Sex abuse: the scandal the Catholic Church cannot shake

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Colm O'Gorman was 14 years old whenFather Sean Fortune arrived unannounced at his parents' house in a small town in southern Ireland. The priest was given tea and a seat by the fire, and asked the teenager to help set up a youth group.

"I was 14, and very eager and hungry to be out in the world, involved in things, doing things, making a difference. And that's what he exploited," said O'Gorman, now 46 and the executive director of Amnesty International in Ireland.

The abuse that followed, culminating in Fortune's repeated rape of the boy, was part of one of the greatest scandals ever to hit theCatholic Church, damaging the curtailed papacy of Pope Benedictand posing a huge challenge to whoever succeeds him.

O'Gorman's story is just one in a worldwide scandal that destroyed lives, bankrupted dioceses, and in many cases cost the Church its most precious asset: faith.

No questions were asked when Fortune took O'Gorman to his isolated house for the weekend. Such was the Church's power inIreland at that time, no one would question a priest.

That was the first time Fortune sexually assaulted O'Gorman. Driving him back to his parents the next day, the priest stopped the car around the corner from the teenager's home.

"There were no words that I had that could explain what had happened, and I was terrified," O'Gorman recalls. "He said to me: ‘I'm worried about you, you have a problem. Either I can tell your parents, or you can come back down to me again.'"

"He kept coming and taking me away, for nearly three years."

Fortune's attacks became increasingly violent and escalated to rape. O'Gorman, depressed and suicidal, finally fled his hometown. He became homeless on the streets of Dublin.

It took a decade for O'Gorman to re-establish contact with his family and explain what had happened. With their support, he made a report to the Irish police in 1995.

"Within weeks, I heard back from the detective who had started the case that they had found another five victims," O'Gorman said.

RECURRING PATTERN

The investigation revealed a bully priest who manipulated and abused people wherever he went, and a Church hierarchy that, after receiving complaints about him, moved him on to places where he found new victims: a pattern that recurred in its handling of abuse cases worldwide.

Fortune killed himself in 1999 while on trial for 66 accounts of assault and rape of boys.

Though there was little legal precedent, O'Gorman took a civil suit against the Diocese of Ferns and Pope John Paul in 1998, in which he cited evidence that Fortune's crimes were well known but that the Church did nothing to limit his access to children.

The diocese apologized in 2003 and paid O'Gorman 300,000 euros ($389,500) in compensation.

In a dramatic illustration of the loss of faith in the Church across the developed world, Ireland - where Catholicism was written into the constitution and had enormous influence throughout the 20th century - closed its embassy to the Holy See in 2011 as relations hit an all-time low.

The sexual abuse crisis and its continuing repercussions on the Church was likely one of the difficulties Benedict referred to when he became the first pontiff in centuries to abdicate, saying he no longer had the strength to continue.

For 20 years before becoming pope, the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the man in charge of coordinating the Church's response to abuse cases, as prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A meticulous scholar, he spent years reading the details of case after case of abuse.

"There was no one in the Church hierarchy who was better positioned to make a real difference than Pope Benedict," David Clohessy, director of the U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said last week. "He had both the power and the knowledge."

FILTH IN THE CHURCH

Shortly before his election in 2005, Ratzinger gave a now-famous address in which he lamented "filth" in the Church, seen as an indicator he would take a tougher line if made pope.

After his election, as the scandal was gaining more publicity, Benedict met abuse victims in Germany, the United States, Australia, Malta and Britain, and barred two high-profile former Vatican favorites suspected of abuse from office.

The barring from public ministry of charismatic Italian priest Gino Burresi and Marcial Maciel, the Mexican founder of the Legionaries of Christ religious order, marked a watershed, showing the Church was finally acting against abuse.

Victims groups say that the Vatican had a policy of not reporting abusive priests to secular authorities, citing evidence such as a letter sent by its head of clergy to a French bishop in 2001, commending him for not denouncing a pedophile priest who had been given 18 years jail for abusing young boys.

They are demanding a comprehensive Church policy for protecting the millions of children still in its care in schools, hospitals and youth groups worldwide, and the demotion of clergy who hid abuse in the past.

The Benedict papacy's response, O'Gorman said, "falls at the first and most important hurdle. That is to simply acknowledge the truth of what happened, and the truth of its role in the cover up of crimes by priests across the world."

With the victims still far from satisfied, the abuse crisis still hangs over the Vatican as the its cardinals - the "princes of the Church" - gather to elect Benedict's successor.

SIN OF A PRIEST

Cardinal Roger Mahony, who as archbishop of Los Angeles worked to shield pedophile priests from prosecution, according to files unsealed by court order in January, has expressed incomprehension about accusations leveled against the clergy over their handling of cases in the past.

"People say: ‘Well, why didn't you call the police?' In those days no one reported these things to the police, usually at the request of families," he told the Catholic News Service on arrival in Rome.

The Vatican's chief prosecutor of sex abuse under Benedict, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, said in an Italian television interview last week: "This disease affects all places and all society, but unfortunately our sin makes the news. Why does the sin of a priest create more fuss?"

The Vatican emphasized last week that it was the duty of cardinals to attend the conclave unless there was a serious impediment such as health. Britain's most senior cardinal Keith O'Brien excluded himself from the conclave after allegations he had behaved inappropriately with other priests.

He admitted his sexual conduct was not that expected of a priest. No allegations suggest this involved children.

Some cardinals have been suggested as "clean hands" candidates for the papacy, notably U.S. Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who published a list of clergy accused of abuse on the Boston Archdiocese website and established a system for mandatory reporting of allegations to civil authorities.

Whoever the next pontiff is, he will have to face a scandal that caused two million Catholics to leave the Church in the United States alone, according to one University of Notre Dame study.

"It doesn't just damage the body, but the soul, and the faith of believers," said Scicluna.

"This is a battle that we cannot afford to lose."

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UN troops seized by Syrian rebels appear in video

BEIRUT (AP) — Several United Nations peacekeepers who were abducted by Syrian rebels said in videos posted online Thursday that they are safe and being treated well, even as activists reported clashes and shelling in the tense border area with Israel where the Filipino troops were being held.

Opposition fighters detained 21 peacekeepers near the village ofJamlah in the Golan Heights on Wednesday — the first time U.N.troops have encountered trouble since they began patrolling an Israeli-Syrian armistice line dividing the plateau nearly 40 years ago, said Timor Goksel, a Beirut-based former United Nations official in the region.

One of the videos posted online shows three men dressed in camouflage and blue bullet-proof vests emblazoned with the U.N. and Philippines.

"We, the U.N. personnel here, are safe, and the Free Syrian Armyare treating us good," one of them says in English. "We cannot go home because the government of (President Bashar) Assad do not stop the bombing. To our family, we hope to see you soon and we are OK here."

The second video shows six peacekeepers sitting in a room. An officer, who identifies himself as a captain, says that as their convoy came under shelling on Wednesday, "we stopped and civilian people helped us for our safety and distributed us in different places to keep us safe."

The targeting of the peacekeepers was likely to heighten Israeli jitters about the Syrian civil war upsetting the delicate balance along the frontier between the two countries. Israel captured Syria's Golan Heights in the 1967 Mideast war, and a U.N. monitoring force, UNDOF, was sent in 1974, a year after another Mideast war, to enforce an armistice deal between Syria and Israel.

A spokesman for the Martyrs of Yarmouk Brigades, which is holding the peacekeepers, told The Associated Press via Skype that all the 21 peacekeepers "are fine and in good health."

"We consider them guests," he added.

The U.N. Security Council has demanded their immediate and unconditional release.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said Thursday in New York that UNDOF had been in touch with the captive peacekeepers "and confirmed that they have not been harmed." He also said the mission was working for their release.

The rebel spokesman, who declined to give his name for security reasons, said the peacekeepers' job was to ensure that no heavy weapons, such as tanks, enter the area near the Israeli-Syrian armistice line. For months, the regime has been bringing tanks into the area to fight rebels, he said, adding that helicopter gunships joined the battle late last week.

Asked if the rebels will be ready to hand over the peacekeepers to an international organization, he said "the command will have to decide about that." He added that once these peacekeepers leave the area the regime could kill "as many as 1,000 people."

He said at least 10 people have been killed and dozens wounded in the shelling of Jamlah and nearby villages.

On Thursday, Syrian troops battled rebel fighters near the Golan Heights, in the southern Syrian province of Daraa, according to Rami Abdul-Rahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group. He said the fighting was concentrated on the outskirts of Jamlah, about one kilometer (half a mile) from Israeli-controlled territory.

In a separate video posted online Wednesday, another rebel who was inspecting the U.N. vehicles said the group will hold the peacekeepers until Assad's forces withdraw from Jamlah.

The videos appeared genuine and in line with AP reporting of the incident.

The Yarmouk Brigades said Thursday in a statement on its Facebook page that Assad's troops are shelling the village and warned that the army will be responsible if any harm comes to the peacekeepers in rebel custody.

In Manila, the Philippine government said Thursday that the peacekeepers were unharmed and were being treated well. Foreign Affairs Department spokesman Raul Hernandez said the U.N. force commander in the area is negotiating with the leader of the rebel group.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said the commander told him to expect the peacekeepers to be released within 24 hours, with negotiations progressing well.

The Observatory said negotiations were under way between the rebels, the Arab League and U.N. officials on handing over the peacekeepers, and that the talks were now focused on which road should be used to deliver the U.N. troops. It said the rebels want the regime to pull out its vehicles from the area, permanently end the shelling of the area and allow refugees to return.

It was not immediately clear whether UNDOF will keep operating in Syria even if the incident is resolved peacefully.

"This is a mission that works under a Security Council mandate and has done for many years, since 1974," Nesirky said at U.N. headquarters in New York. "The security conditions on the ground are not easy," and the U.N. force commander on the ground would make decisions about patrols on observation missions, he said.

Goksel, the former U.N. official who now works for Al-Monitor news website, described the members of the peacekeeping force as "a soft target." He said the group is based in Damascus but staffs observation posts along the armistice line and travels between the Syrian capital and the frontier to deliver supplies and rotate monitors.

"They were never challenged by anybody in Syria until now," Goksel said.

The Yarmouk Brigades, one of scores of groups fighting Assad's troops, was formed a year ago and most of its fighters appear to be young Syrians from poor areas in the south, said Observatory director Abdul-Rahman.

In a statement Thursday, the Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said its representatives are in contact with rebels in the Jamlah area "to let the peacekeepers go." The statement denied that seizing the peacekeepers amounted to kidnapping, saying the peacekeepers were taken in a "preventive security measure."

Rebel groups tend to operate independently, despite attempts in December to form a unified military command, and it's not clear whether the local rebels near the Golan will heed calls from leaders based abroad. Rebel fighters tend to see the opposition figures in exile as out of touch.

Senior SNC member Khaled Saleh told the AP that leaders of the group would meet in Istanbul next week to choose an executive committee that will fill Syria's seat at the Arab League. The 22-member Cairo-based organization suspended the Syrian government's membership in late 2011.

Saleh added that an interim government will be set up in the next two weeks.

The coalition has said in the past that it would set up a Syria-based interim government, but has repeatedly failed to follow through. It was not clear whether the two-day gathering in Istanbul, starting Tuesday, would yield results.

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Israel prepares for next war with Hezbollah

REVIVIM JUNCTION, Israel (AP) — On a dusty field in Israel's southern desert, the military is gearing up for the next battle against a familiar foe: Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

As the Syrian civil war intensifies, military planners are growing increasingly jittery that the fighting could spill over into Israel, potentially dragging the Islamic militant group that is allied with President Bashar Assad into the fray. After battling Hezbollah to a stalemate in 2006, the Israeli military says it has learned key lessons and is prepared to inflict heavy damage on the group if fighting begins again.

The Israel-Lebanon border has remained largely quiet since that last war. But Hezbollah has since replenished its arsenal and has waged a shadow war with Israel around the world. The fall of the Syrian leader or alternatively an Israel strike against Hezbollah's other main patron, Iran, could spark another full-fledged war.

"There is an increase in tension because of Syria," a senior commander in the military's northern command said about a possible battle with Hezbollah. The commander, who traveled south to observe Thursday's exercise here, spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military protocol.

In 2006, weeks of Israeli air raids killed more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of Hezbollah fighters, and key infrastructure was destroyed. But the heavy onslaught failed to prevent Hezbollah from firing some 4,000 rockets into Israel, and the fighting ended in a U.N.-brokered truce.

While the truce has largely held, Israel says Hezbollah has systematically restocked its arsenal with tens of thousands of even more powerful rockets and missiles capable of striking virtually anywhere in the Jewish state. Israeli military officials frequently say it is only a matter of time before the next war erupts.

In the meantime, Israel and Hezbollah have fought a covert war outside the borders of their countries. In 2008, Hezbollah's top military commander Imad Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing in the Syrian capital of Damascus, an attack widely thought to be the work of Israeli agents.

Hezbollah, for its part, is thought to be responsible for a bus bombing in a Bulgarian resort town last July that killed five Israeli tourists and their Bulgarian driver, as well as failed attempts to bomb Israeli diplomats in Thailand, India and Georgia.

Israeli military officials believe that Hezbollah, which is preoccupied with its own domestic problems and the precarious position of its Syrian ally, has no desire to reignite hostilities. But they say the Syrian civil war, as well as Israel's tensions with Iran, could easily upset the fragile balance.

As Assad's grip on power weakens, Israeli military planners fear that Syria, backed by Hezbollah, might try to open a new front in order to deflect attention. Israel also fears that sophisticated Syrian weapons, including a chemical arsenal, could be transferred to Hezbollah. Israel has all but confirmed it carried out an airstrike in Syria in January that destroyed a shipment of anti-aircraft missiles allegedly bound to Hezbollah.

Likewise, an Israeli attack on Iran would almost certainly draw a Hezbollah reprisal. Israel has repeatedly hinted it is prepared to attack Iran's nuclear installations if it determines that international sanctions and diplomacy have failed to curb the Iranian nuclear program. Israel and much of the West believe Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, a charge Iran denies.

Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of the potential link between Iran and Hezbollah.

"A nuclear-armed Iran would dramatically increase terrorism by giving terrorists a nuclear umbrella," he told members of the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC. "That means that Iran's terror proxies like Hezbollah ... will be emboldened to attack America, Israel and others because they will be backed by a power with atomic weapons."

Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has warned that anyone who thinks Hezbollah is vulnerable because of Syria's civil war is mistaken. He also said the group has all the weapons it needs in case war breaks out with Israel, and it would not need to import them from allies Syria and Iran.

"The resistance will not be silent regarding any aggression against Lebanon," Nasrallah said last month.

Israel is also taking a fiercer tone, saying it will act with far less restraint than it did in 2006, when it took out electric grids, roads and city blocks during the monthlong war that was sparked by a deadly cross-border raid by Hezbollah. Military officials say entire villages that host Hezbollah's arsenal would be considered fair targets.

During Thursday's exercise, near the Revivim collective farm, scores of Israeli reservists in full battle gear participated in a drill meant to simulate Israel's capture of a strategic hill overlooking a southern Lebanese village.

In the drill, three tanks kicked up dust as they charged forward and fired live rounds. In front of them, groups of soldiers lay flat on the ground and opened fire with propped-up guns as other soldiers stormed up the hill. Their targets were small cutout cartoon heads meant to represent Hezbollah fighters.

On a nearby Israeli army base, reservists have also been practicing urban warfare recently on a set made to resemble an Arab village, complete with concrete homes, narrow alleyways and mosque minarets.

Military officials say that while Hezbollah has upgraded its capabilities, Israel has also made important offensive and defensive changes since 2006, when it came under heavy criticism for its lack of preparedness and perceived sloppy performance.

They say the military now possesses sophisticated real-time intelligence and upgraded drones. For any potential land operation, it has fortified its armored personnel vehicles, activated a new tank defense that can shoot down anti-tank rockets and recently deployed "Iron Dome," a defense system that shot down hundreds of rockets during a recent round of fighting against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Despite its arsenal and political clout in Lebanon, Hezbollah's maneuvering space has been significantly reduced in recent years.

Hezbollah still suffers from the fallout of the 2006 war, which many in Lebanon accused Hezbollah of provoking by killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers from the border area. Since then, the group has come under increasing pressure at home to disarm. Though Hezbollah has been accused of fighting alongside the military in Syria, the group has largely been cautious with regards to the Syria conflict, knowing that any action it takes could backfire.

In addition, the group's reputation has been tarnished because its leader has supported Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, but has backed the Assad regime in Syria.

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Associated Press writer Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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French army in Mali now in Islamist "sanctuary": defence minister