But years later, the two men joined together again, promoting Robben as the leader of a church of his own making. Since , Missouri records show that Robben has listed his St.
Louis home as the base for a religious organization operating under at least three different names. Mary Kruger, whose son committed suicide when he was 21 after being abused by the men in high school, said she raised fresh concerns about Robben in when she heard he was presenting himself as a cleric.
At the time, he was being considered for promotion to bishop in a conservative Christian order based in Ontario, Canada. Kruger said members of the order told her that Robben had dismissed questions about his abuse conviction, claiming he had merely rented an apartment to Funke and that police blamed him for not knowing what went on inside.
Robben eventually was defrocked from the Christian order, and apparently then started his own. Until last year, when its paperwork expired, the group was registered with Missouri officials as the Syrian Orthodox Exarchate.
Funke refused comment when approached by an AP reporter, and Robben did not respond to requests for comment. As early as , church officials knew of allegations that Roger Sinclair had acted inappropriately with adolescent boys.
Two mothers at St. Sinclair played a game where he would shake hands and then try to shove his hand at their genitals, the mothers said in their letter, parts of which were made public last year as part of the landmark report in Pennsylvania. Other accusations emerged about Sinclair showing dirty movies to boys in the rectory, exposing himself and possibly molesting a teen he had taken on a trip to Florida a few years earlier. After a group of mothers called the police for advice, the police chief told them he had heard the rumors but took no action, according to documents reviewed by the Pennsylvania grand jury.
The church sent Sinclair for treatment, returned him to ministry and provided him with a letter that listed him as a priest in good standing so he could be a chaplain in the Archdiocese of Military Services, according to the grand jury. He was fired from that assignment in after trying multiple times to check out male teenage patients to go see a movie.
He resigned a few years later, before the church concluded proceedings to defrock him. When he started serving on the board of directors of an Oregon senior center and working as a volunteer there, he was required to pass a background check because the center received federal dollars for the Meals on Wheels program. But no flags were raised because he was never charged in Pennsylvania.
Three months later, after learning why Sinclair had been absent, an employee went to the police out of fear the former priest would target someone else. Steven Binstock, the lead investigator in Oregon, said Sinclair immediately confessed to committing multiple sexual acts with the developmentally disabled man.
He also confessed to sexual contact with minors in Pennsylvania 30 years earlier. The Pennsylvania diocese had never warned Oregon authorities about Sinclair because it stopped tracking him after he left the church. The diocese, which did not tell the public Sinclair had been accused of abuse until it released its list in August , declined to comment on his case. Beyond that, the AP confirmed that Sinclair and 64 others have been charged with crimes committed after leaving the church, with most of them convicted for those crimes.
Some of the crimes involved drunken driving, theft or drug offenses. But 42 of the men were accused of crimes that were sexual in nature or violent, including a dozen charged with sexually assaulting minors.
Thirteen were charged with distributing, making or possessing child pornography, and several others were caught masturbating in public or exposing themselves to people on planes or in shopping malls.
Five failed to register in their new communities as sex offenders as required due to their sex crime convictions. Priests and other church employees being listed on sex offender registries at all is a rarity — the AP analysis found that only 85 of the 2, are. Convictions were sometimes expunged if offenders completed probationary programs or the charges were reduced below the level required by states for registration.
The AP also found that more than of the credibly accused former priests live within 2, feet of schools, playgrounds, childcare centers or other facilities that serve children, with many living much closer. In the states that restrict how close registered sex offenders can live to those facilities, limits range from to 2, feet.
Decades after Louis Ladenburger was temporarily removed from the priesthood to be treated for "inappropriate professional behavior and relationships," he was hired as a counselor at a school for troubled boys in Idaho. Ladenburger was arrested in and accused of sexual battery; in a deal with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. He served about five months in prison. According to Bonner County, Idaho, sheriff's reports, students said Ladenburger told them he was a sex addict.
During counseling sessions, they said, the former Franciscan priest rubbed their upper thighs and stomachs, held their hands and gave them shoulder and neck massages. Ladenburger was fired from the school. In an interview with sheriff's officials at the time, he "admitted being a touchy person," kissing many students and having his "needs met by the physical contact" with the boys. No officials from his religious order or from the dioceses in six different states where he had served had warned the school or provided details of the allegations against him when he was a priest.
If priests choose to leave their dioceses or religious orders — or if the church decides to permanently defrock them in a process known as laicization — leaders say the church no longer has authority to monitor where they go.
After the Dallas Charter came a rush to laicize, resulting in more than of the priests researched by the AP being laicized between and The laicized priests also are increasingly younger, giving them even more years to lead unsupervised lives, according to Deacon Bernie Nojadera, the executive director of the U. Conference of Catholic Bishops cannot mandate specific regulations or procedures. The AP found that the dioceses that released lists more than a decade ago have the most robust of the handful of existing programs.
They have to tell me where they are going to be, who they will be with. I truly believe that I am protecting children. In , the Archdiocese of Detroit hired a former parole officer to monitor priests permanently removed from ministry after credible abuse allegations. Spokesman Ned McGrath said the program requires monthly written reports from the priests that include any contact or planned contact with minors and information on whether they attended treatment among other things.
In other dioceses, priests are sent to retirement homes for clergy or church properties that are easy to monitor, but also are often in close proximity or even share space with schools or universities. The analysis found that many of the accused clergy members still receive pensions or health insurance from the church, since pensions are governed by federal statute and other benefits are dictated by the bishops in each diocese. The official Ryan Commission report in found widespread abuse of children in Catholic-run institutions between the s and the s.
It said church-run orphanages and industrial schools were places of fear, neglect and endemic sexual abuse. And after another highly critical report in , into the Cloyne diocese, the Vatican recalled its ambassador after the then Irish premier accused it of obstructing investigations into sexual abuse by priests.
Head of commission probing scandal says it found between 2, and 3, paedophile priests, other members of the church. Published On 5 Oct These figures detailing allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy do not tell the full story.
More from News. Should nations go nuclear to save the planet? Tunisia MP sentenced to jail in landmark MeToo case.
In the most recent development, a damning inquiry found that some , children in France had been sexually abused by members of the clergy since A Vatican statement said Pope Francis "felt pain" over the findings, and expressed hopes for a "path of redemption". Efforts by the Pope to address the problem have included holding an unprecedented summit on paedophilia in the Church , and changing its laws to explicitly criminalise sexual abuse.
But alleged cover-ups continue to dog the Catholic Church, and victims groups say the Vatican has not done nearly enough to right its wrongs.
Although some accusations date back to the s, molestation by priests was first given significant media attention in the s, in the US and Canada. In the s the issue began to grow, with stories emerging in Argentina, Australia and elsewhere. In , the Archbishop of Vienna, in Austria, stepped down amid sexual abuse allegations, rocking the Church there.
Also in that decade, revelations began of widespread historical abuse in Ireland. By the early s, sexual abuse within the Church was a major global story. In the US, determined reporting by the Boston Globe newspaper as captured in the film Spotlight exposed widespread abuse and how paedophile priests were moved around by Church leaders instead of being held accountable. It prompted people to come forward across the US and around the world. A Church-commissioned report in said more than 4, US Roman Catholic priests had faced sexual abuse allegations in the last 50 years, in cases involving more than 10, children - mostly boys.
A report found that sexual and psychological abuse was "endemic" in Catholic-run industrial schools and orphanages in Ireland for most of the 20th Century. A five-year Australian inquiry in found that "tens of thousands of children" were sexually abused in Australian institutions over decades, including churches, schools and sports clubs.
The head of the French inquiry said that until the early s, the Church had shown "deep, total and even cruel indifference" towards victims. He stressed that even today the abuse had not been eradicated, and called for the victims to be compensated and for reforms within the Church.
Australian Cardinal George Pell - the most senior Catholic figure ever jailed for such crimes - had his conviction for child abuse overturned in April and was freed from prison.
Australia's High Court judges agreed that the jury had not properly considered all the evidence presented at the trial.
0コメント