Tag: child abuse

REPORT DETAILS ‘STAGGERING’ CHURCH SEX ABUSE IN MARYLAND

More than 150 Catholic priests and others associated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore sexually abused over 600 children and often escaped accountability, according to a long-awaited state report released Wednesday that revealed the scope of abuse spanning 80 years and accused church leaders of decades of coverups.

The report paints a damning picture of the archdiocese, which is the oldest Roman Catholic diocese in the country and spans much of Maryland. Some parishes, schools and congregations had more than one abuser at the same time — including St. Mark Parish in Catonsville, which had 11 abusers living and working there between 1964 and 2004. One deacon admitted to molesting over 100 children. Another priest was allowed to feign hepatitis treatment and make other excuses to avoid facing abuse allegations.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office released the findings of their yearslong investigation during Holy Week — considered the most sacred time of year in Christianity ahead of Easter Sunday — and said the number of victims is likely far higher. The report was redacted to protect confidential grand jury materials, meaning the identities of some accused clergy were removed.

“The staggering pervasiveness of the abuse itself underscores the culpability of the Church hierarchy,” the report said. “The sheer number of abusers and victims, the depravity of the abusers’ conduct, and the frequency with which known abusers were given the opportunity to continue preying upon children are astonishing.”

Disclosure of the redacted findings marks a significant development in an ongoing legal battle over their release and adds to growing evidence from parishes across the country as numerous similar revelations have rocked the Catholic Church in recent years.

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Attorney Who Represented Survivors of Sex Crimes Arrested for Child Pornography

An attorney in West Palm Beach, Florida, who represented survivors of sex crimes was recently arrested with possession of child pornography.

Michael T. Dolce, 53, appeared in West Palm Beach federal court for his first appearance in the case on March 30, the Southern District of Florida U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a release.

According to the release, citing the criminal complaint affidavit, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Dolce’s apartment and found that Dolce was “actively downloading child pornography using peer-2-peer software.”

“Nearly 2,000 images and videos of child pornography were recovered from his devices,” it stated.

At the March 30 hearing, Dolce agreed to submit to pretrial detention while reserving his right to later challenge it, reported the Miami New Times. His arraignment is scheduled for mid-April, according to the outlet. He faces a child pornography possession charge, which has a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The office of Leonard Scott Feuer, Dolce’s attorney, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

Dolce’s LinkedIn profile describes him as a “highly regarded trial lawyer and political activist” whose practice “is dedicated to representing survivors of sexual crimes, including child and adult victims, and adult survivors of child sexual abuse.”

According to the LinkedIn profile, he was a partner at the Palm Beach Gardens office of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll since late 2015. But his name is no longer listed on law firm’s website as of the time of writing.

According to an archived entry on the firm’s website, Dolce was the leader of its Sexual Abuse, Sex Trafficking, and Domestic Violence team.

In a statement to multiple outlets, the firm said it was “stunned and saddened” by the allegations against Dolce. A spokesperson confirmed Dolce was “terminated and is no longer affiliated with the firm.”

“We are focused on attending to the needs of our clients and staff and continuing to cooperate fully with the investigation,” the spokesperson added.

Separately, Dolce’s LinkedIn profile states that he has been on the board of directors of the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence since 2011.

He also served on the advisory board of Florida’s Children First, according to a now-deleted entry on the legal-aid organization’s website. The non-profit group is dedicated to representing “at-risk children, especially those in foster care.”

According to the website’s entry, Dolce founded a political committee called “Protect Our Kids First, Inc.” Separately, he also served on the Florida Bar’s Legal Needs of Children Committee, and on the governing board of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in West Palm Beach.

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Abusive Priest Exposed in Netflix Series Was Trained Under CIA’s Operation MK-ULTRA

Investigators starring in the Emmy Award-nominated Netflix documentary, The Keepers, interviewed many women and at least one man reporting that Father Joseph Maskell raped them, and appeared to play a part in the murder of teacher Cathy Cesnik.

After The Keepers aired in 2017, Cesnik’s student in 1969, Gemma Hoskins, and a former Baltimore Sun reporter, Tom Nugent, found that Maskell worked at the U.S. Army’s Fort Meade and reportedly sold sex with teen girls to police and politicians, using CIA’s MK-ULTRA techniques.

Award-winning syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist Edwin Black detailed in his book, War Against the Weak, how White Anglo-Saxon Protestant families started the eugenics movement in the early 1900s, paying professors at top universities to state that social issues such as poverty and “imbecility” were genetically caused.[1]

According to Black, these wealthiest families, including the Rockefellers, (JP) Morgans, Carnegies and Harrimans etc., had their hired scholars who classified 89% of Blacks (and other people of color) as well as 70% of Jews and a lesser percentage of Catholics as genetically inferior based on “IQ tests” that were extremely biased in using wealthy people’s activities.[2]

These families also paid for influence amongst politicians who passed eugenics laws in 31 states. NBC News reported how this led to the sterilization of a vast number of Americans, particularly people of color, at least until the 1970s.[3]

Black noted how eugenics doctors, celebrated in a prominent movie of the late 1910s, The Black Stork (1917), killed babies from “defective” mothers upon birth. Many people were sent to state hospitals where they were fed milk from tubercular cows, killing up to 40% of the patients.[4]

Many of those oligarchical families then funded eugenics’ rise in Germany that evolved into Nazism. U.S. intelligence further gave refuge to Nazi scientists through Operation Paperclip, which brought some of them into Project MK-ULTRA by 1953.[5]

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Meth-Smoking Satanist Vicar Convicted of Paedophilia, Zoophilia

An Anglican vicar who smoked crystal meth, boasted of corrupting young boys, abused animals, and discussed sacrificing babies to Satan with online paedophiles has been convicted in England.

Reverend David Renshaw, 63, was convicted of “three counts of possessing indecent images of children; three counts of making indecent images of children; possessing prohibited images of children; and possessing extreme pornographic images portraying acts of intercourse with animals, namely dogs and horses,” according to a Sussex Police statement.

Strangely, he does not appear to have faced any charges relating to animal cruelty or neglect, despite police officers finding his vicarage full of dead and dying animals including cats, dogs, and chickens.

“The search of his address was one of the most revolting tasks our officers will ever have to endure,” commented investigating officer Detective Sergeant David Rose. “As well as malnourished living animals, there was also a dead rotting kitten and a dead rotting rat on the floor, in addition to used needles and other drug paraphernalia lying around. It was a deeply unpleasant scene to search.”

In lurid conversations with other child predators, Renshaw had bragged: “I’m a sadistic bastard. Through and fucking through.”

He also referenced his desire to “sacrifice babies to Satan” in these conversations, and urged another paedophile to sacrifice his own three-year-old to the Devil.

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Historian Calls Pedophilia ‘Intergenerational Sex,’ Refuses To Describe Rape Of 10-Year-Old Boy As ‘Abuse’

Historian Rachel Hope Cleves described pedophilia as “intergenerational sex,” adding that she wouldn’t describe the abuse of children with words such as “survivors or necessarily abuse.”

Cleves wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post earlier in March that argued against Republicans wanted to ban drag shows to reinforce “traditional hierarchies of race, class, sex and gender.”

The resurfaced clip was part of a Zoom interview Cleves had with fellow author Alexis Coe in 2020, hosted by Chicago University Press.

“In writing this book I didn’t want to use pedophilia discourse because I felt like it would fail to capture this other historical organizing system, for intergenerational sex, which was the topic I wanted to address,” Cleves says in the video.

Cleves is a professor of History at the University of Victoria, according to their website, but is currently on leave.

Cleves wrote a biography of British author Norman Douglas in 2020, who was charged multiple times with rape and sexual assault of underage boys and girls, including two cousins aged 10 and 12.

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D.A.R.E. Cop Gets Decades in Prison for Busting Young Boys for Weed, Raping Them Afterward

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program could be referred to as an exercise in how not to convince kids to keep away from substances the state deems illegal. As cops hopped on their high horses and had children pledge not to do drugs, the rate of drug use skyrocketed — thrusting the country into one of the worst drug epidemics in human history. The hypocrisy of the cops who pushed the D.A.R.E. program has been well-documented over the years, explaining, at least in part, why the program was such a failure from the start. Now, another cop who pushed kids to “just say no” has given D.A.R.E. a bad name for a totally different reason.

Warminster Township Police Officer James Carey swore an oath to protect the children of Doylestown, and instead of protecting them, this cop preyed on them. Adding to the insidious nature of Carey’s crimes against children is the fact that he committed them while pretending to be a role model as the school district’s D.A.R.E. officer.

As we reported in 2021, Carey, 54, was charged with over 100 counts. A grand jury presented a whopping 80-page indictment against Carey detailing 122 counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, and other related charges.

As we reported at the time, police believed there may have been other victims, and there were. After yet another victim came forward, Carey was hit with a slew of new charges and now he’s pleaded no contest.

A judge sentenced Carey to 24 1/2 to 55 years in state prison before sending him off with a scathing rebuke.

“Your badge and uniform became weapons of your depravity,” Judge Wallace Bateman Jr. told the former Warminster Township officer. “You preyed upon the most vulnerable of the community.”

Carey was accused of raping multiple boys while working as the D.A.R.E. officer at elementary, middle and high schools in the Centennial School District. The incidents allegedly spanned the course of decades taking place between 1987 and 2009 and involved at least five boys, maybe more.

“Carey ingratiated himself into the lives of minor children, in particular, those who were already facing challenges in their lives,” the Bucks County District Attorney said in a statement, according to NJ.com. “He used his position and authority to groom, not only the children, but their adult caregivers. The grooming tactics he used were pervasive, manipulative and calculated such that he not only lowered the minor’s guard but also attempted to provide an assurance that his crimes would go unreported and if reported, not believed.”

Carey met his victims at school and would lure them to places outside of campus to prey on them, including on overnight camping trips to the Poconos and to Camp Ockanickon, a Boy Scout facility in Medford, Burlington County, according to the district attorney.

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BUSTED: Rolling Stone Editor-in-chief spiked reporting on friend getting arrested for child porn

A new report has revealed that the man who edited Rolling Stone’s initial story on the FBI raid of ABC producer James Gordon Meek, who was later revealed to have been charged with possessing child pornography, removed all references to the charge from the report, and was an associate of the accused producer.

On October 18, former Rolling Stone journalist Tatiana Siegel broke the news that the FBI had raided Meek’s home in April and that the Emmy award-winning ABC producer had disappeared from the public eye.

According to a new report from NPR, Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman had removed from her piece key information from Siegel’s sources that Meek had been raided by the FBI as part of a child pornography federal investigation.

Shachtman, the outlet reported, considered Meek “a peer with whom he was friendly,” a concern that Siegel had brought up to corporate officials. Shachtman reportedly told colleagues that the two travel in the same professional circles. A 2021 tweet, from before Shachtman taking the helm at Rolling Stone, Meek was seen on Twitter suggesting a Niger band for Shachtman to listen to.

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Polygamous leader used jailhouse phone to have ‘sexual’ conversations with kids: feds

A polygamous leader accused of kidnapping underage girls “brazenly” used the jailhouse phone system to have “explicit sexual conversations” with children, a federal filing states.

While in custody last November on suspicion of sex trafficking, Samuel Rappylee Bateman referred to a 13-year-old girl as his “sexy darling” during a video call that included his adult wives, the US attorney in Arizona alleged in documents filed on March 3.

Bateman, 46, also asked the young teen, identified as Jane Doe 4, about “all the sacred times” they shared together, in addition to more explicit sexual remarks.

The accused child trafficker also reportedly made similarly vulgar remarks during the same call to two 16-year-olds known as Jane Doe 10 and Jane Doe 11, the document claims.

At the time of the phone call, Bateman was barred from contacting Jane Doe 4, who is a named victim in the ongoing child abuse case against him.

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Over A Dozen Mayors Have Been Arrested For Child Sex Offenses Over The Past Two Years

At least 13 mayors have been arrested for sexual crimes against children since 2021, according to a review of news articles and police reports.

College Park, Maryland, Mayor Patrick Wojahn is the most recent mayor to be charged with child sex crimes and has been arrested for 56 counts of possession and distribution of child pornography, according to NBC Washington; Wojahn submitted his letter of resignation Thursday.

On February 17, Prince George’s County Police Department (PCPD) was notified that someone in the county was uploading child pornography. The images and videos were traced back to Wojahn, according to a press release from PCPD.

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Mayor of College Park arrested, charged with 56 counts of child pornography

The mayor of a College Park was arrested Thursday morning on dozens of child pornography counts hours after he resigned from office.

Patrick Wojahn, 47, faces 56 counts of possession and distribution of child porn, the Prince George’s County Police Department said in a statement Thursday morning. Police searched his College Park home Tuesday and seized cell phones as well as a storage device, tablet and computer.

County officials said the department started investigating after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children notified them on Feb. 17 that a social media account had distributed suspected child pornography. Detectives traced the account to Wojahn, authorities said.

Wojahn submitted his resignation after business hours on Wednesday, city officials said in a statement Thursday. He was serving his second term as mayor of College Park, which includes the University of Maryland campus, after winning election in 2015. He previously served eight years as a city councilman.

“Mr. Wojahn resigned his position yesterday and has been cooperating fully with law enforcement,” his attorney David Moyse said via email Thursday. “While too early to comment on the allegations, we will continue to cooperate as the process unfolds.”

In his resignation letter, which the city released, Wojahn said he plans to “deal with my own mental health” and asked residents to keep his family in their prayers.

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