The Vatican is examining complaints against the SCV that include sexual and psychological abuse and financial malpractice.

The SCV is using media to discredit critics. Some supporters have threatened individual complainants and their families.

Nun discredited

Sister Lucía Caram OP faced the Catholic group's aggression could be when she posted a comment on X addressed to Alejandro Bermúdez, who is a journalist and SCVs longstanding public face, .

Caram's post indicated her support for the Vatican for expelling SCV founder and former leader Luis Fernando Figari from the order in August.

She also accused Bermúdez of having defamed, attacked and destroyed victims and asked if he would now deny his ties to the Catholic group.

Bermúdez replied, saying "Enjoy this heretic nun's charitable gem" and calling her a "malignant and horrible woman".

Many of his followers posted insults to Caram.

On 20 August Bermúdez published a podcast against Caram, making more attacks on her.

The SCV itself had demanded Figari's expulsion six years ago, he claimed. His expulsion shouldn't lead Caram to "rejoice in evil".

Bermúdez says the SCV critics "have no faith" and intend to destroy the organisation.

Victimising victims

Dr Rocio Figueroa, a former member of the Catholic group and an abuse survivor, told Crux most members are more diplomatic than Caram and some fear the press.

"Bermúdez shows the true face of the organisation, a reflection of how they think and how they act that can be seen without filters."

Figueroa is now a lecturer in Systematic Theology at Good Shepherd College in Auckland and an External Researcher at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at Otago University, In 2011 she spoke out against the SCV.

What happened next piled abuse on abuse.

She says the whole community turned against her, insisted the abuse was her fault and tried to discredit her and her denunciation.

They think the measures against them are being taken "because they have enemies in the Church and in the press, not due to their faults. They're unable to question themselves".

Despite rumours about large financial compensation, Figueroa says none of the six accusers have received any form of compensation or indemnity until now.

Jose Enrique Escardó, who was the first victim to publicly accuse SCV of crimes in 2000 told Crux that, besides being accused of wanting to "destroy the Church", he and his daughter have suffered threats of torture and death.

Authors Pedro Salinas and Paula Ugaz who have written about SCV have been accused of "absurd crimes and face lawsuits".

They say they believe the SCV is behind the judicial measures.

The lawsuits against SCV members are progressing slowly, and its major leaders are being kept "out of risk" Salinas claims.

Source

• Crux Now

The previously undisclosed and ongoing investigation, dubbed Operation Mathius, began in 2021, and followed another investigation that brought to light offending involving 60 people at the West Coast fundamentalist Christian community.

Operation Mathius was launched after an array of serious allegations surfaced about two Gloriavale men, Timothy Disciple and Jonathan Benjamin. Read more

The women have accused them, condemning them to years of forced labour, while keeping them locked up in convents.

They were "abused on industrial scale," the women say.

The case before the Haarlem district court relates to about 15,000 teenage Dutch girls.

They were the wards of the Sisters and lived in convents across the Netherlands from 1951 to 1979.

The women, now aged between 62 and 91, said as troubled teens they were taken in by the order.

They were put to work, often for hours on end, six days a week. Their tasks would include sewing material, which was sold for profit, and grafting in laundries or ironing.

"The Good Shepherd is responsible for the violation of one of the most fundamental human rights known to us: the prohibition of forced labour or compulsory labour," their lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld said.

"Ostensibly the Good Shepherd was doing society, the government and the girls a favour by giving a home to what it called ‘fallen women'," she told the judges.

"In reality, it locked up hundreds of women and forced them to work."

One woman told judges she became a "robot, following the nuns' every instruction and working day after day without rest".

"If I die and land up in hell I won't be afraid, because I've already been in hell," another woman said.

The claimants' lawyers told the court their clients were among "thousands of young women in various countries who were seriously abused by the order by being subjected to forced labour on an industrial scale".

Lawyers representing the Good Shepherd denied the accusations.

They argued the nuns' method was "being seen outside of the context of the time.

"There was no question of physical or psychological abuse just because they were asked to work," lawyer Esther Dubach told the judges.

She said at the time the alleged abuse occurred, labour was seen as a reasonable method of rehabilitation.

"None of the claimants individually proved how they were abused," she said.

Furthermore, she added, the women's claim was invalid: it fell outside the statute of limitations for certain civil claims.

Judges now have to decide whether the order had indeed abused the claimants and, if so, whether compensation should be paid.

A verdict is expected in mid-April.

Source

• The Guardian

The three men, Brs Richard Glen, Francis Henery and Victor Sullivan, have died.

In March, Dunedin bishop Michael Dooley (pictured) announced a name change for the College.

Dooley's move came after a report showed former Dunedin bishop, John Kavanagh, did not act on a complaint of sexual abuse by Fr Freek Schokker in about 1963.

Schokker was a priest from the Netherlands working in the diocese at the time of the complaint. He was accused of abusing two young people.

He left New Zealand at some stage after the complaint. He died in the Netherlands in 1993 age 81.

Schokker was not on the staff at Kavanagh College, and Bishop Kavanagh did not know of the other cases because complaints were not made until some years after he had died.

In renaming the college, Dooley said it was an effort to "contribute to some healing and reaffirm our desire as a church to listen to victims of abuse and work hard to provide a safe environment for those in our care".

Apart from the name change, College principal, Kate Nicholson, appears to have had no knowledge of Glen, Henery and Sullivan.

In a statement on the College's website, Nicholson says it was not the "intent to cause any distress to survivors of sexual abuse in the Church, nor to past pupils and their whanau.

"As soon as ‘we' found out through the ODT that this has happened, the boards were taken down and will remain down."

Nicholson says finding a balance between recognising the positive history and traditions and making pupils proud of their place in Catholic schooling in Dunedin has become a challenge in the last few years.

"I hope that our current whanau and wider community recognise the significant commitment we have made to the survivors of abuse and to all the young people in our care as we undertake to begin a new, forward-looking and exemplary history as Trinity Catholic College next year."

The discovery of the displayed photos stunned old boy survivors who were on a recent reunion tour of the College.

Kavanagh old boy, Dr Murray Heasley, of the Network for Survivors of Abuse in Faith-Based Institutions, was on the reunion tour.

The ODT reports Heasley saying survivors had been told over and over that the church now had a survivor focus, and there was no longer a default position to protect predators and the reputation of schools.

"Did not a single staff member find the honouring of these men reprehensible and unconscionable?

"Is there no awareness, no consciousness of the damage to any victim survivor who might chance on the faces of these men on the walls ... ?"

He said all Catholics were "spiritually, morally and ethically obligated to share and accept the pain and suffering of those grievously abused by Glen, Henery and Sullivan, not ignore it or dismiss it as unimportant."

"On the contrary, this acceptance is axiomatic and central or it's all a ghastly grift," Dr Heasley said.

Sources

• Kavanagh College (Last accessed 5 November 2022.)
• NZ Catholic
• ODT
• ODT