New York Times - October 28, 2010
Somali Islamists Kill Two Girls Branded Spies
By MOHAMMED IBRAHIM
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalia’s most powerful Islamist insurgents, the Shabab, executed two teenage girls on Wednesday after deciding they were spies, setting off fears among residents, officials and witnesses said.
The two teenagers — one 18, the other 14 — were shot by firing squad in the center of the town of Beledweyne, near the border with Ethiopia, witnesses said.
Pickup trucks with big loudspeakers drove into the town, ordering the residents to watch the execution. Residents were also told to switch off their cellphones and were warned not to take pictures, a prohibition that has been enforced at some Islamist executions in the past.
“The teenage girls were executed in the regional headquarters at the center of the town. Some of the women who were watching fainted at the scene,” said Abukar Elmi, a witness. “This is a shocking event.”
The Shabab official in the town, Sheik Yusuf Ali Ugas, told local journalists that “the two girls were found guilty of spying for the Ethiopian government.”
Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006 to oust an Islamist movement that had taken control of much of the country, including the capital, Mogadishu. Thousands of Ethiopian soldiers remained in Somalia for the next three years before withdrawing, and some of the Somali government forces fighting the Shabab in the Beledweyne area are supported by the Ethiopian government.
Mr. Ugas said the teenagers were not the only ones in Shabab custody, adding, “There are many people now in Shabab prisons in Beledweyne.”
He also sent a warning to Ethiopia, saying that the Shabab knew “all the informants serving for the Ethiopian government.”
Townspeople argued that the two teenage girls were innocent. The girls, they said, were traveling away from their families when they were caught in a cross-fire just outside Beledweyne, where both government forces and the Shabab are positioned. Many Somalis try to reach Yemen and Saudi Arabia to find better opportunities there and escape from the violence in this country.
“When the fighting started between the Shabab and the government forces just outside Beledweyne, the girls had to flee to the bush, where they were finally caught,” said a resident whose name was withheld for his safety. “I think they were executed because they were caught at the front line.”
The Somali transitional federal government strongly condemned the public execution, arguing that the two girls had not been given the right to a legal defense, nor had their parents even been informed.
“This execution is yet another human rights abuse committed by the criminals,” the Somali government said. “This act of killing innocent children does not have Islamic and humanitarian justifications.”
The Shabab have been responsible for many human rights violations in the areas they control. In 2008, for instance, they stoned to death a rape victim in the port town of Kismayo.
This article was found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/world/africa/29somalia.html
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Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
11 Jan 2011
15 Feb 2009
Priest must resign or face axe
Brisbane Times - February 15, 2009
CATHOLICS are questioning why the church hierarchy is determined to sack rebel parish leader Peter Kennedy, but is slow to act against pedophile priests.
by Kate Dennehy
Brisbane Archbishop John Bathersby has given Father Kennedy, of St Mary's Church in South Brisbane, until Saturday to resign or face the axe. The archbishop said police would be called "as a last option" to remove Father Kennedy from the church.
He has accused Father Kennedy, 71, of being "out of communion" with the church by presenting unapproved services including giving Holy Communion to gay and divorced people, baptising babies using unorthodox wording and not wearing traditional vestments.
Father Kennedy's supporters include Gold Coast nurse Mary Adams, who said the St Mary's priest helped her and others set up a support group for victims of child sex abuse by the clergy.
Ms Adams said she had been sexually abused in 1962 as a 12-year-old boarder at the St Joseph's Home orphanage at Neerkol, near Rockhampton. She said the priests had not been charged. Ms Adams and hundreds abused as children had received no help through the Catholic Church's Towards Healing program, set up in 1996 after the jailing of several priests and brothers for sexual abuse, she said.
The program was promoted as an in-house alternative to civil court action and promised justice and compensation to victims.
"A lot of people abused by the priests and brothers are now in their 70s and have spent their whole lives suffering because nobody in the church would acknowledge the abuse," she said. "If the church thinks it can get away with the abuse, it will continue to ignore victims and just move priests to other parishes, states or overseas where they continue to abuse."
She said she had met victims who later committed suicide because they could not cope with their memories and being ignored.
Father Kennedy allowed Ms Adams to use his office in 1994 to run the Neerkol Action Support Group in support of sexual abuse victims.
"I went to St Mary's last Sunday to support Peter [Kennedy] because I was so angry about the church's hypocrisy that protects pedophiles and abusers in the church," she said.
Ms Adams wrote to the Catholic Church's professional standards office last month protesting about the way the church had treated her and other victims. It had left her "very saddened and disillusioned", she wrote. "It's only clergy like Father Peter Kennedy that has been there for us. . . and I admire this wonderful man . . . "
Father Kennedy said last week pedophilia had turned thousands of parishioners away from the religion in Australia and overseas.
"I'm threatening the church's power base by questioning their way of thinking and that's why they want to get rid of me," he said. He said many priests suspected of pedophilia were told to stop saying public Mass, then moved to another parish, state or country while their crimes were covered up.
Last year, The Sun-Herald revealed convicted pedophile Father Ronald McKeirnan celebrated weekly private masses at The Marist Brothers House, which adjoins a school, in inner-city Paddington.
McKeirnan, who remains a priest, served a year in prison in 1998 and 1999 for molesting nine boys.
In 2006, a parent whose son attended the nearby school, Marist College Rosalie, complained to the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, about McKeirnan and a "cover-up" by the Brisbane Archdiocese.
"Cardinal Pell replied that the issue . . . was a matter for the Brisbane Archdiocese," she said. After further complaints by parents, Archbishop Bathersby withdrew his permission for McKeirnan to say Mass.
Ms Chris McIsaac, president of victims' support group Broken Rites, said more than 100 brothers and priests had been convicted of sexual assault since 1993. "From the victims' point of view we find it disappointing that the church finds these sorts of issues [complaints against Kennedy] more important than child abuse," she said.
An archdiocesan spokesman said last week: "Any priest convicted of sexual offences has their faculties [permissions to exercise priestly office] suspended and is . . . removed from all public ministry." Once Father Kennedy was removed from St Mary's, he would hold "no office".
This article was found at:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/priest-must-resign-or-face-axe/2009/02/15/1234632616709.html
CATHOLICS are questioning why the church hierarchy is determined to sack rebel parish leader Peter Kennedy, but is slow to act against pedophile priests.
by Kate Dennehy
Brisbane Archbishop John Bathersby has given Father Kennedy, of St Mary's Church in South Brisbane, until Saturday to resign or face the axe. The archbishop said police would be called "as a last option" to remove Father Kennedy from the church.
He has accused Father Kennedy, 71, of being "out of communion" with the church by presenting unapproved services including giving Holy Communion to gay and divorced people, baptising babies using unorthodox wording and not wearing traditional vestments.
Father Kennedy's supporters include Gold Coast nurse Mary Adams, who said the St Mary's priest helped her and others set up a support group for victims of child sex abuse by the clergy.
Ms Adams said she had been sexually abused in 1962 as a 12-year-old boarder at the St Joseph's Home orphanage at Neerkol, near Rockhampton. She said the priests had not been charged. Ms Adams and hundreds abused as children had received no help through the Catholic Church's Towards Healing program, set up in 1996 after the jailing of several priests and brothers for sexual abuse, she said.
The program was promoted as an in-house alternative to civil court action and promised justice and compensation to victims.
"A lot of people abused by the priests and brothers are now in their 70s and have spent their whole lives suffering because nobody in the church would acknowledge the abuse," she said. "If the church thinks it can get away with the abuse, it will continue to ignore victims and just move priests to other parishes, states or overseas where they continue to abuse."
She said she had met victims who later committed suicide because they could not cope with their memories and being ignored.
Father Kennedy allowed Ms Adams to use his office in 1994 to run the Neerkol Action Support Group in support of sexual abuse victims.
"I went to St Mary's last Sunday to support Peter [Kennedy] because I was so angry about the church's hypocrisy that protects pedophiles and abusers in the church," she said.
Ms Adams wrote to the Catholic Church's professional standards office last month protesting about the way the church had treated her and other victims. It had left her "very saddened and disillusioned", she wrote. "It's only clergy like Father Peter Kennedy that has been there for us. . . and I admire this wonderful man . . . "
Father Kennedy said last week pedophilia had turned thousands of parishioners away from the religion in Australia and overseas.
"I'm threatening the church's power base by questioning their way of thinking and that's why they want to get rid of me," he said. He said many priests suspected of pedophilia were told to stop saying public Mass, then moved to another parish, state or country while their crimes were covered up.
Last year, The Sun-Herald revealed convicted pedophile Father Ronald McKeirnan celebrated weekly private masses at The Marist Brothers House, which adjoins a school, in inner-city Paddington.
McKeirnan, who remains a priest, served a year in prison in 1998 and 1999 for molesting nine boys.
In 2006, a parent whose son attended the nearby school, Marist College Rosalie, complained to the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, about McKeirnan and a "cover-up" by the Brisbane Archdiocese.
"Cardinal Pell replied that the issue . . . was a matter for the Brisbane Archdiocese," she said. After further complaints by parents, Archbishop Bathersby withdrew his permission for McKeirnan to say Mass.
Ms Chris McIsaac, president of victims' support group Broken Rites, said more than 100 brothers and priests had been convicted of sexual assault since 1993. "From the victims' point of view we find it disappointing that the church finds these sorts of issues [complaints against Kennedy] more important than child abuse," she said.
An archdiocesan spokesman said last week: "Any priest convicted of sexual offences has their faculties [permissions to exercise priestly office] suspended and is . . . removed from all public ministry." Once Father Kennedy was removed from St Mary's, he would hold "no office".
This article was found at:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/priest-must-resign-or-face-axe/2009/02/15/1234632616709.html
Exposed: Tel Aviv man has 32 women and 89 children
Haaretz.com - Israel February 15, 2009
by Haaretz Service
A Tel Aviv man in his late fifties is living with 32 women with whom he has fathered 89 children, an Israeli television station revealed last week.
The women are subject to strict discipline, but say that they are all living with Goel Ratzon by their own accord.
They are not allowed to communicate with men, be in physical contact with their biological family, eat meat, smoke, drink alcohol or dress immodestly.
Ratzon is held by his companions to be the savior (Goel in Hebrew) of the universe, and is attributed godly and supernatural abilities. Many of the women have tattooed his name and portrait on their bodies.
The names of every one of Ratzon's 89 children include his own first name. For instance, one of his sons is called Avinu Ha-Goel (our father the savior) and he has a daughter named Tehilat Ha-Goel (glory of the savior).
Ratzon told Channel 10 that there had been several attempts at collective suicide when some of the women thought he was going to leave them. Also in the film, some of the women said they would commit mass suicide if anyone tried to harm their leader.
They are all registered as single mothers, and live in separate quarters. Whenever Ratzon comes to visit, the children are required to kiss his shoes, and worship the tattoo of his portrait on their mother's arm.
National Council for the Child Director Dr. Yitzhak Kadman said that the authorities have very little room for maneuver.
"The man is treading a fine line," Kadman said. "As long as these children go to school regularly and are not suffering from neglect or flagrant abuse, there's not much the authorities can do. The law does not permit to prevent people from living in a certain lifestyle just because it seems inappropriate to some."
On Friday, one of Ratzon's companions was hospitalized after claiming to have tried to commit suicide. She was brought to Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot by Ratzon, who was accompanied by some of his other companions. The woman was released the next day.
She said that she had taken a large amount of anti-depressants and that she could not remember whether she had medical insurance or not. Ratzon, for his part, said he could not remember the woman's name.
"As soon as they came I knew it was this guy from TV," a hospital staff member said. "They walked in, and one of the women was supported by another. They really stood out."
The Tel Aviv welfare services and the National Insurance Institute said they were familiar with the case. The woman's apparent suicide attempt on Friday has been seen by authorities as a premeditated provocation to mitigate public pressure to clamp down on the cult.
An estranged friend of one of the women said that the group was very sophisticated and aware of the repercussions of being exposed to the public.
"They are not stupid, just very extreme," he said. "Maybe they fear that the exposure might affect their way of life, and they're acting tactically. I don't think it was the TV report - they wouldn't agree to do it unless they thought that it might benefit them in any way. Everything there is under control."
According to one of the women's friends, "they probably thought that if they make the first step, no one will harm them... That's their way of dealing with the authorities.
This article was found at:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064257.html
by Haaretz Service
A Tel Aviv man in his late fifties is living with 32 women with whom he has fathered 89 children, an Israeli television station revealed last week.
The women are subject to strict discipline, but say that they are all living with Goel Ratzon by their own accord.
They are not allowed to communicate with men, be in physical contact with their biological family, eat meat, smoke, drink alcohol or dress immodestly.
Ratzon is held by his companions to be the savior (Goel in Hebrew) of the universe, and is attributed godly and supernatural abilities. Many of the women have tattooed his name and portrait on their bodies.
The names of every one of Ratzon's 89 children include his own first name. For instance, one of his sons is called Avinu Ha-Goel (our father the savior) and he has a daughter named Tehilat Ha-Goel (glory of the savior).
Ratzon told Channel 10 that there had been several attempts at collective suicide when some of the women thought he was going to leave them. Also in the film, some of the women said they would commit mass suicide if anyone tried to harm their leader.
They are all registered as single mothers, and live in separate quarters. Whenever Ratzon comes to visit, the children are required to kiss his shoes, and worship the tattoo of his portrait on their mother's arm.
National Council for the Child Director Dr. Yitzhak Kadman said that the authorities have very little room for maneuver.
"The man is treading a fine line," Kadman said. "As long as these children go to school regularly and are not suffering from neglect or flagrant abuse, there's not much the authorities can do. The law does not permit to prevent people from living in a certain lifestyle just because it seems inappropriate to some."
On Friday, one of Ratzon's companions was hospitalized after claiming to have tried to commit suicide. She was brought to Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot by Ratzon, who was accompanied by some of his other companions. The woman was released the next day.
She said that she had taken a large amount of anti-depressants and that she could not remember whether she had medical insurance or not. Ratzon, for his part, said he could not remember the woman's name.
"As soon as they came I knew it was this guy from TV," a hospital staff member said. "They walked in, and one of the women was supported by another. They really stood out."
The Tel Aviv welfare services and the National Insurance Institute said they were familiar with the case. The woman's apparent suicide attempt on Friday has been seen by authorities as a premeditated provocation to mitigate public pressure to clamp down on the cult.
An estranged friend of one of the women said that the group was very sophisticated and aware of the repercussions of being exposed to the public.
"They are not stupid, just very extreme," he said. "Maybe they fear that the exposure might affect their way of life, and they're acting tactically. I don't think it was the TV report - they wouldn't agree to do it unless they thought that it might benefit them in any way. Everything there is under control."
According to one of the women's friends, "they probably thought that if they make the first step, no one will harm them... That's their way of dealing with the authorities.
This article was found at:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064257.html
2 Feb 2009
Economy Killing Abusive Teen Programs
Mother Jones Blog - January 30, 2009
by Maia Szalavitz
There is a silver lining to this bleak economy: Abusive and ineffective "tough love" programs for teens are failing right and left.
In just the last few weeks, the notorious Tranquility Bay program in Jamaica, Spring Creek Lodge in Montana, and Pathway Family Center in Detroit and Ohio have all been shuttered.
Tranquility Bay was known for making kids kneel on concrete for days, using "restraint" so harsh that it broke bones. Both Tranquility Bay and Spring Creek Lodge were part of a network called the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP or WWASPS)—and the group’s philosophy involves constant use of emotional attacks and humiliation in a rigid, structured day in order to break teens' spirits.
Spring Creek was notorious for a frigid, small isolation room called "the Hobbit"—sometimes teens were left there for months.
From Pathway—which was descended from the infamously abusive Straight Inc.—I received two separate accounts of suicide attempts by girls which were not reported to their parents, and many stories of the usual attack therapy and humiliation. Unfortunately, neither WWASP nor Pathway is completely dead yet: WWASP still has centers operating in the US and abroad, and Pathway has sites in Indiana: Porter and Indianapolis.
The media tends to present these closures as sad examples of needed services being cut—but in fact, teens are better off with no treatment than with treatment that often divides families and has characteristics known to produce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Family support tends to be crucial to long term recovery—and PTSD doubles the odds that a drug problem will become a lasting addiction.
Troubled teen programs were yet another sign of the bubble economy. Many were financed by mortgage and home equity loans because they cost thousands of dollars a month and because insurers, quite correctly, don't usually pay for programs that aren't proven to help.
Since there are proven alternatives for teens with drug and other problems that do not carry the risks of "tough love," we should greet the closings of these centers with glee.
And those who care about this issue should keep the pressure on so that the wounded programs finally die. After all, there are still teens suffering inside, being "treated" without dignity or respect—some of whom were just transferred from closed programs to other similar, sites.
Legislation to ban the most egregious practices is coming—and may well be strengthened now that the Democrats control Congress and the White House. But an even better outcome would be for the "troubled teen" industry to wither and be replaced by what the evidence shows works: community-based, family-centered, minimally restrictive, and youth-driven care.
Maia Szalavitz is the author of "Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids," and Senior Fellow at stats.org.
This article was found at:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2009/01/12087_economy-teen.html
by Maia Szalavitz
There is a silver lining to this bleak economy: Abusive and ineffective "tough love" programs for teens are failing right and left.
In just the last few weeks, the notorious Tranquility Bay program in Jamaica, Spring Creek Lodge in Montana, and Pathway Family Center in Detroit and Ohio have all been shuttered.
Tranquility Bay was known for making kids kneel on concrete for days, using "restraint" so harsh that it broke bones. Both Tranquility Bay and Spring Creek Lodge were part of a network called the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP or WWASPS)—and the group’s philosophy involves constant use of emotional attacks and humiliation in a rigid, structured day in order to break teens' spirits.
Spring Creek was notorious for a frigid, small isolation room called "the Hobbit"—sometimes teens were left there for months.
From Pathway—which was descended from the infamously abusive Straight Inc.—I received two separate accounts of suicide attempts by girls which were not reported to their parents, and many stories of the usual attack therapy and humiliation. Unfortunately, neither WWASP nor Pathway is completely dead yet: WWASP still has centers operating in the US and abroad, and Pathway has sites in Indiana: Porter and Indianapolis.
The media tends to present these closures as sad examples of needed services being cut—but in fact, teens are better off with no treatment than with treatment that often divides families and has characteristics known to produce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Family support tends to be crucial to long term recovery—and PTSD doubles the odds that a drug problem will become a lasting addiction.
Troubled teen programs were yet another sign of the bubble economy. Many were financed by mortgage and home equity loans because they cost thousands of dollars a month and because insurers, quite correctly, don't usually pay for programs that aren't proven to help.
Since there are proven alternatives for teens with drug and other problems that do not carry the risks of "tough love," we should greet the closings of these centers with glee.
And those who care about this issue should keep the pressure on so that the wounded programs finally die. After all, there are still teens suffering inside, being "treated" without dignity or respect—some of whom were just transferred from closed programs to other similar, sites.
Legislation to ban the most egregious practices is coming—and may well be strengthened now that the Democrats control Congress and the White House. But an even better outcome would be for the "troubled teen" industry to wither and be replaced by what the evidence shows works: community-based, family-centered, minimally restrictive, and youth-driven care.
Maia Szalavitz is the author of "Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids," and Senior Fellow at stats.org.
This article was found at:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2009/01/12087_economy-teen.html
22 Jan 2009
Old hurts, a new quest for justice
The Chronicle Herald - Nova Scotia
January 22, 2009
Men sue church, say they were abused by priest decades ago
January 22, 2009
Men sue church, say they were abused by priest decades ago
He performed their marriage ceremony and baptized their three daughters in the village church.
But Elizabeth Anne Boudreau didn’t know the dark secret between this man of God and her husband.
"It devastated me. I couldn’t believe it," she said about the day some 20 years ago when her husband confided in her that their priest had sexually abused him as a boy.
Her husband, Raymond H. Boudreau, told her that he was just 11 in 1955 when Rev. Adolphe LeBlanc began to take a special interest in him.
The priest at Saint Michael’s Catholic Church in Wedgeport, who died in the 1970s, took Raymond and other boys for drives in his car and on overnight visits to his camp. For four years, Raymond says, the priest engaged in fondling, masturbation and other unspecified sexual activities with him until the boy found the courage to tell him to stop.
Raymond thought he had put it all behind him until he saw a recent Yarmouth newspaper ad from the Ontario law firm Ledroit Beckett announcing that it was investigating the priest and asking people to telephone. He decided to go public.
"I had made myself a promise more than 50 years back that eventually I would expose this priest for what he did, so that was my chance to get involved," Mr. Boudreau told a Halifax news conference Wednesday.
He and fellow Wedgeport native Kenneth Boudreau (no relation) are suing the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax and the Diocese of Yarmouth for up to $2 million in damages, based on Father LeBlanc’s alleged actions. They allege the church was negligent and failed to protect its members from the revered priest and is vicariously liable for his actions.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
Father LeBlanc was ordained in 1924 in the Archdiocese of Halifax and served in isolated parishes in the Yarmouth area, including Wedgeport and Salmon River, until retiring in 1969. The Diocese of Yarmouth was created in 1953 and encompasses the counties of Yarmouth, Shelburne, Digby, Annapolis and Kings.
At a separate news conference Wednesday at the Catholic Pastoral Centre in Halifax, Archbishop Anthony Mancini read from a statement that he will do his "utmost to ensure that clergy and other pastoral workers are held to the highest standard, and that there is an appropriate response to allegations of past or current abuse."
"Today, I experience very deeply the burden of my office."
Raymond and Kenneth Boudreau’s tales of abuse are similar, but the paths they later took were wildly different.
Kenneth, an altar boy, top student and admittedly vulnerable boy, dropped out of school, moved to Ontario in his teens and became an alcoholic and drug user.
His mother died when he was a toddler and his fisherman father was often away at sea. He couldn’t bring himself to become close to his stepmother, and he said Father LeBlanc saw a "void in him." The priest got him to sweep the floors, took him for drives, had him over to watch television and took him to his camp. Kenneth said Father LeBlanc made him feel special and loved.
The abuse, which lasted about two years, started with fondling and progressed to oral sex and other sexual acts, the lawsuit states.
When Kenneth broke free, he began drinking. By age 16, he was in Ontario on his own. He married and divorced and continued to spiral downward.
It wasn’t until he became a born-again Christian at age 27 that he started to regain control of his life. He got his Grade 12, went on to university, married again (for 34 years) and is now a pastor at a nursing home. He has renewed his relationship with his stepmother and is still in counselling.
"If it wasn’t for the Lord and good counselling and being honest, I don’t think I would’ve made it, really," the 62-year-old said.
In contrast, Raymond Boudreau turned his back on religion and only goes to church for weddings and funerals. He didn’t become an alcoholic and doesn’t touch drugs, he said. He remained in Wedgeport, where he married the girl he started dating at 16 and raised his children.
As a child, he was afraid he’d be sent to reform school if he dared make such accusations about his priest, and even as an adult he never told his parents, especially his father.
"It would have devastated him," Raymond said.
And when he told his wife, it almost broke her heart.
"I was very religious and I went to church a lot," she said, "and I stopped going to church as often after that.
"It hurt me a lot."
She spoke to her own priest, "which helped me a lot . . . but this has renewed things."
They told her aging father just four or five months ago, and he said: "We didn’t know for sure that that happened, but there were rumours in the village that it was happening."
Although the men are seeking big damages in the lawsuit, they both say that’s not the reason they’re speaking out. They believe there may be up to 100 other men out there whom Father LeBlanc may have abused. Before the recent publicity, Kenneth said, he "called several people from my village . . . and in my village alone, I found out that many, many people that were abused don’t want to come forth for shame or other reasons."
The men are asking potential victims who were boys in churches from Yarmouth to Halifax to Amherst between 1926 and 1969 to come forward. An unidentified man, also a client of the Ledroit Beckett law firm, was allegedly abused as an altar boy in Salmon River, lawyer Paul Ledroit told the news conference. And two more men have called in since a story about the priest’s alleged abuses appeared in The Chronicle Herald on Tuesday, Kenneth Boudreau said.
"I know how hard it is to live with guilt and shame, and a lot of people that don’t get help wind up on drugs, alcohol, even commit suicide, and (I) want to see them get help," Kenneth said.
What happened to Raymond as a boy was not his fault, his wife said, and she hopes this will finally help him close that dark chapter in his life.
"It didn’t ruin his life, but I think it was behind a closed door somewhere . . . and hopefully this is a closure that — that’s it. It’s finished, everybody knows, (Father LeBlanc is) exposed for what he was, and that’s it."
This article was found at:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1101982.html
30 Dec 2008
U.S. Supreme Court gets exorcism case of ex-Colleyville woman
Star-Telegram - Texas December 26, 2008
by Max B. Baker
The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to review the case of a former Colleyville woman who claims a forced traumatic exorcism left her so physically bruised and emotionally scarred that she later attempted to commit suicide.
A sharply divided Texas Supreme Court ruled in June that the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God staff and members are protected by the First Amendment because it involves an ecclesiastical dispute over religious conduct.
Laura Schubert Pearson described a wild night in 1996 that involved casting out demons from the church and two attempts to exorcise demons from her. Only 17 years old, the incident lead Pearson to eventually attempt suicide.
Pearson’s attorneys contend that the Texas Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision "dramatically and dangerously departs" from U.S. Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence, adding that someone’s religious beliefs do not excuse them from being held accountable under valid state laws that prohibit such things as assault and false imprisonment.
"We don’t know what kind of mischief the decision is going to create," because it tries to expand the universe of activities that are protected by the First Amendment’s freedom of religion precepts, said Scott Gant, the Washington D.C. attorney who is representing the Pearson and her family. "The Texas Supreme Court’s majority ignored some of the most relevant U.S. Supreme Court decisions and then misapplied others."
Forbidden territory
In briefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, attorneys representing the now defunct church _ it has since merged with another Colleyville Church — contend the case is about a personal injury case regarding mental anguish damages that should be left for the state courts to decide.
Arguing that a similar claim has never been made in a United States court, David Pruessner, the church’s attorney, also wrote that "pursuing this tort path would take the courts into forbidden territory: protected religious conduct." He adds the Texas high court’s decision is consistent with the legal doctrine of ecclesiastical autonomy.
"It is fundamental that the Constitution embraces the right to be free from unwarranted governmental intervention," Pruessner’s brief states. The Dallas attorney could not be reached for comment on Friday.
Gant expects the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if it will consider the case by mid to late January.
Pearson is now 29 years old, married and lives in Georgia.
Spread eagle
What happened to Laura Schubert Pearson at the church spanned several days in the summer of 1996.
Pearson and her brother, Joey, were involved in church activities while there parents were out of town. On a Friday evening, the atmosphere at the church became "spiritually charged" when another youth said he saw a demon.
At the youth minister’s direction, the youth frantically anointed everything in the church with holy oil until they were exhausted and finally dismissed early Saturday morning.
At the Sunday evening worship services, Laura Pearson collapsed and church members "laid hands" on her and forcibly held her arms even as she cried, yelled and demanded to be let go. She was finally released after she calmed down and replied with requests to say the name Jesus.
The following Wednesday, during a youth service, Pearson reportedly began acting in the same manner, curling into a fetal position and asked to be left alone. Church members thought she was in distress and held her down in a "spread eagle" position. Pearson suffered carpet burns and scrapes on her back and bruised wrists.
After the exorcism, she dropped out of high school her senior year, began to cut herself as many as 100 times over several years, and refused to leave the house. Pearson slit her wrists with a box cutter.
Spiritual warfare
In his U.S. Supreme Court brief, Pruessner describes the activities at the Pentecostal Pleasant Glade church to cast out demons as "spiritual warfare" that is a controversial activity of the denomination.
To outsiders, while it may appear "weird," he said that tens of millions of Pentecostal followers pursue these beliefs without harm, including Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Her father, Tom Schubert, is a former Assembly of God pastor and missionary. He has since quit the church.
"This was simply normal church life for (Pearson) and her family," Pruessner wrote.
The church’s attorneys told a Tarrant County jury that Pearson’s psychological problems actually were caused by traumatic events she witnessed while her parents were serving in Africa. They also continually argued that the ministers and staff were trying to help Pearson, not hurt her.
But her father questioned what happened and the family eventually sued. They said their daughter had been abused and falsely imprisoned, and the 2002 trial never touched on the religious aspects of the case.
A jury found the church and its members liable and awarded Pearson $300,000 for mental anguish, but the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth cut $122,000 from the verdict for loss of future income.
Dangerous practice
In the church’s appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, it raised the question of whether Pleasant Glades’ First Amendment rights regarding freedom of religion do not prevent the church from being held liable for mental distress triggered by what it described as a "hyper spiritualistic environment."
For the court to impose any legal liability on members would possibly have an unconstitutional 'chilling effect’ by compelling the church to abandon core principles, Justice David Medina wrote.
In a stinging dissent, Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson said the majority’s opinion is an "overly broad holding" that conflicts with well-settled legal and constitutional principles that could "prove to be dangerous in practice."
This article was found at:
http://www.star-telegram.com/northeast/story/1112895.html
11 Dec 2008
Video Tells of Missionary Abuse
Christianity.ca
Former students – children of missionaries – who attended Mamou boarding school, Guinea, share memories that include beatings, ridicule and sexual assault.
by Debra Fieguth
A new documentary film about child abuse at a missionary boarding school in West Africa reopens the painful experiences of survivors who endured physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual assaults.
In All God’s Children: The Ultimate Sacrifice, former students share their memories of Mamou boarding school in Guinea from the late 1950s to the early 1970s – memories that include beatings, ridicule and being sexually violated in the secrecy of their dorm rooms. Interspersed with interviews of survivors and their missionary parents is footage of seemingly happy children playing in the schoolyard and at the swimming pool.
New York filmmakers Luci Westphal and Scott Solary say the documentary isn’t intended as just another exposé. (Faith Today’s first report on Mamou in 1997 was followed by extensive print coverage in other media.)
“Our biggest goal is to help the healing of past survivors,” says Westphal. The idea for the film came about five years ago during a visit with Solary’s great-aunt and uncle, when the retired missionaries began talking about their experiences in sending their two sons to Mamou. Deeply moved by the stories, Solary asked, “How can I not make a film about it?” The pair abandoned the film their company, Good Hard Working People, had begun and devoted the next four years to putting together All God’s Children, their first full-length documentary.
For Canadian Beverly Shellrude Thompson, participating in the project was both difficult and helpful. “One of the things that has been my mantra is that the story needs to be told, that there’s healing in telling the story,” she said from her home in Burlington, Ontario.
“I’ve always carried in my head a deep shroud of secrecy that allowed both the pain and the system to go on.” Old black-and-white photographs of smiling missionary families, recordings of “Onward Christian Soldiers” and other familiar hymns, and the footage of laughing children form the backdrop to the interviews with alumni and former missionaries. The children seem to be happy – at least when they’re playing. But as Shellrude Thompson explains, the playtime laughter was a way of coping with what was taking place in the classroom or at night.
Shellrude Thompson and other Mamou alumni worked for years to get The Christian and Missionary Alliance, which ran the school, to acknowledge what happened at Mamou. A formal inquiry was eventually established and some 80 alumni came forward to tell their stories. The Alliance’s president offered an official apology. Former Mamou staff who were still alive were investigated and a few received reprimands or suspensions.
But to many alumni the apology and the reprimands did little to redress the harm done. In All God’s Children, a current Alliance leader acknowledges the inadequacy of the denomination in dealing properly with the abuse. “They were slower than they should have been in doing something about it when they heard,” says Bob Fetherlin, vice-president for international ministries. “The refusal to deal with it and acknowledge it had as big an impact as the abuse itself.”
Thoughts of suicide, depression, loss of faith and other issues are the legacy of Mamou. Asked to endure a cruel boarding school for the sake of the Gospel, some adult survivors are now asking if all those African souls were worth the sacrifice of children.
All God’s Children premiered at the Sarasota Film Festival in Florida in March. It has yet to receive wide distribution and there are no plans so far to screen the film in Canada. DVDs are available from www.allgodschildrenthefilm.com. For Shellrude Thompson, delving into the past pain once again was worth it. After the film was shown in Sarasota, she recalls “At least two people stood up and said, ‘This is my story.’ ”
Debra Fieguth is a freelance writer based in Kingston, Ontario.
Originally published in Faith Today, November/December 2008.
This article was found at:
http://www.christianity.ca/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=6312
RELATED ARTICLES
Former students – children of missionaries – who attended Mamou boarding school, Guinea, share memories that include beatings, ridicule and sexual assault.
by Debra Fieguth
A new documentary film about child abuse at a missionary boarding school in West Africa reopens the painful experiences of survivors who endured physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual assaults.
In All God’s Children: The Ultimate Sacrifice, former students share their memories of Mamou boarding school in Guinea from the late 1950s to the early 1970s – memories that include beatings, ridicule and being sexually violated in the secrecy of their dorm rooms. Interspersed with interviews of survivors and their missionary parents is footage of seemingly happy children playing in the schoolyard and at the swimming pool.
New York filmmakers Luci Westphal and Scott Solary say the documentary isn’t intended as just another exposé. (Faith Today’s first report on Mamou in 1997 was followed by extensive print coverage in other media.)
“Our biggest goal is to help the healing of past survivors,” says Westphal. The idea for the film came about five years ago during a visit with Solary’s great-aunt and uncle, when the retired missionaries began talking about their experiences in sending their two sons to Mamou. Deeply moved by the stories, Solary asked, “How can I not make a film about it?” The pair abandoned the film their company, Good Hard Working People, had begun and devoted the next four years to putting together All God’s Children, their first full-length documentary.
For Canadian Beverly Shellrude Thompson, participating in the project was both difficult and helpful. “One of the things that has been my mantra is that the story needs to be told, that there’s healing in telling the story,” she said from her home in Burlington, Ontario.
“I’ve always carried in my head a deep shroud of secrecy that allowed both the pain and the system to go on.” Old black-and-white photographs of smiling missionary families, recordings of “Onward Christian Soldiers” and other familiar hymns, and the footage of laughing children form the backdrop to the interviews with alumni and former missionaries. The children seem to be happy – at least when they’re playing. But as Shellrude Thompson explains, the playtime laughter was a way of coping with what was taking place in the classroom or at night.
Shellrude Thompson and other Mamou alumni worked for years to get The Christian and Missionary Alliance, which ran the school, to acknowledge what happened at Mamou. A formal inquiry was eventually established and some 80 alumni came forward to tell their stories. The Alliance’s president offered an official apology. Former Mamou staff who were still alive were investigated and a few received reprimands or suspensions.
But to many alumni the apology and the reprimands did little to redress the harm done. In All God’s Children, a current Alliance leader acknowledges the inadequacy of the denomination in dealing properly with the abuse. “They were slower than they should have been in doing something about it when they heard,” says Bob Fetherlin, vice-president for international ministries. “The refusal to deal with it and acknowledge it had as big an impact as the abuse itself.”
Thoughts of suicide, depression, loss of faith and other issues are the legacy of Mamou. Asked to endure a cruel boarding school for the sake of the Gospel, some adult survivors are now asking if all those African souls were worth the sacrifice of children.
All God’s Children premiered at the Sarasota Film Festival in Florida in March. It has yet to receive wide distribution and there are no plans so far to screen the film in Canada. DVDs are available from www.allgodschildrenthefilm.com. For Shellrude Thompson, delving into the past pain once again was worth it. After the film was shown in Sarasota, she recalls “At least two people stood up and said, ‘This is my story.’ ”
Debra Fieguth is a freelance writer based in Kingston, Ontario.
Originally published in Faith Today, November/December 2008.
This article was found at:
http://www.christianity.ca/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=6312
RELATED ARTICLES
Report reveals dozens of missionary kids in Africa criminally abused at New Tribes Mission school but no one ever charged
Holy Cross Brothers stand accused
The Montreal Gazette - December 9, 2008
Brothers Stand Accused
It was a betrayal like no other. René Cornellier Sr., now 75, thought the thousands of dollars he spent on tuition every year from 1972 to 1976 for his son's education at Montreal's prestigious Collège Notre Dame would be well worth it - until he recently was shown a letter his youngest son, René, wrote before dying of AIDS in 1994, detailing the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of four religious brothers beginning when he was just 12 years old.
by Sue Montgomery
"I entrusted my children to an institution that in theory, at least, had a good reputation, but that clearly wasn't deserved," he said in an interview, stressing the grief and guilt he feels for having unknowingly put his son in harm's way.
His son had gone to a school authority to report the abuse while he was still a student, but nothing was done. A Gazette investigation shows he was not alone. Other young men have come forward, during their youth or much later, to report abuse by Les Frères de Ste. Croix (Holy Cross brothers) at Collège Notre Dame, at a Holy Cross school in Ontario, at a Montreal halfway house run by the brothers, and within a family circle.
Most of the abuse in the cases uncovered by The Gazette took place in the 1970s.
Some victims were persuaded to keep quiet, but in at least three cases that silence was bought - for as much as $250,000. A source close to the Holy Cross order estimates that in the past 20 years, half a million dollars was paid out to sexual abuse victims, half of which came from Collège Notre Dame funds.
The brothers have deep roots in Quebec - they started and own the college, as well as other schools, and own and operate St. Joseph's Oratory, the great domed church on Queen Mary Rd. that can be seen from much of the city.
The college was founded by the brothers in 1869 as a private boys high school that took in boarders, but the last brother to teach there left in 1997. The last director of the school to come from the order died in 2003. Today, it is a private co-ed high school with 1,600 students and the only two brothers still on the payroll work in maintenance and audio-visual. The order still has a strong presence on the board of directors and its director, Yvon Lafrenière, is a layperson who has worked for many years at the college.
- - -
When René Cornellier Sr.'s wife died of breast cancer in 1967 at the age of 35, he sent Manon, Robert and their brother René, who was just 8 at the time, off to boarding school, where he believed they would receive more nurturing than he could give as a single parent.
René, the middle child, still fragile and vulnerable after the loss of his beloved mother, soon followed in his older brother's footsteps and attended Collège Notre Dame. The gothic, four-storey building standing in the shadow of St. Joseph's Oratory was known for its music program, as well as its science and sports activities. It was one of the first schools in the province to be equipped with a swimming pool and gym.
No one in the family had any inkling of what René had endured there. Robert, four years ahead of René at Collège Notre Dame, had heard stories of abuse, but never experienced any himself.
"He kind of seemed a bit lost in the world and couldn't find his way," their father said of René, who travelled the world and never really found his niche in life. "Now it's clear he was marked by that experience."
In his first letter to the school detailing what he'd allegedly endured, written from France in February 1993 and addressed simply to "the concerned authorities," René Cornellier Jr. alluded to a plan he and other students came up with in the 1970s to make their abuse public, but he said they were warned to keep it quiet by then director of educational services Brother Charles E. Smith.
"In this era, threats were effective," Cornellier wrote. "I know that the college was made aware of the problem a number of times, but silence was always maintained regardless of the cost.
"I think it's time that college authorities stop sticking their heads in the sand, either by sending recalcitrant brothers to the Third World, with results you're well aware of, or letting the years pass (scarring the affected children) or in handing out precious sums of money to shield the guilty."
One student who wanted to go public at the time with Cornellier later committed suicide in CEgep because of what he had experienced at Collège Notre Dame, according to a friend Cornellier lived with before his death in 1994. Another was killed in Mexico during an alleged botched drug deal.
After his first letter went unanswered by the college, Cornellier wrote a second months later and addressed it directly to Smith and the school's board of directors. He said he interpreted the lack of response as the college choosing to keep its eyes closed about abuse taking place with impunity over the years - a view that he said was confirmed when he learned Smith had recently been named general director of the college as well as president of its board of directors. Lafrenière, the college's current director, was director of educational services under Smith.
While those who abused Cornellier were now either retired or dead, he said he worried about current or future students whose parents went to great expense and sacrifice ("like my own") to entrust their children to the college.
Finally, in a third letter to provincial superior Raymond Lamontagne, the order's top religious brother in the province, Cornellier wrote that he was disturbed that Smith was the only one who wrote back to him and offered to speak to him "either out of compassion or fear," but Cornellier said he wouldn't accept the offer to talk, since it didn't come from the board. In his letter to Smith, Cornellier said he had no intention of suing his abusers "because no amount of money could repair the damage done, and my silence is not for sale."
In one of two letters he wrote to Cornellier in August 1993, Smith said he was anxious to speak with the former student, for their "mutual benefit and understanding."
Eventually, in about 1994, a committee was set up by the college at the request of the provincial superior to establish a policy to deal with sexual abuse and Smith was appointed chairman.
Approached this week at Le Grand St. Joseph, a large brothers' retirement home with a wrap-around porch in Chomedey, Smith was adamant that he had no recollection of Cornellier or any other allegations of sexual abuse while he was director at the college.
"I have no comment on those problems, if there were problems," he said, when asked about a $250,000 payout to a former student, the agreement for which was signed by Smith himself. Nor did he remember receiving letters from or writing letters to René Cornellier: "I have no memory of that. I'm not aware of that."
He referred all questions to the provincial superior, Father Jean-Pierre Aumont.
"I can assure you that the Congregation of Holy Cross acts with diligence and deals seriously with situations brought to our attention in which one of its members or employees has acted improperly," Aumont wrote in an email this week to The Gazette. "We have taken necessary steps and co-operated with authorities in the past when made aware of such situations."
Aumont said the order has been the target of intimidation and blackmail by a religious brother who recently left the Brothers of Holy Cross and who wasn't happy with the financial package he negotiated before his departure.
But documents obtained by The Gazette and interviews with victims and sources close to the order suggest that Brothers of Holy Cross wished to keep their alleged misdeeds quiet at all costs.
In 1978, a couple of years after Cornellier graduated, a boy whose name can't be published began high school at Collège Notre Dame. In his second year one of the brothers began showing him special attention, which led to sexual touching and oral sex. The pattern of sexual encounters continued over the student's high school years and beyond.
Reached at the order's Laval retirement home, Brother Olivain Leblanc responded curtly to Gazette queries about the abuse.
"It's all been dealt with and I'm not talking about it," he said, before hanging up.
The decision to make the payoff of $250,000 to this student, which appeared on the college's balance sheet as "payment for professional services," was made by Smith on Oct. 15, 1993, infuriating a layperson who had knowledge of the financial operations of the brothers and also had the power to sign cheques for the administration of the religious province.
"It should have been the congregation (the order) that paid," he said, pointing out that the college receives government subsidies of about $5 million annually. "You can't use the college's money to pay for what happened with one of the brothers."
Smith ordered the payout, despite instructions to the contrary from his superiors and despite the harm such a move could cause the order and college should it ever become public. Registration, which was to begin the same week the agreement was reached, might have also been affected had the news got out, those close to the order say.
In the fall of 1977, a year after Cornellier had graduated, another student, who did not want his name used in this story, said he approached Smith and told him about abuse he had experienced the previous school year.
"I remember he listened to me very attentively, and as soon as I finished, he thanked me and said I showed a lot of maturity," said the student, now 45 and married with children. "Then he asked me to be discreet.
"It was clear to me he didn't want me to do anything that would tarnish the reputation of the school."
Years later, in 1992, when the student's wife was pregnant with their first child, he once again approached Smith and said he wanted to speak to his abuser, and perhaps get an apology from him.
"He told me to put it behind me, and that I would never get what I wanted from (the abuser)," the former student said. "He said the man is sick psychologically and that the order was seeing that he was getting therapy."
Still not satisfied, the former student finally went to the police, who managed to dig up two other alleged victims of the same brother.
"When my son was born, I told him that when you see wrongdoing, you have to speak up," he said in an interview. "I couldn't ask him to do something without doing it myself."
There were more allegations of sexual abuse as the Brothers of Holy Cross silently wrung their hands about how best to keep the misconduct of some of their members quiet and in turn, protect not only their name, but the millions of dollars in the order's coffers. Often, when a religious brother was found to be a problem, he was moved, either to another province, to the United States for brief psychiatric therapy or to a mission in the Third World.
Most of the victims' allegations went nowhere. One brother was charged and acquitted in 2006 by Quebec Court Judge Rolande Matte because she said she could not find Brother Claude Hurtubise guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
"There is nothing in the evidence to explain why three young boys who've become men, who don't know one another, for whom the only common denominator is that they had Claude Hurtubise as a teacher, are accusing him of committing indecent acts on them," she wrote. Hurtubise was also one of the brothers named by Cornellier as abusing him.
At the time of the abuse, the former student said, he told his mother, who was an actress, struggling to raise two sons on her own after their father left when the youngest child was just four.
"I was only 14 when I told her and my mother wasn't psychologically strong enough for that," he said. "She cried, that's all. She didn't know what else to do."
Hurtubise had no comment when contacted by The Gazette this week.
In 2004 email to one of the provincial councillors, the superior general in Rome, Father Hugh Cleary, wrote about abuse cases: "They are part of the human condition. They always have to be treated with delicacy and directness for the good of everyone concerned, particularly those who have been abused but also for the good of the perpetrator. They have their pain and human needs, too. ...
"I checked the files here and there is nothing serious about any cases regarding (Claude Hurtubise). There are other cases that were sent to (a brother) but no names are given. In that sense the files are clean and won't be an issue for any court hearings."
In 1996, Smith was replaced by Brother Raymond Lamontagne as director of the college. Lamontagne hired assistant director Jocelyn Morin on a five-year contract to "bring order" to the college. A layperson with experience in teaching and union organization, Morin had worked in the 1990s at another of the brothers' schools, Collège St. Césaire, southeast of Montreal.
In a recent interview at a St. Lambert café, Morin said he arrived at a school, now co-ed and no longer housing boarders, in freefall. Enrolment had fallen from a high of 1,250 students to 975 and Collège Notre Dame had a deficit of $1 million.
During his term, he built a surplus of $1 million. Morin also discovered some brothers were downloading hardcore kiddie porn and he put an end to it, and dismissed a brother in 1997 for groping a female student. The father of the student threatened to sue, but agreed not to if the brother was fired.
"The pedagogical department let me know that this type of complaint wasn't new when it came to Brother (Michel) Gauthier," Morin wrote in a memo for the file. The order then sent Gauthier for therapy in the United States.
"When he returned to Quebec, I warned him that he was not to do anything at the school that involved contact with students," Morin wrote.
"Knowing what I know now," he said, "I should have gone to the police. But I thought the community would clean themselves up. I was convinced, because they told me that if I had proof (of abuse), they would deal with it.
"It was all seen as normal by the brothers, which is even worse. It's like the Duplessis orphans or how we treated natives. It's disgusting. Is it normal to abuse a child? It's never been normal."
Vincent Grégoire, secretary general of Collège Notre Dame, said Lafrenière knew nothing about the $250,000 settlement made to the student, nor had he heard of any other cases of abuse at the school. He said Lafrenière dismissed Hurtubise, who was back on the school's payroll in 2003, when he became director in 2004. Grégoire, who was a student at the same time as Cornellier but didn't know him, said he never heard about abuse at the college.
"I wasn't a victim, nor were any of my friends victims," he said.
smontgomery@thegazette.canwest.com
Collège Notre Dame was founded by the brothers in 1869 with 24 students and was a boarding school exclusively for boys.
Today it has 1,600 students, None of the teachers are brothers. Michel Gauthier was the last brother to teach there, and he was fired in 1997 for sexually touching a female student.
The school is subsidized by the government, according to the number of students it has each year. In 2003-2004, for example, it received $3,421 for each of the 1,599 students enrolled, for a total of $5.5 million.
Up until the 1960s, more than 70 brothers lived in the school, which took in boarders until 1990. From its founding to the '80s, it was an exclusively male place, except for a few female teachers. When a brother retired, he was replaced by a layperson, since members of the order were aging and there were fewer new recruits.
Today, only two brothers work at Collège Notre Dame: one in maintenance and the other in audio-visual. But there are brothers on the board of directors, giving the Brothers of Holy Cross a say in the running of the school, such as hiring the director general, renovations, approval of financial statements and approving signatories to bank accounts.
Brothers of Holy Cross finances
In Montreal, the order has about $50 million in assets, including investments and property. Brothers got their money from three sources: income from investments, old age pension and provincial pension, and rent from Collège Notre Dame, which is about $350,000 a year. A year and a half ago, the brothers joined together with the province's Fathers of Holy Cross to create one entity worth close to $100 million.
They pay no income tax and get a 50-per-cent refund for GST and PST.
Donations, which don't amount to more than about $13,000 annually, go to the overseas missions.
This article was found at:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Brothers+accused/
1041144/story.html
Brothers Stand Accused
It was a betrayal like no other. René Cornellier Sr., now 75, thought the thousands of dollars he spent on tuition every year from 1972 to 1976 for his son's education at Montreal's prestigious Collège Notre Dame would be well worth it - until he recently was shown a letter his youngest son, René, wrote before dying of AIDS in 1994, detailing the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of four religious brothers beginning when he was just 12 years old.
by Sue Montgomery
"I entrusted my children to an institution that in theory, at least, had a good reputation, but that clearly wasn't deserved," he said in an interview, stressing the grief and guilt he feels for having unknowingly put his son in harm's way.
His son had gone to a school authority to report the abuse while he was still a student, but nothing was done. A Gazette investigation shows he was not alone. Other young men have come forward, during their youth or much later, to report abuse by Les Frères de Ste. Croix (Holy Cross brothers) at Collège Notre Dame, at a Holy Cross school in Ontario, at a Montreal halfway house run by the brothers, and within a family circle.
Most of the abuse in the cases uncovered by The Gazette took place in the 1970s.
Some victims were persuaded to keep quiet, but in at least three cases that silence was bought - for as much as $250,000. A source close to the Holy Cross order estimates that in the past 20 years, half a million dollars was paid out to sexual abuse victims, half of which came from Collège Notre Dame funds.
The brothers have deep roots in Quebec - they started and own the college, as well as other schools, and own and operate St. Joseph's Oratory, the great domed church on Queen Mary Rd. that can be seen from much of the city.
The college was founded by the brothers in 1869 as a private boys high school that took in boarders, but the last brother to teach there left in 1997. The last director of the school to come from the order died in 2003. Today, it is a private co-ed high school with 1,600 students and the only two brothers still on the payroll work in maintenance and audio-visual. The order still has a strong presence on the board of directors and its director, Yvon Lafrenière, is a layperson who has worked for many years at the college.
- - -
When René Cornellier Sr.'s wife died of breast cancer in 1967 at the age of 35, he sent Manon, Robert and their brother René, who was just 8 at the time, off to boarding school, where he believed they would receive more nurturing than he could give as a single parent.
René, the middle child, still fragile and vulnerable after the loss of his beloved mother, soon followed in his older brother's footsteps and attended Collège Notre Dame. The gothic, four-storey building standing in the shadow of St. Joseph's Oratory was known for its music program, as well as its science and sports activities. It was one of the first schools in the province to be equipped with a swimming pool and gym.
No one in the family had any inkling of what René had endured there. Robert, four years ahead of René at Collège Notre Dame, had heard stories of abuse, but never experienced any himself.
"He kind of seemed a bit lost in the world and couldn't find his way," their father said of René, who travelled the world and never really found his niche in life. "Now it's clear he was marked by that experience."
In his first letter to the school detailing what he'd allegedly endured, written from France in February 1993 and addressed simply to "the concerned authorities," René Cornellier Jr. alluded to a plan he and other students came up with in the 1970s to make their abuse public, but he said they were warned to keep it quiet by then director of educational services Brother Charles E. Smith.
"In this era, threats were effective," Cornellier wrote. "I know that the college was made aware of the problem a number of times, but silence was always maintained regardless of the cost.
"I think it's time that college authorities stop sticking their heads in the sand, either by sending recalcitrant brothers to the Third World, with results you're well aware of, or letting the years pass (scarring the affected children) or in handing out precious sums of money to shield the guilty."
One student who wanted to go public at the time with Cornellier later committed suicide in CEgep because of what he had experienced at Collège Notre Dame, according to a friend Cornellier lived with before his death in 1994. Another was killed in Mexico during an alleged botched drug deal.
After his first letter went unanswered by the college, Cornellier wrote a second months later and addressed it directly to Smith and the school's board of directors. He said he interpreted the lack of response as the college choosing to keep its eyes closed about abuse taking place with impunity over the years - a view that he said was confirmed when he learned Smith had recently been named general director of the college as well as president of its board of directors. Lafrenière, the college's current director, was director of educational services under Smith.
While those who abused Cornellier were now either retired or dead, he said he worried about current or future students whose parents went to great expense and sacrifice ("like my own") to entrust their children to the college.
Finally, in a third letter to provincial superior Raymond Lamontagne, the order's top religious brother in the province, Cornellier wrote that he was disturbed that Smith was the only one who wrote back to him and offered to speak to him "either out of compassion or fear," but Cornellier said he wouldn't accept the offer to talk, since it didn't come from the board. In his letter to Smith, Cornellier said he had no intention of suing his abusers "because no amount of money could repair the damage done, and my silence is not for sale."
In one of two letters he wrote to Cornellier in August 1993, Smith said he was anxious to speak with the former student, for their "mutual benefit and understanding."
Eventually, in about 1994, a committee was set up by the college at the request of the provincial superior to establish a policy to deal with sexual abuse and Smith was appointed chairman.
Approached this week at Le Grand St. Joseph, a large brothers' retirement home with a wrap-around porch in Chomedey, Smith was adamant that he had no recollection of Cornellier or any other allegations of sexual abuse while he was director at the college.
"I have no comment on those problems, if there were problems," he said, when asked about a $250,000 payout to a former student, the agreement for which was signed by Smith himself. Nor did he remember receiving letters from or writing letters to René Cornellier: "I have no memory of that. I'm not aware of that."
He referred all questions to the provincial superior, Father Jean-Pierre Aumont.
"I can assure you that the Congregation of Holy Cross acts with diligence and deals seriously with situations brought to our attention in which one of its members or employees has acted improperly," Aumont wrote in an email this week to The Gazette. "We have taken necessary steps and co-operated with authorities in the past when made aware of such situations."
Aumont said the order has been the target of intimidation and blackmail by a religious brother who recently left the Brothers of Holy Cross and who wasn't happy with the financial package he negotiated before his departure.
But documents obtained by The Gazette and interviews with victims and sources close to the order suggest that Brothers of Holy Cross wished to keep their alleged misdeeds quiet at all costs.
In 1978, a couple of years after Cornellier graduated, a boy whose name can't be published began high school at Collège Notre Dame. In his second year one of the brothers began showing him special attention, which led to sexual touching and oral sex. The pattern of sexual encounters continued over the student's high school years and beyond.
Reached at the order's Laval retirement home, Brother Olivain Leblanc responded curtly to Gazette queries about the abuse.
"It's all been dealt with and I'm not talking about it," he said, before hanging up.
The decision to make the payoff of $250,000 to this student, which appeared on the college's balance sheet as "payment for professional services," was made by Smith on Oct. 15, 1993, infuriating a layperson who had knowledge of the financial operations of the brothers and also had the power to sign cheques for the administration of the religious province.
"It should have been the congregation (the order) that paid," he said, pointing out that the college receives government subsidies of about $5 million annually. "You can't use the college's money to pay for what happened with one of the brothers."
Smith ordered the payout, despite instructions to the contrary from his superiors and despite the harm such a move could cause the order and college should it ever become public. Registration, which was to begin the same week the agreement was reached, might have also been affected had the news got out, those close to the order say.
In the fall of 1977, a year after Cornellier had graduated, another student, who did not want his name used in this story, said he approached Smith and told him about abuse he had experienced the previous school year.
"I remember he listened to me very attentively, and as soon as I finished, he thanked me and said I showed a lot of maturity," said the student, now 45 and married with children. "Then he asked me to be discreet.
"It was clear to me he didn't want me to do anything that would tarnish the reputation of the school."
Years later, in 1992, when the student's wife was pregnant with their first child, he once again approached Smith and said he wanted to speak to his abuser, and perhaps get an apology from him.
"He told me to put it behind me, and that I would never get what I wanted from (the abuser)," the former student said. "He said the man is sick psychologically and that the order was seeing that he was getting therapy."
Still not satisfied, the former student finally went to the police, who managed to dig up two other alleged victims of the same brother.
"When my son was born, I told him that when you see wrongdoing, you have to speak up," he said in an interview. "I couldn't ask him to do something without doing it myself."
There were more allegations of sexual abuse as the Brothers of Holy Cross silently wrung their hands about how best to keep the misconduct of some of their members quiet and in turn, protect not only their name, but the millions of dollars in the order's coffers. Often, when a religious brother was found to be a problem, he was moved, either to another province, to the United States for brief psychiatric therapy or to a mission in the Third World.
Most of the victims' allegations went nowhere. One brother was charged and acquitted in 2006 by Quebec Court Judge Rolande Matte because she said she could not find Brother Claude Hurtubise guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
"There is nothing in the evidence to explain why three young boys who've become men, who don't know one another, for whom the only common denominator is that they had Claude Hurtubise as a teacher, are accusing him of committing indecent acts on them," she wrote. Hurtubise was also one of the brothers named by Cornellier as abusing him.
At the time of the abuse, the former student said, he told his mother, who was an actress, struggling to raise two sons on her own after their father left when the youngest child was just four.
"I was only 14 when I told her and my mother wasn't psychologically strong enough for that," he said. "She cried, that's all. She didn't know what else to do."
Hurtubise had no comment when contacted by The Gazette this week.
In 2004 email to one of the provincial councillors, the superior general in Rome, Father Hugh Cleary, wrote about abuse cases: "They are part of the human condition. They always have to be treated with delicacy and directness for the good of everyone concerned, particularly those who have been abused but also for the good of the perpetrator. They have their pain and human needs, too. ...
"I checked the files here and there is nothing serious about any cases regarding (Claude Hurtubise). There are other cases that were sent to (a brother) but no names are given. In that sense the files are clean and won't be an issue for any court hearings."
In 1996, Smith was replaced by Brother Raymond Lamontagne as director of the college. Lamontagne hired assistant director Jocelyn Morin on a five-year contract to "bring order" to the college. A layperson with experience in teaching and union organization, Morin had worked in the 1990s at another of the brothers' schools, Collège St. Césaire, southeast of Montreal.
In a recent interview at a St. Lambert café, Morin said he arrived at a school, now co-ed and no longer housing boarders, in freefall. Enrolment had fallen from a high of 1,250 students to 975 and Collège Notre Dame had a deficit of $1 million.
During his term, he built a surplus of $1 million. Morin also discovered some brothers were downloading hardcore kiddie porn and he put an end to it, and dismissed a brother in 1997 for groping a female student. The father of the student threatened to sue, but agreed not to if the brother was fired.
"The pedagogical department let me know that this type of complaint wasn't new when it came to Brother (Michel) Gauthier," Morin wrote in a memo for the file. The order then sent Gauthier for therapy in the United States.
"When he returned to Quebec, I warned him that he was not to do anything at the school that involved contact with students," Morin wrote.
"Knowing what I know now," he said, "I should have gone to the police. But I thought the community would clean themselves up. I was convinced, because they told me that if I had proof (of abuse), they would deal with it.
"It was all seen as normal by the brothers, which is even worse. It's like the Duplessis orphans or how we treated natives. It's disgusting. Is it normal to abuse a child? It's never been normal."
Vincent Grégoire, secretary general of Collège Notre Dame, said Lafrenière knew nothing about the $250,000 settlement made to the student, nor had he heard of any other cases of abuse at the school. He said Lafrenière dismissed Hurtubise, who was back on the school's payroll in 2003, when he became director in 2004. Grégoire, who was a student at the same time as Cornellier but didn't know him, said he never heard about abuse at the college.
"I wasn't a victim, nor were any of my friends victims," he said.
smontgomery@thegazette.canwest.com
Collège Notre Dame was founded by the brothers in 1869 with 24 students and was a boarding school exclusively for boys.
Today it has 1,600 students, None of the teachers are brothers. Michel Gauthier was the last brother to teach there, and he was fired in 1997 for sexually touching a female student.
The school is subsidized by the government, according to the number of students it has each year. In 2003-2004, for example, it received $3,421 for each of the 1,599 students enrolled, for a total of $5.5 million.
Up until the 1960s, more than 70 brothers lived in the school, which took in boarders until 1990. From its founding to the '80s, it was an exclusively male place, except for a few female teachers. When a brother retired, he was replaced by a layperson, since members of the order were aging and there were fewer new recruits.
Today, only two brothers work at Collège Notre Dame: one in maintenance and the other in audio-visual. But there are brothers on the board of directors, giving the Brothers of Holy Cross a say in the running of the school, such as hiring the director general, renovations, approval of financial statements and approving signatories to bank accounts.
Brothers of Holy Cross finances
In Montreal, the order has about $50 million in assets, including investments and property. Brothers got their money from three sources: income from investments, old age pension and provincial pension, and rent from Collège Notre Dame, which is about $350,000 a year. A year and a half ago, the brothers joined together with the province's Fathers of Holy Cross to create one entity worth close to $100 million.
They pay no income tax and get a 50-per-cent refund for GST and PST.
Donations, which don't amount to more than about $13,000 annually, go to the overseas missions.
This article was found at:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Brothers+accused/
1041144/story.html
8 Dec 2008
Many clergy abuse claimants unhappy with settlements
The Republican - Massachusetts December 7, 2008
by Stephanie Barry | Republican Staff
SPRINGFIELD - In a conference room at a downtown high-rise, dozens of men who say they were molested by priests learned recently about the economics of abuse.
Gauge the ugliness and duration. Measure the fallout: drugs, divorce, hospitalizations, suicide attempts.
For Daniel B. Daley, four years of alleged abuse by the Rev. Michael H. Devlin, his parish priest in West Springfield, yielded $80,000 in damages.
"They asked me: 'What difference did it make in your life?'" said Daley, one of 59 plaintiffs who in November collectively settled $4.5 million in clergy abuse claims with the local Catholic diocese. "But it's hard for me to say. I don't know how my life would have been different if it didn't happen."
Victims and their lawyers said they feel the settlements did not nearly assuage years of trauma - in Daley's case, starting when he was 11 years old.
But, a representative for the diocese said the church squeezed as much money as it could out of insurance carriers that resisted covering the claims for years.
"We did honestly and earnestly try to reach the best possible settlement that we could with the insurance companies, and turn it around in large part to the victims. We didn't profit from it," said Mark E. Dupont, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, which covers all four western counties.
The settlement followed a $7.7 million resolution with previous victims in 2004, which the diocese paid out of pocket, Dupont said. The more recent settlement was hung up by wrangling between the church and three insurance companies, which ultimately paid out $8.5 million to the diocese in June.
Lawyers, whose fees can be in the range of a third of any settlement, said high legal hurdles under state law, coupled with the juggernaut of clergy abuse claims that overcame the church in Massachusetts and elsewhere, have produced a protocol for victims looking to settle out of court. Claims are unlikely to make it to a jury, considering statutes of limitations for sex abuse crimes, charitable immunity protections and other legal impediments.
The statute of limitations to report sexual abuse in Massachusetts is 15 years; many victims of clergy abuse come forward long afterward. Also under state law, charities are generally capped at $20,000 in terms of civil awards.
"You have a very difficult job in getting past all of those things in any particular case," said Boston lawyer Carmen L. Durso, who had 10 clients in this round of litigation with the Springfield diocese, and dozens before them with the Boston archdiocese, where more than 500 victims came forward after the scandal broke in 2001. "So (the claimants) don't have a lot of bargaining power."
According to a Web site set up for clergy abuse watchers - bishopaccountability.org - about 30 cases have gone to trial since 1950.
In this city, former Bishop Thomas L. Dupre was indicted in 2004 in connection with the abuse of two boys during the 1970s. However, the district attorney was unable to prosecute because the cases were too old. Dupre resigned when the allegations became public, and contributed to the settlements received in November by two men who sued him.
As a result of dwindling resources, dioceses here and elsewhere have turned to insurance carriers to satisfy legal claims, and insurance companies have begun to place median sums on the members of "victim pools."
In the most recent round in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, each victim entered into voluntary arbitration with a $75,000 allocation, lawyers said. The diocese waived its charitable immunity and statute of limitations protections as a concession.
After completing questionnaires on the extent of their abuse, each plaintiff met with mediators in a conference room at Monarch Place this fall. Arbitrators were charged with deciding who deserved the $75,000 median, or more, or less. The claimants were obligated to take the sums mediators afforded as a condition of participating.
The overall result, according to lawyers, was a mathematical balancing act that took away from one victim as it gave to another. The diocese set a range of $5,000 to $200,000 for each settlement.
"The first time you give someone $200,000, you take $125,000 over the median amount out of the pool . So, in practice, you can't have many people getting $200,000 unless you have a bunch of people getting $5,000. What you end up with is a cluster around the median," said Durso.
A retired U.S. Air Force veteran who now works as a nurse, Daley, 48, of Holyoke, might be considered one of the lucky ones in the relative world of priest abuse.
Although he is twice divorced, Daley said he has not struggled with depression, homelessness or drug abuse, as scores of other clergy abuse victims have reported.
"Did I think the process was fair? Did I think my settlement was fair? No and no," he said.
But Daley struggled to come up with a number that would have satisfied him.
His lawyer, John J. Stobierski, called the most recent settlement process in Springfield "grossly unfair" in comparison with the last, when he represented virtually all of the victims and negotiated personally with the diocese and its lawyers.
"I think the touchstone was how much a victim could really open his heart and spill his guts, which is unfortunate," said Stobierski, who said he observed variances in awards that he thought missed the mark slightly, but lauded mediators' efforts to be fair nonetheless.
He said the high end in the 2004 settlement in Springfield was around $300,000 and the median far exceeded $75,000.
To that end, Daley and other victims said they can't help but be mindful of settlements in other states that are far higher than their own.
According to the clergy abuse watch site, the average settlement per victim between the mid-1980s and today is $325,000. The last three average settlements listed on the site in Spokane, Wash.; Dubuque, Iowa; and Denver, in 2008 were $180,000, $157,000 and $183,000, respectively.
The number of victims in each case was far fewer than in Springfield in each case, however. Jury awards tend to be much higher, according to reports.
Adelard Pierre "Duke" Dumaine III, 45, of Holyoke, also a victim of Devlin, said he received around the median settlement in the Springfield arbitration. He left the process unsatisfied, noting his medical bills exceeded his award after years of drug abuse, hospitalizations for depression and therapy.
However, he said the diocese offered an in-person meeting with Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell, which he found infinitely more rewarding.
"I told him what happened in my life and how it affected me. I am not happy with the financial settlement. I don't think it was nearly enough. But I did feel that he was sincere in his words, and that meant a lot."
This article was found at:
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/12/many_clergy_abuse_
claimants_un.html
27 Nov 2008
Mercy Ministries exorcism books leaked
LiveNews.com - Australia
November 26, 2008
by Tim Brunero
'There's no exorcism - that's not how the program works': Hillsong's earlier denial
THE HANDBOOK: Leaked photocopies of the Mercy Ministries guide
Handbooks allegedly used to perform exorcisms on sick girls at the controversial Mercy Ministries residences in Sydney and on the Sunshine Coast have been leaked to LIVENEWS.com.au.
Mercy Ministries, which is bankrolled by the Pentecostal Hillsong Church, has previously denied performing exorcisms on residents.
The documents, obtained clandestinely by a girl who “escaped” the group’s clutches, shows counsellors how to rid ‘demons’ from girls struggling with anorexia, depression and drug addiction.
Mercy Ministries’ activities hit the headlines in March this year when former residents claimed they were subjected to exorcisms, were cut off from friends and family and had to sign over their Centrelink payments to the group.
Some of the young women say they had little or no access to the promised psychologists and other mental health professionals but were instead counselled by bible studies students whose solution to all problems was prayer.
Earlier this year the then head of Mercy Ministries, Peter Irvine, said exorcisms were not practised at the residences. Mercy Ministries has been forced to shut their Sunshine Coast residence.
“There’s no exorcism, no driving out of spirits it’s not how the program works,” he told Today Tonight’s Marguerite McKinnon earlier this year.
But the handbooks tell a different story and corroborate accounts given to LIVENEWS.com.au by former residents of Mercy Ministries.
In the handbook, under a section entitled ‘Identifying Additional Demons’ those practising the exorcism are advised to ask the demon’s name, but not for any more details.
“They sometimes talk: they may threaten the person or you. They have been know to say, ‘I am going to kill you,’ and other unsavoury phrases. Command them to be quiet in the Name of Jesus,” the book advises.
Later, the book, Restoring The Foundations, published by an American Christian group, warns those exorcising demons to be firm.
“The minister’s attitude is one of commanding,” it reads.
“He needs to be firm and prepared to press in. He does not need to be loud. (Demons are not deaf.) The ministers’ commanding attitude resembles that of a person speaking to a little “yappy” dog commanding him to go home and stop barking.
“We also want the ministry receiver to set his will to resist and then command the particular demon or grouping of demons to leave him, in Jesus’ name. This is repeated until the demons are gone.”
Later in the book, those performing the exorcism are given more complex techniques in a subheading called ‘What to do With Obstinate Demons’.
Later a list of ‘Scriptures that Demons Hate’ is provided.
“But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you,” is one such passage singled out.
The emergence of the exorcism handbook lends weight to other claims made by girls who went through the Mercy Ministries program.
Megan Smith (not her real name), who spoke to LIVENEWS.com.au earlier this year, said her panic attacks only got worse.
“I was self-harming,” she said.
“I was cutting my arm with anything I could get my hands on – scratching with anything from my nails to paper clips.
“I never really had a problem with self-harm beforehand. When you tell them about self-harming they said I was trying to get attention and I was taking their valuable time away from girls with real problems.”
Finally, she was subjected to an exorcism.
“The counsellor gave me a list of different demons – demon of anger, demon of unforgiveness, demon of pride, there were lots of them and I was told to go away and circle the demons I had in me or around me,” said Smith.
“I was really scared… they cast demons out of me, one by one, and they became quite excited and animated during the process, and spoke in tongues.
“It was the counsellors and myself and they put their hands on me and started praying one by one for each of the demons that were on the list to be cast out of me.
“After each demon was cast out I had to say ‘I confirm the demon of X has been cast out of me in the name of Jesus and is unwelcome to return.'
“The whole time I was there, all I heard was that I'm demonic.
“Even after the exorcism, when I had the next anxiety attack, I was told that they had already cast the demons out, so therefore I was obviously either faking it, or I had chosen to let the demons come back, in which case I was not serious about getting better.
“They kept telling us that the world can't help us, professionals with all their 'worldly qualifications' can't help us, only Mercy could because only they have God's power.
“So when I was kicked out for being 'demonic, unable to be helped, not worth a place at Mercy’ and because I had taken too long to pray to become a Christian... it left me worse than I had ever been before in my life.
“They told me I would never get better now because I had blown my chance. I started cutting my arms and wrists more than ever, with their voices echoing in my mind as I did it.”
Suicidal and self-harming after being removed from the program, which she now thought was her only hope, she went to see a “proper psychologist to prepare me to go back to Mercy to help me fit in better.”
“The psychologist had never heard of them but told me to stay away from them… that person helped me more in the 40 minute session – really listening to me and understanding me.”
LIVENEWS.com.au has contacted Mercy Ministries for comment and is still awaiting a response.
This article was found at:
http://livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/11/26/EXCLUSIVE_Mercy_Ministry_
exorcism_books_leaked
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Mercy Ministries exorcism books leaked
November 26, 2008
by Tim Brunero
'There's no exorcism - that's not how the program works': Hillsong's earlier denial
THE HANDBOOK: Leaked photocopies of the Mercy Ministries guide
Handbooks allegedly used to perform exorcisms on sick girls at the controversial Mercy Ministries residences in Sydney and on the Sunshine Coast have been leaked to LIVENEWS.com.au.
Mercy Ministries, which is bankrolled by the Pentecostal Hillsong Church, has previously denied performing exorcisms on residents.
The documents, obtained clandestinely by a girl who “escaped” the group’s clutches, shows counsellors how to rid ‘demons’ from girls struggling with anorexia, depression and drug addiction.
Mercy Ministries’ activities hit the headlines in March this year when former residents claimed they were subjected to exorcisms, were cut off from friends and family and had to sign over their Centrelink payments to the group.
Some of the young women say they had little or no access to the promised psychologists and other mental health professionals but were instead counselled by bible studies students whose solution to all problems was prayer.
Earlier this year the then head of Mercy Ministries, Peter Irvine, said exorcisms were not practised at the residences. Mercy Ministries has been forced to shut their Sunshine Coast residence.
“There’s no exorcism, no driving out of spirits it’s not how the program works,” he told Today Tonight’s Marguerite McKinnon earlier this year.
But the handbooks tell a different story and corroborate accounts given to LIVENEWS.com.au by former residents of Mercy Ministries.
In the handbook, under a section entitled ‘Identifying Additional Demons’ those practising the exorcism are advised to ask the demon’s name, but not for any more details.
“They sometimes talk: they may threaten the person or you. They have been know to say, ‘I am going to kill you,’ and other unsavoury phrases. Command them to be quiet in the Name of Jesus,” the book advises.
Later, the book, Restoring The Foundations, published by an American Christian group, warns those exorcising demons to be firm.
“The minister’s attitude is one of commanding,” it reads.
“He needs to be firm and prepared to press in. He does not need to be loud. (Demons are not deaf.) The ministers’ commanding attitude resembles that of a person speaking to a little “yappy” dog commanding him to go home and stop barking.
“We also want the ministry receiver to set his will to resist and then command the particular demon or grouping of demons to leave him, in Jesus’ name. This is repeated until the demons are gone.”
Later in the book, those performing the exorcism are given more complex techniques in a subheading called ‘What to do With Obstinate Demons’.
Later a list of ‘Scriptures that Demons Hate’ is provided.
“But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you,” is one such passage singled out.
The emergence of the exorcism handbook lends weight to other claims made by girls who went through the Mercy Ministries program.
Megan Smith (not her real name), who spoke to LIVENEWS.com.au earlier this year, said her panic attacks only got worse.
“I was self-harming,” she said.
“I was cutting my arm with anything I could get my hands on – scratching with anything from my nails to paper clips.
“I never really had a problem with self-harm beforehand. When you tell them about self-harming they said I was trying to get attention and I was taking their valuable time away from girls with real problems.”
Finally, she was subjected to an exorcism.
“The counsellor gave me a list of different demons – demon of anger, demon of unforgiveness, demon of pride, there were lots of them and I was told to go away and circle the demons I had in me or around me,” said Smith.
“I was really scared… they cast demons out of me, one by one, and they became quite excited and animated during the process, and spoke in tongues.
“It was the counsellors and myself and they put their hands on me and started praying one by one for each of the demons that were on the list to be cast out of me.
“After each demon was cast out I had to say ‘I confirm the demon of X has been cast out of me in the name of Jesus and is unwelcome to return.'
“The whole time I was there, all I heard was that I'm demonic.
“Even after the exorcism, when I had the next anxiety attack, I was told that they had already cast the demons out, so therefore I was obviously either faking it, or I had chosen to let the demons come back, in which case I was not serious about getting better.
“They kept telling us that the world can't help us, professionals with all their 'worldly qualifications' can't help us, only Mercy could because only they have God's power.
“So when I was kicked out for being 'demonic, unable to be helped, not worth a place at Mercy’ and because I had taken too long to pray to become a Christian... it left me worse than I had ever been before in my life.
“They told me I would never get better now because I had blown my chance. I started cutting my arms and wrists more than ever, with their voices echoing in my mind as I did it.”
Suicidal and self-harming after being removed from the program, which she now thought was her only hope, she went to see a “proper psychologist to prepare me to go back to Mercy to help me fit in better.”
“The psychologist had never heard of them but told me to stay away from them… that person helped me more in the 40 minute session – really listening to me and understanding me.”
LIVENEWS.com.au has contacted Mercy Ministries for comment and is still awaiting a response.
This article was found at:
http://livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/11/26/EXCLUSIVE_Mercy_Ministry_
exorcism_books_leaked
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Mercy Ministries exorcism books leaked
18 Nov 2008
Jonestown and 'confirmation bias'
Los Angeles Times - November 18, 2008
by Michael Shermer
On this day 30 years ago in the jungles of Guyana, Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple cult, ordered the mass suicide or murder of more than 900 of his own followers by inducing them to imbibe cyanide-laced punch or by lethal injection. He had controlled nearly all information coming into the group and warned them daily that "they" (the government, imperialists, greedy capitalists, etc.) were the enemy. So when Rep. Leo Ryan and his investigative team showed up in Guyana, Jones' followers were primed to believe that "they" were coming to destroy them and had to be stopped. After the congressman and others in his party were killed, Jones told cult members that "they" would now really come down on them, and their only choice was to move on to the next stage of life.
Although some members tried to escape (and were shot), and some members were forced to drink the poison, most got caught up in the contagion of the moment and voluntarily took their own lives and those of their children. You can hear it in the screams and voices of their final moments, captured on tape, as Jones eggs them on:
Confirmation bias explains why so many rumors about candidates were eagerly embraced recently. On the left, commentators glommed onto false gossip about Sarah Palin's ignorance (she doesn't know that Africa is a continent) and bigotry (she tried to ban books from the public library) because liberals think that conservatives are dumb and dogmatic, and after eight years of George W. Bush's malapropisms and Palin's interview fumbles, such rumors merely confirmed what liberals already believed.
On the right, conservatives were primed to process hearsay about Barack Obama being a Muslim or Arab as true, or that his tax plan -- indistinguishable from that of most Democratic candidates in recent decades -- confirmed that he's a socialist, even while Republicans were nationalizing the financial industry and running up record debts.
Research on confirmation bias has found that when subjects are presented with evidence that contradicts their deeply held beliefs, they dismiss it as invalid, while other subjects treat the same information as valuable when it confirms what they believe. In one study, for example, subjects were shown a video of a child taking a test. One group was told that the child was from a high socioeconomic class; the other group was told that the child was from a low socioeconomic class. The subjects were asked to evaluate the academic abilities of the child based on the results of the test. The child believed to be from the high socioeconomic group was rated as above grade level, but the child believed to be from the low socioeconomic group wasrated as below grade level. Same data. Same kid. Different interpretations.
The confirmation bias sways us all, especially when it reinforces our inner tribalism. Most of us will never join a cult, but all of us are subject to the pull of believing that the evidence supports our most cherished beliefs. Inside Jonestown, Jim Jones' daily barrages confirmed to members that their cause was right and that ultimately death would bring about peace and justice.
It is for this reason that we need to look for disconfirmatory evidence, to listen to the arguments of those with whom we disagree, to ask for constructive criticism of our beliefs, and to remember Oliver Cromwell's words to the Church of Scotland in 1650: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, is an adjunct professor in economics at Claremont Graduate University and the author of "The Mind of the Market."
This article was found at:
http://www.latimes.com/
news/opinion/commentary/
la-oe-shermer18-2008nov18,
0,2806746.story
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by Michael Shermer
On this day 30 years ago in the jungles of Guyana, Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple cult, ordered the mass suicide or murder of more than 900 of his own followers by inducing them to imbibe cyanide-laced punch or by lethal injection. He had controlled nearly all information coming into the group and warned them daily that "they" (the government, imperialists, greedy capitalists, etc.) were the enemy. So when Rep. Leo Ryan and his investigative team showed up in Guyana, Jones' followers were primed to believe that "they" were coming to destroy them and had to be stopped. After the congressman and others in his party were killed, Jones told cult members that "they" would now really come down on them, and their only choice was to move on to the next stage of life.
Although some members tried to escape (and were shot), and some members were forced to drink the poison, most got caught up in the contagion of the moment and voluntarily took their own lives and those of their children. You can hear it in the screams and voices of their final moments, captured on tape, as Jones eggs them on:
"Please. For God's sake, let's get on with it. . . . We've had as much of this world as you're gonna get. . . . This is a revolutionary suicide. This is not a self-destructive suicide. So they'll pay for this. They brought this upon us. And they'll pay for that. I leave that destiny to them. . . . If everybody will relax. The best thing you do to relax, and you will have no problem. . . . Lay down your life with dignity. Don't lay down with tears and agony. There's nothing to death. . . . Stop this hysterics. This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die. We must die with some dignity. . . . Death is a million times preferable to 10 more days of this life. If you knew what was ahead of you -- you'd be glad to be stepping over tonight. . . . Hurry, hurry my children. Hurry."
Lamentably, Jonestown was not a one-time event. On March 26, 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult drank a deadly concoction (and for good measure wrapped plastic bags around their heads for asphyxiation) in order to join the mother ship they believed was on its way to Earth. How can such tragedies happen?
In general, these types of belief systems are coherent and logically consistent when you are inside them. It is not until you step outside the group and gain a different reference point that the coherence and logic vanishes. This is why cults control the movements of their members, and especially their access to outside information and contact with friends and loved ones in the real world. (Jones moved his group to Guyana from San Francisco.) There also are well-known social psychological effects at work in these groups -- such as the loss of individuality and the compliance of behavior and conformity of thought under group pressure, along with the diffusion of individual responsibility and group think.
But there is something deeper going on here that I think touches on cognitive processes in all of us as members of non-cult groups, such as political parties: confirmation bias. This is when we look for and find evidence to support what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away evidence that does not. And because we are so tribal by nature, we employ confirmation bias with extra vigor when it comes to defending the groups we belong to. Republicans tend to listen to conservative talk radio, watch Fox News and read the Wall Street Journal, gathering data and noting arguments that support their political beliefs. Democrats are more likely to listen to progressive talk radio and NPR, surf liberal blogs and read the New York Times. Everyone does it.Lamentably, Jonestown was not a one-time event. On March 26, 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult drank a deadly concoction (and for good measure wrapped plastic bags around their heads for asphyxiation) in order to join the mother ship they believed was on its way to Earth. How can such tragedies happen?
In general, these types of belief systems are coherent and logically consistent when you are inside them. It is not until you step outside the group and gain a different reference point that the coherence and logic vanishes. This is why cults control the movements of their members, and especially their access to outside information and contact with friends and loved ones in the real world. (Jones moved his group to Guyana from San Francisco.) There also are well-known social psychological effects at work in these groups -- such as the loss of individuality and the compliance of behavior and conformity of thought under group pressure, along with the diffusion of individual responsibility and group think.
Confirmation bias explains why so many rumors about candidates were eagerly embraced recently. On the left, commentators glommed onto false gossip about Sarah Palin's ignorance (she doesn't know that Africa is a continent) and bigotry (she tried to ban books from the public library) because liberals think that conservatives are dumb and dogmatic, and after eight years of George W. Bush's malapropisms and Palin's interview fumbles, such rumors merely confirmed what liberals already believed.
On the right, conservatives were primed to process hearsay about Barack Obama being a Muslim or Arab as true, or that his tax plan -- indistinguishable from that of most Democratic candidates in recent decades -- confirmed that he's a socialist, even while Republicans were nationalizing the financial industry and running up record debts.
Research on confirmation bias has found that when subjects are presented with evidence that contradicts their deeply held beliefs, they dismiss it as invalid, while other subjects treat the same information as valuable when it confirms what they believe. In one study, for example, subjects were shown a video of a child taking a test. One group was told that the child was from a high socioeconomic class; the other group was told that the child was from a low socioeconomic class. The subjects were asked to evaluate the academic abilities of the child based on the results of the test. The child believed to be from the high socioeconomic group was rated as above grade level, but the child believed to be from the low socioeconomic group wasrated as below grade level. Same data. Same kid. Different interpretations.
The confirmation bias sways us all, especially when it reinforces our inner tribalism. Most of us will never join a cult, but all of us are subject to the pull of believing that the evidence supports our most cherished beliefs. Inside Jonestown, Jim Jones' daily barrages confirmed to members that their cause was right and that ultimately death would bring about peace and justice.
It is for this reason that we need to look for disconfirmatory evidence, to listen to the arguments of those with whom we disagree, to ask for constructive criticism of our beliefs, and to remember Oliver Cromwell's words to the Church of Scotland in 1650: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, is an adjunct professor in economics at Claremont Graduate University and the author of "The Mind of the Market."
This article was found at:
http://www.latimes.com/
news/opinion/commentary/
la-oe-shermer18-2008nov18,
0,2806746.story
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13 Nov 2008
Parents say clergy sex abuse drove son to suicide
1150Am WDEL News
By Peter Mac Arthur
The latest lawsuit facing the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington comes from parents who say a priest sexually abused their son, prompting him to commit suicide.
William and Othell Heaney claim Reverand Edward Dudzinski began abusing 10 year old Kevin Heaney in 1978 when the victim was in Dudzinski's religion class at St Mary Magdalen elementary. They say the abuse lasted for three years and changed his personality. The Heaney's say their son got into drugs and tried to commit suicide numerous times before finally shooting himself in 1987 and dying two days later.
Dudzinski moved to Virginia in 1985. He became a counselor until his license was suspended in 2003 following reports he was sleeping in the same bed with kids he was counselling.
This article was found at:
http://www.wdel.com/story.php?id=379596975926
By Peter Mac Arthur
The latest lawsuit facing the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington comes from parents who say a priest sexually abused their son, prompting him to commit suicide.
William and Othell Heaney claim Reverand Edward Dudzinski began abusing 10 year old Kevin Heaney in 1978 when the victim was in Dudzinski's religion class at St Mary Magdalen elementary. They say the abuse lasted for three years and changed his personality. The Heaney's say their son got into drugs and tried to commit suicide numerous times before finally shooting himself in 1987 and dying two days later.
Dudzinski moved to Virginia in 1985. He became a counselor until his license was suspended in 2003 following reports he was sleeping in the same bed with kids he was counselling.
This article was found at:
http://www.wdel.com/story.php?id=379596975926
7 Nov 2008
Two upcoming TV programs: "Mind Control" & "Escape from Jonestown"
A&E TV – Mind Control on November 9, 2008 at 2:00 pm ET
Documentary exploring the secretive doomsday bible groups Meade Ministries and the House of Yahweh, and the methods they use to indoctrinate and control their members. Includes exclusive hidden camera footage that takes viewers inside a doomsday compound and a look at how intervention specialist Rick Ross performs an intervention to get a member out.
http://www.aetv.com/listings/episode_details.do?
episodeid=375820
CNN – Escape from Jonestown on November 13, 2008 at 9 p.m. ET
Thirty years ago, 900 people died by murder and suicide. Only a few survived. Now, CNN special correspondent Soledad O'Brien with their untold stories as "CNN Presents: Escape from Jonestown."
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/presents/
Documentary exploring the secretive doomsday bible groups Meade Ministries and the House of Yahweh, and the methods they use to indoctrinate and control their members. Includes exclusive hidden camera footage that takes viewers inside a doomsday compound and a look at how intervention specialist Rick Ross performs an intervention to get a member out.
http://www.aetv.com/listings/episode_details.do?
episodeid=375820
CNN – Escape from Jonestown on November 13, 2008 at 9 p.m. ET
Thirty years ago, 900 people died by murder and suicide. Only a few survived. Now, CNN special correspondent Soledad O'Brien with their untold stories as "CNN Presents: Escape from Jonestown."
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/presents/
4 Nov 2008
Swiss magistrate alleges priest abused boys
Associated Press - November 3, 2008
By PHILIPPE CLAVEL
WgD947MD3O1
By PHILIPPE CLAVEL
FRIBOURG, Switzerland (AP) — Swiss officials said Monday they have evidence that a Roman Catholic priest sexually abused two dozen boys in France and Switzerland over a 35-year period.
The priest has admitted committing some sex acts with children between the ages of 9 and 14, two of whom had disabilities, said investigating magistrate Yvonne Gendre.
However, the 68-year-old priest, who was not named because of privacy laws, has denied accusations that he molested two children who subsequently committed suicide, Gendre told reporters in the western city of Fribourg. The priest also denied accusations by some of the victims that he sodomized them, she added.
Swiss officials began investigating the priest after being informed of accusations against him by their French counterparts.
The legal time limit for prosecution has expired in all but one case, which occurred in the French city of Grenoble in 1995. Gendre said she will hand the investigation over to justice officials in Grenoble who will decide whether to press charges against the priest.
Gendre expressed horror that the man was able to carry out the alleged abuses for more than three decades. She said the priest, who belongs to the Capuchin order, an offshoot of the Franciscans, was transferred or dismissed from his post three times because of allegations against him, but continued to work for the church.
The Catholic Church has been plagued by a series of sex abuse cases against clergy that have come to light since 2002 and spread throughout the United States and beyond.
A spokesman for the diocese of Fribourg acknowledged that the case raised some questions.
"Obviously we are concerned," Marc Donze told The Associated Press. "But suspicion isn't the same as proof."
Gendre said another priest is under investigation for similar crimes.
Procedures have since been put in place to speed up the church's investigation of such allegations. According to the Swiss Society for the Protection of Children, 364 people in Switzerland were convicted of sexually abusing children in 2006, the last year for which official figures are available.
The group describes the figures as "the tip of the iceberg."
This article was found at:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5irUOtzeF-SZj9Li63DRpuSkUtKWgD947MD3O1
2 Nov 2008
Child abuse cases similar yet so different
The Daily Telegraph - Australia
August 28, 2008
by Dr. Gary Schoener | The Daily Telegraph
OVER the years I have dealt with around 2000 victims of child sex abuse involving clergy.
I've assisted people in bringing complaints about all manner of religious organisations and groups - from Catholic dioceses to Anglican, Jewish organisations and Lutheran Synods.
Most people would be familiar with the US Catholic Church scandal uncovered in the Archdioscese of Boston involving a secret settlement of child molestation claims against at least 70 Catholic priests.
The story made world headlines with some calling it the worst crisis in the Catholic Church in 500 years.
Contrary to what most believe, most victims were known only to their attorneys and the church. Those 500-plus cases in Boston were, for the most part, not public.
The first 15 men I evaluated had not told their parents - and did not plan to. Only a few had told their wives and they often lied to them when they came to see me.
Without confidentiality, most would not have come forward.
Here's a typical comment: "Look, my parents worked three jobs to pay tuition so I could go to Catholic school so as to avoid sex and drugs and bad things and despite their efforts that's what I got. I do not want them to know this, it is of no benefit to tell them."
Hearing of the alleged St Stanislaus College cases it was of little surprise only 13 of as many as 40 alleged victims had come forward. My experience has shown that many victims don't. There is little incentive to come forward as nobody benefits from being identified as a sex abuse victim.
The victim in the Bathurst case who told the police he hadn't told his wife would be the most common case - the rule not the exception.
For some of the victims who are reading the headlines as the story unfolds, the abuse becoming public can help them. As others come forward they can feel less isolated.
Interestingly, the internet was a key ingredient in these allegations coming out. This is not unusual, the same has been true elsewhere in the world. The internet has brought about a major change in that victims can find each other and find support.
However, when stories like these come out, some begin to relive the trauma and develop post traumatic stress disorder.
Others develop incredible rage, especially as they learn that they are only one of many. They do not feel different or "special" any more.
And it's common for the victim to ruminate about the question, "why me?", tending to blame themselves for "letting it happen," or "letting it happen multiple times" or "not reporting it".
The victim who spoke out in The Daily Telegraph described "being herded into a prayer room by a priest chanting 'hypnotic' spells in tongues".
This is one of many ways in which the stage can be set for abuse; however abuse does not require any special techniques - the power of faith in the priest and church is sufficient to do the job.
He also described how the priest or priests in question involved the kids abusing each other.
Again, as horrific as this sounds, this is not new. While many of the cases I have dealt with have eerie similarities to this one, the impact of the sexual abuse on the victim varies dramatically person to person.
It's dependent on many things - the timing in their life, the degree to which the perpetrator was trusted, the amount of repetition, the degree to which fear was induced, the degree of physical pain, and dozens of other factors.
Either way, the impact on their lives can be severe and the course of their life drastically changed.
They lose basic trust in others and have difficulty forming relationships later in life. They have low self esteem and insecurity issues, they are depressed and have suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts.
They often question their sexual identity or develop sexual impulse control disorders of their own.
They take to drug and alcohol abuse and become addicts as a way of dealing with their inner turmoil.
The vast majority lose faith in religion or society in general.
Another thing we also see, though, is people have lost their family. Their parents might be devout followers of the church and they don't dare tell them. Or in cases where they have been brave enough to tell them, the parents have not been able to rise to the occasion and don't believe the child.
When I evaluate damages for a court case, one of the things I do is look at their siblings and see how their lives turned out.
You don't need to be a psychologist to say: "My God, something bad happened here to this individual."
* Dr Gary Schoener is a US-based psychologist who has treated more than 2000 sex abuse victims.
This article was found at :
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24251797-5007146,00.html
August 28, 2008
by Dr. Gary Schoener | The Daily Telegraph
OVER the years I have dealt with around 2000 victims of child sex abuse involving clergy.
I've assisted people in bringing complaints about all manner of religious organisations and groups - from Catholic dioceses to Anglican, Jewish organisations and Lutheran Synods.
Most people would be familiar with the US Catholic Church scandal uncovered in the Archdioscese of Boston involving a secret settlement of child molestation claims against at least 70 Catholic priests.
The story made world headlines with some calling it the worst crisis in the Catholic Church in 500 years.
Contrary to what most believe, most victims were known only to their attorneys and the church. Those 500-plus cases in Boston were, for the most part, not public.
The first 15 men I evaluated had not told their parents - and did not plan to. Only a few had told their wives and they often lied to them when they came to see me.
Without confidentiality, most would not have come forward.
Here's a typical comment: "Look, my parents worked three jobs to pay tuition so I could go to Catholic school so as to avoid sex and drugs and bad things and despite their efforts that's what I got. I do not want them to know this, it is of no benefit to tell them."
Hearing of the alleged St Stanislaus College cases it was of little surprise only 13 of as many as 40 alleged victims had come forward. My experience has shown that many victims don't. There is little incentive to come forward as nobody benefits from being identified as a sex abuse victim.
The victim in the Bathurst case who told the police he hadn't told his wife would be the most common case - the rule not the exception.
For some of the victims who are reading the headlines as the story unfolds, the abuse becoming public can help them. As others come forward they can feel less isolated.
Interestingly, the internet was a key ingredient in these allegations coming out. This is not unusual, the same has been true elsewhere in the world. The internet has brought about a major change in that victims can find each other and find support.
However, when stories like these come out, some begin to relive the trauma and develop post traumatic stress disorder.
Others develop incredible rage, especially as they learn that they are only one of many. They do not feel different or "special" any more.
And it's common for the victim to ruminate about the question, "why me?", tending to blame themselves for "letting it happen," or "letting it happen multiple times" or "not reporting it".
The victim who spoke out in The Daily Telegraph described "being herded into a prayer room by a priest chanting 'hypnotic' spells in tongues".
This is one of many ways in which the stage can be set for abuse; however abuse does not require any special techniques - the power of faith in the priest and church is sufficient to do the job.
He also described how the priest or priests in question involved the kids abusing each other.
Again, as horrific as this sounds, this is not new. While many of the cases I have dealt with have eerie similarities to this one, the impact of the sexual abuse on the victim varies dramatically person to person.
It's dependent on many things - the timing in their life, the degree to which the perpetrator was trusted, the amount of repetition, the degree to which fear was induced, the degree of physical pain, and dozens of other factors.
Either way, the impact on their lives can be severe and the course of their life drastically changed.
They lose basic trust in others and have difficulty forming relationships later in life. They have low self esteem and insecurity issues, they are depressed and have suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts.
They often question their sexual identity or develop sexual impulse control disorders of their own.
They take to drug and alcohol abuse and become addicts as a way of dealing with their inner turmoil.
The vast majority lose faith in religion or society in general.
Another thing we also see, though, is people have lost their family. Their parents might be devout followers of the church and they don't dare tell them. Or in cases where they have been brave enough to tell them, the parents have not been able to rise to the occasion and don't believe the child.
When I evaluate damages for a court case, one of the things I do is look at their siblings and see how their lives turned out.
You don't need to be a psychologist to say: "My God, something bad happened here to this individual."
* Dr Gary Schoener is a US-based psychologist who has treated more than 2000 sex abuse victims.
This article was found at :
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24251797-5007146,00.html
1 Nov 2008
‘Messiah’ Cult Leader Arrested
Albuquerque Journal - October 31, 2008
by Vic Vela
LAS VEGAS, N.M. — The “Messiah” is back in jail. Union County sheriff’s deputies arrested cult leader Wayne Bent at his northern New Mexico compound Wednesday afternoon after a judge here issued a bench warrant when Bent failed to appear at a scheduled court hearing.
Bent and his followers in The Lord Our Righteousness Church have been fasting to protest charges that Bent had illegal sexual contact with underage girls at his Strong City compound near Des Moines. And his congregation believes they will ascend to heaven tonight,
Jeff Bent, the church leader’s son, said Thursday. “We don’t anticipate any future beyond Oct. 31,” he said.
Wayne Bent, who says he’s been anointed by God as the Messiah, was a no-show for a Las Vegas motions hearing in his criminal case. State District Judge Gerald E. Baca, who had specifically asked Bent to appear at the hearing in person, ordered that Bent be arrested when only his defense attorney showed up. Bent recently promised to stop cooperating with court proceedings.
Under Baca’s order, Bent was to be taken first to a Union County medical center for a physical and psychological evaluation.
Bent told the Journal in a recent interview that he has not eaten since Oct. 16 and was planning to go completely without water, beginning today. All of Bent’s followers at the compound — 45 adults — are following his example and some stopped drinking water last weekend, he said.
Jeff Bent said by telephone Thursday that his father’s “thinking is there will be no trial.” Wayne Bent’s followers believe that midnight tonight ends their “Year of Jubilee,” with a deliverance by God from their “earthly life,” Jeff Bent said. “We are glorified, given new bodies and ascend to heaven,” he said. The Year of Jubilee is “the year of judgment when the last trumpet is heard from God and God’s people are set free from their earthly bondage,” he added.
The window for God’s deliverance ends at midnight and he fully expects to be delivered by God and has no plans beyond that, Jeff Bent said. The church members believe “that if (the deliverance) doesn’t happen, they don’t want to go on living.” He said does not mean they will commit suicide, just that “they want to stop sustaining life.”
[...]
If the health of the church members comes into question because of their fasts, it doesn’t look like the state is going to intervene any time soon.
“It’s not the obligation of the district attorney’s office to check on the welfare of the people at Strong City,” said assistant district attorney Emilio J. Chavez during Wednesday’s court hearing. That’s a different tack than the DA’s office took in a court filing last week, when a prosecutor asked for a judge’s approval to make welfare checks at the Strong City compound on grounds that Bent’s followers may not be “competent” because they’re under his influence.
Jeff Bent said some relatives of the church members have shown up at the compound to try to take fasting members away, but they have not been allowed onto the property.
[...]
The legal question before Baca on Wednesday was to consider a change of venue for Bent’s upcoming trial, which the judge granted. Bent was scheduled to begin a weeklong trial Nov. 17 in Clayton, and it will now be in Taos at an undetermined date.
This article was found at:
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/22885/wayne-bent-cult
by Vic Vela
LAS VEGAS, N.M. — The “Messiah” is back in jail. Union County sheriff’s deputies arrested cult leader Wayne Bent at his northern New Mexico compound Wednesday afternoon after a judge here issued a bench warrant when Bent failed to appear at a scheduled court hearing.
Bent and his followers in The Lord Our Righteousness Church have been fasting to protest charges that Bent had illegal sexual contact with underage girls at his Strong City compound near Des Moines. And his congregation believes they will ascend to heaven tonight,
Jeff Bent, the church leader’s son, said Thursday. “We don’t anticipate any future beyond Oct. 31,” he said.
Wayne Bent, who says he’s been anointed by God as the Messiah, was a no-show for a Las Vegas motions hearing in his criminal case. State District Judge Gerald E. Baca, who had specifically asked Bent to appear at the hearing in person, ordered that Bent be arrested when only his defense attorney showed up. Bent recently promised to stop cooperating with court proceedings.
Under Baca’s order, Bent was to be taken first to a Union County medical center for a physical and psychological evaluation.
Bent told the Journal in a recent interview that he has not eaten since Oct. 16 and was planning to go completely without water, beginning today. All of Bent’s followers at the compound — 45 adults — are following his example and some stopped drinking water last weekend, he said.
Jeff Bent said by telephone Thursday that his father’s “thinking is there will be no trial.” Wayne Bent’s followers believe that midnight tonight ends their “Year of Jubilee,” with a deliverance by God from their “earthly life,” Jeff Bent said. “We are glorified, given new bodies and ascend to heaven,” he said. The Year of Jubilee is “the year of judgment when the last trumpet is heard from God and God’s people are set free from their earthly bondage,” he added.
The window for God’s deliverance ends at midnight and he fully expects to be delivered by God and has no plans beyond that, Jeff Bent said. The church members believe “that if (the deliverance) doesn’t happen, they don’t want to go on living.” He said does not mean they will commit suicide, just that “they want to stop sustaining life.”
[...]
If the health of the church members comes into question because of their fasts, it doesn’t look like the state is going to intervene any time soon.
“It’s not the obligation of the district attorney’s office to check on the welfare of the people at Strong City,” said assistant district attorney Emilio J. Chavez during Wednesday’s court hearing. That’s a different tack than the DA’s office took in a court filing last week, when a prosecutor asked for a judge’s approval to make welfare checks at the Strong City compound on grounds that Bent’s followers may not be “competent” because they’re under his influence.
Jeff Bent said some relatives of the church members have shown up at the compound to try to take fasting members away, but they have not been allowed onto the property.
[...]
The legal question before Baca on Wednesday was to consider a change of venue for Bent’s upcoming trial, which the judge granted. Bent was scheduled to begin a weeklong trial Nov. 17 in Clayton, and it will now be in Taos at an undetermined date.
This article was found at:
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/22885/wayne-bent-cult
22 Oct 2008
Cult leader's case headed to jury
KOB Eyewitness News 4 - New Mexico
October 21, 2008
A judge has decided to send the case of a self-styled messiah who is charged with molesting two young girls to a jury.
The Albuquerque Journal reports that Judge Gerald E. Baca has ruled that he won't hear from the two girls that Wayne Bent is accused of touching while lying with them in a bed.
Bent, the leader of a cult that lives together in Strong City north of Clayton in Union County, contends that his actions were religious rather than sexual.
Bent was arrested in May and charged with fondling the girls.
The cult leader warns on his website that God will leave New Mexico a "burned field," because of his prosecution. He says he's been working on the entreaty for nearly two months.
Bent also says he is going on a hunger strike. The first week, he says he will eat one meal a day. The second week he will only drink juice and on the third, only water. After October 31, he says he won't eat or drink again until he is in heaven.
Bent says neither he nor his followers will commit suicide, but writes they are "leaving this world."
Bent says all of this is in protest of the way he is being treated by the state. His trial is scheduled to start November 17.
This article was found at:
http://kob.com/article/stories/S626607.shtml?cat=504
October 21, 2008
A judge has decided to send the case of a self-styled messiah who is charged with molesting two young girls to a jury.
The Albuquerque Journal reports that Judge Gerald E. Baca has ruled that he won't hear from the two girls that Wayne Bent is accused of touching while lying with them in a bed.
Bent, the leader of a cult that lives together in Strong City north of Clayton in Union County, contends that his actions were religious rather than sexual.
Bent was arrested in May and charged with fondling the girls.
The cult leader warns on his website that God will leave New Mexico a "burned field," because of his prosecution. He says he's been working on the entreaty for nearly two months.
Bent also says he is going on a hunger strike. The first week, he says he will eat one meal a day. The second week he will only drink juice and on the third, only water. After October 31, he says he won't eat or drink again until he is in heaven.
Bent says neither he nor his followers will commit suicide, but writes they are "leaving this world."
Bent says all of this is in protest of the way he is being treated by the state. His trial is scheduled to start November 17.
This article was found at:
http://kob.com/article/stories/S626607.shtml?cat=504
17 Oct 2008
Catholic diocese settles sex abuse cases
SooToday.com - Canada October 17, 2008
By SooToday.com Staff
By SooToday.com Staff
Two men who launched multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie, claiming sexual abuse at the hands of one of its priests, have reached a settlement with the regional church authority.
The two accusers - Robert Berube and a man who identifies himself only as Claude - allege that Father Jean-Claude Etienne of Warren, near Sudbury, abused them more than three decades ago.
Etienne is no longer living.
The following news release was issued today in Sudbury by London, Ontario-based Ledroit Beckett Litigation Lawyers:
*************************
Father Jean-Claude Etienne victims settle
Almost forty years ago in a small village not far from here a horrible crime was committed; a sexual crime.
It happened not once, not twice but for years against these two men.
But what made this crime so much worse was that these two were not men at that time but only boys.
Even more disturbing was the fact that the perpetrator of these crimes was none other than their own parish priest, Father Jean-Claude Etienne.
After decades of silence and pain and more recently following years of outspoken defiance these men have finally achieved some justice.
I say some and not absolute justice for their abuser died without having to account for his crimes.
Another irreversible fact is that the damage inflicted upon their minds and souls will never completely fade.
Yet for someone from a time and place when a priest could do no harm; today is a day long in coming.
The conclusion of their lawsuits brings them vindication, closure and a measure of healing.
The primary purpose of their appearance here today is to reach out to others who have endured such evil acts.
To let them know that light does exist at the end of what may appear to be an endless tunnel.
During the course of their lawsuits these men learned of other victims of Father Etienne who let that darkness swallow them up when they tragically committed suicide.
Their message is to seek help, seek justice and seek life.
Robert and Claude also wish to thank those who spoke up so that the truth could be known.
Fellow victims and others stepped forward to answer their call.
As a result of the public's awareness of this matter information was obtained which assisted in corroborating their claims of abuse.
Most dramatic of all was the information which was received by my office that a letter was sent to Father Etienne from Bishop Alexander Carter in July 1970.
The letter which was viewed by a witness, warned Etienne to stay away from a number of altar boys due to complaints from their parents.
It listed a number of local boys by name.
To the local Diocese and the Roman Catholic Church, both clergy and faithful, these men wish to issue a public pronouncement.
We are but a pair of many.
There are others who need the gentle hand of truth and justice to guide them out of the darkness.
Please extend your Christian beliefs to the treatment of them.
We the victims of your own wayward shepherds deserve true pastoral care and compassion.
Take action to both heal those wounded and to prevent future causalities of sexual perversion.
Finally, thanks is due to the reporters, the editors and the media outlets who have covered this and similar matters.
Without the exposure and interest generated by the media getting to the bottom of these crimes would not be possible.
Today you truly provide a public service.
Thank you.
This article was found at:
http://www.sootoday.com/content/
news/full_story.asp?
StoryNumber=35137
The two accusers - Robert Berube and a man who identifies himself only as Claude - allege that Father Jean-Claude Etienne of Warren, near Sudbury, abused them more than three decades ago.
Etienne is no longer living.
The following news release was issued today in Sudbury by London, Ontario-based Ledroit Beckett Litigation Lawyers:
*************************
Father Jean-Claude Etienne victims settle
Almost forty years ago in a small village not far from here a horrible crime was committed; a sexual crime.
It happened not once, not twice but for years against these two men.
But what made this crime so much worse was that these two were not men at that time but only boys.
Even more disturbing was the fact that the perpetrator of these crimes was none other than their own parish priest, Father Jean-Claude Etienne.
After decades of silence and pain and more recently following years of outspoken defiance these men have finally achieved some justice.
I say some and not absolute justice for their abuser died without having to account for his crimes.
Another irreversible fact is that the damage inflicted upon their minds and souls will never completely fade.
Yet for someone from a time and place when a priest could do no harm; today is a day long in coming.
The conclusion of their lawsuits brings them vindication, closure and a measure of healing.
The primary purpose of their appearance here today is to reach out to others who have endured such evil acts.
To let them know that light does exist at the end of what may appear to be an endless tunnel.
During the course of their lawsuits these men learned of other victims of Father Etienne who let that darkness swallow them up when they tragically committed suicide.
Their message is to seek help, seek justice and seek life.
Robert and Claude also wish to thank those who spoke up so that the truth could be known.
Fellow victims and others stepped forward to answer their call.
As a result of the public's awareness of this matter information was obtained which assisted in corroborating their claims of abuse.
Most dramatic of all was the information which was received by my office that a letter was sent to Father Etienne from Bishop Alexander Carter in July 1970.
The letter which was viewed by a witness, warned Etienne to stay away from a number of altar boys due to complaints from their parents.
It listed a number of local boys by name.
To the local Diocese and the Roman Catholic Church, both clergy and faithful, these men wish to issue a public pronouncement.
We are but a pair of many.
There are others who need the gentle hand of truth and justice to guide them out of the darkness.
Please extend your Christian beliefs to the treatment of them.
We the victims of your own wayward shepherds deserve true pastoral care and compassion.
Take action to both heal those wounded and to prevent future causalities of sexual perversion.
Finally, thanks is due to the reporters, the editors and the media outlets who have covered this and similar matters.
Without the exposure and interest generated by the media getting to the bottom of these crimes would not be possible.
Today you truly provide a public service.
Thank you.
This article was found at:
http://www.sootoday.com/content/
news/full_story.asp?
StoryNumber=35137
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