Pope condemns child abuse by priests

Ritual Abuse: Lawsuit Against Convicted Satanic Catholic Priest Dismissed because ‘Survivor Doe’ Filing is too Late, Judge Rules

A lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by Gerald Robinson, left, and others was dismissed by Common Pleas Judge Ruth Ann Franks.

By DAVID YONKE
TOLEDO BLADE | January 15, 2010

A lawsuit against Toledo priest Gerald Robinson, who was convicted in 2006 of murdering a nun, has been thrown out for being filed too late.

Judge Ruth Ann Franks of Lucas County Common Pleas Court said a Toledo woman’s civil suit, alleging that she was abused by Robinson and others in satanic rituals when she was a child, was not filed within Ohio’s statute of limitations, which in most cases is 12 years after the person turns 18.

The woman, now in her mid-40s, filed anonymously in 2005 as Survivor Doe along with her husband Spouse Doe, claiming that she could not have sued Robinson earlier because she did not know his identity until she saw him on television after his 2004 arrest for murder.

Mark Davis, the woman’s attorney, said he plans to appeal the ruling.

Judge Franks said in her 27-page decision, dated Tuesday, that while Survivor Doe did not know Robinson’s identity, she knew at least four people involved in the abuse and therefore could have attempted to learn the other abusers’ identities before the time limitations expired.

Judge Franks said child abuse may be the most “vile and vicious act that can be inflicted by a human” and that it stirs “very profound emotions,” but “the law does not allow the court to operate on emotion.”

She said Survivor Doe “could have sought assistance from law enforcement, and she could have attempted to act through other trusted individuals such as her husband” before the statute ex-pired.

Also named in the now-dismissed lawsuit were Gerald Mazuchowski, a Toledo lay Catholic; the Toledo Catholic Diocese, and St. Adalbert Parish and school, where some abuses allegedly occurred.

Survivor Doe claimed in the suit that she was sexually abused by the satanic cult between 1968 and 1975, and that her abusers included a hooded man “with evil eyes” and a hooded “fat” man who told other cult members what to do.

Judge Franks cited Survivor Doe as saying that she witnessed “her mother’s participation in the ritual-type murder of a child during the satanic rituals and of her brother sexually assaulting her with a snake at someone’s direction, also related to the satanic ritual abuse.”

The judge said the Toledo woman began to remember the satanic rituals in 1994, kept detailed journals she calls her “life’s work,” and sought assistance from an attorney in 1994 about possibly suing her uncle for child abuse in a separate matter.

Mr. Davis, Survivor Doe’s attorney, said he is convinced that “our case is even stronger this time … because the evidence is overwhelming that what she described is what actually happened.”

He said he believes an appeals court will side with Survivor Doe’s contention that the statute of limitations countdown should not have begun ticking until she recognized her alleged perpetrators.

Robinson’s attorney, John Donahue, said yesterday that he was “very pleased” with Judge Franks’ decision, calling it “sensitive to the concerns of child abuse victims” while also upholding the law – “that justice delayed is justice denied.”

Robinson, 71, is serving a 15-years-to-life sentence at Hocking Correctional Facility in southern Ohio for the 1980 murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. He was barred from ministry and has retired from the diocese but remains a priest because he has not been laicized by the Vatican.

Sister Margaret Ann’s body was found, choked and stabbed 32 times, on the morning of April 5, 1980 – Holy Saturday – in the sacristy of the former Mercy Hospital.

Robinson was arrested by cold-case detectives in April, 2004, and found guilty of murder in Lucas County Common Pleas Court in May, 2006.

His legal appeals have been rejected by the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals, the Ohio Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court. A petition for postconviction relief is pending before Judge Gene Zmuda in Lucas County Common Pleas Court, with a hearing scheduled for Jan. 22.

Source: http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100115/NEWS02/1150375

Israeli cult leader Goel Ratzon arrested for allegedly keeping harem of women and fathering dozens

BY Diane Moy Schaefer
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Israeli police arrested a suspected cult leader in Tel Aviv believed to have kept a harem of  women and fathered dozens of children with them.

Goel Ratzon, 59, is being held on suspicion of rape, slavery and incest. Police believe the self-styled healer, who had flowing white hair and a beard, brainwashed the women into staying with him in squalid, overcrowded apartments.

Following a seven-month undercover investigation, police raided three apartments where they found 17 women and 39 children, according to the London Daily Telegraph.

The women in the group were not allowed to be with men, eat meat, smoke, drink alcohol or dress immodestly, according to a rulebook found in one of the living quarters. They would be fined if they argued, gossiped or asked Ratzon where he was going. The children, who all bear Ratzon’s first name, which means “savior” in Hebrew, were expected to kiss his feet when he visited, according to the Telegraph.

His emotional hold on his women was reported to be firm. Police have kept him away from TV cameras for fear that he might send secret messages, ordering the women to hurt themselves. Two women were arrested along with Ratzon on suspicion they cooperated with him or witnessed his alleged crimes.

The other 15 women were taken to homes for abused women, along with all their children.

Ratzon made no secret of his unusual living arrangements, and was featured in a documentary broadcast last year, where he claimed to have fathered 89 children by more than 30 women.

In the documentary, the women were seen to be wearing tattoos of Ratzon’s name and face. When asked why young, attractive women would be part of his group, he replied, “I am perfect. I have all the characteristics that a woman wants.”

A police spokesman told the Telegraph that detectives were trying to piece together the nature of the family relationships, and were determining whether or not the children were subjected to sexual abuse.

Germany reels at abuse in top Jesuit school

The now familiar narrative of systematic abuse of children by priests has scandalised Germans, but campaigners fear the church’s perceived lack of will to change will deny victims justice, writes DEREK SCALLY in Berlin

IT IS 23 YEARS since Adam threw himself in front of a train. His family never knew why. Nor did they know until this week that, months before his death, the 24-year-old had tracked down Fr Peter, a former teacher who had abused him at Berlin’s elite Canisius College.

Adam found the Jesuit priest in the western city of Hildesheim in 1986, confronted him with a knife and stabbed him several times in the chest before fleeing. The priest was seriously injured and was rushed to hospital for treatment, but never pressed charges.

“It seems like others knew earlier what went on in Canisius College, but only now does it seem to concern us,” said Adam’s mother this week to German television. “Abuse seems to be everywhere.”

After years of watching Ireland’s unfolding clerical abuse drama, Germany now has its own home-grown scandal. What started at Berlin’s top Catholic school has, within a week, exploded into a familiar, depressing narrative. Physical violence against children; the sickening abuse of trust by priests; and the cowardly decision to move the abusers on to new pastures and new victims rather than dealing with the problem.

Germany’s Catholic church has not been immune to abuse allegations over the years but, until now, abusing priests were portrayed as isolated black sheep.

But that has changed with revelations of systematic abuse at Canisius College, founded in 1925 and still one of Berlin’s most exclusive schools.

Last month the principal, Fr Klaus Mertes, wrote, in an open letter to former pupils, of his shock and shame at the abuse allegations he had heard after being approached by former pupils. Worse, he said, was how an internal investigation revealed its systematic nature, encouraged by the school’s “culture of looking the other way”.

The Canisius allegations concern three Jesuit priests now in their 60s, all of whom are no longer in the order.

The first, Fr Wolfgang Stab, taught German, religion and physical education at the Berlin school from 1975 to 1979, and later at schools in Hamburg and in the Black Forest. Today, former pupils at all three schools tell of “excessive physical punishment rituals”.

“If we got bad grades, we were forced to lie naked across his lap for a spanking,” said one former student.

The priest moved to Chile in 1985 and left the order in 1992. He has admitted abuse and, last week, asked his victims for forgiveness.

More serious claims surround Fr Peter Riedel – the priest stabbed by a former pupil – who taught at Canisius College from 1971 to 1981.

“He would ask us if we had thought about girls and, if we admitted masturbating, had to show him how. We had to let ourselves be touched,” recalled another victim.

Fr Peter continued to work as a priest after leaving the Jesuits in 1995. In every posting – in Göttingen, Hanover and even Mexico – he faced allegations of sexual abuse of young girls. Letters of complaint were found this week in his file – unanswered.

Colleagues who asked why the priest was moved around so frequently were told a vague story about “financial irregularities” in his previous parish. Fr Peter lives in an upmarket neighbourhood of Berlin and denies all charges.

A third abusing priest who worked as a religion teacher in Canisius College in 1970-71 has since been identified as Bernhard Ehlert, head of a leading Catholic Third World charity. He resigned on Wednesday after he admitted abusing boys early in his career at the school.

Cardinal Georg Sterzinski, archbishop of Berlin, has weighed into the scandal, calling an emergency meeting on Tuesday of all Catholic school heads in the archdiocese. Already Fr Mertes of Canisius College is convinced he has gone public with just “the tip of the iceberg”.

“What has become visible with us happened at other schools,” he told Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper. “But it is a disaster for the Jesuits because the heart of our order is the teacher-pupil relationship. What has happened here is the worst possible betrayal of our spirituality.” Former victims have few legal options: most child abuse offences in Germany can no longer be prosecuted after the victim turns 18; other abuse crimes fall outside the statute of limitations after five years.

Seasoned child welfare campaigners are doubtful that the Canisius College revelations will have a long-term effect.

“This scandal will end with the usual empty phrases and the church will sit it out until the next time,” says Johannes Heibel, founder of Germany’s Initiative Against Child Abuse.

“The church has to show from its side that is anxious to clear this up, to admit that this is not about individual cases, but I don’t see any indication of that willingness yet and we don’t have the means in Germany to exert real pressure.”

Source: http://christianchildabuse.blogspot.com/2010/02/germany-reels-at-abuse-in-top-jesuit.html

Pastor convicted of sexually abusing boys

GOSHEN – The former pastor of the Newburgh Church of God was convicted by an Orange County Court jury late Friday on all counts of an indictment that charged him of abusing three young boys over a two year period.

The jury deliberated for 2½ hours before finding Humberto Cruz, 39, guilty of all the charges against him, the most serious of which was course of sexual conduct against a child in the first degree, said District Attorney Frank Phillips.

Those charges stem from contact with two boys who were under the age of 13 during the time of the abuse from July 2004 through July 2006, said Phillips.

He was also convicted of seven counts of endangering the welfare of a child involving lesser crimes against a third boy.

When sentenced in April, Phillips said Cruz could get 25 years in prison. Until his sentencing, Cruz was remanded to the Orange County Jail without bail.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant DA Julie Mohl, a member of the Special Victims’ Unit.