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Catholic Church In Switzerland: 146 Abuse Victims, 125 Priests In Report

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The Swiss Bishops Conference of the Catholic Church in Switzerland has admitted that 146 victims of sexual abuse stepped forward and reported a total of 125 priests and clergy as their abusers, in the first-ever report of its kind, assembled last year. The abuse allegations go back as far as 60 years, and involve male and female victims who are the time were adults, teenagers, and even children under 12.

READ: Pope Accused Of Sex Abuse “Crimes Against Humanity” Charges At The Hague

Jessica Dacey, writing at SwissInfo, reports:

The statistics broke down in more detail who the victims and perpetrators were and when the incidents had taken place since 1950. Abuse ranged from sexual harassment to rape. Most of the victims were teenage boys (25 per cent) and adult men (23 per cent). Another 20 per cent were children aged under 12.

Half of the incidents were carried out by parish priests and 26 per cent by ordained men.

Most of the abuse happened between 1950 and 1980. Ten per cent of cases took place during the past decade. The biggest dioceses of Basel and Chur were home to most of the abuse (70 per cent).

Confirmation of the abuse first came to light more than 16 months ago when the church announced cases reported from January-May 2010. Thursday’s statistics present a complete picture of reported abuse in that year.

“It should not be forgotten that behind these figures, are people who are suffering,” Werlen added. His abbey – an important place of pilgrimage in central Switzerland – became a focal point of abuse cases after incidents involving 40 victims and 15 monks emerged in January this year. These cases do not appear in the 2010 statistics.

…

More cases are expected in future, according to Adrian von Kaenel, president of the church’s expert commission on sexual abuse in pastoral care.

“Unfortunately this phenomenon is a human phenomenon. It’s not just in the church. The offenders are from all ‘helping’ professions, like doctors and lawyers,” von Kaenel told swissinfo.ch.

But he expects the very old cases to drop off now. “We have had the peak, and I expect that it will settle down a little. But unfortunately there will always be new cases.”

Von Kaenel said prevention and sharing of information was starting to have an effect.

“I think the work has been significant. We have seen a certain success in these ten years that we [the commission] have existed.”

Special note to the Catholic League’s pedophilia protector William Donohue: The Catholic Church has a pedophilia problem on its hands, and an abuse problem on its hands, and your attempts to blame the gay community are bunk.

In 2010, BBC News reported,

Roman Catholic bishops in Switzerland have admitted that they underestimated the extent of sexual abuse committed by priests, and have offered an apology.

The Swiss Bishops’ Conference said it was “ashamed” and suggested victims should consider pressing criminal charges against the perpetrators.

Let’s be clear. Comments like, “It’s not just in the church. The offenders are from all ‘helping’ professions, like doctors and lawyers,” merely serves to continue the ruse that these abuses were not done by the Church, were not enabled by the Church, were not covered up by the Church, and — if the Church’s history in other countries, like the U.S., is any indication of what abuse in Switzerland is like — then that is as close to a falsehood as one can get.

Those “helping professionals” were also priests. The fact that they were professionals and found refuge in Mother Church makes it all the worse.

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Tennessee Governor Slammed After ‘Praying’ for Nashville School Community Without Mentioning Mass Shooting

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March 27, 2023

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Governor Bill Lee quickly drew tremendous outrage in the wake of a school mass shooting where six people including three young children were shot to death. Social media users criticized the Tennessee Republican, who had signed a permit-less gun carry law, for declaring he was “praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community,” without posting any mention of the mass shooting.

Tweeting he was “closely monitoring the tragic situation at Covenant,” Gov. Lee said, “As we continue to respond, please join us in praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community.”

There was no mention of any loss of life, and, as Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts passionately noted, the “situation” was a mass shooting.

“If thoughts and prayers alone worked to stop gun violence, there wouldn’t have been a shooting at a Christian elementary school. It’s your actions – including weakening the state’s gun laws – that’s killing kids in Tennessee,” Watts also tweeted. “SHAME ON YOU.”

Gov. Lee signed a permit-less carry bill into law in 2021, at a Beretta gun manufacturing plant.

According to the CDC, as of 2020 – one year before the permit-less carry bill was signed into law – Tennessee ranked tenth in the nation in per-capita firearm mortality.

READ MORE: ‘Our Children Deserve Better’: First Lady Jill Biden Speaks Out After Six Die in Nashville School Mass Shooting

Meanwhile, others took notice of the gun culture Gov. Lee has fostered in “The Volunteer State.”

MSNBC analyst and Bulwark writer Tim Miller commented, “Tennessee governor Bill Lee issued a statement recently about how the drag ban in Tennessee ‘protects children.’ If only he would have instead focused on laws that might have prevented the mass murder of children in his state today.”

Historian Kevin Kruse pointed to an article from last year, after the Uvalde, Texas school shooting, titled: “Rep. Clemmons Seeks Renewed Gun Laws, Gov. Lee Requests Prayer.”

“You chose prayer over gun reforms last year after the Uvalde massacre,” Kruse wrote. “And now here we are.”

The progressive website Tennessee Holler pointed out that Gov. Lee, along with GOP lawmakers, “just appointed Jordan Mollenhour to the [state] board of education— whose company was sued for selling ammo to an underage mass killer (SANTA FE) and sold ammo to at least one more (AURORA) He has ZERO education experience.”

Let’s Give a Damn founder Nick Laparra tweeted, “We are 86 days into 2023. So far, 9859 people have died by gun violence and there have been 128 mass shootings. Meanwhile, @GovBillLee spends his days being outraged over drag queens and CRT and book bans. This is Bill Lee’s and the GOP’s fault.”

See the tweets and video above or at this link.

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Mystery Grand Jury Witness in Trump Hush Money Probe Is Former ‘Enquirer’ Publisher and Trump Ally

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March 27, 2023

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Avid followers of the Manhattan District Attorney’s moves noted the grand jury had been called into service for Monday, and soon news leaked that yet another witness would be testifying in the probe into Donald Trump’s alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.

Monday afternoon, NBC News’ Garrett Haake reported live on MSNBC that the mystery witness was David Pecker, the former tabloid publisher of the “National Enquirer,” who reportedly had been looking for stories in 2016 to protect Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Haake notes Monday was Pecker’s second appearance before the grand jury in the hush money case.

The New York Times also reported David Pecker as the grand jury witness, calling Pecker “a key player in the hush-money matter. He and the tabloid’s top editor helped broker the deal between the porn star, Stormy Daniels, and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time.”

READ MORE: ‘Our Children Deserve Better’: First Lady Jill Biden Speaks Out After Six Die in Nashville School Mass Shooting

“While the focus of Mr. Pecker’s testimony is unclear, he could provide valuable information for prosecutors. A longtime ally of Mr. Trump, he agreed to keep an eye out for potentially damaging stories about Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign,” The Times reports. “For a brief time in October 2016, Ms. Daniels appeared to have just that kind of story. Her agent and lawyer discussed the possibility of selling exclusive rights to her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump to The National Enquirer, which would then promise to never publish it, a practice known as ‘catch and kill.'”

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman weighed in, noting, “nothing about that decision [to have Pecker testify] suggests any change of heart on Bragg’s part to indict Trump.”

Former Dept. of Defense Special Counsel Ryan Goodman, an NYU professor of law, notes that Pecker’s “testimony can show the [hush money] scheme was designed to affect outcome of election.”

“He reportedly communicated directly with Trump on payment,” Goodman adds.

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‘Our Children Deserve Better’: First Lady Jill Biden Speaks Out After Six Die in Nashville School Mass Shooting

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18 hours ago

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March 27, 2023

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First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, speaking Monday afternoon at a National League of Cities conference, told attendees, “Our children deserve better,” as she broke the news of the Nashville school mass shooting at Covenant Presbyterian School where three children and three adults were shot dead.

“You know,” Dr. Biden, herself an educator and clearly pained by the news, began her remarks by saying, “I hate to say what I’m gonna say next because you know you’re so enthusiastic and with so much energy and hope and I feel it.”

“But while you’ve been in this room, I don’t know whether you’ve been on your phones but we just learned about another shooting in Tennessee, a school shooting and I am truly without words and our children deserve better, and we stand – all of us – we stand with Nashville in prayer.”

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The First Lady, a former public high school English teacher and currently a professor of English at a community college, was speaking at the organization’s Congressional City Conference.

Watch Dr. Biden below or at this link.

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