Here come the diocese ‘bankruptcies’: How New Yorkers seeking justice under the Child Victims Act should approach new pleas of poverty

NY DAILY NEWS

For years, we’ve fought hard for the Child Victims Act (CVA), transformative legislation that is already helping survivors secure justice while increasing transparency for the public. Both are sorely needed to end the epidemic of child sexual abuse.

In the process of passing this legislation, we heard from many large, well-funded institutions that lobbied against the legislation claiming that they’d go bankrupt if the CVA were to pass. Now that the CVA is the law, one such institution — the Rochester Diocese — has filed for bankruptcy and others may well follow. (The Rockville Center Diocese is suing to have the law overturned entirely.)

In order to truly help survivors of child sexual abuse, it’s important to get the facts straight about how bankruptcy proceedings would impact their cause. read more »

The Horrifying Cult Origins of Bikram Yoga: Rape, Harassment and Lies

DAILY BEAST

The new Netflix documentary “Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator” explores the sexual-assault allegations against Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram Yoga.

Bikram Choudhury became a self-made multimillionaire with “Bikram Yoga,” which was founded on 26 carefully-sequenced positions and performed in sweltering studios.

It also netted him an army of acolytes who’d follow his every command—and, it turns out, would even tolerate the sexual assault and rape he perpetrated against them. Until, that is, they wouldn’t. read more »

Vatican youth seminary scandal grows with new abuse claims

AP NEWS

A scandal over alleged sexual molestation and abuse at the Vatican’s youth seminary is growing, with more former papal altar boys alleging inappropriate behavior by priests inside the Vatican walls.

The Vatican announced in September that its criminal prosecutor was seeking to indict a former senior seminarian and the then-rector of the St. Pius X seminary on sexual abuse charges. read more »

Prince Andrew: six key questions raised by his Epstein interview

THE GUARDIAN

Why did Prince Andrew stay at Jeffrey Epstein’s home and attend a dinner on his trip to ‘break up’ with the convicted child sex offender?

In the Newsnight interview, the prince spoke for the first time about a stay at Epstein’s Manhattan home five months after the convicted child sex offender left prison, a trip that included a party where the prince was “guest of honour”.

But while he told Emily Maitlis the party “wasn’t quite as you put it” and described Epstein’s house as “a convenient place to stay”, some observers have asked why the prince could not have stayed elsewhere, why his stay lasted four days, and why he would attend such a dinner under any circumstances if he was bringing the relationship to an end. read more »