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Top Vatican officials in the U.S., India and the Vatican’s own Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, knew, since 2006, about the threat Fr. Jeyapaul posed to minors, after he was charged with sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl in the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota. For six years prosecutors have been working to extradite the Indian priest to face charges in Minnesota. Finally, Indian police arrested Fr. Jeyapaul  last Friday in Erode, India, after Interpol alerted the authorities of his whereabouts. Jeyapaul’s case highlights the Vatican’s continued policy of covering for predator ...

Yesterday, a federal judge awarded money damages to a victim of child pornography using the federal anti-child pornography law named “Masha’s Law.”  In one of the first cases of its kind, a victim of sexual abuse and child pornography won a judgment for $240,000 against his former foster and adoptive parent, Gregg Alan Larsen, for injuries relating to child pornography produced when the victim was a child.

Last year, the Irish Christian Brothers (ICB) became the 10th US Catholic diocese or religious order to declare bankruptcy to avoid public child sex abuse trials or depositions. In the case of the ICB, the order was faced with more than 50 lawsuits at one of its Seattle schools and had to act quickly before any of the cases went to trial. Our offices have handled hundreds of cases in these bankruptcies across the country, but there are some unique attributes of the Irish Christian Brothers bankruptcy that victims and the public need to know.1) It's very hard to track the brothers. And the brot...