Special Interest Glance
Dragged deeper than ever before into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defense that the church hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him deposed. In court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, Vatican lawyers map out a three-pronged strategy - to be formally filed in coming weeks - seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or secret documents subpoenaed.
Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren't employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the "smoking gun" that provides proof of a cover up, the documents reveal.
Three men claiming they were abused by priests brought the suit against the Holy See in 2004, accusing Rome of negligence in failing to alert police or the public about priests who molested children in Kentucky.
Vatican defends pope in US lawsuit
FEC commissioner helped RNC conceal role in 2004 vote suppression
aroline Hunter, a Bush-appointed Federal Election Commissioner who remains in office, provided misleading statements under oath in an effort to conceal Republican National Committee involvement in vote suppression activities during the 2004 presidential election, a Raw Story investigation has found.
Legal experts say Hunter's submission of such statements under oath is a serious ethical and professional breach which could warrant a bar review and potential disbarment. At the time, Hunter was serving as deputy counsel to the Republican National Committee.
n the final days of the 2004 presidential election, the Democratic National Committee files an injunction against the Republican National Committee in New Jersey federal court, alleging its involvement in using lists of returned mail to challenge 35,000 newly registered Ohio voters. This tactic, also known as voter caging, is historically employed to suppress votes from minority and low-income citizens who tend to vote Democratic.
French priest avoids sex charges over claims he abused choirboy as Vatican struggles to contain paedophile crisis
The new French probe was opened after the 22-year-old man told authorities that he had been assaulted by the priest as an adult, according to the prosecutor of Troyes, Alex Perrin.
Police searched the priest's home and found two or three pornographic photos of a child parishioner in Marcilly-le-Hayer, the prosecutor added.
Many Catholics unwilling to address sex-abuse allegations
"I think it's upsetting," said parishioner Shastina Tessier. "There's a lot of things that are upsetting that I see, but God is love and forgiveness and that's the best we can do."
TVNL Comment: And you now understand the brainwashing control effect (and purpose) of religion.
Victims of sex abuse to sue Vatican
Mounting anger at the Catholic Church’s failure to act on predatory priests in the US, Europe and Mexico has plunged the papacy into an institutional crisis described by an American Catholic newspaper last week as “the largest in centuries”.
'I felt like I was brainwashed': After 40 years of silence, abuse victims of U.S. priest relive ordeal 'that Pope covered up'
Former pupils of a U.S. Catholic priest who molested up to 200 deaf schoolboys have spoken out about his offences after four decades of silence.
Father Lawrence Murphy preyed on students in the confessional, dormitories, cupboards and during field trips from the 1950s until 1974.
Drugs, terrorism and shadow banking
They look like a credit or debit card but are not linked to a bank account, can in many cases be loaded anonymously, are not “monetary instruments” under U.S. law, and were labelled “the ideal instrument for large-scale drug trafficking and money-laundering operations” in a 2006 analysis by the National Drug Intelligence Center.
It predicted that drug traffickers, narco-terrorists and other criminals would increasingly rely on stored-value cards — “superior to established methods of money laundering” — because they could be used without fear of documentation, identification, law enforcement suspicion or seizure.
In other words, a shot in the arm of the global money laundering industry, an illicit enterprise that accounts for between 2 and 5 percent of the world’s GDP, according to an estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The Center’s dark warnings did little to curb the rapid growth of the stored-value card industry — more than $300 billion a year by some estimates.
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