Phoebe Prince's Suicide Caused By Relentless Bullying, 9 Teens Charged

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9 Teens Charged With Relentless Bullying Which Led To Phoebe Prince's Suicide


Nine teens have been charged in the "Unrelenting" bullying of a teenage girl from Ireland who killed herself after being raped and enduring months of torment by classmates in person and online, a prosecutor said Monday.

Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel said 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley was stalked and harassed nearly constantly from September until she killed herself Jan. 14. The freshman had recently moved to western Massachusetts from Ireland.

"The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school. The bullying for her was intolerable," Scheibel said.

Six teens — four girls and two boys — face charges including assault, violation of civil rights resulting in injury, criminal harassment, disturbance of a school assembly and stalking. In addition the two boys face rape charges. Three other, younger girls face delinquency charges.

Scheibel said the harassment began in September. She said school officials knew about the bullying, but none will face criminal charges.

"The actions of these students were primarily conducted on school grounds during school hours and while school was in session," the prosecutor said.

Scheibel refused to discuss the circumstances of the rape charges.

Family moved away

Prince's family has moved away from the area and could not immediately be located for comment. Scheibel spoke for them at a news conference to announce the charges.

"The Prince family has asked that the public refrain from vigilantism in favor of allowing the judicial system an opportunity to provide a measure of justice for Phoebe," she said.

Some students accused of participating in the bullying have been disciplined by the school and will not be returning to classes.

Scheibel said the case is still under investigation, and there may be additional charges.

The Massachusetts Legislature cited Prince's death and the apparent suicide of 11-year-old Carl Walker-Hoover of Springfield last year when members passed anti-bullying legislation earlier this month.


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Sources: MSNBC, Google Maps

Vatican Child Sex Abuse Scandal Biggest Crisis Since Reformation

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Archbishop Vincent Nichols Defends Pope Benedict XVI Amid Sex Abuse Scandal

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Archbishop Comes To Pope’s Defense



A leading archbishop and Vatican officials defended the pope on Friday, amid increasing allegations that top members of the church hierarchy protected pedophile priests at the expense of those they abused.

While acknowledging that past child abuse and its concealment by the church was "deeply shocking and totally unacceptable," the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols defended Pope Benedict XVI in an article in London's Times newspaper.

"He is not an idle observer. His actions speak as well as his words," wrote Nichols, who is head of the Catholic church in England and Wales.

When the pope was an archbishop he led important changes in church law, such as the extension of child abuse offenses to include the sexual abuse of all under 18; the case by case waiving of the statute of limitations; and the establishment of a fast-track dismissal for offenders, Nichols pointed out in his article.

The archbishop wrote that less than 0.4 percent of priests in England and Wales had been accused of abuse and since 2001 all allegations of sexual abuse had been reported to the police or social services.

"As far as I know, no other organization in this country does this," the Archbishop wrote. "It is not a cover-up; it is clear and total disclosure. The purpose of doing so is not to defend the Church."

"It is to make plain that in the Catholic Church in England and Wales there is no hiding place for those who seek to harm children," he added.

On Thursday, an editorial in a Vatican newspaper rejected claims that the pope failed to act against a Wisconsin priest accused of abusing up to 200 deaf boys two decades ago and denied there was a "cover-up."

"The prevalent tendency in the media is to ignore the facts and stretch interpretations with the aim of spreading the picture of the Catholic Church as the only one responsible for sexual abuse, something which does not correspond to reality," the editorial went on to say.

In 1996, leading U.S. clergy had complained about the priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, to a Vatican office led by the future pope, but received no response.

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Perilously close to Pope

A scandal of alleged cover-ups of sexual abuse of children by priests has been convulsing the Roman Catholic Church in Europe with even more intensity than a similar one which hit the United States eight years ago.

But this time it has come perilously close to the pope himself as victims groups have said they want to know how he handled cases before his election in 2005.

The pope had known of a cover-up "for many years," claimed one victim, speaking to BBC News. The pontiff should confess about what he knew, Arthur Budzinski, 61, said.

"It goes all the way up to him — he was in charge of these types of cases," he said, according to the BBC.

There have been also allegations of a cover-up of sexual abuse in Munich, in his native Germany, when he was the city's archbishop from 1977 to 1981. Victims groups have called for information on his decisions when he headed the Vatican doctrinal department from 1981 to 2005.

The Vatican was responding to the release of documents, first reported by The New York Times, that showed how the pope's former office told a Wisconsin bishop to shut down the church trial against Rev. Murphy, who was accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys from 1950 to 1975.

Murphy died in 1998, two years after Ratzinger first learned of the accusations, and more than 20 years after they came to the attention of the Milwaukee diocese.

The Munich archdiocese has said that Ratzinger was also involved in a 1980 decision to allow a priest who had been accused of abusing boys, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, to be transferred there for therapy.

However, Ratzinger's then-deputy, Gerhard Gruber, said earlier this month he took full responsibility for a subsequent decision to allow the priest to return to pastoral duties. Hullermann was convicted in 1986 of sexual abuse during a later posting.

The New York Times reported Friday that that the future pope was copied in on a memo saying that the priest would quickly be returned to pastoral work, and that church officials could not rule out that Ratzinger read it.


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Pope XVI Apologizes To Sex Abuse Victims, Mistrust Lingers

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Catholic Sex Abuse Victims Still Angry Despite Pope's Apology



Pope Benedict XVI's unprecedented letter to Ireland apologizing for chronic child abuse within the Catholic Church failed Saturday to calm the anger of many victims, who accused the Vatican of ducking its own responsibility in promoting a worldwide culture of cover-up.

Benedict's message — the product of weeks of consultation with Irish bishops, who read it aloud at Masses across this predominantly Catholic nation — rebuked Ireland's church leaders for "grave errors of judgment" in failing to observe the church's secretive canon laws.

The pope, who himself stands accused of approving the transfer of an accused priest for treatment rather than informing German police during his 1977-82 term as Munich archbishop, suggested that child-abusing priests could have been expelled quickly had Irish bishops applied the church's own laws correctly. He pledged a church inspection of unspecified dioceses and orders in Ireland to ensure their child-protection policies were effective.

He also appealed to priests still harboring sins of child molestation to confess.

"Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God's mercy," he wrote.

But Benedict offered no endorsement of three official Irish investigations that found the church leadership to blame for the scale and longevity of abuse heaped on Irish children throughout the 20th century.

The Vatican refused to cooperate with those 2001-09 probes into the Dublin Archdiocese, the rural Ferns diocese and Ireland's defunct network of workhouse-style dormitory schools for the Irish poor.

The investigations, directed by senior Irish judges and lawyers, ruled that Catholic leaders protected the church's reputation from scandal at the expense of children — and began passing their first abuse reports to police in 1996 only after victims began to sue the church.

Nor did Benedict's letter mention recent revelations of abuse cover-ups in a growing list of European nations, particularly his German homeland, where more than 300 claimants this year have alleged abuse in Catholic schools and a choir long run by the pope's brother.

German Archbishop Apologizes

In the latest development, the leader of the German Bishops Conference apologized Saturday for failing to protect children adequately from a pedophile priest in the early 1990s in his diocese of Freiburg. Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, who was in charge of human resources and staffing at the time, said he should have done more to investigate the priest, who was forced into retirement in 1991 and committed suicide four years later when fresh complaints arose.

Rights campaigners in Ireland and abroad forecast that more victims in more nations will keep coming forward and opening new fronts of criticism, because the pope's promotion of secretive canon laws remains at the heart of an unsolved problem.

"We know this policy of secrecy was worldwide. The more that victims speak out, the more the scandals will spread," said Marie Collins, who was repeatedly raped by a Dublin priest while aged 13 and hospitalized in 1960. Her attacker wasn't removed from the priesthood and imprisoned until 1997.

While a cardinal at the Vatican, Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope, wrote a 2001 letter instructing bishops worldwide to report all cases of abuse to his office and keep church investigations secret under threat of excommunication. The Vatican insists the secrecy rules serve only to protect the integrity of the church's investigations, and should not be taken to mean the church should not tell police of their members' crimes.

But victims' advocates in Ireland and the United States said the pope again failed to make it clear whether the church considers the secular law a higher priority than canon law when seeking to stop a pedophile priest.

"The letter's underlying goal seems to have been to appease the outrage while keeping the church in control of its incriminating information," said Terry McKiernan, president of a Web-based pressure group, BishopAccountability.org, that chronicles Catholic abuse scandals worldwide.

"He should have demanded that the bishops release all pertinent files and other information about all credibly accused priests. He should have demanded that every complicit official be named publicly and forced to resign," McKiernan said.

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Victims call for Resignations

Irish victims' leaders are seeking the resignations of any bishops who transferred pedophile priests to new parishes rather than report them to police — a demand that, if applied, would likely claim the majority of Ireland's 27 bishops, given their failure to tell police of any crimes until 1996. But the pope has yet to accept even the three-month-old resignations offered by three Irish bishops linked to Dublin Archdiocese cover-ups.

The Vatican's chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope's letter contained no punitive provisions because it was pastoral, not administrative or disciplinary in nature. He said any decisions concerning resignations would be taken by the competent Vatican offices.

Benedict faulted the Irish bishops for failing "sometimes grievously" to apply the church's own laws requiring child-abusing priests to be removed from the priesthood. But he didn't rebuke them for failing to report abuse to police, saying instead they must prevent future abuse and "continue to cooperate with civil authorities."

He also repeated an excuse for the bishops' inaction that has been rejected by the Irish investigations — that they didn't understand the scale or criminality of child abuse until recent years.

"I recognize how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice," Benedict wrote in remarks addressed to the Irish bishops.

Paper Trail

However, the Irish investigators forced the church to hand over its copious files on abuse cases dating back to the 1950s. They unearthed a paper trail confirming the Irish bishops' successful acquisition of group liability insurance in the 1980s, a decade before the deluge of lawsuits. And they found cases where Catholic officials in the 1960s reported school employees to police for abusing children, showing they understood even then it was a crime.

Andrew Madden, a former Dublin altar boy who in 1995 became Ireland's first pedophile-priest victim to go public with a lawsuit against the church, said the pope had missed the whole point of a meaningful apology.

"I don't need the pope to apologize for the child abusers. I, and untold thousands of victims like me, needed the pope to apologize for the church hierarchy's role in choosing to protect the abusers at the expense of children. That's the real scandal, and the pope has been involved in that. He's not an innocent bystander," Madden said.

'Only themselves to blame'

Massgoers arriving Saturday at central Dublin churches and in Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, were greeted with piles of the Pope's letter. Some lauded its readability and frank tone.

"I thought it was lovely. I thought it was very moving, and I hope it brings some help to all the victims," said one Armagh worshipper, Annette O'Hara. "They're the ones we should be praying for."

But outside a Dublin church, truck driver Tomas O'Reilly said he doubted the pope's sincerity and was unhappy with putting money in the collection plate. "I don't want to be paying the church's legal bills. They've only themselves to blame," he said.

At the Vatican, Lombardi was peppered with questions about why Benedict didn't directly address the German scandal or take the opportunity in the letter to make a more sweeping commentary on the global dimensions of the scandal.

Lombardi said the Irish scandal was unique in its scope, but said the pope's letter could be read to apply to other countries and cases.

"You can't talk about the entire world every time," he said. "It risks becoming banal."


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Pope Benedict XVI Demands Sex Abusers "Submit To Justice"

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Pope XVI Tells Sex Abusers "Submit to Justice"


Pope Benedict XVI told priests who have abused children to submit to the "demands of justice," according to a letter released Saturday.

The pontiff said a misplaced concern for the church's reputation and inadequate methods of choosing priests had contributed to decades of sexual abuse by members of the clergy. He ordered a Vatican investigation into elements of the Irish church to tackle the problem.

In an open letter written to Catholics in the Irish Republic, the pope said he was "deeply disturbed" by the flood of allegations in Ireland and told victims he was "truly sorry."

He acknowledged that victims had suffered "grievously" from "sinful and criminal" abuse at the hands of priests, brothers and nuns.

"It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the church," he said. "In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel."

The letter did not mention similar claims in the pope's native Germany.

The church has been accused of protecting priests in the past and the pope's comment about the "demands of justice" appeared to be a reference to court proceedings, NBC News reported.

Benedict laid out four reasons why abuse by priests had continued over the last four decades:

* a misplaced concern for the reputation of the church;
* inadequate procedures for choosing priests;
* insufficient training in seminaries;
* and a tendency to favor clergy.

There was no mention of any Vatican responsibility in the scandal and no specific punishments doled out for the bishops who have been blamed by victims and Irish government-ordered investigations for having covered up years of abuse.

The Vatican investigation will look into some diocese, seminaries and religious orders. Such a move is undertaken only when Rome considers a local church unable to deal with a problem on its own.

The Vatican ordered such an "apostolic visitation" into U.S. seminaries after the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal exploded in 2002.

The results of the Irish investigation could lead to further action.

Victims 'disappointed'

However, an Irish group representing survivors of abuse expressed dismay at the pope's remarks.

"My first response was deep disappointment in the letter. We feel the letter falls far short of addressing the concerns of the victims," Maeve Lewis, executive director of victims group One in Four, told Reuters.

"There is nothing in this letter to suggest that any new vision of leadership in the Catholic church exists," Lewis added.

She said the pontiff had focused too narrowly on lower-ranked Irish priests without recognizing the responsibility of the Vatican.

The letter also did not call for the resignation of the head of the church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, which victims groups have demanded, Lewis added.

In a speech after celebrating Mass on Saturday in Armagh, Northern Ireland, Cardinal Brady: "I welcome this letter. It is evident from the Pastoral Letter that Pope Benedict is deeply dismayed by what he refers to as 'sinful and criminal acts and the way the Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them.'"

Three Irish bishops have offered to step down. Benedict hasn't accepted the resignations. The pope said that while bishops committed errors in the past, the church's leadership had already begun to remedy past mistakes.

Benedict used his harshest words for the abusers themselves, saying they had betrayed the trust of the faithful, brought shame on the church and now must answer before God and civil authorities.

"Conceal nothing," he exhorted them. "Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God's mercy."

Benedict faulted their superiors, the Irish bishops, for having failed "sometimes grievously" to apply the church's own law which calls for harsh punishments for child abusers, including defrocking them.

He said Irish bishops had made "grave errors of judgement" in handling the allegations. But he didn't rebuke them specifically for having failed to report cases of abuse to police, saying only that serious mistakes were made and that now they must "continue to cooperate with civil authorities."

"I recognize how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice," Benedict wrote.

"Nevertheless, it must be admitted that grave errors of judgement were made and failures of leadership occurred. And this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness."

Secularization
The letter said the Irish church had had "to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society."

The pope added there was a "tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel."

Vatican reforms had been "sometimes misinterpreted" and "there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations."

Asked why there were no punitive provisions contained in the letter, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi noted that the letter was pastoral, not administrative or disciplinary in nature, and that any further measures concerning resignations would be taken by the competent Vatican offices.

Three Irish government-ordered investigations published from 2005 to 2009 have documented how thousands of Irish children suffered rape, molestation and other abuse by priests in their parishes and by nuns and brothers in boarding schools and orphanages. Irish bishops did not report a single case to police until 1996 after victims began to sue the church.

But Benedict said it wasn't enough to argue that abuse is widespread in society at large. He said the Irish church must now address the problem that has occurred in the Irish Catholic community "and to do so with courage and determination."

The seven-page letter was divided into sections directed at particular groups: the victims, their parents, their abusers, the bishops and the Irish faithful as a whole. Addressing himself first to the victims, Benedict said he understood that nothing he could say could undo their pain. He equated their wounds with those of Christ, and said he hoped that they find the courage to find faith.

"Christ's own wounds, transformed by his redemptive sufferings, are the very means by which the power of evil is broken and we are reborn to life and hope."

The letter concluded with a prayer for the faithful to meditate on as they work to try to rebuild the church.

"May our sorrow and our tears, our sincere effort to redress past wrongs, and our firm purpose of amendment, bear an abundant harvest of grace for the deepening of faith in our families, parishes, schools and communities, for the spiritual progress of Irish society, and the growth of charity, justice, joy and peace within the whole human family."

Sources: MSNBC

Pres. Obama Hosts Ireland's President Brian Cowen, Emphasizes Peace

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Celebrating St. Patrick's Day, Why We Wear Green

St. Patrick's Day: Why Do We Wear Green?


“There are only two kinds of people in the world,” an Irish saying goes. “The Irish and those who wish they were.”

But for 24 hours this Wednesday, that saying is a pot o’ blarney. This St. Patrick’s Day, we’ll all be Irish.

St. Patrick's Day was originally a Roman Catholic feast day for Ireland’s patron saint, celebrated only in Ireland since before the 1600s. But it evolved into a secular holiday in the 1700s, when Irish immigrants in the US held some of the first St. Patrick’s Day parades. More than a show of patriotism, the parades were an opportunity for Irish immigrants to make a political statement about their discontent with their low social status in America.

Today, St. Patrick’s Day is a transcontinental celebration of Irish culture, replete with festive food and traditions. Ever wonder why we eat corned beef, wear green, and pinch our friends on St. Patrick’s Day? Read on to discover how three St. Patrick’s Day traditions came to be.

• Why Green?

According to some accounts, blue was the first color associated with St. Patrick’s Day, but that started to change in the 17th century. Green is one of the colors in Ireland’s tri-color flag, and it has been used in the flags of several Irish revolutionary groups throughout history. Ireland is the “Emerald Isle,” so named for its lush green landscape. Green is also the color of spring, the shamrock, and the Chicago River, which the Midwestern city has dyed green on St. Patrick’s Day for the past 40-odd years.

• Corned beef or Bacon?

This St. Patrick’s Day, millions of people will sit down to an authentic Irish meal of corned beef and cabbage. Or so they think. In fact, only half of it is really Irish. Though cabbage has historically been a staple of the Irish diet (along with potatoes), it was traditionally eaten with Irish bacon, not corned beef. Irish immigrants in America could not afford the bacon, so they substituted it with corned beef, a cheaper alternative they picked up from Jewish immigrants.

• Pinch me, I’m Irish

Forgot to wear green on St. Patty’s Day? Don’t be surprised if you get pinched. No surprise, it’s an entirely American tradition that probably started in the early 1700s. St. Patrick’s revelers thought wearing green made one invisible to leprechauns, fairy creatures who would pinch anyone they could see (anyone not wearing green). People began pinching those who didn’t wear green as a reminder that leprechauns would sneak up and pinch green-abstainers.


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UFO Sighting In Dublin, Ireland Another Hoax Or Real Aircraft?

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(Anomaly Magazine) Another "Dublin UFO" Hoax Underway Against The Media?

Who’s Pranking Whom? Why Ireland and Why Triangular UFOs?

It’s like déjà vu all over again … remember back in October 2008 when we broke the story of how someone in Ireland’s media had been convinced that a then recent UFO sighting flap (which featured an apparent triangle ufo with a red laser caught with cellphone video footage) was connected to this amazing footage of a triangle ufo with red laser darting about but which turned out to be reused footage of an award winning model from a UFO hoax contest? Well it appears that someone has yet again pulled the wool over the media’s eyes.

I was just made aware of some “dramatic new triangular ufo footage” and as soon as I saw it I recognized it as something I’d seen just a few months ago in October 2009 when I was researching the ufo videos of Ed Grimsley who claims to witness ufo battles complete with lasers and explosions using only a pair of expensive nightvision goggles. Yet none of his footage is anywhere near as interesting as this “new” triangular footage which happens to apparently use this same type of green-tinting night vision tech

The video I saw in October of last year was allegedly “filmed 12/5/08 in fremont, ca.” and uploaded to YouTube the same day by someone who appears to own a pair of the goggles and/or collects footage of nightvision anomalies. Yet the online news reports and bits of information offerred so far contradict that stating…

A triangular formation of lights was filmed flying at night at “incredible speed”.
Sighting near the River Liffey in Dublin.

One has to wonder, who got this misrepresentation of the footage started? Was it deliberate or could it just be a simple case of a news editor / web manager posting an interesting accompanying video that looks like what was described but which apparently has absolutely nothing to do with the “new” alleged Dublin sighting?

So far a handful of newsites has been taken in by this “hoax” or misidentification / miscommunication. But the list is growing everytime I check:

Liffey on Mars

The Sun – Vince Soodin – Jan 21, 2010
EXPERT Nick Pope says it’s vital for our security to log sightings – and he will review yours. Among the most mysterious include a UFO over Parliament in …
www.thesun.co.uk

UFO spotted above Ireland

Daily Contributor - 11 hours ago
A strange triangular formation of lights moving at an “incredible speed” has been filmed flying near the River Liffey in Dublin. …
Dailycontributor.com

Triangular light formation UFO seen in Dublin
NewsLite – 17 hours ago
Witnesses say the lights moves at an “incredible speed” as they sped over the River Liffey. In the footage – which seems to have been taken via a night …
newslite.tv

Footage of "UFO" taken in Ireland
Oneindia – 21 hours ago
news.oneindia.in

UFO spotted above Dublin as Ireland turns X-Files
Metro – 13 hours ago
www.metro.co.uk

Footage of ‘UFO’ taken in Ireland
Newstrack India (blog) – 22 hours ago
London, Jan 22 (ANI): The footage of a UFO flying near the River Liffey in Dublin has left experts thinking it could either be a secret aircraft or …
www.newstrackindia.com

Footage of UFO taken in Ireland
Little About (blog) – Jan 21, 2010
London, Jan 22 : The footage of a UFO flying near the River Liffey in Dublin has left experts thinking it could either be a secret aircraft or spacecraft. …
www.littleabout.com

We’ll keep you posted with updates as we receive them.

SMiles Lewis


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Sources: MSNBC, Anomaly Magazine, Youtube, Google Maps