The Worthy Adversary

Tag: child sex abuse

  • 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

     

  • Honoring the tragically flawed is tragically flawed

    Why, oh why, does the Catholic Church continue to bestow honors and awards on tragically flawed wrong-doers?

    Disgraced Former Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali

     

    Trial watchers in Philadelphia have been treated to a firsthand view of vile and disgusting human behavior. What makes it worse is that the evildoers are priests and the victims are children. The lede from the Philadephia Inquirer’s Sunday story on the trial is enough to make even the hard-hearted ill:

    Stalking. Groping. Gay bondage porn.

    A sexually graphic love letter to a grade-school boy.

    That they emerged in testimony about priests – and at times, from priests – only amplified the uneasiness.

    One would think that the big boss who allowed this activity to continue and flourish would be castigated and forced to live a life of penance and contrition. Not so much.

    Disgraced Philly Cardinal Justin Rigali—who retired last year after the Philadelphia Grand Jury exposed the fact that he was keeping more than two dozen accused priests in ministry in 2011—has been honored by the Pope as a special envoy and this week will be a special Mass celebrant at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

    So, while Philly jurors hear about how Rigali kept 37 accused predators from ministry, sat idly by as children were abused and accusers came forward, deceived his review board, and oversaw an organization that employed five men who were criminally indicted in 2011 for sex abuse and/or cover-up, Rigali will be the special guest of honor in one of the most famous landmark Catholic Churches in the United States.

    Ummm … hello?

    In 2004, LA Times writer William Lobdell (full disclosure: Bill is good friend and former business partner) wrote a great story about how child molesting clerics have been honored by Catholic officials, groups and communities that refuse to comprehend the horror of sexual abuse, can’t believe that “such a nice priest” could hurt kids, or simply don’t care:

    When congregants at a parish in Rancho Santa Margarita in southern Orange County were told in 2002 that their longtime pastor [Fr. Michael Pecharich] had admitted to molesting a boy three decades earlier, the first reaction by some was to name the parish hall after him. The idea was quickly dropped. Three more alleged victims have come forward since then.

    Fast forward to 2012, and little has changed:

    Honors and awards are for people who do nice things. Honoring predators and enablers (who have never accounted for their crimes, atoned, made penance or attempted to right their wrongs) is little more than salt in victims’ wounds. I don’t think Jesus would approve.

     

  • Another Lay Review Board Thrown Under The Bus …

    Serve on a Diocese lay review board, and you can go to jail. Or at least that’s what Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn says.

    Bishop Finn and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph are each being charged with one misdemeanor of failure to report suspected child abuse. The charges stem from the case of Fr. Shawn Ratigan, a priest in the diocese who now faces 13 federal counts of child pornography. According to legal accounts, whistleblowers, and media reports, Bishop Finn knew about Ratigan’s suspicious behavior for at least a year, possibly more, and sat on Ratigan’s child pornography collection for six months before turning it over to the police.

    Finn also didn’t inform his own lay review board until six months after Finn learned of the pornography and a month AFTER he finally notified the police. This is a year after the school principal wrote Finn a detailed letter outlining Ratigan’s suspicious behavior, including the facts that parents had found toys in his house and children’s underwear in his bushes.

    The lay review board learned about the principal’s letter in the media. Not from Finn.

    Yesterday, lawyers for Finn stated that charges should be dropped because he is NOT a mandatory reporter. According to the Associated Press:

    Finn claims Vicar General Robert Murphy and a diocese review board — not the bishop — were responsible for reporting suspected images of child pornography to the state.

    Wait. Did I miss something? Now it’s the review board’s fault? Even when Finn keeps them in the dark (on purpose) or gives them incomplete and faulty information?

    I have written about the utter failure of law review boards in the past. These boards were expressly created to have NO power. Don’t believe me? From the 2001 Essential Norms (revised):

    4. To assist diocesan/eparchial bishops, each diocese/eparchy will also have a review board which will function as a confidential consultative body to the bishop/eparch in discharging his responsibilities. The functions of this board may include

    a. advising the diocesan bishop/eparch in his assessment of allegations of sexual abuse of minors and in his determination of suitability for ministry;

    b. reviewing diocesan/eparchial policies for dealing with sexual abuse of minors; and c. offering advice on all aspects of these cases, whether retrospectively or prospectively.

    See that part about “confidential and consultative”?  That means that the bishop can tell them whatever he wants and doesn’t have to take their advice. As a former board member myself, I know.

    How else do bishops keep lay review boards as powerless as possible? In Los Angeles, members of the review board admitted only knowing about “hypothetical” cases (while an admitted perpetrator was a board member). In Philadelphia, review board members had no idea about more than two dozen accused clerics still in ministry, until a grand jury report exposed them.

    The head of the Philadelphia Lay Review Board, Ana Maria Catanzano, went so far as to say that they were chartered to only review cases where civil or criminal litigation were not involved.

    So they weren’t even given cases to review that fell under the reporting statute.

    Who is supposed to report? The bishop. In fact, if you carefully review the norms, under #11, you will see this:

    11. The diocese/eparchy will comply with all applicable civil laws with respect to the reporting of allegations of sexual abuse of minors to civil authorities and will cooperate in their investigation. In every instance, the diocese/eparchy will advise and support a person’s right to make a report to public authorities. (from the footnotes: The necessary observance of the canonical norms internal to the Church is not intended in any way to hinder the course of any civil action that may be operative)

    That means that a criminal report must be made before ANYTHING else is done.

    But Norm #9 is my favorite:

    9. At all times, the diocesan bishop/eparch has the executive power of governance, within the parameters of the universal law of the Church, through an administrative act, to remove an offending cleric from office, to remove or restrict his faculties, and to limit his exercise of priestly ministry.

    Because sexual abuse of a minor by a cleric is a crime in the universal law of the Church (CIC, c. 1395 §2; CCEO, c. 1453 §1) and is a crime in all civil jurisdictions in the United States, for the sake of the common good and observing the provisions of canon law, the diocesan bishop/eparch shall exercise this power of governance to ensure that any priest or deacon who has committed even one act of sexual abuse of a minor as described above shall not continue in active ministry

    So, Bishop Finn, the buck stops with you. You have the “executive power of governance” over an institution required under law and moral obligation to report child sexual abuse. And you blew it.

  • Clarity at Cantwell High School

     

    Sometimes, the most profound statements at a press conference come from the reporters, not us.

    Today, my friend and colleague Ken Smolka and I were in front of Cantwell Sacred Heart of Mary High School in Montebello, California. We were there because the Irish Chrisitian Brothers, the religious order that ran Cantwell High School, declared bankruptcy when more than 50 victims of child sex abuse in Washington State and Canada came forward to file civil sex abuse and cover-up suits. Order officials sought bankruptcy protection to avoid embarrassing public civil trials. The Christian Brothers are the 10th diocese or religious order to take this (less than pastoral) path.

    The Brothers ran Cantwell High School until 1990, when Cardinal Roger Mahony kicked them out and put the Jesuits in their place. No real explanation was given.

    But I have an idea: in the six yearbooks I have reviewed, we have found four known perpetrators who worked at the school (three of them were there at the same time). Maybe Mahony realized that even he couldn’t keep a lid on the Christian Brothers much longer.

    There was Thomas Cuthbert Ford, who was convicted in 2000 of violently beating abandoned children between 1956 and 1959 at the Mt. Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland. He had been hiding in the United States at schools like Damien Memorial High in Honolulu, Cantwell and Bergen Catholic (Bergen, NJ) until he was finally extradicted to Canada. Ford was the 11th Irish Christian Brother to be sentenced for crimes at Mt. Cashel.  He was principal of Cantwell in 1980.

    We also found Br. Daniel Peter Ryan, a former vice principal, Br. Jerome Heustis, a former coach and teacher and Br. Robert Satterthwaite, a former teacher. All of these guys are the subject of numerous sex abuse and cover-up lawsuits. Satterthwaite was even named (although misidentified) in Mahony’s infamous “Report to the People of God.”

    We told the reporter the reason we were there: victims from Cantwell only have until August 1, 2012 to come forward, expose their abusers, and seek justice (including secret church documents) in the courts.

    We also told her that victims’ coming forward is important for more than healing, but also for protecting children and punishing wrong doers. Although some of the men who abused children are dead, many are not. Many of the men who covered up for the predators are still alive. Every official in the Christian Brothers organization is still sitting on important secret church documents that will expose more criminals and outline the scope and scale of abuse. These documents will only be released if victims come forward. It is VITALLY important that every victim at Cantwell come forward before the deadline, we said.

    The Christian Brothers still run schools across the United States, and they are still covering up for abusers.

    She looked at us for a moment in silence. Then she said, “This is huge. Why hasn’t the story gotten more publicity?”

    Exactly.

    Why isn’t the new LA Archbishop standing outside of the school? (He gets WAY better press than I do) Where is the president of the Irish Christian Brothers? Shouldn’t he be out in front of every single school where a known abuser worked? Nah. That would be too … pastoral.

    And the last thing they want to do is let victims know they have rights.

     

     

     

  • Consider this your homework

    If you care about clergy sex abuse victims, you should read this. If you think that the Catholic Church is doing everything right in the scandal, you must read this. And then you must read it again.

    Thousands of pages of child sex abuse and cover-up documents are now public in the Wilmington Delaware Diocese bankruptcy.  They outline the long-term and shockingly recent tragic, gut-wrenching, enraging, cavalier, disgusting, and criminal actions of priests, brothers, bishops, employees and church officials. And they show how kids were thrown under the bus over and over and over again.

    From the Delaware News Journal:

    One 2009 letter mentions a report that abuser priest Joseph A. McGovern, removed from ministry about two decades ago, had expressed his desire to move overseas to a place more amenable to “man/boy pedophiliac relationships.” A file on the investigation into allegations against another abuser priest includes photographs the priest took of a young boy emerging from a shower, wrapped in a towel. Scrawled across them are the priest’s handwritten notes, most with sexual connotations.

    Start here for an overview of the documents and what they entail.  Full copies are online here.

    Fortunately, this story has a hero. His name is Matt Conaty. If it were not for him and his family, victims in Wilmington would still be isolated, Catholics would be in the dark, and dangerous men would be roaming free to abuse more kids.

    Think I’m overstating? You won’t after you read the documents.