SGM-Mahaneygate: Lawsuit Claims Sovereign Grace Church Hid Child Sex Abuse Claims

Brent Detwiler offers this intro:

"This article was carried by the Associated Press and published in newspapers throughout the US. I had no knowledge of these events while I was part of Sovereign Grace Ministries. All cases of child abuse (or spousal abuse) should be reported to civil authorities as a necessary means to prevent future abuse and protect past victims. That has always been my position. Perpetrators must face justice and pastors should never prevent this from happening. I trust this lawsuit will bring forth the truth and result in corrective and punitive measures where warranted."

Here's the AP article that went nationwide. 

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Lawsuit-claims-evangelical-church-hid-abuse-claims-3956791.php#ixzz29aJeivEk

 

Lawsuit claims evangelical church hid abuse claims

ERIC TUCKER, Associated PressCopyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

Updated 11:06 a.m., Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Page 1 of 1

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three female plaintiffs claim in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that an evangelical church group covered up allegations of sexual abuse against children, failed to report accusations of misconduct to the police and discouraged its members from cooperating with law enforcement.

 

The lawsuit was filed in Maryland state court against Sovereign Grace Ministries, a 30-year-old family of churches, with about 100 congregations. Most of its churches are in the U.S., but it also has planted churches in about 21 countries.

 

The plaintiffs allege a conspiracy spanning more than two decades to conceal sexual abuse committed by church members. The alleged abuse happened in Maryland and northern Virginia in the 1980s and 1990s. The lawsuit accuses church representatives of permitting suspected pedophiles to interact with children, supplying them with free legal advice to avoid prosecution and forcing victims to meet with and "forgive" the person that had molested them.

 

"The facts show that the Church cared more about protecting its financial and institutional standing than about protecting children, its most vulnerable members," the lawsuit claims.

 

The church did not immediately respond to a written message or to a phone message left on its general voicemail box. It wasn't immediately clear if the church had a lawyer. The suit names as defendants about a half-dozen pastors and church officials who plaintiffs say were alerted to the accusations but either failed to take action or actively covered them up. One official said he had not seen the suit and declined comment. Other defendants either did not immediately respond to phone messages or did not have publicly listed phone numbers.

 

In accusing church leaders of turning a blind eye to sexual molestation, the lawsuit bears parallels to the allegations of priest sex abuse and the resulting cover-up that have rocked the Roman Catholic church over the last decade. But while that scandal centered on sex abuse by priests, the accusations in this case involve molestation by church members instead of clergy.

 

Sovereign Grace Ministries grew from its mother church in Gaithersburg, Md., in 1982. It moved its headquarters this year to Louisville, Ky., where it's also planting a new church. The group has struggled in recent years with fractured leadership and criticism over its discipline methods, especially the church's emphasis on sins, discipline and repentance.

 

The suit only covers alleged abuse that occurred in Maryland in northern Virginia, but the church has faced scrutiny on other occasions for its handling of sexual abuse claims, and Susan Burke, a lawyer representing the three plaintiffs, said there are other alleged victims prepared to join a class-action suit.

 

For instance, an April report by a non-profit Lutheran mediation group that studied the church for nine months found that while church leaders showed "care and concern" about sex abuse allegations, a number of people interviewed felt the claims were handled irresponsibly and were left with "disappointments and hurts."

 

The lawsuit faults the church's "Home Group" structure, in which children are provided with day care so their parents can attend services, as fostering a poorly supervised environment that enabled the abuse to occur.

 

The lawsuit centers on allegations of three female plaintiffs, each identified by pseudonyms to protect their anonymity.

 

One of the three plaintiffs, a high school student in Virginia, alleges she was sexually assaulted when she was 3 years old and that the mother of the boy who abused her revealed the molestation to the church. But church officials discouraged her family from reporting the allegations to police and, instead, repeatedly interviewed the alleged abuser and worked with him and his mother to determine how best to prevent any prosecution and publicity regarding the abuse.

A second plaintiff, a college student in Maryland, says she was sexually abused as a toddler by a church member. She says the church pastor scolded her parents after they called the police and then tipped off the accused that he had been reported to the police. She says her parents were instructed to bring her to a meeting with her alleged abuser so they could be "reconciled," but that she was "visibly scared and crawled under the chair" after being brought into the same room with him.

 

The third plaintiff says her adoptive father, a member of the church, sexually abused her older sister for three and a half years. She says the church warned her mother not to pursue a prosecution, then kicked the family out of the church and denied the children reduced tuition to the school. The man was ultimately prosecuted and imprisoned, the lawsuit says.

 

"We view the case as an important step in holding SGM accountable for its misdeeds," said Burke, the lawyer who represents the three plaintiffs and is also suing the military on behalf of female service members who say they were raped. "No institution can put its own financial concerns above the needs of vulnerable children."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Lawsuit-claims-evangelical-church-hid-abuse-claims-3956791.php#ixzz29aSEWyIK

Philadelphia Monsignor Gets 3-6 Years for Child Endangerment

Sunday, August 5, 2012

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/crime_and_punishment/165075886.html

Msgr. Lynn's lawyers seek bail on appeal

When defense lawyers go before Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina on Monday to ask for bail pending appeal for Msgr. William J. Lynn, the guest of honor will not be present.

The 61-year-old cleric, sentenced July 24 to 3 to 6 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of child endangerment in the landmark clergy sex abuse trial involving the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, is already more than 100 miles away in the state prison at Camp Hill near Harrisburg.

At sentencing, Lynn told his lawyer he did not want to be returned to Philadelphia for his bail hearing, which would have required a rigorous prison bus ride as well as a likely stay at the state prison at Graterford in Montgomery County before his court date.

Lynn was the archdiocesan secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, a job in which he was responsible for investigating allegations that priests sexually abused minors. Though Lynn personally was never accused of sexual abuse, city prosecutors maintained that he enabled deviate priests to prey on children by moving them among Philadelphia-area parishes.

In court filings, Lynn’s attorneys have argued that he should be released on bail pending appeal because there is “better than a 50-50 chance” that the state Superior Court will find the prosecution’s extension of the child endangerment statute improper in charging a church supervisor.

Lynn has never missed a court appearance, say his lawyers, who ridiculed the prosecution’s claim that he might flee the country and find sanctuary in the Vatican in Rome, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. They say he is also wedded to the Philadelphia area: he was born and raised here, educated and worked here and has his large extended family living here and in full support of him.

Regardless of Judge Sarmina’s ruling on Lynn’s bail motion, Lynn’s ties to the Philadelphia area are unlikely to carry much weight with the state Department of Corrections. Since being ordered to begin serving his sentence on July 24, , Lynn has been on an odyssey that took him from solitary confinement – for his protection – at Philadelphia’s Curran-Fromhold Correctional Center to Graterford and then to Camp Hill, the state prison system’s diagnostic center where new inmates are evaluated before final assignment.

Although Lynn’s final destination is unknown, one indication might be in the experience of former Philadelphia priest Edward V. Avery. Avery, 69, was supposed to have gone on trial with Lynn but pleaded guilty on the eve of trial to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy.

Avery, who Sarmina sentenced to 2-1/2 to 5 years in prison, is now housed at the state prison at Laurel Highlands, in Somerset County in Western Pennsylvania.

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MA Attorney General/Phila Grand Jury: Sex Felonies and Accessories After the Fact in Roman communion

H/T to Triablogue (a blog worth following) for the lead at:  http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/03/excerpts-from-official-reports-on-sex.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Ftriablogue+%28Triablogue%29.  These bring no surprises since RA studied this rather thoroughly as the story developed with the Boston Herald and Boston Tribune.  We have on file the "Roman" protocol from the Vatican which mandated the coverup.  The American Cardinals and Bishops were "following orders."  We have the "liturgy" for absolution for priestly felons.  You ask, "How did you get that?"  RA knew one attorney in a class action, a Romanist himself, in fact, an outraged Romanist, and he discovered it through his connections with the University of Louvain.  Long story, but the short of it?  Rome was controlling the American responses.  However, the press never uncovered or exposed the connection to the Vatican, but it was assuredly there.  These citations only confirm our conclusions from years ago.

From this document.

MASSACHUSETTS ATTORNEY GENERAL’S REPORT, July 23, 2003

Summary:

The investigation did produce evidence that widespread sexual abuse of children was due to an institutional acceptance of abuse and a massive and pervasive failure of leadership.

A. Top Archdiocese officials knew of the extent of the abuse problem for many years before it became known to the public.

B. The Archdiocese's response to reports of the sexual abuse of children, including maintaining secrecy of reports, placed children at risk.

C. The Archdiocese did not notify law enforcement authorities of clergy sexual abuse allegations. Clergy were not mandated reporters until 2002. Archdiocese policy of 1993 did not require reporting.

D. Archdiocese officials did not provide all relevant information to law enforcement authorities during criminal investigations.

E. The Archdiocese failed to conduct thorough investigations of clergy sexual abuse allegations.

F. The Archdiocese placed children at risk by transferring abusive priests to other parishes.

G. The Archdiocese placed children at risk by accepting abusive priests from other dioceses.

PHILADELPHIA GRAND JURY I, 2003-2005, Report issued Sept. 15, 2005

Excerpts:

This report contains the findings of the Grand Jury: how dozens of priests sexually abused hundreds of children; how Philadelphia Archdiocese officials -including Cardinal Bevilacqua and Cardinal Krol -excused and enabled the abuse; and how the law must be changed so that it doesn't happen again. Some may be tempted to describe these events as tragic. Tragedies such as tidal waves, however, are outside human control. What we found were not acts of God, but of men who acted in His name and defiled it.

But the biggest crime of all is this: it worked. The abuser priests, by choosing children as targets and trafficking on their trust, were able to prevent or delay reports of their sexual assaults, to the point where applicable statutes of limitations expired. And Archdiocese officials, by burying those reports they did receive and covering up the conduct, similarly managed to outlast any statutes of limitation. As a result, these priests and officials will necessarily escape criminal prosecution. We surely would have charged them if we could have done so. But the consequences are even worse than the avoidance of criminal penalties. Sexually abusive priests were either left quietly in place or "recycled" to unsuspecting new parishes -vastly expanding the number of children who were abused. It didn't have to be this way. Prompt action and a climate of compassion for the child victims could have significantly limited the damage done. But the Archdiocese chose a different path. (Introduction to the Grand Jury Report, p. 1)

The behavior of Archdiocese officials was perhaps not as lurid as that of the individual priest sex abusers. But in its callous, calculating manner, the Archdiocese's "handling" of the abuse scandal was at least as immoral as the abuse itself. The evidence before us established that Archdiocese officials at the highest levels received reports of abuse; that they chose not to conduct any meaningful investigation of those reports; that they left dangerous priests in place or transferred them to different parishes as a means of concealment; that they never alerted parents of the dangers posed by these offenders (who typically went out of their way to be friendly and helpful, especially with children); that they intimidated and retaliated against victims and witnesses who came forward about abuse; that they manipulated "treatment" efforts in order to create a false impression of action; and that they did many of these things in a conscious effort simply to avoid civil liability.

In short, as abuse reports grew, the Archdiocese chose to call in the lawyers rather than confront the abusers. Indeed Cardinal Bevilacqua himself was a lawyer, with degrees from both a canon law school and an American law school. Documents and testimony left us with no doubt that he and Cardinal Krol were personally informed of almost all of the allegations of sexual abuse by priests, and personally decided or approved of how to handle those allegations. (Overview of the cover-up by archdiocese officials, p. 3)