Pope John Paul had take the unprcedented step of asking for forgivenessLink the churches abuse of others for thousands of years. Proving that God loves repentence and moving in great strenght and clarity to publically address problems of the past the Pontiff may well be remembered as a true and faithfull follower of Christ and walking in the shoes of the fisherman.

Keith Coffman

(Reuters) - A Roman Catholic diocese in Montana has filed for bankruptcy protection, months before facing its first trial of a civil lawsuit stemming from child sex abuse claims against its clergy, church officials and the plaintiffs’ lawyers said on Friday.

The Diocese of Great Falls-Billings filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in Montana federal court as part of a negotiated settlement of dozens of “credible” sex abuse cases that date from 1950s through the 1990s, lawyers for 72 victims and the diocese said in separate statements. At least 15 other U.S. Catholic districts and religious orders have been driven to seek Chapter 11 protection by a sex abuse scandal that erupted in 2002. Montana’s other Catholic diocese in Helena, the state capital, filed for bankruptcy in 2012 to settle cases stemming from similar accusations.

If granted by a judge, the Great Falls bankruptcy would allow the diocese and its insurer to contribute to a fund that would be set aside to compensate victims, the diocese said in a statement. The total sum paid to victims will be determined after both sides negotiate settlement terms. Timothy Kosnoff, a Seattle lawyer who has represented victims in both of the Montana diocesan cases, told Reuters that bankruptcy is the only realistic mechanism to settle the claims.

However, he said obstacles remained to reaching a resolution, including the insurance carrier’s resistance to pay fair compensation to the victims. “Let there be no illusions. Despite this sensible step forward, speedy resolution is unlikely and the future of the diocese remains clouded,” he said. A lawyer for 34 of the victims, Vito de la Cruz, said Friday’s bankruptcy will allow his clients to receive “a measure of justice” in a reasonable amount of time rather than the years it would take to try each case separately.

Great Falls Bishop Michael Warfel said he felt “profound sorrow” over the abuse and offered “sincere apologies” to the victims.

Editing by Steve Gorman
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Kevin GramanThe Spokesman-Review
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Alberta Sena, left, and Dorothea Skalicky listen as Leander James describes the settlement in the legal case against the Northwest Jesuits on Friday in Spokane. The Jesuit order that established Catholic missionary schools across the Northwest and Alaska has agreed to a $166 million payout to settle child sex-abuse allegations from 500 people against its clergy and other agents.

The proposal would be among the largest payouts so far in the crisis that has beset the Roman Catholic Church during the past decade. And it would require The Society of Jesus, Oregon Province, to offer written apologies and provide pertinent records of the approximately 140 priests, nuns, brothers and lay workers accused from the 1950s through the 1980s. The breadth of the abuse and the sheer number of victims is staggering,� said attorney Michael Pfau, who represents 150 of those who alleged abuse. It's troubling that so much of the abuse happened to the poorest and most vulnerable children among us.

The Northwest Jesuits have a rich tradition in the region that includes founding Gonzaga University in Spokane and Seattle University. Most abuse victims were Alaska Natives or American Indians. In many cases Northwest Jesuit leaders moved priests accused of sexual abuse to Alaska Native villages and Indian reservations in Montana, Eastern Washington, Idaho and Oregon, attorneys and survivors said.

During a Friday press conference announcing the settlement proposal, Dorothea Skalicky recalled growing up on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation, where she was sexually abused by a priest she knew as Father Freddy. The Rev. Augustine Ferretti had been assigned to Sacred Heart Church in Lapwai, Idaho, in the 1970s after serving throughout the Northwest, including St. Michael's Scholasticate in Spokane in 1969. He died in 1982, two years after being assigned to Gonzaga University.

He has been accused of molesting at least 34 children, some of whom have filed lawsuits accusing him of abuse. I thought I was alone,Skalicky recalled, but discovered I was only one of hundreds of Native American victims.� It's tragic, Coeur d�Alene attorney Leander James said. Clearly, they sent problem priests to reservations and remote villages, knowing these priests would have direct access to children.

The Northwest Jesuits attempted to settle many of the allegations, though when the scope of the scandal grew, the religious order filed for bankruptcy protection in February 2009. In 2008, the Jesuits agreed to pay $4.8 million to 16 people who said they were sexually abused as children by the Rev. John J. Morse and James Gates, a Jesuit brother, at the St. Mary's Mission and School near Omak in the 1960s and 1970s. Morse, who denied the allegations, was removed from ministry in 2006.

In 2007, the Northwest Jesuits agreed to pay $50 million to dozens of Alaska Natives who were sexually abused by priests. Including the settlement announced Friday, payouts from the Northwest Jesuits will top $240 million to more than 700 people.

More than 100 are from Washington state, many who said they were abused at St. Mary�s on the Colville Indian Reservation. Many other men and women said they were abused on the Kootenai-Salish and Blackfoot reservations in Montana, the Coeur d�Alene and Nez Perce reservations in Idaho and the Umatilla reservation in Oregon.

The Jesuits and a steering committee of seven victims and their attorneys negotiated the settlement proposal, which must now be approved by all of those alleging abuse and the bankruptcy court judge. The victims will have to talk with a judge-appointed claims reviewer to demonstrate that they were abused. The reviewer will then decide on payment amounts, based on several criteria including the severity and frequency of the sexual abuse, Pfau said. Payments could be issued in the fall, he said.

The universities did not participate in the settlement and maintain they are separate organizations. Pfau said he represents victims who intend to pursue lawsuits against Seattle University once the bankruptcy case is resolved. Those cases revolve around the action of the late Rev. Michael Toulouse, who once taught at Gonzaga High School and lived on the Gonzaga University campus.

One night in 1950, a 14-year-old boy told his father that Toulouse had sexually assaulted him, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Seattle. The father took his gun to the campus to confront Toulouse but was stopped by the university president and another priest before shots were fired. Toulouse was soon moved to Seattle, where he ingratiated himself with strong Catholic families with boys, even though Jesuit higher-ups and university officials knew he was a pedophile, according to Pfau, who represents plaintiffs in cases against Seattle University.

The settlement calls on the Northwest Jesuits to pay about 30 percent of the $166 million agreement. Insurers will pay the rest. Every priest and employee of the religious order will have to sign an annual statement that they have not abused a child and are not aware of any abuse that has not already been disclosed. That will go in personnel files so that if it is determined later that they have, they can be prosecuted for perjury, Seattle attorney Tim Kosnoff said. Howard Levine, a lawyer for the Jesuits, said the settlement is the centerpiece of its plan to emerge from bankruptcy, perhaps within three to four months. The Jesuit bankruptcy is separate from that of the Catholic Diocese of Spokane.

The Missoulian

Missoula Police Chief Mark Muir has handed the reins of daily operations to Assistant Chief Mike Brady so Muir can focus on the city’s response to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.

The federal investigation into gender bias in the police department led to an agreement between the DOJ and the city of Missoula, and the contract outlines changes police will make to improve their response to reports of rape and sexual violence. The contract was signed in the middle of May, and since then police have seen “an enormous increase” in the number of sexual assault reports, Muir said. He said the department counts 27 reports in the past 10 weeks, although not all incidents are of recent occurrences, and one dates back to 2006, outside the statute of limitations.

“We’ll continue to see if it’s a pattern or a trend that continues. It’s a real unknown for us, but it’s very unexpected,” Muir said. The chief said he will never concede to allegations the department was violating people’s civil rights. However, he does want to implement changes set forth in the agreement and lay the groundwork for others before he retires in December. “By the end of September, we will have fulfilled the first year’s requirement for training, so that is a milestone by all means,” Muir said.

In a July 24 memo, Muir announced he was delegating the authority of daily operations to Brady. “Brady and I will meet and consult regularly and as necessary to assist in making the next few months productive and supportive of a change in leadership brought about by my retirement. “Making this change will ensure that I have sufficient time for engaging citizens and partners outside the department to meet the extensive community-based requirements of the DOJ agreement.

The department already is making strides in implementation, Muir said. On the ground, police officers are more sensitive to “how their efforts to investigate are perceived by victims,” he said. One related practice recommended in the federal agreement, for instance, is that police explain their reason for sensitive lines of questioning before launching into inquiries. Last week, the monitor hired to oversee the implementation process visited Missoula, and police laid out the action steps they will take to accomplish the terms of the agreement, Muir said. He said the meetings proved successful, especially because the monitor saw firsthand that police have “extensive working relationships” with community partners, especially those who work to prevent violence against women and children.

“He hadn’t been given anything more specific than the findings that were written by DOJ, so he was sort of led to believe that … law enforcement was on this little island, which is clearly not the case,” Muir said. Next week, a former prosecutor who conducts trainings around the world in the area of violence against women will hold classes in Missoula, Muir said. He said he met her at a leadership institute a couple of years ago. Muir requested she put on a training here, and 95 people from around the state will attend, including investigators from Missoula, he said. Other law enforcement officers will attend training sessions scheduled in September, completing the training requirements for the entire year.

As part of the federal agreement, the local department also is selecting a panel of professionals to review closed cases, Muir said. The panel will examine whether changes in policies and procedures make their way into the field. “We continue to disagree with the Department of Justice with respect to whether we were violating people’s rights, but we see that there are better ways that we could accomplish both our work and to improve the outcomes of the criminal justice process,” the chief said.

As the data on this page demonstrates students of these Universities and colleges are engaged in serial stalking of casual visitors to their campus and computer hacking of email accounts and webservices. Students even follow casual library visitors off campus to other areas of town. Former faculty and graduate students of these organizations should not be considered for employment because they poise a serious threat to persons doing business with your firm

Helana Newspaper
Most of the 362 sex-abuse victims who sued the Catholic church of western Montana, saying they were abused years ago by priests and nuns, will get monetary damages from a settlement with the church. But they’ll see something else they consider vitally important, their lawyers say: Public identification of their abusers.

“They wanted their abusers to be publicly identified and for the Diocese to accept responsibility,” says Tim Kosnoff, a Seattle attorney who co-represents 271 of the plaintiffs in two lawsuits. “By that aspect, I think we’ve succeeded.” Kosnoff and other attorneys who worked on the cases say more than 50 Roman Catholic priests will be named as sexual abusers of children.

Once the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Butte approves the settlement, the names of the abusers will be posted on the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena’s website. Most, if not all, of these priests are dead, attorneys for the plaintiffs say. The bulk of the abuse occurred from the 1940s through the 1970s, although some happened as far back as the 1930s. The oldest victims are in their 80s; the youngest are in their 40s.

The settlement, if approved, also may include documents that discuss the knowledge of Diocese officials who knew or may have known about the abuse, plaintiffs’ attorneys say. However, these officials won’t be held personally liable. David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, has criticized such settlements for not doing more to identify responsible church officials, saying the “enablers” should be exposed. Still, it’s no secret who led the Helena Diocese when the abuses occurred: Bishop Joseph Gilmore, who served from 1936 until his death in 1962, Raymond Hunthausen, the bishop from 1962-1975, and Elden Curtiss, who was bishop from 1976-1993.

Hunthausen lives in a Helena nursing home and Curtiss is a retired archbishop of Omaha, Neb. The victims filed two lawsuits in 2011 in state District Court in Helena, against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena and the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province, whose nuns ran a school in St. Ignatius. The suits said nuns at the Ursuline Academy and priests in 23 western Montana counties groomed and then abused children in their care, and that the church shielded the offenders or should have known about them. On Jan. 31, the Diocese of Helena filed for bankruptcy protection, as part of a proposed settlement with the plaintiffs.

The settlement says the church will pay $15 million to the victims and set aside at least another $2.5 million for victims who come forward later. The agreement also calls for identification of those “credibly accused” of abusing children.

George Thomas, bishop of the Diocese of Helena since 2004, said in a recent interview that a church review board will look at abuse claims, but that he doesn’t expect the church to quibble over the naming of abusers. “I give the benefit of the doubt to the accuser,” he said. “The one thing I want to punctuate is that I have been committed from the beginning to transparency. There are no names that I will hold in secret.

“If an accusation is made against (someone) and the facts line up, I think the public has a right to know.” Molly Howard, a Missoula attorney representing some of the plaintiffs, says she’s heard no arguments from Thomas or the Diocese of Helena over abusers named by her clients, but that any disputes will be sorted out by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Kosnoff also says while identification of the abusers isn’t entirely complete and the Diocese’s personnel records are sometimes unclear, there’s been “a great deal of independent corroboration of circumstances” in the identification of abusers. The trustee for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court is naming two committees of creditors for the case, and one will be made up entirely of sexual-abuse survivors, Howard says. Once those committees are formed, the “first order of business” will be to prepare and send ballots to the plaintiffs to vote on whether to accept the settlement, she says. The settlement of the Helena Diocese case is seen by some as a model of cooperation between sex-abuse accusers and the church, and Bishop Thomas said the church is committed to preventing future abuse and helping the past victims heal.

“If there are victims out there who are still unknown to us … the publication of the known abusers’ names gives them courage to come forward and start the healing process,” he said. “It comes out of the context of pastoral care.” Kosnoff, the attorney for the victims, says that’s all well and good, but he’s not convinced the Catholic church has committed to solving the problem. “Who knows how long (Bishop Thomas) will be around?” Kosnoff says. “I think the problem is a very deep-rooted and complex issue that isn’t going away with this settlement.”

RE:Recovery Inn:

We believe that the Salvation Army, City of Portland, and other funder's policy of offering free food and housing to persons who are substance abusers and/or are involved in illegal activities (A condition of the forenamed entitles have created by operating and supporting the unrestricted access mass dormitory Recovery Inn Shelter at 313 East Burnside,)  Has resulted in the Recovery Inn (RI) being a public nuisance: 

Despite the Community's involvement and SA's good intention criminal activity continues to flourish in and around this shelter. Drugs are openly sold outside the front door from supplies stashed inside. Police Officers routelinely find discarded hypodermic syringes in RI's restroom as well as evidence that bindles are being assembled within the facility. A four inch thick file of arrest made from July 1991 to May 1992 involving drug activity at RI was recently submitted to the City Attorney as evidence in support of closing the building under the City's specific Crime Ordinance.
What will happen if RI is closed?  Our observation is that most of the RI clients are illegal aliens who eat and stay at the shelter and are bussed to agricultural job sites outside the city.  Some have found selling drugs easier and more profitable than working in the fields.  Thus, taxpayers and contributors funds are being used to support criminal activity.  Closing the shelter would allow these funds to be used for more worthwhile purposes.

The problems this shelter has created in our community will not be solved by transferring RI to another operation (If SA, with their expertise cannot manager this shelter, no one else can).  Nor can the problems by increasing operational funding, hiring additional help or building new state-of-art facility.  The problems, we feel, are endemic to unrestricted-access shelters and can only be solved by closure.  Concerned members of a CECI sub committee hired an attorney in 1990 to research successful nuisance suits against dormitory shelter operations.  The attorney provided information on several lawsuits that were successfully settled in the Complainants favor.  He also writes 9/24/90 Memo that states in part:

furnishing free, unstructured housing.  The Law does, however, provide remedies for those injured by governments, providers, and  funders shortsighted facilitation of criminal behavior.  Not only may the governments, and providers involved be required to compensate victimes, but executives, directors, and major funders of the providers may also be required. It is time that community decision makers realize that on the one hand they have no legal obligation to reward those who refuse to live by community standards and laws; on the other hand they do have an obligation to protect the health and security of the whole community. On the basis of this legal opinion and the City's pending civil action under the Specified Crime Ordinance, we maintain that the Recovery Inn should be closed.

Captain Bob Brooks
Lt. Dan Lambert
Commanding East PrecinctChair Demonstration Project

Demonstration Project Committee Chairs: Wes Hackbarth, Environmental Cleanup-Union Pacific Railroad Joanne Ferrero, Building and Lt. John McNabb, Enforcement Margaret Moreland, Advocacy and Resources (Morrow Building) Copy: Mayor Bud Clark Commissioners Bogle, Blumenaeur, Kafoury, and Lindberg Police Chief Tom Potter Commissioner Paul Rader, Salvation Army, Los Angeles Major Neil Hogan, Salvation Army Harborlight.

Footnote on Michael Stoops A 1987 article by Mark Zusman and Kay Durham about homeless activist Michael Stoops, and founder of the Baloney Joe's homeless shelter. Their story charged Stoops with extorting sex from homeless male teenagers in return for shelter and food. While a subsequent investigation confirmed the article's charges (including evidence that a number of boys had contracted gonorrhea of the throat), Stoops was fired and Baloney Joe's eventually closed. Nevertheless, the article resulted in a backlash at Willamette Week and a significant loss of advertising revenue.

By 1987, homelessness had become a major political issue, thanks in part to the efforts of a charismatic grassroots activist named Michael Stoops, founder and chairman of the Burnside Community Council, which operated Baloney Joe's-Portland's best-known homeless shelter.

A grizzled social worker from a Quaker background, Stoops was the perfect antidote to the materialism of the Reagan era: He drew no salary, favored thrift-store clothes and lived in a skid-road hotel with two broken TVs-one for picture and one for sound. Behind the rumpled demeanor, however, Stoops was a media-savvy advocate with a knack for publicity: He gave reporters a taste of street life through an innovative "urban plunge" program and organized an annual tongue- in-cheek parody of the Rose Festival to crown the King and Queen of the Hobos.

But on Nov. 19, WW published what was destined to be its biggest story of the decade: a report that Michael Stoops routinely had sex with teenage boys who came to Baloney Joe's seeking shelter. The news hit the city like a barreling freight. Stoops hotly denied the charges, and droves of supporters rushed to his defense, bombarding WW with angry calls and letters, complaining, in effect, that the allegations were too ugly to be true.

But the city's collective wall of denial crumbled after the BCC commissioned Portland lawyer Don Marmaduke to investigate the accusations. Several months later, after a brief effort to keep the investigation under wraps, the agency finally released the Marmaduke report, which confirmed WW's story. Stoops resigned the same week. The story's aftermath continued for years. Stoops moved to Washington, D.C., where he continues to work on homeless issues. The BCC collapsed, and the Salvation Army took over Baloney Joe's and renamed it the Recovery Inn. Today the shelter stands empty and forlorn on the east end of the Burnside Bridge, its windows boarded up, its walls stained with urine-just another hard-luck story in a town too busy to care.