Louisiana’s Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s law on reporting child abuse, which requires health workers, teachers, clergy and others to report evidence of child abuse to authorities, does not oblige priests to violate the sanctity of a sacramental confession. The ruling deals with a section of Louisiana’s Children’s Code requiring health workers, teachers, Read more
Posts Tagged ‘Child Abuse’
Court rules priests exempt when they hear of child abuse in a “sacramental confession.”
Tuesday, November 1st, 2016Auckland’s Marist College visits Samoa’s Campus of Hope
Friday, October 14th, 2016
More than 20 students and teachers from the Marist College, Auckland New Zealand, spent four days with children on the Campus of Hope in Samoa. It’s the second year in a row the school has visited. While there, as part of their of their community service work, they ran activities for the children. The Campus of Read more
Family violence: 525,000 New Zealanders harmed every year
Tuesday, May 10th, 2016New Zealand has the worst rate of family and intimate-partner violence in the world. In 2015, police around New Zealand attended about 105,000 family violence callouts. If each of those incidents was represented by a person, that’s getting close to the population of Tauranga. It is estimated that 80 per cent of incidents go unreported Read more
Acclaimed movie about child abuse in Boston opens in NZ this week
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016Journalism, the Catholic Church, and victims of sexual abuse will feature at this year’s Oscars, thanks to best film nominee Spotlight. It’s the story about the newspaper investigation that uncovered widespread child abuse within the Catholic Church opens in New Zealand on Thursday. Spotlight is the name of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team of journalists from the Boston Read more
Catholic church considers banning photographing of children
Tuesday, June 9th, 2015The New Zealand Catholic Church has announced it is considering introducing guidelines to control the filming and photographing of children on church grounds. Similar guidelines already exist overseas. In Ireland there is a total ban on all photographs during religious services in the Dublin archdiocese, including weddings, first communions, confirmations and baptisms. Other churches in Read more
The government is a bigger obstacle to justice for victims than George Pell
Friday, June 5th, 2015
Cardinal George Pell has said he’ll return to Australia to give evidence at the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, if he is required to do so. The recent revelations from Ballarat are so horrifying as to beggar belief and I expect he will honour the commission’s request for him to appear Read more
New Zealand’s shocking child abuse statistics
Friday, June 5th, 2015A child is admitted to a New Zealand hospital every second day with injuries arising from either assault, neglect or maltreatment, research says. Nearly half of them are aged under five. The figures on child abuse, which are likely under reported, are contained in a 2012 report prepared for the Ministry of Health by the Read more
Church supports Fiji’s first child helpline service
Tuesday, April 21st, 2015
The Methodist Church in Fiji and Rotuma is supporting Fiji’s first-ever Child Helpline service. Callers will be able to use a short code toll free phone number which is 1325 to contact the helpline with the cost of the calls being covered through project funding. “All of us, not only as parents but as church Read more
New Sydney archbishop reaches out to disillusioned Catholics
Tuesday, November 18th, 2014The new Archbishop of Sydney has urged disillusioned Catholic to return and “help us to be a better Church”. At his installation Mass last week, Archbishop Anthony Fisher vowed to improve the Church’s record on safeguarding children. He said the Church would emerge from a period of intense public scrutiny about clerical child abuse “humbler, Read more
Priest hangs himself after abuse allegation
Tuesday, November 4th, 2014A Catholic priest in Italy has reportedly committed suicide after being accused of child abuse. Fr Maks Suard, 48, reportedly hanged himself after being accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl some 17 years ago. According to the Messaggero Veneto newspaper, the priest had admitted his guilt. He had asked Trieste Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi for Read more