Conservative Babylon

Backstory: “Michigan Priest Faces Sex Charge,” April 3, 2009 (more…)

PinkNews.co.uk tells all:

October 21, 2009

Father John Owen, the priest who said earlier this year that gay men are the main perpetrators of paedophilia in the Catholic Church has resigned as a chaplain at Cardiff University.

Speaking on BBC1’s Big Questions programme in May, which focused on child abuse scandals in the church, the communications officer for the archdiocese of Cardiff stated that “most of the offences are being committed by homosexuals”.

Father Owen, also said that teenage boys were the group affected by the “majority” of abuse cases in the United Kingdom, adding: “Now what does that tell you? Now that is a fact.”

His comments were met with anger from the studio audience, while others such as author and director of Amnesty International Ireland Colm O’Gorman, who has written of his own abuse, described Owen’s words as “ill-informed, ignorant, corrupt and dishonest”. …

More at the link.

August 25, 2009

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

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. …

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

More at the Hartford Courant.

June 6, 2009

PEMBROKE — A well-known local Roman Catholic priest has been accused of sexually assaulting three victims.

Twenty-five years to the day after his ordination as a priest, Monsignor Robert Borne, 60, was charged by the Ontario Provincial Police, Renfrew County Crime Unit, for incidents alleged to have occurred between 1977 and 1995.

The charges were laid on April 20 of this year.

Monsignor Borne, a native of Pembroke, was charged with two counts each of gross indecency, indecent assault and breach of trust in relation to three victims.

He was arrested yesterday when he turned himself in at the Renfrew detachment. He has been released on conditions and is to appear in Pembroke court on July 7. …

According to police, they began their investigation in January 2008 after receiving a complaint that Msgr. Borne had sexually assaulted a then-teenage boy while visiting with Msgr. Borne. The statement issued by police said that the other victims were identified as a result of the initial investigation. …

More from the Ottawa Sun via Canoe.ca.

June 4, 2009

Priest accused of exposing himself
in restaurant is fined

A Catholic priest accused of exposing himself to a waitress while he sat at a table in a Mexican restaurant was sentenced today in 33rd District Court in Woodhaven to nine months probation and fines and costs of $595.00.

The Rev. im also was ordered to stay away from the Amigo’s Mexican Restaurant in Woodhaven and to have no contact with the waitress. …

Knapp, 57, of Gibraltar, pleaded guilty to being an disorderly person, a misdemeanor. An indecent exposure charge was dropped.

According to Woodhaven Police Chief Michael Martin, Knapp, pastor of the St. Victor Catholic Church in Gibraltar, exposed his genitals to a waitress a the Amigo’s restaurant in Woodhaven on March 26.

“He said he was cleaning a stain off his pants…”

More at the Detroit Free Press.

June 5, 2009

Lawsuit accuses Freehold priest of sex abuse

TOMS RIVER — A Roman Catholic priest, most recently the pastor of St. Rose of Lima Church in Freehold, has been accused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing a boy in the 1980s, when the clergyman was assigned to St. Veronica’s Church in Howell.

The lawsuit, filed late last month in Superior Court in Ocean County by lawyer Robert R. Fuggi Jr., alleges that the Rev. Richard Milewski abused his client, an unnamed, 37-year-old Virginia man, between 1984 and 1985.

Fuggi said his client was 13 years old and a student and altar boy at St. Veronica’s, which has an elementary school, at the time. …

The lawsuit alleges that Milewski, on numerous occasions between 1984 and 1985, sexually assaulted the plaintiff and other unnamed victims, all either parishioners at St. Veronica’s Church or students at its grammar school, or both. …

In [one] incident, Milewski molested the boys under the guise of roughhousing, the lawsuit alleged.

It alleged that Milewski and two of the boys molested the plaintiff after Milewski forced the boy to strip naked. Then, Milewski and the two other boys threw the plaintiff outside in the cold, where he cried until he was allowed to come back inside and get dressed, the lawsuit alleged.

More at APP.com