July 2008
Monthly Archive
MANSFIELD, Ohio — Police said Friday that they think there are other victims after a former youth pastor was arrested on 10-sexual related felonies allegedly involving a teenage parishioner.
John Picard is accused of having sexual relations with a girl starting in 1992 when she was 13 and continuing until she reached adulthood when he was at Mansfield’s Grace Brethren church, 10TV’s Glenn McEntyre reported.
Police said that the first claim against Picard, now 40, came in 2005. The girl, who at that time was 16, claimed that Picard first engaged with sexual conduct with her but investigators did not have any supporting evidence to charge him.
Another woman came forward last week who said she and Picard had a sexual relationship that started when she was 13.
Investigators said that Picard not only used his position in the church to prey on his victims that he also used scripture to convince the girls that what he was doing was right.
“They looked up to this person for their spiritual guidance,” said Mansfield police Detective Jeff Shook. “He violated that.”
Picard was placed under house arrest, McEntyre reported.
Shook said that he expects the list of women coming forward to grow.
“I wish I could have resolved it 3 1/2 years ago but it wasn’t time. Now it’s time,” Shook said. “People are coming forward and have figured out it’s time for this abuse to stop.”
Watch 10TV News and refresh 10TV.com for additional information.
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) — It has been ten months after a Kanawha County pastor was arrested and charged with sexually abusing teenage boys in the early 1990s. The case against Sandy Cook still has yet to go to trial.
One man who claims he’s a victim says a slow-moving court system is victimizing him all over again.
David Mullins says he’s not afraid or ashamed anymore to share his past of sexual abuse. He says it was at the hands of Pastor Sandy Cook eighteen years ago.
“There’s nothing he can do to me. I am not that 13 or 14 year old kid,” David Mullins said.
Mullins first told his story to investigators after Cook was charged in September 2007 with sexually abusing and sexually assaulting children in 1994.
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A former Boy Scouts chaplain accused of child pornography spent time at the same south Charlotte church where a former priest is accused of molesting a teen.
“How much contact the two may have had is impossible for me to say,” said David Haines with the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte.
Charles Knight, 62, is accused of having child porn on his home computer.
“I’m a gentle person. Please let’s not make this any worse,” said Knight Tuesday while denying the charges against him.
In April, Father Robert Yurgel was extradited to Charlotte from New Jersey.
Yurgel is charged with molesting a teenage boy in 1999 when he was a priest at St. Matthew Catholic Church in the Ballantyne area.
Knight would visit the parish as a volunteer to teach cub scouts.
“I know that he (Knight) left and stopped doing that work around 2001,” Haines said.
Knight has not been accused of any wrongdoing while at St. Matthew. Police want parents of any child who may have had contact with Knight to ask questions.
“As far as Mr. Knight is concerned, if somebody has a question or a concern, even a comment that they want to share with the pastor or with the authorities, we say please come forward,” Haines said.
Both Knight and Yurgel are awaiting trial.
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A church committee that investigated sexual abuse complaints involving a city priest in the mid-1980s didn’t recommend turning over those allegations to police, the Cornwall Public Inquiry heard yesterday.
Former diocesan lawyer Jacques Leduc said the decision not to tell either the Cornwall Police Service or the Children’s Aid Society about the accusations against Rev. Gilles Deslauriers was based largely on the fact the victims were adults when they came forward.
“I am fairly certain that that is the reason why,” said Leduc, 57.
Leduc, who began testifying at the inquiry Monday, was one of three people the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese appointed in early 1986 to look into claims Deslauriers was abusing young men.
Deslauriers would plead guilty that November to four counts of gross indecency. He was sentenced to two years’ probation.
Leduc told the inquiry - which is examining how institutions like the diocese handled historical sexual abuse allegations - that the committee was set up to take statements from a number of people who had contact with Deslauriers. Included on that list was Benoit Brisson, one of Deslauriers’ victims, and members of Brisson’s family.
The committee didn’t consider approaching people who weren’t mentioned in their mandate, Leduc told inquiry lawyer Karen Jones.
In May 1986, the committee delivered its final report to Bishop Eugene LaRocque. It made six recommendations, including that Deslauriers not be transferred to another diocese without first undergoing psychological treatment, that the priest would be on the hook financially for victims’ counselling, and that their report be sent to the pope’s representative in Canada.
But nowhere in the report, Jones pointed out, were recommendations that the victims’ allegations be given to an outside agency.
“Did you ever do any follow up with your client to see if they had been actually followed?” she asked.
“No,” said Leduc.
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AMITE, La. - The former pastor of the defunct Hosanna Church in Ponchatoula will not face charges that he sexually abused a 2-year-old girl at his upcoming aggravated rape trial, a prosecutor said.
The case involving the girl will be severed from the rape charges involving Louis D. Lamonica’s two sons, ages 11 and younger at the time of the alleged abuse, on which Lamonica will be tried next month.
Lamonica is among the seven members of the former Hosanna Church in Ponchatoula indicted in 2005 in the abuse of the three children. His trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 18.
Tangipahoa Parish Assistant District Attorney Don Wall told the court Monday he planned to sever the charges, but Lamonica could be tried in the girl’s rape at a later date.
Wall offered no explanation for his decision during the hearing and declined to comment afterward, citing a gag order issued last year by state District Judge Zoey Waguespack.
Another former Hosanna member, 39-year-old Austin “Trey” Bernard, is serving a life sentence after being convicted in December of three counts of aggravated rape of a 2-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy.
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ATLANTA (MyFOX Atlanta) — A DeKalb County mother says her young son was sexually abused at a Stone Mountain church. But first a warning to our viewers — the details of this story are rather disturbing to hear.
According to this DeKalb police report, detectives are investigating this as aggravated child molestation.
The victim’s mother says the nursery school teacher said her little boy came running out of the bathroom and said a teenager at the church had touched his private parts.
The little boy has since told his mother and doctors even more.
The mother of the 3-year-old boy says her son hasn’t been the same since Sunday afternoon.
Angelique asked that we not use her last name. She’s coming forward because she says other parents should know what her son says happened to her son at Berean Christian Church in DeKalb county.
Angelique’s family visited the Stone Mountain church Sunday for worship service and left the little boy in the nursery area for 3-year-olds. After the service she says he graphically described a sex act performed by a 15-year-old who reportedly took him to the bathroom.
“He said it was a big boy in my class and he came to the bathroom and he put his mouth right here,” said the victim’s mother, Angelique.
The Lithonia mother showed us the discharge papers from Children’s Hospital at Egleston where her son was examined Sunday. The diagnosis — sexual abuse. Angelique says Monday her son shared even more disturbing details with a child psychologist.
DeKalb Police detectives questioned but did not arrest a 15-year-old accused of the crime. The incident is being investigated as aggravated sexual molestation. Berean church officials declined to comment on camera citing the on-going investigation, but issued a statement saying
“We are deeply concerned about the matter and we are awaiting the results of the police investigation. We are sensitive to the fact that there were two minors involved in this alleged incident. At this point, we cannot confirm or deny this happened.”
While no arrests have been made at this point, DeKalb police say that could change after authorities review the videotaped statement the three year old gave to the child psychologist who interviewed him on Monday.
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A former Rice Lake pastor is in jail Tuesday night after pleading guilty to sexually abusing a teenager. Prosecutors say the attack happened more than 20 years ago.
Angel Toro pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor counts of forth degree sexual assault. He was originally charged with four counts of third degree sexual assault and two counts of exposing himself. Those are all felonies. A jury trial was also set for this month.
Tuesday his victim says he’s just glad it’s over.
“How long is he getting? Because I’ve done 21 to life.”
Doug Guillen says he’s waited all 21 years for this day; the day he saw the man who raped him sent to jail.
“I feel like a free man, like a totally free man and he’s not,” Guillen says.
According to the criminal complaint, in 1987 Toro, a pastor at First United Methodist Church in Rice Lake recruited 17-year-old Doug Guillen to help him fix a fence. That’s when Guillen says Toro sexually assaulted him.
Judge Eugene Harrington sentenced the 57-year-old to 18 months in jail and three years probation. Before heading to jail, Toro apologized.
“I have asked God to forgive me. Now, I ask the Guillen family to forgive me,” Toro told the court.
It was an apology Guillen didn’t want to hear. He walked out of the courtroom.
“When I wept, he didn’t hear me. I didn’t hear him today. I didn’t want to hear. Talk is cheap and I’m not buying,” Guillen says.
Now, Guillen and his wife are heading back to their home in Florida, hoping to move forward.
“After today, we’re going to put all of that behind us and be that happy couple that we were before,” says Doug’s Wife Tricia Guillen.
“I was picking up the pieces all the way here from Florida and I think I have them all. Now, on the way back, I’m done. I’m done,” Doug Guillen says. “I feel like a free man… a totally free man.”
Doug Guillen says he hopes his story will inspire other victims to speak up, especially children.
Toro will be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life.
Click here for more information on why Toro was able to be sentenced 15 years after the statute of limitations on his crime was up.
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Third time in eight years at least one employee at Mid-Western Children’s Home has been charged.
Staff Report
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
For the third time in eight years, an employee at a church group home faces allegations of having sex with a Butler County child living at the home in southern Warren County.
On Monday, July 14, Carolynn K. Hatcher, 25, was indicted by a grand jury in Lebanon on six counts of sexual battery. She is pregnant after reportedly having a two-month-long affair with a 16-year-old Middletown boy sent by Butler County Childrens Services to Mid-Western Children’s Home in Pleasant Plain, according to police and court records.
“I think she thought she was in love with him,” Warren County Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel said Tuesday, July 15.
Group home administrator Barry Boverie on Monday called the abuse an “isolated” incident in Mid-Western Children’s 41-year history.
However, in 2000, a former preacher and teacher at the group home was sentenced in Warren County Common Pleas Court to five years in prison and labeled a sexual predator for the rest of his life for the 1993 rape of a 12-year-old boy staying at the group home.
The preacher, Roy N. Puckelwartz, then 44, and his wife managed the youth home at the time. Puckelwartz pleaded no contest to one rape charge and served four years in prison; he now lives in Florida, according to the Ohio Department of Corrections.
And in fall 2000, a man and his wife were fired after the agency substantiated complaints that a 14-year-old girl was sexually abused at the facility, said Butler County Children Services Director Michael Fox. A Warren County grand jury did not return an indictment in the case because of lack of evidence, he said.
Also Tuesday, the boy Hatcher is accused of molesting who had been missing since Sunday was found safe at his grandparents’ home in Middletown. His grandmother on Tuesday said the teen was “fine,” but declined further comment.
Fox said the facility followed proper procedure in responding to the Hatcher case and there’s no evidence proper oversight wasn’t followed.
“That’s three too many (cases),” Fox said, “and that’s not acceptable. But is there something about that facility that puts kids at unusual risk? We’re trying to find out now.”
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A new lawsuit against the Denver Archdiocese accuses a dead priest of sexually abusing a man decades ago when he was an altar boy at a Loveland church.
The lawsuit, filed in Denver District Court on Tuesday, alleges that the Rev. Harold Robert White sexually abused the victim, identified only as “John Doe 2A,” in either 1969 or 1970 at St. John the Evangelist Parish. The victim was a minor at the time, the complaint said.
White, who died in 2006, has been implicated in many of the sex abuse cases settled by that archdiocese in the last two years.
Local leaders of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a national victims’ advocacy group, announced the latest lawsuit at a news conference Tuesday morning outside the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver.
This month the archdiocese released some of its personnel files on White as part of a lawsuit settlement. The files indicated church officials knew White was a pedophile but kept moving him from parish to parish.
Jeb Barrett, SNAP’s local leader, said John Doe 2A “was encouraged that his allegations would be believed. . . . I think he realized that anyone who doesn’t come forward is protecting pedophiles.”
Zach Warzel, one of the man’s lawyers, said his client is seeking “all damages allowed by law” given the nature of the complaint.
Warzel said he could not comment on the specifics of the case but that his client would be open to settling outside of court.
The archdiocese said that as of midday Tuesday, it had not received a copy of the lawsuit.
“We take seriously every allegation of sexual abuse of a minor involving clergy or an employee of the Archdiocese of Denver,” said spokeswoman Jeanette DeMelo.
original story here
The scandal over child sex abuse by Catholic priests flared again Wednesday as Pope Benedict XVI prepared to take centre stage at the world’s biggest Christian festival in Sydney.
While more than 200,000 young pilgrims attended beach concerts, barbecues and religious classes, the pope and the head of the Australian church, Cardinal George Pell, faced the parents of two victims of abuse.
The pilgrims are in Sydney for World Youth Day celebrations, which will be led by the pope from Thursday at the end of his four-day holiday at a retreat on Sydney’s outskirts.
But the scandal over sex abuse by clergymen has partly overshadowed the festival, despite the pope’s pledge on Sunday to apologise to victims as he did in the United States in April.
And in a move that could further complicate the papal visit, the pontiff’s spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, cast doubt on the form of the pope’s planned statement, expected on Saturday.
“I draw your attention to the term ‘apology’ that journalists are using,” Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, told a press conference late Wednesday.
“The pope in the plane (to Australia) spoke of the problems of sexual abuse but I don’t think he said he would apologise and I advise you to listen to what the pope says” when he raises the issue, he said, without elaborating.
The pontiff was however clear when he told journalists he would examine how the church can “prevent, heal and reconcile” the past crimes of the clergy.
“This is the essential content of what we will say as we apologise,” the pope had said.
The father of two girls abused by a Melbourne priest, one of whom committed suicide, meanwhile said he and his wife were on their way back to Australia from Europe to confront the church over its attitude to paedophilia.
Anthony Foster told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. he would not accept an apology unless the pontiff also changed the way the church and its lawyers dealt with victims of sex abuse.
“I want them to set up a system which provides lifetime help to victims, a system where they beg forgiveness of the victims,” he said.
Foster said he planned to make a public statement when he arrived and would demand a response from the pope and Pell.
He said he hoped the pope would grant him an audience to hear his demands, but added: “I should not have to try to see them. They should be coming to us to beg our forgiveness.”
Foster’s daughter Emma committed suicide this year aged 26, after struggling to deal with having been repeatedly abused by a senior Catholic priest while she was at primary school, ABC said.
Her sister Katie was also abused and turned to alcohol in her teens before being left brain-damaged after being hit by a car while drunk, the broadcaster reported.
The priest involved, Father Kevin O’Donnell, died in 1997 after serving time in jail for multiple sex offences, but the Fosters had to fight an eight-year legal battle for compensation from the church, ABC said.
World Youth Day coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher angered the parents by telling reporters that most people were focusing on the positive aspects of the event “rather than dwelling crankily as a few people are doing on old wounds”.
The Fosters told Australian news website ninemsn.com from Tokyo’s Narita airport that they were deeply hurt by the bishop’s “very insensitive” comments.
The remarks showed “a complete lack of understanding of the victims, that there are so many people out there that really do have open wounds”, said the girls’ father.
Pell described the story of Emma Foster as “tragic”, saying he had apologised to her and her family in 1998.
“I met with her parents. We offered them some financial help. We also offered them counselling,” he told reporters.
The pope, who Lombardi said was likely to address the issue of sexual abuse Saturday while meeting with bishops and Australian novices, left his semi-rural retreat for St Mary’s Cathedral House in central Sydney late Wednesday.
The 81-year-old pontiff, who has been recovering from jet-lag after the 20-hour flight from Rome, will make his formal arrival in Sydney in a 14-vessel “boat-a-cade” on the harbour on Thursday.
He is expected to be welcomed by crowds on spectator craft and harbourside vantage points before disembarking and addressing a gathering of some 150,000 pilgrims.
He will then take to his more traditional “Popemobile” for a tour of the city streets, which are expected to be lined with up to 500,000 people, organisers say.
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