STARNES: Houston now seeks pastor speeches - VIDEO: Houston has "gone too far," pastor says - GREGG JARRETT: The abuse of subpoenas

Five Christian pastors will no longer have to turn their sermons over to attorneys for the city of Houston. Instead, they will be forced to turn over their speeches related to the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO).

I don’t mean to point out the obvious here – but what do those attorneys think a sermon is? It’s a speech.

According to an amended motion filed Friday in Harris County, Texas court, the city’s attorneys will no longer demand sermons related to homosexuals, gender identity, or Mayor Annise Parker – Houston’s first openly lesbian mayor.

The amended subpoenas do require the pastors to turn over “all speeches or presentations related to HERO” – along with 17 different categories of information.

I don’t mean to point out the obvious here – but what do those attorneys think a sermon is? It’s a speech.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is a religious liberty law firm that is representing the pastors. Attorney Erik Stanley tells me the amended subpoenas don’t solve anything.

“The city of Houston still doesn’t get it,” he said. “The subpoenas still ask for information that encompasses speeches made by the pastors and private communications with their church members.”

Stanley said the only resolution is for the city to rescind the subpoenas entirely.

“This tramples their First Amendment rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion,” Stanley said. “Any inquiry into what these pastors did in standing against the ordinance passed by the city of Houston and encouraging members to sign the petition is a violation of the First Amendment.”

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The subpoenas were issued in a response to a lawsuit filed related to HERO, also known as the “Bathroom Bill.” Religious groups were opposed to a provision of the law that would allow men who identify as women to use the restrooms of their choice.

The city’s attorney said the pastors were subpoenaed because they were helping to lead opposition to the Bathroom Bill.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Mayor Parker said on Friday, “We don’t need to intrude on matters of faith to have equal rights in Houston, and it was never the intention of the city of Houston to intrude on any matters of faith or to get between a pastor and their parishioners.”

Folks, that’s a load of grade A fertilizer. 

“We don’t want their sermons, we want the instructions on the petition process. That’s always what we wanted and, again, they knew that’s what we wanted because that’s the subject of the lawsuit,” she said.

There’s just one problem, Madam Mayor, the pastors aren’t party to the lawsuit. And if you weren’t looking for their sermons, why did you put that in the subpoena. 

The amended subpoenas are not likely to quell growing national outrage over what many are calling an all-out assault on religious liberty.

Sen. Ted Cruz forcefully denounced the city’s actions during a Thursday rally in support of the pastors in Houston.

“Caesar has no jurisdiction over the pulpit,” Cruz said to a cheering crowd of pastors and supporters. “When you subpoena one pastor, you subpoena every pastor.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a blistering letter to the city attorney Wednesday night – demanding they immediately rescind the subpoenas.

He called the subpoenas “aggressive and invasive” and said they show “no regard for the very serious First Amendment considerations at stake.”

“Whether you intend it to be so or not, your action is a direct assault on the religious liberty guaranteed by the First Amendment,” Abbott wrote.

Also on Wednesday, Mayor Parker issued a defiant statement on Twitter – justifying the city’s attack on the ministers.

“If the 5 pastors used pulpits for politics, their sermons are fair game,” Parker tweeted.

Stanley said the mayor’s tweet revealed the city’s true intent.

“I think the mayor’s comment unmasks what the city is really after,” he said. “The city views these pastors and the communications they make with their members, their sermons, and their speeches as fair game.”

He said it was nothing more than a “strong-arm intimidation tactic to silence these pastors.”

“They are sending a message that you better not go up against City Hall on these issues,” Stanley added.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins had a strong reaction to the city of Houston’s latest move. He told me Friday, “this head-fake might fool some, but the reality is, Mayor Parker didn’t need a subpoena to access those sermons in the first place. “They were already public,” he said. 

“In this ‘new’ filing, the mayor still insists on seeing private emails, texts, and other communications related to the mayor’s office and the city’s Bathroom Bill.’ While two words – ‘or sermons’ – are dropped from the ‘revised’ subpoena, the government intrusion into private religious affairs remains.  The ‘revised’ subpoena is a difference without a distinction.”   

Alliance Defending Freedom said they will move forward with a request to quash the subpoenas. Regardless of the outcome, the pastors will not turn over any documents to the city.

As Senator Cruz so eloquently said, Caesar has no jurisdiction over the pulpit.

Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. Sign up for his American Dispatch newsletter, be sure to join his Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter. His latest book is “God Less America.”

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STARNES: Houston now seeks pastor speeches - VIDEO: Houston has "gone too far," pastor says - GREGG JARRETT: The abuse of subpoenas

Silent witnesses to child abuse could be jailed – new Barbados law

Sunday, June 22, 2014 | 3:05 PM    

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — Persons who may be aware of instances of child abuse, but do not inform the authorities, could be brought before the courts and face possible jail according to a looming law.

Child Care Board Director, Joan Crawford, says Cabinet is about to consider a proposal making it mandatory for school principals, church leaders, social workers, court officials, and media workers, among others to report knowledge of child abuse.

“There are no ifs or buts. It will be that you … are bound to report,” she said Thursday. “The only exception there is that lawyer-client privilege, but all others are not considered that way.”

Further explaining the proposal before the Cabinet she said, “Failure to report a suspected case should carry a sanction in the form of a fine, with the alternative of imprisonment”.

Crawford’s revelation came during a symposium on student sexual abuse, where UNICEF Representative, Knu-Sandi Lwin, suggested that education officials and others involved in the delivery of education can be blamed for not disclosing all information on probable cases of child abuse.

“All of us, in one way or another, have been sinning, the sins of omission,” she said.

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Silent witnesses to child abuse could be jailed – new Barbados law

Chicago archdiocese hid decades of child sex abuse

Tuesday, January 21, 2014 | 11:31 AM    

CHICAGO (AP) — After a 13-year-old boy reported in 1979 that a Roman Catholic priest raped and threatened him at gunpoint to keep quiet, the Archdiocese of Chicago assured the boy’s parents that, although the cleric avoided prosecution, he would receive treatment and have no further contact with minors.

But the Rev William Cloutier, who already had been accused of molesting other children, was returned to ministry a year later and went on to abuse again before he resigned in 1993, two years after the boy’s parents filed a lawsuit. Officials took no action against Cloutier over his earliest transgressions because he “sounded repentant,” according to internal archdiocese documents released Tuesday that show how the archdiocese tried to contain a mounting scandal over child sexual abuse.

For decades, those at the highest levels of the nation’s third-largest archdiocese moved accused priests from parish to parish while hiding the clerics’ histories from the public. The documents, released through settlements between attorneys for the archdiocese and victims, describe how the late Cardinals John Cody and Cardinal Joseph Bernardin often approved the reassignments. The archdiocese removed some priests from ministry, but often years or decades after the clergy were known to have molested children.

While disturbing stories of clergy sexual abuse have wrenched the Roman Catholic Church across the globe, the newly released documents offer the broadest look yet into how one of its largest and most prominent American dioceses responded to the scandal.

The documents, posted online Tuesday, cover only 30 of the at least 65 clergy for whom the archdiocese says it has substantiated claims of child abuse. Vatican documents related to the 30 cases were not included, under the negotiated terms of the disclosure.

The records also didn’t include the files of former priest Daniel McCormack, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to abusing five children and whose case prompted an apology from George and an internal investigation of how the archdiocese responds to abuse claims.

But the more than 6,000 pages include internal communications between church officials, disturbing testimony about specific abuses, meeting schedules where allegations were discussed, and letters from anguished parishioners. The names of victims, and details considered private under mental health laws were redacted.

Cardinal Francis George said in a letter distributed to parishes last week that the archdiocese agreed to turn over the records in an attempt to help the victims heal. “I apologise to all those who have been harmed by these crimes and this scandal,” George wrote.

Officials in the archdiocese said most of the abuse detailed in the files released Tuesday occurred before 1988, none after 1996, and that all these cases ultimately were reported to authorities.

But victims’ lawyers argue many of the allegations surfaced after George assumed control of the archdiocese in 1997, and some of the documents relate to how the church handled the cases more recently.

“The issue is not when the abuse happened; the issue is what they did once it was reported,” said Chicago attorney Marc Pearlman, who has represented about 200 victims of clergy abuse in the Chicago area.

When a young woman reported in 1970 that she’d been abused as a teen, for example, Cody assured the priest that the “whole matter has been forgotten” because “no good can come of trying to prove or disprove the allegations.”

Accused priests often were quietly sent away for a time for treatment or training programmes, the documents show. When the accused clerics returned, officials often assigned them to new parishes and asked other priests to monitor them around children.

In one 1989 letter to Bernardin, the vicar for priests worries about parishioners discovering the record of the Rev Vincent E McCaffrey, who was moved four times because of abuse allegations.

“Unfortunately, one of the key parishioners … received an anonymous phone call which made reference by name to Vince and alleged misconduct on his part with young boys,” wrote vicar for priests, the Rev Raymond Goedert. “We all agreed that the best thing would be for Vince to move. We don’t know if the anonymous caller will strike again.”

When the archdiocese tried to force accused clergy into treatment or isolate them at church retreats, some of the priests refused, or ignored orders by church administrators to stay away from children.

Church officials worried about losing parishioners and “potential priests” over abuse scandals. “This question I believe is going to get stickier and stickier,” Patrick O’Malley, then-vicar for priests, wrote in a 1992 letter.

Then, in 2002, a national scandal about dioceses’ failures to stop abusers consumed the American church. US bishops nationwide adopted a toughened disciplinary policy and pledged to remove all guilty priests from church jobs in their dioceses.

But for many victims, it was too little and too late.

“Where was the church for the victims of this sick, demented, twisted paedophile?” one man wrote in a 2002 letter to George about abuse at the hands of the Rev Norbert Maday, who was imprisoned in Wisconsin after a 1994 conviction for molesting two boys. “Why wasn’t the church looking out for us? We were children, for God’s sake.”

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Chicago archdiocese hid decades of child sex abuse

Cubans allege sex abuse by Bahamian detention guards

MIAMI (CMC) – A Cuban family who arrived in the US from a migrant detention centre in the Bahamas has alleged that guards regularly beat some of the male inmates and sexually abused some of the women.

The Democracy Movement, a Miami group that has been helping undocumented migrants detained in Nassau, said one of the women repatriated from the centre to Cuba earlier this month was impregnated by a guard.Ramón Saúl Sánchez, Democracy Movement head, who greeted the family on their arrival, said a 24-year-old woman repatriated from Nassau to Havana last week reported that she was six months pregnant.The movement led a string of protests against the Bahamian government this summer after detainees at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre smuggled out cell phone images of inmates sewing their lips together in protest and an alleged guard kicking prisoners, according to the Miami Herald.Randy Rodriguez, 31, his wife Misleidy Olivera, 30, and their two children were the first detainees to speak in person to reporters about conditions at the centre after they arrived in Miami on a flight from Nassau.“That video is real, and after the video came the beatings” (by guards) as punishment for the negative publicity, said Rodriguez.However, Bahamas Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell has said the video is a fake and that the allegations are under investigation.“I wish to say that no one from the Bahamas government has admitted that there was any abuse of detainees by the Bahamas government,” he said in a statement.The Bahamas repatriated 24 Cubans to Havana on August 16 and another eight on August 21, including several of the alleged victims of beatings and sexual abuse.The Miami Herald said another 18 undocumented Cubans detained in the Bahamas will be allowed to fly to Panama, which has agreed to issue them “territorial asylum” while they try to arrange onward trips to the United States.Marleine Bastien, Executive Director for Haitian Women of Miami, who joined Sánchez at the news conference, said for several years Haitians have also complained about how they were treated at the Carmichael Road centre.Like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/jamaicaobserverFollow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/JamaicaObserver

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Cubans allege sex abuse by Bahamian detention guards

VIDEO: FBI arrest 150 in child abuse raids

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VIDEO: FBI arrest 150 in child abuse raids

Bing introduces abuse search pop-ups

27 July 2013 Last updated at 10:34 ET Bing’s warning is triggered by a search term “blacklist” compiled by experts Microsoft’s Bing search engine has become the first to introduce pop-up warnings for people in the UK who seek out online images of child abuse.

The notification will tell them the content is illegal and provide details of a counselling service.

It comes after the prime minister said internet companies needed to do more to block access to such images.

Yahoo, which uses Bing’s technology on its search page, said it was considering a similar move.

Google, the UK’s most popular search engine, is not planning to use pop-ups but said it would continue to report material and help experts combat the problem.

The debate about online images showing the sexual abuse of children has come to prominence after two high-profile murder trials heard how the killers searched for them.

Bing’s pop-up warning, which only applies to searches conducted in the UK, is triggered when people enter words on a “blacklist” compiled by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).

Microsoft said the notifications aimed “to stop those who may be drifting towards trying to find illegal child abuse content on the web via search engines”.

A spokesman said: “This is in addition to Microsoft’s existing and longstanding policy of removing any verified links to illegal content of this sort from Bing as quickly as possible.”

Continue reading the main story

It is a small, initial part of the solution to prevent child sexual abuse, protect children and pursue offenders”

End Quote Andy Baker Ceop deputy chief executive “Microsoft has been, and remains, a strong proponent of proactive action in reasonable and scalable ways by the technology industry in the fight against technology-facilitated child exploitation. We have teams dedicated globally to abuse reporting on our services and the development of new innovations to combat child exploitation more broadly.”

However, Bing’s alert does not seem to go as far as Prime Minister David Cameron’s call for a message warning people of the consequences a criminal conviction for their actions could have “such as losing their job, their family, even access to their children”.

He also called for the internet companies to block certain searches from even providing results.

“There are some searches which are so abhorrent and where there can be no doubt whatsoever about the sick and malevolent intent of the searcher,” the prime minister said in a speech.

‘Positive step’

Google, which last December was found by a consumer group to have an 88% share of the UK search engine market, said it had a “zero tolerance policy” to child abuse imagery.

A company spokesman said: “We use purpose-built technology and work with child safety organisations to find, remove and report it, because we never want this material to appear in our search results. We are working with experts on effective ways to deter anyone tempted to look for this sickening material.”

A spokeswoman for Yahoo said it supported the work of third parties in “running education and deterrence campaigns on our platforms and are already actively engaged in discussions with Ceop and others”.

She added: “Yahoo has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to child abuse images online. Our dedicated governance and safety teams work hand-in-hand with the product, engineering, and customer care teams to remove these illegal images. We also work with a number of external partners.”

A Ceop report this year highlighted how the “hidden internet” helped distributors of child abuse images to evade detection by using encrypted networks and other secure methods.

David Cameron recently met the parents of murdered schoolgirls April Jones and Tia Sharp

Ceop deputy chief executive Andy Baker said: “This is a positive step in the right direction to deterring potential offenders from accessing indecent images of children on the internet. But it is a small, initial part of the solution to prevent child sexual abuse, protect children and pursue offenders.

“While the Bing project isn’t the whole solution, I hope it goes some way to making those who are curious about searching for indecent images think again.”

Ceop acknowledged its “blacklist” could not include every search term that might lead to images of abuse.

John Carr, from the Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety, told the BBC: “To hardened technology-sophisticated, technology-literate paedophiles, these pop-ups will probably make very little difference.

“But there is a very large number of men who perhaps have a marginal interest in this type of material and we need to stop them getting any further engaged with it.”

Mr Carr said the internet companies were all focusing on the problem of child abuse material.

In June, after a meeting chaired by the culture secretary, the government said Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook would allow the charity the Internet Watch Foundation actively to seek out abusive images, rather than just acting upon reports they received.

View the original article here

Bing introduces abuse search pop-ups

Bing introduces abuse search pop-ups

27 July 2013 Last updated at 10:34 ET Bing’s warning is triggered by a search term “blacklist” compiled by experts Microsoft’s Bing search engine has become the first to introduce pop-up warnings for people in the UK who seek out online images of child abuse.

The notification will tell them the content is illegal and provide details of a counselling service.

It comes after the prime minister said internet companies needed to do more to block access to such images.

Yahoo, which uses Bing’s technology on its search page, said it was considering a similar move.

Google, the UK’s most popular search engine, is not planning to use pop-ups but said it would continue to report material and help experts combat the problem.

The debate about online images showing the sexual abuse of children has come to prominence after two high-profile murder trials heard how the killers searched for them.

Bing’s pop-up warning, which only applies to searches conducted in the UK, is triggered when people enter words on a “blacklist” compiled by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).

Microsoft said the notifications aimed “to stop those who may be drifting towards trying to find illegal child abuse content on the web via search engines”.

A spokesman said: “This is in addition to Microsoft’s existing and longstanding policy of removing any verified links to illegal content of this sort from Bing as quickly as possible.”

Continue reading the main story

It is a small, initial part of the solution to prevent child sexual abuse, protect children and pursue offenders”

End Quote Andy Baker Ceop deputy chief executive “Microsoft has been, and remains, a strong proponent of proactive action in reasonable and scalable ways by the technology industry in the fight against technology-facilitated child exploitation. We have teams dedicated globally to abuse reporting on our services and the development of new innovations to combat child exploitation more broadly.”

However, Bing’s alert does not seem to go as far as Prime Minister David Cameron’s call for a message warning people of the consequences a criminal conviction for their actions could have “such as losing their job, their family, even access to their children”.

He also called for the internet companies to block certain searches from even providing results.

“There are some searches which are so abhorrent and where there can be no doubt whatsoever about the sick and malevolent intent of the searcher,” the prime minister said in a speech.

‘Positive step’

Google, which last December was found by a consumer group to have an 88% share of the UK search engine market, said it had a “zero tolerance policy” to child abuse imagery.

A company spokesman said: “We use purpose-built technology and work with child safety organisations to find, remove and report it, because we never want this material to appear in our search results. We are working with experts on effective ways to deter anyone tempted to look for this sickening material.”

A spokeswoman for Yahoo said it supported the work of third parties in “running education and deterrence campaigns on our platforms and are already actively engaged in discussions with Ceop and others”.

She added: “Yahoo has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to child abuse images online. Our dedicated governance and safety teams work hand-in-hand with the product, engineering, and customer care teams to remove these illegal images. We also work with a number of external partners.”

A Ceop report this year highlighted how the “hidden internet” helped distributors of child abuse images to evade detection by using encrypted networks and other secure methods.

David Cameron recently met the parents of murdered schoolgirls April Jones and Tia Sharp

Ceop deputy chief executive Andy Baker said: “This is a positive step in the right direction to deterring potential offenders from accessing indecent images of children on the internet. But it is a small, initial part of the solution to prevent child sexual abuse, protect children and pursue offenders.

“While the Bing project isn’t the whole solution, I hope it goes some way to making those who are curious about searching for indecent images think again.”

Ceop acknowledged its “blacklist” could not include every search term that might lead to images of abuse.

John Carr, from the Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety, told the BBC: “To hardened technology-sophisticated, technology-literate paedophiles, these pop-ups will probably make very little difference.

“But there is a very large number of men who perhaps have a marginal interest in this type of material and we need to stop them getting any further engaged with it.”

Mr Carr said the internet companies were all focusing on the problem of child abuse material.

In June, after a meeting chaired by the culture secretary, the government said Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook would allow the charity the Internet Watch Foundation actively to seek out abusive images, rather than just acting upon reports they received.

View the original article here

Bing introduces abuse search pop-ups