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Alan J. Placa (born 1944 [1] ) is an American Catholic priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre employed by Giuliani Partners, a management consulting and security consulting business founded by high school friend Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City Mayor. [2] [3] [4]
Giuliani and Placa reportedly have been close friends since childhood. They attended Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School together in Brooklyn and were in opera club together. [5] Placa was best man at Giuliani's wedding to Regina Peruggi in 1968. He then presided over Giuliani's wedding to Donna Hanover in 1982. [6] He also assisted Giuliani in getting his marriage to Peruggi annulled so that he could marry Hanover. [7] He also baptized Giuliani's two children, Andrew and Caroline. [8]
In September 2002, only months after barred from the ministry due to sexual abuse allegations, he received special permission from the diocese to preside over the funeral of Giuliani's mother, Helen because of his closeness to the family. [9]
In May 1970, Placa was ordained as a priest for the Diocese of Rockville Centre. [10] [5]
After his ordination, Placa began serving as a parish priest in Glen Cove, and in 1974 was assigned to teach at St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary. [11]
In 1978, Placa left Pius to attend Hofstra University School of Law at the expense of the diocese as they were seeking an expert in social service law. [11]
In 1992, Placa was appointed by the church to a three-person panel which handled accusations of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the Diocese of Rockville Centre. He also served as a legal consultant for the church on sexual abuse cases. [12] Placa had admitted to consulting over 300 cases. [13] This activity was allowed after sex abuse allegations by Placa, had been given to Bishop's office in the Diocese of Rockville Centre as well as another office had received abuse reports about Alan Placa. [14]
In April 2002, Placa was placed on an administrative leave of absence by the Catholic Church following conflict of interest allegations. Several families of sexual abuse victims claimed that he had used his role as a spiritual adviser to gain information from victims to strengthen the diocese's legal position. [9] [15]
In June 2002, Placa was stripped of his right to function as a priest by the diocese after the Nassau County District Attorney's Office announced that Placa was under investigation for sexual abuse, specifically that he molested a teenage seminarian 25 years ago. Three other alleged victims subsequently came forward claiming Placa sexually abused them. [16] [9] [15] Subsequently, a grand jury published a report accusing him of misconduct in sexually molesting a teenager and for covering up molestation by other priests. [17] [18] No criminal charges were filed.
In August 2002, he was hired by Giuliani to work at his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners. [5] [9]
He was subsequently cleared by a church tribunal. The Tribunal was to last six weeks according to David Berberian. It lasted over two years with the church delaying, rescheduling, and moving the tribunal dates repeatedly. The decision date by the church was completed after Alan Placa's 65th birthday, enabling him to be "exonerated" and immediately retire, by permission of Bishop Murphy of the Rockville Centre Diocese. Accuser/complainant Richard Tollner has never changed his testimony.
In December 2009, the Vatican upheld the tribunal's decision. [1]
There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, nuns, Popes and other members of religious life. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
Seán Fortune was a Catholic priest from Ireland, and child molester, who allegedly used his position to gain access to his victims. He was accused of the rape and sexual molestation of 29 different boys. He committed suicide while awaiting trial.
The Diocese of Oakland is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in Northern California. The diocese comprises Alameda and Contra Costa Counties in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Cathedral of Christ the Light serves as the bishop's seat, replacing the Cathedral of Saint Francis de Sales which was demolished after the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church that comprises the territory of Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island in the U.S. state of New York, except for Fishers Island, which is part of Suffolk County but is included in the Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut. Founded in 1957, this diocese was created from territory that once belonged to the Diocese of Brooklyn.
William Francis Murphy is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island, New York, from 2001 to 2016 and as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston in Massachusetts from 1995 to 2001.
The Ferns Report (2005) was an official Irish government inquiry into the allegations of clerical sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns in County Wexford, Ireland.
Donald William Wuerl is an American prelate, a cardinal, of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., from 2006 to 2018. He was elevated by Pope John Paul II to serve as auxiliary bishop of Seattle (1986–1987), and bishop of Pittsburgh (1988–2006). He was named archbishop of Washington by Pope Benedict XVI and made a cardinal by him in 2010.
Michael Joseph Bransfield is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. Bransfield served as bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in West Virginia from 2005 to 2018.
This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.
Howard James Hubbard is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as bishop of the Diocese of Albany in New York from 1977 to 2014.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston sex abuse scandal was part of a series of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in the United States that revealed widespread crimes in the American Roman Catholic Church. In early 2002, TheBoston Globe published results of an investigation that led to the criminal prosecutions of five Roman Catholic priests and thrust the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy into the national spotlight. Another accused priest who was involved in the Spotlight scandal also pleaded guilty. The Globe's coverage encouraged other victims to come forward with allegations of abuse, resulting in numerous lawsuits and 249 criminal cases.
The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic diocese of Orange is an important chapter in the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States.
The sexual abuse scandal in the Chicago archdiocese in the late 20th and early 21st century is a major chapter in the series of Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States and Ireland.
The sexual abuse scandal in the Milwaukee Archdiocese is a series of sexual-abuse cases that occurred in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US.
There have been many lawsuits, criminal prosecutions, and scandals over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in the United States of America.
From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of sporadic, isolated reports. In Ireland, beginning in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over decades. Six reports by the former National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church established that six Irish priests had been convicted between 1975 and 2011. This has contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and to the decline in influence of the Catholic Church. Ireland held referendums to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion rights in 2018.
Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Canada are well documented dating back to the 1960s. The preponderance of criminal cases with Canadian Catholic dioceses named as defendants that have surfaced since the 1980s strongly indicate that these cases were far more widespread than previously believed. While recent media reports have centred on Newfoundland dioceses, there have been reported cases—tested in court with criminal convictions—in almost all Canadian provinces. Sexual assault is the act of an individual touching another individual sexually and/or committing sexual activities forcefully and/or without the other person's consent. The phrase Catholic sexual abuse cases refers to acts of sexual abuse, typically child sexual abuse, by members of authority in the Catholic church, such as priests. Such cases have been occurring sporadically since the 11th century in Catholic churches around the world. This article summarizes some of the most notable Catholic sexual abuse cases in Canadian provinces.
The parish transfers of abusive Catholic priests, also known as priest shuffling, is a pastoral practice that has greatly contributed to the aggravation of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases. Some bishops have been heavily criticized for moving offending priests from parish to parish, where they still had personal contact with children, rather than seeking to have them permanently returned to the lay state by laicization. The Church was widely criticized when it was discovered that some bishops knew about some of the alleged crimes committed, but reassigned the accused instead of seeking to have them permanently removed from the priesthood.
The Society of Jesus has had different episodes of Catholic sex abuse cases in various jurisdictions.
A grand jury investigation of Catholic Church sexual abuse in Pennsylvania lasted from 2016 to 2018, and investigated the history of clerical sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses.
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