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(Part 2: More from Sexual Autobiography of Franciscan Pedophile Priest, Robert Van Handel, actual Santa Barbara Story Part 8, Part 2)
Has anyone anywhere ever paid this much attention to the crime victims?
HAS ANYONE DONE RESEARCH ON WHAT THESE PRIESTS” CRIMES DID TO US?)
More:
“At the end of the week at St. Luke’s my provincial flew out and together we listened to the psychological and medical evaluation. At this point I felt devastated. The psychiatrist emphasized the seriousness of the problem, which he diagnosed as pedophilia, same sex non-exclusive, and recommended that I begin treatment as soon as possible. I remember one of the interviewing therapists reading a summary of my life history. I was asked if I wanted to say anything.
“In an emotional outburst I said, ‘I don't know how you can say those things about my father. He’s a very good man!
“Trying to calm me, she stated that she was only repeating information I had given her.
“It was decided that in ten days I would return as a patient.
“I felt convicted and sentenced.
“My depression became more acute. I just wanted to die. On the six hour flight back to San Francisco, I stared out the window and was silent.”
(I’M SORRY I HAVE TO INTERJECT HERE, DID ANYONE ELSE SEE THAT TUNNEL VISION:
“I FELT CONVICTED AND DEVASTATED, ALL THE WAY BACK ON THE FLIGHT TO SAN FRANCISCO”
Do you think they flew coach? What did he get to eat and drink from then all the way to the provincial palace where he continued to be well fed and tended)
More:
“St. Luke Institute was originally founded by a priest psychiatrist to treat alcoholic clergy. When it became clear that there was a need for treating sex addiction, the SLI adapted its program.
“It is well staffed and expensive. Generally the program lasts seven months, but I was there for thirteen months.”
(MAN, WHAT I COULD DO WITH THIRTEEN MONTHS OF IN HOUSE THERAPY.
or one month for that matter.
SEE WHY SURVIVORS ARE PISSED AT THE CHURCH?
None of us got treated anywhere near this good by anyone, anywhere.)
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“I had individual therapy twice a week, small group therapy, 8 men and a therapist, three times a week. Large groups twice a week, and then psychosocial and other plums thrown in at various times. There were also educational features and workshops on eating disorders, rational thinking, family dynamics, etc.
“Every night we went to a 12-step meeting. On weekends one could get permission to go into Washington for the day.
“I became an expert tour guide of the Smithsonian Museum.”
(DO TOURISTS IN D.C. HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW THESE GUYS ARE WANDERING AROUND THE SMITHSONIAN? Why are they wandering around the Smithsonian?)
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“I started the St. Luke’s program feeling very miserable and quite sure that if anyone should find out what I had done, I would be ostracized.
“So I tried to say as little as possible. I spent a lot of time reading novels.”
BLAH-BLAH-BLAH LINES AND LINES one long paragraph of SELF INVOLVED NAVEL GAZING Some quick cuts:)
“Afterwards the other patients greeted me with hugs.”
“I just sobbed.”
“Much less often did I slip into this extreme self-pity.”
(AS A SURVIVOR, I CRIED EVERY DAY FROM 2006 TO 2009, EVERY DAY FOR THREE YEARS straight, it’s finally over by the way, DID PERMANENT EYE DAMAGE
I've never gotten any help from the Church. )
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“I improved and became more active in the program.”
“I felt safe because of the support of the institute.”
“I started taking Depo-Provera injections. Anti-depressants.
“I had many crises as my conduct in Santa Barbara became more public, but from each crisis, I recovered.”
“The major crisis was when I was told that I had been on the front page of the Santa Barbara paper. And that one of the victims had been on television saying what I had done to him.
“I fell apart.
“Actually I went into a kind of trance. I just started at a blank wall and didn't hear anything. My friends became alarmed and called the duty nurse. Later my therapist asked me to please try not to have a crisis at 10:30 PM on a Saturday night.”
(CAN’T HELP BUT STOP HERE AND THINK OF THE LAST TIME I WAS HOSPITALIZED L.A. County USC General Hospital sent me to one of their psych places as I was going nuts … I didn't see a doctor and they would not release me for six days. THEN MD GOT BACK FROM VACATION, AND ALL HE DID WAS RELEASE ME, with bus fare home. I never got any treatment at all the whole time.
Starting this blog kept me from going insane.
Myself and many other of the victims have gotten no help from the Church )
More:
“Connected with my public notoriety was what the church alls ‘public scandal’
“As a result my Provincial told me that I could not again function as a Catholic priest.
“Although I knew this was coming, I was, and still am, devastated.
“When I realized that my case was becoming public, I decided that I needed to tell my parents about the sexual acting out, about the molestations, and also about the women. My mother was in stunned silence. What happened next says a lot about my family. BLACKED OUT sat with my mother who kept muttering that she couldn't understand how I could do such things. Weren’t priests given special graces so that they had no sexual feelings? What had gone wrong.
(HUH? WEREN’T PRIESTS GIVEN SPECIAL GRACES SO THAT THEY HAD NO SEXUAL FEELINGS?
Is that the Pap you guys have been believing all these years?
NO WONDER THIS HAPPENED.
Plus look at this hyper tunnel vision over-Catholicized reaction of his father here:)
More:
“My dad marched into his room and said, ‘I’m going to the store, does anyone need anything from Safeway?’ My sister asked if he had understood what I had said. Dad said, ‘You can’t do anything about that, it’s all in God’s hands.’ Out to Safeway he went.”
(OKAY, I gotta say this, to me this is very revealing.
AND WHAT A COP OUT. You don’t have to feel anything, be responsible, take actions to make up for my wrongs, you just give put it all in God’s hands.
DO YOU REALLY THINK GOD WANTS YOUR PEDOPHILE SON, NO REPAIRS MADE? I CAN’T HELP FEELING this misplaced mercy is the main reason all these guys got away with pedophilia on the parish children for so long, and if religious people want to just give the problem to God, pedophiles and will probably get away with it among your priests again.
HONEST, I THINK GOD WOULD BE ANGRY IF YOU JUST LEFT THIS PROBLEM SIT IDLE. And he just might smite the whole human race, considering how disgusted as he could get.
Human beings created these crimes and the environment they thrived in.
Humans have to stop turning the other way and take responsibility, change the things in the church that allowed this behavior to thrive,
BUT THIS ATTITUDE THAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING, just turn it over to God? Not only are you thoughtlessly re-victimizing the victims, but Jesus himself is probably turning over in his grave.)
More:
“And my therapist said, ‘the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.’”
(NO, FATHER ROBERT, YOU DON'T GET TO PASS THE BUCK ON TO SOMEONE ELSE, LIKE YOUR DAD)
“After seven months I graduated from the main program, (at St. Luke’s) but all concerned agreed that in many ways I had only just scratched the surface of my search for self understanding.
(THIS GUY HAS TOO MUCH TIME ON HIS HANDS, make him get a job, and support himself.)
“Things in Santa Barbara were still hot and I was in no rush to jump into the caldron.”
AFTER HE LEFT ST. LUKE’S.
“Arranged to meet with a therapist in San Jose.”
“I left St. Luke’s frightened of what lay before me but pleased with the work I had done there.
“Upon viewing my old room at Berkeley, I was assigned A forensic psychologist, who told me I would get group therapy for child molesters instead of individual.”
(I WONDER IF THEY SERVE COOKIES)
“I stared in disbelief.
“I told Tom that without a therapist I would self destruct, I wouldn't make it. In my distress I felt I was being set up to fail, a feeling that has arisen in various situations since.
“As I found out more about Pacific Treatment Center, I developed reasons why I should not be involved.
“Then they said I could have my individual therapist as long as he was in my small group. So I agreed to try PTA.
*****************
*(Reading these docs, it appears Robert Van Handel was in a state of panicked penance when he allowed the Court to introduce the memoir into public record, The “sexual autobiography” reveals so much to this reader about the inner workings of the Catholic Church, the environment that allowed this epidemic to flourish.)
(Probably writing the Sexual Autobiography is the best thing Fr. Robert Van Handel ever did in his life.)
Part 1 is here
(Actually this is Santa Barbara Story Part 9, part 2, but who can keep track of all this?)
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3 comments:
I read this and its all about me,me,me, and the church is all about us, us, us.
Oh boo hoo!
This gets down to what I call the great divide. Parishioners are viewed as "the sheep", literally and figuratively. Us kids were sent of to the butcher like so many head of sheep, just part of the farm.
To be a catholic is not to be a part of the church. Their attitude is thank you for the financial contributions now please move along, we know what is good for you.
This is why they kept all these sick priests around. Free labor = more money for the church.
NEVER expect anything from the church; help, sincere sorrow or apology, with out a fight. Like the priests notes above they ONLY think of themselves. Look at the money willingly spent on their own yet the victims have had to fight tooth and nail to get what they have. The question is why do you expect this to change? They are not like you. You must fight to protect others, like they should do, but don't. It's between us and them.
You must find solace in the victims that never became victims because of our collective actions. You must draw strength from the other
victims. Theirs is the courage, the strength, the compassion, the true spiritual center you desire from the church. We are in a fight against evil, to save the other sheep, to give to them what we never had.
Posting Comment from Ray in more places:
I was a member of the Independent Board of Inquiry Regarding St. Anthony Seminary that investigated the sexual abuse that occurred there. When we issued our report in November 1993 we knew that we had not found all of the abuse but little did we know that we had only scratched the surface of events, there and across the entire Catholic Church. I had known Van Handel personally for many years without an inkling of the heinus crimes he was committing. The Board of Inquiry determined that one out of four Franciscans on the faculty during the period we investigated were perpetrators but the facts that have surfaced since then indicate that the percentage was much higher. I thought I had about heard it all on this topic but now even I realize that it was much worse than I had imagined. This document should be required reading for all Catholics.
Ray
".....Jesus himself is probably turning over in his grave."
That's funny.
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