D.C. priest on leave faces more charges of sex abuse

A Catholic friar who was convicted of inappropriately touching a teenage boy in the District of Columbia in 2007 has been arrested in Florida on charges of having a sexual relationship (it's actually called "RAPE") with a 14-year-old boy.

William C. Wert, 53, is being held in a Sarasota County jail on 10 counts of committing a sex offense against a child. He had been living in a retirement home for clergy in Venice, Fla. He went there after he was found guilty of assaulting a 14-year-old he had followed from a Metro station.

Last week, another 14-year-old boy and his father filed a complaint after the father found inappropriate messages from Wert on his son's cell phone, sheriff's deputies said.

Investigators found text messages and a motel room receipt connecting Wert to the boy.

Deputies said Wert engaged in sex with the boy several times between September 2010 and last month.

At the time of the D.C. incident, Wert oversaw Whitefriars Hall in Northeast Washington, where he trained young men to be priests.

A spokesman for Whitefriars Hall on Friday said Wert hadn't worked at the institution in four years and referred inquiries to the Chicago office of the Order of Carmelites. A message left at the headquarters was not returned.

According to D.C. court documents, on May 22, 2007, Wert followed a boy from the from the Brookland-CUA Metro station in Northeast Washington.

Wert began to talk to the boy, who was walking home from school. After he asked the boy his name, Wert asked, "Do you know somewhere we can hide?"

Police said he grabbed the boy's inner thigh, and the teenager yelled and hit Wert.

When police arrived, Wert claimed that the boy tried to rob him, but later admitted that he had was interested in the boy and apologized because there had been a mistake because he "misread" the teenager, documents said.

After a two-day trial, a D.C. judge found Wert guilty of simple assault. He was sentenced to 15 days in jail.

According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Wert moved into the retirement home for Order of Carmelites in 2008.

A retired priest who lived at the home told the newspaper that Wert never explained why he had been on leave from Washington, D.C. and had recently bought a new Ford Mustang that was parked out front.

On the Carmelite web site it says of Wert, "William Wert, O.Carm., is the new Prior of Whitefriars Hall, the Carmelite House of Formation in Washington, DC. Father Bill made his profession in the Order in 1980 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1986. In this position as the Director of Formation, he oversees all the levels of formation for the Carmelite students. He will continue in his role as coordinator for the Province’s vocation team. He follow Father Emmett Gavin, O.Carm., who now ministers in New Jersey as a canonist for the Archdiocese of Newark, and as an associate pastor at Saint Anastasia’s Parish in Teaneck."

In Jail where he belongs!

'If you tell, you go to hell'

"As Pope Benedict continues his visit to Britain, Channel 4 News north of England Nick Martin meets three clerical sex abuse victims who tell him their harrowing stories." Read More

**Update** It seems that channel 4 News decided to take down this story. I wonder why.........

Here's another link to the story.

But if you click it you'll see that the story has been removed. The video was very important and damaging to the Vatican. That is why it was removed.

Here's the text of the article at least:

"As Pope Benedict continues his visit to Britain, Channel 4 News north of England Nick Martin meets three clerical sex abuse victims who tell him their harrowing stories. Therese Albrecht looks me straight in the eyes and says: “I planned the whole thing; I was going to buy a gun, go see the priest who abused me, shoot him in the head and then kill myself – that’s how bad it got.”
She did not, because she feared she would go to hell for killing the priest.
Ms Albrecht is a straight talker. A former New York cop, she was abused at the age of eight by her parish priest.



”The priest who abused me controlled me through fear,” she said. ”There was a rhyme: ‘If you tell, you go to hell.’ It worked. I didn’t tell. Not for a long time.” Life’s work to protect children I am spending two days with three women who have made it their life’s work to prod and pester the Vatican. They want the Pope to do more to protect children who come into contact with priests intent on abusing them. 

And they are not satisfied with the Pope’s expressions of regret on the first day of a four-day state visit to the UK. “We have heard the apologies, now we want action,” said Barbara Blaine, the president and founder of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). 

”I was abused by my priest from the age of 13. My family looked up to him, the whole community looked up to him. It was horrendous, embarrassing but I was just a child and I didn’t understand what was happening,” she said. The pair have travelled from the US to be in Edinburgh for the papal visit. With them is Barbara Dorris, a retired gym teacher who was raped at the age of six by her parish priest.

“The priest told my mother to put me in my best dress and send me to church to help out,” she said.

”My mother was so proud that I had been chosen. I was a special chosen one. She didn’t know that he was raping me.”

SNAP says the way the Catholic church is dealing with emerging cases of child abuse at the hands of priests is inadequate and it is looking to the Pope for action. 



The Catholic church says there has been radical changes to the way they deal with this issue and that priests found guilty of abusing children should never have access to youngsters again. But SNAP wants to see a register formed so that priests who they say have been “credibly accused” of child abuse could be named and shamed so that parents can protect their children."