Gun Enthusiasts – Let Your Voices Be Heard

In a first-of-its-kind case, three former Catholic leaders were charged Tuesday in Pennsylvania with conspiracy and child endangerment for enabling a known sexual predator friar to continue sexually abusing over 100 children until 2010. Prosecutors said the late Friar Stephen Baker repeatedly said he was “treating” boys as an athletic trainer, that he was untrained to do. He would grope their genitals and penetrate them with his finger. The indictment is a major victory over Catholic leaders’ culture of silence about its child sexual abuse crimes.

Giles Schinelli, 73; Robert D’Aversa, 69; and Anthony M. Criscitelli, 61, were successively the provincial ministers of the Franciscan religious order of the Roman Catholic Church in western Pennsylvania from 1986 to 2010. In that role, each assigned and supervised the order’s members.

“These men knew there was a child predator in their organization. Yet they continued to put him in positions where he had countless opportunities to prey upon children,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane said in a statement. “Their silence resulted in immeasurable pain and suffering for so many victims. These men turned a blind eye to the innocent children they were trusted to protect.”

Prosecutors pointed to repeated opportunities the friars had to stop Baker: Schinelli sent Baker for a psychological evaluation, got results showing Baker should not have contact with children, but assigned Baker to another state to be in contact with children. D’Aversa found an accusation of Baker’s sexual abuse credible in 2000; removed him from that school and assigned him to be in charge of overnight youth retreats around the country. Criscitelli let Baker work in a shopping mall around children, prosecutors said.

The three have until Friday to surrender, according to prosecutors. Each had moved out of Pennsylvania and were continuing to work. Schinelli is a pastoral administrator at San Pedro Center, a Catholic retreat in Winter Park, Fla. D’Aversa is pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Community in Mount Dora, Fla. Anthony Criscitelli is pastor of St. Bridget Parish Community in Minneapolis.

Groundbreaking: Vow of Priest Sex Abuse Silence Being Shattered

Catholic supervisors have been charged with child endangerment in cases only three times anywhere in the country, according to Marci Hamilton, a constitutional law scholar at Yeshiva University and prominent attorney for child sex abuse survivors.

“What we’re seeing is the incremental improvement in the way in which prosecutors are seeing these issues and dealing with them,” Hamilton said. “This sends a real message of support to the victims, not just of Stephen Baker but across the country.”

Monday’s charges are also the first in the country to target a religious order, according to Hamilton. The Crux reports that orders such as the Franciscans are notoriously secretive, and the worldwide regularity among monasteries of the order might help prosecutors elsewhere to bring cases similar to the Pennsylvania one, she said.

“This is groundbreaking. We have not seen a prosecutor charge an order of priests,” Hamilton said.

Brother Stephen Baker, the friar at the center of the abuse allegations, committed suicide in 2013 at age 62, reportedly with two knives to the heart, after church officials in Youngstown, Ohio announced settling lawsuits by 11 former students who said he abused them at Ohio schools from 1986 to 1990. That, however, was the tip of the iceberg in this one of many similar cases across the nation. After that, over 100 abuse claims were filed by former students of Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, where Baker worked from 1992 to 2000. Millions of dollars in damages have been paid.

In 2002, five reporters on the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team brought the “sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests” into national limelight. In 2003, the Boston Globe series of priest sexual abuse articles received a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

The Pulitzer website says it honored the Boston Globe “for its courageous, comprehensive coverage … an effort that pierced secrecy, stirred local, national and international reaction and produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church.”

See: Key stories from The Boston Globe Spotlight Team reporting on clergy abuse in the Catholic Church.

In Boston alone, at least 271 priests clergy have been publicly accused of child sex abuse, according to a Globe review. Church officials, including Cardinal Bernard F. Law, reacted to these explosive charges by “quietly transferring rogue priests to other parishes and treating them with a gentleness and sensitivity apparently unshaken by the heinous allegations against them.” (Thomas Farragher and Sacha Pfeiffer, More clergy abuse, secrecy cases, Records detail quiet shifting of rogue priests, Boston Globe, December 04, 2002.)

As the Boston Globe broke the news in early 2002 of the Catholic clergy abuse cover up in Boston Archdiocese, survivors streamed out of the closet. They had remained silent for years, too ashamed to tell their stories or too afraid they’d never be believed, much the same as today’s Targeted Individuals.

“Haunted by the abuse, many victims wrestled for years with depression and drug abuse. Some ended up in prison. Others committed suicide because of the abuse, according to their relatives. In Baltimore, one man turned with rage on his attacker, shooting the priest he claimed molested him.” (The Victims, Special Reports, The Boston Globe)

The Catholic abuse crisis and the clergy’s victims were subjects of the 2015 Hollywood movie Spotlight, starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams. The film won two Oscars, including Best Picture.

“It is a love letter to investigative journalism and a reminder that, 13 years and some $3bn in settlement payments later, survivors in Boston and beyond are still waiting for satisfactory long-term action from the Vatican,” the Guardian has reported.

The Spotlight team found that 50% of priests are not celibate and at least six percent of priests abuse children.

Three former Catholic Franciscan religious order leaders in Pennsylvania were charged Tuesday with conspiracy and child endangerment, allowing a known sexual predator friar to continue working and enabling him to sexually abuse over 100 children.

Giles Schinelli, 73; Robert D’Aversa, 69; and Anthony M. Criscitelli, 61, successively held positions of provincial ministers of a religious order of the Roman Catholic Church in western Pennsylvania from 1986 to 2010. In that role, they each assigned and supervised the order’s members.

The three have been given until Friday to surrender, according to prosecutors. Each of the three had moved out of Pennsylvania, continuing to work in other states. Schinelli is a pastoral administrator at San Pedro Center, a Catholic retreat in Winter Park, Fla. D’Aversa is pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Community in Mount Dora, Fla. Anthony Criscitelli is pastor of St. Bridget Parish Community in Minneapolis.

Brother Stephen Baker, friar at the center of the abuse allegations, committed suicide in 2013, reportedly with two knives to the heart, after church officials in Youngstown, Ohio announced settling lawsuits by 11 former students who said he had abused them at Ohio schools from 1986 to 1990.

After that, over 100 abuse claims were filed by former students of Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, where Baker worked from 1992 to 2000. Millions of dollars in damages have been paid.

Anyone with information about sexual abuse by a priest or religious leader in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown is urged to call a new hotline established by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office.

The hotline – 888-538-8541 – is being staffed by attorney general agents or attorneys fluent in the Altoona-Johnstown diocese abuse case.

Vatican Long-term Action Awaited as Thousands of Catholic Priest Sexual Abuse Survivors Continue Abuse Against Self and Others

In 2002, five reporters on the Boston Globe’s Spotlight brought the Catholic priest sex abuse issue to national prominence in the US, winning them the Pulitzer prize for public service. This’ story, and victims of the clergy, are the subject of Spotlight, a Hollywood movie starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams. The explosive film won the 2015 Oscar for Best Picture.

“It is a love letter to investigative journalism and a reminder that, 13 years and some $3bn in settlement payments later, survivors in Boston and beyond are still waiting for satisfactory long-term action from the Vatican,” the Guardian has reported.

A visit by Popular Pope Francis to Boston in September 2014 was tainted due to his comments the week earlier that US bishops had shown “courage” in facing the scandal. Too many victims continue continue to commit violence against self and others and too few bishops have taken direct action to hold predatory priests accountable.

Over the last decade, the Vatican defrocked over 850 priests and sanctioned some 2,500 more. In terms of policy, however, very little systemic change has occurred,, according to Michael Rezendes, played by Mark Ruffalo in the film. Rezendes, is the only journalist involved in the investigation still working on the Globe’s Spotlight team. Investigative reports from the Globe exposing the sex abuse scandal continues to rock the Catholic Church today.

Many survivor allegations have been made by adults reporting abuse from when they were children. Other allegations, however, are by children reporting abuse by clergy today.

The Spotlight team found 50% of priests are not celibate and at least six percent abuse children. Nationally, since the work of the Spotlight team, more than 17,500 survivors made accusations of clergy abuse that church officials determined credible, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. These stories, however, remain buried in most cases in most cities.

“Every major city in the US has two things in common,” Spotlight journalist Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson told Guardian reporter Henry Barnes. “They have an archdiocese and they have a major newspaper. I don’t know of a single city where, in hindsight, clues that this was going on didn’t surface way back when. If we’d been more open to the notion that such an iconic institution might have committed such heinous crimes, I think people would have got on to this sooner.”

Survivor support is offered by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, (SNAP). To look for a local SNAP chapter, check here. If you do not see a SNAP chapter in your area and might want to start a chapter, email Barbara Dorris at [email protected].

Gun Enthusiasts – Let Your Voices Be Heard