Late Jesuit global leader didn’t stop known child molester from becoming priest – court documents

Pedro Arrupe is a candidate for sainthood, but an abuse victim’s lawsuit turned up evidence that he didn’t prevent child molester Donald Dickerson from being ordained after learning of allegations

Pedro Arrupe, the late, former worldwide leader of the Jesuit religious order and a candidate for Catholic sainthood, acknowledged in records produced as part of a New Orleans court case that he was warned about how one of the group’s aspiring priests had been accused of sexually molesting two minors and acknowledged making sexual advances on a third.

The man was ultimately ordained, and there is no indication in records in the court case in Louisiana state court that Arrupe – who coined the Jesuits’ slogan “men for others” – took steps to prevent him from becoming a priest. The man was later accused of molesting other minors he met through his ministry.

Continue reading...
Continue ReadingLate Jesuit global leader didn’t stop known child molester from becoming priest – court documents

Crest of a new wave: Cleethorpes is all set for a seaside revival

The resort is extending its bucket-and-spade appeal to a new generation with a raft of investment, a series of new festivals and some original offerings on the food and accommodation front

Cleethorpes Pier, circled by the local gull squad, looks at its picture-postcard best. Ahead of the lunch crowd making for Papa’s Fish & Chips restaurant, I’m taking a seat in the pier’s ballroom to hear seaside historian Kathryn Ferry talk about her latest book, Twentieth Century Seaside Architecture.

Ordering a pot of tea, I’m taken back to my student days. Back in the late 1990s, the ballroom hosted Pier 39, a sticky-floored nightclub where getting your heels wedged in the planks after too many vodkas was considered par for the course. Following a shift waitressing at a nearby fish restaurant, our girl gang would douse our hair in Charlie Red body spray to mask the fug of haddock before dancing the night away where the Humber estuary meets the North Sea.

Continue reading...
Continue ReadingCrest of a new wave: Cleethorpes is all set for a seaside revival

Apology for South Korean woman convicted of biting off tongue of alleged attacker 61 years ago

In 1965 Choi Mal-ja was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years, after she fought back as a man allegedly tried to sexually assault her

A woman who bit off part of a man’s tongue during an alleged sexual assault more than 60 years ago has received a formal apology from South Korean prosecutors, as they sought her acquittal during a retrial after decades of living as a convicted criminal.

Choi Mal-ja, now 80, was 18 when she bit the tongue of a 21-year-old man who she said was attempting to rape her in Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city.

Continue reading...
Continue ReadingApology for South Korean woman convicted of biting off tongue of alleged attacker 61 years ago

TV tonight: a film about the Southport attack and the riots that followed

A family whose daughter survived that devastating day tell their story. Plus, Jimmy McGovern’s difficult drama about abuse. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Channel 4
It’s been a year since a 17-year-old attacked a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport and murdered three young girls. It sparked riots across the nation, fuelled by extreme-right rhetoric and online misinformation. This documentary tells the experience of a family whose daughter survived the stabbing, who condemn the nature of the rioting. It also examines the bigger societal problems the riots exposed. Hollie Richardson

Continue reading...
Continue ReadingTV tonight: a film about the Southport attack and the riots that followed

I travelled the globe to document how humans became addicted to faking the natural world. Here’s what I found

In his new book, The Anthropocene Illusion, photographer Zed Nelson reflects on the surreal environments created as people destroy nature, yet crave connection to it

The Anthropocene is a new term used by scientists to describe our age. While scientific experts argue about the start date, many point to about 200 years ago, when the accelerated effects of human activity on the ecosphere were turbocharged by the Industrial Revolution. Our planet is said to have crossed into a new epoch: from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, the age of the human.

The strata of rock being created under our feet today will reveal the impact of human activity long after we are gone. Future geologists will find radioactive isotopes from nuclear-bomb tests, huge concentrations of plastics, the fallout from the burning of fossil fuels and vast deposits of cement used to build our cities. Meanwhile, a report by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the British Zoological Society shows an average decrease of 73% of wild animal populations on Earth over the past 50 years, as we push creatures and plants to extinction by removing their habitats.

Continue reading...
Continue ReadingI travelled the globe to document how humans became addicted to faking the natural world. Here’s what I found