurred on a number of occasions during two years — in Gahan’s car and on overnight trips. The victim said in his impact statement that, as a child, he did not understand what was happening — “only that here was a man that took an interest in my future and this was a small sacrifice to maintain his friendship”. The victim said that the abuse caused problems in his adult life, including in his marriage.
  5. Mato Karapandzk, cathedral caretaker
    On 11 March 2008 in the South Australian District Court, a 37-year-old woman gained justice for sexual abuse that she experienced while she was a pupil at Adelaide’s St Aloysius Catholic girls’ school.  At age 12 in the early 1980s, the girl was told to wheel a disabled elderly nun over to the Adelaide cathedral (opposite the school) for church services. There, the girl was befriended by Mato Karapandzk (then over 50), a Croatian-born caretaker at the cathedral. Over the next five years, he sexually abused the girl in and around the cathedral building, “under the noses of the cathedral staff and the school”, sometimes giving her $20 after the abuse, the court was told. He continued as the cathedral caretaker until the victim came forward with her complaint in 2004. Karapandzk, aged 77 at sentencing, was given a nine-year jail sentence (with four years behind bars before parole).
  6. Willi Kovac, sports teacher
    In Melbourne County Court in December 2005, Kovac (then aged 73) was jailed for a maximum of  nine and half years’ jail, with a non-parole period of 5½ years, after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting three  boys (aged between nine and fourteen) in the 1960s and 1970s. German-born Kovac was an athletics coach at Melbourne’s Xavier College and Marcellin College and other Catholic schools and worked as a co-ordinator at summer camps for Catholic school children. Judge Pamela Jenkins said that, since the offences, Kovac’s three victims had struggled with life, including drug and alcohol abuse and relationship breakdowns, and had under-achieved in their work-life. These three boys were not Kovac’s only victims. He also had victims from other Catholic schools. Some victims have contacted Broken Rites. According to information given in court in 2005, Kovac was also jailed in 1970 for indecent assault. One prominent Catholic school sacked Kovac for his behaviour but it then breached its duty of care by allowing him to work at other Catholic schools, putting more boys in danger.
  7. Paul John Lyons, Canberra
    In 2006 and 2007, Daramalan College, a Catholic co-educational school in Canberra (run by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart), finally began making civil settlements with victims of a former teacher, Paul John Lyons. Lyons taught at Daramalan from 1989 to 2000. He took dozens of students to his home overnight or away on sporting trips. In 2000, police caught up with Lyons who admitted indecently assaulting a 15-year-old schoolboy. Police charged Lyons but, a few days later, he committed suicide. His police interview indicated that Lyons had many other victims, meaning that more charges would have been likely.
  8. John Marsden, solicitor, school sports coach
    John Marsden was originally a trainee for the Catholic priesthood but he left the seminary and later became a prominent lawyer and president of the New South Wales Law Society.  In a crimes compensation case on 6 July 2001, NSW District Court judge Ken Taylor found that, “on the balance of probabilities”, Marsden had sexually abused an eight-year-old schoolboy in the late 1960s when Marsden was a swimming and football coach at a Catholic school, St John’s, Campbelltown, in Sydney’s south-west. The court was told that, on three occasions, the boy was forced to engage in mutual genital fondling with Marsden and on the third occasion he was forced to perform oral sex on Marsden. The boy then complained to school authorities but was not believed over the respected local solicitor and former trainee priest, the victim told the court. The victim took his allegations against Marsden to Mr Justice Wood’s royal commission into corruption in 1996, but Marsden was never charged by police. The victim then began a civil action in the NSW Supreme Court, but said he was “threatened with financial ruin” by the rich and powerful lawyer.  On legal advice, he sought victim’s compensation instead.  Judge Taylor awarded the plaintiff the then maximum amount of $40,000 in victim’s compensation, plus $5078 for psychiatrists’ fees and $8000 in legal costs. This finding could not be revealed in 2001 because it was subject to a court suppression order.  Marsden died in May 2006, aged 64, and the Weekend Australian published the court documents on 3 June 2006.
  9. Former Test cricket umpire Steve Randell
    He was jailed in 1999 for sexual offences against young girls while he taught at Marist College in Burnie, Tasmania, in the early 1980s (after the school became co-educational). Randell also taught at St Virgil’s College in Hobart. He also allegedly had male victims.  See our article about a different offender at Marist College here.
  10. St Mark’s College, South Australia
    Jenny Christall, who was an education support officer at St Mark’s College in Port Pirie (South Australia) in 2001, learned that a male religious education teacher, Sunil Francis Clark, was sexually abusing female students. Mrs Christall alerted the school administration and the Port Pirie Catholic diocese but, she says, these authorities failed to contact police. Ms Christall contacted the police herself but this meant losing her job because of a workplace confidentiality agreement.  After this, she says, she was banned from working at more than 100 Catholic schools in South Australia. The male teacher, Sunil Clark, was charged in the South Australian District Court in 2006 with sexual offences against two schoolgirls, including two charges of unlawful sexual intercourse by a teacher. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, with a non-parole period of three years.
  11. Stephen Stockdale-Hall, Adelaide
    In the South Australian Supreme Court in December 2005, Stephen John Stockdale-Hall (aged 56) was sentenced to 10 years’ jail (with parole after eight years) after admitting that he sexually abused nine boys, aged between eight and 16 years, between 1977 and 1989, while he was a Catholic schools lay teacher. His crimes started while he was a teacher at Adelaide’s Blackfriars Priory School and went on for a decade after he resigned when he continued to take students on camping expeditions. Stockdale-Hall also encouraged some of his Catholic school victims to drink alcohol and take drugs. See our story here.
  12. Darren Tector, former lay teacher
    In 1994, Darren John Tector was jailed for sexual offences against boys while he was a teacher at a Catholic primary school (Our Lady of Lourdes) at Seven Hills, near Parramatta, west of Sydney. He was jailed again in 2007 (aged 41) for using the internet and a telephone to procure a child (a 12-year-old boy) for sexual activity. See our story here.

The Broken Rites database contains many similar cases of teachers in church schools. Some of these are teachers of “religion”, which indicates hypocrisy as well as a crime.