September 9 2009 Remembrance Day Former Residents of Institutional Care in Queensland

The Annual Remembrance Day service for Former Residents of Institutional Care in Queensland will be held on Wednesday September 9 2009


foto's: MicahInc
HAN

Clan Care Leavers Australia Network

...

By the end of 2009 the Australian Government will issue a formal statement of acknowledgement and apology, on behalf of the nation, to Forgotten Australians and former child migrants. In the spirit of the bipartisan nature of the Senate Inquiry reports, the Government will work with the Opposition to develop the remembrance event.

This is a significant national step in the healing process for Forgotten Australians and former child migrants.

Many former child migrants and other children who were in institutions, their families and the wider community have suffered from a system that did not adequately provide for, or protect children in its care.

In June this year, a further Senate Inquiry reported on progress since the 2001 and 2004 reports. This report said more needed to be done. The apology will address recommendations 1 and 2 of this recent report and the Government will table a full, formal response in coming months.

To further help the healing process, the Government is also providing $300,000 each to both the Alliance for Forgotten Australians (AFA) and the Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN), over the next two years. We will work with these organisations to make sure that care leavers can get the practical support and information they need.

We will also be consulting broadly with state and territory governments, past care providers and those affected by these practices to develop the apology and the path ahead.

We have also begun a dialogue with mothers and children separated by past adoption practices which were inappropriate or unethical. The Government recognises that the pain and suffering of these women also endures.

We will work with the National Library of Australia, the National Museum of Australia and those who have suffered in the past on how to best to record, for the historical record, the experiences of the Forgotten Australians, former child migrants, and women and children affected by past adoption practices.

Redress to pay deceased victims $5K
8th September 2009
ABC News

The West Australian Government has announced ex gratia payments of $5,000 will be made to victims of child abuse in state care who have died before their application was finalised.

Redress WA was set up under the previous Labor government to compensate people who suffered abuse in Australia's orphanages, children's homes and in foster care.

Last month, the State Government cut the maximum payment for victims from $80,000 to $45,000.

The Minister for Community Services, Robyn McSweeney, has now announced payments of $5,000 will be made to the estates of deceased victims.

Ms McSweeney says Redress WA has identified 21 cases where victims have died before their claim was finalised.

She says victims who are terminally ill can apply for an interim payment of up to $10,000.

This afternoon a West Australian Federal Liberal MP joined about 100 people at State Parliament protesting against the Barnett government's changes to the Redress WA scheme.

Today's protest was the second in two months.

The Federal Member for Swan, Steve Irons, told the crowd his state Liberal colleagues had made the wrong decision.

"As I said before I am a Liberal and a strong supporter of the Barnett Government, however they have got this one wrong," he said.
"I ask Colin Barnett to reconsider.

"I will continue to support the remembered Australians in pursuing a positive outcome."

sexual abuse survivor prepares legal case to have Protestant institutions included in redress scheme

A former resident of a Protestant children's home in Dublin is preparing to launch a High Court challenge to force the government to include it in the state redress scheme for victims of institutional abuse.

If successful, this could leave the state facing a potential multimillion euro additional compensation bill.

Derek Leinster was born in Bethany Home in Rathgar in 1941 after his 16-year-old Protestant mother was sent there for what he calls the "social sin" of becoming pregnant out of wedlock with the child of a Catholic man.

He left school illiterate at the age of 13 after being beaten and molested by his foster parents in Wicklow, before moving to the UK where he subsequently married and settled down.

However, despite attempts to have his case placed within the terms of the redress scheme, he claims the government and Church of Ireland authorities have resisted such moves.

As a result, Leinster told the Sunday Tribune he is considering launching a legal challenge to force the government to include Bethany Home on the list of homes covered by the residential redress board, and to establish the best route to pursue in order to get the compensation he and others deserve.

He said he is aware of at least 12 other former residents of the home, based in Ireland, the UK and the US, who are still alive.

However, he estimates there are potentially hundreds of others who may be entitled to compensation for the care they received at Bethany Home.

"First and foremost I am an Irish person. I want to be treated not one jot differently being an Irish person than if I had been a Catholic Irish person," he said. "It was a toss of the coin that I ended up in Bethany Home, I could have easily have been sent to Artane, for example. If I had been, I would have been entitled to redress."

"I believe without doubt that it is sectarianism ... particularly in light of the Ryan Commission report findings, I just can't believe this is still going on in this day and age."

Leinster has previously called on the Church of Ireland, including Archbishop of Dublin John Neill, to support his calls for Bethany Home to be included in the redress scheme.

A spokesman for Archbishop Neill said that Church of Ireland authorities have contacted the redress board in recent months to draw their attention to the issues raised by Derek Leinster."

A spokeswoman for the redress board declined to comment.

Adoptieouders houden zich doof

Trouw
Podium
2 september 2009
Hilbrand Westra,
United Adoptees International, organisatie van geadopteerden

Ouders zwijgen over misstanden bij adoptie. Het komt hen niet uit, want ze hebben een kinderwens.

Het vertrek van Ina Hut als directeur van adoptiebureau Wereldkinderen deed zelfs buiten Nederland stof opwaaien. Opvallend is dat adoptieouders in Finland, Australië en de Verenigde Staten adhesie betuigden; zij toonden begrip voor haar argument dat zij niet langer de verantwoordelijkheid wil dragen voor interlandelijke adoptie, zolang er misstanden zijn.

...
Er is een zwijgcultuur ontstaan, gevoed door de politieke en economische belangen die gepaard gaan met adoptie. En dat komt vele wens- en adoptieouders goed uit. Immers, de erkenning van misstanden brengt de kinderwens van velen in de gevarenzone.

Trouw beweerde in een hoofdredactioneel commentaar onlangs dat ook “ouders, met hun kritische boeken en kritische vragen’’ zoveel aandacht vragen voor de belangen van de kinderen. Dat is een grove schending van de werkelijkheid.

Het zijn juist níet de wens- en adoptieouders die met berichten over misstanden naar buiten kwamen maar geadopteerden. Geadopteerden die, vaak met gevaar voor eigen leven, veldonderzoek doen in de landen zelf. Het is aan deze vertegenwoordigers van de eerste generatie te danken, dat we weten wat er onder andere afspeelde in India, China, Sri Lanka, Haïti, Brazilië, Malawi, Argentinië en Korea.

...
De adoptieouders en de directeuren van andere adoptiebureaus weten hetzelfde als Ina Hut, maar kunnen de moed niet opbrengen om te erkennen dat ook zij een deel uit maken van het proces dat grote kenmerken heeft van een corrupt machtsblok, en dat adoptie heet.

Kjoe

It could turn out right and all I hope and long that there'll be no wasted words

Jeroen en de zilveren sleutel

Merci

Alsof de duvel ermee speelt: de kikkerproef en Helena

...Institoris lijkt vooral geinteresseerd te zijn geweest in het krijgen van antwoorden op specifieke vragen. Zo wilde hij de rol die satan in deze magische handelingen speelde ophelderen en was hij erop gespitst informatie te verkrijgen over de zalven die zogenaamd van babylichaampjes werden gemaakt.

Eén heks in het bijzonder, Helena Scheuberin, legde hij het vuur aan de schenen over haar seksuele activiteiten en morele reputatie binnen

de gemeenschap. De bisschop van Brixen maakte echter veel bezwaar tegen deze strategie, en Institoris medegelastigden waren

het met hem eens.

Bron? Forum voor modelbouw. Voor PDF files Klik

"Onderzoekt alles en behoudt het goede"

KARTONBAU.de ®...mein Forum

Gestampte foetussen godsdienstwaanzin van de Mengele's

Forum: Maatschappij en wereld. Geplaatst op 31/8 '09 15:55u. Onderwerp: Poging tot massamoord (posts: 60, views: 0)
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- De reden -

Hopelijk komen we die in de komende maanden te weten. Het kan toch niet zijn dat ondertussen heel de wereld samenspant om deze ernstige feiten onder de kandelaar te plaatsen?

Dat Jane het zou gaan ontgelden, was te verwachten. Welke mens durft het aan om multinationals als Baxter aan te klagen en zoiets als de WHO, die toch moet gelden als een organisatie die vecht voor de gezondheid en niet ijvert om de mensen ziek te doen worden?

* Laten we ondertussen waakzaam blijven en géén inentingen tegen welke griep dan ook accepteren. Wie zo verstandig is de goede raad vd heilige Hildegard op te volgen, op gebied van preventieve gezondheid, heeft al die kunstmatige toestanden niet nodig !
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Brixen

kikkerproof

Ratificatie VN-verdrag tegen verdwijningen nodig Call for action

augustus 2009 Op de Internationale dag van de Gedwongen Verdwijningen, verzoekt Amnesty regeringen wereldwijd een VN-verdrag te ratificeren dat een belangrijke rol kan spelen bij

de aanpak van verdwijningen.

30 augustus herdenkt Amnesty op de 26e Internationale dag van de Gewongen Verdwijningen de slachtoffers van verdwijningen wereldwijd. Honderdduizenden gevallen van deze verdwijningen blijven onopgelost, terwijl elk jaar weer nieuwe zaken worden gerapporteerd. Regeringen gebruiken deze verdwijningen als een middel van repressie om politieke oppositie en andersdenkenden het zwijgen op te leggen en om etnische minderheden en religieuze groeperingen te vervolgen.

De internationale gemeenschap heeft in 2006 de Internationale Conventie voor de Bescherming van Alle Personen van Gedwongen Verdwijningen aangenomen, maar dit verdrag is nog niet van kracht. Deze overeenkomst verplicht staten om gedwongen verdwijningen als misdrijf in het strafwetboek op te nemen. Hierin staat dat getuigen recht hebben op bescherming en alle betrokkenen bij een verdwijning strafrechtelijk vervolgd moeten worden. Het verdrag erkent het recht van de familie van het slachtoffer om de ware toedracht van de verdwijning te horen en om schadevergoeding te vragen. Staten zijn volgens dit verdrag verantwoordelijk voor de bescherming van mensen die potentieel gevaar lopen en voor het opsporen van vermisten.

Er zijn nog maar zeven ratificaties nodig om het VN-verdrag tegen Gedwongen Verdwijningen van kracht te laten zijn. Ter gelegenheid van de Internationale dag van de Gedwongen Verdwijningen roept Amnesty regeringen op om het verdrag te ratificeren op de Algemene Vergadering van de VN op 15 september 2009. De Nederlandse regering heeft dit verdrag nog niet geratificeerd.

Meer informatie:

Bron

•Lees recente Amnesty-rapporten over verdwijningen:
- Burying the Past: 10 years of Impunity for Enforced Disappearances and Abductions in Kosovo
- Gambia: Fear rules
- Lebanon - A Human Rights Agenda for Human Rights

•Stuur een brief naar de regeringen van Burundi, Kaap Verdië, Costa Rica, Libanon, Marokko, Pakistan, Paraguay, Portugal, Servië, en Oost-Timor met het verzoek het verdrag te ratificeren
•Bekijk het interview met Natalia Estemirova over verdwijningen in Tsjetsjenië

Paderborn Duitse priester verdacht van bezit kinderporno

donderdag 27 augustus 2009
Brabants Dagblad

ARNSBERG (ANP) - De Duitse justitie verdenkt een rooms-katholieke priester in het Sauerland ervan dat hij meer dan honderd afbeeldingen van kinderporno heeft verzameld en verspreid. Het aartsbisdom Paderborn heeft de 31-jarige man, die werkte in een parochie in Brilon, met onmiddellijke ingang geschorst.

Volgens het Openbaar Ministerie (OM) stelde justitie een onderzoek in na tips van collega's van de priester uit het zuiden van Duitsland. De politie heeft de woning van de man en het parochiesecretariaat doorzocht en twee computers in beslag genomen.

De Rooms-Katholieke Kerk is de afgelopen jaren geregeld geconfronteerd met schandalen over seksueel misbruik door priesters. Die hebben in de Verenigde Staten de kerk tientallen miljoenen dollars gekost. In Duitsland bleef de kerk tot dusver grote schandalen bespaard.


Paderborn
27.08.2009

Priester räumt Kinderporno-Handel einIn mehr als 100 Fällen soll ein katholischer Geistlicher aus dem Erzbistum Paderborn Kinderpornos gesammelt und verbreitet haben. Er hat die Vorwürfe weitestgehend bestätigt.
Die Staatsanwaltschaft Arnsberg ermittelt gegen einen 31-jährigen Vikar aus Brilon im Erzbistum Paderborn, der unter anderem über den Computer des Pfarrbüros Kinderpornos im Internet verbreitet haben soll. Die Anklagebehörde hat bereits im Juli einen Rechner sichergestellt, dessen Inhalt nun ausgewertet werde."Wir wurden Mitte Juli von Kollegen in Süddeutschland über den Verdacht informiert“, sagte Oberstaatsanwalt Josef Hempelmann am Donnerstag.

Das Erzbistum Paderborn reagierte mit der sofortigen Suspendierung des 31-Jährigen. „Wir waren fassungslos und haben natürlich sofort reagiert“, sagte ein Bistumssprecher. Die seelsorgerische Tätigkeit sei dem Beschuldigten nun ausdrücklich untersagt. Derzeit sei der Vikar, der am vergangenen Wochenende nach vier Jahren in Brilon eigentlich ins hessische Korbach hätte wechseln sollen, krankgeschrieben. Dass er jemals wieder seinen Beruf ausüben werde, sei mehr als unwahrscheinlich, hieß es. Der Vikar hat die Vorwürfe weitestgehend eingeräumt. nan/AP/dpa

Spanje's gestolen kinderen; Franco's last victims search for solace. Van wie is die baarmoeder?

Is de Ierse residentiele geschiedenis zo Iers ?






dwaze moeders op het plein
wiens kinderen verduisterd zijn
die nog steeds
jaren door roepen
ongehoord

vervolgden om geloof of ras
vervolgden om wat vader
of moeder was
vervolgden met het schiet gebed

ze schuifelen door het journaal

The children of Republicans ‘stolen’ from their parents in the Spanish Civil War fight to find their relatives

The Times
August 27, 2009
Graham Keeley

Uxenu Ablana grasps the rails of the rundown house that once was like a prison to him. He breaks into an irreverent version of Cara al Sol (Facing the Sun), one of the songs drummed into him as a child when he lived at this former orphanage. It is a bitter-sweet moment. This was the marching song of General Franco’s dictatorship.

For Ablana, the song symbolises a youth lost to the dictator’s regime. “My life stopped in 1936,” he says. “They robbed me of my childhood.”

Now 80, Ablana is one of an estimated 30,000 “stolen children” of Franco’s Spain. These sons or daughters of Republicans were taken from their parents during and after the Spanish Civil War in a sinister programme under direct control of El Caudillo.

Many were too young to remember who their real parents were. Others were lured back from exile under the pretence that they’d be reunited with their families, only to be sent to live with adults sympathetic to the regime. The children’s identities were changed so that they could not be traced.

Emilia Giron was persecuted by the Nationalist Government as it searched for her brother-in-law, a guerrilla. One of her sons, Jesús, was taken from her in jail, shortly after he was baptised, in the early 1940s. For 67 years, she searched fruitlessly for Jesús. In an interview with Spanish documentary-makers before her death last year, she said: “I know I gave birth to him. They took him to be baptised but they never brought him back. I never saw him again.”

This campaign of indoctrination was the brainchild of Antonio Vallejo-Nágera, the head military psychiatrist. Vallejo-Nágera believed Marxism was a mental illness that needed to be eradicated from Spain. A prominent psychiatrist in the 1930s, the manual of his theories, The Eugenics of Hispanicity, sealed the fate of a generation of innocents, such as Ablana.

Today those innocents are pensioners, many still desperately searching for parents, brothers, sisters — and their own identities — before it is too late.

When Ablana returns to the orphanages where he spent his youth in Pravia, northern Spain, painful and vivid memories flood back. His mother was tortured to death by Franco supporters to gain information about his father, who was sentenced to death, reprieved, then jailed. His crime: lending a car to officials from the Republican Government.

Ablana was thrown into orphanages from the age of 5. He spent 13 years being abused by priests and indoctrinated with propaganda from the Falange, the right-wing party allied to the Franco regime. The aim was to transform him from the son of a “red” into a follower of the regime. “The priests would beat you if you wrote or ate with your left hand. They thought it was a sign of being a red,” he says.

Ablana was denied toys and made to clean shoes while the orphaned children of Franco supporters played outside. Then there was the abuse. “One priest told me to take my trousers off, he said he was going to clean my feet as Christ did. But his hands carried on up,” he recalls.

He escaped from an orphanage at the age of 18 and was found by his father. But after years apart, the two were distanced and soon lost touch. He became a travelling salesman, married and has children. But today he is still marked by what he suffered more than 70 years ago.

Antonia Radas, another victim, finally got to know her mother, albeit briefly. The two had been separated when her mother Carmen was forced to give her up after being jailed for her husband’s Republican links. Radas lived a comfortable life surrounded by lies; her adoptive parents told her that her real parents had abandoned her. Her name — Pasionaria Herrera Cano — after the communist civil war leader — was changed to stop her from being traced. “My new parents kept telling me that my real parents were undesirables and had sold me. It was poisonous,” she says. Mother and daughter were reunited through a TV show in 1993. Radas shared 18 months with her mother before she died.

Now a frail 75, Radas, from Málaga, has mixed feelings about the reunion with her. “We had time to get to know each other. But it has been difficult to deal with what happened to me,” she says. “My mother was destroyed by the pain caused by not being able to be with me. She lived for 60 years with my photo under her pillow.”

Others, desperate to find loved ones, embarked on searches, using DNA tests to find their families. María José Huelga, 84, paid for tests on five women in France, Belgium and Spain, to find her sister, Maria Luisa. She is still looking.

After Franco’s death in 1975, much of Spain’s past was brushed under the carpet. The new democracy wanted to ensure the transition from dictatorship did not falter. An amnesty law ensured those guilty of crimes committed during the Franco’s reign couldn’t be brought before the courts.

As countries such as Argentina and Guatemala dealt publicly with the fate of those who disappeared during their dictatorships, Spain stayed quiet. It is only relatively recently that the fate of victims such as the stolen children has come to light. As the mood in Spain changed, campaigners asked questions about the generation of “disappeared”. People such as Emilio Silva, who at the start of the decade became the first person to search for the body of his grandfather, shot and buried during the civil war. He inspired others to embark on similar quests. Now barely a week goes by without a mass grave being reopened.

Paul Preston, the British historian who has written a book called The Spanish Holocaust, says: “We know the names of 101,000 people. But there are at least 30,000 mass graves across Spain.”

Despite changes, many believe Spain has a long way to go and early judicial efforts to give coherence to the campaign have hit the buffers. Two years ago, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, introduced the Law of Historical Memory, which offered redress to victims or their relatives who were killed or “disappeared” during the Civil War and its aftermath. The law ordered the removal of symbols celebrating Franco. But the legislation failed to satisfy campaigners, who said it did not go far enough. For those on the Right, such as the opposition Popular Party, it served only to open past wounds.

Then, earlier this year, the Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, who rose to fame when he tried to arrest the Chilean dictator General Pinochet in 1998, launched an investigation into the fate of the “lost children”. But just as Spain seemed about to confront this dark chapter, Judge Garzón was forced to concede jurisdiction of the case to lower provincial courts. They are unlikely to pursue such a complex and controversial case.

Campaigners, however, refuse to give up. They are to take to court the case of Beatriz Soriano Rui. In 1964 she was taken from her mother while still in hospital and disappeared. Her sister, 44-year-old Mar Soriano Ruti, says: “I hope one day to set eyes on my sister.”

He's got the whole world in his hands...
in our whomb
we've got
the tiny little baby


U B U N T U !

The lost children of Franco-era Spain; the pact of forgetting

Sue Lloyd Roberts
BBC Newsnight, Spain

Seventy years after the end of the civil war in 1939 in which more than 350,000 people were killed, Spain is still divided over how to deal with what the country calls its "historical memory".

Many people, especially the older generation, say that it has been so long since the war took place that now it is time to forget.
However, those related to victims of the Franco era, and the younger generation, say that it is necessary to know about the events of that time, that they owe it to those who died.

Old battle lines are being redrawn.
When Franco died in 1975, there was an agreement between his friends and foes, often dubbed the "pact of forgetting", in which both sides agreed a mutually beneficial amnesty to paper over their divisions in order to move forward to a modern, democratic Spain.

Unlike South Africa, Spain has never had a truth and reconciliation commission, so only now are long-repressed aspects of Spain's dark past coming to light.

Young volunteers
The dead on the losing side of the war had been thrown into unmarked, mass graves, but people have not forgotten where they are.

the priest who, when we were sitting at the table, either eating or writing,
had a cane and he would whip us on the neck if we used our left hand
Uxenu Ablana

Exhumations are now taking place all over Spain. In Malaga, just metres away from Spain's famous Costa del Sol, teams of young volunteers work alongside academics and forensic scientists.

They are watched by old men who, as children, remember seeing their fathers rounded up by the Fascist troops.

"My father was assassinated," says 72-year-old Antonio Perez Ruiz. "Not killed because he deserved it. He was killed by those who in those days went around calling themselves nationalists. But who were these people? Do 'nationalists' go around killing fellow Spaniards, supporters of a democratically elected government?"

'Important work'
The young volunteers, working in t-shirts under the hot August sun, are as indignant as the old men.
Nuria complains that she was not told the truth about the civil war at school and she now wants to know:
"It's a bit late, but better late than never," she says. "The work we are doing here is important. We mustn't forget these people."

Exhumations are now taking place all over the country
As students and academics alike dig away at Spain's past, other horrific stories about the Franco era are emerging.

As people begin to talk about this period, we are finding out that some 30,000 children were forcibly removed from their parents, given to childless pro-Franco couples or put into institutions where they were brainwashed and cruelly abused.

We met Uxenu Ablana in Pravia, in northern Spain. He says his life came to an end in 1936 when, at five years old, he was taken from his parents.

His father had been a government driver and was imprisoned. His mother died and Uxenu spent 12 years in four different orphanages run by the Church and by the dictatorship.

'Armed priest'
Uxenu took us back to the first orphanage where he was called "son of a red" by the priests, whom he says had a fanatical hatred of anything left wing.
We all agreed to forget these things when Franco died

Milagros residents
He told us about "the priest who, when we were sitting at the table, either eating or writing, had a cane and he would whip us on the neck if we used our left hand".

"On two occasions as he leant over, a gun fell out of his robes and fell to the floor and we realised that he had a weapon he could kill with," he said.

He was interned with his three brothers, all of whom died of tuberculosis.

The priest in charge, he says, used to abuse them sexually:
"The priests collaborated completely with the Falangists who had overthrown the government. They were paedophiles and they converted me to atheism - they were bad and I refused to believe a word they said."

'Nonsense' claims

In another orphanage, run by the Auxilio Social, the main welfare institution in Franco's Spain, Uxenu and the other children were made to sing Falangist hymns celebrating the godliness of Franco's followers.

Dr Felix Morales says people like Uxenu are lying
Uxenu says that at the Auxilio Social orphanage he would endure serious punishments and go for up to 15 days without a meal at night.

"I complained, I cried, but there was no-one who cared. I never received any affection," he says.

Dr Felix Morales, vice-president of the Franco Foundation says people like Uxenu are lying:

"These people can say what they like, but it is not true. I don't know anything about these stories about what the priests and nuns did or any such nonsense.
"As all the people you spoke to well know, there was a department set up - the Auxilio Social - to look after poor children and war orphans."

Reluctance to talk

He goes on to claim that he had testimonies from children looked after by the Auxilio Social who went on to do well in life. And he claims that Franco's effect on Spain was positive:

Many still find the events of 70 years ago too inflammatory to discuss
"In 1936, when the war began, Spain was a poor country. I am old and I remember. It was a backward country. Franco left a different country - the eighth most industrialised in the world with a proud middle class."

Another exhumation is taking place in Milagros, in central Spain in an area which was pro-Franco during the conflict.

It is said to be still sympathetic to the dictator, so I am not surprised when my attempt to talk to local people about the digging down the road, was met with reluctance:

"We all agreed to forget these things when Franco died," they remind me. "It's been too many years," says one woman.

Only one local, born well after the war, was prepared to go further:

"I'll get the butcher to talk to you," he said. "He knows everything in the village".
But, after a few minutes, he came out explaining that the butcher would not talk because the subject was "incandente" that is, more than 70 years after the war, it is still an inflammatory subject.

You can watch Sue Lloyd Roberts' film on Franco's missing children on Newsnight on Tuesday 25th August 2009 at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

Listeners to BBC Radio 4 will also be able to hear a report on the PM programme at 5.00pm. Viewers of BBC World can also see her documentary Spain's Dark Past in the Our World series from Wednesday 26th August 2009.

Kassa! Catholic Church Dealt Blow by U.S. Supreme Court

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has denied a request by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport to keep court files on clergy sex abuse cases sealed until the high court decides whether to take up their case in the fall.

Ginsberg verbally notified attorneys in the case of her decision late Tuesday.

The diocese's attorney, Ralph W. Johnson III, said church officials will now decide whether to ask the full nine-member court to keep the stay in place.

The diocese is trying to keep sealed more than 12,600 pages of depositions, exhibits and legal arguments involving 23 lawsuits against seven priests from the Bridgeport diocese.

Most of the lawsuits were filed in the mid-1990s. The lawsuits were settled in 2001 by the church for undisclosed amounts with the agreement that the settlements and the documents would remain sealed forever.

Four newspapers, including The Courant, filed a lawsuit to have the documents unsealed in 2002 when it was discovered they had not been destroyed by the judicial department.

Among the court documents are three depositions by then-Bishop Edward Egan, who was in charge of the Bridgeport Diocese when most of the lawsuits against priests under his control were filed and adjudicated.

Egan recently retired as the archbishop of New York.

Stories detailing how Egan and other officials in Bridgeport ignored accusations or protected abusive priests were published in The Courant in 2002. The stories were based on some of the secret court documents that the paper obtained on its own.

The state Supreme Court has twice ruled that the documents should be unsealed.

A possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is the church's last legal step to keep the documents secret. The diocese is expected to file its petition with the high court by the end of this month.

The high court usually doesn't decide which cases it will hear until the fall. The court decides to hear only a handful of the petitions it receives.

In its motion asking the high court to keep the stay in place, the diocese says there is a good chance the high court will take up the diocese's case because of two issues: the state Supreme Court's definition of what constitutes a legal document; and the church's contention that its First Amendment rights would be violated by the unsealing of documents that church officials produced with the understanding that they would be sealed forever.

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant

Tiktiktik en een mens heeft alweer gegeten en gedronken. Dag kardinaal.

U mag niet met genen klooien van uw collega William Levada

In early June, the pope appointed Cardinal Egan to the Vatican's highest court.
Uit Bishop-accountability

In his previous post as bishop in Bridgeport, Conn., he let some priests keep working after they were accused of sexual abuse. In closed testimony in a 1997 lawsuit, he expressed doubt about the veracity of most allegations, saying that "very few have even come close to having anyone prove anything." One priest he supported was the Rev. Raymond Pcolka, who had been accused as far back as 1966. Father Pcolka's alleged victims included more than a dozen boys and girls - some as young as 7 - who described being spanked and forced into oral and anal sex. Cardinal Egan kept him on the job until 1992, when another accuser came forward and the priest refused orders to remain at a treatment center. The diocese has since settled lawsuits against Father Pcolka, who refused to answer lawyers' questions during the litigation. Another priest protected by Cardinal Egan was the Rev. Laurence Brett, who had first admitted abuse in 1964 - biting a boy's genitals. After Cardinal Egan became Bridgeport's bishop in the late 1980s, he met Father Brett and endorsed him for continued ministry. "In the course of our conversation," he wrote, "the particulars of his case came out in detail and with grace." Further accusations led to Father Brett's suspension in 1993. In a recent letter to New York parishioners, Cardinal Egan said his policy in Bridgeport was to do a preliminary investigation of accused priests, then send them for psychiatric evaluation and heed doctors' advice. The Connecticut Postlater showed that the policy wasn't followed in the case of the Rev. Walter Coleman, who stayed on the job for more than a year after the Bridgeport diocese concluded in early 1994 that he had abused the son of a woman with whom he had an affair and bought a house. In early June, the pope appointed Cardinal Egan to the Vatican's highest court. In mid-May, the Westchester County district attorney convened a grand jury to investigate New York archdiocesan leaders' handling of sex-abuse allegations.

The Ryan Report; "Abuse was not a failure of the system. Abuse was the system."

The Mayo News
Monday, 24 August 2009

“To paraphrase some words of James Joyce, it is the nightmare from which the Church is trying to awake. I sensed that the Ryan report would be the darkest piece of the jigsaw of abuse and so it has proved.”

Fr Kevin Hegarty

My column this week is a resumé of my contribution to a seminar, ‘The Catholic Church after the Ryan Report’, held during the Humbert summers school in Ballina last Saturday.
Last May, sixty years and one month, almost to the day, after the official declaration of the Irish Republic, at a state ceremony in Dublin, the Ryan report on abuses in our industrial schools was released.
The original proclamation of the Republic in 1949 promised to cherish the children of the nation equally. The cumulative evidence of the report brought graphically home to us the abject failure of the state and its main social and educational agency, the Catholic Church, in their responsibilities to children who were orphaned, abandoned or convicted of petty theft up to the 1970’s.
In a collection of poetry, ‘Flight to Africa’, published in 1963, Austin Clark included a poem called ‘A Simple Tale’.
“A casual labourer, Pat Rourke, who hurried from bricking across the water
With wife and babe, could find no work here.
All slept in a coal hole, heard
(When light, that dwindled through the grating,
Was Wicklowing from strand to hill)
The gulls, loop lines, near Dublin Bay,
Squabble for offal, rut of cur
Or cat around a dustbin, till
A bang in a breadshop, dairy. Brought
To Court, the little screaming boy
And girl were quickly, for the public good,
Committed to Industrial School.
The cost - three pounds a week for each:
Both safely held beyond the reach
Of mother, father. We destroy
Families, bereave the unemployed.
Pity and love are beyond our buoys.”

What we have in the Ryan report is a collection of hundreds of “simple tales”, fused into a compelling compendium of human suffering that is a source of profound shame to the state and the Catholic Church. The report tells the story of an Ireland that was relatively hidden until now. It unveils the geography of a dark hinterland that we failed for so long to name or acknowledge.
Though late in the day for many who endured the system, and much too late for those who have died, it is important that these stories have been recorded. The first step towards any possibility of genuine healing for those, whose childhood days were blighted, is that their experiences are now in the public domain.
Great credit is due to Judge Seán Ryan and his team for their meticulous work over the last decade. The report, drafted in limpid language, has the austere cast of truth. They, and journalists like Mary Raftery, have done the state and the Catholic Church some service.
I expected the Ryan report to be devastating. Since the 1990’s the Catholic Church in Ireland has been hit by a tsunami-like tide of revelations of the sexual, physical and mental abuse of children by clerics and religious. To paraphrase some words of James Joyce, it is the nightmare from which the Church is trying to awake. I sensed that the Ryan report would be the darkest piece of the jigsaw of abuse and so it has proved.
However, I found the report even more devastating than I had envisaged. There were over 800 known abuses in 200 institutions during a period of 35 years.
The adjectives used in the report are stark and brook of no equivocation. Abuse was systemic, pervasive, chronic, arbitrary and endemic. Abuse was not a failure of the system. Abuse was the system.
Furthermore, the truth seems to have been extracted reluctantly out of the religious congregations responsible for perpetrating the abuses. The report asserts that, for example, the public apology by the Christian Brothers was “guarded, conditional and unclear” and that “it was not even clear the statement could properly be called an apology”.
Why did all this happen? I am not so arrogant as to believe that I have any or all of the answers but I would like to suggest four pointers; religious authoritarianism; and excessively deferential respect for an authority, that was corrosively non-critical; a cosy clericalism; and an oppressive sexual theology.
In the world described in the Ryan report, loyalty to the Church as institution had a higher value than adherence to the truth. Those who professed loyalty, whether out of fear or a desire to further ecclesiastical ambition, were usually rewarded. Those who tried to speak the truth were rarely listened to and often sidelined.
Where does the Church go from here? One suggestion made at the Humbert School seminar is that church leaders should establish a commission of independent historians, sociologists and theologians to investigate the history, structures, the use of power and the dominant theologies of the Catholic Church in Ireland in the 20th century. In that historical experience lie the reasons for the Church’s present predicament. Hopefully, from such a study, there might emerge proposals for the better governance of the Church, in line with the challenge and charisma of the Christian Gospel.

The Catholic Church in Ireland cannot duck, weave or hide from the implications of the Ryan report. In the words of T S Elliot, after “such knowledge, what forgiveness?”

Augustinus onder de douche;

DMS IN DSM

Blijft de vraag hoe vaak een rechter een nieuwe categorie aan de DSM heeft toegevoegd.

Denied Memory Syndrom

Scheiding der geesten in Ierland? Limmericken

...
Showing moral courage by her attendance, but bringing with her no extra cash demanded by the Government and survivors to top up the meagre redress deal negotiated by former education minister Michael Woods, Sr Marianne O’Connor, secretary general of Cori, the Conference of religious of Ireland, said the Humbert School was “the first public forum to which religious have been invited since the publication of the Ryan”.

There was no prize for the religious orders from the Humbert School.
Only two of the local clergy were present. It was noted by many that the Bishop of Killala, John Fleming, away on pilgrimage to Lourdes, had not sent a special delegate to witness both the awards, and there was a series of scathing criticisms of the secrecy deployed by the Catholic hierarchy and their lack of direct engagement with the survivors.

....Maar vooral ook ging hij in op de uitdagingen waar “de theologie” voor staat binnen de academische wereld, de Kerk en de maatschappij als geheel.

Dat in ieder geval de Ierse Kerk en maatschappij belang hechtte aan dit congres bleek uit de betrokkenheid van zowel de bisschop van Limerick, Donal Murray als de aartsbisschop van Ierland kardinaal Brady. Beiden waren aanwezig op het congres. Kardinaal Brady ging voor in de Eucharistieviering in de kathedraal van Limerick.

Grote mediabelangstelling

Dat Ierland trots was op deze gebeurtenis bleek uit de grote media-aandacht voor het congres. Landelijke kranten berichtten er over en iedere taxichauffeur in Limerick was op de hoogte van het evenement.

Het thema was een zeer actueel thema. Welke bijdrage moet de theologie leveren aan het denken over ecologie en economie? In deze tijd van een financiële crisis en uitbuiting van de planeet zijn dit geen hobbythema’s, maar realiteiten waar vanuit katholiek perspectief actief een bijdrage aan moet worden geleverd.

EDUCATION (IRELAND)—ST. GEORGE'S INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, LIMERICK.

HC Deb 15 April 1886 vol 304 c1619 1619
§ MR. H. J. GILL (Limerick) asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If his attention has been called to the fact that St. George's Industrial School, Limerick, has been duly certified as capable of accommodating one hundred and seventy children, but that a grant for only eighty has been given; and, whether he will bring the matter under the consideration of the Treasury, with a view of obtaining a grant for the full number?

THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. JOHN MORLEY) (Newcastle-on-Tyne) Yes, Sir; my attention has been called to this case in a correspondence I have had with the hon. Member, to whom I wrote on the subject yesterday. The purport of the letter was that the utmost I could promise was that the case will be considered, with many others of a similar character, when next year's Estimates are being framed.

Vanuit verschillende disciplines van de theologie werd het thema belicht. Prof. Sean Freyne uit Dublin ging vanuit Bijbels exegetisch perspectief in op de verantwoordelijkheden voor een verantwoorde omgang met de schepping in al haar facetten.

The criticism came from Augustinian priest Fr Iggy O’Donovan and Fr Kevin Hegarty, two courageous priests who want the Irish Church to move out of its closed cloisters into the more participative church of the Second Vatican Council, in which bishops share decision-making with priests and laity in a national synod.

Fr Hegarty, exiled to the remotest parish in north Mayo for publishing articles on clerical child abuse in the mid-1990s, noted how today’s bishops tried “to establish clear blue water between themselves and the religious congregations” in the wake of the Ryan Report.

“As they sought to sail away from the wreckage revealed in the Ryan Report, room on the Episcopal lifeboats was extremely limited,” Fr Hegarty lamented, while Michael Kelly, deputy editor of the traditionally conservative ‘Irish Catholic’ newspaper, bemoaned that following Ryan the Irish Church now stood “in the gutter, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, humiliated, hopefully repentant”.

Fr O’Donovan, who was reprimanded for con-celebrating an Easter Sunday Mass in Drogheda three years ago with an Anglican rector, explained that he belonged to a Church which, as an institution, “rarely if ever admits to having been wrong or to having inflicted harm on people”.

Most strikingly of all, Michael O’Brien accused the Irish bishops of not telling Pope Benedict the full scale of the Irish abuse crisis — and he demanded that the Pope should meet two survivors to listen to their stories.

Rome, Maynooth and Cori needed to take seriously the alarm bells rung in Mayo this weekend, or their Church is moribund as far as the next generation is concerned, he said. However, while Rome, Cori and Maynooth continue to man the breached ramparts of their closed walls, the danger is that like the Church, the Cowen government will shrink from its financial responsibilities to abuse victims.

The unspoken hope of Maynooth and Government Buildings is that the survivors’ group will divide and fight among themselves, and that the media and the public will weary of their plight.

John Cooney, the director of the Humbert School, is Religion Correspondent of the Irish Independent

Child-abuse report judge praises courage of victims

Irish Independant
By John Cooney
Monday August 24 2009
THE JUDGE behind the damning report into systematic abuse of thousands of children in State institutions has warmly praised those who told him their stories, thereby bringing to light "events which were shrouded in darkness for so long".

Mr Justice Sean Ryan, making his first public comments since publication last May of the shocking report, acknowledged the "courage and fortitude" of the survivors. He was speaking at a weekend ceremony in Ballina, Co Mayo, after receiving a special award presented by Nobel Peace Laureate John Hume, patron of the Humbert School.

Accepting the award on behalf of the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse which he chaired, Judge Ryan said its report "says a lot about our society, institutions and our systems in the past that these events happened.

Response
"We hoped that there would be discussion, debate and reflection on it and undoubtedly the scale of the response was more than we would have thought."

Judge Ryan said he accepted the Humbert School award "with great humility and he was conscious of the enormous contribution of colleagues.

"This is the best report we could make," he said. "It is for others to do justice to those who suffered abuse in the past -- and to decide what can be done to ensure that such events do not happen in the future."

A second award was also presented by Mr Hume to three representatives of former residents of institutions, Michael O'Brien of the Right to Peace group, Tom Hayes of the Alliance group, and Dolores Rooney of Soca UK and Ireland.

Mr O'Brien accepted the award "on behalf of everyone who as a child went through the institutions".

"Justice Sean Ryan, today I bow to you and I thank you for the momentous work you and your team have done," he added.

"It will also say a lot about our present situation as to how we respond to the disclosure of these events."

Asked by the Irish Independent if he had expected the report's conclusions to receive such a response of shock and revulsion by the nation, he said: "The honest answer is no.

As regards the religious congregations, Mr O'Brien said: "I will forgive when I know that these people mean it when they say 'we are really, really sorry'.

"I don't want silly apologies. I want to see repentance."

Addressing the Humbert, Sr Marianne O'Connor, secretary general of Cori, the Conference of Religious of Ireland, said this was "the first public forum to which religious have been invited since the publication of the Ryan Report. "I am here, first and foremost, to apologise," she said. "To say: 'We are sorry' and to confirm our commitment, as in individuals and as congregations, to do whatever we can to make reparation. We religious are asking for forgiveness ... without forgiveness one is stuck, unable to move forward".

Sr O'Connor pledged that the religious congregations would provide money for reparation.

"But we must do much more than provide money. We must listen and learn, to the degree survivors will permit us, to journey with them as they discover what they need."

bron
A third award was presented to journalist Mary Raftery for her documentaries into clerical child abuse.

- John Cooney

Bol.com

Dank jullie wel!

Jersey Haut de la Garenne, 't stinkt. Nog steeds.

W A L G E L I J K !

Aantoonbaar feit:
Ná de eerste veroordeling van de week, is er weer eentje veroordeeld.
Da's winst.

Maar nog steeds: 't stinkt!
En een belangrijke vraag hierbij, en niet alleen voor Jersey, is waar en hoe.
Heksenjacht of doofpot? Hoe en door wie dan?
Beiden schaden de belangen van de overlevers. En vooral dát stinkt heel ernstig.
Het maakt overlevers hernieuwd tot slachtoffers.

Wat schiet je uiteindelijk op met een vent, desnoods die 3, in een gevangenis zolang er nog steeds geen duidelijkheid over heksenjacht of doofpot is, maar na misbruik gevolgd door jaren doofpot nog steeds die zelfde vraag blijft?
Dan is er een veroordeling, maar nog steeds géén recht(spositie).
Je wordt nog steeds gebruikt.

Er is geen rechtspraak die ooit slachtoffers recht kan doen; terug kan geven wat ontstolen werd.
Maar rechtspraak die die vraag over heksenjacht of doofpot overeind houdt is verkrachting van iedere vorm van (rechts) bescherming.
Het ontbreken van die bescherming kenden de slachtoffers al. Dat hebben ze al bovengronds gehaald.
Daar zijn, zeker sinds Australie, Canada en de Ryancommissie als rk tegentegenhanger, dit soort operette-opvoevoeringen niet langer voor nodig.

Die duidelijkheid is niet slechts van belang voor de slachtoffers van Haut de la Garenne.
Maar ook elders.
Hoe de doofpotten werkten begint steeds duidelijker te worden.
Nu de heksenjachten-duidelijkheid!!

Ook daarop, zoals Ierland ook laat zien, hebben slachtoffers en overlevers hun antwoord(en) te vinden. Dat kan niet gedelegeerd worden aan een overheid, een rechtssysteem of een samenleving (of een kerk) die heeft bewezen haar verantwoordelijkheden niet te nemen.
Die antwoorden kunnen alleen slachtoffers/overlevers vinden.
Gezamelijk, voor ieders noodzakelijke individuele antwoord. Over Leven en Menswaardigheid.

Afwentelen van de ramp ná de ramp op (voormalige) slachtoffers/overlevers is moreel en feitelijk niet tolerabel. Dat is w a l g e l i j k en stinkt! naar kinderschedels en tanden, zélfs als die niet gevonden werden. Het niet vinden daarvan is dan immers nog steeds géén garantie maar niet anders dan het gelukkig toeval van nou nou nou, valt me dat nu toch even mee.

Middeleeuws pr stunten met wat fooiengestrooi is géén verantwoordelijkheid nemen tov het verleden, maar wat zich katholiek noemend schorem in de VS uithaalde.
Het is géén bescherming van zorg-afhankelijke kinderen!

Nu maar hopen dat ze zich dat in Duitsland realiseren.
Cynisch genoeg misschien wel juist de kracht van het verleden.


Home to something evil
What really happened at Haut de la Garenne, the children's home at the centre of the Jersey care scandal last year? Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy report on a building that still houses some very dark secrets

The Guardian, Saturday 14 March 2009

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