Scandals

LeRoy Valentine: Decades After First Alleged Child Sex Abuse, St. Louis Priest Removed

Another day, another dispute with the St. Louis Archdiocese regarding allegations of child sex abuse. The case of Father LeRoy Valentine, however, involves a long and complicated history of accusations that span several decades and allegations of repeated inaction by those in charge. And victims' ad ... More >>

Parents Sue St. Louis Archdiocese, Father Bryan Kuchar Over Son's Alleged Rape, Suicide

A local couple is suing the St. Louis Archdiocese and Father Bryan Kuchar in a lawsuit alleging that their son was raped by the priest when he was a young boy and, once the "abuse finally overtook him," killed himself. "It has been almost four years since his death, and we struggle with the part t ... More >>

Pope Francis I: Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests Say He's Not One of "Dirty Dozen"

Yesterday afternoon, the chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in Rome billowed white smoke, and the new pope emerged on the balcony in white robes: Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires. His papal name will be Francis I. David Clohessy, the executive director of Survivors Network of T ... More >>

Mystikal, Famous Sex Offender / Rapper to Drop New Album in 2013 With Appearances By Rick Ross, Busta Rhymes, Lil Wayne

Mystikal has been getting a lot of attention for an interview he did with Rolling Stone recently. In said interview, he mentions that lately he's been listening to James Brown, Sam Cooke, Master P, Ludacris, and Eddie Murphy lately, and is in the midst of working on a new album (recent singles seem ... More >>

Photo ID Bill in Missouri? Controversial Proposal Sparks Voter Suppression Criticism

Should Missouri residents be required to show photo identification if they want to vote in elections? Yes indeed, says Representative Tony Dugger, a Republican from Hartville, who is pushing not one, but two different measures to try and create stricter requirements for voters in Missouri. The effo ... More >>

Band Mom is The Man: Five Musicians with Politician Parents

Sen. Daniel Inouye, who passed this week, was present for some of the 20th Century's pivotal events. Born in Hawaii in 1924, he witnessed the Pearl Harbor attack as a medical volunteer. He enlisted in the Army and fought in World War II; there he lost an arm and still stayed in the service until 194 ... More >>

David Clohessy and SNAP: Ten Years After Gaining Celebrity

Ten year's ago this month David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), was named one of the world's "25 Most Intriguing" by People magazine. Included in that 2002 class were actors and performers such as George Clooney and Britney Spears, world leaders the l ... More >>

Charles Manning: Ex-Priest Charged with Sexual Assault on Child, Back Living in St. Louis

A priest who served in four different Missouri parishes has just been formally charged with sexual abuse of a minor in a Colorado courtroom. The details of Charles Robert Manning's alleged crimes are under seal, but an investigation began after one 15-year-old boy complained that Manning was behavi ... More >>

Pulitzer Prizes Announced

The Pulitzer Prize committee has just announced its awards for 2012. No Missouri publication received an award or finalist citation. In the Local Reporting category, 24-year-old Sara Ganim of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, became one of the youngest prizewinners in history for her w ... More >>

SNAP Releases Transcript of Church Lawyers Grilling Director David Clohessy

​On January 2, David Clohessy -- director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) -- sat down with lawyers representing Catholic priests. It was not to chat over tea.The attorneys deposed Clohessy for over six hours as part of a lawsuit that a anonymous victim has brought agains ... More >>

Rick Ross

7 p.m. Sunday, February 19. The Ambassador, 9800 Halls Ferry Road.

Blagojevich Gets Fourteen Years

flickr.com/photos/jasonized​The saga of Rod Blagojevich, erstwhile governor of the great state of Illinois, contestant on Celebrity Apprentice, inadvertent comedy star and fan of Elvis, Rudyard Kipling and the Chicago Cubs, has come to an end, or at least a long hiatus. This afternoon, U.S. D ... More >>

Stealing from the rich to...oh, whatever. Funny is the message in Tower Heist.

Joseph Ross: Former St. Cronan's Priest Accused of Molesting Parishioner

bishopaccountability.orgJoseph Ross left St. Cronan's in 2002.​Updated 4:15 p.m. with comment from the Archdiocese of St. Louis. A lawsuit filed today paints a disturbing picture of abuse within a St. Louis Catholic Church. According to the complaint filed in St. Louis Circuit Court, Father Joseph ... More >>

Fake Air Marshals Reportedly Kicked Off St. Louis to D.C. Flight

​Update 10:45 a.m.: The Transportation Security Administration today released a statement saying there was no security threat on United flight 3681 last night and no fake federal air marshals. The flight returned to the gate at the pilot's discretion. Original story follows...We're taking this sto ... More >>

Lindsay Lohan's Billy Joel Tattoo: Five Other Lyrics She Could Have Used

Photo credit to... what's that? You figured it out already? ​Lindsay Lohan got a Billy Joel lyric tattooed on her rib cage, and frankly we can't believe it took this long. The gossip mill says that, "It represented where she is in life and everything she's been through ... it signifies that sh ... More >>

Rush Limbaugh and Ashton Kutcher have their defenders, the archdiocese does not

Milton "Skip" Ohlsen Pleads Not Guilty to Clayton Bombing

Milton "Skip" Ohlsen​The man authorities say set up a bomb that injured a Clayton attorney in 2008 pleaded "not guilty" to the crime today in federal court in St. Louis. Authorities believe Milton "Skip" Ohlsen left the bomb in a Clayton parking garage next to an Acura TL that he believed was owne ... More >>

Jason Berry: Author and Expert on Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal in St. Louis Tuesday

jasonberryauthor.com​Perhaps no other journalist in the world has devoted as much time or penned as many words covering the Catholic Church and its sex abuse scandals as Jason Berry. The New Orleans' journalist has written three books on the subject with his latest (released just last week) Render ... More >>

Archdiocese Not Liable For Pedophile Priest Robert Johnston

courtesy of SNAP MidwestRobert Johnston: not the archdiocese's fault that they hired a perv.​Score one for the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis. Because, as a legal ruling today makes clear, even if a Christian ethicist would hold the church accountable for allowing a predatory priest to run roug ... More >>

SNAP Blasts Report Blaming Priest Sex Abuse On 1960s Culture

The '60s made them do it!​The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has responded to the controversial study released yesterday exploring the cause of the sex abuse crisis inside the U.S. Catholic Church. Commissioned by the church, the 300-page study by researchers at John Jay Colle ... More >>

Donald McGuire: Abusive Priest Had Local Connection "Examining" Boy in St. Charles

Fr. Donald McGuire​A civil suit filed last week in Chicago captured headlines across the nation and brought up more allegations of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, including an incident occurring in Missouri in 1999. Eighty-year-old Father Donald McGuire, a popular camp director and former ... More >>

Mark McGwire Should Thank His Testicles For Giving Him the Balls to Admit to Steroids

Mark McGwire: Fortunately we won't be hearing courtroom testimony on what lies beneath this towel.​Have you been following Barry Bonds' perjury trial this week in San Francisco? It's been -- how can we put this? -- nuts. Seriously. On Monday prosecutors called Bonds ex-girlfriend, Kimberly Bell, t ... More >>

Former Post-Dispatch Editor Was Nat'l Enquirer Source for John Edwards Affair

We now know who's behind John Edwards' implosion.​For all of you scandal-mongers who followed John Edwards' affair and complete-and-utter fall from grace with baited breath, boy, have we got a doozy for you.It turns out the unnamed source close to Edwards' paramour Rielle Hunter who tipped off the ... More >>

Court Upholds $5 Million Sex Abuse Judgment Vs. Belleville Diocese

​An Illinois appellate court has upheld the ruling of a 2008 St. Clair County jury that awarded a man $5 million in a lawsuit versus the Belleville Diocese. The 2008 trial alleged that Rev. Raymond Kownacki sexually molested James Wisniewski of Champaign when Wisniewski served as an altar boy in t ... More >>

Bring it On! Missouri Cheerleaders Sue School for Taking Away Their Pom-Poms

​"Mean Girls" has come to Missouri. In a made-for-Hollywood subplot that would make Lindsay Lohan blush, two cheerleaders from a state championship team have filed a federal lawsuit against their southwestern Missouri school district, claiming their civil rights were violated after being boot ... More >>

Steve Tilley, Will Royster, John Rizzo and the Battle for the 40th District

Steve Tilley, incoming Speaker of the House​Reading the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch yesterday, we were stunned to learn that the new Speaker of the House, Steve Tilley, may decide to "refuse to seat a new representative from Kansas City" over allegations of voter fraud. That represen ... More >>

Ed Martin: Site Suggests He Knew About Pedophile Priests but Did Nothing

threaledmartin.com Click here to watch the site's video.​Heard about therealedmartin.com?It's a website that argues -- albeit indirectly, and with loads of documents -- that GOP congressional candidate Ed Martin, while employed at the Archdiocese of St. Louis, was in a position to have inti ... More >>

Clergy Sex Abuse Victim Didn't Know His Video Interview Involved Ed Martin

therealedmartin.com Click here to watch the site's video.So you've seen therealedmartin.com, the website implying that congressional candidate Ed Martin knew about "pedophile priests" being shuffled around from parish to parish, but failed to do anything about it. But how did this website com ... More >>

[UPDATE] Bro. William Mueller: Ordered to Pay $500,000 for Sexual Assault of Vianney Student in 1980s

Bro. William Mueller in a 1971 photo.​Updated 1:50 p.m. with court documents and detailed account of the sexual assault.A former teacher at Vianney High School, Brother William Mueller, has been ordered to pay one of his former students $500,000 in a case alleging sexual assault. According to the ... More >>

Blago Uncensored Ring Tones -- Now with F-Bombs!

Several weeks ago, an Illinois newspaper offered free Blagojevich ringtones so that online readers could enjoy Blago's "profanity-laced tirades" on incoming calls. We liked the idea. However, we didn't like that they'd bleeped out all the profanity from the "profanity-laced tirades." (We know dail ... More >>

Five Hollywood Heist Movies That Resemble Yesterday's ATM Solutions Robbery In St. Louis

Image source​Several local news outlets have already donned their deerstalker hats and done their best Sherlock Holmes impressions by connecting the robbery of ATM Solutions Inc. in Midtown yesterday with two other similar burglaries of armored cars in 1999 and 1992.In the heist yesterday, four ma ... More >>

St. Louis Female Priest Responds to Vatican Equating Women Reverends with Pedophiles

Photo: Jennifer SilverbergThe Revs. Elsie McGrath and Rose Marie Hudson​By now you've probably heard how the Vatican unveiled sweeping changes last week regarding its policies on sexual abuse and sexuality within the Catholic church. On one hand, the Church increased efforts to out priests accused ... More >>

The Moment We've All Been Waiting For: Blago to Testify at His Own Corruption Trial

Image source​Pull out the popcorn, folks. The best show in town gets underway in Springfield this week. "I will prove my innocence and I will testify," declared former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich last week as he left the courtroom that is the scene of his corruption trial. Blago has, si ... More >>

Whatever happened at Father Cooper's cabin in 1971, the archdiocese isn't responsible

Ken Burns' New Documentary Takes a Nuanced Look at Baseball's Steroid Era

Ken Burns: Someday Barry Bonds will be in the Hall of Fame.​Ken Burns, the nation's most prolific documentarian, has chosen for his next opus baseball's steroid era as a postscript to his 1994 landmark Baseball series. Entitled The Tenth Inning, a two-part, four-hour documentary that will a ... More >>

Blagojevich Trial, Radio Silence Start Tomorrow

Image source​It's been a grim week so far -- oil continues to spill out into the Gulf, the Israeli Army fought a Gaza aid flotilla and Al and Tipper Gore are separating -- and it's about to get grimmer. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who has been going to hilarious lengths to protes ... More >>

Archbishop of New York Faces Scrutiny for Handling of Sex Abuse Case in St. Louis

Archbishop Dolan​Timothy Dolan was a bishop in St. Louis in the early 2000s before being named archbishop of Milwaukee and from there moving on to serve as the current archbishop of New York. A year into his tenure in the Big Apple the archbishop has been generaly well-received, though questions p ... More >>

Mark McGwire Highway To be Renamed After Mark Twain

Great works of literature are immortal. Baseball records -- especially dubious ones -- are not. So it's fitting then that Missouri legislators yesterday approved a bill to rename a stretch of Interstate 70 after Missouri's America's most famous author, Mark Twain. ​

SNAP Protests SLU's Commencement Speaker; Vatican Rep Allegedly Called Sex Victim "Idiot"

Pietro Sambi, that's Italian for "Don't $&#@ with Me!"​The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is holding a demonstration right this very minute on the corner of Lindell and Grand, just outside Saint Louis University. The group is upset that SLU has invited the Vatican's U.S. A ... More >>

'Holy Goalie' Becomes New Springfield Bishop

Saving goals souls one at a time.​The Catholic Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, will soon welcome a new bishop to their flock. Pope Benedict XVI appointed Thomas J. Paprocki to the position yesterday.Paprocki is interesting for several reasons. Fist of all, he is an avid hockey fan and sometimes ... More >>

St. Louis Hairdresser Who Found New Moon Script in Dumpster is Selling Plunder on eBay

Courtesy of Albert WatkinsRay in Hollywood last fall for the New Moon premiere.​Remember Casey Ray? The luckiest Dumpster-diver ever? Her story just keeps on going. Sort of like the Twilight saga. Now she's auctioning off her autographed New Moon script on eBay. Bidding starts at $10,000. (For ... More >>

Rod Blagojevich on Celebrity Apprentice: Week Four

Image source​Friends, for four weeks now, we've been watching Rod Blagojevich together on Celebrity Apprentice. It hasn't always been great -- actually, since every episode is now two hours, most of it is actually pretty damned boring, especially the parts where the celebrities meet the recipi ... More >>

Hannah Montana gets upstaged by sea turtles in The Last Song

Rod Blagojevich on Celebrity Apprentice: Week Three

Image source​It's an incredible responsibility being governor of a major state. There's so much work to be done, so many photo ops to smile for, so many profane phone calls to be made, so many favors to be sold that it's a wonder the governor has time to sleep, let alone keep up with modern te ... More >>

Rod Blagojevich on Celebrity Apprentice: Week Two

Image source​Two important revelations about former governor Rod Blagojevich from last night's episode of Celebrity Apprentice:1. Blago is still innocent.2. Blago has a thing for balloons.In this week's task, Donald Trump told the two teams to set up storefronts pimping Kodak's exciting new produc ... More >>

Rod Blagojevich on Celebrity Apprentice: Week One

Image sourceIs this the face of a guilty man...or a business genius?​Some people who believe they are accused of heinous crimes decide to prove their innocence in court. Other people go on TV reality shows. So two days after Rod Blagojevich's lawyers requested that his court date be postponed from ... More >>

Lady Gaga Returning to St. Louis This Summer

Per a Livenation email this morning, Lady Gaga will be returning to St. Louis this summer, on July 17 at the Scottrade Center. Ticket info/prices is TBA. Gaga's January 7 show at the Fox was one of the hottest tickets in town -- and so should this one. Last week, the video for "Telephone" -- featuri ... More >>

In Which the Author is Forced to Defend Tony La Russa Against His Will

commons.wikimedia.org​Well, it was inevitable, I suppose. Finally, after years of little passive-aggressive asides and snarky jabs being tossed surreptitiously toward Tony La Russa, someone came out and said it straight up: La Russa doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame. Thom Loverro, of ESPN 98 ... More >>

Killer Queens