'70s musician faces new sex charges

(News Terupdate) - A musician who played in the 1970s pop music group KC & the Sunshine Band will be in court Friday to face an indictment on 16 sex charges involving "multiple male juveniles," an Ohio prosecutor said.

Richard Finch was arrested last month in Licking County, Ohio, after a 17-year-old boy said he had sexual contact with him. Investigators said they were looking into other possible victims.

A grand jury indictment this month charges Finch with 10 counts of sexual imposition. Assistant prosecutor Tracy Van Winkle said the charges involve having sex with someone when it is harmful to them.

Finch also faces three counts of compelling prostitution involving offering money to minors for sex, Van Winkle said. Two counts involve asking a minor to engage in sex, and one count is a charge of sexual contact with a minor, she said.

A teenager said he had sexual contact with Finch at Finch's house in Newark, Ohio, the Licking County Sheriff's Office said in a statement after the arrest.

During an interview with detectives, Finch "disclosed that he did in fact have sexual contact with the juvenile, along with multiple other male teenage juveniles as well ranging from ages 13 to 17," the office said.

A pretrial hearing will be held Friday. Finch is in the Licking County jail; no trial date has been set, she said.

A statement from Finch and his lawyer was posted on his website soon after his arrest: "They would like to remind everyone that these are just allegations and that Mr. Finch is presumed innocent."

A more recent posting asking fans to donate to his legal defense fund said Finch had to cancel his plans for "an impending tour" and "a catastrophic economic hardship has taken their place."

"Those revenue generating possibilities are now gone, and as of this time, Mr. Finch's attorneys are in the early stages of their investigation," it said.

Finch played bass and drums with KC & the Sunshine Band. The group is known for hits such as "That's the Way (I Like It)," "Get Down Tonight" and "I'm Your Boogie Man." He co-wrote many of the band's biggest hits with Harry Wayne "KC" Casey. He left the band in 1980.

Casey disputed that Finch co-founded the band, saying that he started it in 1973 and Finch joined a year later. However, singles from the band's first album, "Do It Good," were released in 1973 and feature Finch.

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Priest at his child abuse trial in Rome: 'I am not a monster'

Rome, Italy (News Terupdate) - A priest accused of child abuse denied the charges Tuesday in a high-profile trial taking place in the shadow of the Vatican.

"I am not a monster. I am innocent," the Rev. Ruggero Conti said in court.

Conti is accused of molesting seven young boys at the Nativita di Santa Maria Santissima parish in Rome. He faces charges of committing sexual violence and prostitution.

Two alleged victims told police that Conti masturbated them and forced them to perform oral sex on him in his home, where he often invited them to dinner and to watch movies, according to court documents.

Anti-abuse activists say Conti's superiors knew of allegations against him as early as 2006 but did not do enough to stop him.

Prosecutors say they will call Conti's bishop, Monsignor Gino Reali, to testify. Reali was interrogated by police as part of their investigation into Conti, the activists say.

Putting a bishop on the stand in Rome, the capital of deeply Catholic Italy, would be potentially explosive, particularly against the background of a European-wide scandal.

The Catholic Church has been rocked this year by allegations of child abuse by Catholic clergy in Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, following similar accusations in the United States in the past decade. A damning Irish government-backed report last year said the Dublin Archdiocese had systematically covered up the allegations.

Pope Benedict XVI met this month with a group of men in Malta who say they were abused. He prayed and cried with them.

He has repeatedly insisted the church will do everything in its power to prevent child abuse.

But the trial taking place on his doorstep may undercut such assurances, not least since the alleged abuse of boys took place well after the scandal came to light in the United States.

Conti, a former adviser to the mayor of Rome, was arrested in June 2008, more than a year after an anti-pedophilia organization says it brought accusations against him to Catholic Church officials.

Roberto Mirabile, the president of the organization, said his group was warned about Conti by another priest in the spring of 2007. The group, La Caramella Buona, met with the alleged victims and their families, Mirabile told reporters on Friday.

Mirabile himself went to top Vatican officials, including the man responsible for prosecuting alleged child abusers within the Catholic Church, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, he said.

Scicluna told the child-protection activist there was no Vatican record of complaints about Conti and advised him to go to the police with his concerns, Mirabile said.

Mirabile accused Scicluna of washing his hands of the matter.

Scicluna did not respond to CNN attempts to contact him about the case.

Caramella Buona officials did go to the police, who launched an investigation in November 2007.

Conti was arrested as he prepared to go to World Youth Day in Australia in June 2008. Police believe he continued abusing children until March 2008, Mirabile said.

Conti's superior, Bishop Reali, told police in December 2008 he knew of vague accusations against the priest two years before he was arrested but did not take action, according to court documents.

Nino Marazzita, a lawyer for La Caramella Buona, provided CNN with what he said were transcripts of the prosecutor's interrogation of the bishop.

"You know that there are so many 'rumors,' " Reali told investigators, according to the lawyer. "And I can't run after each one of them."

Conti accused La Caramella Buona of being ideologically opposed to him in his testimony Tuesday. The group denies it.

Reali did not respond to CNN attempts to contact him by phone and e-mail.

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Jury verdict hits Boy Scouts with $18.5 million in punitive damages

(News Terupdate) - An Oregon jury on Friday found the Boy Scouts of America liable for the sexual abuse of a 12-year-old boy more than 25 years ago, returning a verdict of $18.5 million in punitive damages.

The plaintiff, Kerry Lewis, now 38, allowed his name to be used publicly during the trial, according to his attorneys. He is among six men suing the Boy Scouts over allegations of sexual abuse.

Attorney Kelly Clark has said that when his clients were boys during the 1980s, the organization knew that at least one of them had been abused by former assistant Scoutmaster Timur Dykes. The 53-year-old convicted sex offender was released from prison in 2005 and paroled until 2013. He could not be reached on Friday.

Clark also alleged that though the scout leader was removed, he was allowed to stay on as a volunteer and the abuse continued. In 1983, Dykes told troop leaders he abused 17 scouts, according to plaintiff's attorneys.

During the six-week trial, Clark produced documents that he said were part of an archive of previously secret Boy Scout files that chronicled decades of abuse of boys.

Earlier this month, jurors in Portland awarded Lewis $1.4 million after finding that the organization was negligent in allowing a Scout leader who was a sex offender to have contact with him. Under Oregon law, 60 percent of a punitive damages award goes to the state's crime victims' fund.

The Boy Scouts of America did not immediately respond to CNN's requests for comment on Friday. However, lawyers for the organization have said it had not known about the scout leader's record.

Once the Scouts did learn about it, the organization acted immediately and cooperated with police, the lawyers have said.

The Boy Scouts have acknowledged the organization does have confidential files, but said they are made confidential in order to protect people who are ineligible to be scout leaders, but who may not have done anything illegal.

A scouts spokesman has said that, in recent years, the organization has taken extensive measures to keep abusers out.

In a written statement earlier this month, the Scouts said the organization intends to appeal the initial verdict.

"We are gravely disappointed with the verdict," it said. "We believe that the allegations made against our youth protection efforts are not valid."

It added, "We are saddened by what happened to the plaintiff. The actions of the man who committed these crimes do not represent the values and ideals of the Boy Scouts of America.

"The safety of the young people currently in the Scouting program has never been in question during these legal proceedings. The case focused on a discussion about what society and the BSA knew about child abuse approximately three decades ago.

"This is a long-standing societal issue that every youth-serving organization must address. Based on the standard of care of that time, the BSA believes it acted responsibly and that the evidence presented during the trial does not justify the verdict."

While holding the Boy Scouts of America 60 percent negligent, the jury said the Cascade Pacific Council -- which oversees Scouting activities in the region -- was 15 percent negligent and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 25 percent negligent.

The church has sponsored a number of Boy Scout troops, including the one to which the plaintiff belonged.

Steve English, a lawyer representing the church, has said the verdict has no impact on the church, since it settled the case out of court more than a year ago.

"The church absolutely condemns any kind of child abuse," he said. "Because of the way the law is set up in Oregon, we thought it made sense both to help the victim and also to get this behind the victim and us to settle this case."

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