Award-Winning Sportswriter Accused of Child Molestation

[ via Huffington Post ] 21 Dec

The sports world is about to be rocked by another child sex abuse scandal. Following quickly on the heels of the scandals at Penn State and Syracuse, as well as the accusations against former AAU president Bobby Dodd, decorated baseball columnist Bill Conlin is reportedly the subject of allegations of child molestation, reports Deadspin.

In July, Conlin received the J.G. Taylor Spink Award from the Baseball Writers' Association of America for "meritorious contributions to baseball writing."

Before that Inquirer story was even published, NBC10 in Philadelphia indicated that Conlin had retired, but not resigned as Deadspin initially reported. NBC10 says this information came from a source within the Daily News. The same source also indicated that more information would be forthcoming later in the day.

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Dutch bishops apologize for abuse of thousands

[ via Mercury News ] 16 Dec

Roman Catholic bishops in the Netherlands said Friday that they offered "sincere apologies" to victims of sexual mistreatment, hours after a report by an official commission said church officials had "failed to adequately deal with" abuse, including rape, affecting as many as 20,000 Dutch children in Catholic institutions.

It remained unclear, however, whether the report broke new ground in a debate over the relationship between sexual abuse and Roman Catholic institutions.

"Sexual abuse of minors," the reports says bluntly, "occurs widely in Dutch society."

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Irish Archbishop Who Died in ’73 Linked to Abuse

[ The New York Times ] 8 Dec

The former archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, widely regarded as the most powerful Catholic prelate in modern Irish history, stands accused of serial child sexual abuse, The Irish Times newspaper said Thursday.

Two specific complaints and a separate unspecified “concern” against an unidentified cleric were reported to the Murphy Commission, a state-sponsored investigation into the handling of clerical sexual abuse of children in the Dublin archdiocese. The newspaper reported that Archbishop McQuaid, who retired in 1972 and died a year later, was the unidentified cleric.

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