Posts by Dogpatch

june 24, 2012. priest's conviction is a first, will more follow?http://heraldbulletin.com/breakingnews/x1254881066/priests-conviction-is-a-first-will-more-follow.

associated press.

Dogpatch

This is an excellent article from the Herald Bulletin Online and Associated Press:

June 24, 2012

Priest's conviction is a first, will more follow?

http://heraldbulletin.com/breakingnews/x1254881066/Priests-conviction-is-a-first-will-more-follow

Associated Press

NEW YORK — A decade after the clergy sex-abuse crisis erupted, the first Roman Catholic church official has been criminally convicted for failing to alert parishes or police about known predators.

Advocates for children said the verdict Friday against Monsignor William Lynn sends a critical message that diocesan officials who supervise priests must report offenders or face prosecution.

Lynn was secretary of the clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004. A jury in Philadelphia found him guilty of one count of child endangerment but acquitted him of conspiracy and a second child endangerment count.

Lynn was far from the only diocesan official in the United States who kept accused priests in parish assignments. Thousands of case files made public through lawsuits and civil investigations revealed that consistent inaction by church officials in the face of abuse claims in earlier years left a trail of victims in dioceses nationwide. About 16,000 claims have been made against Catholic clergy since 1950, according to studies commissioned by the U.S. bishops.

So, why is Lynn the only American church official convicted so far for letting this happen? Here's an explanation in question-and-answer format:

Q: Why is it so difficult to successfully prosecute bishops and other church leaders who mishandled abuse claims?

A: Most of the abuse cases that have come to light in recent years involve allegations of wrongdoing from decades ago — far beyond the statutes of limitation for criminal charges and often for civil lawsuits. Since 2002, when the scandal broke wide open with one case in the Archdiocese of Boston, a few prosecutors have struck deals with local dioceses to avoid indictment, and eight grand juries have investigated how local dioceses responded to abuse claims. All the grand jury reports found evidence that church officials consistently protected accused clergy more than children. However, only one such report found enough evidence within time limits to prosecute a diocesan official: the Philadelphia grand jury investigation last year that led to Lynn's conviction.

Q: Haven't several states extended the statutes of limitation in response to the abuse scandal?

A: Some states have changed their laws to give victims several more years to file civil lawsuits. Three states — California, Delaware and Hawaii — also opened a one-time window of at least a year for accusers to sue the people who allegedly abused them as children. However, criminal statutes of limitation are a different story. Even if lawmakers extend the time limits now for a criminal prosecution, it wouldn't apply to old crimes. In California, legislators tried to retroactively waive the criminal statute of limitations for child molestation. The U.S. Supreme Court later threw the law out.

Q: If government authorities can't prosecute the diocesan officials, can't the church at least hold them responsible?

A: The toughened child safety policy the bishops enacted in 2002 contains a discipline plan for abusive priests, but not for the bishops who failed to report them to police. Only the pope has authority over bishops, and none has been forced out for mishandling abuse cases from decades ago. Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as archbishop of Boston in 2002 after court files revealed his role in sheltering accused priests. However, Law reportedly did so against the wishes of Vatican officials. Last year, Cardinal Justin Rigali stepped down as Philadelphia archbishop after the grand jury accused him of keeping credibly accused abusers on the job. However, Rigali had already submitted his retirement request to the pope the year before, at age 75, as the Vatican requires.

American bishops have sometimes spoken of "fraternal correction" — meaning attempts to hold each other accountable for child safety. However, it's almost unheard of for a fellow bishop to question the actions of another in public. "The church itself has not been good at holding bishops or chancery officials accountable," said Nicholas Cafardi, a legal scholar and former chairman of the National Review Board, the advisory panel bishops formed to help monitor child safety. "We've done a good job with priests. We've not done a good job with chancery officials who enabled these priests.'"

Q: Does Lynn's conviction have any impact at all beyond Philadelphia?

A: Yes. Timothy Lytton, a legal scholar and author of "Holding Bishops Accountable," on how civil lawsuits over clergy abuse helped create pressure to reform, said the verdict is a warning to any church official wavering about keeping his pledge to report child sex-abuse claims to civil authorities and remove offenders from church work. Since the child protection policy was enacted in 2002, some cases have been made public of bishops who have kept accused priests in churches. Later this year in Missouri, Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph is scheduled to be tried on misdemeanor failure to report suspected child abuse in the case of pornographic photos of children found on a priest's laptop. Bishops insist that Finn's case is isolated and "It's one thing to threaten the financial viability of an institution," Lytton said of the massive civil settlements dioceses have paid in abuse cases, "but it's another thing to threaten to send to jail the people who run it."

[my emphasis in red]

__________________

A very good article... kind of gives us an idea why these things take so long to come to fruition, and why we have to be patient and keep working the cause.

I say we push the cause to get some of the GB in jail. While we're at it, get Gene Smalley and Fred Rusk in there, too.

http://www.freeminds.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=575:most-wanted-watchtower-leaders-for-crimes-against-humanity&catid=31:governing-body&Itemid=346

Randy

19

The Summer Of Sparlock Has Just Begun!

by DT in

jw
friends

.

how well do you think about we can get the word out about the watchtower's embarrassing pr disaster before witnesses attend their conventions?.

Dogpatch

Keep an eye out for Sparlock.TV and/or Sparlock.org.

CAUTION! Will not be PG-13, but patterned after South Park.

I just need an animator.

The story:

Sparlock is a kid of one of a clan of wizards who are not fond of humans.

The WT (Morris) kidnaps Sparlock to use him to do his child brainwashing.

The wizards want him back and want revenge.

Sparlock is like Ike on South Park, enjoying the attention.

No copyrighted images or segments of WT images or dialogue will be used.

It will start out as a cartoon strip.

One of my first projects I have been looking forward to doing for two years... and Anthony Morris provided me with just the perfect story.

Thanks Anthony!

My favorite Youtube so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzYI3dFPBGU

16

Lawyer tells of agonising scenes as doctors forced to let a Jehovah's Witness who wanted to live, die

by 3Mozzies in

lawyer tells of agonising scenes as doctors forced to let a jehovah's witness who wanted to live, die.. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/lawyer-tells-of-agonising-scenes-as-doctors-forced-to-let-a-jehovahs-witness-who-wanted-to-live-die-7879674.html.

a lawyer who advised doctors that they must let a 22-year-old jehovah's witness die even though he wanted to live has spoken of the agonising scenes before the young man's death.. robert tobin, a partner in the london law firm kennedys, was called in by an unnamed nhs trust when the man, a jehovahs witness who was critically ill with sickle cell anaemia, refused a blood transfusion which could have saved his life.. over three weeks the man gradually deteriorated as the crisis progressed, before eventually dying.

medical staff were understandably upset at seeing a patient deteriorate before their eyes knowing a simple procedure could have been provided that would have saved his life, mr tobin said.. the mans mother, also a jehovahs witness, was at her sons bedside, and an elder from the mans church also attended.

Dogpatch

hi jamiebowers,

That's precisely what we are aiming to accomplish in the days ahead at www.ajwrb.org. We have 3 forums... one for doctors (closed to public), one for JWs (will be mods) and one for the public. Plus we have video interviews from the Red Cross. They are unlisted but you can see them now at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzzOTOMCt38

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIJCW2V53Hg

Randy

14

The Watchtower Society actually WANTS witnesses to take blood.

by Sapphy in

jw
friends

shocking?

hear me out.. acts 15v29 "blah blah blah... abstain from blood".

for years the millions of jehovah's witnesses worldwide have been fed stories of "brave witnesses" who "fought to stay true to their convictions" by refusing blood transfusion.

Dogpatch

Zen and I have had this request out for 8 months and no cases have come forward.

Randy

See:

How The Watchtower's Unholy Trinity Speaks

14

The Watchtower Society actually WANTS witnesses to take blood.

by Sapphy in

jw
friends

shocking?

hear me out.. acts 15v29 "blah blah blah... abstain from blood".

for years the millions of jehovah's witnesses worldwide have been fed stories of "brave witnesses" who "fought to stay true to their convictions" by refusing blood transfusion.

Dogpatch

There has been no evidence that the WT is saying people have disassociated themselves by taking a blood transfusion in the last year or so.

If you have evidence of such a case, email me at [email protected] or Zen, manager of AJWRB.ORG, at [email protected]. Don't include cases that are more complex and may involved other issues - just the emergency situations.

They are sweeping it all under the rug, and are not "disassociating" JWs anymore; unless you can prove otherwise.

Randy

171

Watchtower's Billion Dollars of Property Cannot Be Sold until Outcome of Conti Appeal

by Dogpatch in

30 minutes ago i just got off the phone with some important players in this case, and some things were relayed to me concerning a lot of details of the outcome of the last two days of court.

i am passing this on.

cynthia hampton, one of the main players in the candace conti case (and a close friend of 28 years), just informed me of a further, far more powerful move by the state of california against the watch tower bible and tract society of new york, inc.. by order of the superior court of the state of california - county of alameda (see documents below), until the watch tower's appeal, which won't begin until august 13th and will take up to two years to settle due to due process of law, has forbidden the watch tower to sell any more of its $1 billion in assets in the borough of brooklyn until the appeals case is finished, to assure they won't shelter their monies in the light of this most huge and devastating sexual abuse scandal ever to hit the watch tower society, and perhaps any other single-victim lawsuit.

Dogpatch

I am not an expert in these matters at all. I'm just repeating what I was told over the phone.

Let Barb and Kerry Louderback-Wood predict what will happen.

I'm just the one who got a surprise phone call out of the blue, and I'm just repeating what I heard. I don't think anyone else has gotten such a call.

I claim ignorance otherwise :-))