“Catholic hospitals in Cameroon have been enlisted as partners in the CoSMo project and provide pornographic sex-education materials promoting contraception and condoms. The materials themselves are supplied by CARE and Georgetown University, organizations that CRS often partners with,” Hichborn said in presenting evidence about the involvement of the humanitarian arm of the USCCB in promoting contraceptives and abortion in Cameroon.
Zimbabwe
During the March 6 virtual conference, the American Life League’s Director of Communications, Rob Gasper, said that CRS led the implementation of the DREAMS project in the Southern African nation of Zimbabwe.
Through a project called Pathways, DREAMS was operationalized from 2018-2022, Gasper said, and added, “One of the prime goals of DREAMS is ‘Increasing Contraceptive Method Mix’, that is, encouraging the use of both condoms and long-acting contraceptives (IUDs, contraceptive implants, Depo-Provera), among adolescents and young girls in vulnerable populations.”
Based on the joint study findings, the American Life League said, “CRS’ implementing partners – organizations to which girls enrolled into DREAMS by CRS would be sent – were responsible for fulfilling the project requirements to promote and provide condoms and contraceptives.”
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“CRS’ own Chief of Party in Zimbabwe confirmed that these referrals were done with CRS’ direct knowledge and consent. A video conference on Pathways held by CRS also confirms this,” Gasper added.
He continued, “CRS’ Pathways partners Caritas Zimbabwe, JP Kapnek, Musasa, Salvation Army, and Africaid all promote contraception. Africaid even stated that CRS gave them access to 6th grade children where they handed out condoms, stating that CRS knew about the condoms and did not object.”
“CRS’ Pathways partner Childline Zimbabwe, in addition to promoting and providing contraception, also refers girls for abortion,” the Director of Communication of the American Life League said.
He added about programs in Zimbabwe, “CRS’s Pathways project directly collaborated with public outreach campaigns, such as Stop the Bus, that were explicitly designed to spread condoms.”
Lesotho
In his input during the March 6 virtual conference, Hichborn said that in Lesotho, the landlocked Kingdom encircled by South Africa, “CRS’ 4Children project included pornographic sex education and referred girls to contraception peddlers through the overarching DREAMS project.”
“The Go Girls! educational manual in use, a copy of which was provided to our local investigators, was identical to one we had earlier discovered online. It includes sexually explicit, not to say pornographic, content,” he added.
The LI President said, “Caritas and other DREAMS partners confirmed our concerns that girls were being sent to contraception peddlers such as Population Services International (PSI) during ‘community service days’ as an integral part of the project.”
“Through KB’s ‘Community Service Days,’ during which condoms were openly demonstrated and distributed, CRS was responsible for coordinating ‘linkages to services’ among the various DREAMS partners,” Hichborn said.
He added, “CRS remains actively involved as an ‘implementing partner’ in the successor project to DREAMS, which is called Karabo ea Bophelo (KB). One of KB’s primary goals, which we repeatedly confirmed in interviews and primary source materials, was to increase contraceptive prevalence among Lesotho youth. In other words, it is an anti-natal population control program.”
“In the course of meetings at KB headquarters that included CRS representatives, our investigator saw large boxes of condoms being unloaded from a van by KB staff, and a box of condoms in the bathroom, graphically illustrating the projects’ purpose,” he added.
During the March 6 virtual conference, Hichborn also observed that the joint-study had established that “a contraception-promoting curriculum called Stepping Stones, currently in use by KB in Lesotho, has previously been used by CRS in other countries.”
ACI Africa reached out to CRS for comment but did not receive a response.
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