Saturday, May 4, 2024

Covenant House Helps Youth in Need Overcome Homelessness

covenant house scandal

Officials in the Jamestown city clerk's office assured her that they would not have given a copy of Tim's birth certificate to anyone else. But last Tuesday, the New York Times was the first of several New York City newspapers to call the Warner household with news of the connection. The thought has infuriated his mother since she heard the preposterous news late last week. Chanting protesters also entered the church and lay down in the aisles, forcing Cardinal John J. O’Connor to interrupt his sermon as they were carried out. “The mentors are encouraged to take the kids home and treat them as their own children,” Kells said.

SHELTER RESIDENTS DEFEND COVENANT HOUSE PRIEST - The Washington Post - The Washington Post

SHELTER RESIDENTS DEFEND COVENANT HOUSE PRIEST - The Washington Post.

Posted: Fri, 09 Feb 1990 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Send Care and Support for Homeless Youth.

Father Bruce Ritter’s network of runaway shelters has made him a hero to millions, a beacon of hope on the nation’s most troubled streets. Father Bruce Ritter, the founder of the famous Covenant House shelter for teen-age runaways, said today he was stepping down temporarily amid a flurry of accusations that he had sex with some of the young men he tried to rescue. “Between our shelter and paying for bed space (elsewhere), we’re sheltering 55 to 60 a night, with dozens coming to our drop-in center and vans. That move, in turn, prompted the resignation of Donna Santarsiero, a director for a decade, who was Macchiarola’s lone supporter on the 18-member board. She insisted that he had offered “remedial actions that needed to be taken,” and blasted her fellow board members in an interview. He did acknowledge that it is too early to tell the effects of the latest allegations, which center on Covenant House’s finances rather than allegations about Ritter’s sexual behavior.

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But the strong-willed, intellectually brilliant and domineering priest eventually grew Covenant House into a charitable giant with 178 locations in the US, Canada, Mexico and Central America. When the Ritter scandal was first broken by The Post in 1989, priest sex-abuse stories were rare in the United States and unheard of in New York. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan praised Covenant House in his State of the Union address for their efforts in aiding homeless and runaway youth. In 1985, Ritter served on US Attorney General Edwin Meese's Commission on Pornography. It was a daylong celebration featuring notable alumni including Chicago Bulls All-Star guard Zach LaVine and football luminaries Wendell Tyler, Gaston Green, Zach Charbonnet and Laiatu Latu, who was recently selected No. 15 in the NFL draft by the Indianapolis Colts. A running game that was missing fullback Anthony Adkins (knee) did not produce many explosive plays except for one memorable touchdown.

covenant house scandal

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In exchange for sex, Ritter had paid him off with a nice apartment, a computer, a college scholarship and money to buy good clothes and restaurant dinners — an illegal use of nonprofit Covenant House’s funds. In 1990, Ritter was forced to resign from Covenant House after allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. It was one of the most widely publicized cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

covenant house scandal

His story differed from today’s church cases in that “the secular powers more than the archdiocese or the Franciscans protected him,” says Charles M. Sennott, the former Post reporter who at age 26 broke the story of the district attorney’s probe in December 1989. In 1968, Ritter had given a commencement speech at the College attacking American society for becoming grievously disconnected from the teachings of Jesus. Ritter had been praised by the students for his speech, but challenged that he ought to practice his preaching.

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Since Covenant House was shaken by allegations of sexual and financial impropriety four months ago, the charity has been cutting back some programs and reassessing its system of crisis shelters that serve 25,000 runaway and homeless young people across the country. As part of the FY 2023 Enacted Budget, Governor Hochul prioritized a statewide effort to address street homelessness and support New York's most vulnerable. Furthermore, the Governor increased funding by $2 million for Runaway and Homeless Youth Programs to support the expansion of crisis and transitional living beds for vulnerable youth. Many of those complaints resurfaced early this year, when Ritter laid plans for a 100-bed shelter in Hollywood. In a struggle with rival youth programs that was mediated by City Councilman Michael Woo, Covenant House agreed to start on a much smaller scale than it had initially planned. Nonetheless, Donahue said, it is sheltering at least 50 young people a night, in its own facility and elsewhere, and plans to open other facilities around the city over the next few years.

Former Covenant House employee in West Virginia charged with embezzlement - WOWK 13 News

Former Covenant House employee in West Virginia charged with embezzlement.

Posted: Thu, 07 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

UC had held investments of more than $3 billion in firms that owned plants, had employees or did business in South Africa. The university’s $169-billion investment portfolio includes funds for its retirement plan, endowment and working capital. No estimate was available for how much of that portfolio is invested in firms that do business with Israel. He received a film degree from Chapman University, where he specialized in directing, and is an alumni of the Television Academy Foundation internship program.

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Tim Warner's name was first mentioned in connection with the Father Ritter scandal in December, when news reports detailed the male prostitute's accusations against the Franciscan priest. The first reports identified him as Tim Warner, with no mention of the name being a pseudonym. The current scandal, with its allegations of homosexual behavior by Ritter, comes at a particularly bad time for the Catholic Church in New York. Last Sunday, in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, about 4,500 demonstrators protested the church’s policy on AIDS, saying it was an attack on gays. Covenant House’s problems first became public in December when Kevin Kite, a former prostitute, asserted that while part of the program, he had received special favors and money in exchange for having sex with Ritter, 63.

A Los Angeles native, Abarbanel began her career as a social worker in Santa Monica. She had no particular interest in rape victims, but in the early 1970s, she was asked to see a young woman who had been hospitalized after a suicide attempt. Less than a week earlier, it turned out, the young woman had been raped by a stranger on the beach. "Oftentimes they come in off the street thinking, 'I'm just trash that's been kicked to the curb' and no child should think that way," Downing said. "So being able to provide them with this lovely space where they can stand up a little taller, think a little better of themselves, it helps them move onto better places in their lives."

The church has paid out billions of dollars in settlements — including $60 million by the New York Archdiocese in the past two years, The Post reported this month. Prodded by Cotter, who warned the reporter, “I’ll kick your ass” if he got beat on the story, Sennott pursued the scoop. He learned from sources that the DA had put Kite into a “witness-aid program” for his protection. Morgenthau’s famed sex-case prosecutor, Linda Fairstein, gave him a tape recorder to catch Ritter discussing sex and money with him. The spring showcase concluded a whirlwind week for Toia, who withdrew from the transfer portal on Monday — later joking it was a “four-day vacation” — and attended the draft Thursday to support Latu alongside Foster and defensive coordinator Ikaika Malloe.

Other groups, however, have criticized this approach as blurring the line between professional and personal involvement. The 20-year-old prostitute approached Covenant House in New Orleans last February, seeking protection from the drug dealers and organized crime figures for whom he worked, Covenant House spokesman John Kells said. He was given the alias Tim Warner, and sent for protection to New York, where Ritter said he recognized someone who needed special help. Ritter has won praise from presidents and the Vatican for creating Covenant House and saving thousands of teen-agers from desperate lives on the street. Covenant House also launched an internal investigation, to be headed by a former New York City police commissioner, Robert J. McGuire. The Internal Revenue Service has said it can find no evidence that Ritter filed required annual reports on the trust.

For the next four decades, Covenant House grew, led by Sister Mary Rose McGeady (1990–2003), Sister Tricia Cruise (2003–2008), Kevin Ryan (2009–2023), and Bill Bedrossian (2023-Present), opening centers in 34 cities in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. The dying priest celebrated Mass every day alone in his chapel overlooking nothing but wooded hills and the clover field where he knew he would be buried. He worked in his garden, he wrote, and he visited with friends who had remained in touch despite his scandal-stained public life, 200 miles and one decade away. Church officials and the organization’s insiders ignored years of buzz about his relationships with boys and a mysterious, secret “safe-house” program for certain youths who were Ritter’s favorites.

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