Damned Pervert Priests - and other assorted Holy Scumbags

[Fake Messiah]

Former Mormon missionary arrested in Pittsburgh, accused of sexually abusing minors

William James Purdy, 28, of West Valley, Utah, was indicted by a federal grand jury on July 16 on charges related to the exploitation of minors outside the United States.

Court documents say Purdy traveled to Tonga in 2017 for his mission with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While there, he allegedly sexually abused multiple underage boys, according to a media release from the Department of Justice. Purdy then returned to Tonga in late 2019 to teach at a school in Nuku'alofa.

Purdy is alleged to have groomed and sexually abused "numerous" male students over several years.

He allegedly provided gifts, including electronic devices and internet access, food, toys, and money, in exchange for performing sexual acts, authorities say. Purdy is also alleged to have recorded underage boys in his bathroom at his various Tonga apartments without their knowledge.

Purdy was arrested by Tonga police in October 2022, when an eight‑year‑old boy disclosed that Purdy sexually assaulted him during a tutoring sessions. When Purdy was released from jail, he allegedly continued to sexually abuse children. In March 2023, just before his scheduled trial, Purdy fled Tonga using an assumed identity and returned to Utah.

https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/...sex-abuse/

[Fake Messiah]

Pastor jailed for 'removing demons' sex attacks

A church pastor who sexually assaulted a female churchgoer under the pretence of "removing demons" from her body has been jailed for 10 years.

Walter Masocha, 61, groped the married woman at his home in Stirling, claiming he was a "gift from god".

Masocha founded his own church in Scotland in 2007 soon after moving from Zimbabwe.

He built Agape for All Nations Church into an international religious organisation with more than 2,000 members and appointed himself as archbishop.

One of his victims said most people in the church saw him as a father figure and referred to him as "Dad" or "Daddy".

The trial heard Masocha, an accountancy professor, had first targeted another of his victims, now aged 58, about 20 years ago at his home in Stirling.

She told the court how Masocha had ordered her to kiss his "holy lips" and attempted to justify putting his hand in her pants and groping her by claiming he was "removing demons" from her body.

A 39-year-old woman told how she was 20 when Masocha began sexually abusing her after she went to stay with his family.

She said Masocha repeatedly sexually assaulted her during that period by forcing her to touch him and slapping her on the bottom as she walked upstairs.

The woman said he later tried to rape her after taking her into his bedroom before managing to escape.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c206mp28exvo.amp

---

Mesa pastor accused of sexually abusing 16-year-old church member

A 61-year-old Mesa pastor was accused of molesting a 16-year-old member of the church who was meeting with him to help her grieve the recent loss of her brother.

The victim and her family were described in court documents as being friends with the pastor and his family. The victim and her mother had been “very involved” with Worship Life Center Church for several years, the document says.

Over the past year, the pastor made comments about the teenage victim’s body, documents say.

In early May, as the victim met with the pastor to grieve the loss of her brother, Jay touched her over her clothes, documents say. The contact escalated in subsequent meetings, documents say, with Jay asking her to share nude photos of herself with him.

The girl told police she felt disgusted, but she felt compelled to send the photos. She also said she was scared to tell her mother.

Jay, according to the court documents, asked the victim to “pinky promise” she would not tell anyone.

During a sermon on May 25, held on the birthday of “Pastor Stan,” days before he stepped down, Jay told members of his church he didn’t think he would “get to this point in life because of the life I’ve lived.”

In his sermon, Jay described himself as a three-time convicted felon.

Jay said during his sermon that he used to “smoke dope” and described being revived from a “concrete slab.”

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/loc...410250007/

[Fake Messiah]

A convicted priest is back at work. Child advocates want Pope Leo to act.

Carlo Alberto Capella served prison time for a child pornography conviction but was allowed to return to work at the Vatican, posing a test for Pope Leo XIV.

Capella, a 58-year-old Italian priest, was investigated by U.S. and Canadian authorities for almost two years for gathering and sharing child pornography while a senior diplomat at the Holy See’s embassy in Washington. In 2017, the U.S. State Department asked the Vatican to waive his diplomatic immunity, a request it denied. Instead, Capella was recalled to Rome, where he admitted to tracking down “repugnant” images and, in a rare Vatican criminal trial a year later, was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison.

In recent weeks, reports have emerged on Catholic blogs of his 2022 release and quiet return to work at the Holy See’s Secretariat of State. His restoration to the powerful department has outraged advocates for the survivors of abuse by Catholic clerics. They insist that even though he was never accused of sexual abuse, a convicted priest who consumed child pornography has no place in a prominent Vatican office.

As Pope Leo is confronted with demands to act, he becomes the fourth pontiff since the 1990s to face scrutiny, and potentially judgment, over how he handles the still-emerging cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics.

Pope John Paul II faced both contemporary and posthumous criticism for his handling of abuse cases. The issue dogged Benedict XVI even more, with a chorus of complaints seen as one of several factors contributing to his historic decision to retire. Pope Francis enacted reforms aimed at addressing the scandals, yet survivor groups routinely took him to task for failing to adopt a policy of zero tolerance including mandatory reporting to civil authorities.

Now, advocacy groups are looking to Leo to chart a different course, and even reverse Francis on the Capella case.

Capella’s attorney, Roberto Borgogno, said in an interview that his client was released a year early, in the first part of 2022, for “good behavior” and resumed work at the secretariat in January 2023. Pope Francis, Borgogno said, approved Capella’s return and had at least one direct post-release conversation with him about his contrition.

The renewed focus on Capella comes as Archbishop Guy de Kerimel of Toulouse, France, faces criticism for appointing a priest, convicted of raping a 16-year-old boy in 1993, to the senior post of archdiocesan chancellor, citing the moral imperative of forgiveness. Victims groups are now calling on Leo to intervene in both instances.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/202...d-vatican/

[Fake Messiah]

Mosque in Vienna paid escort girls with donations

Escort ladies instead of prayer. In a Diyanet mosque in Austria, an imam (Islamic cleric), religious officials and local staff are said to have embezzled donations for several years.

Specifically, they are said to have booked escort ladies and then had orgies with them, as the Turkish medium "Sözcü" reports.

The scandal goes back five years and has its roots in the federal capital Vienna. Even back then it was about alms and aid money, which was also used for parties with escort ladies.

A recent investigation reveals concrete allegations. Thus, the Diyanet mosques, that is, religious authorities of Turkey, collected Friday and holiday donations from citizens, but did not fully record them in the accounts.

In order to conceal the expenses, they are said to have been recorded as "residence permit costs, rents, expenses for imams".

But that's not all: inspectors who showed up for inspection and clarification wanted to bribe the accused. They are also said to have been offered entertainment events and excursions with donations to cover up the case.

The authorities in Austria are now reacting to the alleged scandal. An audit of ATIB's foreign financing is currently underway.

https://www.heute.at/s/moschee-in-wien-z...-120122629

[Fake Messiah]

How a Christian college ministry glorified and enabled a sex offender

Daniel Savala, a revered Pentecostal missionary, challenged his young followers to live for Jesus. In a 2023 confession, he revealed religion was just “a cover” to get them undressed.

In a video filmed by his lawyer, Savala described how, for decades, he gained the trust of college students who sought spiritual guidance to sexually exploit them. He would touch their penises and pressure them to touch his, all under the guise of bringing them closer to Jesus.

“He would say things like, ‘Hey, you know it’s OK to masturbate,’” said Joseph Cleveland, adding that Savala groomed and sexually abused him for a decade beginning in 2004, when he was 15. “‘Because we’re brothers, we can do it together.’”

The pastors who shepherded hundreds of high school and college students to Savala’s home were part of Chi Alpha, a Christian ministry that evangelizes on university campuses. The group is run by the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination.

Savala was deeply entrenched in Chi Alpha, hailed by many as a brilliant theologist. The reporting reveals that Assemblies of God leaders — all the way up to the denomination’s national superintendent — were warned repeatedly about Savala’s troubling history but did not cut off his influence. These failures allowed more children and young men to be abused, the reporting shows.

Ministry officials defended Savala in 2012 when was charged with sexually abusing boys as a youth minister in the 1990s. In the decade that followed, multiple whistleblowers tried to alert Assemblies of God that Chi Alpha was exposing students to a sex offender. Again and again, they were dismissed or ignored.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chr...rcna222816