The Worthy Adversary

Tag: catholic clergy sex abuse

  • Altarcations debuts at the Hollywood Fringe Festival

    “A bishop. A priest. A woman. A boy.”

    My friend Steve Julian‘s play Altarcations will debut in June at the 2012 Hollywood Fringe Festival. I met Steve (whom some of you may recognize as the morning host of KPCC‘s Morning Edition) after I “outed” one of his former high school teachers as an admitted perpetrator in the New York Times. When he told me about this play, I flipped (in a very good way). I’ve been lucky enough to see early drafts and talk to him about the progression of the play and the growth of the characters.

    It’s going to be an amazing production.

    Then I found out the play had been accepting into the Hollywood Fringe Festival. I flipped again.

    The play runs from June 8 to 14 24 at The Actors Circle Theater. Tickets are a VERY AFFORDABLE $10 to $15. You need to go. And then you need to tell your friends to go. You can buy tickets here.

    You can also donate to help offset the cost of the production through the Pasadena Arts Council EMERGE Fiscal Sponsorship Program. We all know that ticket sales alone do very little to help offset the costs of producing a play. An added plus: all donations are tax deductible. When you donate, you will sleep better at night and like yourself more, knowing that you contributed to the growth of live theater in Los Angeles.

     

  • **UPDATED**FIRST HAWAII LAWSUIT FILED** Gerald Funcheon: A missing priest appears ….

    The first lawsuit under Hawaii’s landmark civil window was filed yesterday in Hawaii Circuit Court.

    The lawsuit (posted here) charges that Fr. Gerald Funcheon sexually abused a 13-year-old boy at Damien Memorial School in 1983/1984 during an overnight retreat on the eastern shore of Oahu. Considering Funcheon’s history (you can read some of the documents here), we can only assume that there may be more victims in Hawaii who are suffering.

    Besides exposing predators and keeping kids safe, the beauty of the anti-crime civil window is that the responsible parties are forced to be accountable for the harm they did to child victims and take some of the financial burden for victims’ care off of state coffers and taxpayers. The civil window provides an opportunity put that burden back onto the abusers and enablers, where it belongs.

    Similar laws in California and Delaware have exposed hundreds of predators and helped law enforcement put child molesters behind bars.

    Funcheon has also been accused of sexual abuse by two former students at Salinas’ Palma School, Chris Spedden and Steven Cantrell. Cantrell, a Monterey-area doctor, wrote an open letter to Palma and the community about the importance of coming forward and reporting sexual abuse. Both Spedden and Cantrell came forward as a part of the Irish Christian Brothers’ bankruptcy. The Brothers run Damien and Palma, as well as other schools across the United States

    Spedden, Cantrell and the victim in Hawaii are heroes.  Were it not for them, Hawaii and California would never have known about the predator dumped in their schools.

     

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    Original post: March 15, 2012

    Every once in a while, the stars align.

    Last year, I was contacted by family members of a child sex abuse victim. They asked me if I had any information about a priest named Gerald Funcheon who worked at Damien Memorial High School in Honolulu. I had never heard of Funcheon, but a quick search showed that he had a nasty past.

    Not only was the Crosier priest banned from the Diocese of Indianapolis, but there were numerous sex abuse lawsuits against him from his time in the midwest. And then Funcheon vanishes: he disappeared from the Official Catholic Directory in the early 1980s. There is really only one reason why a living priest would vanish from the Official Directory. He was probably in hiding.

    I told the family that I couldn’t find any information about Funcheon in Hawaii, but to keep in touch.

    A few months later, the Irish Christian Brothers based out of New York declared bankruptcy because of more than 50 allegations of abuse at one of their Seattle schools and more than 250 allegations of abuse at Mt. Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland. They are the 10th Catholic diocese or religious order to seek bankruptcy protection due to sex abuse claims.

    When a religious order or diocese declares bankruptcy because of child sex abuse, the court will order a “bar date,” that is, a deadline for ALL victims to come forward and use the bankruptcy court to “out” their perpetrator and file a claim. This is a good thing and a bad thing.

    It’s good because it opens a window for victims who couldn’t come forward before because their statutes of limitations had run out. It allows potentially hundreds of victims to use the court system to get justice and do what they can to ensure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to another child.

    It’s bad because the window is only open for a very short period of time. After the deadline, many victims lose the ability to use the civil justice system forever.

    In the case of the Irish Christian Brothers, getting the word out is tough.  They run or ran dozens of schools across the United States. Many well known perpetrators (like Thomas Ford, who was convicted of beating abandoned children, and Robert Brouillette, who was convicted of child pornography after being arrested in a police sting for attempting to meet a child he had lured on the internet) worked in seven or eight of the schools. Many of the brothers sailed under the radar and were never listed in diocese directories.

    But yearbooks never lie.

    I decided to go to Honolulu (I know, it was a tough decision) and do a press event to garner attention about the bankruptcy. While many alumni at the school were scheduled to receive letters telling them that they may have rights, I knew that there was going to be no publicity about perpetrators that worked at the school.

    I got copies of the Damien yearbooks from the Honolulu public library (because of a super-dooper friend who shall remain nameless) and we started comparing faculty to known, admitted, or convicted predators. And guess who we found? Thomas Ford and Robert Brouillette (our two arrested and convicted Christian Brothers) and … Gerald Funcheon. He worked at the school for two years (1983-1985), right after he escaped allegations of abuse in Florida, Indiana and Minnesota.

    We got all three men in the news.

    But there’s more.

    Not only did we find Funcheon in the Damien yearbooks, but we also found him in Palma School yearbooks. Palma, which is a Catholic all-boys school in Salinas, CA, was where Funcheon was “dumped” in 1984 after parents in Hawaii complained that Funcheon was possibly molesting kids. Two victims from Funcheon’s time in Palma have now come forward.

    I kept in touch with the family in Hawaii. They now know that their son has legal rights. They also have photographic evidence that Funcheon worked at Damien.

    And the Irish Christian Brothers? I fear we will uncover a cover-up scandal where Irish Christian Brothers officials knowingly shuffled child predators from school to school and destroyed hundreds of children across the country.

     

     

  • I don’t think this is what Fr. Damien had in mind …

    Things are looking uglier and uglier for the Irish Christian Brothers at Damien Memorial High School in Honolulu. To date, we have found five known perpetrators who worked at the school, had direct access to students, and abused. There are the three we discovered in January:

    Fr. Gerald Funcheon, Br. Robert Brouillette, and Br. Thomas Ford,

    And the two latest additions, just discovered in the past week:

    Fr. Lawrence Spellen and Br. J.B. Lackie.

    Call me crazy for saying it: but it’s looking like Damien was a den of child sex abuse.

     

    Victims Rights

    Victims at Damien High School have until August 1, 2012 to seek justice and accountability from the Irish Christian Brothers. But there is good news: victims rights in the Hawaii have expanded dramatically—but only for two years.

    A new law in the State of Hawaii has given these victims and other victims of child sexual abuse new rights in the courts. Last month, Governor Neil Abercrombie signed Act 068 into law. It temporarily lifts the civil statute of limitations and gives victims of childhood sexual abuse a two-year “window” to come forward and use the civil courts to seek justice and expose predators, no matter how long ago the victim was abused.

    Similar laws in Delaware and California exposed hundreds of predators and helped law enforcement put child molesters behind bars.

    The new law gives rights to almost all victims, not just those at Damien Memorial. If you live in Hawaii or know victims who were abused there, pass the word. The biggest tragedy is when a victim learns about the law … after it has already expired.

  • More Trouble for Stockton: Oliver O’Grady Re-emerges

    

    Oliver O’Grady is like a cockroach: He will never, never, ever go away.

    A new Oliver O’Grady victim has come forward and filed a lawsuit against the notorious predator and the Diocese of Stockton. SNAP will have a press conference tomorrow to release details. On the heels of the Michael Kelly verdict, this is very, very disturbing news. I have yet to see any kind of apology from the diocese for either Kelly’s actions or the horrific legal hardball tactics that the diocese employed in an attempt to scare the victim into dropping his suit.

    O’Grady is currently serving a three-year prison sentence in Ireland for possession of child abuse images (child porn).

    Here is the press release:

     

    NEWS EVENT: Victims announce new lawsuit against notorious Stockton priest

    Child was abused after cleric admitted crimes to church officials & police

    Convicted in Stockton, O’Grady is now in Irish prison for child porn

    He worked at same parishes as Stockton priest recently found liable for abuse

    SNAP believes there may be more victims scared by diocese’s legal hardball

    What: Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, victims of child sex abuse and their supporters will announce a new lawsuit against notorious child molesting priest Oliver O’Grady and the Diocese of Stockton.  The lawsuit says:

    • O’Grady molested the victim after the cleric already admitted to abusing kids,
    • Stockton church officials knew O’Grady was a predator before the victim in this case was born, and
    • Catholic church officials covered up O’Grady’s crimes and silenced victims.

    Victims will also:

    • Show how O’Grady shared assignments with Fr. Michael Kelly, who fled to Ireland after a jury unanimously said Kelly was liable for child sex abuse.
    • Urge Stockton Bishop Blaire to reach out to other potential victims of O’Grady and Fr. Michael Kelly,
    • Beg Stockton church officials to stop cruel, hardball legal tactics against victims, and
    • Ask local law enforcement to continue criminal investigations against molesting clerics and their protectors.

    Where: Outside of the Stockton Diocese Headquarters, 212 North San Joaquin Street (at Channel) in Stockton

    When: Wednesday, May 2, at 1pm

    Who: Three-to-four victims of child sex abuse and their supporters who are members of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPNetwork.org). They will be joined by a former priest and monk—now advocate for victims—who is an expert on O’Grady.

    Why: This week in San Joaquin Superior Court, a 25-year-old victim of convicted serial predator Oliver O’Grady filed a child sex abuse and cover-up lawsuit against the Diocese of Stockton. The lawsuit says that the former priest molested the boy when the victim was five and six years old. During the time, O’Grady was assigned to St. Andrews in San Andreas and St. Anthony’s in Hughson, California.

    The victim was molested in 1992, just before O’Grady was arrested in Calaveras County. According to press reports and court documents, Stockton Diocese officials knew that O’Grady was a direct risk to kids as early as 1976. Police investigated other allegations against O’Grady in 1984, when O’Grady admitted to a mental health practitioner that he had molested children. Instead of removing O’Grady from ministry, then-bishop Cardinal Roger Mahony reassigned O’Grady to St. Andrews parish. The victim in this case was born in 1987, three years after church officials had direct knowledge that O’Grady was a child molester. http://www.bishop-accountability.org/ma-bos/settlements/SettlementStocktonOGrady.html

    O’Grady was convicted in 1993 of four counts of lewd and lascivious acts against two minors. In 1998, the two victims in the case won a $30 million settlement against the diocese. O’Grady was paroled in 2000 and deported to Ireland.

    In January 2012, O’Grady was sentenced to three years in prison for possession of child pornography, after law enforcement discovered the images on O’Grady’s computer and USB drive. According to press reports, the images were of victims as young as two.  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0131/1224311002517.html

    O’Grady was the subject of the 2006 Academy Award nominated documentary “Deliver Us From Evil,” in which O’Grady admitted to molesting at least two dozen children. The actual number is believed to be closer to 100 http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2008/11_12/2008_11_20_Smith_AbuseSuit.htm.

    Before O’Grady’s latest arrest, he was discovered volunteering with children in a church in The Netherlands and working in a McDonald’s, where he coordinated children’s birthday parties.

    Last month, a jury voted unanimously that another Stockton priest, Fr. Michael Kelly, was liable for molesting retired Air Force pilot Travis Trotter. http://www.modbee.com/2012/04/20/2166315/stockton-diocese-settles-with.html After the verdict, Kelly fled to Ireland.  The Stockton Diocese finally settled the case for $3.75 million.  To date, they have not apologized to Travis or acknowledged Kelly’s civil crimes.

    According to church records, Kelly and O’Grady, who were both from Ireland, worked in many of the same parishes at different times, including Our Lady of Fatima, Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Andrews, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Joachim’s http://www.bishopaccountability.org/assign/O’Grady_Oliver_Francis.htm#shorthand. SNAP believes there may be many more victims of both men who have been shamed into secrecy and silence.

    The victim in this case is represented by Sacramento attorney Dr. Joe George (916) 641-7300, joe@psyclaw.com

     


  • Disconnect, Pt 2: Subpoenas are for the little people

    Earlier this year in Kansas City, SNAP’s David Clohessy was ordered to give a six-hour deposition in a child sex abuse lawsuit. Neither SNAP nor David himself were a party or even knew the victim. Critics piled on Clohessy, calling him evasive and a con-artist. In the end, the deposition has nothing to do with the lawsuit. It was instead a legal maneuver on behalf of a group of bishops to bankrupt SNAP through legal fees.

    This week in Stockton, California, former Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony was called to testify in court in the case of Father Michael Kelly, a priest that a civil jury found had molested a boy in the 1980s. Mahony decided to go to Rome instead. Lawyers are pushing for the judge to cite Manhony with contempt.

    And legal fees? No worries: the Diocese of Stockton and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are always more than happy to pick up his legal fees. Collection baskets from poor parishes in vulnerable communities never seem to fail. Besides, what does Mahony care that he is costing taxpayers thousands of dollars in unnecessary court costs?

    So who’s the con artist now?

    Read Disconnect Part I here