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Bible Tracts
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Chick Publications
P.O. Box 3500
Ontario, CA 91761
(909) 987-0771 Ph.
(909) 941-8128 Fax
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Go Inside the $56 Billion ‘Black’ Budget
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Go Inside the $56 Billion ‘Black’ Budget
The Pentagon dropped its $533 billion budget this week. Some line items get a thorough public debate — like stealth jet engines and soldier health care. Others have opaque names like “RETRACT MAPLE,” and are totally hush-hush. Welcome to the Defense Department’s classified, or black, budget. It appears to be about $56 billion, the same as last year, less some inflation.
This may only be the tip of an iceberg of secret funds (more about that in a sec). But we’d like your assistance in mapping out that icy tip. So, with help from the Center for New American Security’s Travis Sharp, we’ve put together this spreadsheet. Feel free to add, subtract and edit it — kind of like a classified cash Wiki.
Finding the Pentagon’s secret money in the budget involves a bit of document diving and some back-of-the-envelope calculations. A number of programs labeled “classified” are tucked away into the operations and maintenance, procurement and research development, testing and evaluation budgets. Find each budget’s classified total (about $19 billion each for operations and procurement and $18 billion in research), add them together and you’ve got a ballpark black budget.
It’s in research and development budget where you can find the bureaucratic poetry of black project code names at its most obscure. The services slap together the most random of nouns to make their code names. The Army’s fond of prefixing its black projects with “TRACTOR” (“TRACTOR JUTE,” “TRACTOR EGGS,” etc) and the Navy has a slight tendency for animal imagery with “COBRA JUDY” and “Pilot Fish.”
But don’t think that this is necessarily all of the Pentagon’s secret cash.
The pencil pushers in Arlington play all kinds of tricks with the line items to keep outsiders from guessing where, exactly, the black budget actually gets spent. Some of the National Intelligence Program, a component of the country’s intelligence budget, gets hidden away inside the Pentagon’s ledger. For years, the Department stashed a chunk of the CIA’s cash and its share of funds for the secret satellite makers at the National Reconnaissance Office in the blandly-named “Selected Activities in Other Procurement, Air Force” funding line. The NIP budget request was officially disclosed for the first time this year, and so you’re likely looking at some of its $55 billion in these line items.
With that kind of bookkeeping, it’s worth wondering if all of the Defense Department’s secret cash is stashed in the places we’re looking for it. As transparency guru Steven Aftergood tells Danger Room,”It’s designed to be obscure.”
Photo: DOD/Flickr
See Also:
- Secret Pentagon Funding Near All-Time High
- White House, Intel Chief Can’t Agree on Budget Secrecy
- Darpa Wants You To Build An Anti-Secrecy App
- Defense Budget Dreaming: Sensors, Audits, and Wal-Marts
- The Final Gates Defense-Budget Showdown Begins
- Obama’s Budget Combines Civilian, Military War Funds
- Cut the Defense Budget? Over My Cold, Dead Gavel
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FBI Pushes for Surveillance Backdoors in Web 2.0 Tools
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FBI Pushes for Surveillance Backdoors in Web 2.0 Tools
By Ryan Singel
The FBI pushed Thursday for more built-in backdoors for online communication, but beat a hasty retreat from its earlier proposal to require providers of encrypted communications services to include a backdoor for law enforcement wiretaps.
FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni told Congress that new ways of communicating online could cause problems for law enforcement officials, but categorically stated that the bureau is no longer pushing to force companies like RIM, which offers encrypted e-mail for business and government customers, to engineer holes in their systems so the FBI can see the plaintext of a communication upon court order.
“Addressing the Going Dark problem does not require fundamental changes in encryption
technology,” Caproni said in her written testimony (.pdf). “We understand that there are situations in which encryption will require law enforcement to develop individualized solutions.”(“Going Dark” is the FBI’s codename for its multimillion-dollar project to extend its ability to wiretap communications as they happen.)
That’s a far cry from what Caproni told The New York Times last fall:
“No one should be promising their customers that they will thumb their nose at a U.S. court order,” Ms. Caproni said. “They can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text.”
Those remarks indicated the FBI seemed to want to revisit the encryption wars of the 1990s. That largely ended with the government scrapping its plans to mandate backdoors in encryption, after security researchers discovered flaws in the idea, and the National Research Council concluded that strong encryption made the country safer.
But that retreat didn’t satisfy Susan Landau, a privacy and cryptography expert who testified alongside Caproni in front of a House Judiciary subcommittee Thursday.
That’s because the FBI is still pushing for more online-communications companies to build real-time spying capabilities into their software, which Landau said will harm innovation and introduce security flaws that will be used against American companies, government agencies and citizens.
Innovation happens too fast on the internet to require companies that provide chat and voice-calling capabilities, which these days includes online games, social networking sites and a myriad of online chat and photo-sharing services, to comply with detailed wiretapping specifications that cost hundreds of dollars just to read, according to Landau.
“Requiring that internet applications with communications systems — [which] means anything from speak-to-tweet to Second Life to software supporting music-jam sessions — be vetted first will put American innovation at a global disadvantage,” Landau said. “For American competitiveness it is critical that we preserve the ease and speed with which innovative new communications technologies can be developed.”
And she added the wiretapping holes are serious security risks.
“Building wiretapping into communications infrastructure creates serious risk that the communications system will be subverted either by trusted insiders or skilled outsiders, including foreign governments, hackers, identity thieves and perpetrators of economic espionage,” Landau said in her written testimony (.pdf), pointing to incidents in Greece, Italy and the United States where equipment built to comply with U.S. wiretapping rules were subverted. Those rules, known as CALEA, were enacted in 1994 to require phone companies to engineer their networks to be wiretap-compliant. The rules were expanded by the FCC in the George W. Bush Administration to apply to ISPs as well.
The FBI’s further push for expanded powers to wiretap online communications in real time comes against the backdrop of revolutions in the Middle East that relied heavily on social media communication tools and as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for worldwide internet freedom.
“I urge countries everywhere to join the United States in our bet that an open internet will lead to stronger, more prosperous countries,” Clinton said Tuesday, speaking at George Washington University.
But Caproni argued that law enforcement officials are occasionally running into cases where criminals are using online communication tools that aren’t wiretappable in real-time, because the provider had not built-in that capability. Caproni did not mention that the FBI has not encountered a single case of encryption hampering its criminal investigations for the past four years, according to reports to Congress, nor that the FBI has never run into a single case over the last 10 years where it could not get the plaintext of a target’s communications.
Landau told Congress the FBI was overlooking some very good news.
“While there is a genuine problem with intercepting some communications, the FBI now has access to more
communications, and more metadata about communications, than ever before in history,” Landau said.But Caproni said that’s not enough and the FBI needs to find new technical solutions — though she did add that the Obama administration has no “formal position at this time” about needed changes to the law.
But she warned Congress that the country was in danger from a surveillance gap.
“As the gap between authority and capability widens, the government is increasingly unable to collect valuable evidence in cases ranging from child exploitation and pornography to organized crime and drug trafficking to terrorism and espionage –- evidence that a court has authorized the government to collect,” Caproni said. “This gap poses a growing threat to public safety.”
Also on Thursday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released some government documents about the FBI’s so-called Going Dark program, which it got under the Freedom of Information Act. Those documents show the project dates to 2006, and that the FBI had hired high-powered consultants from the Rand Corporation and Booz Allen Hamilton to help come up with solutions.
Photo: FBI.gov
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Trooper Charged With Sending Lewd Video To Minor Undercover Agent Posed As 13-Year-Old Girl
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Trooper Charged With Sending Lewd Video To Minor
Undercover Agent Posed As 13-Year-Old Girl
Copyright 2011 by WGAL.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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The time of the end
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The time of the end.
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CNN Hints At Nibiru's Existence...
Video: LUCIFER IS NIBIRU/ELENIN! & Masonic Symbol is 75 Degrees!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=THPe_-RKEBM
Amplify’d from ohlundonline.blogspot.com
CNN Hints At Nibiru's Existence...
CNN reports of the presence of a massive object in our solar system's outskirts.
We live in prophetic times, and in times of great upheavals.
Some of this can be explained by the fact that we are part of a double star system, but most people have never noticed.
We have a second star in our system, and it explains the periodicity in extinction events, and also why animals and people are getting emotionally disturbed right now.
Suddenly, we have dead birds falling from the sky, revolutions in nation after nation, and politicians who unfortunately put efforts in dividing Jerusalem instead of prohibiting that a loaf of bread will cost 25 dollars in a few years' time.
"Et ait illis: 'Videbam Satanam sicut fulgur de caelo cadentem' ", Luke 10:18.
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Written in Stone
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God is the ruler of the universe ... and as a ruler, He naturally has some rules for His creation.
You're probably already familiar with them. They come in a set of ten and cover how we relate to God and to our neighbor. They began in eternity past and will continue into eternity future, and they are a matter of life and death. With that at stake, take a few minutes to seriously consider your responsibility in this Q&A ...
Q. Where did the Ten Commandments come from?
- "And he gave unto Moses ... two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18).
- "And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables" (Exodus 32:16).
Answer: The God of heaven wrote the Ten Commandments on tables of stone with His own finger, and gave them to Moses to deliver to Israel.
Q. Why did God give us the Ten Commandments?
- "He that keepeth the law, happy is he" (Proverbs 29:18).
- "Keep my commandments: For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee" (Proverbs 3:1, 2).
Answer: There are several reasons God introduced His law to mankind. One is for our happiness. That's right! Keeping His law promotes peace and joy in our lives.
Q. Do I have to keep God's commandments today?
- "For sin [breaking God's law, 1 John 3:4] shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin [break the law], because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid" (Romans 6:14, 15).
- "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law" (Romans 3:31).
Answer: According to the Bible, Christians today are obligated to keep the Ten Commandments—not as a means of saving them, for they are saved by grace through the sacrifice of Jesus—but to promote the peace and joy God desires for all His children.
Grace is like the governor's pardon to a prisoner. It forgives him, but it does not give him freedom to break one single law on the statute books. The forgiven person, living under grace, is under double obligation to keep the law. A person who refuses to keep God's law, saying that he is living under grace, is mistaken. He is living under disgrace.
Q. Is it even possible to keep God's commandments?
- "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts" (Hebrews 8:10).
- "I can do all things through Christ" (Philippians 4:13).
- "God sending his own Son ... That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us" (Romans 8:3, 4).
Answer: We can do it. The Bible says we can through Christ.
- Inspired? Make more articles possible with a donation today.
- Want more? Check out our full Study Guide, for free!
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SNAP will meet with abuse victims, concerned citizens, in Philadelphia, Sunday February 21
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For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 17
Clergy sex group to hold 2 Philly meetings
One is for concerned Catholics and citizens
The other is a confidential support meeting for victims
SNAP says both are in response to “lots of pain & frustration”
Self help organization is “hearing from dozens of upset parishioners”
Leaders of a Chicago-based international support group will hold two meetings in Philadelphia on Sunday, in response to “lots of pain and frustration” from victims and church-goers stemming from what they call “recent revelations of on-going archdiocesan complicity in clergy sex cases.”
One is strictly for those who have been sexually assaulted by religious authority figures. The other is open to the public. The events are being organized by a self-help organization called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org).
Everyone – Catholics and non-Catholics – is welcome at a 4:00 p.m. event in the Constitution Room of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 1800 Market St. (215-561-7500).
“Child predators rarely stop molesting. That’s especially true of highly educated and savvy ones like most pedophile priests,” said David Clohessy, director of SNAP. “So we hope Philly citizens and Catholics overcome their fears and tell law enforcement what they know and suspect about these credibly accused predators so that kids will be better protected.”
The meeting, SNAP hopes, will also give concerned individuals a chance to “vent” and discuss “tangible ways to better safeguard the vulnerable and heal the wounded,” Clohessy emphasized.
“We in SNAP have been around for 23 years, so we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work in terms of exposing predators, deterring wrong-doing, and consoling victims,” he said.
It’s recommended, but not mandatory, that those planning to attend RSVP at SNAPadmin@gmail.com (with the phrase “Philly meeting for concerned citizens” in the subject line).
“If kids are to be safer, anyone with information about clergy sex crimes and cover ups must come forward to police and prosecutors,” said Barbara Blaine, SNAP’s president. “When victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers stay silent, nothing changes and kids get assaulted. But when victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers speak up, at least there’s a chance for prevention, healing, and justice.”
The confidential support group – for clergy sex abuse victims and their families – will be held at 6:30 p.m. at an undisclosed location (to protect the privacy of participants).
”There are hundreds of men, women and kids who’ve been molested by clergy here who are hurting in silence, shame, and self-blame,” said Karen Polesir, SNAP’s Philadelphia director. “And many victims who have already spoken up are now feeling betrayed again by the Catholic hierarchy. For both groups, sharing the pain and the burdens with others who are also suffering can be very healing.”
For details on the self help meeting, please contact Blaine at 312 399 4747.
(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 23 years and have more than 10,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)
Contact: Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747, SNAPblaine@gmail.com), Peter Isely (414-429-7259, peterisely@yahoo.com), Barbara Dorris (314-862-7688 home, 314-503-0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com), David Clohessy (314-566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com),
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A church’s chance for redemption
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A church’s chance for redemption
By Maureen Paul Turlish
Why isn’t the Catholic hierarchy actively supporting legislation to protect Pennsylvania children?
Avoiding liability for sexual abuse on the grounds that the statute of limitations has expired is hardly a moral victory, but it’s exactly what the church has done in Philadelphia and throughout Pennsylvania in recent years. Legislation to lift civil and criminal statutes of limitations would give victims of childhood sexual abuse the opportunity at long last to have their cases heard in court.
Most of the individuals mentioned in a 2005 grand-jury report on sexual abuse in the church, released under former District Attorney Lynne Abraham, could not be criminally or civilly prosecuted for their alleged crimes. Why? Because their enablers did not have the integrity to call the police, and the statute of limitations covering their alleged crimes ran out. In fact, the archdiocese issued a lengthy response to the report that was geared toward damage control and protecting the church at the expense of children.
This does not appear to be the case with the latest grand-jury report. So far, the church has made no orchestrated public attempt to discredit this investigation or the current district attorney, Seth Williams.
This grand jury indicted three priests and a lay teacher on charges of sexual abuse of boys, and one church official – Msgr. William Lynn, who was formerly responsible for priest assignments – was charged with reckless endangerment of those youngsters. Not only has this never happened in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia; it appears not to have happened anywhere in the United States, and it has sent shock waves through the country’s largest religious denomination.
As a community of believers, we say we are concerned about the rights of the downtrodden. But many of us have ignored the victims of child sexual abuse who are right in front of us. Instead, we talk about those who must be in it for the money and make inflammatory statements about anti-Catholic bias – none of which does much to address the problem.
Real accountability requires that all arbitrary statutes of limitations on sexual abuse of children, criminal and civil, be repealed, and that a window of at least two years be provided to allow previously barred cases to be brought forward.
Justice, like charity, should begin at home, and our church should be leading the push for legislative reforms. Jesus said, “The truth shall set you free,” but when will the truth of these allegations be known? If the leadership of the archdiocese means what it’s been saying since 2005, it will take the lead in abolishing the statute of limitations.
State Rep. Michael P. McGeehan (D., Phila.) has said he intends to introduce legislation in Harrisburg this week “that will once and for all afford all victims of childhood sexual abuse the ability to seek justice.” I encourage other legislators to join him, and I expect the archdiocese to actively support his bill. The church leadership failed its most vulnerable charges, but now it has an opportunity for redemption.
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37 Philadelphia-area Catholic priests now under investigation in latest child sex abuse scandal
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37 Philadelphia-area Catholic priests now under investigation in latest child sex abuse scandal
By Brett Michael Dykes
The Vatican has withstood a very long run of scandals involving the alleged sexual abuse of boys by Catholic clergy. The latest church outpost to get caught up in an explosive sexual abuse scandal—the archdiocese of Philadelphia—is trying to ensure that parishioners see that it’s taking an active hand in investigating the charges.
As you may have heard, three Philadelphia priests and a parochial school teacher were charged last Thursday with raping and sexually assaulting young boys in their care. In response to the charges, the Catholic Church in Philadelphia is opening its own investigation into the possibility that 37 additional priests who remain in active ministry committed similar crimes.
Cardinal Justin Rigali, the archbishop of the Philadelphia diocese, announced that the three priests already charged with crimes have been placed on administrative leave, and that his office is concerned about “credible allegations of child sexual abuse” involving 37 others. To lead the investigation, the church hired Gina Maisto Smith, a former Philadelphia assistant district attorney who’s spent the bulk of her career prosecuting child sexual assault cases.
“Sexual abuse of children is a crime. It is always wrong and gravely evil. Protecting children, preventing child abuse and assisting victims are priorities of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia,” Rigali said in a statement. “Many people of faith and in the community at large think that the Archdiocese does not understand the gravity of child sexual abuse. We do. The task before us now is to recognize where we have fallen short and to let our actions speak to our resolve.”
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams praised Rigali’s announcement, and in the statement the church said it is “committed to working” with the DA’s office to get to the bottom of all accusations. Rigali’s aggressive response to the alleged pattern of abuse stands in stark contrast to the Church hierarchy’s grudging-to-evasive handling of similar charges over a span of decades. As more recent scandals have emerged, senior Vatican officials have questioned the motivation of their critics. Indeed, last year, one senior Vatican official suggested that media outlets reporting on the scandals were targeting the Church because they’d been possessed by Satan.
In addition to charging the three priests with rape and sexual assault, Philadelphia prosecutors also charged Monsignor William Lynn, the Philadelphia Diocese’s secretary for clergy under former Archbishop Anthony Bevilacqua, with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child for his alleged role in covering up the crimes. From 1992-2004, Lynn was responsible for investigating such allegations. A grand jury found that he knowingly allowed pedophile priests to continue serving in roles in which they had regular access to children.
John Allen, CNN’s senior Vatican analyst, characterized the charges against Lynn as a potential bombshell for the Church hierarchy.
“This is apparently the first time that a Catholic leader has been charged criminally for the cover-up as opposed to the abuse itself,” Allen said on the news outlet’s religion blog. “It sends a shot across the bow for bishops and other diocesan officials in other parts of the country, who have to wonder now if they’ve got criminal exposure, too.”
(Photo: Matt Rourke/AP)
Read more at reform-network.net
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Catholic Scandal
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Catholic Scandal
I have a good friend who is a devout Catholic. Every time I write about sexual abuse by priests and the church hierarchy’s institutional schemes to cover it up, he accuses me of being anti-Catholic.
Since my column today is about the latest grand jury report on sexual abuse within the Philadelphia Archdiocese, I expect another phone call from him. My answer will be the same I offered in today’s column and that I’ll offer in today’s blog: Read the grand jury report. You can do it here.
It’s 124 pages that should be a clarion call to Catholics and law enforcement authorities alike that nothing much has changed and that it won’t until these criminals — predator priests and their Catholic church leader accomplices — are sent to jail and church leaders start firing anyone responsible for allowing this to continue. And this report was tame compared to another grand jury’s 2005 report on the archdiocese. In the end, it made little difference.
In preparing today’s column, I spoke to David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, both to get his take on what has happened in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and to confirm that this problem is not pecular to this region. I didn’t have space to fully report our conversation in my column, so I figured I would elaborate here, where space is no concern.
Is the local archdiocese atypical? He said, “I think they are atypical in that twice, independent professional law enforcement officials and impartial jurors have forcibly gained access to their files through subpoena and exposed the wrongdoing that is largely happening around the country.” If people think the Philadelphia Archdiocese is unique, he noted, “The culture and structure of the church is nearly indentical across the country.” This is not some loosely knit alliance of independent dioceses. This is a highly structured, hiearchical organization.
Clohessy said the naïve assumption that things are much worse in this one diocese “is a key reason why literally thousands of priests have molested tens of thousands of kids all through the ’80 and ‘90s and beyond.”
One thing the church has been very good at is public relations, and that effort instantly kicked into high gear after the latest report was released. As I reported today, Cardinal Justin Rigali issued a statement that said, “I assure all the faithful that there are no archdiocesan priests in ministry today who have an admitted or established allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against them.” One Catholic who called me this morning to complain, nicely, apparently had latched onto that as proof that all this was old news.
What the cardinal didn’t mention in his statement was that the church no longer ASKS accused priests about the allegations — hey, that way nothing is admitted — and that its notion of what constitutes an established allegation may not fit that of someone whose goal isn’t avoiding scrutiny and, especially, lawsuits.
Here’s what the grand jury said. I only had space for a small portion of this quote in my column, but it’s worth seeing more of it:
Most disheartening to the grand jury was what we learned about the current practice toward accused abusers in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. We would have assumed, by the year 2011, after all the revelations both here and around the world, that the church would not risk its youth by leaving them in the presence of priests subject to substantial evidence of abuse. That is not the case.
In fact, we discovered that there have been at least 37 such priests who have been kept in assignments that expose them to children. Ten of these priests have been in place since before 2005 – over six years ago. We understand that accusations are not proof; but we just cannot understand the Archdiocese’s apparent absence of any sense of urgency.
On the other hand, in cases where the Archdiocese’s review board has made a determination, the results have often been even worse than no decision at all. The board takes upon itself the task of deciding whether it finds “credible” the abuse victims who dare come forward. It is the board, though, that strikes us as incredible.
Our review of just some of these priests’ files shows that the Review Board finds allegations “unsubstantiated” even when there is very convincing evidence that the accusations are true – evidence certainly alarming enough to prompt removal of priests from positions in which they pose a danger to children.
Six years after an earlier grand jury documented sexual abuse by priests whom church officials shielded for decades, and in the face of current assurances that Archdiocese procedures now protect families, credibly accused priests have routinely been permitted to stay in ministry.
Indeed, the grand jury said, the process ostensibly set up to help the victims has the opposite purpose. “The procedures implemented by the Archdiocese to help victims are in fact designed to help the abusers, and the Archdiocese itself,” the report said.
Speaking of public relations, in the wake of the report, the cardinal hired two more lawyers, rehired the victim assistance consultant whose 11 recommendations were ignored after the last grand jury report, and announced that three of the priests specifically named in the report were being placed on administrative leave pending a new review of their cases.
Clohessy said this kind of thing is window-dressing. “What he needs to do is fire someone, not hire someone.” He said two “untested sources of reform,” at least until now, have been charging complicit church supervisors with crimes — and the church firing and severely punishing those who ignore and conceal sex crimes.
While I’m on the subject of “old news,” I’ll point out that one reason District Attorney Seth Williams — a Catholic, by the way — was able to file charges was that the cases the grand jury focused on here fall within Pennsylvania’s predator-friendly statute of limitations. He talked about this in a statement he issued in conjunction with the report’s release, here specifically about Monsignor William Lynn, whose criminal charges for endangering the welfare of children were encouraging news to anyone who wants justice for the church officials who have so dismally failed in their responsibility to protect children. Williams said:
“A word about Monsignor Lynn, the former Secretary of Clergy for the Archdiocese who was not himself an abuser but is being charged today for knowingly endangering the children he was supposed to defend. The previous grand jury concluded that prosecution of high-level Archdiocese officials would be inappropriate on the evidence then available. The primary problem was the statute of limitations. In addition, in the absence of evidence that the actions of these officials led to the abuse of any juveniles who could be identified at that time, it would be difficult to meet our statutory burden of proving that the officials had a supervisory role in relation to the victims.
“This time, however, we have far more specific evidence, within the statute of limitations, directly linking Monsignor Lynn’s actions to the abuse of two new victims. He had all the information he needed to protect them. Instead, he lied to parishioners and went out of his way to put known abusers into contact with adolescents, resulting in assaults against at least two more young boys. Let this be a clarion call. This behavior will not be tolerated.”
In addition to the criminal charges, the grand jury had some recommendations, for the archdiocese, our Legislature and victims themselves. I’ll summarize them quickly, first for the archdiocese: Fund a victim assistance program that is independent of the archdiocese and its lawyers. Revise the Review Board process so that credibly accused priests are removed from ministry. Conduct the review process in a more open and transparent manner. Use independent treatment facilities to evaluate and treat priests accused of sexually abusing minors.
For the Legislature: Enact a two-year window to allow child sexual abuse victims to have their cases heard, a “window of opportunity” that would suspend the civil statute of limitations. Abolish the statute of limitations for sexual offenses against minors. (“We see no reason that sexual predators should benefit because they choose vulnerable young victims who are unable to come forward for many years.”) Amend reporting law so that mandated reporters are required to report sexual abuse of a child even though the victim is over 18 at the time of the report. Demand improved protection for children.
Finally, the report’s advice to victims coincides with what Clohessy told me: Report sexual abuse allegations directly to law enforcement authorities. Clohessy said he hopes that the revelations contained in the latest grand jury report will make that more likely. “In Philadelphia now, the next victim or witness or whistleblower who thinks: ‘Call the police or call the pastor? Hmmm. What should I do?’ Hopefully they’ll make the right choices.”
As disgusting as the alleged actions of some of these pedophiles were, I suppose you could argue that they’re sick and they can’t help themselves, although I can’t muster any sympathy. But what excuse can we offer for such church leaders as — if you believe the grand jury findings — Lynn and many others whose names have appeared in these two grand jury reports and others who have been able to keep their actions secret?
That they were protecting the church from lawsuits? That its reputation would suffer if any of this came out? That Catholics might stop contributing if they knew what was going on?
I’ve spoken to some of these anguished victims and read about many more. That “men of God” could put monetary considerations ahead of the suffering of innocent children is monstrous. At the very least, we as a society — including Catholics — need to serve notice, loud and clear, that we won’t tolerate those kinds of twisted priorities when it perpetuates this terrible cycle of abuse.
Clohessy told me that there still are Catholics who swallow the church P.R. and conclude that surely they’ve changed by now. “When I speak to Catholic groups,” he said, “I tell them: ‘You know who the enemy is? Surely. Oh well, surely, they don’t keep bad priests in the ministry anymore. Surely if I come forward, they’ll believe me. If the cardinal says these allegations aren’t credible, surely they aren’t.’”
I’ll add another one. Surely some Catholics reading my column and blog today will conclude that I’m treating their church unfairly by tarring it with the actions of a relative handful of wrongdoers and that church leaders will clean this up eventually on their own. In fact, I’ve already heard from such defenders.
You’re entitled to your opinion. But I’ll tell you the same thing I’ll tell my friend when he calls me:
Read the grand jury report. Visit the SNAP website and read what’s happening, not just in this area, but all over the country. I think you’ll conclude, as I have, that nothing will change as long as good people go along with a systematic effort to cover up this ugly, ugly secret. It has nothing to do with faith. It has everything to do with right and wrong.
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