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California
SANTA ROSA. (04/1997). Rabbi sentenced to three-year term.
Sidney Goldenberg, age 58, was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Mark Tansil
for sexually fondling a 12-year-old girl in his religion class. Reports had
surfaced of similar offenses from 27 years before.
SANTA ROSA. (07/1997). Episcopal Church pastor sexually assaulted boys for
30 years. Francis Papworth was released from California state prison six
years ago, after serving a four-year term, but a July 1997 lawsuit claims that
Episcopal Church officials earlier knew of Papworth’s tendencies and had
still allowed him access to boys. Papworth, now of Prescott, Arizona, admitted
to prosecutors at his previous sentencing in California that he victimized children
for 30 years.
LOS ANGELES. (09/1997). Rabbi gets community service and counseling.
Rabbi Israel Grunwald, accused of fondling a 15-year-old on a 1995 plane flight
from Australia, has had the charge against him dropped after agreeing to perform
500 hours of community service and to seek counseling.
Colorado
DENVER. (09/1997). Repeat felon executed for rape/murder.
Convicted and released in past years, Gary Davis, age 53, was a three time loser.
His fourth offense was the rape and murder of a 33-year-old mother of two, Virginia
May, whom he abducted in front of her children in July 1986. Davis was scheduled
for execution by lethal injection in October 1997.
Connecticut
NEW HAVEN. (08/1997). Jury awards survivor $750,000 from Catholic
Bridgeport diocese. Frank Martinelli was sexually victimized by Father Laurence
Brett, starting when he was age 15 in the 1960s, in Stamford, CT. The damages
cited are compensatory, and punitive damages are also expected to be awarded.
Florida
MIAMI. (07/1997). Woman aids FBI in America OnLine sting.
Posing as a 13-year-old boy, an unidentified woman arranged to meet a New York
man for sex in Miami. When Robert M. Nebens, age 37, - a teacher and self-proclaimed
psychologist from Pound Ridge, NY - showed up toting 53 computer disks full
of child pornography, he was arrested.
Illinois
CHICAGO. (11/1997). Alleged false memory victim wins suit. Patricia Burgus
of Lombard, Illinois, was treated for depression at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s
Medical Center and diagnosed by them with multiple personality disorder. Since
then she has won a lawsuit that alleged she had been frequently hypnotized and
drugged to force her to believe she had been a priestess of a satanic cult that
abused children. News reports do not address whether or not the credibility
of her testimony was challenged in court based on susceptibility to suggestion.
Massachusetts
MEDFORD. (04/1997). Assistant middle school principal charged.
Richard DiGiacomo, an assistant principal for 33 years in Medford, was indicted
by the Middlesex County District Attorney’s office on 21 counts of sexual
abuse of six girls, aged nine to fifteen. Arraignment for set for Cambridge.
PLAINVILLE. (10/1997). Child porn viewer via Internet is sentenced. Robert
B. Lightfoot, Jr., age 37, of Plainville has been sentenced to fifteen months
in prison for possession of child pornography he had obtained through connections
made via online services. Pre-pubescent children were depicted in sexually explicit
acts in the images. Lightfoot used America OnLine and Prodigy to meet other
pedophiles with whom he traded child-porn both online and directly.
Missouri
POTOSI. (10/1997). Paroled rapist executed for contract murder. In August
of 1982, Alan J. Bannister committed a paid-contract murder in Joplin, Missouri.
At the time of the shooting murder, he was out on parole for a rape conviction.
Despite an appeal to the governor by actor Ed Asner, Bannister, age 39, was
executed on October 22, 1997, for the murder of Darrell Ruestman. Bannister
reportedly had received $4,000 for the murder.
New Hampshire
NASHUA. (11/1997). Catholic high school teacher is convicted sex
offender. Bishop Guertin High School hired a Roman Catholic brother as a
teacher in 1990, despite the man being a convicted sex offender. Brother Shawn
McEnany, age 35, had been convicted in Maine. McEnany was described by the school’s
headmaster as a “respected and popular” teacher.
New York
NEW YORK. (10/1997). Rules set for pedophiles on Halloween.
A special force of New York City police were on patrol this Halloween evening
to see that convicted and paroled child molesters were obeying city rules governing
their conduct for the holiday. The NYPD officers were checking for any decorations
displayed that could attract children to the abusers homes, and to make sure
the ex-convicts were observing a 6 P.M. curfew established for them for that
night.
Rhode Island
PROVIDENCE. (10/1997). Father Michael V. LaMountain charged for
sexual assaults on five altar boys. In Superior Court, before Judge Mark
A. Pfeiffer, the now-suspended priest pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually
abusing five boys between 1979 and 1992. Prosecutors say that some of the assaults
took place at the priest’s summer cottage in Burrillville, RI, and others
at the church rectories where the priest served. Two survivors of the Catholic
priest, Dan Turrene and James Egan, have gone public, urging other survivors
of sexual abuse to come forward.
WARWICK. (04/1997). Scoutmaster charged with sexual assaults on three boys.
George Wall of West Warwick was an assistant scoutmaster and scoutmaster in
East Greenwich, then full Scoutmaster of Troop 11 at the Arthur Trudeau Center
in Warwick. The Trudeau Center works with the mentally retarded. Wall has been
suspended by the Narragansett Boy Scouts Council. Charges were filed in Superior
Court in March.
Tennessee
DYERSBURG (04/1997). Convicted judge may yet face prison.
David Lanier, former Tennessee judge, had been convicted of sexual attacks on
five women in his courthouse between 1989 and 1991. His sentence was 25 years.
Now a unanimous decision by the US Supreme Court has overturned the federal
appeals court decision to strike down Judge Lanier’s conviction. The appeals
court must now review its erroneous ruling.
Texas
DALLAS. (7-10/1997). Diocese loses $119 million suit; Father Rudolph Kos
arrested. Most recently, in late October 1997, Father Rudolph Kos was arrested
in San Diego, California, for eight counts of sexual assaults on four children
in Irving, Texas. Judge Janice Warder has kept the bail for the priest at $400,000
despite the defense’s request to lower it. Several months earlier the Dallas
Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas had lost a lawsuit by 11 of Kos’s victims
who successfully claimed that the diocese had known of the pedophile priest’s
activities but had failed to protect them from him.Those sexual assaults by
Kos took place between 1977 and 1992. One of the victims committed suicide.
The jury found the diocese grossly negligent - finding that other priests who
had warned high Church officials about Kos had been ignored - and awarded the
plaintiffs a record $119 million in damages. Testifying for the plaintiffs was
a priest, Father Robert Williams, who reported Kos’s crimes to the diocese
in 1991.
In stark contrast, a former high-ranking official of the diocese,
Monsignor Robert Rehkemper, told news media that, although Kos’s crimes
were horrible, some of the blame for the sexual assaults had to be attached
to the young boys themselves because they were older than the “age of reason”
at the time. The children were as young as nine when the assaults took place.
The “age of reason” in the Roman Catholic Church is age seven. Monsignor
Rehkemper also blamed the victims’ parents for placing their trust in Father
Kos, saying, “It doesn’t appear they were very concerned about their
kids.”
DALLAS. (08/1997). Church documents in Holley case show knowledge & coverup.
The Dallas Morning News recently gained access to documents sealed by the court
after lawsuits against Father David Holley and Catholic dioceses where he had
served. Personnel records show that the Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts,
Bernard J. Flanagan, wrote in a 1968 therapy referral that “This man has
been (accused of) molesting teen-age boys on at least two occasions . . . most
recently in a hospital from which he has been barred . . . and with carrying
around and showing to these boys pornographic magazines and books.” Texas
Bishop Stephen Leven sent Holley for psychiatric hospitalization in 1977, terming
the deviant priest a “calculated risk.” Then, in 1982, Leven’s
successor, Texas Bishop Joseph Fiorenza, accepted Holley as a priest for the
Diocese of San Angelo, writing that although he knew of Father Holley’s
“difficulties,” nevertheless, “With our shortage of priests,
I am willing to risk incardinating him,” (making him a diocesan priest
there). For 30 years Holley was assigned to parishes in Massachusetts, Colorado,
Texas, and New Mexico. In 1993, Holley was sentenced to 275 years in prison
for sexual assaults he had committed as a priest in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Reverend Holley, age 70, is now serving time at the Western New Mexico Correctional
Facility in Grants, New Mexico.
SINTON. (07/1997). Father Jesus Garcia has criminal case dropped; five civil
suits remain. Catholic priest Jesus Garcia is still in legal trouble over
sexual assaults occurring in Corpus Christi area at a church rectory. The state
of Texas had to drop one criminal case by an altar boy against the priest because
under 1992 Texas state law a victim who is fourteen years old or older is required
to report the offense within six months of its occurrence if the victim’s
testimony can not be corroborated by impartial witnesses. In 1993 the law was
changed to apply to victims 18 or older.
Washington, DC
WASHINGTON. (11/1997). Most states fail to join national offender
registry. Only 14 of the 50 states are participating in the national sex
offender registry, according to White House officials. Although the states are
keeping local registries as mandated by federal law, only a handful have joined
in the national effort. The 14 states that so far have voluntarily taken part
include Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon,
South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.
Without a national computerized database effort, predators cannot readily be
followed from state to state. President Clinton has written to 36 state governors
asking them to comply.
Washington state
TACOMA. (04&07/1997). Six men file lawsuits against Jeff Smith,
the Frugal Gourmet. All allege they were sexually abused by Smith between
the 1970s and 1992. Five were employees at Smith’s Chaplain’s Pantry
Restaurant in Tacoma, while the sixth states he was picked up as a hitchhiker
and then abused. Smith, a Methodist minister, has denied the allegations contained
in the Tacoma-based suits.
SEATTLE. (05/1997). Mother catches son’s molester using online service.
After learning that her son’s sexual abuser was using America OnLine to
meet young boys, a mother from Federal Way, Washington, began frequenting the
same chat room to trick him into a meeting. Cooperating with Mercer Island police,
she arranged for Otis “Jerry” Fellows to come to a parking lot, where
he was arrested after propositioning a young female officer who was posing as
a boy. The molestation of the woman’s 13-year-old son took place in 1993.
Fellows, age 46, has pleaded guilty to the 1993 crime. He has a prior record
from 1987 for possession of child pornography.
Wisconsin
LA CROSSE. (9/1992 & 10/1997). Convicted priest released from
priesthood at his request. Ex-priest Bruce Ball had been convicted of the
1991 “sexual exploitation” of a twelve-year-old child during counseling
sessions and served a five-year sentence at the Oshkosh Correctional Facility.
Now out of prison, he is on parole through December 12, 1997. At his own request,
the diocesan priest, formerly assigned to St. Mary Help of Christians parish
in Colby, Wisconsin, was released from the priesthood - in a process known as
laicization - effective August 11, 1997. At the time of the 1992 police investigation
of Ball, news reports say that Wood County Sheriff Department records showed
that LaCrosse Diocese bishop, John Paul, received reports from police as far
back as at least 1984 that Father Ball had made sexual comments to children
and invited children to sleep with him. Father Ball was removed from his parish
assignment when criminal charges were officially filed in 1992. *Another LaCrosse,
Wisconsin priest facing a civil suit in 1992 seeking damages for sexual assault
against a child was Father James E. Ennis. *Father Thomas Dempsey, formerly
of the LaCrosse diocese pleaded guilty in April 1997 to criminal charges of
molesting boys in the 1960s.