Prominent
clergy abuse law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates filed a civil lawsuit on
Wednesday on behalf of a former Salinas, California, Palma High School student
who alleges a former Palma teacher, Father Gerald Funcheon, sexually abused him
on a ski trip to Oregon in the mid-1980s.
News
A 34-year-old man testified Tuesday that when he was a Boy Scout in Duluth two decades ago a scoutmaster sexually assaulted him at least 20 times and when he confronted his assailant in 2009 the man offered to pay $300,000 to keep the matter secret and out of court.The alleged assailant, Edwin C. Culbert, a 77-year-old former Air National Guard navigator with no criminal history, is standing trial in State District Court in Duluth, charged with five sex crimes …
Some Native American tribes in Minnesota are hoping a relatively new federal law will help reduce high reservation crime rates.The Tribal Law and Order Act would allow for more federal prosecutions of reservation crimes. But some county prosecutors aren’t eager to have federal officials handle cases that have traditionally been theirs.Justice Department statistics show just how dangerous reservations can be. Crime rates are more than twice as high on reservations as they are elsewhere. American Indian women experience violent crime rates three and-a-half times the national a…
Since the Penn State scandal, questions about protecting children from sexual abuse seem to be on parents’ minds all the time. I am thankful for the media’s spotlight on these issues. I tell my friends and family to use these stories as “teachable moments.” Sit your kids down and talk to them about the issue of sexual abuse. Discuss the range of behaviors that could be characterized as sexual abuse. They can range from fondling and inappropriate tickling/touching of genitals to child pornography and rape.
A fugitive Roman Catholic priest has been arrested in India after seven years on the run from charges that he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old Minnesota girl who sought his advice about becoming a nun.The Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul’s case was included in a March 11 story in the Tribune. His alleged victim, Megan Peterson, who is now 22, said in an interview Monday that she was taken off guard by the arrest after so many years of waiting.”I find it quite ironic that we did that interview and then a week later he is in handcuffs,” Peterson said. “I wasn’t expecting it to happen this fast.
A catholic priest, who was arrested on Friday night at Erode on charges of sexually abusing two minor girls in the US, will be produced before the additional chief metropolitan magistrate at Patiala House in New Delhi on Sunday. The priest, J Jayapaul alias Joseph Palanivel, 57, of Ariyalur, is accused of sexually assaulting two minor girls at Northern Minnesota in 2004. He was charged in a US court in 2007. But by 2005, Jayapaul had returned to India to be with his ailing mother. The Interpol had approached the additional chief metropolitan magistrate court in New Delhi to sec…
A federal judge has ordered former St. Paul teacher Gregg Alan Larsen to pay $240,000 to a man who was once his foster son for using him in the production of child pornography.Pierre Larsen, a foster child who was adopted by Larsen when he was 11, won the judgment on Wednesday, March 14.It was only the second time that a plaintiff has successfully used the federal “Masha’s Law” to obtain restitution for a victim of child pornography, said Pierre Larsen’s attorney, Patrick Noaker of Anderson and Associates. The law was named for a Russian orphan adopted by an American man who began abusing her …
Dozens of high school foreign exchange students have been raped,
sexually abused, or harassed by American host parents in towns and
cities across the country, an NBC News investigation has found.
Parents
who want to protect their kids from sexual abuse need to reassess the
notion of “stranger danger” — the belief that children should be on
guard around strangers because they’re most likely to be molested by
someone unknown to them, experts say.In truth, at least four of
five cases of child sexual abuse are perpetrated by someone who knows
the child, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.”Parents
need to get away from that mythology and deal with the reality [that]
if it’s going to happen, it’s going to be someone within your circle,”
said Nancy McBride, nat…
Katherine Starr was at a crossroads last April, professionally and personally, when she says she began brainstorming: as a previous victim of sexual abuse in sports, how could she help make a positive impact on addressing the issue?This was months before the names Jerry Sandusky, Bernie Fine and other coaching/sports figures were strewn across the headlines, before the tidal wave of media coverage about horrific cases of alleged sexual abuse at Penn State, Syracuse and other iconic sports programs.”I was barely coaching,” says Starr, a former member of the British Olympic swimming team for the…