Russian Priest Sentenced to 14 years in Prison on Child Molestation Charges

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Editor:

Russia is SERIOUS about putting crank priests in the slam. Another priest got hard time for sticking his hand in the till. This is what bozo priests in the USA and Canada deserve (but rarely get).

BMD

A TASS correspondent reported that Priozersky City Court in Leningrad Oblast sentenced Priest Gleb Grozovsky to 14 years in a high-security penal colony for molesting children in camps organised by the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia and Greece. Announcing the court’s decision, Judge Lyudmila Yashgina said:

We find Gleb Grozovsky guilty and sentence him to 14 years in prison.

Grozovsky said:

I understand the sentence and I’ll file an appeal. This isn’t the end; you’ll see the situation change.

The prosecutor’s office asked the court to sentence the priest to 15 years in a high-security penal colony and deprive him of the right to engage in activities related to the upbringing of children. Grozovsky plead “not guilty” and rejected all charges as absurd.

According to investigators, in 2011, Grozovsky, who was a priest at the Ascension Cathedral in Tsarskoye Selo near St Petersburg, sexually abused an underage girl. In the summer of 2013, he conducted similar actions towards two girls at an Orthodox youth camp in Greece. After an investigation began, the priest fled abroad and authorities put him on the international wanted list. In 2016, Grozovsky was brought to St Petersburg from Israel. Earlier, sources in the Russian Orthodox Church said that the Church would decide on whether to defrock Grozovsky after the court announced its verdict.

17 January 2018

TASS

http://tass.com/society/985407

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It’s Time to Tell a Story (Part IX): The World, the Flesh, and Fr Herman (It’s Sad… but True. Read This and WEEP…)

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WARNING! SEXUAL MOLESTATION

I rarely saw Fr. John Marler. He was always in Kodiak, working on setting up the school. That’s one of my regrets. However, Fr Herman, our Spiritual Father, was coming to Kodiak, and to Spruce Island! He was coming to visit his monks and nuns… and the students! I was elated. Abbot Herman was so fun to be around and he was a holy man. My head, full of visions of clairvoyant elders and fools for Christ, immediately suspected him to be a walking Saint. He brought us to the True Faith. He guided us into the fullness of the Christian life and he connected us with the “Golden Chain of Sanctity”. He’d hold one’s hand in his and say, “My hands have touched the hands of a saint, and now you have touched them!” I was amazed. He knew St John Maximovich! He was in the great spiritual tradition of the Optina Elders. Most importantly, he was transmitting this grace to us. I venerated him as a living saint, and hung on his every word. What’s more, he made always made one feel so special.

One evening, behind the Meeting of Our Lord Chapel he conducted confessions. The chapel was too small to offer privacy. Out in the twilight by a tree, I poured my heart out to him in confession. Then, I told him my deepest desire. I was on fire for God. I wanted to become a monk! He brought me before an icon of the Theotokos and bade me offer this up to her. Another evening, a few of us boys were in the Abbot’s barabara spending time with Fr Herman. We prayed and he inspired us with words of wisdom. Then he singled me out and in his enigmatic way said, “This one. This one will be a saint”. Imagine hearing something like that from the Holy Elder! Of course, I did my best to be humble and forget about it. We went to Saint Michael’s Skete, Fr Herman and I, to visit the nuns. It was delightful. I got to go up into the tower with Fr Herman while he translated the lyrics of a modern Russian spiritual song into English.  I tried to help him. He had me scratch his back. I remember his back had pimples. I remember a nun coming up to get us for church.

Occasionally, we boys would get to go to town. Take a shower. Eat junk. The best part was Monk’s Rock café and bookstore. It was the coolest place. It was always bustling with activity, delightful after the isolation of Monk’s Lagoon. The back room had a loft at the time that was an illegal sleeping quarters (something about zoning and codes). We’d sleep there. One morning, I woke up to Fr Herman on top of me in the loft of Monk’s Rock. He was kissing me, repeatedly, on the lips and face in a romantic fervour, saying my name, Sammy, and what a sweet boy, and I love you…

18 June 2015

Caz and Little: Speaking the Unspoken

https://cazandlittle.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/its-time-to-tell-a-story-part-ix-the-world-the-flesh-and-fr-herman

Toronto Priest Exploited Position to Sexually Assault Women

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A disgraced Romanian Orthodox priest admitted to sexually assaulting 10 women, exploiting his position to victimise them in church, during confessions, and in other places. Ioan Pop, 56, used his holy position to fondle, kiss, and make unwanted sexual advances at women from April 1999 through September 2013. The assaults occurred whilst victims sought religious services such as confessions, weddings, and funerals. Pop also tried to confine, seduce, and spark an affair with a despondent woman in 1999. The court heard that he vowed to curse her and her family for generations if she exposed him. Pop pleaded guilty to seven sexual assault charges, but he also admitted the facts on three other allegations. The judge can then weigh those facts as an aggravating factor on sentencing, which could result in a more severe sentence. Crown attorney Jackie Garrity read out the disturbing facts to Justice Peter Hryn.

The Romanian women, whose identifies are under a publication ban, ranged in age from early 20s to mid-30s. Pop kissed one woman on the mouth whilst he was performing a memorial service for her grandmother in All Saints Romanian Orthodox Church in February 2009. Pop groped the breast and kissed the knee of another married woman during a confession in November or December 2011. Garrity said that he also told her what he’d do to her sexually “if he were her husband”, and then told her she was “his angel and that he wanted to spend days with her”.

The court heard that one victim emigrated to Canada with her husband and young child. Her husband became gravely ill. The devoted wife attended his hospital bed every day and in July ’99, she reached out to Pop to bless her dying spouse. Testimony stated that the woman and Pop were going to the hospital when they stopped off at a friend’s home “to pick up some religious robes”. Once inside, Pop propositioned the woman, who vehemently rejected him. He restrained her by his forceful hugs as she threatened to scream to escape. Garrity said, “Pop said, ‘No one would know as he was a priest and he could not tell anyone’”. The terrified, crying woman finally left with Pop. He threatened to curse her and her family “for generations to come” if she revealed the incident. Garrity said that the victim took “this threat very seriously” and never reported it until after the police first charged Pop in September 2013 after another woman complained he molested and licked her in church when she sought his help in a child custody matter. The ’99 victim and 12 others came forward after the 2013 victim’s complaint became public.

In another incident, Pop, now 56, visited a 24-year-old East York woman’s apartment home to bless it in July 2006. Garrity told Hryn, “Pop suddenly stopped the ritual, and began crying and talking to the victim about women who suffer breast cancer, describing the fact that many women do not survive this illness. Ultimately, he offered to bless the woman’s breasts. She was concerned that the priest had some kind of premonition that she herself may have breast cancer”. The victim agreed to the blessing. Garrity said that he “put his hand inside her top, making the sign of the cross of her bare nipples with holy water to purportedly bless her breasts”. He then “hugged her tightly for about 30 seconds … in what the victim perceived to be a sexual manner”.

Pop, who emigrated to Canada in 1999 with his wife and two children, started a religious community in East York and then built All Saints Romanian Orthodox Church at 545 Danforth Road in Scarborough, where he served from 2004 until 2013. A court order now bars him from practising as a priest. His prominent lawyer Joseph Neuberger said, “He was a very caring priest who contributed so much to the Romanian community, from fundraising to accommodating the poor and distressed families”. Neuberger said that Pop “went beyond the boundaries of permissible behaviour after his daughter’s tragic death a few years after he came to Canada”. Pop’s sentencing will be on 23 June.

6 May 2015

Sam Pazzano

Toronto (ON) Sun

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/05/06/priest-exploited-position-to-sexually-assault-women

23 January 2015. More Intel on the Abuse Situation in Alaska

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There’s more on the situation in Alaska where a konvertsy priest abused kids. Click here for more intel on this unfolding story. Cappy and Mel know what they’re about (they know much more than I do on the topic)… keep this link in mind, for they’ll keep this story updated. This is their special field; they do a better job of covering it than I could ever do. FYI… here’s the link for the original website on the abuse… check it periodically, its updated.

I know when to step back and let really-informed people speak… Cappy and Mel have taken tons o’ shit from the goodthinkers for having unearthed clerical abuse. A hat tip and a pass o’ the jug to both of ’em!

BMD