Predator priests shuffled around globe

LOL! His face says it all.


Predator priests shuffled around globe

RIO DE JANEIRO – There he was, five decades later, the priest who had raped Joe Callander in Massachusetts. The photo in the Roman Catholic newsletter showed him with a smile across his wrinkled face, near-naked Amazon Indian children in his arms and at his feet.
The Rev. Mario Pezzotti was working with children and supervising other priests in Brazil.
It's not an isolated example.
In an investigation spanning 21 countries across six continents, The Associated Press found 30 cases of priests accused of abuse who were transferred or moved abroad. Some escaped police investigations. Many had access to children in another country, and some abused again.
A priest who admitted to abuse in Los Angeles went to the Philippines, where U.S. church officials mailed him checks and advised him not to reveal their source. A priest in Canada was convicted of sexual abuse and then moved to France, where he was convicted of abuse again in 2005. Another priest was moved back and forth between Ireland and England, despite being diagnosed as a pederast, a man who commits sodomy with boys.
"The pattern is if a priest gets into trouble and it's close to becoming a scandal or if the law might get involved, they send them to the missions abroad," said Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and critic of what he says is a practice of international transfers of accused and admitted priest child abusers. "Anything to avoid a scandal."
Church officials say that in some cases, the priests themselves moved to another country and the new parish might not have been aware of past allegations. In other cases, church officials said they did not believe the allegations, or that the priest had served his time and reformed.
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Callander says he was 14 when he was raped three times and abused on other occasions in 1959 at the now-closed Xaverian Missionary Faith High School in Holliston, Mass. The Xaverians settled the case for $175,000 in 1993. At least two other accusations of sexual abuse were leveled against Pezzotti in the Boston area.
In the meantime, from 1970 to 2003, Pezzotti was in Brazil, where he worked with the Kayapo Indians.
In a handwritten note of apology to Callander in January 1993, Pezzotti said he had cured himself in the jungle.
"I asked to leave Holliston and go to Brazil to change my life and begin a new life. Upon arrival in Brazil, confiding in God's mercy, I owned up to the problem," Pezzotti wrote. "With divine help, I overcame it."
There is no evidence that Pezzotti, now 75, abused children in Brazil, which has more Catholics than any other nation. Brazilian law enforcement officials said they were unaware of any complaints about him.
The Rev. Robert Maloney, a former provincial of the Xaverians who worked closely on Callander's settlement, said Pezzotti was allowed to stay in Brazil for another decade and work with children after a psychological evaluation. He added that a Xaverian investigation into Pezzotti and his work in Brazil turned up nothing.
After Pezzotti returned to Italy in 2003, "he was constantly being asked for by Brazil and by the people he worked with," Maloney added.
In 2008, Pezzotti returned to Brazil. A few months later, Callander saw the photos of him on the Internet and complained to the church. The priest was quickly sent back to Italy.
The Xaverian vicar general, Rev. Luigi Menegazzo, said Pezzotti works at Xaverian headquarters in Parma tending to sick and elderly priests. Asked if Pezzotti had any contact with children or public parish work, he said, "Absolutely in no way."
Reached by telephone, Pezzotti said only: "I don't see why I have to talk about it. Everything was resolved and I don't feel like talking."
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Father Vijay Vhaskr Godugunuru was forced to return to India and then was transferred to Italy after pleading no contest to assaulting a 15-year-old girl while visiting friends in Bonifay, Fla. He now ministers to a parish in a medieval town of about 4,000 in Tuscany, where he hears confessions, celebrates Mass and works with children.
The bishops supervising him said they were aware of the case but believed he was innocent.
"The evidence that has been given does not support the accusation," Monsignor Rodolfo Cetoloni, the bishop of the Montepulciano diocese, told the AP last week.
Cetoloni said he saw no reason for any restrictions. Godugunuru, now 40, "enjoys the esteem of everybody," he said.
Godugunuru had been charged with fondling a parishioner in her family's van on June 23, 2006. The priest, visiting from India's diocese of Cuddapah, had been allowed to assist at the Blessed Trinity Catholic Church in Bonifay.
The girl, now 19, told police in a sworn statement that Godugunuru "fondled her breasts and penetrated her vagina with his fingers." In his own interview with police, Godugunuru said the girl "had taken his hand and placed it between her legs." He denied intentionally touching her.
The priest was arrested the next month for lewd or lascivious battery on a minor. He faced up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine but in exchange for his no contest plea was required to return to India, undergo counseling, not supervise minors for a year and not return to the United States.
The girl's mother brought the case to the attention of Pope Benedict XVI.
"My family and others have been forced out of our church," she wrote in an Aug. 23, 2006, e-mail obtained by the AP. "Just when our faith and our faith in our church were tested most, our Priest chose the side of silence. ... To make matters worse, it was my daughter who was the one being attacked and he just sat back and watched. ...
"This is the biggest problem my family has ever dealt with," she continued. "Please Father, help us. Remember us in your prayers, especially for the speedy healing of my daughter."
The e-mail also said she had contacted the bishop of Cuddapah, the Most Rev. Doraboina Moses Prakasam, and asked if there had been any past accusations of sexual improprieties against Godugunuru. "I have not heard back from him and I don't expect to," she said.
The pope never answered.
Prakasam told the AP he was under the impression that Godugunuru had been absolved of the charges.
"What I was told by the people looking after that case was that he was cleared and ... he was allowed to come back to India," he said.
He said he told the Italian bishop of the case when Godugunuru moved to Tuscany.
The priest of San Lorenzo parish told the AP by phone last week that Godugunuru works as his deputy. He refused further comment, except to say that Godugunuru "does what all deputy parish priests do" and "helps the parish priest."
Godugunuru declined to be interviewed by the AP.
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More cases in the link below...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/lt_predator_priests