Child Victims Act in New York

The organization Safe Horizon announced that more than 2000 Spanish-speaking users visited the web page looking for information about this law since it came into force. This number represents 1/3 of total amount of visits, reason enough to translate the Act so the information accessible in a clear manner for those interested.

In this regard, the ads of public services on the organization’s Social Networks received twice the visits that the English version (112,500 vs. 54,000, respectively); moreover, it is the most shared post. It has the most amounts of comment and reactions with emojis.

This new act gives sexual abuse victim survivors an extra five years to press charges against the perpetrators. On that note, the limit age for pressing charges for a sexual abuse case during childhood changed to 28 years old to establish a new “statute of limitations.”

As to civil procedures, survivor can press charges in a civil trial against their abusers, an individual subject, but also against any institution that had allowed the abuse to happen, no matter the how old the victim is or when did the abuse took place.

Thanks to the Child Victims Act coming into force, a retroactive window for victims that could not press charges, due to the time limit being over, can do so against their aggressors.

Safe Horizons works under the idea of the Hispanic community in New York knowing their rights, and they focus on campaigns to motivate people to get help or to talk about the abuses they suffered.

Invaluables Testimonies

To promote this initiative, Safe Horizon used the testimony, in Spanish, of a victim of child abuse: State Assembly Catalina Cruz, of Colombian origin and representative of the neighborhood with the highest Hispanic representation in Queens: Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights.

Cruz accepted to be part of the campaign to educate the community. She explained that fear and shame are associated to this topic, that is why many survivor keep silence, because they feel alone and afraid of the repercussions.

A Safe Horizon

The organization Safe Horizon is one of the most important service suppliers of protection and support to victims that suffered abuse and violence in New York City.

The organization’s mission is to support victims of crimes and abuse. They also work on preventing violence and promoting justice for survivors, their families, and communities.  thus positioning as the main victim assistance organization in the United States.

All year long, Safe Horizon has a support hot-line with qualifies staff that can help in Spanish and in any other language. This line has councilors ready to help any given moment.

The post Child Victims Act now Available in Spanish first appeared on Counter Pedophilia Investigative Unit - Official Site.

Denied accusations

John Jenik was chosen to be an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of New York in 2014. His job consisted of supporting the State’s archbishop with his functions. Since the last year, Jenik stopped offering public priestly activities and he moved from his parish in the Bronx. Also, he denied all the sexual abuse accusations against him.

On October 29th, 2018, he wrote a letter for his parishioners, quoted by the New York Times, he said: “I am still denying that I have abused someone at some point. For this reason, I will ask the Vatican, who has the maximum authority in these cases, to review this subject, hoping that they can prove my innocence ultimately.”

Although the bishop affirms his innocence, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said that the archdiocese Laity Review Board concluded that the accusation was believable and founded, so they sent the case to the Holy See to do a deeper investigation. The reason for this is that the Pope is the only authority that may decide a bishop’s destiny.

This is the same archdiocese that received countless denounces for inappropriate sexual conduct against the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. These cases forced accountability on the American ecclesiastic hierarchy.

New York’s attorney general announced a civil investigation on the sexual abuse accusations and the catholic diocese concealing. These unleashed a wave of cases aperture in over a dozen states within the United States, related to sexual abuse. In these cases, there are more than 1,700 religious linked to the church in this country that were denounced for inappropriate sexual conduct.

A believable accusation.

The man who accused the bishop -Michael J. Meenan, 52 years old- affirms that he informed the archdiocese about the inappropriate relationship before doing the public denounce. Bishop Jenik became friends with the victim when he was around 13 years old, in the Nuestra Señora del Refugio church in the Bronx, where the religious man served as a priest from 1978.

For decades, the Vatican covered up or pretended not to see the cases where bishops or cardinals raped or harassed children and adults. This fact forced the maximum authority to take steps to make the church’s members this kind of conduct.

The law titled “You are the world’s light” forces the high hierarchies and other cleric members to report and inform their superiors about any believable abuse situation. Equally important, this law extends the responsibility to those church members who try to conceal or interfere with any civil or canonic investigation.

However, even with all these measures, demanding reports in any abuse situation has not been enough. The Pope denied one of his cardinals’ resignation after covering a predator priest who sexually abused underage Boy Scouts during the ’80s and the ’90s.

In that opportunity, the French cardinal Philippe Barbarin requested his resignation to the Vatican, after being declared guilty before the penal justice because he did not inform the police about these cases. The request was denied by the Pope, who ensured that he would not accept his resignation while there was not a sentence in the court and the trial followed its course.

Cardinal Barbarin is the most important French cleric involved in the worldwide Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal. He lives at the Lyon archdiocese.

The post Pope Francis accepted the bishop’s resignation, who was accused of abuse first appeared on Counter Pedophilia Investigative Unit - Official Site.

Around the children

Some of the priests, deacons, monks, and laities accused, after leaving the church, do things such as:

• Teach high school math
• Advise survivors of sexual abuse
• Work as nurses
• Volunteer in nonprofit organizations that help children in a state of vulnerability

A publication of the Archdiocese of New York with the names of the members of the clergy who were accused of pedophilia has provided information on how they live and how to track and monitor them since they were never criminally charged. Instead, they were expelled from the church, which allowed them to live like normal people within communities.

The Archdiocese has its own criteria to determine if the priest has actually committed abuse. The accusations range from:

• Inappropriate conversations
• Unwanted hugs
• Sexual assaults on children

So far, the diocese and religious orders have shared the names of at least 5,100 members of the clergy with credible accusations. The AP investigated almost 2,000 members who are still alive and determined where they have lived and worked. The results showed that:

• 160 continued to work – being paid or volunteering- in Catholic diocese churches abroad.
• 190 obtained professional licenses to work with infants in education, medicine, social work, and legal advice.

Besides, there are found cases in which the priests were repeat offenders. Clerics were included in a list of credibly accused people never faced criminal prosecution for the abuses committed, which frees them from having a verifiable background before the state boards and services when they look for a new job and allow them to live without problems in other communities that ignore the presence and past of these people.

Police authorities can only supervise those who have been convicted after a court ruling, otherwise, it would be considered harassment.

The New Your Diocese excludes clerics accused of abuse

After the Archdiocese publication with the names of the clergy, Judge Barbara Jones —named by the Cardinal of New York, after a year of conducting an independent study on how the archdiocese processes sexual abuse allegations against its members- issued a report highlighting that substantial complaints are outside that ministry, besides including a series of recommendations.

The stipulated protocols regarding complaints of sexual assault are carried out strictly. The independent investigation that is carried out on the accusation is presented to a Lay Review Board that will decide if the allegation is justified.

Judge Jones, in her final report, set that the Archdiocese must follow certain measures to keep sexual abuse at bay:

• Hire a person to supervise and follow up on sexual abuse complaints as the sole responsibility
• Improve independent research practices
• Demand an annual training that includes working techniques with children in safe environments
• Include the relationship between the Archdiocese and the ten district attorneys of the New York area in the protocols
• Suggest that the New York Catholic hierarchy remain receptive to new claims and complaints
• Include new members with additional experience areas to the Lay Review Board
• Technologically Modernize the Archdiocese, to carry out these processes more effectively, which includes the clerics’ records tracking.

These current practices improvements are followed by the recognition given to the allegations of abuse, along with the commitment to support victims and survivors of abuse.

The post Catholic Church members that were accused of aggression maintain contact with children first appeared on Counter Pedophilia Investigative Unit - Official Site.