Police: Priest Solicited Murder Of Boy Accusing Him Of Sex Abuse

A Catholic priest, facing criminal charges and a lawsuit alleging that he sexually abused a teenage boy, is now charged with attempting to hire someone to kill the youth, authorities said Tuesday.

The Rev. John M. Fiala was in the Dallas County, Texas, jail on Tuesday, charged with one count of criminal solicitation to commit capital murder, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety and the jail's website. He also is charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. His bail totals $700,000.

Fiala, 52, of Dallas, was out on bond on other sexual assault charges involving the youth, now 18, when he allegedly attempted to negotiate the boy's murder, said Tom Rhodes, the teen's attorney.

He was arrested last week after he offered an undercover agent with the Texas Department of Public Safety $5,000 to kill the teen, according to department spokeswoman Lisa Block.

"This guy," Edwards County Sheriff Don Letsinger said, "is an evil man."

A call to Rex Gunter, the defense attorney listed in jail records for Fiala, was not immediately returned Tuesday.

The youth met Fiala in 2007, according to Rhodes. The attorney said the priest started "grooming him," buying him gifts including a computer and a car. In early 2008, when the boy was 16, under the guise of providing private catechism lessons, Fiala "gained access to him and began to sexually abuse him once or twice a month, including on church grounds," Rhodes said.

At the time, Fiala was administrator of Sacred Heart of Mary in Rocksprings, Texas, which is in Edwards County. The alleged abuse occurred in two counties -- Edwards and Howard -- and included the youth's rape at gunpoint, the attorney said.

Fiala allegedly threatened to kill the youth if he told anyone -- threats he repeated in daily text messages, Rhodes said, and Fiala also threatened to kill himself, telling the teen they would "go to heaven together."

The teen, after struggling with the abuse, told a school counselor, who notified authorities, Rhodes said. He filed suit in April against Fiala, as well as the archdioceses of San Antonio, Texas, and Omaha, Nebraska -- where Fiala was before Texas -- and Fiala's religious order, the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, the attorney said.

The suit claims that all three covered up Fiala's record of abuse. All three have denied doing so, according to the San Antonio, Texas, Express-News. When former San Antonio Archbishop Jose Gomez and the religious order learned of the police investigation into Fiala's relationship with the teen, he was removed from active ministry in October 2008, the newspaper reported.

In September, an Edwards County grand jury indicted Fiala on three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of aggravated sexual assault by threat, according to the Express-News. Fiala was arrested in Kansas by a fugitive task force and was extradited to Texas, where he posted bail on September 27, according to the newspaper. He then moved to Dallas County.

A grand jury in Howard County handed up an indictment last week on the two aggravated sexual assault charges, the Express-News said.

Meanwhile, "approximately a week ago, we got an anonymous phone call from someone saying, 'Look, I'm living in a building with this guy, and he's talking about killing this young man,' " Rhodes said. "Our response was, 'You need to call police.' "

Letsinger said he got a call November 11 from the neighbor. The man at first just told authorities they should "be looking at this guy," the sheriff said, but later said Fiala had offered him $5,000 to kill the teenager. The allegation surprised him, Letsinger said.

The Department of Public Safety and its Texas Ranger Division got involved, sending the undercover agent to speak with Fiala, Rhodes said. The conversation was caught on video and audiotape.

Rhodes said his client was relieved to hear of Fiala's arrest. He was attending college but had to withdraw and be spirited away somewhere safe because of the threats, he said.

"He's still very afraid, but he is hoping that this time Fiala will stay behind bars," Rhodes said.

A hearing on the lawsuit was held Monday, he said. The Omaha diocese had argued it should be sued in Nebraska rather than Texas. The judge rejected that argument, Rhodes said.

"I think he's cooked his goose now," Letsinger said of Fiala. "We know that pedophiles sometimes threaten their victims to keep them quiet. But this is kind of an older victim, and you wonder sometimes why they wouldn't come forward. ... I can see now the evil in this guy is pretty bad."

Mitchell To Police: God 'Delivered' Smart To Me

Salt Lake City, Utah (CNN) -- Brian David Mitchell told police Elizabeth Smart was "converted by the priority of God" and willingly stayed with him after she vanished from her bedroom in June 2002.

"The Lord God delivered her," he told police.

Jurors at Mitchell's federal watched police grill him on a two-hour video played Monday at Mitchell's federal kidnapping trial. On the video, Mitchell offered religious responses to questions posed by an FBI agent and a police detective from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Mitchell, his wife, Wanda Barzee, and Smart were taken into custody on March 12, 2003, as they left a Wal-Mart store in suburban Sandy, Utah. They were hitchhiking back from a winter trip to California and headed to a remote mountain campsite when passersby recognized Mitchell and called police.

Mitchell, 57, is charged with kidnapping and transporting a minor across state lines for sex. He could face life in prison if convicted. His lawyers are raising an insanity defense.

Smart, now 23, was composed and certain as she recounted her ordeal during three days of riveting testimony last week.

She said Mitchell snatched her from her bed at knifepoint and led her to a makeshift mountain camp, where he chained and degraded her as he repeatedly raped her, she said.

As the trial entered its second week, testimony focused on the final days of Smart's ordeal.

At times, Mitchell's voice was nearly inaudible on the tape of his police interrogation.

"Not to be too obvious about it, but we've been looking for Elizabeth Smart for some nine months, and she's with you," an unidentified investigator says as the taped interview begins. "And we'd like to know how that came about."

Mitchell, who responds to the name Immanuel, tells police God had led Smart to him: "She was converted by the spirit of God. If you read the book you will understand."

Asked whether his name in the secular world is Brian David Mitchell, Mitchell responds that the question is of no relevance: "I've forsaken the world. It is immaterial to ask me such a question."

He told investigators that the Lord told him Smart was 18. She was 14 when, she testified, Mitchell abducted her at knifepoint from the bed she shared with her sister and led her to a campsite high in the mountains.

Asked if he had sexual intercourse with Smart, Mitchell becomes evasive, saying the question is "too personal." Asked if he took her from her home, he responded, "The Lord God delivered her."

Investigators repeatedly tried to steer him back to the subject of Smart, and he repeatedly deflected their questions with religious speeches.

"So far I have no idea what you're talking about," said one investigator in a autorotation. "For the past nine months, this family has gone through hell."

He tells Mitchell hundreds of law enforcement officers spent hours looking for Smart and the family had thought she was dead.

"They expected to find a corpse," he said.

Mitchell continues with his religious talk, but never directly responds to investigators' questions.

The investigator takes a direct tack: "We've been talking to this girl and she's been saying some really terrible things about you, and I'm going to ask you some direct questions."

Investigator: "Did you take that girl from her house? Yes, or no?"

Mitchell: "I'm not going to answer that question."

Investigator: "We want to be able to go to Elizabeth's family. ... We want to be able to have an explanation for them. You have to feel sorry for them."

Mitchell: "I have great compassion and love for them, because they are the parents of my ... " -- voice trails off.

Investigator: "Oh, [expletive] You took her out of her house!"

The investigator accuses Mitchell of laying the groundwork for an insanity defense, and accuses him of being on a "pretty big power trip."

"I'm just obedient to what God told me to do," Mitchell responds.

"You understand these charges could potentially keep you behind bars for the rest of your life?" the investigator asks.

Mitchell responds, "It mattereth not ... prison or death, it mattereth not."

Mitchell accuses police of trying to get him to say something false, and an investigator notes, "This is getting a little too intense for you, isn't it? ... You keep retreating into your spiel and your diatribe."

"The core of the problem is you, and you are not a prophet and you are not a servant of Jesus Christ. You are Brian David Mitchell," the frustrated investigator states, "and you have done something awful."

The investigator raises his voice:

"If heaven's filled with people like you, I'd be more comfortable in hell! ... You are Brian David Mitchell, and you are a child molester. A criminal. You are a hypocrite and a fraud."

Mitchell repeatedly denies he raped Smart.

"I have only done what the Lord God almighty commanded me to do," he says. "You're asking me to speak about things which are sacred and holy and which I cannot talk about."

"I thought she was 18. And she willingly chose to be sealed," Mitchell says.

Mitchell begins to sing in the interrogation room, as he has at every court hearing since December 2004. An investigator joins him for a while.

As they begin to speak with him again, Mitchell screams, "Get thee behind me Satan!" several times.

"You are not a servant of the Lord. You have harmed a child," says an investigator once Mitchell quiets. "You need to evaluate your life."

"You don't have any power here. You don't speak for Jesus Christ," Mitchell is told. "Your name is Brian Mitchell, and you're attracted to young girls, and you're just a loser. ... You're not going down as a servant of God. You're going down as a child rapist. You're going down as the lowest of the low."

As Mitchell sits silently with his eyes closed, the investigator says: "I hate to tell you this, Brian, but the Rapture has not happened. You are still in this room. You cannot escape."

The investigators taunt him about Smart:

"She gave you up."

"She thinks that you are a child rapist."

"She finds you rather smelly, and disgusting."

Later, FBI agent George Dougherty interviewed Mitchell for several days, finally winning a major concession. "Did you then consummate your marriage to make it a true union?" he said he asked. "And he said 'Yes.'"

Earlier in the day, witnesses described seeing an odd trio -- later identified as Mitchell, Barzee and Smart -- walking the streets of Lakeside, California, in their flowing religious robes between late October 2002 and early March 2003.

Retired police officer Jill Olgivie recalled seeing them walking "like ducks in a row" and noticed the young girl seemed "out of place."

She told the jury that the man glared at her in a way "so intimidating, so encompassing it stopped me." She was shown a photograph of Mitchell in court, and identified him as the glaring man.

"And I looked at the girl," she said, "I looked at her eyes. Her eyes were blank. Just dead."

Mitchell bought three Greyhound bus tickets from Salt Lake City, Utah, to San Diego, California, for $177, according to testimony and stipulations between prosecutors and defense attorneys. The bus left Salt Lake City on October 7.

Smart testified last week that she accompanied Mitchell and Barzee to California after a police officer questioned them at the public library in Salt Lake City. The police officer, Jon Richey, testified last week that a caller who claimed the young woman wearing the veil had Elizabeth Smart's eyes, brought him to the library.

She wore a veil, and Mitchell refused to let the officer lift it, saying their religion prohibited anyone but the young woman's husband to see her face.

Afterwards, Smart testified, an additional veil shielded her eyes because, as Mitchell told her: "The world wasn't ready for that light in my eyes."

Adelia Harrington, a former employee, testified that she also noticed the three at the Lakeside branch of the San Diego public library on several occasions.

"Boy, this teenager has really done something to make her parents angry with her, and they're just staying right on top of her," she recalled thinking. She described them as "just not a happy group."

Mitchell took his two wives away from the San Diego area after he spent a week in jail for tossing a brick through a church window. Smart testified that she and Barzee grew weak from hunger as they awaited his return at their makeshift mountainside camp.

Prosecutors played a video of Mitchell's February 18, 2003, appearance in a San Diego courtroom.

On the video, the judge asks Mitchell where he is going to stay the night, and he replies he, his wife, and his daughter are staying with friends, and that he is a minister of the Lord. He pleads guilty to vandalizing church property and is sentenced to seven actual days in jail.

"That was the worst night and the worst week of my whole life," he tells the judge. "For the first time in 22 years, I got drunk that night. ... This week in jail has been like Jonah getting swallowed by the whale," he says, promising to turn his life around.

He had given authorities a false name, prosecutors said.

Smart testified that she convinced Mitchell to hitchhike back to Utah, saying God had suggested it in a revelation similar to those Mitchell claimed to receive.

Trevelin Colianni, a disabled Navy veteran, testified that he saw the hitchhikers at a Burger King in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The teenager "had kind of a grayish wig on and a scarf around it, sunglasses, and a look that I'll never forget. She was very frightened, very nervous," he told the jury.

The man had a hold on the young woman's wrist and led her around, he said. "She never looked like she moved on her own."

He said he told his wife, "something's not right" and called police. Colianni was asked what compelled him to call the police.

"The look in that little girl's face."

Today's Thought

When people ask me if I believe in God, I don't immediately answer, "No.".

Instead, I tell them, "I will when I finally have a reason to."

Six Die When Church Van Wrecks In New York

New York (CNN) -- Six people died Saturday when a church van overturned and rolled on Interstate 87 north of New York City, police said.

The incident occurred around 3 p.m. in the town of Woodbury in Orange County, said State Police Sgt. David Malone.

An undetermined number of people were taken to nearby hospitals with injuries, he said.

One of the first on scene, Second Assistant Fire Chief Pat Prozzillo told CNN affiliate YNN that the accident was caused by a blown tire and that "the van rolled approximately three to four times. About six to seven people were ejected," he said.

Good Samaritan Hospital received four female passengers, two of whom were in intensive care, said Deborah Marshall, a spokeswoman for the Suffern medical center.

The four most critically injured were taken via air to Westchester Medical Center, according to Prozzillo.

Malone said details on the accident were hazy.

Today's Thought

People call me crazy because I'm not looking to Heaven for hope and inspiration. I'm looking to the stars beyond it.

Children Abused, Killed As Witches In Nigeria

Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria (CNN) -- Just after midnight, the pastor seized a woman's forehead with his large hand and she fell screaming and writhing on the ground. "Fire! Fire! Fire!" shouted the worshippers, raising their hands in the air.

Pastor Celestine Effiong's congregants are being delivered from what they firmly believe to be witchcraft. And in the darkness of the city and the villages beyond, similar shouts and screams echo from makeshift church to makeshift church.

"I have been delivered from witches and wizards today!" exclaimed one exhausted-looking woman.

Pastors in southeast Nigeria claim illness and poverty are caused by witches who bring terrible misfortune to those around them. And those denounced as witches must be cleansed through deliverance or cast out.

As daylight breaks, and we travel out to the rural villages it becomes apparent the most vulnerable to this stigmatization of witchcraft are children.

A crowd gathered around two brothers and their sister. Tears streamed down their mother's face as she cast out her children from the family, accusing them of causing the premature deaths of two of their siblings with black magic.

"I am afraid. They are witches and they can kill me as well," she sobbed.

Taking his time to talk to the mother, Sam Ikpe-Itauma, an imposing man wearing a "Child's Rights & Rehabilitation Network" t-shirt, has come to try to rescue the three children.

"If we are not here there's a possibility of them being thrown into the river, buried alive or stabbed to death," Sam said.

He tries to persuade their mother and a crowd of villagers that the three children are not witches - but no one believes him. And so, putting the children in his white pick-up, he drives away to his orphanage and safety.

Sam runs Child's Rights & Rehabilitation Network, or CRARN -- an orphanage that supports nearly 200 children. All of them were accused of witchcraft and cast out by their families, often after being tortured. The orphanage provides security, healthcare, nutrition and counseling.

Godwin's story is typical. As he sat next to the quiet 5-year-old, Sam said that after Godwin's mother died, the church pastor told his family that "Godwin is responsible."

From his own investigation, questioning Godwin and talking with neighbors, Sam said that when a relative asked Godwin if he was a witch, "he said no and was beaten and made the confession that he actually killed the mother."

Sam said Godwin was locked up with his mother's corpse every night for three weeks with little food or water before a neighbor contacted Sam, who was able to rescue him.

Other children at his orphanage bear the scars of being beaten, attacked with boiling water, and cuts from machetes. But these children are the ones lucky to be alive.

"A child witch is said to be a witch when that child possessed with certain spiritual spells capable of making that child transform into cat, snake, vipers, insects, any other animal and that child is capable of wreaking havoc like killing of people, bringing diseases, misfortune into the family," Sam said.

"When a child is accused of being a witch -- that child is hated absolutely by everybody surrounding him so such children are sent out of the home... But unfortunately such children do not always live long. A lot of them, they're either killed, abandoned by the parents, tortured in the church or trafficked out of the city."

Sam doesn't believe in witchcraft and is trying to raise awareness in local communities now gripped by hysteria.

Belief in witchcraft is rooted in centuries of tradition, but it's only in the last 10 years, that it has become associated with child abuse, he said.

"It's a social crisis," he added. "Poverty propels this child witch phenomenon and poverty is a twin sister to ignorance.

"Most vulnerable children come from single parents, divorced parents, dysfunctional families."

But the orphanage has very little space for more children. Overstretched finances mean he can barely pay a skeleton staff of four people, as well as feed the children.

Instead, many children are left to roam the streets.

"My parents sent me out of the house -- said I'm a witch," said Samuel, a 15-year-old who has lived on the streets for five years after a local pastor blamed him for unexpected deaths in the family.

"I was beaten by the prophet in the church," he said in a quiet voice.

Samuel lives in an abandoned building with 10 other children accused of witchcraft. A local group, 'Stepping Stones Nigeria,' which is dedicated to helping street children, visits them.

"Religious leaders capitalize on the ignorance of some parents in the villages just to make some money off them," said Lucky Inyang, project coordinator for 'Stepping Stones Nigeria'.

"They can say your child is a witch and if you bring the child to the church we can deliver the child but eventually they don't deliver the children... The parents go back to the pastor and say, 'why is it you have not been able to deliver the child' and the pastor says 'Oh - this one has gone past deliverance - they've eaten too much flesh so you have to throw the child out.'"

And most pastors charge a fee for deliverance -- anywhere from $300 to $2,000.

One of the most notorious and influential pastors is Helen Ukpabio of Liberty Gospel Church. Her 1999 film, the widely distributed, "End of the Wicked" has been attacked by child rights groups for its depictions of Satan possessing children.

She had agreed to an interview but the meeting was continually postponed for two days.

But in her preaching at Liberty Gospel Church, she heralds success stories of how she has driven out demons through deliverance.

"Witches and wizards, they started getting afraid. I never gave them rest!" she shouted to a cheering congregation.

Some pastors believe education is a more powerful tool against witchcraft fears.

"One of the things that caused the parents to abandon the children is ignorance," explains another local pastor, Celestine Effiong.

The local government, however, accuses Sam Ikpe-Itauma and Lucky Inyang of using the children to run a scam.

"We insist that the name of Akwa Ibom state must not be smeared and the people of the world should not be deceived by certain NGOs who are claiming to be taking care of stigmatized children of Akwa Ibom," said Aniekan Umanah, the Information Commissioner of Nigeria's Akwa Ibom state.

"This is a ruse, they are making money for themselves."

Stories of NGOs rescuing children, say the government, are exaggerated. They argue instead, that a new Child Right's bill outlawing child stigmatization has largely ended the problem.

But despite some arrests, so far, the government acknowledges, there have been no prosecutions.

"There may be problems yes but it's been blown out of proportion and people are capitalizing, on what ordinarily may be a social problem, across the globe in painting Akwa Ibom state black -- that is the aspect we say no to. We will not allow the image of our state to be smeared."

Sam and other NGOs deny any improprieties, insist their finances are a matter of public record and plead with the government to support their cause.

"Relevant government agencies, working on security and protection of children must step up their efforts to make sure any child that is stigmatized must -- that parent, the churches, the law must be evoked to make sure such people face the law immediately, otherwise it must go on and on, on and on."

With the night comes the screams of more deliverances -- and more witches to be cast out.

Priest Accused Of Having 'Erotic Dungeon' Surrenders

A Polish-born priest accused of sexually abusing minors in his parochial residence in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has turned himself in, state officials said Saturday.

State security officials said Marcin Michal Strachanowski, 44, surrendered to authorities Friday night in the village of Realengo.

State Civil Police had issued a "preventative arrest" warrant against Strachanowski on Thursday. The priest is accused of handcuffing a minor in 2006 and forcing him to perform sexual acts at his home in the Divino Espirito Santo church in Rio de Janeiro's west zone, the officials said.

In a press statement, the Rio de Janeiro archdiocese said it has suspended Strachanowski from his duties and that in addition to the criminal inquiry, the church has called on a ecclesiastic tribunal to oversee a canonical trial.

"The archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro laments the incident, especially for the people involved, especially for the possible victims, and clarifies that the mentioned clergyman already finds himself suspended of his parochial functions," the statement said.

According to Brazil's Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, the priest could not be found Friday morning.

The newspaper reported that a 16-year old alleged victim told investigators that after being frequently raped by the priest, he was forced to remain silent and was threatened regularly.

Citing court statements, the newspaper reported that criminal Judge Alexandre Abrahao Dias Teixeira said police investigations revealed the profile of a man with a "compulsive attraction to having sex with adolescents" and that he had allegedly turned his parish residence into an "erotic dungeon" where he forced boys to have sex with him.