Cardinal Bernard Law spoke at an ordination of new priests yesterday, telling the men that the current sex abuse scandal has demonstrated the church’s acute need for godly priests. He asked them to be holy men.
(Boston, Massachusetts)
Rev. Karl Dowd is accused of allegedly sexually assaulting a boy when he was 9 years old at a Roman Catholic summer camp for children. The camp has become a target of sex abuse allegations from former campers, including the man who said he was sexually assaulted in the chapel by Dowd, a former camp director, in 1972. According to court records and interviews with alleged victims and their lawyers, at least eight clergymen, some allegedly with multiple victims, face allegations involving Camp Fatima, an idyllic collection of lakeside cabins
An investigation by the Cleveland Plain Dealer found, at least 16 Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children, including 12 priests in the United States, have killed themselves since 1986. The numbers were found in the investigation after the suicide April 4 of the Rev. Don Rooney, a priest in the Cleveland Roman Catholic Diocese who faced allegations that he sexually abused a child.
Bishop J. Kendrick Williams, a Roman Catholic bishop of Lexington, Kentucky, yesterday denied molesting an altar boy 21 years ago. Church official said he would take a leave from pastoral duties while the allegation is investigated. He said, I am stunned and saddened by this accusation, let me state this simply: The allegations are false.
(Kentucky)
The Rev. Jeffery Windy, a 31 year old suspended Roman Catholic priest, pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiracy to manufacture and distribute the date-rape drug GHB. He faces up to 20 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines when he is sentenced August 22. He was allowed to remain under house arrest at his parents’ Peru, Illinois home until then.
(Davenport, Iowa)
Keon Easterling, a 19 year old Roosevelt man who is mentally retarded, has been charged with two counts of first-degree sexual abuse following allegations that he fondled two boys in the bathroom of a Hempstead church in December. According to police, Easterling, a parishioner of Faith Baptist Church, followed two boys who are between the ages of 4 and 10, to the church’s downstairs bathrooms on or about December 30, 2001. He touched the boys’ genital areas through their outer clothing, said Det. Lt. Kevin Smith, a Nassau County Police