Priest sex abuse: New report lists 212 Catholic priests in Oakland, San Jose, San Francisco dioceses accused of child sex abuse

• Matthias Gafni, Julia Prodis Sulek, John Woolfolk and David DeBolt
• PUBLISHED: October 23, 2018 at 10:02 am | UPDATED: October 24, 2018 at 9:36 am
• Categories:California News, Crime & Courts, Latest Headlines, Nation & World, News

Related Articles

• A priest, a sex addict, an exorcist
• The stories behind each of San Jose’s 15 accused priests
• San Jose diocese names 15 priests accused of abuse
• San Jose priest, registered sex offender, faces new molestation charges

---

As Bay Area Catholic leaders are increasingly under pressure to name priests accused of abusing children, a Minnesota law firm published a report Tuesday identifying 212 priests in the San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco dioceses accused of sexual misconduct involving kids.

The report names 135 accused offenders in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, 95 in the Oakland diocese and 33 in the San Jose diocese, though 51 names are duplicates because some of the priests worked in more than one Bay Area diocese. Earlier this month, the San Jose diocese released its own list of credibly accused priests that had only 15 names, which this report calls “deficient.”

Jeff Anderson & Associates, a law firm that has represented a number of Catholic priest abuse victims in California and elsewhere, compiled the 66-page report, which included the mugshots of priests, their parish work history and a short synopsis of their alleged abuse.

“The data reveals the scandalous scale of hundreds of priests assaulting thousands of minors from early history to the present in these Dioceses,” the report concludes. “The data collected suggests the patterns and practices of Church officials, including the orchestration of an institutional cover-up of an enormous magnitude.”

Related Articles

• A priest, a sex addict, an exorcist
• The stories behind each of San Jose’s 15 accused priests
• San Jose diocese names 15 priests accused of abuse
• San Jose priest, registered sex offender, faces new molestation charges

The law firm acknowledges that the “vast majority” of the claims against the priests named in the report have been settled or not fully evaluated in civil court. Therefore, they say “the allegations should be considered just allegations and should not be considered proved or substantiated in a court of law.” They further describe how they compiled the names from media reports, the priest abuse database on BishopAccountability.org, dioceses’ own public statements and other sources.

For example, the Oakland Diocese in 2004 released a list of 24 credibly accused priests, and an investigation by this news organization in 2008 reported that 64 priests who had served in the East Bay had been accused of sexual abuse, either while working within the Oakland Diocese or at another outside the area. The investigation noted if a priest was named in a lawsuit, internal church records or another one of the thousands of documents reviewed. All but one of those was included in the law firm’s list Tuesday.

One of the most egregious abusers on the list is Stephen Kiesle, a priest who was placed on three year’s probation in 1978 for molesting two boys at Our Lady of the Rosary in Union City and was later arrested and charged with molesting three girls at Santa Paula in Fremont in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was was allowed to continue serving in a number of Bay Area parishes and ministries until the mid-1980s before being defrocked in 1987. He was sentenced in 2004 to six years in prison for abusing a 15-year old girl.

New on the list is Milton Eggerling, a priest who was accused of sexually abusing a boy in Austin, Texas, from 1973 to 1978. Before leaving for Texas, Eggerling was at Corpus Christi in Piedmont. He returned to Oakland in 1980 and later worked at the San Jose Diocese and at St. Patrick’s Church in Rodeo. He died in 2008. Anthony Rodrigue of the Dominican order served at St. Albert’s Priory in Oakland but was not named as an abuser by the Oakland diocese in 2004 despite having been sentenced in 1998 to 10 years in prison for abusing youth in Southern California before he came to the East Bay.

At least eight priests’ only East Bay connection was attending or being stationed at the Jesuit Theology Seminary in Berkeley.

On the law firm’s list connected to the San Jose Diocese, some names that did not appear in the diocese’s own report last week were already well-known offenders who were not parish priests but had a connection to the San Jose area. For others, there appears to be either no connection to the San Jose diocese or a tenuous one.

The San Jose diocese released a statement Tuesday saying they are reviewing the names on the list and will comment Wednesday.

“It is heart-breaking to see the list of so many who have betrayed and abused innocent children in these horrific ways in the list released today by Anderson & Associates,” the statement said. “Diocese of San Jose remains resolute in our commitment to provide healing and reconciliation for the victims/survivors. This will allow us to begin the process of restoring trust that has been painfully eroded by those in positions of leadership and trust by being accountable and transparent for what has happened in the past within the Diocese of San Jose.”

The new report shows a list of priests accused locally and elsewhere over the decades ended up at two South Bay retirement homes — the MaryKnoll retirement house in Los Altos and the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos.

They include Jerold Lindner, spiritual adviser for a lay organization called Christian Family Movement, who was accused of molesting boys at a religious camp in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the 1970s. One case made headlines in 2016, when one of his accusers, Will Lynch, attacked Lindner at the Jesuit Center where he was living. A jury later acquitted Lynch of assault.

William Farrington, a Jesuit accused in 2012 of molesting a Bellarmine College Preparatory School student in the 1960s, also lived at the Jesuit Center. Farrington was disciplined by the Jesuit order and banned from working with minors, according to a Mercury News report at the time.

The late John Rodriguez Moniz, also from the Los Gatos retirement home, had been convicted of lewd conduct with a young girl for a 1991 incident while visiting St. Mary’s parish in Los Gatos, also reported by the Mercury News. At the MaryKnoll retirement center, James E. Avery plead guilty and was sentenced to prison for abusing a 10-year-old boy in 1978 in Philadelphia. He later recanted his confession, according to BishopAccountability.org and the Philadelphia Enquirer.

Two priests who had brief stints at the campus ministry program at Santa Clara University in the 1970s and 1980s also were accused of sex crimes while working out of state. James F. Kuntz pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography in 2008 while in New Jersey, according to published reports, and Edward Buenter was accused in a civil lawsuit of abusing four boys in the late 1960s.

In a statement, Santa Clara University said it supports “the release of the names and statuses of clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse.” It also said it would “cooperate with any lawful investigation.”

The Oakland diocese has vowed to release a list of priests credibly accused of child sex abuse, and the San Francisco archdiocese has hinted that it also is looking at doing a similar self-reporting. The Oakland report is expected late next month. It’s not clear what effect the law firm’s disclosure — or previous reporting — will have on Oakland’s report.

Oakland diocese spokeswoman Helen Osman said she could not comment on Tuesday’s report while it prepares its own list.

“We are actively reviewing files,” Osman said. “We don’t have a definitive date yet for the release, but I am anticipating immediately after Thanksgiving.”

In 2004, the San Francisco archdiocese named 56 abusive priests, significantly less than the 135 named in Tuesday’s report. Spokesman Mike Brown said the San Francisco Archdiocese plans to look “carefully” at the names released by the law firms.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has not yet decided if he’ll follow bishops in San Jose and Oakland, who are releasing names. Brown said the church is “going through our files,” and Cordileone is holding listening tours with parishioners. A decision could come “in the next month or even shorter,” Brown said.

At a San Francisco news conference Tuesday, Anderson spoke about the lawsuit filed earlier this month against every California diocese asking for the church to turn over their books.

“The bishops made a conscious choice to protect those offenders, but they also made a conscious choice to protect themselves and officials complicit in their crimes,” said Anderson, who earlier this month released a report naming 307 offenders in the Los Angeles diocese.

Patrick Wall, a former priest who works with the Minnesota law firm and helped compile the list, said the names were pulled from public sources.

“This is a secret sitting right in front of their eyes through open sources,” he said. “That’s what drives me nuts.”

The report comes in the wake of a scathing Pennsylvania grand jury report about abuse in several diocese there, as well as more and more law enforcement agencies across the country launching their own probes. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has a policy of not confirming whether his office has opened an investigation, but several Bay Area victim advocates said they met with senior staff from the AG’s office on Sept. 26 in the state building in Oakland.

“They told us that they didn’t have the same powers as the AG in (Pennsylvania), but they seemed concerned, and they asked us for additional information on a couple of topics,” said Melanie Sakoda, a member of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“They asked good questions and clearly were tuned into the situation,” SNAP official and priest abuse victim Dan McNevin said. “They shared that they had already been in touch with dozens of other states aboutut the status of those investigations.”

Six Children Dead In 'Severe' Virus Outbreak At NJ Facility

Six children are dead because of a severe and life-threatening virus outbreak at a NJ rehabilitation facility, according to the state.

By Tom Davis, Patch National Staff 

Six children are now dead because of a severe and life-threatening virus outbreak at a New Jersey facility that was reported this week, according to state health officials.

The state Department of Health says it is investigating a total of 18 adenovirus cases at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, Passaic County.

"Of these 18 cases, there have unfortunately been six deaths of pediatric residents," according to a statement from the Department of Health.The facility has been instructed not to admit any new patients until the outbreak ends and the Wanaque Center is in full compliance with medically appropriate standards, officials said.

A department team was at the facility Tuesday and an inspection team was also there Sunday. The team on Sunday found minor handwashing deficiencies and the Health Department is continuing to work closely with the facility on infection control issues, officials said.

This is an ongoing outbreak investigation.

Adenoviruses are tyicaly a family of viruses that often cause mild illness, particularly in young children. But this particular strain of adenovirus (#7) is affecting medically fragile children with severely compromised immune systems, according to Donna Leusner, a spokeswoman for the health department.

"The combination of a worse strain of adenovirus together with a fragile population has led to a more severe outbreak," she said.

Inspectors from the Department of Health were also at the facility on Monday. The department has been following the situation very closely and has been in close contact with clinical and administrative staff, providing guidance on infection control and cleaning procedures, Leusner said.

The Wanaque Center is a professional nursing home, rehabilitation center and pediatrics center which offers short and long term care in a secure and caring environment, according to its website.

Adenoviruses can cause a wide range of illnesses such as:

• Common cold
• Sore throat
• Bronchitis (a condition that occurs when the airways in the lungs become filled with mucus and may spasm, which causes a person to cough and have shortness of breath)
• Pneumonia (infection of the lungs)
• Diarrhea
• Pink eye (conjunctivitis)
• Fever
• Bladder inflammation or infection
• Inflammation of stomach and intestines
• Neurologic disease (conditions that affect the brain and spinal cord)

Adenoviruses can cause mild to severe illness, though serious illness is less common. People with weakened immune systems, or existing respiratory or cardiac disease, are at higher risk of developing severe illness from an adenovirus infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC photo

NCMEC - Search For Missing Children

DONATE

 
 
 

• ENSP

Active AMBER Alerts

Name	Missing From	Issued For	Alert Date
Jonathan Nunez-Coronado	Phoenix, AZ	AZ	Sep 1, 2018
Victor Nunez-Coronado	Phoenix, AZ	AZ	Sep 1, 2018
Jayme Closs	Barron, WI	WI	Oct 15, 2018

---

Notice: The The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children® certifies the posters on this site only if they contain the NCMEC logo and the 1-800-THE-LOST® (1-800-843-5678) number. All other posters are the responsibility of the agency whose logo appears on the poster.

Select an image to view the poster for one of these missing children.

If you have any information, please call:
1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST)

The stories behind each of San Jose’s 15 accused priests

John Woolfolk, Julia Prodis Sulek, Tatiana Sanchez and Matthias Gafni

Father Philip McCrillis, Rev Joseph Theodore Pritchard, and Arthur Harrison are on a list of 15 priests names released by San Jose Bishop Patrick McGrath on Thursday he said were found to have been credibly accused of abusing kids within the diocese.

These are the priests named Thursday by the Diocese of San Jose as credibly accused of abusing children during their time in the diocese.

Leonel Noia

While a pastor at the former St. Patrick parish in San Jose, Noia was arrested and convicted in 1976 after two boys reported he sexually abused them on a camping trip. When he got out of jail in 1978, he was transferred to three other San Jose parishes: St. Julie Billiart until 1982, St. Anthony until 1986 and Five Wounds, where he served for 16 years until 2002, when the church banned all priest child molesters from ministry. Each time Noia was introduced at a new parish, according to a newspaper account in 2004, either he or the pastor announced to the parish his past record. The same news account says he was accused of sexual misconduct with two boys while he was at St. Anthony’s parish in 1985, although the the family didn’t pursue compensation or a lawsuit and those accusations are not listed in the diocese account.

Robert Gray

While a priest at St. Justin parish in Santa Clara from 1991 to 1993, Gray was accused of sexually abusing three teenage boys he taught in a karate class, including at least one from St. Christopher parish. In 1993, in exchange for a no contest plea in one case, two other counts were dropped. Gray served 160 days in jail and received psychiatric treatment before returning to the diocese in 1995, when he was given a job as an administrator in the cemeteries department. He was still allowed to serve Mass weekly at different parishes and preside over weddings. He was permanently banned from ministry in 2002, in accordance with the Dallas Charter.

Related Articles

• San Jose diocese names 15 priests accused of abuse

Hernan Toro

Originally of the Archdiocese of Popayan in Colombia, Toro was accused of sexual misconduct with a child while at Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish in Alviso in 1983. He was convicted and registered as a sex offender in 1983, but that didn’t stop his work in the church. After his conviction, Toro went on to serve at St. Athanasius Parish in Mountain View; St. Catherine Parish in Morgan Hill; and St. Aloysius Parish in Palo Alto. He was sent to a detention ministry in 1988 and was permanently banned from the ministry two years later. Toro retired that year and now lives in San Leandro, according to the Diocese. The allegations against him had not previously been disclosed.

Laurent Largente

Father Laurent Largente is pictured in an article from the Friday, October 27, 1967 issue of The Spartan Daily, the San Jose State University newspaper. Largente is on a list of 15 priest names released by San Jose Bishop Patrick McGrath on Thursday he said were found to have been credibly accused of abusing kids within the diocese. 

Largente was removed from ministry in 1994, the same year the victim came forward recounting sexual molestation by Largente at St. Patrick Cathedral between 1980 and 1983. The case apparently wasn’t made public until this week. Largente was put on leave from St. Patrick’s in 1987, although the reason isn’t explained. He was transferred to Church of the Ascension in Saratoga later that year. Although he was “removed from ministry” in 1994, in accordance with the Dallas Charter, he was permanently banned from ministry in 2002.

Thomas Bettencourt

Bettencourt reportedly engaged in sexual misconduct with a child while serving at St. Justin Parish in Santa Clara in 1982. The diocese says the abuse was not reported until 1997, seven years after Bettencourt, the 48-year-old scion of two well-known San Jose families and a heavy smoker, died from respiratory failure. From 1974 to 1988 he served at parishes and Catholic schools from San Francisco to San Jose to Campbell to Los Gatos. In a 1981 article, a year before the abuse, Bettencourt told a reporter he found the most satisfaction in “restoring the faith of someone who has been driven from the church by the insensitivity of some other priest.” Bettencourt’s father, Anthony Bettencourt, owned a fountain at 17th Street and Santa Clara Avenue that became a popular hangout for San Jose families, and his mother Elizabeth was part of the Pasetta construction family. The allegations against Bettencourt had not previously been disclosed.

Joseph Pritchard

Pritchard, a priest from the 1950s through late 1980s, was accused of sexual abuse by at least 19 victims, at least 10 from St. Martin of Tours parish in San Jose and one from St. Nicholas in Los Altos. The cases weren’t made public until the early 2000s, when the St. Martin’s victims came forward. However, the father of one of the victims said that in 1977, he wrote a letter of complaint to church officials and was told that Pritchard was in therapy and would be transferred. Pritchard left St. Martin’s in 1978 and moved to St. Nicholas in Los Altos, where he served until the year of his death in 1988. The diocese’s list Thursday said it was not alerted to Pritchard’s abuse until lawsuits were filed in 2002 and 2003. However, a victim’s father mailed a letter in 1977 alerting church officials to the abuse of his son and other children by Pritchard. Over the years, the diocese has said the letter didn’t exist, but it later stipulated in court that the father sent the letter.
Attorney Rob Mezzetti, who represented about 10 of Pritchard’s victims, said “that list is wrong and they know it’s wrong.” Mezzetti said he deposed Bishop McGrath during the case.

Alexander Larkin

Father Alexander C. Larkin. This photo appeared in the Saratoga News, September 11, 1996. 

Larkin was removed as pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Saratoga in 2005 after the diocese was served with a lawsuit by two men who allege he molested them while they were altar boys at Our Lady of the Rosary in Palo Alto in the late 1970s. One of the men, known as “John Doe 31” in court filings, told the Mercury News in 2005 that Larkin was a trusted friend of the family who visited them three to four times a week. He escaped his abuse, he said, when he went off to college. At the same time he was filing his lawsuit, the diocese was contacting law enforcement and initiating an investigation into Larkin based on an anonymous letter posted on car windows at Sacred Heart. The letter writer described being abused as a teen by Larkin at St. William in Los Altos. Larkin was put on restrictive ministry duties in 2005 and was permanently banned in 2009. He still resides in San Jose, according to the diocese.

Don Flickinger

Don Flickinger is on a list of 15 priest names released by San Jose Bishop Patrick McGrath on Thursday. McGrath said the priests were found to have been credibly accused of abusing kids within the diocese. (Courtesy of KMPH/FOX26) 

The diocese found credible sexual misconduct allegations involving children against visiting priest Flickinger while he stayed at St. Frances Cabrini in San Jose and Sacred Heart Parish in Saratoga from the 1990s to the early 2000s. The diocese said they learned of the abuse in 2002, 2005 and 2006, the latter year Flickinger was permanently banned from the ministry.
Flickinger, who was a visiting priest from the Fresno diocese and allowed to stay in the South Bay rectories as he cared for his ailing mother, was sued by at least three individuals who alleged he molested them as children — two boys and a girl. At the Saratoga parish, Flickinger would hear confessions and prepare second-graders for their First Communions.

George Moss

Moss was accused of sexual misconduct with children while at St. Joseph Parish in Mountain View from 1963 to 1976, when it was part of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The allegations were reported in 2002, 2004 and 2012 to the Diocese of San Jose, established in 1981. Moss had retired in 1976 and died a decade later, the diocese said. The allegations had not previously been made public.

Noel Senevirante

Senevirante was accused of sexual misconduct with a child some time between 1971 and 1972 while at St. Leo the Great School in San Jose. The San Jose diocese associated him with a diocese in Sri Lanka but indicated he spent time in San Jose in 1970 at St. Martin of Tours, St. Leo the Great and St. Maria Goretti parishes. The abuse was reported in 2002 and the diocese said he was permanently banned from ministry that year and that he died in 2009. The allegations against Senevirante had not previously been disclosed.

Phil Sunseri

Sunseri was accused of sexual misconduct with children at St. Christopher Parish in 1986 and while at Holy Family Parish the following year. The abuse was reported in 1987 and 2018, and the diocese said Sunseri was permanently banned from ministry in 1988 but still living in San Jose. The allegations against Sunseri had not previously been disclosed.

Philip McCrillis

McCrillis was accused by two sisters of sexual misconduct during his time at St. Albert the Great Parish & St. Patrick Seminary between 1968-1969. The sisters said McCrillis became close to the family after their parents divorced and that he and their mother had an affair. When they were in junior high, they said he began molesting them. Parkinson’s disease forced him to retire in 2003. The sisters sued in 2004, won a settlement, and he was banned from ministry that year. Aside from several pastoral assignments, McCrillis also ran two restaurants and wrote poetry. But by the time he died in 2007, many parishioners still didn’t know about the accusations, and those that did were angered by the glowing obituaries and memorials he received upon his death.

Angel Mariano

Mariano was reported and convicted in 1998 of having sex with a 17-year-old boy that he met in an internet chat room. He was convicted of two felonies and spent five months in Santa Clara County Jail. Mariano was permanently banned from the ministry in 1998, the same year he left Most Holy Trinity Parish in San Jose. But according to parishioners, the diocese didn’t disclose the information to them, and many wondered why Mariano quietly left the church without notice. They didn’t find out about the charges against him until 2002, when his name came up in news reports in a list of priests accused of sexual abuse. After being forced out of the church, Mariano, like other priests, was taken to Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos.

Joseph Dondero

Dondero was accused of sexual misconduct with a child while at St. Joseph Parish in the 1960s, according to the diocese, which said the incident wasn’t reported to them until 2002. Dondero had several pastoral assignments throughout the South Bay and a stint at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in the 1950s. After leaving St. Thomas Cantebury Parish in Campbell in 1980, Dondero spent seven years at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos, where he died in 1997.

Arthur Harrison

Harrison was accused of sexually abusing children he met at St. Frances Cabrini parish in San Jose between 1974 and 1976, as well as at Our Lady of Loretto Parish in Novato in 1961. Although he was not her parish priest, one of the victims told this news organization that said she had been repeatedly molested in the 1970s at Harrison’s cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Harrison was listed as chaplain at San Quentin Prison at the time. The first victims didn’t come forward until 1988 — after Harrison had been serving for 10 years as priest at St. Elizabeth parish in Milpitas and had moved to Church of the Ascension in Saratoga. In 1989, Harrison was put on leave. He retired in 1992, was permanently banned from ministry in 2002, and died in 2005.

Ukraine’s largest telecom carrier helps police find missing children

By Denys Krasnikov.

A person receives an SMS from mobile operator Kyivstar in Kyiv on Oct. 18. In order to help police search for missing children, the carrier sends its subscribers text messages put together by the police that contain information about the missing child. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)

Photo by Kostyantyn Chernichkin

Officially, every day at least 10 kids go missing in Ukraine.

Longing to bring every one of them back to their parents, Ukraine’s largest mobile operator Kyivstar has been helping police search for those missing children with the help of its telecom resources.

Called Kid Search, the service provided by the carrier uses a technology that locates people within a particular area and contacts them to get evidence in case they turn out to be crucial witnesses.

It’s statistically important to look for missing children especially actively within the first day after they went missing, according to Ganna Zakharash, corporate communication director at Kyivstar. If ever found, 95 percent of missing children are located within this time span.

“Therefore it is important to report about the disappearance as soon as possible,” Zakharash told the Kyiv Post. “If we can help do that, then why not?”

She said the operator had been testing the service in Kyiv for half a year and then asked police if it helped them. It did, and so the service has been rolled out across Ukraine.

This is how it works: police contact the carrier, and as soon as Kyivstar knows where a missing child was seen for the last time, its technology allows locating all of its subscribers who were active — those who used the internet, made calls, or sent text messages — within the radius of 3 kilometers around the spot, over a particular time span.

As the carrier locates them and draws a list of phone numbers, it sends them text messages put together by the police and the child’s parents. Such a message has information about the missing kid: the location place where the child was last seen, distinguishing characteristics, and a link to a police operated website or Facebook page with several photos.

If people who receive the message know of anything, they dial a number mentioned in the message and provide evidence.

The whole cycle, from a parent talking to a police to sending out text messages, takes up to 25 hours, but Zakharash insists it depends on how fast the police can give the information and parents’ permission to Kyivstar. The police, in turn, inspire parents to contact them as soon as the parents realize something went wrong.

In order to make this service work, Kyivstar partnered with the National Police in 2017, and has been — together with the authorities — connecting Ukraine oblasts to its system ever since.

Only at the end of September, the carrier launched the service in three new oblasts (Rivne, Khmelnytskyi, and Sumy), now being present in 20 oblasts in total. Kyivstar plans to cover the whole country by 2019. This means its messages will be able to reach as much as 26 million people, the amount of Kyivstar subscribers.

Today 17 million people are on the database to be contacted if a child goes missing in the area next to them.

Every region connected to the service has a Facebook page as well, moderated by police. They post profiels of missing children and include links to them in Kyivstar text messages.

The operator stresses that it does not give out any information about its subscribers to any third parties. And that all the data collection is done by artificial intelligence.

Besides, such a service can work only for children as their parents can give permission to process their data on their behalf. Sending out information about an adult is thus restricted without the adult’s permission.

As soon as the kids are found, Kyivstar and police delete their profiles from their databases.
The service works by default for free, but can be canceled. Only 0.1 percent of users have ever asked for that, though.

Since the launch of the service, from summer of 2017 to summer of 2018, the carrier has sent out 87 text packs across Ukraine. By accident or not, all these missing children were found.

Zakharash, however, would not say that it’s so specifically because of Kyivstar’s text messages: “We are just providing police with another tool,” she said.

She continued after a short pause, “You know, just as we launched the service we thought, ‘If we can help find at least one child, then this is worth all the effort we made.”

The Kyiv Post’s technology coverage is sponsored by Ciklum and NIX Solutions. The content is independent of the donors.