The Worthy Adversary

Category: Clergy Abuse Crisis

  • Jesus would fire them

    Here’s a simple question:

    If you have a phone and know about evidence of child sex crimes, you call police, right?

    Doesn’t sound hard does it? Well, unless you’re one of Missouri’s two most influential Catholic bishops …

    Example one: “Just Say No to Reporting” Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn 

    Bishop Robert Finn: Call the cops? Nah. I might miss my tee time.
    Bishop Robert Finn: Call the cops? Nah. I might miss my tee time.

    In 2010, a Catholic school principal gave Finn’s second-in-command a single-spaced, three-page letter detailing all kinds of inappropriate behavior by Fr. Shawn Ratigan. You can read it here. Soon after, a church staffer found hundreds of photos of naked and partially naked girls—all taken by Fr. Ratigan.

    But it was almost a year before anyone on Finn’s payroll managed to get that evidence to police.

    The end result: in 2012, Finn became the first US bishop to ever be convicted for failing to report child sex abuse suspicions.

    Example two: “Make sure they don’t cash the check” St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson

    Robert Carlson: Damn! If only those pesky parents had just given me that check.
    Robert Carlson: Damn! If only those pesky parents had just given me that check.

    St. Louis priest Fr. Joseph Jiang has been charged with first degree child endangerment for repeatedly molested a girl as recently as last summer. Legal documents say Jiang admitted his crimes first to the girl’s parents and then to Archbishop Carlson. But in between, Jiang left a $20,000 check with the girl’s parents hoping, prosecutors say, to silence them.

    Did Carlson tell the police about the check? Nope. In fact, the girl’s mom says Carlson called her and “suggested” that she turn the check over to him, the archbishop. Carlson has now been accused of attempted tampering and has been subpoenaed in the criminal case.

    Kick them to the curb

    Why was it so impossible for these two men—Carlson and Finn—to do the right, simple and moral thing?

    They are smart men. They have top-notch lawyers. They’ve got expensive public relations teams. But apparently, they lack the ability to do the right thing. That’s criminal, hateful and lacking in any morality. They should be ashamed—and they should be removed.

    That’s what Jesus would do.

     

     

  • As SB131 heads to Assembly floor, LA Archdiocese spins and presses

    SB 131 – The California Child Victims’ Act – is scheduled for a floor vote in the Assembly soon. And the Archdiocese of LA is pulling out all of the stops.

    The Archdiocese, in its attempt to defeat the bill, has created a website that allows ordinary folks to send mass emails to legislators. They hope that low-information Catholics – those who aren’t following the issue and don’t understand the legislation – will just march lock-step with Archbishop Gomez.

    I would include the link, but I don’t want to send them traffic. Once you fill out the form, the website automatically generates emails to your particular legislators.

    Here is the text of the emails that the website generates (with my notes):

    I am your constituent and I respectfully urge you to vote “No” on SB-131.

    This legislation does not protect all victims of child sexual abuse. In fact, it offers no protection to the 92 percent of children who attend public schools or for children in foster care or in other public settings.

    The only way to be able to protect students in public schools would be to eliminate sovereign immunity, an entirely different issue. In addition, SB 131 is a “first step” bill. We will never be able to fight abuse in the hugely powerful public arena until we build public awareness. To defeat the powers that be who control public entities, we need to prove that the problem is huge. SB131 is the only way to do that. And to imply that public school victims are “jealous” is infantile. Exposing ANY perpetrator is a huge step towards exposing ALL perpetrators.

    This bill discriminates against Catholic schools and other private employers. It could lead to reductions in the educational and social services provided by the Church and other nonprofits.

    What they don’t say is that a majority of the funding for the church’s social services come from contracts with local governments – using tax dollars. Besides, if there is enough sexual abuse to cause a reduction in spending for social services, shouldn’t the church stop offering social services and fix the problem FIRST?

    Any legislation that seeks to deal with this grave problem should be applied to protect victims in all institutions in society — public and private— equally.

    See my above argument.

    Then the site allows you to add other “shortcomings.” Letter writers are, however, unable to change the subject line of the email.

    Want to learn what the bill is REALLY about? Read this or this.

    If the Archdiocese spent as much time and money releasing documents, punishing wrongdoers and helping victims as they do trying to fight this bill, we wouldn’t need SB131 in the first place.

    We can only wonder what else they are hiding.

    What can you do? Follow this link to write your legislators NOW and tell them you support SB131.

  • Final score: Business 2, Jesus 0

    Jesus has left the building.

    crystal-cathedral-interior-2
    Nope. No Jesus here. So quit asking.

    I have always thought that the Diocese of Orange’s purchase of the former Crystal Cathedral was a good business decision, but a horrible pastoral one. And the bad pastoral decisions keep coming.

    But first, a little background:

    No one except former Bishop Tod Brown wanted a new cathedral. There was no parishioner outcry for a new ediface, and construction on the “Christ our Savior Cathedral” land in Santa Ana was stalled for years due to lack of funding and interest by Orange County Catholics.

    But the bargain price of the Crystal Cathedral in 2012 was too tempting for Tod Brown to pass up—even though poor parishes just a few miles from the Crystal Cathedral were forced to hold bake sales to pay for basics like air conditioning.

    Previous score for the Diocese of Orange: Business 1, Jesus 0.

    Which leads me to yesterday’s column in the Orange County Register.

    The diocese is removing memorial stones on the Crystal Cathedral site’s “Walk of Faith” as a part of their remodel of the campus. Crystal Cathedral donors had paid up to $3000 for the stones to memorialize deceased loved ones, and now, donors are mad.

    Not terribly surprising.

    But what really surprised me was what came next in the article. I expected Bishop Kevin Vann to be quoted saying something. Anything. Maybe he would talk about how he understands the pain and suffering of the donors and wants them to help him figure out a solution. He could even invite them to a special blessing ceremony where they could re-dedicate some other kind of memorial. Heck, he could at least offer to pray for them.

    Nope.

    Bishop Vann said nothing. He left the response to the CEO of the Christ Cathedral Corporation (!), Fred C. Helms. Helms handled the situation in the secular, corporate way that one would expect from a former commercial banker:

    “The name of the person they donated to, and the obligation they received was from who?” he asked. “Yes, Robert Schuller. So we are, in essence, like a new homeowner.” Do we even have a legal responsibility to tell (purchasers) what we are doing? No, we don’t.”

    Ouch. I’m not seeing a whole lot of “What would Jesus do?” here.

    Final score: Business 2, Jesus 0

    If this is how Bishop Kevin Vann treats sad and angry people who just need a little pastoral outreach, how does he treat victims of abuse who come forward for help, love and pastoral support from their bishop? Oh wait, he and his fellow bishops are spending millions to deny victims legal rights.

    Silly me.

     

     

     

  • Second UN Committee Scrutinizes Vatican

    The UN Convention Against Torture has announced that it will be reviewing reports by the Holy See to determine if they are in compliance with the international treaty against torture.

    Other states being reviewed include Sierra Leone, Cyprus and Lithuania.

    While it’s a routine review—and only in the informational stages—victims and advocates hope that the review will publicly expose Vatican crimes.

    This latest news comes on the heels of a request of the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child, in which in the international organization asked the Vatican to account for every child sex accusation by clergy it has received and disclose all records of abuse and cover-up by church officials.

    While these actions are symbolic and have no “teeth”—in other words, no one is going to go to jail and the Vatican can simply “quit” the UN if it doesn’t want to play along—it’s reassuring to the victims’ community to see that international bodies DO recognize that there is a problem.

    Then hopefully, local civil authorities in the sovereign nations where these crimes are occurring will be brave enough to do something about it.

     

  • When your district is rife with crime, hold bad guys responsible

    Rep. Diane Harkey: Please take a look at the crimes and cover-up in YOUR district before voting no.
    Rep. Diane Harkey: Please take a look at cost of crimes in YOUR district before voting no.

    Yesterday, CA Assembly Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Diane Harkey voted no on important crime victims legislation—even though a similar 2003 bill exposed horrible abuse in her own district.

    I don’t believe it was a malicious act against victims, I just think she doesn’t know about the child sex crimes and cover-up that have thrived in the 73rd Assembly District.

    SB 131—the California Child Victims’ Act, a bill that gives crime victims the opportunity to use the civil courts to seek justice and accountability—has stalled in House Appropriations Committee.

    According to the Los Angeles Times:

    A key question for the committee is whether new lawsuits would strain an already overburdened court system. At the height of the clergy abuse scandal in 2002, the legislature signed off on a similar one-year window. Hundreds of people filed claims, many of them against the Catholic Church.

    Diane Harkey (R-Dana Point) was one of the no votes. She represents the district that is the home of St. Edward’s in Dana Point—home of some of the worst perpetrators in OC history. We wouldn’t know about the scope and scale of the crimes against her constituents were it not for for a similar, but broader, 2003 civil window bill.

    And since this was a vote in Appropriations, she should be weighing the “costs” to the court system against the millions of dollars in state-wide and district-specific social services that have already and are currently being spent to care for the victims in her district alone. Let wrong-doers pay for their crimes, not taxpayers. The costs to the courts are minimal in comparison.

    Let’s take a look at St. Edwards:

    Here are the known predators – It’s a “Who’s Who” of OC offenders.

    • John Lenihan (who, despite the arrest chronicled in this story, is a free man)
    • Denis Lyons (was finally sentenced when a younger victim came forward)
    • Gerald J. Plesetz (he got a 16-year-old Mater Dei student pregnant and signed the adoption papers in San Diego)
    • Michael Pecharich (he told parishioner there was just one “boundary violation.” We later learned that he and diocese officials were not quite telling the truth)
    • Henry Perez
    • Sigfried Widera

    Without the 2003 window, Michael Pecharich would still be in ministry, Denis Lyons would never have gone to jail, and we never would have learned the whole truth about Sigfried Widera, who was sent to OC after an arrest for “sexual perversion” in Milwaukee.

    I think that Ms. Harkey should know what has been going on in her district, don’t you? I think that the state of California would be saved a whole lot of money if wrong-doers are forced to do the right thing.

    What Can You Do?

    Fortunately, SB131 supporters have time to re-present to the committee. But in the meantime, what can YOU do?

    Write members of the House Appropriations Committee and let them know you support the bill.