Counter Pedophilia Investigate Unit

Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald has ruled out exempting the confession box from long-awaited rules on mandatory reporting of child abuse.

Amid the fallout from the Cloyne report’s exposure of former bishop John Magee for failing to unmask abusive priests, the minister reiterated warnings that there will be no religious exceptions to hardline rules on withholding information.

Ms Fitzgerald dismissed out of hand suggestions that information given to a Catholic priest in the confessional about crimes against a child can remain confidential.

The church’s watchdog on clerical child abuse, Ian Elliot, has said there should be room to allow clerics to keep secret details passed on when someone seeks forgiveness. (more…)

WASHINGTON — U.S. dioceses and religious orders received 505 new credible allegations of child sex abuse by clergy in 2010, a slight decrease from the previous year and a significant drop from the 1,092 new allegations reported in 2004, when the numbers began being tallied, according to a report released April 11 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The report was prepared for the USCCB Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University from survey responses submitted by all but one of the 195 U.S. dioceses and eparchies (Eastern Catholic dioceses) and 156 of the 218 religious orders that belong to the Conference of Major Superiors of Men.

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A 40-year-old married father of four has been charged with sexual abuse for allegedly carrying on a two-year relationship with a girl he met at his church.

Edwin DeLeon, of the 1700 block of West Ohio Street in the West Town neighborhood, allegedly began a sexual relationship with the girl in 2005 when she was 14 and he was 34, prosecutors said Sunday in Cook County bond court.

DeLeon, who appeared before Judge Donald Panarese Jr., knew the girl’s aunt, prosecutors said. After the relationship ended in 2007, the girl told her parents the two had been having sex, prosecutors said.

DeLeon was arrested Saturday at his home by members of the Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force.

Source: CHICAGOTRIBUNE

Officially 21 Priests from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia have been placed on ‘administrative leave’ until a thorough investigation has been conducted into child sexual abuse claims raised by a Grand Jury report that found a widespread cover up over the actions of up to 37 priests employed by the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia, should have suspended the priests suspected of paedophilia much sooner, campaigners say.

The sweeping action of the church, the largest mass suspension in America of Priests, comes after the report was released on February 10, 2011.

Disclosed in the report were allegations that for decades the church had covered up abuse of children as young, mainly boys as young as 9. (more…)

Rodger William Moloney, now 73 and in ill-health, was jailed for two years and nine months by Justice Graham Panckhurst in the High Court at Christchurch today, the New Zealand Press Association reported.

He will be deported after serving his sentence. (more…)