Joseph Ratzinger, a.k.a. “The Pope” is charged with the following crimes:

1. Opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of AIDS
2. Promoting segregated education
3. Denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women
4. Opposing equal rights for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people
5. Failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.
6. Rehabilitating the holocaust denier bishop Richard Williamson and the appeaser of Hitler, the war-time Pope, Pius XII.

Reports of settlement overseen by bishop of Derry adds to abuse scandals surrounding Catholic churches in Europe

Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent

Thursday 18 March 2010 11.14 GMT

The Catholic church in Ireland was today embroiled in another child abuse scandal after allegations that a victim was paid to keep quiet in a deal overseen by the bishop of Derry.

Bishop Seamus Hegarty was named as a party in a confidential civil settlement after a woman claimed she was abused by a priest for more than a decade, according to a report in today's Belfast Telegraph. According to the newspaper, the claim was settled without admission of liability but with a payment of £12,000 to the alleged victim. The settlement between the archdiocese of Derry and the woman, who was eight when the abuse began, reportedly contained a confidentiality clause preventing her from discussing the case.

How paedophile priest was allowed to evade justice

Former priest Bill Carney was named as one of the worst cases in Dublin's Catholic diocese in the Murphy report into clerical abuse there. However, for the last 10 years he has been free to live quietly in Britain.

Newsnight's Olenka Frenkiel has investigated his case and tracked him down in the Canary Islands.

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Carney used to invite children to his house in Ayrfield to watch videos

All the children in Ayrfield, Dublin, knew fun-loving Father Bill Carney - not just the altar boys and those who met him through school, but members of the Scout troop he ran and the groups of local children he took swimming.

His door was always open, there was a ready supply of Coke in the fridge and in the 1980s he had the very latest thing to lure youngsters in - a video player.

Adults disapproved of his swearing and crazy driving, but the Catholic Church was still so trusted, no-one suspected the truth about him.

Bridie Dwyer still lives in Ayrfield. Above the fireplace, with other family photographs is a picture of her youngest child, Paul, on his first Communion day.

At the age of 13 Paul went with other boys to watch videos at Father Carney's house and to have a sleepover, Mrs Dwyer told me. But at 2am Paul unexpectedly returned home.

"Thought you were going for a sleepover?" she recalled asking him as he pushed past her. "Didn't want to stay," he replied and shut his door.

Carney is accused of raping Paul Dwyer when Paul was 13

"That's when he'd been raped," Mrs Dwyer told me, "but I didn't know".

What no-one, except Carney's bishop and the local police, knew was that the priest was a paedophile.

The Murphy report into the cover up by the Catholic Church and Irish state of clerical sex abuse was published in November 2009.

It described Carney as "a serial sexual abuser of children, male and female", saying that there had been complaints and suspicions "in respect of 32 named individuals" about him, adding that "there is evidence he abused many more children".

'Child in his bed'

Michael Wheeler, who as a boy was one of Carney's altar servers, said that following the report a strange but vivid memory from when he was young suddenly made sense.

He told me that when he was nine years old Carney was late for Mass one day, so, fearful that he might not turn up, he ran into the priest's house and called his name.

He wanted Carney in court so he could ask him why, why had Carney raped him? That never happened and the way things are going, the way the police and the clergy are handling it now I can't see it ever happening Bridie Dwyer, mother of Paul

"I heard a groan," he said, "and I saw in the bedroom, a boy, a little older than me, naked between the sheets.

"This boy sat up, stared groggily at me, and fell back into the bed. I was terrified and ran out. As a child I couldn't understand why he was there. Now I know."

We now know that complaints about Carney were diverted away from the Irish criminal justice system to Bishop James Kavanagh, a man described by the Murphy Report as someone with "a soft spot for Carney".

Kavanagh did what he could to protect Carney from the law to avoid scandal for the Church.

One conscientious policeman, praised in the Murphy Report, did investigate complaints and they came to court. But the press were kept away as Carney pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault and got probation.

Six families were paid compensation and Carney was soon back working, with access to children.

Paid to leave parish

In its 40 pages on Carney, the Murphy report said that his was one of the worst cases the commission investigated and that the Church's handling of his case was "nothing short of catastrophic".

"It was inept, self-serving and for the best part of 10 years displayed no obvious concern for the welfare of children," the report said.

Bishop James Kavanagh protected Carney from the law

In 1992, the Church convicted Carney internally, under Canon law, of child sexual abuse.

But this compulsive paedophile refused to leave the parish house. So the Church paid him £30,000 to go away.

He moved to Cheltenham and then to Scotland, where he has lived for the last 10 years running a family-friendly guest house in St Andrews.

Back in Dublin, it took Bridie's son Paul Dwyer 21 years to come forward, but in 2004 he told the police about his rape.

The police said they had received two other complaints like his and sent the file to the Irish director of public prosecutions (DPP), but the DPP said there was not enough evidence to prosecute.

"So the case stopped," his mother told me, "and, a couple of weeks later Paul committed suicide. He couldn't handle it any more.

"He wanted Carney in court so he could ask him why, why had Carney raped him? That never happened and the way things are going, the way the police and the clergy are handling it now I can't see it ever happening," she added.

No warnings given

That same year, in Scotland, Carney got married.

Newsnight has established that the Irish authorities knew his address but no-one, either from the Church or the Irish state, thought to warn his new wife about his past, or protect any children who might be at risk.

His refusal to acknowledge his paedophilia means the prognosis for a cure is bleak Psychiatric assessment of Carney in Murphy report The Murphy report

Nothing was done to prevent him leaving, as usual, for his winter holiday in the Canary Islands, a popular destination for families with children, and no-one warned the local police.

The Murphy report quotes a psychiatric assessment which says he suffers from a "psychopathic personality disorder".

"His refusal to acknowledge his paedophilia," it said, "means the prognosis for a cure is bleak".

Confronted over abuse

I tracked Carney down in the Canary Islands, first at a restaurant on the sea front and then to the flat where he was staying, to ask about the abuse.

He refused to comment on the Murphy report, saying he had not read it.

He claimed that when he pleaded guilty to child sex abuse in 1983 it was not because he was guilty, but because: "I was told if I plead guilty the press would be kept away."

When I asked "Why did you rape Paul Dwyer?" his response was: "Rape. I'd like to explain that. Put it into context."

Carney got married in Scotland in 2004

What kind of context, I asked, could excuse the rape of a child? But he did not answer.

And when I asked "Are you still abusing children?" his answer begged more questions.

"I haven't done that in 26 years and I have had no inclination," he said. But he refused to be drawn on whether that was admission that he had abused before.

Assistant Garda Commissioner John O'Mahoney has been assigned the task of investigating whether anyone should be prosecuted as a result of the revelations in the Murphy report.

These investigations, his office has said, are ongoing.

In Britain, the Home Office said that because Carney's two convictions for indecent assault pre-date the 2003 Sex Offender's Act and took place in Ireland he would not be on the Sex Offenders Register and would pass unseen through the new stricter vetting procedures for child protection.

Carney meanwhile remains free to disappear beneath the radar.

Watch Olenka Frenkiel's full report on Newsnight at 10.30pm on Tuesday, 9 March 2010 on BBC Two, then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.

The children's secretary wants an urgent decision on whether the law should be changed to close a loophole that allows children to be smacked by Sunday school teachers and private tutors

• Jessica Shepherd
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 January 2010 12.10 GMT
• Article history

Parents can still smack children legally, but should any teachers be allowed to? Photograph: Rex Features

The children's secretary, Ed Balls, has ordered an urgent inquiry into whether Sunday school teachers and private tutors should be allowed to smack their pupils.

A loophole in the law means that while teachers in state and private schools are banned from smacking children, their counterparts in faith schools are not.

Teachers who take pupils for fewer than 12.5 hours of lessons a week have the same status as someone who is standing in for a parent, and can therefore give a child a mild smack. They can plead the defence of "reasonable punishment".

Balls has demanded that the government's chief adviser on children's safety, Sir Roger Singleton, report to him within a week on whether the law should be changed.

The issue has been raised by Ann Cryer, a Labour MP, who wants the loophole closed.

In a letter to Singleton, Balls wrote that the government would like to "progress to a point where smacking is seen as unacceptable by the vast majority of parents, and is only used as a last resort, if at all".

But ministers would stop short of making smacking illegal because it would "criminalise decent parents who decide to administer a mild smack," he said.

Balls wrote: "We recognise that whilst it seems that fewer parents smack their children, most currently do not believe they should be banned from doing so by law. Our approach is to provide parents with support and guid ance to help them manage their children's behaviour more effectively.

"The defence of reasonable punishment may be available to those who teach in certain part-time educational and learning settings, for example religious instruction that children attend at the weekend. I am concerned to establish the key issues here and whether this is an area in which we need to consider a change, in the interests of strengthening safeguards for children."

But the schools minister, Vernon Coaker, said he feared a change in the law could create "unintended problems" such as stopping fathers from smacking children they care for, but for whom they do not have parental responsibility.

In his reply to Cryer in the House of Commons last week, Balls said: "The important point to make is that there is not one rule for a child in a madrassa and another for a child in any other circumstance.

"The use of physical punishment against any child is wrong; it is outside the law and is not fair to children.

"I do not think we should tolerate any use of physical punishment in any school or learning setting in which trusted adults are supposed to be looking after children, not abusing them."

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, said: "The government needs to legislate to protect children – not leave an opt-out simply because it fears some ethnic or religious backlash."

Two-year-old Brazilian boy found with metal sewing needles inside his body, including some in his lungs

• Associated Press
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 December 2009 18.18 GMT
• Article history

In this frame taken from a TV Globo video, a person points at a X-ray of a 2-year-old boy showing needles inside his body in a hospital in Ibotirama, northern Brazil. Photograph: AP

The stepfather of a two-year-old boy found with 42 needles in his body has confessed to jabbing them into him as part of a religious ritual, Brazilian police said today.

Roberto Carlos Magalhaes claimed that a woman who went into a trance commanded him to stick the needles into the boy's body, a police inspector, Helder Fernandes Santana, said. He said three people, including the stepfather and the woman, had been arrested.

Doctors found 42 needles in the boy, who was in stable condition in the city of Salvador after a 240-mile flight to a hospital in Barreiras with a special heart unit.