Priest Plans Center to Heal Abuse Victims

NEW YORK NEWSDAY, May 27 —Father Gary Hayes of Cloverport, Ky., has responded with love to abuse of young people by clergymen: He's starting a live-in center for victims, where they can receive therapy and make “spiritual reconnections,” reported the Long Island daily.

Himself the target of abuse by two priests in high school, Father Hayes said he feels the devastation such molestation can cause, and he wants to help his fellow victims heal.

“We've got 14 treatment centers around the country for priests, but the bishops have set up nothing for survivors, which is astounding,” Father Hayes told the paper. “I'm trying to interest a number of therapists.”

Father Hayes aims to raise $500,000 to buy a 75-acre parcel of land with a 40,000-square-foot house and to pay for operating expenses.

A spokesman for Father Hayes' Diocese of Owensboro, Ky., said that Bishop John McRaith supports Father Hayes' project, agreeing that “[the victims] need spiritual care from the Church.”

Stealing From the Poor?

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 27 —Even as they note the benefits free trade will offer to African countries that export manufactured goods to America, the U.S. Congress and the White House are enacting other policies that will devastate African farms, reported the Los Angeles daily.

While Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill toured Africa with rock star/philanthropist Bono of the Irish band U2, observers worried about the impact of the $190 billion agriculture bill President Bush recently signed.

“This farm bill, I think it's fair to say, will put millions of small farmers out of business in Africa,” warned agriculture analyst Mark Ritchie. “They will have to move to cities and become part of unemployed labor pools.”

Ritchie feared that the large subsidies given to farmers in the United States would cause overproduction of corn, wheat, cotton and other staples, which represent up to half of the output of some African countries.

“Commodity prices will probably sink lower on a global basis,” said Neil Harl of Iowa State University. “For countries that do not subsidize their farmers as well as we do, that will mean economic and financial trauma.”

Homeless Men Used as Gladiators

BRITISH BROADCASTING CORP., May 25 —Two graduate school filmmakers in the United States have made money for their next cinematic project by plumbing new depths of so-called “reality TV”: encouraging homeless people to fist-fight, undertake dangerous stunts and humiliate themselves for gifts and food —on videotape.

The result is Bum Fights, which its 24-year-old creators, Las Vegas-based Ray Laticia and Ty Beeson, claim is a socially useful picture of homeless life.

The video has already sold more than 200,000 copies, bringing in revenues of more than $1 million. Its ads promise “drunk bums beating each other silly,” and the tapes deliver, according to the BBC, which reported that the hand-held video “shows homeless men fighting, sometimes resulting in serious injuries.”

Donald Whitehead of the U.S. National Coalition for the Homeless condemned the video: “It's clearly exploitative. It's clearly cruel. … People are being forced to do things under various conditions of substance abuse and mental illness … by people that clearly just are absolutely uncaring, unfeeling.”