The former Scout leader James Morris has caused untold damage to the children he sexually abused over a period of 40 years.
Morris, also known as Ian Charles Phipps, is now waiting to receive his fourth jail sentence and this time it could be forever.
Stuff can now reveal that Morris has a string of convictions for child sexual abuse and was sentenced to preventive detention in 1997.
Published in Stuff
The cardinal maintains he didn’t know about the Victorian town’s notorious paedophile priests, a claim the royal commission found ‘implausible’.
Published in The Guardian
The number of sex abuse allegations against Catholic clergy members more than quadrupled in 2019 compared to the previous five years, U.S. church officials reported in an annual audit (PDF) released this week.
Published in The Hill
Background: A growing gap has emerged between people with mental illness and health care professionals, which in recent years has been successfully closed through the adoption of peer support services (PSSs). Peer support in mental health has been variously defined in the literature and is simply known as the help and support that people with lived experience of mental illness or a learning disability can give to one another. Although PSSs date back to several centuries, it is only in the last few decades that these services have formally evolved, grown, and become an integral part of the health care system. Debates around peer support in mental health have been raised frequently in the literature. Although many authors have emphasized the utmost importance of incorporating peer support into the health care system to instill hope; to improve engagement, quality of life, self-confidence, and integrity; and to reduce the burden on the health care system, other studies suggest that there are neutral effects from integrating PSSs into health care systems, with a probable waste of resources.
By Reham A Hameed Shalaby*, MD; Vincent I O Agyapong*, MD, PhD
May 2020
A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts in Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.
By Yevgeniy Pastukhov Semchenkov
May 2020
A Catholic Marist Brother told a girl he sexually assaulted to push rotten tomatoes into her face because she was so “ugly”.
The victim no longer lives in New Zealand, but the toxic memories of Kevin Healy’s offending are a constant reminder of betrayal, fear and anger.
The 81 year old, previously known as ”Brother Gordon”, was sentenced to nine months of home detention when he appeared in the Napier District Court on June 5, after pleading guilty to four charges of indecency between a man and boys aged 12 and 13, and one of indecency with a girl aged under 12.
The offending occurred between 1976 and 1977 when Healy was a member of the Marist Brothers and an active school teacher in Wairarapa.
Published in Stuff
IPS Statement of Support
Intentional Peer Support stands with all marginalized peoples, especially those of color experiencing harm at the hands of police and those with system and institutional power. We stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow organizations who condemn and are outspoken in their fight against white supremacy in the U.S. and throughout the world. This disregard of basic human rights is ubiquitous, malicious, and must be challenged at every turn. The death of George Floyd – at the hands of police – is yet another graphic reminder of the systemic racism and violence that is increasingly pervasive and incompatible with basic human rights and the values we uphold.
Published in Intentional Peer Support
The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry is appealing for information from survivors who reported the abuse they suffered while in faith-based care and sought redress either directly from the Church or other Faith-based Institution or by filing civil proceedings in Court or the Human Rights Review Tribunal.
Published in Scoop
New South Wales has one of the largest incidences of youth homelessness in Australia, and one of the leading causes is domestic and family violence. For Alex* home life reached a point of no return during the pandemic. But knocking on the door of youth homelessness services has led to finding a place where he can be himself — without needing to wear a mask.
Published in SBS News
Male survivors of sexual trauma have been working with rescued horses to help them develop trust and to manage post-traumatic stress.
Ken Clearwater of Male Survivors Aotearoa introduced the concept to the group. Many of the men have never been around horses.
Published in TVNZ
In 2020 an invisible assassin has swept across the world, creating chaos, confusion and uncertainty. Covid 19 has taken many people’s health, some people’s lives and the lives of loved ones. It has destroyed livelihoods and put the financial futures of billions at risk. We are helpless, there is nothing to fight back with. We are trapped, we have to stay in our homes. We are physically isolated, our usual freedoms and way of life suspended…
By Louise Byrne & Til Wykes
23 May 2020
Isolated, lacking support and not able to see his children Ryan* didn’t know where to turn.
Suicidal thoughts had started to creep in with isolation compounding the issue.
Family members encouraged him to reach out for help and gave him the number of a free counselling service provided by Male Support Services Waikato during lockdown.
Published in Sun Live
One in four people experience sexual assault in their lifetime, but 94 percent of those assaults are not reported to the police, the largest survey of crime in New Zealand shows.
Published in Radio NZ
Earlier this year Erin Delaney revealed on Facebook a secret she’d kept from almost everyone.
As a child she suffered physical and emotional abuse and severe neglect. The neglect had significant consequences, including a fractured skull from falling – which was only picked up when, after she vomited at school the next day, a member of her extended family intervened and took her to hospital.
Published in The Guardian
The Catholic Church is facing hundreds of civil claims by victims of clerical sex abuse, bolstered by the royal commission’s findings about Cardinal George Pell’s role in the “catastrophic failure of leadership” in the Ballarat diocese.
The royal commission’s finding that Cardinal Pell knew nearly 40 years ago of the church’s practice of shifting notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale to different parishes to avoid scandal is likely to bolster the cases of abuse survivors who must demonstrate a breach of duty of care to successfully sue the church.
Published in Sydney Morning Herald
In 2015, 60 Minutes presented damning new evidence against Pell. He has always argued his intervention on behalf of child abuse victims was innovative, independent and compassionate. But now, secret documents reveal it as a cynical smokescreen designed to protect the Catholic Church at all costs.
By 60 Minutes
25 Feb 2020