Counter Pedophilia Investigate Unit

Roman Catholic Church leaders unveiled an Internet teaching project on Thursday to help clergy around the world root out pedophiles in their ranks and protect children from potential abusers.

Ending a four-day conference on child abuse in Rome, Father Francois-Xavier Dumortier said the 1.2 million euro ($1.60 million) project would provide multilingual advice and access to research on pedophilia and how to respond to the problem. (more…)

A senior Vatican cardinal has revealed how more than 4,000 cases of sex abuse by priests on children have been investigated during the last ten years.

The shock figure was announced by American cardinal Joseph William Levada as he opened a conference on the wide scale phenomenon which has rocked the Roman Catholic church with cases reported all over the world.

Cardinal Levada, who is head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, described the figure as a ‘dramatic increase’ and came in the face of global indignation at the scale of the problem and which has forced Pope Benedict XVI to apologise for previous cases during papal visits as he meets victims. (more…)

A preacher who stood as a Conservative candidate for Holyrood has been jailed for eight years for a 15-year campaign of child abuse.

John Smart, 48, preyed on three youngsters he met at the Edinburgh City Mission.

He began abusing one of his victims when the boy was just three years old. Judge Lady Dorrian put Smart on the sex offenders’ register and ordered him to be monitored in the community for three years after his release.

(more…)

LONDON — Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has set up an inquiry in Chichester diocese in southern England, reportedly after allegations that paedophile priests were allowed to continue working despite being accused of sexual abuse.

The archbishop’s decision to investigate the diocese will throw the spotlight on abuse by clergy in the Church of England, raising an issue which has already rocked the Catholic Church in a number of countries.

A statement late on Thursday from the archbishop’s Lambeth Palace residence said the inquiry had been launched “in response to concerns within the diocese” but declined to expand on the background to the fears. (more…)

In Belgium, the association of victims of clergy sexual abuse (Snap) denounces an attempt by the Catholic Church to hide its crimes through private negotiations.

In the 90s and in the following decade, the ecclesiastical hierarchy conducted secret negotiations to pay for silencing the scandal of pedophile priests. (more…)

Animals performing in movies have better safeguards, says advocate.

First, it was the Catholic Church. Then Penn State. Now, a new child-abuse scandal in Hollywood is raising questions over the safety of minors in the entertainment business and sparking calls for new child-labour regulations.

Martin Weiss, a longtime man-ager of young talent, was recently arrested on suspicion of child molestation after an 18-year-old former client told police he had been abused by Weiss 30 to 40 times from 2005 to 2008. (more…)

On Friday Bishop Robert Finn, of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, became the highest ranking member of the Catholic Church to be charged for covering up child abuse.

Bishop Finn and the diocese have been accused of taking about six months to tell authorities that they’d found child pornography on a priest’s laptop, during which time he allegedly abused more children.

The indictment is a landmark event in the church’s ongoing struggle with allegations of sexual abuse by its members. Yet, during yesterday’s services priests in the diocese met the issue with even more silence, choosing to discuss forgiveness rather than addressing the new developement directly. (more…)

BRUSSELS – Belgium’s Roman Catholic church is to conduct psychological tests on candidates for priesthood to weed out any with pedophile tendencies.

“The Church must do a better job to protect children,” Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard told VTM television late Monday in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal that has shaken the Belgian Catholic church.

Men who enter a seminary will be “screened” and they will have follow-ups with psychologists, Leonard said, adding that a code to prevent child abuse was prepared by bishops and will be published soon. (more…)

The Swiss Bishops Conference of the Catholic Church in Switzerland has admitted that 146 victims of sexual abuse stepped forward and reported a total of 125 priests and clergy as their abusers, in the first-​ever report of its kind, assembled last year.

The abuse allegations go back as far as 60 years, and involve male and female victims who are the time were adults, teenagers, and even children under 12. (more…)

ANALYSIS: There is too much at stake for confrontation with the Vatican to continue, writes STEPHEN COLLINS.

THE EAGERLY awaited response of the Vatican to the scathing criticism made by Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Dáil last July following publication of the Cloyne report has left the Government in a quandary.

In his speech to the Dáil in July, Kenny voiced the deep anger of the Irish people at the failure of the Catholic Church to deal adequately with child abuse and he received widespread praise for taking such a strong line. (more…)