Sex Abuse Scandals News Stories

Excerpts of Key Sex Abuse Scandals News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on sex abuse scandals from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Allegations of [a] disturbing pedophile ring with connections to the highest ranks of government have come to light. Campaigning Labor MP Tom Watson [has] rocked the House of Commons by airing allegations from child-protection professionals of a "powerful pedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10.” Watson’s co-author of Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain, Martin Hickman, [said] on the eve of [Watson's] parliamentary statement “this is much darker and more disturbing than phone hacking … We have no idea where it will go." Within days, Steven Messham, one of the alleged victims, went on camera on a BBC Newsnight documentary to say that he and other children were sexually abused on a regular basis at a care home by a circle of men that included a leading Thatcher-era politician during the 1970s and 1980s. Messham claimed to have been raped by the senior political figure at least a dozen times, and his accusations were echoed by [an] anonymous victim, who told Newsnight that in 2000 he was abused by the same man. Watson, who for years led a lonely campaign to expose phone hacking at Murdoch tabloid News of the World, described this new scandal as “potentially worse.” In a blog post titled "10 Days That Shook My World," Watson wrote ... that “these allegations go way beyond the claims made on BBC Newsnight yesterday ... It sounds like I’ve taken leave of my senses,” Watson admitted, “Just like they said I had during the early days of the hacking scandal.”

Note: To learn about a widespread pedophile ring which reaches to the top levels of government, watch the suppressed Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here.

A powerful paedophile network may have operated in Britain protected by its connections to Parliament and Downing Street, a senior Labour politician suggested. Tom Watson, the deputy chairman of the Labour Party, called on the Metropolitan Police to reopen a closed criminal inquiry into paedophilia. Mr Watson referred to the case of Peter Righton, who was convicted in 1992 of importing and possessing illegal homosexual pornographic material. Righton, a former consultant to the National Children’s Bureau and lecturer at the National Institute for Social Work in London, admitted two illegal importation charges and one charge of possessing obscene material. He was fined Ł900. Mr Watson said the evidence file used to convict Righton “if it still exists, contains clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring”. He told a hushed Commons: “One of its members boasts of a link to a senior aide of a former Prime Minister, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad. “The leads were not followed up, but if the files still exist, I want to ensure that the Metropolitan Police secure the evidence, re-examine it, and investigate clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10.” The Independent understands that Mr Watson’s comments were [aimed] at a living person associated with Margaret Thatcher’s administration. They are thought to involve the activities of the Paedophile Information Exchange, a pro-paedophile group in existence between 1974 and 1984, which believed there should be no age of consent.

Note: To learn about a widespread pedophile ring which reaches to the top levels of government, watch the suppressed Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here.

The detective spread out the photographs on the kitchen table, in front of Nicole, on a December morning in 2006. She was 17, but in the pictures, she saw the face of her 10-year-old self, a half-grown girl wearing make-up. The bodies in the images were broken up by pixelation, but Nicole could see the outline of her father, forcing himself on her. Her mother, sitting next to her, burst into sobs. The detective spoke gently, but he had brutal news: the pictures had been downloaded onto thousands of computers via file-sharing services around the world. They were among the most widely circulated child pornography on the Internet. Also online were video clips, similarly notorious, in which Nicole spoke words her father had scripted for her, sometimes at the behest of other men. For years, investigators in the United States, Canada and Europe had been trying to identify the girl in the images. Nicole’s parents split up when she was a toddler, and she grew up living with her mother and stepfather and visiting her father, a former policeman, every other weekend at his apartment in a suburban town in the Pacific Northwest. He started forcing her to perform oral sex and raping her, dressing her in tight clothes and sometimes binding her with ropes. When she turned 12, she told him to stop, but he used threats and intimidation to continue the abuse for about a year. He said that if she told anyone what he’d done, everyone would hate her for letting him. He said that her mother would no longer love her.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse, click here.

It was the start of the end of the silence, and wasn't it a racket? Yet officially at least, the "survivors" of child sex abuse who have waited decades to be unburdened of their stories must wait a little longer. Inside the [Australian] Royal Commission, where the hands on the wall clock were missing, chair Justice Peter McClellan announced that evidence was unlikely to start being heard in public until October. Outside the County Court, however, ... some survivors rushed to tell their secrets now. Ray Thomson told tales he had never admitted to in public before. He was a lucky one, he explained. Unlike so many other wards of the state, he hadn't landed in jail by his 20s. He wasn't dead. There had been suicide attempts. For decades, Thomson, of Coldstream, lived in denial. For a long time, he derided those who said they couldn't remember the atrocities committed against them, even though he himself still blanks them out. He also alluded to darker things, far darker things. He couldn't talk about those. Yes, he wants justice. "Five minutes" with any one of his childhood predators, in NSW boys' homes and in foster care - that would be justice enough. Thomson made clear that he didn't want his story alone highlighted. In talking to other protesters from Care Leavers Australia Network, who queued to share their sadness, his reasoning became dreadfully clear. Thomson's story wasn't at all unusual. It was just another in a sinkwell of cruelty that Australia would not or could not confront. Until now.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here.

Bill Nelson has been a boat captain most of his life. [He] is speaking out for the first time about the two-and-a-half years he spent at the Dozier School for Boys. Just a skinny 11-year old, he was sent away for a crime he was later exonerated of. "I was raped over there as a kid, and there were several boys raped. Anything we spoke out about, we went to the White House," he said. It's a story many Dozier boys never lived to tell. "A lot of boys didn't make it. They weren't strong enough to make it," said Nelson. "Sometimes at night you could hear the screams," said Nelson. [The White House is] a small building where the temperature drops inside and paint peels off the walls and where Nelson remembers being tortured. "Sometimes you stayed two or three days in chains and they beat you," he said. "They were beaten to death." Soon the Dozier graveyard, known as Boot Hill, may become a crime scene. Scientists are preparing for a massive exhumation. They've discovered nearly 50 unmarked graves in the woods using ground-penetrating radar. The state shut down the institution for wayward boys in 2011 after allegations of abuse and suspicious deaths. "I didn't want to say anything because it's personal. But with all the boys that died up there, somebody needs to speak up for them," [Nelson] said.

Note: To see how this sadly may be more common than most would ever imagine, watch the suppressed Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link.

"You just get a funny feeling every time you come back here," said Marinna resident Elmore Bryant. You can feel, taste and listen to the silence on Boot HIll. It's heavy, bitter, and deafening. "Who's going to listen to you when you're poor, committed a crime and you're in an institution," said Bryant. Wards of the defunct Dozier School for Boys, children, are buried in the Marianna, Florida graveyard. Ground-penetrating radar revealed nearly 50 unmarked graves that the state never detected. "Like a sorority or a fraternity, everything was closed-mouth," said Bryant, talking about his town. Bryant, 79, grew-up in Marianna with the silence in the woods. He heard the hushed stories of boys who were beaten, tortured, or worse: Disappeared. He says his town was complicit in keeping these secrets. "Nobody knew anything or was going to tell you anything," he said. Bryant tells a story he heard about Dozier boys running away at night. He says a group called the "Dog Boys" would wait for them in the woods. "The dogs would about tear them to pieces and they would holler and yell," he says. "How many? What happened to them? Were there crimes committed?" asked U.S. Senator Bill Nelson standing atop Boot Hill. Now, after nearly a century of quiet, Nelson, University of South Florida researchers and a Tampa Bay family searching to bring their loved one home, may have made enough noise to answer these questions. They are pushing for a massive exhumation of an unknown number of bodies. "We were uncovering what was clearly grave shafts," said USF's Dr. Erin Kimmerle.

Note: To see how this sadly may be more common than most would ever imagine, watch the suppressed Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link.

A former supervisory FBI agent has been arrested and jailed on child pornography charges. Donald Sachtleben was taken into custody and charged ... after a nationwide undercover investigation of illegal child porn images traded over the Internet. The 54-year-old resident of Carmel, Indiana, has pleaded not guilty. A federal complaint alleges 30 graphic images and video were found on Sachtleben's laptop computer late last week when FBI agents searched his home, about 23 miles north of Indianapolis. The arrest was a result a months-long probe, said the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, Joseph Hogsett. "The mission of our Project Safe Childhood initiative is to investigate and prosecute anyone found to (be) engaged in the sexual exploitation of children," Hogsett said in a news release. "No matter who you are, you will be brought to justice if you are found guilty of such criminal behavior." Sachtleben is currently an Oklahoma State University visiting professor, according to his online resume. He is director of training at the school's Center for Improvised Explosives. He had been an FBI special agent from 1983 to 2008, serving as a bomb technician. He worked on the Oklahoma City bombing and Unabomber investigations, according to his university biography. The Justice Department's Project Safe Childhood initiative was launched in 2006, leading to what federal officials call a more than 40% increase in the number of cases investigated. The project's website says 2,700 indictments were filed last year alone.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here.

Faces at the scandal-struck Vatican were even redder than usual after it emerged that the Holy See had purchased a €23 million (Ł21 million) share of a Rome apartment block that houses Europe’s biggest gay sauna. The senior Vatican figure sweating the most due to the unlikely proximity of the gay Europa Multiclub is probably Cardinal Ivan Dias, the head of the Congregation for Evangelisation of Peoples. This 76-year-old “prince of the church” enjoys a 12-room apartment on the first-floor of the imposing palazzo, at 2 Via Carducci, just yards from the ground floor entrance to the steamy flesh pot. There are 18 other Vatican apartments in the block, many of which house priests. The Holy See is still reeling from allegations that the previous pontiff, Benedict XVI, had quit in reaction to the presence of a gay cabal in the curia. La Repubblica newspaper noted that the presence of “Italy’s best known gay sauna in the premises is an embarrassment”. There was further embarrassment for the Holy See when the press observed that thanks to generous tax breaks it received from the last Berlusconi government, the church will have avoided hefty payments to the Italian state. The properties are recognised as part of the Holy City. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Pope Emeritus Benedict’s widely disliked right-hand man, ... was said to have been the brains behind the purchase of 2 Via Carduccio in 2008.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on secrecy, click here.

The Catholic Archbishop of Durban, Wilfrid Fox Napier, has described paedophilia as a psychological "illness, not a criminal condition". The South African cardinal told the BBC that people who were themselves abused as children and then abused others needed to be examined by doctors. In an interview with the Stephen Nolan programme on BBC Radio 5 live, Cardinal Napier referred to paedophilia as "a psychological condition, a disorder". "What do you do with disorders? You've got to try and put them right. If I - as a normal being - choose to break the law, knowing that I'm breaking the law, then I think I need to be punished." He said he knew at least two priests, who became paedophiles after themselves being abused as children. "Now don't tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that. I don't think you can really take the position and say that person deserves to be punished. He was himself damaged." Marie Collins, who is a victim of abuse, told the BBC: "I think it is appalling that we have a cardinal, a man at this level in the church that can still hold these views. He is totally ignoring the child."

Note: After receiving a lot of flack for these comments, Cardinal Napier reversed his opinion and stated that pedophilia is a crime, as you can read in this BBC article. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here.

Celebrities and politicians were protected from child sex investigations because hundreds of police intelligence files were kept so secret that investigating officers could not access them. Information on famous suspects was marked “secret” or “restricted”, allowing only a small number of officers to access it, to offset the risk of police officers or staff leaking the information to the media. The burying of information is understood to have helped serial offenders such as Jimmy Savile and Sir Cyril Smith MP escape prosecution for decades. The problem has emerged in a review of police information handling by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. Since the exposure of the former TV presenter as Britain’s most prolific child sex offender, police have been inundated with reports from members of the public of “historical abuse”, often by prominent politicians, celebrities and VIPs. The National Association of People Abused in Childhood said the practice had hampered investigations that could have prevented further abuse. John Bird, spokesman for the charity, said: “It is certainly the case that in the past the police put protecting celebrities above child protection. However we do think that now there is a clear drive to learn from these mistakes and get it right in the future.”

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here.

Malala Yousafzai has gone to school today for the first time since she was shot last October. Then, the 15-year-old Pakistani girl was left for dead by the Taliban, a punishment inflicted on her simply for wanting to be educated. Malala’s journey back from a hospital bed to the classroom is not only an inspirational story of courage triumphing over all the odds but a story of determination and, indeed, of destiny: a signal to the world that nothing—not even bullets and death threats—can now stand in the way of every girl’s right to education. Yesterday Malala, who spent months in hospital recovering from neck, face, and head injuries, met teachers at her new school in Birmingham, England. But around the world there are 32 million girls who will not be joining Malala at school today, unable to go to school because they are prevented from doing so or because there is no school to attend. Of the 700,000 children not at school in their home province of Khyber Pakhtunkwha (KPK), 600,000 are girls. Until we provide both the resources and security for them and others to travel securely to school and feel safe from the Taliban while there, then many of Pakistan’s schools will remain closed, and literally millions of Pakistani girls will be denied an education. Some, perhaps as many as 10 million girls each year, will be taken out of school because they are forced into child marriages against their will. Other girls, perhaps as many as seven or eight million school-age girls, will become domestic laborers, sent to sweatshop factories or to languish in the fields and farms.

Note: After many years of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, the U.S. government has failed to put any significant pressure on the government to change the policy there. Does anyone in government really care? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on abuse of women and girls, click here.

Kids help resolve such issues as bullying, violence and suicide threats, the director of Safe2Tell told Chatfield High School students. "You're the solution to your own problem," said Susan Payne, urging students to be proactive about reporting trouble when they see it. The state program allows young people to anonymously report potentially dangerous and life-threatening situations. Since Safe2Tell launched in the 2004-05 school year, there have been 2,782 reports from 158 cities in 58 counties. The reports resulted in 393 investigations, 282 school-disciplinary actions and 67 arrests. The program's website also credits Safe2Tell with 200 suicide preventions. "I think a lot of kids would feel intimidated to say something normally," said [senior] Ellie Roberts. Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said Safe2Tell, a nonprofit organization that partners with his office as well as law enforcement and various advocacy groups, gives young people a way to combat the problems they face before those problems escalate to such serious levels. "Safe2Tell has been a tremendous asset to schools and local law enforcement," Suthers said. "The success of this program should underline for educators and the public that bullying, harassment and all the other problems facing youth today can be prevented when we give kids the resources to ask for help." Young people can report problems on issues of bullying, drugs, violence and other dangerous activity by phone; at the Safe2Tell website, safe2tell.org; or by text message.

Note: Programs like this around the world are giving children a safe way to expose child abuse, bullying, and much more. Because of this, children growing up now will almost certainly be much more psychologically and emotionally healthy overall than preceding generations. For more on this inspiring trend, click here.

“A life ... out of moral bounds,” is how Pope Benedict XVI described Maciel in a 2010 interview, two years after Maciel’s death. A “wasted, twisted life.” And a life that exposed shocking flaws in the Vatican and the papacy. The saga of Father Maciel opens a rare view onto the flow of money in the Roman Curia across the last half century. In the late 1940s, Maciel began sexually plundering teenage seminarians in the religious order he founded, the Legion of Christ. He also shuttled between Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain ... portraying his Legionaries as a force of resurgent orthodoxy, himself a fearless foe of Communism. Maciel won government support for seminary scholarships in Madrid, after the Spanish Civil War cemented ties between Francisco Franco’s dictatorship and the Catholic hierarchy. Wealthy industrialists and patricians from the Spanish-speaking world poured money into Maciel’s fledgling order. Legionaries called their leader Nuestro Padre (Our Father). They were taught that their founder was a living saint. They took private vows, swearing never to criticize Maciel or their superiors and to report on anyone who did. The cultlike insular culture Maciel molded would reward spying as an act of faith and shield Nuestro Padre from scrutiny as the youngest victims grew up and left the order, returning to Mexico and years of grappling with his traumatic impact on their lives.

Note: Jason Berry is author of Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church.

Police failures over five decades allowed Jimmy Savile, one of Britain’s best-known television personalities, to escape investigation for a lifetime of sex offenses dating back to the early 1960s. [A] report detailed poor police procedures, missed opportunities and an unwillingness to pursue accusations against one of the country’s biggest celebrities, whose renown also inhibited victims from coming forward. According to Tuesday’s report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, which reviews police forces and policing in England and Wales and answers to Parliament, the police were first alerted to accusations of sex crimes by Mr. Savile in Cheshire in 1963. On that occasion, a male reported to a local police officer that Mr. Savile had raped him the day before, but was told to “forget about it” and “move on,” and no official crime report was made or investigation undertaken, the inspectorate’s report said. During Mr. Savile’s lifetime, the inspectorate found, the police recorded five accusations of criminal conduct and two further pieces of intelligence about his behavior; the earliest of these formal entries in the records dated from 1964. “We have not found evidence to suggest that any investigation was carried out as a result of that intelligence,” the document said. Since Mr. Savile’s death in 2011, more than 600 people have come forward with information about him, including 450 who have made specific accusations.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here.

In Rome, where 115 cardinals are gathering to elect a new pope, the conclave will include these luminaries: Cardinal Roger Mahony, former archbishop of Los Angeles, who in the 1980s plotted with an adviser to conceal child molesting priests from law enforcement. Cardinal Sean Brady, the leader of Ireland's church, who failed in the 1970s to follow up on incriminating evidence against a priest, who went on to become a notorious serial molester. Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the former head of the Belgian church, who once advised an adult victim of 13 years of childhood abuse against making "a lot of noise" about it because his molester, a bishop, was about to retire.The full list of cardinals who abetted the child abuse scandal that has dogged the church for more than a decade is longer. Under church law, no one can force these cardinals to forgo voting, but they should. It is impossible to overstate the breadth and depth of the child molestation scandal, or the damage done to both the children and the credibility of the church. In the U.S. alone, more than 16,000 victims have reported abuse. Similar scandals have roiled Australia, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium and Benedict XVI's own Germany, each revealing thousands more victims. The details in each country are as horrifying as they are familiar. Hundreds of priests abused and raped children. Reports of abuse were ignored. Victims were sometimes muzzled. Predator priests were shuffled off to other parishes to molest again. And the highest church leaders often fought to keep the details secret.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, including involvement of several Catholic Cardinals directly implicated in the sex abuse scandals, click here. To learn how child sex-abuse rings lead to top levels of leadership around the world, watch the powerful Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link.

Three priests and a former priest in Scotland have reported the most senior Catholic clergyman in Britain, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, to the Vatican over allegations of inappropriate behaviour stretching back 30 years. O'Brien, who is due to retire next month, has been an outspoken opponent of gay rights, condemning homosexuality as immoral, opposing gay adoption, and most recently arguing that same-sex marriages would be "harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of those involved". Last year he was named "bigot of the year" by the gay rights charity Stonewall. One of the complainants, it is understood, alleges that the cardinal developed an inappropriate relationship with him, resulting in a need for long-term psychological counselling. The revelation of the priests' complaints will be met with consternation in the Vatican. Allegations of sexual abuse by members of the church have dogged the papacy of Benedict XVI, who is to step down as pope at the end of this month. Following the announcement, rumours have swirled in Rome that Benedict's shock move may be connected to further scandals to come. Those involved believe the cardinal abused his position. "You have to understand," explains the ex-priest, "the relationship between a bishop and a priest. At your ordination, you take a vow to be obedient to him. "He's more than your boss, more than the CEO of your company. He has immense power over you. He controls every aspect of your life."

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse, click here.

After her Air Force training instructor raped Virginia Messick, a young recruit, he told her it was fun and they should do it again, she remembers. Then he threw her clothes at her and ordered her to take a shower. Ms. Messick was unable to move, cry or scream. She was a 19-year-old from rural Florida, in her fifth week of basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, and she had just been assaulted by the man the Air Force had entrusted with her life. After the April 2011 attack, Ms. Messick completed basic training, following orders from the instructor for nearly a month more. Afraid of the consequences, she did not tell anyone what he had done. “How am I supposed to go about reporting something,” asked Ms. Messick, “when the person I’m supposed to report to is the person who raped me?” Now, after leaving the Air Force, Ms. Messick is the first victim of a still-unfolding sexual assault scandal at Lackland to speak publicly about what she has endured. Since accounts of sexual violence at the base began to surface in late 2011, it has emerged as the largest such episode in Air Force history. Ms. Messick, now 21, is one of 62 trainees identified as victims of assault or other improper conduct by 32 training instructors between 2009 and 2012 at Lackland, a sprawling base outside San Antonio that serves as the Air Force’s basic training center for enlisted personnel. So far, seven Air Force instructors have been court-martialed, including Staff Sgt. Luis Walker, now serving a 20-year sentence for crimes involving 10 women, including Ms. Messick.

Note: To read a Reuters news report on the pervasive "invisible war" of rape in the U.S. military, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse, click here.

In a hotel in southern India, in the midst of a dreamless sleep, I awoke inside a nightmare. I heard someone screaming. I’m not sure how much time passed before I realized that it was my scream. I had traveled to India on behalf of a U.S.-based organization to film a documentary about political street theatre and how art is used as a tool for social change. But I found myself awake in this nightmare, with a man violently gripping my mouth shut, attempting to rape me. I was biting and kicking, using every ounce of my energy to fight for my life. I continued to scream and fight incessantly, until finally he relented. [He] said, “I’ll leave. Don’t tell the manager.” He counted on the fact that he lived in a culture that blamed the victim — that the stigma associated with sexual assault would force a woman to keep quiet. And although I had escaped the worst-case scenario, and prevented a rape, the nightmare was far from over. For several weeks, I tried to get a response from several American and Indian bureaucracies, but they all responded the same way: by doing nothing. Despite my formal complaints, in which I detailed the attack in full, these institutions offered no assistance – not even a single follow up call. I was devastated. I traveled to India on part of an American organization, and received no mental, physical or emotional support.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse, click here.

In 1995 a 13-year-old boy committed suicide having been told he could not have counselling in the long run-up to his abuser's trial. His mother said: "He was desperate to talk to someone. But social workers said there was no possibility of discussing the abuse before the trial. They did not want to contaminate the evidence." His abuser was later jailed for four years for offences against other boys. Nearly two decades on, we do not appear to have learned the lesson from his unnecessary death, with another victim killing herself. Frances Andrade was held back from therapy as she was forced to relive her abuse in constant pre-trial interviews over two years and was then brutally humiliated in court. Malign attacks in the 1990s on psychotherapists by those accused of abuse in an effort to discredit their adult children's stories have left a false impression. The purpose of therapy is to provide a container for patients' often unbearable feelings and help them to move on. It leads to a more not less coherent witnessing of the past. Perhaps that is why it arouses such hostility in those who are desperate to bury what happened – accused abusers and their defence teams.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse, click here.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Britain’s highest-ranking Catholic leader, says he is resigning as archbishop in the wake of misconduct allegations and will be skipping the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI. Experts said the decision not to attend the papal conclave is unprecedented; never before has a cardinal stayed away from a conclave because of personal scandal, according to Vatican historian Ambrogio Piazzoni, the vice prefect of the Vatican library. The Vatican confirmed that O’Brien had resigned as archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh. He said in a statement that he is in “indifferent health” and that he had offered his resignation last November. A church statement says the pope accepted O’Brien’s resignation on Feb. 18. O’Brien ... is contesting allegations ... that three priests and a former priest have filed complaints to the Vatican alleging that the cardinal acted inappropriately with them. During a briefing with reporters at the Vatican last week, Piazzoni was asked about the campaign to keep Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony away from the voting because he covered up sexual abuse by priests. Piazzoni said while in the past some cardinals have been impeded either by illness or by interference from their governments, none has stayed away because of a stain on his own reputation.

Note: If people at the top of the church are resigning, we can only imagine the earthquakes happening at lower levels. The dominos are falling. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on sexual abuse scandals, click here. To learn how child sex-abuse rings lead to top levels of leadership around the world, watch the powerful Discovery Channel documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" at this link.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.