Police block sex abuse survivors near Vatican

Nicole Winfiel
Associated Press

ROME — Italian paramilitary police blocked a boulevard leading to the Vatican to prevent a march in Rome on Sunday by survivors of clergy sex abuse from reaching St. Peter's Square.

When Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi came to speak with organizers Sunday evening, a protester shouted "Shame, shame" in Italian, and Lombardi left, escorted by police.

He later told The AP by telephone that if organizers want to see him he would "gladly" receive them inside his office. Shortly after that, one of the organizers, Gary Bergeron, did meet briefly with Lombardi and the two agreed to meet Sunday night after the end of the protest.


The event, which aims to show survivors worldwide they are not alone – is being organized by Bergeron and another Boston man, Bernie McDaid, who were abused by the same priest starting in the sixth grade. Bergeron said he told Lombardi that the abuse survivors have been "waiting a lifetime to be able to stand up and speak out."

Protesters held signs with slogans including "Hands off children."

Late last week, march organizers said they were denied permission to hold the event on Vatican soil. It is standard Vatican practice to ban non-Vatican-sponsored events from the square.

Lombardi said he had come to greet the organizers but when he saw "it wasn't going to be easy" he left.

Participants, who came from a dozen countries and said they were raped and molested by priests as children, flocked to Rome for the candlelit march.

At the culmination of the march, each victim planned to put a stone he or she had brought from home onto a pile – in the same way hikers leave piles of stones along mountain paths to show others that someone had been there before.

Wearing T-shirts that read "Enough!" in English, Italian and German, organizers demanded that the United Nations recognize the systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity.

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Boy hides from social workers in the jungle

Britain's zealous social workers have rarely gone to such lengths to seize a child from loving parents

Christopher Booker
Telegraph

Of all the stories I have covered about zealous social workers seizing children from loving parents without cause, none is more bizarre than the one that looked as though it would be concluded in the High Court last Friday.

After London social workers had spent thousands of pounds vainly trying to track down, in the Ugandan jungle, a four-year-old boy who had evaded their clutches, the council indicated that it wished to close the case. But in a last minute twist, the judge gave the social workers three more months to find the child – so the story hasn’t yet got a happy ending.

The boy’s mother is a Ugandan Catholic who has lived in Britain for more than 20 years, has degrees in IT and finance from two London universities, and has held down good jobs. Six years ago, however, she was temporarily homeless with a young daughter. She appealed for help to the social workers of the borough where she then lived. She was told she could put her little girl in foster care, but could be given no help herself. When she refused to hand over her child, a care order was made on the grounds of the mother’s “neglect”.

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