Category: Clergy Abuse Crisis

Yesterday, the Diocese of San Diego issued a press release, calling an “all hands on deck” meeting about child sexual abuse.

At the meeting, which is scheduled for Tuesday, August 13,

“All diocesan employees will hear about the steps the diocese is taking to protect children and young people, and on the moral and legal responsibilities shared by all of the diocese’s employees, not just mandated reporters, to report suspicions of child abuse,” said the news release.

Among the “education” employees will receive at the meeting and subsequent presentations:

One [presentation] will explore the church’s response to the sexual abuse crisis. Another will review the obligations of staff members who are mandated by law to report suspected abuse. And a third will underscore every employee’s mission to raise awareness of potential sex abuse and to act to prevent it even if they are not mandated reporters.

Of course, the whole clergy sex abuse cover-up thing happens in the bishop’s office. But I digress.

Out of all of the public relations spin in the article, it was this little nugget that caught my eye:

No priest of the San Diego diocese has been found to have sexually abused a minor since 2004, as determined by the Independent Review Board, said the report.

That’s interesting.

Let’s see. The monsignor who admitted to destroying evidence of child sex abuse was answering the sex abuse hotline in 2015.

A priest who sexually assaulted a 19-year-old and pled guilty was allowed back into a parish. You can read the graphic nature of the assault here.

But San Diego thought it was no big deal. They put him back into his former parish, and only removed him when advocacy groups got upset. Then, they hid him in Oklahoma City and told church officials there that the assault was “just a big misunderstanding” and that there were a bunch of people in the room when it happened. Lies.

Gee, if they were willing to lie about this, what else are they lying about? How about a bankruptcy? When the Diocese declared bankruptcy in 2007, according to the LA Times: 

Judge Louise De Carl Adler ordered the diocese to explain at a hearing next month why she should not throw out the bankruptcy filing. The diocese, she said, has been “lax, ineffective or indifferent” in its oversight of parishes.

“Some parishes are actively and deliberately hiding assets from the diocese or inappropriately designating donations as restricted to circumvent or evade the direction of the diocese and/or the court,” the judge wrote, citing the findings of a court-appointed financial expert who reviewed the diocese’s financial records.

In other words, believe nothing San Diego Bishop McElroy says. Remember, it’s not an employee or volunteer sex abuse crisis. It’s a clergy sex abuse and cover-up crisis. And the problem has its genesis in McElroy’s office.

Yesterday, six of California’s Catholic bishops announced an independent compensation program for survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

I wrote an extensive series on these programs a while back. While the some of the details are different, the facts about these programs remain the same:

This plan is not about helping survivors. This is about the church writing checks to keep its secrets.

The flow of information goes one way in the plan: in. Survivors give the plan administrators valuable data, including predator names, dates of crimes, evidence, photos, witnesses, names of other victims, locations, letters, etc. The plan administrators share that with the church.

The church shares nothing, except a check. They won’t say what they know about a cover-up. They won’t tell us who knew what and when. They won’t tell us what is in the secret personnel files. They won’t tell us how high the cover-up goes. They won’t tell us if anyone will be punished. They won’t verify if other victims have been contacted and helped (or silenced). In some cases, they won’t disclose if the accused is still in a parish. They won’t disclose documents to the survivor or the public. They won’t tell us if there are still crimes within the criminal statute of limitations.

Is this about protecting children or protecting themselves?

In other words, it’s business as usual.

The bishops have put this plan together to stop legislative reform

There is only one reason that these plans have been introduced (starting in New York and spreading to other states): to stop statute of limitation reform that would allow victims of child sexual abuse to use the civil justice system to expose their predator and the institution that covered up that abuse.

SOL reform has been rumbling around the halls of Sacramento for a while. California’s bishops think that they can 1) persuade legislators that reform isn’t necessary and 2) silence a large number of the victims in the more embarrassing cases.

Not all survivors are included

If the Catholic Bishops want to persuade legislators that they are doing the right thing, the first thing they should do is construct a plan that would include ALL of the victims in their dioceses.

But they don’t. Survivors who were abused by lay teachers (like me), volunteers, or religious order priests are not included.

Why have some bishops signed on and others have not?

I can understand why Stockton (the diocese that sought bankruptcy reorganization a few years ago) would exclude themselves. But where is San Francisco? Why are they standing aside in this process? San Francisco has also never released a list of credibly accused clerics.

How many secrets will be kept in this process?

No one will ever know.

What should you do if you were abused in one of these dioceses?

My knee-jerk reaction is always: RUN AWAY! My second, third, and fourth reaction are also: RUN AWAY. Huge strides have been made in SOL reform in the past few years, and now that Jerry Brown is out of office, I expect great changes in California, and soon.

BUT: I am not in every survivor’s shoes. I don’t know if a survivor is dying of cancer, has a tremendous financial need, or is too incapacitated for the legal process. There are a few survivors who may need to take advantage of this plan.

Always talk to a lawyer. You can get a referral from the National Crime Victims Bar Association here. The bishops say you don’t need one. That’s because they have an army of attorneys. They will also assign you one of their attorneys at the end of the process to help you sign away your civil rights.

Don’t you want to go into the process on equal footing? The church has not cared about survivors once in the past 60 years. Why would they suddenly become self-sacrificing now? Get a lawyer.

The entity who benefits most from these plans is the church. Paying a victim is far cheaper than paying a lawyer to defend the victim’s civil case.

Remember: no child is kept safer with an independent compensation plan.