The castration process - which is confined to offenders aged between 18 and 65 - will involve "coercive chemical castration" by injecting anti-androgen drugs to reduce libido and sexual activity.

The new law will apply to all those who commit the "unnatural" rape and sexual abuse of children above and below the age of puberty.

In addition, the maximum jail term for raping a child was increased from 12 to 15 years, and a public register of paedophiles jailed for child rape and sexual abuse of minors has been established.

They will be monitored for life by police after release from jail.

In 2017 official figures showed there were 320 child rapes in Ukraine.

In addition, there are believed to be thousands of other cases of paedophile sex abuse.

Ukraine's national police chief says five children were raped in four regions of Ukraine within just 24 hours.

"And these are the crimes which parents reported to police despite their fear and anxiety to do so.

"We can only guess how many latent sexual crimes against children we have in the country."

Radical Party leader Oleg Lyashko who proposed the new castration law says Ukrainian law is necessary because Ukraine "does not have a life term or death penalty for sex crimes against children".

Furthermore, he says it's highly likely that the rapist would be back to his "business" again after being released from jail.

This was why castration was needed, he says.

Another former Soviet state, Kazakhstan, also permits the chemical castration of sex offenders.

Source

• Daily Mail
• Mirror
• Image: NBS System

The documentary includes harrowing testimonies from victims and has been viewed more than 18 million times.

Convicted paedophiles could now face up to 30 years or even life in prison.

Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favour of the longer sentences which will not only permanently incarcerate dangerous paedophiles but also remove a statute of limitations on prosecuting the most drastic cases of child sex abuse.

The changes were introduced by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government, which is closely allied with the Church in the devoutly Catholic country.

The ruling Law and Justice party says the legal amendments have been in the works for months and the proposal will now go to the senate.

The proposed amendments were introduced just 10 days ahead of the election race for the European Parliament.

The PiS is currently polling neck-and-neck with the European Coalition, a collective of opposition parties.

Poland's prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki says it is the government's "strong conviction" that suspended sentences should not apply in cases of paedophilia.

"It is difficult to imagine a more serious offence than the betrayal of the trust of the youngest people, those placed under someone's protection.

"Therefore, people, who are guardians in various institutions, including all secular and Church institutions, all such persons will have to bear even more severe penalties."

The documentary "Only Don't Tell Anyone" by brothers Tomasz and Marek Sekielski has been viewed nearly 18 million times since it was posted on YouTube on Saturday.

The Apostolic Nuncio to Poland, Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio, has expressed "the closeness and solidarity of the Holy Father towards victims of abuse,".

Archbishop Charles Scicluna, who is the Adjunct Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, will visit Poland in June at the request of the Polish Bishops.

It includes secret camera footage of victims confronting priests about their alleged abuse. Some of the priests admit to the abuse.

Police have prevented the documentary from being projected on to the façade of churches in Warsaw and Gdansk.

Source

• Vatican News
• European Views
• BBC
• Image: DW

The reality is that priests abuse small boys not because they are gay but because they have the opportunity. Most are not even paedophiles, but rather sexually maladjusted, immature and lonely individuals unable to resist the temptation to exploit their power over children who are taught to revere them as the agents of God.

A church that has tolerated the sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children - a crime against humanity in any definition - needs to face unpalatable truths and to make drastic reforms.

Cover-ups are no longer an option. The magnitude of the crimes is well-established and the evidence of how the Vatican and its bishops hushed them up in order to protect the reputation and finances of the Catholic Church is fully proved.

By insisting upon its right to deal with allegations under medieval canon law weighted in favour of the defendant and providing no effective punishment, the church itself became complicit.

It has allowed abusive priests to confess without fear of any report to police; it has encouraged bishops to withhold information from prosecuting authorities; it has refused to allow Vatican envoys (papal nuncios) to co-operate with government inquiries on the excuse that it is a state and hence they have diplomatic immunity.

The necessary reforms must begin with recognition that child sexual abuse is a crime, not just a sin, and must be reported to and dealt with by prosecuting authorities.

Canon law, with its pathetic punishments of prayer and penitence, and its obligations to keep proceedings secret, must have no part in dealing with allegations of sex abuse.

Nor can the veil of confidentiality any longer be allowed to shroud the confessions of paedophiles, let alone the absolution of one priest by another ("Brother, can you spare a crime?") The confessed abuser must be told to confess to the police or else be handed over to them.

Obviously, there should be zero tolerance for clerics who confess or are convicted. They must be defrocked and certainly not allowed any appeal to the Vatican, which in the past has permitted many to remain in holy orders - the sheep's clothing in which they have often reoffended.

Even in countries where local bishops have announced that public prosecutors will be told of sex abuse allegations, there is always the qualification "only if the victim consents".

It is all too easy for young victims and trusting parents to be counselled that their child's best interests lie in allowing the church to deal with the matter "in its own way" without involving the police. They give in easily to pressure and persuasion that their complaints should be dealt with in secret under canon law.

Abolishing the role of canon law in dealing with sex crimes will take some papal courage, but will be relatively easy, beside the radical changes necessary to stop the abuse from happening in the first place.

The reform most often suggested is to abandon celibacy. This would not be doctrinally difficult - Christ's disciples appear to have been married and the rule was a dogma introduced in the 11th century and almost abolished by 16th-century reformers.

But marriage does not "cure" paedophilia. Continue reading

• Geoffrey Robertson QC is a former UN Appeal Judge and author of The Case of the Pope (Penguin).

Barry John Greaves and Robert Francis Sharwood were both given recurring roles doing readings at services at the Holy Trinity Church, Fortitude Valley, after serving time in jail for sexually abusing children.

Brisbane Anglican diocese regulations introduced in 2012 forbad any sex offender or "person of concern" from any leadership role, which includes being a "reader at worship".

Continue reading

This is the uncomfortable underpinning of the Police Minister's proposed register for the close monitoring of sex offenders in the community.

Anne Tolley has, however, struck the right balance in, first, piloting the monitoring system with about 300 convicted child abusers and, second, keeping the names secret.

Offenders against children present by far the greatest reoffending risk.

Other sex offenders judged likely to reoffend could be added when the system has been thoroughly tested.

The secrecy question is more problematic.

Parents want to know if a convicted paedophile lives nearby.

Expatriate New Zealander and broadcaster Derryn Hinch, twice jailed for breaching Australian child sex offenders' suppression orders, makes a strong argument for parent power.

The proposal, for officials to identify paedophiles to members of the public only on a "need to know" basis, may be too limited.

For instance, people in a workplace would probably not be told a new colleague is an offender - but what about the office family picnic or offer to babysit the kids? Continue reading.

Source: The Listener

Image: kirontv.info

Bishop Peter Connors said his predecessor in Ballarat diocese, Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, made "terrible errors" and showed "great naivety" in moving paedophiles Gerald Ridsdale and Paul David Ryan from parish to parish despite knowing they were child abusers.

"I can't see how a bishop could possibly do the things Bishop Mulkearns did today," said Bishop Connors, who was bishop of Ballarat from 1997 until last year.

Later, when current Bishop Paul Bird said the Church's emphasis was now on victims, Bishop Connors added: "We were listening to insurers and lawyers, who said 'admit nothing'."

Bishop Bird said the diocese had accepted 107 of 116 claims of child abuse, of which 67 were by Ridsdale — who was laicised in 1993 and is eligible for release from jail this year, aged 79.

He said Bishop Mulkearns should have removed Ridsdale from ministry when the first complaint was made against him in 1975.

"From my reading of the accounts it wasn't wilful blindness. It was a tragic mistake on his part," Bishop Bird ssaid.

"He explained it to me.... It was, he believed, the accepted opinion at the time that dismissal was not the first option, but that a person might be referred for treatment in the hope that they can correct their behaviour."

Bishop Bird said Bishop Mulkearns had decided not to appear at the inquiry because he "had a stroke some years ago and his ability to concentrate or remember details is now quite limited".

The inquiry chairwoman asked whether Bishop Mulkearns still regularly said Mass. Told yes, she required that he appear at a future date.

The Catholic Church's insurer told the inquiry it has paid out about $NZ36 million to 600 victims of child abuse in Victoria. Catholic Church Insurance chief executive officer Peter Rush said it refused to make payouts for offences that occurred after the date the Church had knowledge of an offender.

Sources:

The Age

The Age

9News

Facing the Truth (Catholic response to inquiry)

Image: The Age

Only 12 per cent of those studied were diagnosed as paedophiles, according to a report released by Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier, the Catholic Bishops' Conference spokesman on abuse cases.

Psychological testing showed that a further 5 per cent could be classified as ephebophiles — those with a preference for teenage sexual partners.

"There are no significant differences to results found in the general population in Germany," reported Dr Norbert Leygraf, of the Institute of Forensic Psychiatry at Duisburg-Essen University, who was one of the experts commissioned to review reports on priests involved in sexual abuse cases in the past decade.

At least 66 priests were accused of 576 cases of sexual abuse of children or adults during that period. Three-quarters of the 265 alleged targets of abuse were male.

Most of the cases took place between the 1960s and 90s "in a period when a different social awareness and a lower sensitivity to the theme of sexual acts on children and youths still prevailed", Dr Leygraf said.

"The alleged sexual abuse was committed for reasons that can mostly be described as within normal psychological bounds and only a few cases resulted from a specific psychopathology," he said.

According to the study, 54 per cent of the priests were identified as heterosexual, 37 per cent as homosexual and nine per cent as bisexual.

Almost all the priests said they met their victims in their parishes or in schools. Asked why three-quarters of the victims were male, Bishop Ackermann noted that many cases dated back several decades when priests were likely to come into contact only with boys.

"There were no girl altar servers back then," he said. "The boys were there and were the ones the priests had the most to do with in their daily work."

At a news conference, Bishop Ackermann ruled out any suggestion that celibacy was a contributing factor in the abuse that occurred. "There is no causal connection between a celibate way of life and sexual abuse," he said.

Sources:

Reuters

Australian Associated Press

Image: Washington Post