A file image of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s tenure in office ends Monday (January 6, 2025), after an investigation found that he failed to tell police about serial abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it.

Archbishop Welby, the head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, will lay down his bishop’s crozier – a ceremonial long staff – in a symbolic act which marks the end of his ministry. Most of his official functions will be delegated to the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell.

Archbishop Welby had announced in November that he would resign after an independent investigation into the late John Smyth, a prominent attorney who the report said sexually, psychologically and physically abused about 30 boys and young men in the United Kingdom and 85 in Africa from the 1970s until his death in 2018.

The 251-page report of the Makin Review concluded that Archbishop Welby failed to report Smyth to authorities when he was informed of the abuse in August 2013, soon after he became Archbishop of Canterbury. Had he done so, Smyth could have been stopped sooner.

Archbishop Welby’s initial refusal to step aside kindled anger about a lack of accountability at the highest reaches of the church.

Archbishop Welby’s resignation comes against the backdrop of widespread historical sexual abuse in the Church of England. A 2022 report by the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse said a culture that gave more support to alleged perpetrators than their victims helped make the Church of England “a place where abusers could hide.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the symbolic head of the Anglican Communion, which has more than 85 million members in 165 countries. While each national church has its own leaders, the Archbishop of Canterbury is considered first among equals.

A 54-year-old man in Brazil who has been accused of sexually abusing and imprisoning his wife, their seven children and his mother-in-law for two decades has been arrested. Citing Brazilian outlets, the People reported the alleged crimes came to light after one of the daughters escaped the home in Novo Oriente, Brazil. The man, who has not been named in the reports, allegedly held his 40-year-old wife captive for almost the entirety of their marriage. She only left the house to receive benefits and was usually accompanied by him. 

“None of the neighbours knew her, not even her relatives had access to her,” police spokesperson Herika Ribeiro Sena said, per the outlet. 

The seven children, between the ages of 3 and 22, were also victimised by the man. He also allegedly sexually abused his now-deceased mother-in-law. Police allege the woman died after falling ill and not being given proper care. 

The daughters claim that the man drilled holes into the walls of the house so he could see them taking showers and getting dressed. He also allegedly raped them before forcing them to have abortions.

It was only when one of the daughters gave him a sleeping pill that she could escape and report him to the police. Authorities then carried out a month-long investigation before they carried out a raid at the home. 

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According to People, the man is also accused of burying three fetuses on the property after forcing his wife to have three miscarriages by making her take medication. 

The 54-year-old is being charged with false imprisonment, rape of a vulnerable person, psychological violence, abortion and concealment of a corpse. “What this daughter did is very important: bringing what was happening to the public so that action could be taken,” Ms Sena said, per the outlet. 

The man is currently in custody and has denied all charges against him. The investigation is ongoing. 

A shocking incident unfolded in Texas on October 3 when police responded to a 911 call about a suspicious person at an under-construction home in Garden Ridge. Upon arrival, deputies from the Comal County Sheriff’s Office made a disturbing discovery – 51-year-old Jennifer Massey, an art teacher at Davenport High School, was found inside with a male juvenile student. The situation quickly escalated, leading to Massey’s arrest. Authorities confirmed that Massey was caught having sex with the minor student. The age of the male student was not immediately known.

Massey was charged with improper relationship between educator and student, a second-degree felony, and is being held at the Comal County Jail, as per the New York Post. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Comal Independent School District responded to the allegations against Jennifer Massey, condemning the suspected misconduct and placing her on leave. In a statement to KENS 5, the district emphasized, “We do not tolerate inappropriate relationships between teachers and students. Student safety and security are our utmost priority.”

Comal ISD also pledged full cooperation with law enforcement during the ongoing investigation. Additionally, the district sent a notification to parents on Friday, reassuring them of their commitment to student well-being.

“The district learned that last night Mrs. Massey was charged with having an improper relationship with a student. Mrs. Massey was placed on administrative leave this morning, and she will not be returning to Davenport High School,” the message said.

The principal of Davenport High School also issued a letter to parents on Friday informing them that the teacher was placed on administrative leave and will not be returning to the school. 

The disturbing phenomenon of teachers engaging in illegal sexual relationships with students is a growing concern in the United States. According to recent reports, there were over 500 reported cases of teacher misconduct between 2014 and 2019, with nearly 1 in 10 students experiencing some form of sexual misconduct by an educator. Several factors contribute to this alarming trend, including increased reporting and awareness, social media facilitating inappropriate interactions, breakdowns in teacher-student boundaries, inadequate screening and hiring practices, and insufficient teacher training on ethics and boundaries.

Last month, a 26-year-old former high school math teacher in Missouri, US, pleaded guilty to felony sexual contact with a 16-year-old student. Hailey Clifton-Carmack was arrested in January for her relationship with the student, which included having sex in a driveway while other students served as “lookouts,” reported People magazine. She is currently under house arrest as she awaits her sentencing on October 11.

Chennai:

The Madras High Court on Thursday said the report of the Tamil Nadu State Legal Services Authority (TNSLSA) relating to the alleged sexual abuse of girls at a fake National Cadet Corps (NCC) camp in the state’s Krishnagiri district was “shocking”.

The first bench comprising Acting Chief Justice D Krishnakumar and Justice PB Balaji made the observation while hearing a Public Interest Litigation filed by Advocate AP Suryaprakasam, seeking to transfer the investigation into the incident from Krishnagiri police to the CBI.

After perusing the report, the court said the TNSLSA in its report stated that one of the instructors present in the two-day fake NCC camp showed weapons (guns) and threatened the students not to reveal anything about the incident to anyone. The main accused, Sivaraman, who is now dead, threatened students that he would cut off their little fingers if said anything. All of this happened inside the premises of a school, Moreover. the organisers conducted a campfire inside the school on two occasions, mingled with the students and Sivaraman moved freely with them, the bench added.

The bench had directed the TNSLSA to visit the school, interact with the students, parents and the teachers, besides the school management. The authority filed a report after that.

Earlier, Additional Advocate General J Ravindran submitted that as per the directive of the court, the government had issued a show-cause notice to the school and since the reply was not satisfactory, the Krishnagiri District Educational Officer has recommended that the Director of Private Schools appoint a Special Officer to administer the school. The officer will be appointed in a week or two, he added.

He said an interim compensation was also paid to the survivors through a Fast Track Mahila Court.

Advocate General PS Raman said the accused, Sivaraman, died by suicide after consuming rat poison. The school principal and correspondent had been arrested earlier. Show-cause notices will be issued to three schools where such fake NCC camps were conducted and action will be taken, he added.

AP Suryaprakasam submitted that whether Sivaraman committed suicide or not should be thoroughly investigated. The students should be given free medical treatment in a private hospital and an “ex-gratia” amount should be given to the girls, he added.

The bench posted the matter for hearing on September 19. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A New York City doctor has been found guilty of sexually abusing eight patients including minors,  under the guise of medical treatment. According to the New York Post, Darius Paduch was a urologist, who specialized in infertility and male reproductive health. The outlet reported that he carried out the abuse from 2015 through 2019 when he was alone with his patients in the exam room. 

The indictment said he used to allegedly instruct his victims to masturbate themselves. He also used sex toys on them and carried out unnecessary rectal exams without wearing gloves.

According to the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office, the 55-year-old doctor was found guilty by a jury Wednesday in a federal court on all 13 counts he faced related to his sexual abuse of eight patients. 

In a press release, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said, ”As a unanimous jury has just found, Darius A. Paduch leveraged his position of trust as a medical doctor for his perverse gratification. For years, patients seeking needed medical care, many of them children, left his office as victims. I commend the career prosecutors of this Office for bringing this important case to a just conclusion.”

Statement of U.S. Attorney Damian Williams on the conviction of Darius Paduch

: https://t.co/OnAFAhl6tppic.twitter.com/cT85xCGe4x

— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) May 8, 2024

Defending himself, the doctor had claimed some of his methods of touching patients were medically necessary. However, the indictment said they were intended for his sexual gratification.

After the verdict, Mallory Allen, a lawyer representing his victims said, ”For nearly twenty years, patients who trusted him for their medical care and treatment were instead brutalized by his degrading, sexually violating, and medically unfounded acts while the hospitals were he worked looked the other way.

”The jury verdict in the criminal case affirms that these heinous acts will not be overlooked, and the pending civil cases will ensure that the institutions who repeatedly prioritized profits over their patients will face consequences for their indifference in ignoring years of complaints,” Mr Allen added. 

The disgraced doctor who’s been behind bars since his April 2023 arrest faces up to 60 years imprisonment at his sentencing. However, his attorney Michael Baldassare said his client would seek to appeal. 

”Dr. Darius Paduch has maintained his innocence since the start of this case. He maintains it to this day and we will continue to fight for him. We will be filing post-trial motions and an appeal and will seek all available relief,” the attorney stated. 

Ombudsman Angel Gabilondo, right, delivers a report on the country’s first independent probe into the abuse of minors within the Catholic Church to President of the Congress Francina Armengol, left, at the Spanish parliament in Madrid, Spain, on October 27, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

Over 200,000 minors are estimated to have been sexually abused in Spain by the Roman Catholic clergy since 1940, according to an independent commission published Friday.

The report did not give a specific figure but said a poll of over 8,000 people found that 0.6 percent of Spain’s adult population of around 39 million people said they had suffered sexual abuse by members of the clergy when they were still children.

The percentage rises to 1.13% — or over 400,000 people — when including abuse by lay members, Spain’s national ombudsman Angel Gabilondo told a news conference called to present the findings of the report which has over 700 pages.

The revelations in Spain are the latest to rock the Roman Catholic Church after a series of sexual abuse scandals around the world, often involving children, over the past 20 years.

The commission also interviewed 487 victims, who stressed “the emotional problems” the abuse has caused them, Gabilondo said.

“There are people who have (died by) suicide… people who have never put their lives back together,” the former Socialist education minister said.

Teresa Conde, a philosophy teacher who was abused for years by a friar starting at the age of 14 when she attended a religious school in the northwestern city of Salamanca in the early 1980, said she is “never going to be a normal person.”

“I’m never going to stop doing therapy or taking medicine,” the 57-year-old told AFP.

Downplay the issue

Unlike in other nations, in Spain — a traditionally Catholic country that has become highly secular — clerical abuse allegations only recently started to gain traction, leading to accusations by survivors of stonewalling.

The report is critical of the response of the Catholic Church, saying “it has long been characterised by denial and attempts to downplay the issue.” It recommended the creation of a state fund to pay reparations to victims.

“Unfortunately, for many years there has been a certain desire to deny abuses or a desire to conceal or protect the abusers,” said Gabilondo.

Spain’s parliament in March 2022 overwhelmingly approved the creation of an independent commission led by the country’s ombudsman to look into clerical abuse.

The country’s Catholic Church, which for years flatly refused to carry out its own probe, declined to take part in the probe, although it did cooperate by providing documents on cases of sexual abuse that had been collected by dioceses.

But as political pressure mounted, it tasked a private law firm in February 2022 with an “audit” into past and present sexual abuse by clergy, teachers and others associated with the Church, which should be completed by the end of the year.

The Spanish church has also set up protocols for dealing with sexual abuse and has set up “child protection” offices withing dioceses.

Contacted by AFP, the Spanish bishops’ conference said it would react to the commission’s report on Monday at an extraordinary meeting.

Slightly better country

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the release of the report was a “milestone” in the country’s democratic history.

“Today we are a slightly better country, because a reality that everyone was for years aware of but no one talked about, has been made known,” the Socialist premier told reporters in Brussels.

Juan Cuatrecasas, a founding member of the “Infancia Robada” (Stolen Childhood) victims’ association and the father of a youth who was abused by a teacher at a Catholic school in Bilbao, said lawmakers now must ensure repairs are made.

“This must be the start of something, not an end in itself,” he told AFP.

The Roman Catholic Church’s abuse crisis exploded onto the international stage in 2002 when the Boston Globe newspaper revealed priests had sexually abused children for decades and church leaders had covered it up.

Patterns of widespread abuse of children were later reported across the United States and Europe, in Chile and Australia, undercutting the moral authority of the 1.3 billion-member Church and taking a toll on its membership.

An independent commission in France for example concluded in 2021 that some 216,000 children — mostly boys — had been sexually abused by clergy since 1950.