U.S. Presidents

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https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-presidents-have-been-accused-sexual-assault-692766

U.S.

How Many Presidents Have Been Accused of Sexual Misconduct? George H.W. Bush Is the Latest

By Marie Solis On 10/25/17 at 5:59 PM

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More than a dozen women leveled accusations of sexual assault against President Donald Trump during the 2016 election. Win McNamee/Getty Images

U.S.

George H.W. Bush

Donald Trump

Sexual Assault

rape

U.S. History

Former President George H.W. Bush was accused this week of sexually assaulting a woman and the man now sitting in the Oval Office has more than a dozen women accusing him of sexual misconduct.

But long before public allegations against presidents became more common, the legacy of alleged sexual abuse and harassment from men leading the nation stretches back to America's earliest days, spanning leaders both iconic and obscure.

Here's a look at the long history of presidential allegations:

1. Thomas Jefferson

One of the Founding Fathers was a rapist.

Historians often talk discuss Sally Heming's "relationship" with President Thomas Jefferson, or refer to her as his "mistress." In reality, Hemings was Jefferson's slave who he raped whenever he wanted and later impregnated with six children born into slavery.

"Romanticizing Hemings and Jefferson’s so-called relationship minimizes the deadly imbalance of power that black people suffered under before the Civil War," Britni Danielle wrote in a July Washington Post column.

It also obscures our collective history as a nation that moved from being built on the blood, bones and backs of enslaved African Americans and indigenous people, to being the imperfect, hopeful and yet still unequal country we are today.

2. Grover Cleveland

Former President Grover Cleveland has long been known for a "sex scandal" involving an "illegitimate child." But it wasn't until author Charles Lachman investigated Cleveland's life for a 2015 book that he uncovered an affidavit setting the record straight: Cleveland had allegedly committed a "violent sexual assault."

The allegations involve a 38-year-old woman named Maria Halpin, who encountered Cleveland on the street in Buffalo, New York, in 1873. According to Lachman, Cleveland had been "courting" Halpin for months, and when he saw her on the street he invited her to dinner, later walking Halpin back to her home. In the affidavit, Halpin alleges that when they arrived to the house, Cleveland raped her "[b]y use of force and violence and without my consent."

She said Cleveland threatened retaliation if she spoke out about what happened, telling her he was "determined to ruin [her] if it cost him $10,000, if he was hanged by the neck for it." Halpin continued: "I then and there told him that I never wanted to see him again [and] commanded him to leave my room, which he did."

Six weeks later, Halpin discovered she was pregnant with Cleveland's child, who she gave birth to in September 1874. News of the child broke after Cleveland won Buffalo's mayoral election, during which time Cleveland said he had "doubts" about whether he was indeed the child's father.

3. Richard Nixon

Nixon has been dubbed a "bumbling ladies' man," but an account of his interactions with women working in the White House during his tenure suggests something more insidious.

The Last President's Men, a book on Nixon by journalist Bob Woodward, mentions the 37th president making unwanted advances toward multiple women and touching a secretary's thigh.

According to Woodward, one secretary, Nell Yates, said Nixon did "an awful lot of starting to make moves and then withdrawing" when he invited her to Camp David.

[Yates] came back three hours later," Alexander Butterfield, Nixon's deputy assistant, told Woodward. "She was a pretty cool person to be really distraught, openly distraught, but said, 'Ugh, the most painful, uncomfortable evening of my life.'

Another time, Woodward wrote, Nixon touched the bare legs of a secretary named Beverly Kaye, whom he ogled when she boarded a flight with him wearing a mini skirt. He then asked Kaye to sit with him and stared at her thighs until "just out of the blue ... he start[ed] patting her on her bare legs," Butterfield said.

She has stiffened up like you can’t believe," he added. "She’s petrified.

Neither Yates nor Kaye ever came forward themselves to accuse Nixon, but Butterfield's accounts paint a clear picture of the president making unwanted sexual advances toward his female staff.

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In 'The Last of the President's Men,' journalist Bob Woodward includes accounts of President Richard Nixon making unwanted sexual advances toward his female staffers. Keystone/Getty Images

4. Ronald Reagan

Actress Selene Walters leveled assault allegations against the actor-turned-president in Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography, a book by Kitty Kelly that came out in 1991.

Walters told Kelley she met Reagan at a Hollywood nightclub in the 1950s, where he asked for her address. Walters said she gave it to him, and Reagan showed up at her door at 3 a.m. and forced himself on her.

I opened the door," Walters later recounted in an interview with People magazine. "Then it was the battle of the couch. I was fighting him. I didn't want him to make love to me. He's a very big man, and he just had his way.

When the magazine asked if she would term the incident "date rape," as Kelley wrote in her biography on Nancy Reagan, Walters replied: "No, God, no, that's [Kelley's] phrase. I didn't have a chance to have a date with him."

Slate revisited reports on the incident in 1999, reporting that the press "ridiculed this and other passages" from Kelley's book, chalking it up to "National Enquirer journalism." Slate itself wrote that it "doubts" Reagan raped Walters, without saying why. But the outlet did point out the sourcing of the alleged rape is no worse than the sourcing bolstering claims of then-President Bill Clinton's assault of Juanita Broaddrick.

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Actress Selene Walters accused President Ronald Reagan of raping her in the 1950s. Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

5. George H.W. Bush

In a since-deleted Tuesday Instagram post, actress Heather Lind accused former President George H.W. Bush of groping her during a photo-op in 2014.

According to Lind, the former president touched her from behind while seated in his wheelchair just inches away from his wife Barbara, who'd accompanied him to a premiere of the series Turn: Washington's Spies.

Lind leveled the accusations against the 41st president after seeing a photo of former President Barack Obama shaking hands with Bush at a recent benefit for all five living former U.S. presidents. She said:

I found it disturbing because I recognize the respect ex-presidents are given for having served. And I feel pride and reverence toward many of the men in the photo. But when I got the chance to meet George H. W. Bush four years ago to promote a historical television show I was working on, he sexually assaulted me while I was posing for a similar photo. He didn't shake my hand. He touched me from behind from his wheelchair with his wife Barbara Bush by his side. He told me a dirty joke. And then, all the while being photographed, touched me again. Barbara rolled her eyes as if to say 'not again.'

Bush issued an apology through his spokesman, Jim McGrath, for what he called an "attempt at humor."

"President Bush would never under any circumstances intentionally cause anyone distress, and he most sincerely apologizes if his attempt at humor offended Ms. Lind," McGrath stated.

Lind said the incident represents an abuse of the office of the president.

We were instructed to call him Mr. President," Lind said. "It seems to me a President's power is in his or her capacity to enact positive change, actually help people, and serve as a symbol of our democracy.'

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Actress Heather Lind accused former President George H.W. Bush of groping her in 2014. Getty Images

6. Bill Clinton

Clinton's legacy will always be tainted by his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, who has said that while Clinton "took advantage" of her, their relationship was consensual. A sexual harassment lawsuit from Paula Jones also led to the perjury and abuse of power charges that ended in Clinton's impeachment.

But Clinton's alleged acts came long before his presidency. Juanita Broaddrick said Clinton raped her in 1978, when he was Arkansas attorney general. When she first went public with her accusations in 1999, she told the Washington Post that the incident occurred when reporters interfered with plans to meet Clinton for coffee in the lobby of her hotel, so she invited him up to her room. Broaddrick told the outlet it was just a matter of minutes before Clinton began kissing her.

According to the Post:

She resisted his advances, she said, but soon he pulled her back onto the bed and forcibly had sex with her. She said she did not scream because everything happened so quickly. Her upper lip was bruised and swollen after the encounter because, she said, he had grabbed onto it with his mouth.

'The last thing he said to me was, "You better get some ice for that." And he put on his sunglasses and walked out the door,' she recalled.

Broaddrick resurfaced these allegations during the 2016 election, amid sexual assault allegations against President Donald Trump. She claimed his opponent Hillary Clinton had intimidated her into keeping the alleged assault under wraps.

Broaddrick recently slammed Lewinsky for her belated #MeToo tweet, accusing Lewinsky of abandoning her and Clinton's other accusers when they needed her solidarity.

I have always felt sad for you, but where were you when we needed you?" Broaddrick asked. "Your silence was deafening in the '90s, when Kathleen, Paula and I needed your voice.

The woman Broaddrick references are two other Clinton accusers: Jones, who allegations also led to landmark Supreme Court case ruling the president is not immune to civil litigation, and Kathleen Willey, who claimed Clinton groped her in a White House hallway in 1993.

7. George W. Bush

A woman named Margie Schoedinger accused former President George W. Bush of raping her in October 2000, filing a lawsuit two years later against Bush for "race based harassment and individual sex crimes committed against her and her husband," according to a local Texas paper.

There are few details about the circumstances surrounding the alleged assault, which the Daily Kos blamed on biased media coverage in 2006.

Schoedinger reportedly died of a self-inflicted gun wound just a year after filing the suit against Bush.

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Former President George W. Bush was accused of rape by a woman named Margie Schoedinger in 2000. Sam Greenwood/Getty Images

8. Donald Trump

The Washington Post opened the floodgates to sexual assault accusations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in October 2016, when the outlet published an Access Hollywood tape of Trump bragging about grabbing women "by the pussy" without their consent.

George H.W. Bush

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/11/02/george-h-w-bush-and-problem-thinking-good-guys-dont-cross-line/820455001/

Analysis: George H.W. Bush and the problem with thinking 'good guys' don't cross the line

Alia E. Dastagir, USA TODAY Published 8:48 p.m. ET Nov. 2, 2017 | Updated 10:15 p.m. ET Nov. 3, 2017

Actress Heather Lind says former President George H.W. Bush touched her "from behind from his wheelchair" at an event four years ago. USA TODAY

AP GEORGE HW BUSH HOSPITALIZED I FILE USA TX

(Photo11: David J. Phillip, AP)

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It's been nearly a month since sexual harassment and assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein exploded into national headlines, and it seems like nearly every day since, the country wakes up to another story of a powerful man accused of sexual misconduct. But there is one set of allegations that seemed to confound America more than the rest: those against former president George H.W. Bush.

Five women have accused Bush of groping them. Their accounts are largely similar. They say the former president tells a dirty joke with the punchline "David Cop-a-feel" and touches their butts. "Squeezed ... hard" is how one woman put it. "Patted" is the word Bush's office used in an apology last week.

“At age 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures," the statement said. "To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke — and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner. Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate. To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologizes most sincerely."

While many decried Bush's behavior, others didn't, saying it pales in comparison to the nightmarish allegations against Weinstein. Comments online ranged from "give him a break" to "good for you H.W."

I just heard on the news that George H.W. Bush the 95 yo one is being accused of groping a woman in a photo shoot. At 95 good for you H.W.

— Call me PP (@2_B_A_PPC) October 29, 2017

Readers called the allegations "stupid," and suggested that news organizations were "maligning the reputation of a decent man in the last years of his life." Some suggested his vascular Parkinson condition was to blame. Late Show host Stephen Colbert may have summed up the situation best when he joked in his monologue last week, “Oh, come on, not him. He’s the Bush we like!”

There are two larger societal trends reflected in such reactions that are present entirely separate of Bush, sociologists say. One is disagreement over what constitutes sexual assault. The other reflects a deeply rooted myth that "good guys" don't cross the line when it comes to treatment of women.

Labeling sexual assault

The Department of Justice defines sexual assault as "any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient," including a wide spectrum of behaviors from "grabbing or fondling" to "forced sexual intercourse." It's broad definitions such as this that some people take issue with.

It was really neat and clean to have this idea that sexual assault was what happened when a stranger attacked you, forced you down, and made you have sex against your will," said C.J. Pascoe, a University of Oregon sociology professor. "By widening the scope of what we consider to be assault ... and by placing assault on a continuum with other problematic behaviors, such as sexual harassment and unwanted touching, it becomes clear that many more men might be implicated in these sorts of behaviors.

Former first lady Laura Bush defended her father-in-law Wednesday on CNN.

That was very, very innocent that he's been accused of," she said. "He would never hurt anybody.

Labeling 'good guys'

Another reason for disbelief is that it can be difficult to distinguish a person from their persona. While Weinstein had a reputation for aggression even before these allegations came to light, Bush is seen "as this gentle, kind, measured, sort of grandfatherly figure," Pascoe said.

People don't want to believe bad things about people who exhibit such wholesome qualities — whether a coach, a minister or a "family man."

Because these guys inhabit an identity that we think of as a 'good guy' ... it makes it really hard for us, and for them, to reconcile behaviors of sexual assault with that identity," said Pascoe, who in 2015 co-authored the paper "Good Guys Don’t Rape.

Many people have an idea of a sexual offender as a man who is dominant and aggressive, Pascoe said. When the behavior comes from someone who doesn't fit that profile — for instance, a young boy or an old man — excuses come out in the form of cliches: "boys will be boys" or "that old flirt." But there is no typical profile of a sex offender, the non-profit Futures Without Violence wrote in 2013.

One of our psychological defenses against feeling vulnerable ourselves is to create this idea that it must take some kind of monster to commit sexual assault or any of these other types of sexual offenses," said Sherry Hamby, a University of the South psychology professor and founding editor of the American Psychological Association journal Psychology of Violence. "I think that's one of the reasons why it can be particularly hard when somebody who has been revered and respected gets accused of these types of crimes. We just want to believe that can't possibly be true.

Changing perceptions

Feminists, political commentators and everyday Americans have spent a lot of time in the last few weeks trying to predict what will happen now that Weinstein has opened the floodgates. Each new #MeToo revelation insists the country not look away. Each implores us to believe not only the individual, but also the mounting evidence that shows the impunity of powerful men has heavy costs. Sociologists and psychologists say people must recognize sexual assault can happen to anyone — and be perpetrated by anyone.

We want to think of it as this rare and extreme form of deviance," Hamby said. "And that's just not an accurate perception of offending at all.

#N/A!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41766987

George Bush Senior's second apology after sex assault claims

26 October 2017

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Image caption Former US President George Bush Snr has said he was trying to put people "at ease"

Former US President George Bush Senior has issued a second apology to "anyone he has offended" after a second allegation of sexual assault emerged.

Actress Jordana Grolnick told US website Deadspin Mr Bush groped her in 2016 after announcing his favourite magician was "David Cop-a-Feel".

Another actress, Heather Lind, had already come forward to say the former president had "touched me from behind".

Mr Bush's spokesman said it was supposed to put people "at ease".

"At age 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures," the spokesman said in a statement supplied to media outlets.

'MeToo' and the scale of sexual abuse

How the Harvey Weinstein scandal unfolded

"To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke - and on occasion, he has patted women's rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner.

Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate. To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologises most sincerely.

Like Ms Lind, Ms Grolnick shared a photo of the moment the alleged assault took place on social media platform Instagram.

The picture, taken during the interval of a play Ms Grolnick was performing in, appears to show Mr Bush's hand on her bottom.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Heather Lind was the first actress to come forward with allegations

She told Deadspin: "He reached his right hand around to my behind, and as we smiled for the photo he asked the group, 'Do you want to know who my favourite magician is?'

As I felt his hand dig into my flesh, he said, 'David Cop-a-Feel!'

Ms Lind made a similar allegation against Mr Bush, who served one term as president starting in 1989, saying he had "touched me from behind from his wheelchair" and told a "dirty joke" while posing for a photo in an Instagram post which has since been deleted.

The incident allegedly took place during an event in 2014 for the television show Turn: Washington's Spies, in which Ms Lind is one of the main cast members.

Ms Lind finished her post with the hashtag #metoo, which has seen widespread use by victims of sexual assault to share their experiences in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein Hollywood scandal.

In his initial apology, Mr Bush's spokesman said the wheelchair-bound former president "most sincerely apologises if his attempt at humour offended Ms Lind".

Mr Bush, the father of George W Bush, who served two terms in the office between 2001 and 2009, suffers from a form of Parkinson's disease.

Catholic

2021 justice 30 yrs later, nun murdered who witnessed priest and nun sex

notes of interest

Especially inspiring is the activist hero Jomon Puthenpurackal who took up the case and stuck with it for decades when Church tried to cover up corruption, and the key witness thief with integrity who refused the exhorbitant bribes and stuck to the truth of his testimony. What's even more horrific than the chief perptetrators (priest, nun, murderer), is the kind of support it took from the whole Church organization to bribe the police, lie to the world, destroy evidence, etc. Many people in the church or police were witnesses and willing accessories to the crime. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/23/asia/sister-abhaya-murder-intl-dst-hnk/index.html

She was murdered for catching an Indian priest and nun in a sex act. Three decades later, justice is served

By Rhea Mogul, CNN Updated 4:20 AM ET, Sun January 24, 2021 (CNN)The dead nun's slippers were scattered on the convent kitchen floor -- one near the entrance, the other by the fridge. Her white veil was found snagged on the door. An open bottle of water was leaking onto the tiles. In the corner of the room was an ax. Officers discovered the crime scene, described in court documents seen by CNN, at St. Pius X Convent Hostel in southern India on March 27, 1992. Later that day, they found Sister Abhaya's body in a nearby well at the Indian convent, in the city of Kottayam, Kerala. A post-mortem examination revealed she had nail marks on both sides of her neck and two lacerated wounds on her head. Her body had multiple abrasions and she had sustained a fracture to her skull. Despite her wounds and the kitchen crime scene, no one was brought to court over Sister Abhaya's murder for 27 years. Instead, what followed was years of dead-end investigations, plagued with allegations of corruption. Finally, last December, guilty verdicts were handed down to a priest and nun who had gone to extraordinary lengths to protect their illicit relationship. The court found Sister Abhaya had walked in on them while they were engaging a sex act in the kitchen, and killed her to conceal their sins. They were sentenced to life in prison. After nearly three decades of fighting for justice, her family have one overriding question. "Why did it take so long?" asks Sister Abhaya's brother, Biju Thomas. Failed investigations When she died, Sister Abhaya was a student at a local college run by the Knanaya Catholic Church in Kottayam, then home to about 1.8 million people. Among India's Hindu-majority population, 2.3% follow Christianity -- a figure that hasn't changed in more than two decades. But Kerala has a sizable Christian community, around 18% of its people. According to India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which prosecuted the case, Sister Abhaya woke up at about 4:15am on the day of her murder to study for an exam. She went to the ground floor kitchen to fetch some water and it was there prosecutors said she found Father Thomas Kottoor and Sister Sephy performing a sex act. Father Kottoor taught psychology at the school and Sister Sephy was in charge of the convent hostel where the act took place. Prosecutors said the pair "maintained an illicit relationship". Father Thomas Kottoor was arrested in 2008, 16 years after Sister Abhaya's body was found in a well. Father Thomas Kottoor was arrested in 2008, 16 years after Sister Abhaya's body was found in a well. The night before the murder, prosecutors said the priest snuck onto the convent grounds and stayed in Sister Sephy's room, which was on the ground floor of the hostel, near the kitchen. When they realized the young nun had seen them in a compromising position, the pair hit her on the back of the head with a small ax kept in the kitchen, then threw her body into a well on the hostel grounds. The details of what happened that night didn't come to light until years later, after immense pressure from activists and the young nun's family. Her father, in particular, refused to give up. The first investigation into Sister Abhaya's death was opened by the Kottayam West Police Crime Branch on the day her body was found. A year later, it concluded the cause of her death was suicide. But Sister Abhaya's father, Matthew Thomas, refused to accept their version of events and urged the CBI, the nation's premier investigation agency, to take over the case. They picked it up in 1993, but for 12 years did not charge anyone for her death. Instead, between 1993 and 2005, the CBI filed four reports, including three closure petitions, urging the Chief Judicial Magistrate to drop the case. In their first report, they agreed with Kottayam police that the cause of death was "suicide by drowning." However, it was not accepted by the Chief Judicial Magistrate, and the case was reopened. Their second report, published in 1996, was inconclusive -- they could not determine if it was suicide or homicide. Investigators once again urged the case to be closed. This was once again rejected. Their third report, published in 1999, stated it was a homicide but didn't nominate any suspects. This was rejected as "unsatisfactory" by the Chief Judicial Magistrate. Yet another report was filed in 2005, reiterating the case was "untraced," as they could not identify any suspects. And once again, it was rejected by the Chief Judicial Magistrate. After this, the investigation was transferred from the CBI New Delhi branch to the CBI in the southern city of Cochin in Kerala. Finally, in 2009, the CBI formally charged Father Kottoor and Sister Sephy with murder, as well as another priest, Father Jose Poothrikkayil, who police said was involved in the killing. All three denied the charge, as well as allegations of conducting an improper relationship. They filed a dismissal request to get the case dropped, and it took another nine years before a judge ordered Father Kottoor and Sister Sephy to face trial. Charges against Father Poothrikkayil were dropped due to lack of evidence. The trial On August 5, 2019, the trial finally began. Prosecutors argued that Father Kottoor and Sister Sephy went to remarkable lengths to cover up their relationship and crime. According to the CBI, Sister Sephy underwent hymenoplasty, a cosmetic fix to restore or reconstruct her hymen, the day before her arrest in 2008, to make it appear that she was still a virgin. In court, prosecutors accused police officers from the Kottayam West Crime Branch of tampering with evidence and destroying documents crucial to the investigation. "It is reasonable to suppose that Father Kottoor had at his control the immense resources of the diocese in terms of money and material, and could command the obedience of priests, nuns, and laymen," the prosecution said. Sister Sephy walks into court after her arrest on murder charges in 2008. Sister Sephy walks into court after her arrest on murder charges in 2008. Prosecutors alleged lead investigators, including the Superintendent and the Deputy Superintendent of the police, were instrumental in the cover up. The judge agreed with the prosecution's assertions that early police investigators fabricated and destroyed evidence, including the plastic bottle, Sister Abhaya's slippers, and her white veil. He ordered the state's police head to ensure that "such misdeeds on the part of the police" do not occur in future. Only one charge was made against an investigating officer, but that was dropped in 2008 after he died. At least one other lead investigator from the Kottayam West Police Crime Branch, who was accused of fabricating and destroying evidence, also died before the case concluded. Father Kottoor maintains his innocence. "I have done no wrong. God is with me," he told local reporters as he arrived in court on December 23 for the sentencing hearing. His lawyer said the case relied entirely on circumstantial evidence. "There is no conclusive evidence," said Father Kottoor's lawyer, B. Sivdas. "And there was a delay in the investigation, a delay in finding the accused, there were so many loopholes. The court convicted them because the case became a sensation." Suicide or murder? Sister Abhaya -- born Beena Thomas -- was a "polite and quiet child," according to her brother, Biju Thomas. They grew up in Kottayam, and were "devout Catholics and followers of Jesus Christ." "I remember when she was about five or six, she began taking a huge interest in God and the Bible," said Thomas, now 51 and living in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. "She would read the Bible religiously, and take comfort in its teachings. Everyone loved her. She was always laughing." Sister Abhaya was 19 when she was "called to a religious life," according to Thomas. The family had relatives in Germany and Italy who were also nuns. Thomas said that his sister admired the respect they received, and the work that they did. "She wanted to be respected also, and devote her life to Jesus," he said. Thomas was 24 when he was told that his sister had died by suicide. "I was so confused because she was happy, and she was following her dream. Why would she have killed herself?" he said. Thomas traveled back to Kottayam town, from the state of Gujarat where he was studying, to be with his family and take care of his sister's funeral arrangements. Several days later, he visited her body in the morgue and read the postmortem report that revealed his sister had head injuries and nail marks to her neck. "These to me showed that something had happened to her before she was thrown in the well," he said. Sister Sephy filed an eight-page written statement stating that Sister Abhaya suffered from "psychological depression." She claimed that Sister Abhaya came from an "economically weak family and was not good enough in her studies." Some other nuns were "staunch upholders" of the suicide theory, according to the final judgment. They "endeavored to give all support to the accused," the judgment said. "It was very hurtful to hear those things said about my sister," said Thomas. "She didn't kill herself. She was silenced." Sister Abhaya's father -- a low-wage farmer -- fought tooth and nail for his daughter, Thomas said. "We were poor people, we didn't have much money," said Thomas. "But my father would travel for hours a day by bus to probe the police to reopen the case and give us the truth." "He suffered a lot," said Thomas. "He always said 'someone killed my Beena. I am sure of it'."

activist hero Jomon Puthenpurackal

Activist pushed for answers Days after news broke of Sister Abhaya's death, the suspicious nature of the case piqued the interest of a young activist, Jomon Puthenpurackal. "When I heard details about (Sister Abhaya's) case -- the overturned fruit basket, the ax in the kitchen, her slippers in different positions -- I knew immediately that something bad had happened to her," said Puthenpurackal, who said he was inspired by Kottayam-based freedom fighter, K E Mammen, to "do good in the world." "I knew she hadn't committed suicide, like the police and the Church said," he said. Puthenpurackal soon formed an Action Council to get justice for the murdered nun. He took a signed petition, along with Sister Abhaya's father, to the CBI, detailing all the allegations of corruption and listing key witnesses. Every time the CBI filed a petition to close the case, Puthenpurackal kept the pressure on, using the Indian media to keep the case in the public eye, and urging investigators to dig deeper. There was one witness, in particular, who had testimony Puthenpurackal felt was key to convicting the case. Adacka Raju was a "thief by profession," according to court documents. He had trespassed onto the hostel campus on the night of the murder to steal copper plates from the terrace, which he planned to sell, according to court documents. Sister Abhaya's murdered body was found on March 27, 1992, in the city of Kottayam, Kerala. Sister Abhaya's murdered body was found on March 27, 1992, in the city of Kottayam, Kerala. Raju had stolen copper plates from the hostel twice before. But on his third attempt -- the night of the murder -- he told the court that he saw two men approaching the staircase. He identified one of them as Father Kottoor. During the trial, defense lawyers vehemently argued against Raju's version of events and sought to discredit him, by branding him untrustworthy and a "man of no integrity." They also alleged that he was a witness planted by the prosecution.

(thief Raju with integrity)

The prosecution, however, said Raju was taken into custody by the Crime Branch and kept in the station for 58 days. He was subjected to "inhumane torture" by officers there, who tried to extract a confession to pin the murder on him. "He stood his ground and did not budge even an inch," according to the prosecution. "He was offered a substantial monetary reward and a job for his wife and the meeting of the educational expenses of his children and a house to live in, but he did not succumb to these blandishments." The police even arrested an acquaintance of Raju's, and tortured him for two days, according to court documents seen by CNN. The judge stated that the acquaintance's brother was also arrested and tortured for six days. He was repeatedly told to testify that Raju had committed Sister Abhaya's murder. "Raju faced many difficulties in coming forward," said Puthenpurackal. "(The defense) completely dehumanized him. But he was one of the only witnesses who stood his ground, despite the mounting pressure." "I dedicated my life to this case and I wanted to see it through the end," said Puthenpurackal, who continued to pursue the case even when it endangered his safety. Father Kottoor threatened Puthenpurackal at a protest for Sister Abhaya. According to court documents, Father Kottoor warned Puthenpurackal that he would be "handled in the proper manner," also pointing out that "no one working against the church had ever been spared." Long wait for justice Because religious authorities in India are held in such high regard, victims often find it difficult to come forward if their perpetrators are involved with the church, according to the former president of the All India Catholic Union, John Dayal. However, in recent years a number of victims in Kerala have come forward to seek justice. In April 2019, Catholic Bishop Franco Mulakkal was charged with raping a nun multiple times between 2014 and 2016. A group of nuns who spoke against his alleged abuse claimed the church attempted to transfer them to other parts of the country, in a bid to silence them. Mulakkal, who is now based in the northern state of Punjab, has denied all allegations. Former Catholic priest, Robin Vadakkumchery was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2019 for raping a 16-year-old girl in Kerala. The incident came to light only after the victim gave birth in February 2017. The victim and her parents attempted to redirect focus away from the priest. Her father went as far as telling the court that he was the one who raped his daughter. Sister Abhaya's parents died in 2015, before their daughters' attackers were brought to justice. "I just wish my parents could have been here to see it happen," said Thomas, Sister Abhaya's brother. "That's all they ever wanted." Thomas said he "can rest in peace" and move on with his life, now that the case is finally over. However, he said he still struggles to reconcile his sister's love for the church with the horror of what happened that night -- and the fact that those who purported to share her faith were the ones who "took her away."

Cardinal McCarrick

case study: follow the money, Former Cardinal McCarrick the pedophile

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/07/31/as-rumors-of-sexual-misdeeds-swirled-cardinal-mccarrick-became-a-powerful-networker-and-fundraiser/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c1c24ad36888

The whole article is well worth reading.

Basically, the short synopsis is, Former Cardinal McCarrick was able to to get away with being a pedophile for decades because he was charismatic, a huge fundraiser, so the Pope and vatican were reluctant to prevent (by demoting or defrocking) him from making money for them by investigating accusations against him. The church knew, and tried to get him to stop, but because he was such a big money maker they didn't do the right thing as long as the accusations hadn't been proven and well known publicly.

excerpt:

McCarrick’s popularity and his enormous stature as an emissary for the church and as a prolific fundraiser for Catholic causes may have helped protect him over the years as other, whispered words were added to his reputation: harasser, groper, violator of his vows of celibacy.

Although allegations that McCarrick abused adolescents surfaced only last month, when the Vatican suspended the 88-year-old, there had for decades been rumors in church and journalistic circles about his behavior with seminarians. These ranged from talk of an unwanted hand on a knee to chatter on conservative Catholic blogs citing anonymous descriptions of sex parties.

...

There is also a long-standing deference within the Catholic Church to upholding institutional hierarchy and protocol, even in an extreme case like this. Priests, cardinals and bishops have said they told the Vatican years ago about McCarrick — either about the rumors or about the two legal settlements New Jersey dioceses reached with him in the early 2000s — and there’s no evidence anything was ever done. Victims never heard from Rome, and McCarrick was functioning as a priest until a few weeks ago, speaking to Catholic audiences and performing weddings and baptisms.

Vatican Defrocks Former Cardinal McCarrick Over Sex Abuse

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (FRANCES D'EMILIO and NICOLE WINFIELD)

February 16, 2019, 1:09 AM PST Updated on February 16, 2019, 9:13 AM PST

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Vatican City (AP) -- Pope Francis has defrocked former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick after Vatican officials found him guilty of soliciting for sex while hearing confession and of sexual crimes against minors and adults, the Holy See said Saturday.

McCarrick, 88, is the highest-ranking Catholic churchman to be laicized, as the process is called. It means he can no longer celebrate Mass or other sacraments, wear clerical vestments or be addressed by any religious title. He is the first churchman who reached the rank of cardinal to be defrocked in the church's sex abuse scandals.

The punishment for the once-powerful prelate, who had served as the archbishop of Washington, spent years in New Jersey dioceses and had been an influential fundraiser for the church, was announced five days before Francis leads an extraordinary gathering of bishops from around the world to help the church grapple with the crisis of sex abuse by clergy and the systematic cover-ups by church hierarchy. The decades-long scandals have shaken the faith of many Catholics and threaten Francis' papacy.

The scandal swirling around McCarrick was particularly damning to the church's reputation because it apparently was an open secret in some church circles that he slept with adult seminarians. Francis removed McCarrick as a cardinal in July after a U.S. church investigation determined that an allegation he fondled a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible.

The Vatican's press office said the Holy See's doctrinal watchdog office, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, found McCarrick on Jan. 11 guilty of "solicitation in the sacrament of confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power." The commandment forbids adultery.

The officials "imposed on him the penalty of dismissal from the clerical state." It considered his appeal on Wednesday and upheld its ruling, telling McCarrick Friday of that decision, the Vatican said.

McCarrick, when he was ordained a priest in his native New York City in 1958, took a vow of celibacy in accordance with church rules on priests.

The pope "has recognized the definitive nature of this decision made in accordance with (church) law, rendering it as 'res iudicata,'" the Vatican said, using the Latin phrase for admitting no further recourse.

One victim, James Grein, the son of a family friend of McCarrick's, had testified to church officials that, among other abuses, McCarrick had repeatedly groped him during confession. He said the abuse, which went on for decades, began when he was

"Today I am happy that the pope believed me," Grein said in a statement issued through his lawyer.

Grein also expressed hope that McCarrick "will no longer be able to use the power of Jesus' church to manipulate families and sexually abuse children."

Adding that it's "time for us to cleanse the church," Grein said pressure needs to be put on state attorney generals and senators to change the statute of limitations for abuse cases.

"Hundreds of priests, bishops and cardinals are hiding behind man-made law," he said.

McCarrick's civil lawyer, Barry Coburn, told The Associated Press that for the time being his client had no comment on the defrocking. Coburn also declined to say if McCarrick was still residing at the Kansas friary where he had moved to when Francis ordered him to live in penance and prayer while the investigation continued.

The archdiocese of Washington, D.C., where McCarrick was posted at the pinnacle of his clerical career, from 2001-2006, said in a statement it hoped that the Vatican decision "serves to help the healing process for survivors of abuse, as well as those who have experienced disappointment or disillusionment because of what former Archbishop McCarrick has done."

Complaints were also made about McCarrick's conduct in the New Jersey dioceses of Newark and Metuchen, where he previously served.

Francis' move marks a remarkable downfall for the globe-trotting powerbroker and influential church fundraiser who mingled with presidents and popes but preferred to be called "Uncle Ted" by the young men he courted.

The Vatican summit, which starts Thursday and runs through Feb. 24, will draw church leaders from around the world to talk about preventing sex abuse. It was called in part to respond to the McCarrick scandal as well as to the explosion of the abuse crisis in Chile and its escalation in the United States last year.

Despite the apparent common knowledge in church circles of his sexual behavior, McCarrick rose to the heights of church power. He even acted as the spokesman for U.S. bishops when they enacted a "zero tolerance" policy against sexually abusive priests in 2002.

That apparent hypocrisy, coupled with allegations in the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing decades of abuse and cover-up in six dioceses, outraged many among the rank-and-file faithful who had trusted church leaders to reform how they handled sex abuse after 2002.

The allegation regarding the altar boy was the first known against McCarrick to involve a minor — a far more serious offense than sleeping with adult seminarians.

Francis himself became implicated in the decade-long McCarrick cover-up after a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S. accused the pope of rehabilitating the cardinal from sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI despite being told of his penchant for young men.

Francis hasn't responded to those claims. But he has ordered a limited Vatican investigation. The Vatican has acknowledged the outcome may produce evidence that mistakes were made, but said Francis would "follow the path of truth, wherever it may lead."

An advocate for church accountability in the sex abuse crisis demanded Saturday that Francis "tell the truth about what he knew and when he knew it" about McCarrick. Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org says also demanded that the pope use immediately laicize other abusive bishops.

In a statement, she said of the 101 accused bishops her group has tracked, McCarrick is only the seventh to be laicized. She said the other 94 either still hold the title of bishop or did so until they died.

Vatican watchers have compared the McCarrick cover-up scandal to that of the Rev. Marcial Maciel, perhaps the 20th-century Catholic Church's most notorious pedophile. Maciel's sex crimes against children were ignored for decades by a Vatican bureaucracy impressed by his ability to bring in donations and vocations. Among Maciel's staunchest admirers was Pope John Paul II, who later became a saint.

Like Maciel, McCarrick was a powerful, popular prelate who funneled millions in donations to the Vatican. He apparently got a calculated pass for what many in the church hierarchy would have either discounted as ideological-fueled rumor or brushed off as a mere "moral lapse" in sleeping with adult men.

#N/A!

Acts of Faith

As rumors of sexual misdeeds swirled, Cardinal McCarrick became a powerful fundraiser for the Vatican

Theodore McCarrick listens to Craig Martin, a child victim of sexual abuse by a priest, as he delivers remarks to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on June 13, 2002, in Dallas. (L.M. Otero/Getty Images)

By Michelle Boorstein July 31, 2018

When Theodore McCarrick arrived in D.C. in 2001 to be the region’s Catholic archbishop, it was clear right away that he was something very rare: a celebrity priest.

The vivacious cleric reportedly had spent time with famous Americans such as Bing Crosby and the Hearst family. He was a prolific fundraiser for big-name Catholic groups from right to left, and valued for his connection to Pope John Paul II, who dispatched McCarrick to hot spots worldwide as his diplomat. President George W. Bush, also new in town that January, marked his first private dinner in D.C. by going to the home of the new archbishop.

McCarrick’s gilded résumé stood in striking contrast to his public demeanor, that of a self-effacing do-gooder who, in a city full of egos and polish, wore rumpled clothes and exhibited a voracious drive to help others.

[Cardinal McCarrick, facing sexual abuse reports, resigns from the College of Cardinals]

“I wish I were a holier man, more prayerful, more trusting in God, wiser and courageous,” he said at his first D.C. news conference. “But here I am with all my faults and all my needs, and we will work together.”

McCarrick’s “faults and needs” are being considered in a new light after he became the first cardinal in U.S. history to resign from the post.

The resignation, accepted by Pope Francis, followed explosive allegations that the cleric sexually abused adolescents and sexually harassed seminarians and young priests under his authority.

The accusations have shocked and devastated McCarrick’s many fans, leaving some to conclude that their hero apparently lived a double life. But to others who worked closely with him over the decades, the cardinal was always a more complex figure than his saintly public reputation conveyed. He was a man of enormous personal ambition, a skillful politician and, at times, shrewdly calculating, according to interviews with Catholic officials and others who knew and worked with him.

[Bishop leaves Twitter, calling the platform an ‘occasion for sin’]

McCarrick stated his innocence after the first allegation that he abused a 16-year-old decades ago, which led to his suspension from ministry. He has since been in seclusion and has not responded to requests for comment. McCarrick’s civil attorney, Barry Coburn, has declined to comment. McCarrick’s canonical attorney, Michael Ritty, declined to comment after the initial allegation and has not responded to repeated additional requests for comment. The Vatican has opened a case on McCarrick that could result in a church trial. Possible outcomes include defrocking and exoneration.

In 1988, McCarrick co-founded the Papal Foundation, a nonprofit organization that raises millions for the Vatican. He sometimes rushed to the side of the country’s wealthiest Catholics in their times of personal crisis, following up to raise money later, according to two people who witnessed such interactions.

“The Papal Foundation was a huge point of leverage for him in terms of going to Rome,” said Steve Schneck, the longtime head of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at Catholic University. Schneck worked often with McCarrick. “There is not a Catholic organization in the United States he hasn’t raised money for.”

[Southern Baptist Convention takes steps toward reform on sexual abuse]

Schneck admired McCarrick, but others used less favorable terms to describe him.

“He was a climber,” said someone who worked closely with McCarrick in the past. Like several others in this report, the person spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to violate the church’s protocol that only official spokespeople discuss McCarrick.

Settlements and rumors of abuse

On March 29, 2011, Cardinal McCarrick answers questions during a Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing titled “Protecting the Civil Rights of American Muslims.” (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

The day he was suspended, two New Jersey dioceses made public that they had fielded three complaints from budding priests against McCarrick and had settled two of the cases. Last week, Albany priest Desmond Rossi became the first cleric to go on record as saying McCarrick’s casual touches during seminary in the 1980s made him uncomfortable. Rossi told the Jesuit magazine America that he thinks McCarrick’s conduct at the time fueled inappropriate behavior among seminarians, which he said forced him to transfer to another seminary outside of McCarrick’s jurisdiction.

Some who had heard the rumors and allegations surrounding McCarrick said they did not speak out because he was so greatly admired for his role in the church. But there are other possible reasons McCarrick’s alleged actions are coming to light only now.

[In a break with tradition, Orthodox Jewish women are leading synagogues]

Some at the time dismissed as unreliable the attacks on McCarrick, who was often seen as left-leaning, because they came largely from conservative bloggers. That same impulse appears to now be leading some conservatives eager to find fault with the Pope Francis era to highlight the McCarrick case. Conservative blogs have been filled in recent days with rumors that Francis’s U.S. allies — cardinals including Joe Tobin of Newark and Blase Cupich in Chicago — are close to McCarrick, an effort to tarnish Francis by association. One inaccurately said McCarrick and Tobin worked together.

Requests from The Washington Post for comment from Rome haven’t been returned for weeks.

A friend to celebrities

McCarrick’s career stood out from the start.

Many ambitious Catholic clerics spend time in seminary and graduate school in Rome, making connections around the Vatican.

Yet McCarrick spent much of his early career in the New York City area, where he had grown up. He graduated from Fordham University, attended seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., and was ordained a priest in New York City, cementing connections that helped speed his rise later on.

His first assignment was as dean of students and fundraising at Catholic University in D.C., the bishops’ own university.

He was then named president of a Catholic university in Puerto Rico at age 35 and then secretary, in the mid-1970s, to the cardinal of New York City.

From there, McCarrick began an unbroken stream of promotions, garnering some of the nation’s highest civic and religious honors. He was taken as a young priest under the wing of two powerful New York City cleric-bosses — Cardinal Francis Spellman, and Cardinal Terence James Cooke, whom McCarrick served through the 1970s.

“He had what we call the ‘godfathers,’ of the church,” said the person who worked for years with McCarrick.

[Pennsylvania Supreme Court approves release of 900-page grand jury report about clergy sexual abuse]

Around that time, McCarrick was becoming a jet-setting fundraiser, said James, 60, who lives in Loudoun County, Va., and earlier this month accused McCarrick of sexually abusing him from age 11 or so until he was in his early 30s in an interview with The New York Times. He lived in New Jersey when the abuse began, he says.

James, who spoke to The Post on the condition that his last name not be used, filed a police report on July 17 with the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, a copy of which The Post has seen.

James’s extended family was close to McCarrick, who had baptized him as a baby, he said. Through his later teens and 20s, James told that he attended many fundraising dinners with McCarrick, as well as meetings with potential donors in various places, including Northern California, Chicago and Boston. In 1974, when James was a teenager, he said McCarrick took several trips to California to console the Catholic millionaire publishing family of Patty Hearst, who was kidnapped by leftist radicals. James’s family had moved by then to the West Coast. James’s sister told The Post that she recalled the visits, as well. Requests for comment to Hearst and one of her siblings were not answered.

Later, McCarrick made use of the relationship to raise money from the family, James said.

James also said McCarrick visited and solicited donations from Bing Crosby, who, like the Hearsts, was Catholic. McCarrick delivered the homily at Crosby’s New York funeral Mass, but a spokesman for the Crosby family said that while “Bing hardly ever turned down a request from a priest,” he could not easily locate records of such donations.

[Bing Crosby dies at 73]

James said he then fell into a damaging pattern with McCarrick for the next two decades, and spent time with the priest — including in sexual encounters. Often McCarrick was traveling for pastoral and fundraising trips, and he would bring James along, the man said.

“Sometimes he’d just speak at the table, he’d give a homily, the after-dinner homily,” James said. “We’d be in a private dining area, and everybody would just open their purses and … write checks. All they’d say is, ‘Who do I make the checks out to?’ ”

McCarrick had a core pitch: “We have so much, they have so little. We need to speak the word of God so they have something,” James recalled.

In the 1980s, McCarrick was among those who established the Papal Foundation, meant to support the Vatican during an Italian banking crisis. Wealthy donors pledge a minimum of $1 million; the group has an endowment of $215 million, according to its site.

The person who worked with McCarrick in the past said McCarrick worked hard to woo Pope John Paul II, leaving his diocese to see the pope whenever possible. McCarrick traveled to Cuba and Mexico during John Paul’s visits to those countries.

“Wherever the pope was, he was. He tried to be noticed,” the person said. He said McCarrick became somewhat close to John Paul’s secretary, the Polish Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, which helped him get closer to the pope.

When the pope came to the United States in 1995, he flew directly to Newark.

Pope John Paul II, left, speaks, with McCarrick standing nearby, in 2003 in Vatican City. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

McCarrick “was just a genius at schmoozing,” said the Rev. Boniface Ramsey, a New York City priest who worked at a New Jersey seminary when McCarrick was bishop there. “I think it was all to suck up to John Paul II.”

Yet McCarrick’s decades of pavement-pounding for money were part of the reason he was considered so holy.

He was raising many millions for needy causes, from persecuted religious minorities in the Middle East to aid for immigrants to low-cost housing. He helped groups from the political right to left, from the Knights of Columbus to Catholic Relief Services. Although he also raised money for conservative causes, he was often viewed as left-leaning, primarily because he focused on causes such as alleviating poverty and supporting immigration rather than efforts against abortion and in support of Catholic views on sexuality.

He was also unusually public in the early 2000s in speaking out for survivors of clerical sex abuse; he was involved in the church’s efforts to write policies aimed at preventing abuse and was an early advocate for zero-tolerance for priests who abuse.

[Online church for gamers: Va. pastor draws thousands to worship on Twitch]

McCarrick’s ambition and fundraising prowess were not considered self-enriching. Some who worked with him over the years said that when it came to himself, the cardinal was thrifty and lived very simply. He wore an old raincoat, and his staff one year gave him a Macy’s gift card so he would get some new clothes.

“He had no entourage, wasn’t pompous, unlike traditional powers in the church and public life,” said a person active in church organizations who collaborated on causes with McCarrick. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said he was concerned about being identified as speaking favorably about McCarrick, given the allegations that have surfaced.

In 2001, McCarrick was awarded the position of D.C. archbishop — a relatively small city but because of its prominence as the U.S. capital, a post viewed as the ticket to an automatic “red hat,” or cardinal spot. Indeed, he became a cardinal that year.

About this time in the early 2000s, Pope John Paul II’s health was starting to fade, and the culture wars within the Catholic Church — intensified by the liberalizing Second Vatican Council of the 1960s — revved up even more as it became clear that there would soon be a new pope.

It was also around this time that rumors about McCarrick and his treatment of seminarians seem to have spread further. Many of them were on a few conservative blogs, and contained anonymous, secondhand allegations that McCarrick had pressured young men studying to be priests to sleep in his bed. Some abuse watchdog sites published reports, as well.

But some Catholics who had heard the unsubstantiated rumors dismissed them as the product of church politics seeking to vilify those deemed too liberal. That remained the case in the following decade.

Someone whose organization honored McCarrick said they looked into the rumors. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they didn’t want their work to be associated with the case.

“It sounded like disgruntled conservative Catholics. I didn’t give credence to the source,” the person said. “It seemed ideologically motivated.”

As the rumors swirled in the early 2000s in certain pockets of the budding Catholic blogosphere, quietly the diocese of Metuchen, N.J., and the archdiocese of Newark were fielding three formal complaints about McCarrick and his treatment of seminarians and a young priest. Two were settled, the dioceses said in a statement last month, the day the Vatican suspended McCarrick, the first time any church office said on the record that there had been a complaint about the senior cleric.

McCarrick retired as archbishop shortly after he turned 75, in 2006. It’s standard for bishops to offer their retirement to the Vatican at that age, but it’s common for them to keep working for years if both sides wish. McCarrick was a hard-working striver whose routine didn’t appear to slow until very recently.

He remained extremely active in the church, traveling on diplomatic missions, fundraising and officiating weddings and baptisms.

The person who worked with McCarrick said they suspect church leaders in Rome had chastised McCarrick in some way, telling him to pull back from public life.

“But he did whatever he damn well wanted,” the person said.

These days there are limits.

Now that he has been suspended from ministry and resigned, the globe-trotting, vivacious McCarrick is not allowed to wear clerical garb in public. He also may not present himself as a priest. His movements must be approved by the Vatican’s representative in Washington. However, in the privacy of his own room, McCarrick may still say Mass for himself.

Correction: An earlier version of this story omitted the first name of Cardinal Terence James Cooke.

This story has been updated to say that The New York Times first interviewed James about his abuse allegations against McCarrick.

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Michelle Boorstein

Michelle Boorstein is a religion reporter, covering the busy marketplace of American faith. Her career has included a decade of globe-trotting with the Associated Press, covering topics including terrorism in the Arizona desert, debates on male circumcision, Ugandan royalty, and how strapped doctors in Afghanistan decide who lives and who dies. Follow

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Tiratna guru - Sangharakshita

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/21/sangharakshita-guru-triratna-buddhist-dark-secrets

Buddhist, teacher, predator: dark secrets of the Triratna guru

The Observer

Buddhism

British-born guru Sangharakshita was mired in allegations of abuse for years. Now it seems the scandal in his wealthy order went far wider than previously acknowledged

Jamie Doward

Sun 21 Jul 2019 08.59 BST

English-born Buddhist The Venerable Sthavira Sangharakshita

Mandatory Credit: Photo by John Twine/ANL/REX/Shutterstock (1683330a)

The Venerable Sthavira Sangharakshita

English-born Buddhist The Venerable Sthavira Sangharakshita

Sangharakshita in 1966. Photograph: John Twine/ANL/REX/Shutterstock

Coddington Court, near the Herefordshire market town of Ledbury, is a late-18th-century red brick mansion surrounded by farmland.

These days it goes by the name of Adhisthana, reflecting its reincarnation as the headquarters of one of the most influential Buddhist orders in the world, the Triratna Community, whose founder, Sangharakshita, lived there until his death last year at the age of 93. With its impressive grounds and gardens, it looks like a serene place for someone to spend their final years. But behind the scenes, the picture is a rather more turbulent one.

Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you

For decades the order has been dogged by claims of sexual misconduct, claims that often strayed into allegations of coercion and abuse but which were thought to involve only a handful of individuals at worst.

But now a bombshell internal report, produced by concerned members and shared with the Observer, has found that more than one in 10 of them claim to have experienced or observed sexual misconduct while in the order. Many of the allegations are against Sangharakshita himself, but others make it clear that he was not the only alleged perpetrator. Indeed, the report seems to indicate that the licentious culture the guru encouraged when he established his first centre in the 1960s, at a time when Timothy Leary was urging people to “turn on, tune in, drop out”, flourished across the order.

Yet, despite the lurid revelations, Sangharakshita’s influence lingers. The Adhisthana website carries many pictures of him, a bespectacled, slight man draped in holy robes. The photographs invite comparisons with Gandhi, but the two gurus come from very different backgrounds.

Born Dennis Lingwood, the son of a French polisher from Tooting, Sangharakshita, meaning “one who is protected by the spiritual community”, deserted from the British army in India during the second world war and wandered the subcontinent, studying with several leading Tibetan lamas.

Adhisthana (formerly Coddington Court) in Herefordshire is the headquarters of the Triratna Community.

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Adhisthana (formerly Coddington Court) in Herefordshire is the headquarters of the Triratna Community.

Two decades on, he returned to London at the invitation of a group of Buddhists in Hampstead, with a mission to set up one of Britain’s first monasteries, before leaving for reasons that are disputed. Some claim that he was caught using rent boys, an allegation that the Triratna community said it had not heard before. At the time of his departure, the Hampstead group issued a statement that said: “Whatever may have been said to the detriment of his character in the course of recent speculation and gossip may now be withdrawn.”

Venturing out on his own, Lingwood developed his own, highly interpretative brand of Buddhism, drawing on elements of Nietzsche and Freud. Critics would accuse him of a pushing a “semi-intellectual potpourri of Buddhism” but he shrugged off the attacks, claiming he was helping the religion find new followers in the west.

Many of his ideas were unorthodox. Lingwood encouraged heterosexual followers to experiment with homosexuality as a means of expanding their minds; he was deeply critical of the nuclear family and of mixed-sex communities in general; he encouraged young men to break away from their families.

“I think the son has to cut free and maybe not have much to do with his parents for a year or two,” he once explained.

His thinking struck a chord.

“There was something anarchic and anti-establishment about it,” one man who has been a member since the late 80s told the Observer. “I’d seen the rows my parents had, how they’d tried to amass money and it hadn’t helped them. I decided that the nuclear family didn’t work for me. I didn’t want the get-married-get-a job narrative. I was looking for something different and what it offered helped me.”

Sangharakshita teaching at the Hampstead Buddhist Temple in 1966.

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Sangharakshita, born Dennis Lingwood, teaching at the Hampstead Buddhist Temple in 1966. Photograph: John Twine/Rex

As a growing number of predominantly young men flocked to Triratna, then called the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), it expanded dramatically. Today it has more than 30 centres in the UK alone and operates in 26 countries.

Thousands mourned Lingwood when his funeral was broadcast at Triratna centres around the world. His obituary in the Times suggested that he had arguably done “more than any other person to popularise Buddhism in the west”.

But fissures within the community he founded are now becoming major fault lines. An internal report by nine disaffected members, who call themselves the Interkula, makes troubling reading about the order’s historical safeguarding policies and the duty of care it had to its followers.

Its incendiary findings have hitherto gone unpublicised: a current member explained that it was not the Triratna way to share internal criticisms with the outside world. But they were drawn to the Observer’s attention by a former member who claims he was manipulated into having sex with Lingwood.

Of 423 respondents to a survey featured in the report, of whom two-thirds are order members and a quarter are “Mitras” – followers who may aspire to become order members – 55, around 13%, said that either they themselves, or someone they knew, had “experienced sexual misconduct by either Sangharakshita or other Triratna order members, in past and recent times”.

The report, which acknowledges that “some good progress” has been made in responding to the allegations, an approach the order describes as a “restorative process”, states: “While many respondents described misconduct between a more experienced male OM [order member] and less experienced male Mitra, as has been described many times in the past, other types of misconduct were also reported, including male order members becoming sexually involved with very vulnerable women … and inappropriate behaviour by a female order member.”

Some of the comments in the report are damning. One order member of more than 15 years said: “I know of several cases and the details are awful. They include alleged intervention on the part of one of the most high-profile OMs to try and encourage a victim not to testify to the police if questioned.”

Another said: “Yes, I know three OMs personally who experienced sexual misconduct by other OMs and have not been invited to participate in the restorative process.”

A third said: “I was sexually abused by older order members.”

A fourth added: “I know of four people who this describes. Only one of these was in the UK. I worry that this type of behaviour was much more widespread than generally believed.”

“I have friends who were sexually assaulted by senior OMs in recent times,” another said. “They reported it to other senior OMs. Nothing happened.”

It was not just men who were targeted.

“I know of a couple of women ‘friends of the movement’ who were pursued by male order members … both very vulnerable women – one ex-prison[er] pursued and one severe mental health problems – entered into sexual relationship with.”

Some of those who completed the survey questioned Triratna’s appetite for investigating the abuse.

“I think there is a large denial factor … I’m up for selling assets and making amends as part of us moving on and acknowledging our ignorance of the abuse,” one said.

If it came to that, and several law firms have floated the idea of bringing claims against Triratna, it would certainly have assets to sell. The latest accounts of its charitable arm, the Triratna Preceptors’ College Trust, reveal that in 2017, the most recent figures available, it alone was sitting on net assets worth more than £3.3m. It bought Adhisthana several years ago for a rumoured £5m.

But this is only part of the picture. The accounts explain that the trust acts as a hub for dozens of charities that operate in the UK and overseas. One member told the Observer that, in Cambridge alone, Triratna had eight or nine properties worth between £700,000 and £2m each. Another member suggested that its entire property empire was worth more than £100m.

It helps that the order is a charity and enjoys tax perks. And the fact that its members are often happy to work in its bookshops or cafes for very little helps keep its cost base low.

Today, much of the trust’s income comes from donations and organising spiritual retreats and meditation courses. Its position at the vanguard of the fashionable mindfulness movement was cemented four years ago when several of its leading members helped a cross-party group of MPs produce their influential Mindful Nation UK report, which extolled the benefits of the new psychological approach in treating mental health problems such as depression.

Mark Dunlop, now 69, was a victim at the Triratna Buddhist community.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mark Dunlop, now 69, was a victim at the Triratna Buddhist community. Photograph: Rosa Furneaux/The Observer

Mark Dunlop left the order in 1985 after many years working for it. A heterosexual man, he felt compelled to have sexual relations with Lingwood over a four-year period. “He didn’t have any charisma,” Dunlop said. “He was a slightly weird guy, in a way that worked in his favour because I thought: ‘I’m not being swayed by his charisma.’

“One theory about narcissists is that they have experienced some kind of trauma in their childhood so they don’t have any confidence in themselves, and they create this whole world as a compensation and manipulate other people to build up their own ego.

“That fits with how Lingwood behaved. He built up this fantasy of himself as a spiritual teacher, someone on a higher plane of understanding, but I always sensed he wasn’t a happy bunny. There was a sense of dissatisfaction lying underneath. I felt sorry for him, in a way. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to help him bring Buddhism to the west.”

It now seems that Lingwood’s behaviour provided a template that was copied by others who exploited the order’s hierarchy. Many who came to it seeking enlightenment aspired to become members. But this made them vulnerable to coercion by those in senior positions.

“There was a general feeling around at the time that you were ‘blocked’ if you had an aversion to gay sex,” one former member recalled in an online forum.

One Triratna retreat, in Norfolk, where Lingwood was resident for much of the 80s, was described by the member as “more reminiscent of a San Francisco gay bath-house than a Buddhist retreat”.

A current member told the Observer that in the early 90s a 17-year-old boy with obvious mental health problems ended up in a sexual relationship with an order member in his 40s when residing at a centre in the south-east.

Five years ago, an order member at another centre in London was caught exposing himself to a young child in a supermarket. After being found to have committed several similar offences, he was suspended indefinitely.

Misconduct has also been reported at centres overseas. One woman who attended an FWBO centre in New Zealand in the 90s said: “There was one ordained member when I was there who seemed to treat the centre as his own personal Tinder app, hooking up with one woman after another, using his position as guru to great advantage.”

Concerns were first raised about the order in a BBC news report in the early 90s, and then again in 1997 when the Guardian revealed sexual misconduct at one of its centres, in Croydon, south London. That exposé prompted the resignation of one member of the order.

In response to the Guardian’s report, one of the order’s senior members, Kulananda, wrote to the paper stressing that the abuse was confined to one centre and one individual. But in a blog posting 20 years later, Kulananda confirmed hehad been in a sexual relationship with Lingwood and that he had come to see that the guru’s behaviour towards others had engendered a “cultish-ness at the heart of things that, I believe, will ultimately be our downfall”.

The FWBO Files website contains a vast and growing repository of allegations from ex-members expressing similar views.

Towards the end of his life, Lingwood appears to have acknowledged the damage he had unleashed, expressing “deep regret for all the occasions on which I have hurt, harmed or upset fellow Buddhists”. But, even today, the order seems unwilling to confront its past head on: Triratna now describes Lingwood’s behaviour as “unskilful”, a key Buddhist term, but one which, to outsiders, seems to underplay the consequences of his predatory actions.

The order’s safeguarding officer, who goes by the spiritual name Munisha, insisted the order had learned lessons from past mistakes and said every Triratna centre in the UK now has a safeguarding officer.

“I’m extremely sorry if misconduct reported to any member of the order was not properly addressed at the time,” she said. “The Interkula’s survey includes accounts of misconduct which we would be keen to address. However, some of these are references to misconduct experienced by unnamed others, and we can only address a case where a named complainant is willing to tell us their story first hand.

“It is the policy of Triratna’s central safeguarding team that anything reported to us of a criminal – or even potentially criminal – nature is reported to the police, without exception.”

She confirmed that one of the order’s most senior members, Suvajra, who some had seen as a potential successor to Sangharakshita, had been “suspended in December 2018 after a rigorous internal disciplinary panel process found on a balance of probabilities that serious ethical misconduct had taken place.” She declined to explain the nature of the alleged misconduct.

Lingwood, of course, escaped such censure in his lifetime, enjoying the tranquillity of his final years cosseted away in the idyillic setting of Coddington Court, feted by his followers. Perhaps, though, in the twilight of his life, he anticipated that a higher judgment awaited him. His translation of a Buddhist text – Verses that Protect the Truth – was read out at his funeral.

One verse must have given him pause for thought: “Lead a righteous life, not one that is corrupt. The righteous live happily, both in this world and the next.”

Sangharakshita interviewed in 2009.

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Sangharakshita interviewed in 2009. Photograph: Vimeo

‘Leaving mother’: the group credo

Key extracts from Leaving Mother and Initiation into Manhood, a document written by a senior member of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order in the 1970s and shared down the years within the order. The document reflects and helped shape the order’s thinking and confirms that much of Lingwood’s more controversial teachings were embraced and promoted by others.

“An initiation into manhood, then, is an experiential situation in which the false man dies in order that the true men may be born. The young man has to realise that he must submit and become totally passive to that which will liberate him from the domination of his mother.”

“Having abandoned the world of mother and all that it implies, the young man can now begin to realise that his assertiveness is natural to him and that it is no longer an act that he has to put on.”

“Many ‘mummy’s boys’ have a fear of passivity in a homosexual relationship even though that is what they may naturally want.”

“I would even go so far as to suggest that taking the passive role in a homosexual relationship could, for some men, constitute an initiation into manhood as (a) the man is surrendering his own pseudo-assertive side and therefore undergoing a sort of symbolic death, and (b) is experiencing his sexuality in a situation that is free from women and all their associations (ie, emotional dependency).”

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Topics

Buddhism

Michael Jackson (popular singer)

10 Undeniable Facts About the Michael Jackson Sexual-Abuse Allegations

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/03/10-undeniable-facts-about-the-michael-jackson-sexual-abuse-allegations

The author, who spent more than a decade covering the scandal for V.F., shares the key revelations and insights that viewers of the new HBO documentary Leaving Neverland need to know.

Maureen Orth

March 1, 2019 3:10 pm

Michael Jackson arrives at Courthouse in 2005.

Michael Jackson arrives with his father Joe Jackson at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse for day 20 of his trial, March 25, 2005.

By Kimberly White/Getty Images.

The anguished voice of Wade Robson’s father will always haunt me. Back in 1993, when the first charges of sexual abuse were leveled at Michael Jackson by a 13-year-old boy named Jordan “Jordie” Chandler, I was assigned to write about the case for Vanity Fair. I naturally wanted to know if Jackson had befriended any other young boys, and it wasn’t long before I heard the names Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck.

Wade’s mother, Joy, wasn’t talking, but his father, Dennis, surprised me by returning my call from his home in Australia. Dennis explained that Joy had taken Wade and his sister to Los Angeles so Wade could be with Jackson, adding that he was afraid that he might lose his son if he said anything against the pop superstar. Dennis’s sorrow was compounded by his own dark secret: he himself had been molested as a child, he told me, and had been unable to bring himself to tell anyone for 30 years.

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Then, a week later, Dennis Robson called me back. He had just gotten through to his wife and now he wanted to change his story and give me a quote praising Jackson. I asked him what had prompted this sudden change of heart. He paused. It was all just a mixup, he said. Dennis, who had been diagnosed as bipolar shortly before his wife left, never got over losing his family, all because his son, then five, had won a local dance contest, and the first prize was a meeting with his idol, Michael Jackson.

Watch Now: Madea Recaps the Madea Movies in 10 Minutes

In 2002, Dennis Robson committed suicide. In the new HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, Wade Robson says he never fully understood what caused his father’s pain; his father died without ever being close to his son again.

The two-part documentary, which premieres on HBO this Sunday, gives Robson and Safechuck, together with their surviving family members, the opportunity to tell their stories of being first befriended and then seduced, emotionally and—they allege—sexually, by Michael Jackson. What struck me most, as someone who spent more than a decade reporting on allegations against Jackson, was how closely Robson’s and Safechuck’s stories mirrored those of Jordie Chandler and Gavin Arvizo, the 13-year-old whose allegations prompted the 2005 trial in which Jackson was acquitted on 10 felony counts, including four counts of child molestation and one of attempted child molestation. Another boy, Jason Francia, whose mother worked as a housekeeper for Jackson, testified under oath that he was molested by Jackson, bringing to five the number of young men who’ve sworn that Jackson showed them pornography, masturbated them, or introduced them to sex when they were between the ages of 7 and 12.

So many details of each case were the same: the targeting of boys from troubled families, the skillful grooming, the gifts, the seduction, the Jacuzzis, the way sex was performed, the fear and threats of what would befall them if they ever told anyone what Jackson had done. Their dismissals followed a similar pattern, too: as puberty approached, Robson and Safechuck say in the documentary, they were abruptly thrown to the curb and replaced with a new, younger kid.

Even their families got similar treatment: the sisters were put off to the side by Michael, the supposed adorer of all children; the parents were whisked around in limos and private jets, taken shopping, and treated to vintage wine from Neverland’s cellar. Jordie Chandler’s mother got trips to Monaco and Las Vegas, along with a diamond bracelet. Jimmy Safechuck’s parents got a whole house; the documentary never mentions the cars they received, or the permanent residence visa that Wade Robson’s mother testified in 2005 to having received by funneling whatever wages she had received through the Michael Jackson Corporation. Joy Robson also acknowledged accepting a car, a $10,000 payment from Jackson, and a $10,000 loan from Jackson’s investigator.

Both Robson and Safechuck previously testified under oath that Jackson never touched them, but there is good reason to believe they are telling the truth now. Ron Zonen, a prosecutor in the 2005 trial who has tried many sex-abuse cases, told me he understood why Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck came out when they did, instead of “when we needed them.” Especially for male victims, he said, “it has to be on their terms. They finally decide to disclose when the pain becomes unbearable and it’s not going to get better until they talk to somebody and tell the truth about it.”

Jackson’s hardcore supporters allege that Robson and Safechuck memorized details from the other boys’ stories in order to get revenge after their own previous attempts to sue Jackson’s estate for damages were thrown out of court (not because the charges had no merit but because the statute of limitations had run out). That seems far-fetched to me. Why would anyone put himself through this? Robson and Safechuck are not being paid by HBO. They had to come to grips not only with what happened to them but also with the complicity of those closest to them. That kind of stress can and does destroy families. Anyone who has spent time hearing victims tell their stories of sexual assault knows that it is extremely painful to recall detail after detail. You never know which one will stick in your mind, causing depression, nightmares, and P.T.S.D. It can be something as simple as a song.

The Jackson family, for its part, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against HBO, trying to prevent the documentary from being aired. Given all the money and vaunted reputations at stake, that may have seemed like the best course of action, lest viewers see and judge for themselves why two men would go to these lengths and suffer the hate being hurled at them. Robson and Safechuck say it is because they are fathers themselves now. The experience of having children summoned these tangled and terrible memories up from the depths of their psyches and spurred the need to come clean, to point their moral compasses north. Now it’s the public’s turn.

To help viewers contextualize the documentary’s presentation of what ultimately amounts to a narrow slice of a sprawling saga, here are 10 undeniable facts about the sexual-abuse allegations against Michael Jackson.

1. There is no dispute that, at age 34, Michael Jackson slept more than 30 nights in a row in the same bed with 13-year-old Jordie Chandler at the boy’s house with Chandler’s mother present. He also slept in the same bed with Jordie Chandler at Chandler’s father’s house. The parents were divorced.

2. So far, five boys Michael Jackson shared beds with have accused him of abuse: Jordie Chandler, Jason Francia, Gavin Arvizo, Wade Robson, and Jimmy Safechuck. Jackson had the same nickname for Chandler and Arvizo: “Rubba.” He called Robson “Little One” and Safechuck “Applehead.”

3. Jackson paid $25 million to settle the Chandlers’ lawsuit, with $18 million going to Jordie, $2.5 million to each of the parents, and the rest to lawyers. Jackson said he paid that sum to avoid something “long and drawn out.” Francia also received $2.4 million from Jackson.

4. Michael Jackson suffered from the skin discoloration disease vitiligo. Jordie Chandler drew a picture of the markings on the underside of Jackson’s penis. His drawings were sealed in an envelope. A few months later, investigators photographed Jackson’s genitalia. The photographs matched Chandler’s drawings.

5. The hallway leading to Jackson’s bedroom was a serious security zone covered by video and wired for sound so that the steps of anyone approaching would make ding-dong sounds.

6. Jackson had an extensive collection of adult erotic material he kept in a suitcase next to his bed, including S&M bondage photos and a study of naked boys. Forensic experts with experience in the Secret Service found the fingerprints of boys alongside Jackson’s on the same pages. Jackson also had bondage sculptures of women with ball gags in their mouths on his desk, in full view of the boys who slept there.

7. According to the Neverland staff interviewed by the Santa Barbara authorities, no one ever saw or knew of a woman spending the night with Michael Jackson, including his two spouses, Debbie Rowe or Lisa Marie Presley. Rowe, the mother of two of Jackson’s children, made it clear to the Santa Barbara authorities that she never had sex with Jackson.

8. The parents of boys Jackson shared beds with were courted assiduously and given myriad expensive gifts. Wade Robson’s mother testified in the 2005 trial that she funneled wages through Jackson’s company and was given a permanent resident visa. Jimmy Safechuck’s parents got a house. Jordie Chandler’s mother got a diamond bracelet.

9. Two of the fathers of those who have accused Jackson, Jordie Chandler and Wade Robson, committed suicide. Both were estranged from their sons at the time.

10. In a 2002 documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, Jackson told Martin Bashir there was nothing wrong with sharing his bed with boys.

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story misidentified the father of one of Jackson’s accusers. Wade Robson’s father, not Jimmy Safechuck’s, committed suicide. We regret the error.

Columbia University gynecologist

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/28/politics/columbia-sexual-assault-letter-warning-invs/index.html

same pattern with catholic bishops, olympic coaches and doctors, etc, in prominent roles.

what's really shocking about this one, is the nurse witnessing it and just turning a blind eye.

#N/A!

Exclusive: New evidence shows a patient warned Columbia University about OB-GYN's alleged sexual assault decades ago

By Nelli Black, Robert Kuznia and Drew Griffin, CNN

Updated 6:31 PM ET, Fri February 28, 2020

Patient warned Columbia about OB-GYN who allegedly assaulted Evelyn Yang

Patient warned Columbia about OB-GYN who allegedly assaulted Evelyn Yang 04:37

The following piece contains explicit descriptions of sexual abuse allegations that may be disturbing to some readers.

(CNN)As the number of women who accuse a former Columbia University gynecologist of sexual assault keeps growing -- it currently stands at 78 -- new evidence has emerged that indicates university officials were warned about his behavior decades ago.

CNN has obtained a letter from a former patient to Columbia officials that spells out her allegations of sex abuse by Dr. Robert Hadden. The year: 1994.

What's more, the head of the hospital's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology unit responded with a letter to the patient acknowledging receipt and saying her concerns would be addressed-- but the accuser says the official never got back to her, despite his assurance he would do so.

Hadden continued to practice for another 18 years until he was arrested on sexual assault charges.

I am 37 years old and have had numerous gynecological exams in the past," says the 1994 letter to Columbia, written by Dian Saderup Monson. "I have never, until being examined by Dr. Hadden, been disturbed by the way in which a breast or pelvic exam was conducted.

A whistleblower holding an envelope.

We offer several ways to reach our journalists securely.

At a time when the slew of additional accusers has triggered a new investigation into Hadden by the Manhattan District Attorney's office, Monson's case raises questions about how long the university has known about the allegations against Hadden and what steps it took to investigate him.

Dian Saderup Monson

1994 letter evidence of a cover-up, attorney says

Attorney Anthony DiPietro -- who says he is representing Monson and 77 other accusers and is suing Hadden and Columbia University and its affiliated medical centers -- says the letter is evidence of a coverup.

On Friday, DiPietro filed a class-action lawsuit against the university. The five lead class representatives say they were "sexually exploited, abused, harassed and molested at the hands of serial sexual predator defendant Robert Hadden," according to the filing. Two of the women were minors in high school at the time they were treated by Hadden, the suit says. The suit accuses Hadden of "ogling and groping" the minors' unclothed bodies, while engaging "in idle chatter about wholly medically irrelevant information."

DiPietro and the accusers allege in the lawsuit that Columbia knew about Hadden's behavior and protected him for years.

The university "concealed Robert Hadden's sexual abuse for decades," the class-action suit claims, "and continued to grant Robert Hadden unfettered access to vulnerable, unsuspecting" patients, in part to protect its "status amongst other Ivy League institutions ... and (the university's) own corporate and financial interests."

Columbia University did not answer a list of detailed questions from CNN, including what was done about the letter and whether the university has ever done an internal investigation into Hadden.

Instead, it provided this statement: "We are deeply disturbed by the accounts of Robert Hadden's behavior that are now emerging. At the time of Hadden's 2012 arrest, we did not know about the 1994 letter. Had we been aware of it, we would have shared that information with the District Attorney's office. We are fully cooperating with the new investigation and are committed to following the truth wherever it leads."

In 2012, a patient went to the police after an office visit with Hadden, accusing him of licking her vagina during an exam. The arrest was voided and Hadden returned to work and continued to see patients for about another month until he was removed from his post.

Andrew Yang's wife reveals she was sexually assaulted

Andrew Yang's wife reveals she was sexually assaulted 13:21

The institution has denied in court filings the civil suit's allegations that the university did nothing to stop the "serial sexual abuse" on "countless occasions."

Hadden's behavior eventually did attract the university's attention -- after his 2012 arrest.

In 2014, Hadden was arrested again, this time following an investigation by the Manhattan DA. The OB-GYN was indicted on nine counts involving six patients who said he abused them. He pleaded guilty to two counts -- criminal sexual act in the third degree and forcible touching -- in a 2016 plea deal that stripped Hadden of his medical license but spared him any prison time.

Hadden's civil attorney did not return calls, but in the civil filings, Hadden, now 61, has denied everything except for the two specific charges to which he pleaded guilty. CNN reached out to Hadden's criminal attorney last week, but she responded saying she no longer represents him.

Hadden, who lives in New Jersey, has not responded to numerous attempts seeking comment.

The doctor's conduct came under renewed scrutiny in January, when Evelyn Yang -- wife of former Democratic presidential candidate and CNN contributor Andrew Yang -- shared her allegations of abuse against Hadden in a CNN interview.

Yang says she was assaulted by the doctor after he returned to work following the 2012 complaint but before being dismissed.

Evelyn Yang says Columbia University and New York DA 'grossly mishandled' case of OB-GYN she accuses of sexual assault

Can you imagine the audacity of a man who ... continues to do this after being arrested?" Yang said in the interview. "It's like he knew that he wouldn't face any repercussions, that he was protected.

Since Yang's interview aired, more than 40 former patients have come forward to say that they, too, were assaulted by Hadden, DiPietro said.

Accuser was promised immediate 'follow up,' but says she never heard back

Responding to the new allegations, the Manhattan DA opened a new investigation into the former doctor last week.

Monson says Yang's interview brought back the memory of the 1993 appointment. She was also hit with a realization: Columbia University was warned about the gynecologist decades ago.

Monson went looking for the correspondence. A copy of her letter turned up in an old hard drive. She found the response from a Columbia official in a box in her basement.

Her letter, dated May 30, 1994, was addressed to Dr. Harold Fox, the acting chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (now called NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center).

You may be wondering why it has taken me seven months to write this letter," she wrote. "The chief reason is that I have been too overloaded with the difficulties of pregnancy. ... Secondarily, this isn't a letter I've looked forward to writing. It is not a pleasant prospect to describe on paper an incident that left me, ultimately, feeling violated.

Dozens of accusers emerge after Andrew Yang's wife reveals sexual assault

Dozens of accusers emerge after Andrew Yang's wife reveals sexual assault 04:13

Monson, who has a PhD in English and American literature, says she also sent a copy of the letter to the medical center's risk management office, hoping to create a record. Her letter to Fox included the following notation at the bottom: "cc: Risk Management Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center."

Two weeks later, in a letter dated June 14, 1994, Fox thanked Monson for "taking the time to recount the concerns you have regarding the care provided by Dr. Robert Hadden," and promising to "immediately follow up" and to "have a discussion with Dr. Hadden."

"I trust that your pregnancy outcome was excellent," he added.

Fox wrote that he would reach out again in two weeks, but Monson, now 63, says she never heard back from him, the Office of Risk Management or anyone else at Columbia.

She remembers thinking: "Okay, they're not going to take me very seriously. They're not going to go fire this guy."

In an interview with CNN, Monson said that at the time of her appointment with Hadden, she was pregnant with her second child and looking for a new doctor. Her first pregnancy had a number of complications requiring multiple office visits, and she wanted to find a doctor closer to her home in Manhattan. She says a friend who worked at Columbia's renowned hospital system recommended Hadden.

Monson said that what started as a routine first visit with friendly conversation led to a physical examination like no other and ended in an assault.

Monson says that unlike breast cancer screenings she had in the past, Hadden conducted two prolonged and painful exams.

Another former university doctor has been charged with sex crimes. This time, the accusations are at UCLA

In past breast exams my physicians have always started at the outside of the breast and, in a circular fashion, palpated inward to the nipple," her 1994 letter to Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center states. "Dr. Hadden just did a lot of feeling around. Most surprising, he concluded the exam of each breast by pulling very hard on the nipple.

While she was on the exam table for a pelvic exam, Hadden "pressed my knees outward and down so that my genitals were as 'wide open' as possible," the letter says.

"At some point he started masturbating me," Monson told CNN. Monson said when she gasped, Hadden said, "just lubricating the outside" in a manner that made it seem standard. He "began running two fingers up and down my inner labia," she said.

"I've thought about it many, many times since then," she said.

The pap smear she experienced, she wrote in the letter, "took longer and was more uncomfortable than any pap smear I've ever had."

All the while, she wrote, the nurse in the room seemed to be looking away.

During the breast exam, she had her back half turned to us and, while she did assist during the pap smear (handing Dr. Hadden various swabs, etc.), during the rest of the exam she once again turned away and essentially faced the counter as though she had something engrossing to do. But she had nothing else to do; the countertop was empty, and she was simply standing idly.

It was 'beyond belief,' Monson says

After leaving his office, Monson said she was in shock.

I couldn't conceive that this person would be molesting me," she told CNN, adding that it was "beyond belief.

Later that night, when she was home, she was finally able to process what happened to her.

US Department of Education slams USC's response to Tyndall abuse allegations

I was sitting on the couch and I was thinking about the exam and it's just like the light bulb went off in my head," she said. "I just suddenly knew it... and I just started sobbing and sobbing.

That night, she told her husband what happened.

Monson decided that she needed to document what happened to her. In a three-page, single-spaced letter, she described what happened during her visit.

She wrote that the appointment left her feeling that "Dr. Hadden's conduct was improper, indeed, grossly so."

I have tried to imagine any of my past or current physicians giving me the exam he gave me," her letter says, "and I simply cannot.

Columbia officials would not confirm when the university became aware of abuse allegations against Hadden, or answer CNN's questions about whether university officials conducted any investigations prior to the 2012 complaint.

At the time of the 2016 plea deal, Hadden was accused of sexually abusing 19 women. That number has since more than quadrupled.

Fox, through his attorney, declined comment.

Weinstein conviction shows #MeToo made its mark on justice system

The matter you want to question Dr. Fox about is matter under investigation and about which he is potentially a witness," attorney Susan Necheles said in an email to CNN. "It would be inappropriate for him to speak with the press at this time and he will not be speaking with you.

Monson said she has no idea if anyone at Columbia University ever talked to Hadden after her warning. But she had assumed that the institution would do something with it.

I thought, this is Columbia -- this is a top-tier university," she said. "I thought, thank heavens this is at Columbia because they will keep this letter. They will put it in a file -- whatever file they keep on their doctors -- it'll be there in a prominent way. It will be marked and surely in the next few years he'll get either verbal or written complaints and they will do something. There'll be an accumulation of some kind of evidence. They'll do something. And I, I just, I felt confident that would happen.

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Kāma crime💘🦹

kāma crime database💘🦹‍:

Lessons of the instructive dead

U.S. Presidents

George H.W. Bush

Theistic religions

Catholic

2021 justice 30 yrs later, nun murdered who witnessed priest and nun sex

notes of interest

She was murdered for catching an Indian priest and nun in a sex act. Three decades later, justice is served

activist hero Jomon Puthenpurackal

(thief Raju with integrity)

Cardinal McCarrick

Buddhism

Tiratna guru - Sangharakshita

2019 upasaka Culadasa

Misc.

Michael Jackson (popular singer)

Columbia University gynecologist

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