Drama in Documents: New Theater Production comprised of words in Pedophile Priest Files that were released by U.S. Supreme Court Order last year

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“We heard how a daughter described a nightmarish trip with Rev. Raymond Pcolka. She walked into a room by mistake to discover Pcolka sodomizing a boy while a younger boy cried hysterically in the same room. We saw then-Bishop Edward Egan coldly dismiss reports of Pcolka’s abuse as mere complaints, not facts. The effect was emotional, but also austere. And the result was truly extraordinary.” – Terry McKiernan

The drama is in the documents, as proven again in a play constructed from pedophile priest files the Archdiocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was forced by the U.S. Supreme Court to release December 2009. After a year-long effort, VOTF Bridgeport brought “Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned,” to the stage earlier this month.

“On Saturday, November 13, I attended a remarkable event at the Norwalk Concert Hall in Norwalk, Connecticut,” Terry McKiernan of Bishop Accountability wrote to City of Angels. “Fifteen actors brought to life the famous Rosado documents, the files that Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport had spent millions of dollars to keep secret.”

Producer of the event, John Lawrence Lee, said in a recent phone call, “What I found most curious was that the great newspapers who spent their money to press the legal case against the diocese- New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Hartford Courant- were alerted about the performance in New Haven and chose not to report on it. We sent press releases, I called.”

McKiernan wrote, “In December 2009, after nearly a decade of appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport’s last argument, and the diocese was forced to post the Rosado documents.

“They did so in 11,187 individual, unlabeled, one-page PDFs on a website briefly available to the newspapers that had sued to have the documents released. The newspapers did the best they could, but it was impossible to absorb a chaotic file in that form and report on it effectively in the paper by the following morning. So Voice of the Faithful in the Diocese of Bridgeport decided to study the Rosado documents (they are named after a boy who was molested by Rev. Raymond Pcolka) and bring them to the people in a dramatic way.”

John Lee said the Bridgeport documents came out, “one PDF for each page, with no index, unlike San Diego, where ten thousand pages were able to be posted in 24 hours. This was a different story. The Diocese of Bridgeport made it very difficult to access the documents.”

Lee added, “It's the usual response. The Diocese just did what the court ordered them to do”

So taking a lead from “Sin: A Cardinal Deposed” based on the Boston documents and “No Escape” from documents released in Dublin, Ireland, area activists in New Hampshire put together a play based on the words in the pedophile priest files. CofA Lady dreams of productions like “Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned” using criminal documents released by archdioceses in every city in America, just like these crimes took place in every city in America. Words in the crime files bring to life the true stories of the pedophile priest epidemic in the Catholic Church better than any fiction can, and better than any biography based on one survivor’s experience. Plus dramas based on documents have the potential to be an oral history that will live on.

Re fundraising for Bridgeport Voice of the Faithful accomplished by the New Hampshire presentation, “We lost money on it,” said Lee, “but we're not done.”

McKiernan described “Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned” as performed November 13th:

"To begin the performance, fifteen actors filed on stage and took their seats in a row– men and women dressed in black, holding the documents that they would read. Then over the next two hours, the actors stood up individually, or came forward in pairs, and simply read from the documents. The effect was very emotional, but also very austere. And the result was truly extraordinary– the pages that we’ve seen reproduced in newspapers or posted on websites (and many documents that are not available anywhere yet) were brought quietly and devastatingly to life.

"We heard a mother tell how her daughter had described a nightmarish trip with Rev. Raymond Pcolka– the daughter had walked into a room by mistake to discover Pcolka sodomizing a boy while a younger boy cried hysterically in the same room. We saw then-Bishop Edward Egan, played by the superb Manny Lieberman, coldly dismiss the reports of Pcolka’s abuse as mere complaints, not facts. We heard a girl tell how Pcolka beat her, and then offered her the “choice” of continuing to be beaten, or being sodomized instead. Horrible things, that Lori had tried to keep hidden, and that are hidden no longer. In addition to Pcolka, the performance presented the stories of Rev. Laurence Brett, Rev. Charles T. Carr, and Rev. Martin J. Federici. We met the survivors and the bishops and managers who did the cover-up in each of those cases. In a final section, the bishops and managers were cross-examined, using their own revealing words from depositions, to bring out the procedures and the mindset that made the abuse and cover-up possible.

"I work on documents a lot, and BishopAccountability.org has posted a selection of the Rosado documents [ http://www.bishop-accountability.org/docs/bridgeport/history ], but I don’t think a batch of documents had ever fit together for me the way the Rosado documents did on that afternoon in Connecticut. Terrible as the subject was, it was also oddly comforting to experience the documents with each other – survivors, advocates, people from Norwalk and surrounding communities – learning and bearing witness together. After the performance, there was a ceremony acknowledging survivors, and a lively discussion."

Producer John Lee talked about the release of some 11,126 individual pdf files were released last December by the Bridgeport Diocese.

“Terry helped us group them into five hundred page blocks, then Anne Pollack went through them, I don't know how many pages she read personally. She made a map, showing where Egan was located, where the cases were concerning Father Carr, Donovan.”

Lee continued, “Terry [McKiernan] said it was the first time that anybody had connected the statements by different priests and vicars and families, so you had vignettes that had voices of different people talking about the same situation, it allowed you to compare and contrast the statements, that provided the dramatics."

McKiernan shares the credit with other volunteers, saying the goal of the project was “so the significance of the documents could be understood at last.”

McKiernan wrote: “Everyone pitched in, but three people were key to the effort: Anne Pollack, who built a vast spreadsheet that put the chaotic jigsaw puzzle of the file together so that it could be read; Joe O’Callaghan, who created a beautiful script by painstakingly piecing together statements by survivors and their parents, depositions of bishops, and diocesan letters and memos; and John Marshall Lee, who kept the project going and acted as producer for the event.

The producer John Lee commented, “If Anne Pollack hadn’t been there, Joe never would have been able to do his work. Then the playwright was able to say, take out the narrator, and gave that voice to a victim.”

McKiernan continued:

“Some of us saw the excellent ‘Sin: A Cardinal Deposed,’ a 2003 play that dramatized the Boston files. The Bridgeport documents, as presented in ‘Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned!’ were even more powerful. I hope a way will be found to take the production on the road, and I also hope that other groups will do similar events with the documents in their dioceses."

(John Lawrence Lee sent this email which gives background on the project, and an idea of the logistics faced in getting Bless Me Father for I have Sinned onto the stage November 13th.)

"The Diocese of Bridgeport saw Bishop Egan transferred to New York in 2001 with a replacement in the person of Bishop William Lori who was transferred from Washington DC where he had experience with administering sexual abuse complaints. By 2003 the bulk of cases had been settled rather than fought out in court in two major blocks, 2001 and 2003, spending over $37 Million. Cases settled, confidentiality enforced on all parties, and the people in the pews (who paid the premium for the insurance policies in one way or another from contributions) and who also are responsible for the funds of all kinds contributed over the years were left in the dark as to costs and details. To this day there is not comprehensive diocesan reporting from all entities, and even the minor report for the year ended June, 2009, that shows the Diocesan Corp, Catholic Charities and a special education fund, . is about 10 months late.

"To us sex, money and power were part of the story line from the glances occasionally seen in stories that leaked out. (We also, during the past five years, had listened to two Fairfield County parishes with large amounts missing whose pastors were probably not living out ordination promises and who were indicted or just disappeared.) But four newspapers (NYT, Washington Post, Hartford Courant, and Boston Globe) used a legal team to pursue through CT court system the opening up of court files that were no longer necessary as settlement had occurred. One or more judges in the extended appeals process stated that the public interest would be served by the records being opened.

"As members of VOTF in the Diocese of Bridgeport we followed the ping-pong game being fought by the lawyers for the Diocese and those for the newspapers. Last fall when the US Supreme Court denied standing to the Diocese, the documents were disgorged, all 11,126 pages of 12,600 as individual PDF. One of our members, Anne Pollack, with help from Bishop Accountability began the laborious process of mining what was there and organizing it into some form that could be printed and read. Several of us read notebooks about one or more of the victim survivors and/or the depositions on multiple occasions of Bishops, Monsignors, and alleged abusers. Sitting with that material and sensing the reality of the clergy who were distant, legalistic and superior in their answers, while also understanding the stonewall that victims and families met with disbelief, lies or misdirection about management actions of abusers, and no sign of concern for those who had been abused by power and sexual predation as children, now burdened as adults.

"In any case by May Dr. Joseph O'Callaghan had read and assembled four stories about clergy abusers using the language from the documents. When we assembled as a group and read the words of the parties, we were taken by the spoken word. But would we look to do this ourselves as amateurs or engage assistance at each level to develop the material and the stories therein, giving voice to the voiceless, branding the product and promoting our effort at a time that many public voices claim, "It's all over." I personally believe that until you have listened to a survivor tell their story in person and reflected on that person's journey, you are in no position to say with the episcopal chorus, "It's all over."

"So little by little we sought out a playwright to help rewrite and edit to bring out the dramatic potential. We sought out legal advice on dramatic material, ownership, etc. and created agreements. Found a director. He found actors to perform a dramatic reading. Artists and graphic designers were sought to promote through Internet technology as well as more traditional print materials. Publicist for local releases. Interviews on local public access and public TV. Renting a civic performance venue, not a Church, since we are not allowed to meet as faithful Catholics on Catholic property in our Diocese. Professional sound engineer and video crew to record the reading, the Q & A and the memorial to honor survivors. Budget concerns, attendance concerns, Murphy's Law fears...... Saturday evening it was over and the approval and commendations from survivors as well as just plain folks in attendance made the time, talent and treasure worth it."

(Note: City of Angels tried to get a copy of the Bless Me Father For I Have Sinned script, so we could run excerpts, and I was told copyright issues prevented VOTF from providing it...

Huh?)

“The Diocese of Bridgeport had to turn over documents about ten months ago — 12,000 pages worth. The media and activist groups have organized and indexed this mountain of raw data.

“It’s the Bridgeport chapter of Voice of the Faithful, an activist group formed to address the abuse problem, which developed the unorthodox, though not unprecedented, idea of presenting the transcripts as theater.

“There’s a script,” insists author Joseph O’Callaghan, a lifelong Catholic and a retired professor of history who taught at Fordham University for 40 years. He constructed Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned—Priestly Abuse in the Diocese of Bridgeport so it would have central characters and a narrative structure. Of the 32 priests accused of sexual abuse in the Bridgeport diocese, Bless Me Father focuses on four in particular — Charles Carr, Martin Federici, Laurence Brett and Raymond Pcolka — but also includes dialogue between attorneys, bishops, monsignori and abuse victims. Except for the subtraction of some repetitions and stammers and the addition of some clarifying narrative remarks, O’Callaghan says the script is “all verbatim from transcripts.”

From the New Haven Advocate who were about the only media to cover the New Hampshire event November 13th.

Here is program for the piece, directed by Jack Rushen

Read a review of Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned at the VOTF Bridgeport website
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The City of Angels is Everywhere

And Copyright Laws are So Last Century

New Post at CofA 2 Today

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Read I Have to Brag on My Daughter a Minute posted today at This Really Happened, City of Angels 2

Scandal drives Catholics out of Church while Bishops live like nothing happened, from Chicago Catholic

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"An all-too-pervasive anti-gospel has compelled people to leave their Catholic heritage, not to embrace secularism or self-sufficiency but to find some peace of mind.

"What is this anti-gospel? It is the persistent priest abuse scandal that drains respect for Church authority even as it keeps bubbling up all over the world. It is the shameful failure of the pope and bishops to take control of the scandal in its early manifestations and in many cases to spread the contagion by transferring offending priests over and over into sensitive situations. It is the fact that many self-protecting bishops to this day have not been removed from their positions, have not offered contrition or done penance and remain in their cathedrals living as if nothing had happened, while their dioceses dry up and go bankrupt."

Read entire article: Church From Below: For many, the Church was abandoned because of the Church at Chicago Catholic.
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Recovered: 'Sin: A Cardinal Deposed' CofA story destroyed indirectly by L.A. Archdiocese, found at Bishop Accountability

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(Re the Boston to L.A. theater production Sin: A Cardinal Deposed, here is the LA City Buzz Examiner post written March 2009 by me, Kay E, the same month Examiner fired me at the behest of L.A. Archdiocese attorneys. Last week while working on a story about "Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned" about the Bridgeport documents, I realized this post on "Sin" is almost nowhere to be found online, except at Bishop Accountability, and I am now posting it here where it belongs at CofA in total:)

Astounding. When the character Bernard Law said, “Those were not my files, they were the archdiocese’s files,” deja vu swept over me, as that is almost verbatim the words muttered by Roger Mahony in his deposition in Fresno around the same time as Law was testifying in Boston in 2002. They both have said, “I wish I had seen the report” and words like “then I’d know if it was said or if it wasn’t said,” Yes, even more astounding to me is the fact that those are almost the same exact words used by almost every other bishop around the country, trying to pass the buck regarding who’s really guilty in these serial sex crimes against children.

In the play, Sin: A Cardinal Deposed which I saw Thursday night at the Hayworth Theater, on Wilshire near MacArthur Park, playwright Michael Murphy has the actors say nothing but actual words from legal documents relating to the clergy cases in Boston 2002, especially the testimony of Cardinal Bernard Law.

They also read from exhibits such as letters written by family members and social workers that ended up in case files. There on the stage front of you is a barefaced display of the coverup and conspiracy that took place at a hierarchy level in the Catholic Church regarding priests who were pedophiles. In the play, as in real life, Law puts on that fake Please Love Me smile that so many bishops wear, as in Act One he passes the buck in much the same way as bishops and cardinals passed the buck across the country in these cases. Law says, “The institute of Living carried the weight of that decision” and “For me to make an assessment is not correct” and other empty language to prevent himself from having to admit guilt.

WAITING for the show to start, I was wondering how they could create story dynamics using nothing but genuine testimony and words that were in letters etcetera, exhibits attached to the cases. But as I watched, I realized, God, this really works, this is the real thing.

IT WORKS: IT REALLY WORKS

At the end of Act One, the actor portraying a composite of plaintiffs named Patrick McSorley, Jack Maxwell in Thursday’s performance, storms off the stage, through the audience, and out the door. At the end of the play, McSorley delivers a speech that sums up so much of what the crime victims feel, I was in tears (especially knowing that McSorley committed suicide shortly after the Boston cases, including his case, settled, a fact that needs to somehow get into the story, just to make it even more meaningful to audiences.)

THE STORY dynamic was there.

Playwright Michael Murphy and Director Paul Mazursky were able to create with these documents a story with passion and evocative emotion which drew responses from “sheesh” to laughter, to an audience sitting on the edge of their seats silent, listening. Towards the end of the play, and also for a second mid way through the first act, you can see the pain and truth is starting to hit Bernard Law, Archbishop of Boston, portrayed that night by Bruce Davison. Law’s demeanor changes from the glad-handing attaboy attitude of the bishop always trying to be loved, maintained in the first act, to a beaten down man who finally begins to realize the full potential of his and the Catholic Church’s guilt, those moments when the audience listens to a long period of silence.

Of course, in real life, after that testimony, Law was quickly spirited off to the Vatican for good, so he would never say another word in public again. . . .

MORE COMING NEXT POST: THE REAL THING

Sin: A Cardinal Deposed is The Real Thing! I swear, actor Gary Cole is channeling Jeff Anderson and Mitchell Garabedian combined, as he portrays a composite of plaintiff attorneys, the character Orson Krieger.

Watch here at LA City Buzz Examiner, for more stories about the cast and the play as the week progresses, as I am excited about this project and want to watch it grow.

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Around this time I got fired, and never did follow up with additional stories on the play... go figure.

OBIT: Cree victim of Catholic clergy abuse in Canada, Died Oct. 14, 2010, of drowning

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OBITUARY first published at Ottawa Citizen

Pauline Wesley

Born Nov. 15, 1963.

Died Oct. 14, 2010, of drowning.

Pauline Wesley drowned in the Rideau River. Those who knew her were shocked at the news of her death. How she came to be in the river is not clear. Reports are that she was seen thrashing in the water, and then she was gone....

Pauline was removed from her family at an early age and placed in a residential school, where she endured endless days of ridicule. She was abused as a child in terrible ways. A great force called the Government of Canada was determined to "remove the Indian from the child." Many children were broken in those shameful places, some beyond repair

Pauline Wesley never overcame her residential school experience, and alcohol thereafter ruled her life. She lived on the streets and in ghettos. She became a mother but did not know how to parent, having no example to follow.....

Read more here at Ottawa Citizen

The Borgias, currently in production in Canada, soon to be on Showtime

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"My character Rodrigo becomes the Pope, buys his way in really."- Jeremy Irons

Watch "The Borgias" Trailer here:



“The Borgias is a family, the most powerful blood thirsty immoral bunch that you could wish for behaving in a way which we today would be appalled by."

The Borgias is in production in Canada soon to be on Showtime in the U.S.

Comparing self to Jesus, Another Pedophile Priest Proclaims Innocence from Prison

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From Joey Piscitelli on AlterNet :
(Edited by KE)

The recent statement made by Fr. Patrick McCabe from Santa Rita prison, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do," is a quote from the Bible, made by Jesus Christ, about his persecutors. Other serial rapist clergy have also made this same statement, comparing themselves to God himself. They are implying that they are as holy as Jesus Christ and they are being persecuted by wrongdoers, and they are martyrs themselves....

This is unfortunately typical behavior for sociopath clergy in the Catholic Church, and is a byproduct of several decades of unpunished acts of rape, sodomy, sex abuse, molestation and cover-ups by the thousands of predecessors and companions of McCabe, who were trained by the Roman Catholic Church to believe they are above the law, and immune to prosecution, and that innocent children were deservedly prime targets for their depraved behavior.

The thought of facing justice now seems impossible to McCabe. He claims he has diabetes, and the authorities are seeking to prosecute him, without regard for his health. But what about his victims? What was McCabe thinking when he molested and violated countless innocent children?

Where was his diabetes then?

Fr. Patrick McCabe was transferred from Ireland directly to the Servants of the Paraclete rehabilitation center in the USA, after complaints were made against him, for being a sex offender. That would mean his superiors in the Roman Catholic Church knew he was a sex offender, and so did Patrick McCabe. As is typical for the Catholic hierarchy, they willfully, and intentionally transferred the serial abuser to a parish in California, knowing full well he was a threat to children. He was “dumped” on the unsuspecting parish of St. Bernards’ in Eureka, and after complaints were made there, he was dumped on the unsuspecting parish in Guerneville, and elsewhere. This criminal behavior, and the act of aiding and abetting serial child sex offenders and child rapists has occurred countless times in the Catholic Church throughout the world

Read the whole post Priest Abuser Patrick McCabe Compares Himself to Jesus Christ by Joey Piscitelli on AlterNet

On Hiatus through Thanksgiving

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City of Angels Blog is dark for the holidays, will post more Nov. 30th or so... Be thankful for what you've got...
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How to Answer Questions Under Oath Without Revealing Anything: Levada to speak to Cardinals at Vatican today about sex abuse cases

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Asked about a priest who took minor boys skinny dipping, Levada says, "My memory is not that airtight." Another priest was in treatment at House of Affirmation in Massachusetts for sex problems before coming to Oregon; it did not register in the bishop’s brain. Throughout the deposition the cardinal responds “I don't recall,” and “I don't remember.” Only when attorneys put hard evidence in front of the Cardinal does he suddenly have a memory, and then only for that one fact brought out by evidence.

Today at 5 p.m. Rome time Cardinal William Levada gives a speech titled "Response of the Church to Cases of Sexual Abuse" after a day of meetings at The Vatican. "It is unclear whether the format will allow for any back-and-forth among the cardinals, or whether there would be any time for discussion given the limited window allotted," Politics Daily and other news media have reported.

The main skill Levada can demonstrate to the cardinals is “How to answer questions under oath without revealing anything more than what opposing attorneys already have as evidence,” judging from the Cardinal’s own answers in a deposition taken January 2008, about sex crimes of priests in Portland, Oregon, where Levada was bishop before becoming Archbishop of San Francisco and then, just after the deposition, flying away to Rome never to return to American soil and be questioned again. Today Levada heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly The Inquisition).

Cardinal William Levada is an expert on evading the truth in deposition testimony, even after taking an oath on the Bible. Here are excerpts from the January 2008 deposition. (Attorneys Erin Olson, Michael Morey, and Kelly Clark appeared for plaintiffs, Paul Gaspari is attorney for the San Francisco Archdiocese, Jeff Lena and Mary McNamara represent Levada:)

Mr. MOREY: Q: You indicated to Mr. Clark that during your tenure as archbishop of Portland that you met with a number of victims of clergy abuse.
A: I did say that, right.
Q: Can you tell me the names of any one of them.
A: I don't recall that.
Q: Are you certain you actually even met with a victim?
A: To the best of my recollection, I did.
Q: But you can’t remember a single name.
A: Mm-mm.
Q: Can you remember the context of any of the meetings?
A: The context?
Q: Who the priest was, what was the person’s desires?
A: No, I don't.

Q: During your tenure as the archbishop of Portland, were there any reports of the crime of solicitation sent to the Holy See?
A: I think I can answer no because I'm sure I would have remembered if I had done such a report.
Q: I may miss one, but during your tenure, there were reports of sexual abuse of children by priests Baccellieri, Perone, McCray, Goodrich and Also.
Ms. McNamara: Compound.
Mr. LENA: Compound. What is, I'm sorry, I've lost track of the question. [INAUDIBLE DISCUSSION]

***
Q: Okay, let me switch subjects and talk about Father [BLANK]
[Then 28 and a half REDACTED PAGES]

[Then we get to Erin Olson’s questioning of Cardinal Levada:]

Q: How about Father Donald Durand?
A: I received a report of child sexual abuse. I think it would be more inappropriate behavior.
Q: Can you describe the nature of the complaint?
A: I believe the report I received was one of skinny dipping in a river up towards Silverton or Salem someplace.
Q: Skinny dipping alone?
A: With minors, minor boys.
Q: Did you receive that from a known source?
A: I don't recall. But that sticks in my memory for some reason. And my memory is not that airtight, as you know.
Q: Did you take any action in response to the complaint?
A: I'm sure I must have discussed it with Father Lienert.
Q: Would it be documented in a memorandum of sorts?
A: It could well have been. Certainly I think it would have been discussed with him.
Q: With Father Durand?
A: With Father Durand.
Q: Do you have any independent memory of that discussion?
A: No, I don't.

***
Q: What did you do when you received the report about Father Goodrich?
A: Well, as I recall, he was not in a condition to be interviewed himself. But I'm not absolutely sure whether someone didn't attempt to interview him. You know, I don't know. There should be something in the record about it.
Q: Do you recall having a meeting with Father Lienert, Tom Selliken, and counsel for the archdiocese about how to proceed with that investigation?
A: I don't recall such a meeting but that would be the normal thing.
Q: Okay, let’s talk a little bit about that. When a complaint against a priest was received by you during the course of your tenure as archbishop, what would be your first reaction in terms of what you would do?
A: If it came to me directly, I would call in the vicar for clergy and share this complaint with him, ask for any information and background and ask him to go through files. And then we would meet about what next steps to take.
Q: Was it always the case, with regard to the seven priests you've identified about whom you received complaints during your tenure, that you would convene a meeting to discuss how the investigation would proceed?
A: It would not necessarily- we would- the people that were mentioned, the archdiocesan attorney, oftentimes the risk management person, all of those persons would be involved in consultation. But whether we would always meet together, it's not- I don't recall that being the case.
*****
Ms. OLSON: Q: In Paragraph 3, exhibit 41 describes Father Grammond being upset because he’s being treated so harshly and I'm sort of summarizing it. In it he says: “Father Jim Harris was accused of child abuse fifteen years ago and nothing has happened to him.” Were you familiar with the prior allegation against Father Jim Harris?
A: No.
Q: Did you know Father Harris simply as his supervisor or more as a passing acquaintance?
A: No, I knew him as his bishop. I think Harris was already retired by this time.
Q: Did you receive information from Father Lienert, [Vicar for Clergy] after he got this rant from Father Grammond, that there had been an accusation made against Father Harris?
A: I don't recall having that information before, before this indication, before hearing from, I'm sure I heard from Father Lienert about developments in the Grammond case.
Q: Do you recall learning from Father Lienert in 1992 that a prior accusation of child sexual abuse had been made against Father Jim Harris?
A: All I recollect is what's in this memo.

[COFA: They never admit to anything more than what's already in evidence.]

Q: Did you take any action following up that there’d been accusations against Father Harris?
A: I don't recall it.
Q: You don't recall directing Father Lienert to investigate further?
A: I don't recall it, but it would be the normal thing to do.
Q: Do you remember any allegations against REDACTED?
A: I don't remember hearing any allegations. I think he was the director of the ST. Mary’s Home for Boys, or chaplain there or something?
Q: I believe that's correct, but you recall no allegations against him?
A: I don't recall.

****
Q: We've talked briefly about Father Jacobson. And I want to ask you in more general terms about how you came to learn that Father Jacobson had been accused of sexual misconduct. [Church lawyers object, some discussion ensues]
MR. CLARK: Let me just, not to shoot from the peanut gallery, but I'm quite familiar with Father Jacobson’s file. The allegations involved- I think it mentioned women, young women and girls, almost interchangeably all through the file.
THE WITNESS: Apart from what we have reviewed here, I don't really recall, have a real recollection of anything other than that in regard to Jacobson.
MS. OLSON: Do you recall evaluating his suitability to return to some sort of limited ministry while you were archbishop of the archdiocese of Portland?
A: Yes I do.
Q: What do you recall about that process?
A: I'm sorry I don't recall any details about it.
Q: Do you recall returning him to some sort of ministry during your tenure?
A: My recollection is, is not good here. But there should be some record in the, in the personnel files of the archdiocese about whether I did or didn't.
Q: Well there’s lots of stuff but we're limited in time, So tell me what your memory is of Father Jacobson during your nine years at the archdiocese.
THE WITNESS: Father Jacobson was an affable, gregarious priest. I often ran into him on assignments, priest gatherings, meetings. And I recall some of the situations that are described in the memoranda we've reviewed being brought to my attention and trying to deal with them in an appropriate manner.
MS. OLSON: Do you recall him being at the House of Affirmation in Massachusetts?
A: No.

[Paul Gaspari, attorney for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, questions William Levada next:]

MR. GASPARI: Who succeeded y you as archbishop of Portland?
A: Archbishop Francis George.
Q: Did you meet with Archbishop George before you left Portland?
A: I don't recall that.
Q: Do you recall having any communicates with him about ongoing problems that he would encounter upon his arrival in Portland?
A: It's quite possible, but I don't recall anything specific.

*********
[CofA: Oh, come on, we're talking about priests buggering boys, how do you forget a conversation like that?]
*********

Q: Do you recall having any communications with him about ongoing problems he would encounter upon his arrival in Portland?
A: It's quite possible, but I don't recall anything specific.
[Gaspari’s questions spark the cardinal to talk on for paragraphs about friendships with bishops and meetings and he has no trouble remembering them, as long as they don't have anything to do with child sex abuse.]
A: Archbishop George and I have known each other pretty well since we were both bishops in the northwest. He was in Yakima. And we have had frequent conversation in person and over the telephone. I don't recall any specific conversation, but my practice would be to let my successor take the initiative and not to try to impose upon him any vision of things.
Q: And you don't recall any conversation you had with Archbishop George about the problem priests that you had received accusations against during your tenure as Archbishop?
A: Certainly not that'll. That would be something he would be well informed about by Father Lienert.
[CofA: Oh the buck passing they do.]

*****************

Ms. OLSON: Q: Did you review the sub secreto files when you would enter a new position? Let me be more specific. When you came to Portland, did you go in and look at the sub secreto files?
A: I don't recall doing so.
[CofA: Oh, come on]
Ms. OLSON: Okay, back to Father Jacobson. You testified that you didn't recall that he had been at the House of Affirmation. Does the first page of Exhibit 42 refresh your memory as to that subject?
A: No, but I take it for- on face value here that he- such an inquiry was made, so-
Q: Do you know of any other priests during your tenure as archbishop of Portland who were at the House of Affirmation in Massachusetts?
A: No.
Q: The second page of that exhibit, which is Bates- marked Jacobson 4356, appears to be a memorandum to you from a nun.
A: Yes.
Q: do you have any independent memory of that document? Does it appear to be a request to have Father Jacobson assigned to the- to her institution for at least a part-time position.
MR. LENA: Document speaks for itself.
THE WITNESS: It seems to be.
Q: Okay, if a priest has been seriously accused of molesting a child and he were being considered for a return to some sort of ministry, would a ministry assignment that didn't involve access to children have been something you would have considered before one that did?
Mr. LENA: Calls for speculation.
THE WITNESS: Yes.
Q: What sorts of ministries would you consider, did you consider, while you were archbishop of Portland, assigning priests you were considering returning to parish ministry in some fashion?
A: But I didn't want to assign them to a parish, is that what you mean?
Q: Correct.
A: Well, you know, there could be assignments at, for example, cloistered monasteries of sisters. Some positions in the Chancery Office itself would not involve contact with children.

Q: The first thing I'm going to do is go through and ask you about priests, whether you ever heard, during your tenure as Archbishop of Portland, an allegation that any of these named individuals had committed an act of child sexual abuse. Joseph Henry Arata.
A: No.
Q: Father Edmund Boyle?
A: I don't recall hearing that priest’s name.
Q: Ernesto Guzman-Chavez?
A: I don't recall receiving complaints.
Q: How about father BLANK BLANK BLANK
A: I don't recall any, I don't recall
Q: Father Gerald Dezurick?
A: No I'm not familiar with that name.
Q: Father Martin Doheny, Father BLANK

****************

On and on ad infinitum. The only time the Cardinal remembers anything is when plaintiff attorneys put blatant evidence in front of him. Then all of a sudden it's, “oh, yes, now that you mention it, I do recall Father BLANK skinny dipping with little boys," etcetera. But when the attorney for archdiocese of San Francisco asks Levada questions, the cardinal suddenly has a crisp clear memory for everything.

And American judges and news media went along with the whole charade.

That's all the deposition I've got, have to go back to the job I do that supports this blog. You can help these efforts by sending high fives through PayPal or Western Union.

High Fives are $5 increments sent to City of Angels now and then to pay for readership. Funds are reported by Kay E to the IRS as freelance writing income, It's all legit.

City of Angels Blog is Not a Non-Profit.

****

Want some rejuvenation? I listen to this song over and over, among others:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjDpAwG3Lts

"I am Healed" by Donald Lawrence

(Wish I had grown up in an African American Gospel church...)

They delete but they cannot hide, plus Unsolved murder, Useless bishop excuses, and Jeff Anderson speaks from cyberspace: News Roundup at CofA Blog

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We neglected to mention last post that Fr. John Feit, who wrote the minutes of the Servants of the Paraclete meeting we ran November 15, 2010, came to Via Coeli himself under a cloud of suspicion that includes an unsolved murder, read more below. Also in today’s “Roundup of Stories We Could Not Cover While We Were In Transit” we argue that it does not matter who is the new President of the USCCB, as no Catholic bishop has a clean record when it comes to clergy sex crime cover-ups. We also link in this post to video of plaintiff attorney Jeff Anderson speaking to Australian victims from what I call "space" and give CofA's take on Oprah’s nod to pedo-priest victims, on William Levada leading a Vatican session on sex crimes, and on Bill Lynch beating up his perpetrator priest in San Jose, and More: First this email:

“Hi Kay, I see that TheServants.org have pretty much closed down their web presence. You might make use of the web archive http://web.archive.org/ also known as the Way Back Machine. It is amazing and has been attempting to archive the entire World Wide Web since the mid 1990s. Useful in this instance since here’s the 2001 version of the Servants of the Paraclete website home page (which they apparently deleted a year or so ago). Here is a link to a very rosy description of their whole history “the story” and a philosophy of ministry and here is the index for articles in their magazine Priestly People for 2001. OK I’ll get back to work and let you pick up the research!!!- Jennifer.”

Click those links to see what Servants of the Paraclete tried to delete from the internet, but the WayBack Machine has brought back to life, articles from 2002-2003, before the light started to shine down on them, so they had to hide in shame.

Oh Oprah!

City of Angels was dark for about a week and this Roundup post is only part one, as I catch up on news alerts. I didn't want to get caught up in the flibbermejibbit that resulted when Oprah spent a cosmic blip of time on the issue of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church Nov. 5, 2010. It was interesting to observe news media reaction to the show: endless repetition of the same sound bytes, one end of the globe to the other, in our copy-and-paste world of news coverage. By the time Oprah ran Part two the following Friday, the world seemed to have forgotten.

When Oprah said, “Pain is the same,” early in the first show, I about shut off the TV, but forced myself to watch the rest. The pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church produced about a hundred thousand crime victims alive today in the USA alone. Yes, when a father or schoolteacher rapes a child it is horrendous and shocking, but what happened in the Catholic Church is an entirely different story. Six thousand Catholic priests raped children in the last sixty years, systematically, almost as if children were an entitlement that came with the job of being a priest.

Bishops covered up the crimes. There is no comparison to Catholic priest sex crimes.

Bishops continue to cover up the crimes today claiming First Amendment rights in the USA. That total aberration of justice and misuse of religion has no comparison to any crime spree that's ever happened before in recent history.

So no, all pain is not the same.

I honestly don't even care anymore about the individual rapes, the salacious details on which Oprah loves to dwell, as the individuals who committed those crimes were sick and should have been in treatment and separated from society.

Felonious cardinals and monsignors continue to lunch at country clubs, continue to be pictured in thousand dollar get-ups posing as leaders in the community, and continue to influence American politics, and that's the thing that has stoked my rage for decades.

Felonious bishops still in power is what Oprah totally missed.

So when someone like Oprah says it's best to forgive your perpetrator and move on, it shows they are speaking very authoritatively as an outsider.

Oprah's staff did not do the research.

We weren’t just raped by priests, we continue to be screwed by a religion.

Not just any religion, either, but the religion that claims to be the root of all Christianity, the Pope, The Vatican.

No, Oprah, all pain is not the same.

Not for us who see our perpetrators leading public prayers, commanding respect, and brandishing authority with lawmakers in our country.

***

William Levada to run session
at The Vatican Thursday
to show the rest of the Cardinals
how to handle pedophile priests

When the cardinals devote maybe an hour to the issue of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church at The Vatican November 19, William Levada will conduct the session.

What a joke.

City of Angels Blog began quoting the Levada Deposition from January 2008 here last July and here last May reporting from L.A.***

What a great authority on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church we have in Cardinal Levada. At that deposition he testified about the Doyle Peterson Mouton report from 1985. Levada said the report was “more aggressive in its response than the facts as I knew them warranted.”

Then Levada testified that in all his years as a priest up to becoming Bishop of Portland, Oregon:

Q: At no time during those years did you ever hear anything about abuse of a child by a priest?
A: Not that I can recollect.
Q: When you were in Rome at the North American College, never heard about this problem of priests abusing kids?
A: I'm sure I didn't.
A: Same question, St. John’s Seminary School of Theology, nothing at St. John’s Seminary, no rumors, anecdotal stories, nothing about priests abusing kids?
A: Nothing.

If The Vatican thinks the former Archbishop of San Francisco is qualified to conduct its session on child sex crimes by pedophile priests this week, it must be because Levada was so good at convincing American judges that he did not see serial sex crimes going on right in front of him.

Levada is going to teach other cardinals how to sound innocent under oath.

Levada can show the other cardinals how to convince judges that their negligence makes them innocent.

It's much like a story on AlterNet today- Jail the Bankers where author Josh Holland says as long as bankers don't go to prison for the crime of destroying the American economy, there is no justice. The criminals are empowered.

Well, Josh Holland should try being in the world of pedophile priest crime for a few years.

Innocent Ignorant Bishops?

How could you work your way up in an organization, indeed be one of the bosses, and not know that about ten percent of your employees are serial pedophiles, flagrantly committing sex crimes against children on your corporate properties?

And how does not knowing about the crimes make you innocent?

We had Bishop Gerald Kicanas, who did not get elected President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week, using the “I didn't know” excuse yet again, this time defending his handling of pedophile priest Daniel McCormack when he was in seminary:

From Catholic Tide: “Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tuson,[SIC] Arizona, told the National Catholic Register that he had never heard reports that Daniel McCormack had been guilty of sexual abuse when he supervised McCormack’s study at Mundelein seminary. After his ordination, McCormack would face charges of molesting more than 20 boys.” ( Read Catholic Tide story here )

Also in a November 2007 Chicago Sun-Times story about McCormack, Kicanas is quoted as saying, “I would never defend endorsing McCormack’s ordination if I had had any knowledge or concern that he might be a danger to anyone, and I had no such knowledge or concern.”

So you were so incompetent, so unobservant that you had no knowledge?

That is your defense?

**********

Bizarre development in the William Lynch trial at a hearing in San Jose last Friday.

Demonstrators outside the courthouse (pictured) showed support for Lynch after he pummeled William Lindner almost to death in a rage like many victims of pedophile priests have expressed to me on the phone since I started City of Angels Blog.

If Church Hierarchy had only told the truth from the start, no misdirected enraged victims would be stalking perpetrators today. If people want to beat up pedophile priests, what do you expect, after the way the Catholic Church has abused the justice system to avoid being prosecuted, after they allowed about a hundred thousand children to be raped in the last sixty years in the USA alone.

When I saw the Free Willy photos last Friday, I phoned Joey Piscitelli in the Bay Area to see if he had been there:

“No, but I would have been if they’d contacted me,” Joey said. “It was organized by his family, Lindner raped all their nieces and nephews."

Joey said the Jesuits of San Jose are continuing to lie about Lindner: “That's the same guy that I did a protest in Los Altos about, with John Chevedden. And at that time I asked them, ‘Where are you keeping Lindner?’

“They said, ‘Under close guard because he’s a dangerous serial predator.”

Joey continued: "They said, they watched him 24 hours a day under lock and key. When William Lynch beat Lindner up, the local news reports said Lindner drove himself to the hospital.

“So he must not have been under lock and key.

“They're liars. Lindner still has access to kids,” Joey repeated.

“Where was the DA who’s prosecuting William Lynch in San Jose Superior Court here was she when Lindner was raping kids?” What has she done about Lindner? But she goes after William Lynch.

We've written about Lindner at City of Angels before, in October 2009: Mysterious Death of Father Cheveddon And that same month: Police call it suicide, survivor sees wrongful death

Those were another couple of stories that never made it into the Bishop Accountability database.

I hate to say it but, expect a lot more pummeled priests, burned down churches, and defaced statues, as long as The Vatican and all its overstuffed occupants continue to lord over us with their undeserved power.

The San Jose Mercury News ran Herhold: The sadness of the Will Lynch Case in the San Jose Mercury News, where the columnist recommends healthier ways for victims to express anger. I sent him this email:

I am one of about a hundred thousand pedophile priest victims and I'm also a journalist, so I started City of Angels Blog in Jan 2007 and turned myself from a perpetual victim into a warrior using words and images as my weapons.

I understand the anger William Lynch feels.

The real culprit is the justice system that has allowed bishops to continue to be in powerful positions after six thousand priests were able to rape children in Catholic Churches. (read story on these statistics from Jan 2010 at CofA.

In four years doing the blog, I've interviewed dozens of victims. The unspent rage, the lack of closure- watching bishops continue to sway public opinion and garner respect- really feeds the anger and frustration we all feel. So I understand why Will Lynch did it and am afraid more victims will feel they have no other recourse.
I write to you just because in your column today about Lynch you talk about victims finding a more sane way to deal with these un-resolved crimes. My blog is a good example of what this one victim did...

Thanks for your words on the issue. I have to write about Lynch next post and will probly quote you.

Kay E.
The City of Angels

*******

Catholic hierarchy keep getting making this claim of innocence because bishops did not know all this crime was going on in the dioceses they run.

Victim John Vai testified last week in his case that's gone to trial in Wilmington Delaware:

“It was hard to believe that priests who lived and worked with DeLuca didn't know he was molesting children,” according to Associated Press coverage of the trial in Dover Delaware.

**********

Watch video of Jeff Anderson talking to Australian victims here and see why I say he’s speaking from space...

**********

Re Father Feit:

From Camp Ped
By Ron Russell
Los Angeles New Times
August 15, 2002

The author of glowing reports about Porter and fellow priests who molested during furloughs from Jemez Springs during its early days was Father John B. Feit, who became the superior in charge of the psychosexual treatment program after only two years there. Feit, who had no professional training other than in theology, exemplifies all that was wrong with Camp Ped, not to mention the cynicism—or incompetence—of bishops who sent their priests there. Incredibly, Feit had switched from another religious order to join the Paracletes in 1962, just months after pleading "no contest" to a reduced charge of assault while a priest in Texas. A 20-year-old school teacher had accused him of attempting to sexually assault her as she knelt to pray inside a church in Edinburg, Texas, where he was the pastor, in 1960.

What's more, Feit had been a suspect—although no charges were filed against him—in the murder of a 25-year-old South Texas beauty queen. Three days after she went missing, the woman's partially clad body was found in a drainage ditch near the same Edinburg church, barely a month after the assault on the teacher. Irene Garcia had been raped and suffocated. Garcia's car was found parked at the church, where Feit, who had heard her confession, was the last known person to have seen her alive. "It pains me even now that the person who killed that girl was never brought to justice," retired McAllen, Texas, police officer W.L. "Sonny" Miller, now 70, tells New Times. Miller reviewed the evidence at the request of a now-deceased police chief in the 1970s. Four polygraph tests administered to Feit were "inconclusive," and for lack of physical evidence no charges were brought in the case against anybody, he says.

Garza's clothing and other items remain in an evidence locker at the McAllen Police Department. Miller has pushed in vain to have authorities use DNA testing, which wasn't available at the time of the murder, to revive the investigation. "It's the only right thing to do," he says. Feit, now 69, left the priesthood years ago and works for a Catholic charity in another state. He did not respond to interview requests from New Times, but he told the Brownsville Herald newspaper—which cited the four inconclusive polygraph tests—that he had had nothing to do with the Garcia slaying. He also said he would never have pleaded to the earlier charge if, at the time, he had known what a no-contest plea suggested.

Yet, sadly, the Feit era wasn't an aberration. Camp Ped's track record continued to be the source of tragedy—and the butt of jokes by critics of the bishops' failed rehabilitation model—until it closed in 1994.

Read the entire story Camp Ped at Bishop Accountablity.

***************

* Please click the PayPal buttons on the left or send cash by Western Union.

** Watch City of Angels Blog in the near future for more quotes from the Levada January 2008 deposition. This winter, I promise, this winter I will finish that series of posts. And now that I'm hunkered down in a warm place where I may be snowbound several times this winter, I will finish reading the deposition and do more posts with quotes on the entire January 2008 deposition.

Coming soon.

*** We still need $53.00 of the $88.50 to purchase the trial transcript from Roger Mahony’s testimony in Santillan versus Bishop of Fresno, $35.00 raised so far, thank you.

Read another post at CofA2, more about moving at Mystery Woman of Albuquerque posted earlier today.

ke

Jeff Anderson from Cyberspace to Australia to My Space Station

.
View the video below or by using this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oQCYuKaDgc if the embed code does not work
.
Just watched this video of Jeff Anderson addressing the Survivor meeting in Australia from his offices in St. Paul, from my hotel room in Albuquerque...



... and realized wow, I'm on an outpost, like on a space station ...

Video of Anderson played at the first Global Sexual Assault Summit in Sydney on Saturday November 13, 2010, at a session run by Survivors of Clergy Abuse Australia, part of a weekend put together by, Adults Surviving Child Abuse, Alliance for Forgotten Australians, and Care Leavers Australia

Anderson talks in the video about how great it is that all these groups work so well together...

Here I am at my outpost...

Paraclete Doc: ‘Guest-priests enter ministerial work and no details of a clinical nature need be made known' Minutes from Feb 1967 Meeting

.
With CofA Blog now in Albuquerque, we begin what should be an outpouring of information about the Servants of the Paraclete treatment center for priests with "psycho-sexual problems." Started in 1949 with the best intentions of providing spiritual renewal and prison-like oversight of problem priests, Via Coeli in Jemez Springs morphed by the 1960s into a psychology-dependent almost New Age secular rehab that was so assured of its success treating pedophilia that it sent its priests into local parishes while they were still in treatment, thus creating an inordinately high number of victims of clergy sex crimes in the region around Jemez Springs in Northern New Mexico

Scanned here for you to click enlarge and read are minutes from a February 13, 1967, meeting held: “To present to the archbishop a plan whereby guest-priests under the care of the Servants of the Paraclete could enter into ministerial work in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe as a final step in a graduated program of rehabilitation begun at Via Coeli Monastery, and continued through the Paraclete houses in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.”

The minutes were among documents found during the discovery phase of the L.A. Clergy Cases that settled in 2007, where Cardinal Roger Mahony authorized payment of $660 million to 510 plaintiffs and avoided testifying in trials where these documents would have been released by much more mainstream media than City of Angels Blog.

The Archbishop of Santa Fe and Servants of the Paraclete leaders felt it prudent not to tell local parishes about the problems the out-patient priests brought with them, the minutes reveal, as you can read on Page 2:

“In placing men in the parishes, the Archbishop would use his judgment and discretion in informing the pastors only of what he thought they must absolutely know about the priest they were receiving, so that they might more effectively work with the man."

The minutes continue: “No details or particulars of a clinical nature need be made known regarding the man’s past history.”

“The Archbishop seemed immediately receptive to the idea (of placing out-patient priests in parishes) and added his own personal interest in and concern for the work, then proposed the following parishes as suitable fur such a plan:

In Albuquerque:

Sacred Heart
St. Anza’s
San Felipe
Our Lady of Fatima
Queen of Heaven
Holy Ghost
Our Lady of Assumption
St. Francis Xavier
St. Bernadette’s
St. Theresa
Annunciation
Immaculate Conception
St. Charles
Holy Family
St. Edwin’s
Ascension
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Nativity EVM (Alameda)
St. Clement’s (Los Lunas)

(My God, how big was the population of Albuquerque in 1967 that they even had this many Catholic Churches. City of Angels will be absorbing local culture as we remain in Albuquerque.)

More from the Minutes page 2:

“The point was made that the program as so far stated might carry with it an inconvenience in terms of constant personnel changes in the parishes. The Archbishop remarked that there were enough parishes available to obviate that problem… He repeated that the priests of the archdiocese were ready and willing to help in this operation.”

(More from page 2-3, where as CofA Blog reads it, The Catholic Church through SotP experimented with the people in local New Mexico parishes, used them as guinea pigs to see if pedophile priests who completed treatment were ready for full-time assignments or not:)

“It was further agreed that the parochial assignment was to be of an indefinite nature, lasting as long as was necessary for the man to give evident signs that he had readjusted well to the ministry and was now deserving of a full time assignment, either in his home diocese, his religious community, or in whatever opportune situation he might be placed. It was agreed that should a man fail to measure up in his parochial assignment, he should be returned to a Paraclete house, preferably in the Canyon, where efforts at his priestly renewal might begin again.”

The Paraclete New Mexico Corporation?

Page 3 goes on to discuss teaching opportunities for the Servants of the Paraclete out-patients as “not feasible at the moment, with one possible exception, at St. Vincent’s Academy.” Also on Page 3: They're adding four more rooms because of the “influx of guests,” the $10,000 cost would be referred to the Paraclete New Mexico Corporation.

The Archbishop “spoke of his admiration for the professional services being extended to the Paracletes by Dr. Frank Rowe (Howe? It's hard to read this 1967 typewriter with its ink splotches), and Dr. John Salazar.”

Also on Page 3, the Archbishop, concerned about overcrowding and understaffing, “cautioned that we not allow a large number of specifically ill-adjusted emotional cases to accumulate in one place.”

Dr. Salazar interjects:

“So far as treating the seriously disturbed (in the psycho-sexual sphere) no good is gained from segregating these individuals from men with dissimilar problems. This only serves to accentuate their feelings of being cut off from society.”

(Thanks for being so concerned about the needs of the perpetrators, Dr. Salazar.)

More from the Minutes:

“Fr. Connolly then reminded the group that an integral part of the Paraclete apostolate was and always would be the care of those who, either by personal decision or obvious signs, would NOT return to the active ministry. He pointed out the benefits to community life some of these ‘retired’ priests were able to make.”

(Again, no one ever wonders what happened to the victims of these “priests with boundary problems” but they are so concerned that the perpetrators are well tended.)

Page 4 of the Minutes from February 1967:

“The Archbishop was in agreement that Via Coeli existed to help priests in whatever capacity possible or necessary…. He pointed out there is an area of reasonableness to be hoped for between luxury and poverty and that a pleasant and liveable [SIC] kind of living quarters was a factor in a man’s readjustment and rehabilitation.”

Then they go on to discuss how well the AA program is fitting in to the Servants of the Paraclete treatment plan.

Minutes submitted by Fr. John Feit, 2/15/67

Attending this meeting where they all agreed it was great to send pedophiles into local parishes were:

Most Rev. James P. Davis, Archbishop
Rev. John Vincent
Rev. Edwin Connolly
Rev. John Feit
Rev. Patrick Hulcahy
Rev. Harry Kenney
John Salazar, Ph.D.

*************
We are including

TWO BONUS documents

from L.A. Clergy Cases Discovery for today’s post:

First This letter from Father Gerald Fitzgerald, founder of Servants of the Paraclete, written July 4, 1956, for those who like to know the names of priests involved in Servants of the Paraclete work (looking for signs your perpetrator was in treatment there).

The July 4th letter closes in Father Gerald Fitzgerald’s unique style, first a moving spiritual message:

“Let me beg you, dear Paracletes, to love the Divine Spirit and learn to live in simple childlike docility. He will lead you deeper and deeper into the Sacred Heart and there, and there alone, will you find the warmth of Divine Caritas without which priests hearts soon find themselves fighting the chill of worldliness and earthly frustration”

Followed by:

“PS: a financial Drive for a building fund for adequate facilities here in the Canyon is developing. Pray if it is God’s will that it will prosper."

“We have the happiness of professing Father Agnellus of the Sacred Heart. This brings to a total of 24 the number of professed Paracletes and 5 Oblates. We have besides 6 priests and 3 seminarians in the novitiate and a saintly priest on retreat prior to entering the novitiate.

“We have in our retreat houses very close to 100 guests and as of this date, July 4, (1956) we have 10 or 11 Paracletes here and there in the country helping Bishops who are hard pressed for cover.

“Father Edwin Connolly and Father John Mathias McCarthy have the Villa Madre de Dios community functioning smoothly and efficiently in helping the needs of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.

“Here in the Canyon Father Guy Rosse and the Regina Mundi house threatens to surpass the Motherhouse and Father Pat Mulcahy is a small but vigorous planting. Father Felix is doing an outstanding job with the parish in our administration at Two Inlets. I am especially happy over his development of the Eucharistic consciousness of his people.

“Father Urban, with Father Swanson’s able assistance, has Our Lady of the Snows Retreat at Neyis, Minnesota, developing rapidly. We are grateful to Bishop Schenk for this splendid development.

“Finally here at the Motherhouse, the increased number of final profession s makes it possible for us to fill out the offices of the General Administration, which at the present moment are:

Father Francis J. Morrell, Consultor and Vicar General
Fr. Joseph Moylan, Consultor and Treasurer General
Fr. Edward Woeber, Consultor and Secretary General
Fr. John D. Lee, Consultor

Thus bringing back to the General Administration Father Woeber and adding the experience of one of the oldest Paracletes who is taking care of a difficult assignment- the parish of St. Genevieve at Las Cruces, New Mexico. We wish by the selection of Father Lee to indicate how valuable in the Congregation are the spiritual contributions of those Paracletes who under holy obedience are deprived of the consolations of community life.
**************

BONUS DOC:

City of Angels Blog is also running this article where Father Joseph MacNamara, writes about his personal experience in the blooming Servants of the Paracletes religious order, from being a novitiate who always felt like a failure to becoming Servant General after Fr. Fitzgerald died.

“Fr. Gerald then appointed me Father Servant at Via Coeli in Jemez Springs. At the request of Archbishop Davis, one of my tasks was to inaugurate therapy programs for our guest priests. Fr. Gerald felt that the Archbishop’s request infringed upon his own responsibility as Superior General of the Servants of the Paraclete, and he reacted strongly to the plans for the therapy program.”

(Yes, here we see that Fitzgerald knew the New Age whoo-whoo therapies psychologists were bringing in to Servants of the Paraclete were not going to stop his patients from acting out, his priests were sexual deviants, a sickness for which there is no cure. Fitzgerald called out, the lone voice, the one voice with experience, to stop thinking therapy will cure priests of pedophilia. He was ignored, when he was the smartest one.)

More from MacNamara’s article:

When Father Gerald died on June 28, 1969, “I attended our General Chapter to elect Father Gerald’s successor. My reaction was shock and Surprise! I was elected.

My main goal was to assist our Community in making the transition that all newly founded religious groups must eventually make- from the charismatic presence of the founder to the ordinary operation of a religious community within the Church.

“There were difficult decisions with both positive and negative consequences.”

(One big mistake MacNamara made as seen in his article was to think of Servants of the Paraclete as an “ordinary religious order” when it harbored priests that should have been kept away from mainstream society entirely, the way Father Gerald Fitzgerald wanted it, on an island cut off from society. MacNamara and others led this movement to give pedophile priests treatment, then turn them loose again on the world, like psychology is some be-all-end-all answer to all our problems.)

(Funny that a religion would adopt a stance that favored psychology over spiritual treatment.)

Page 3 of MacNamara’s article gushes out a priestly gush of gratitude.

Notice at the bottom of the three pages of this document, you see a link to a website, but the pages are no longer posted there. It says http://www.theservants.org/priestlypeople/pp11-2001part2.html when I try to go that link, it says, “cannot be found.”

Instead if you go to http://theservants.org/ you will read at the bottom of the page the same promise that has been there now for more than a year: “New and improved website coming soon.”

***********

Coming next at CofA: A Roundup of Stories we couldn't cover while we were on the road, plus more Servants of the Paraclete documents, including Oso Pious’ reaction to the case filed Monday in Gallup New Mexico.

Stay tuned.

Send up high fives by PayPal or by Western Union, thank you, all income from City of Angels Blog is reported by Kay to the IRS as free lance income as at City of Angels Blog we like to keep things legal.

And we do need money.

We have yet to get the $88.50 we need to purchase Mahony's testimony from Fresno trial, Santillan versus Bishop of Fresno, for the conclusion of "What Melissa Huckaby Heard."

If everyone who reads this blog sent five dollars today it would lift a great deal of worry and assure a professional level of ongoing coverage of the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church at City of Angels Blog.

-ke

Read a more personal take on our trip to Albuquerque here at City of Angels 2

CORRECTION:
Here is link to the Servants of the Paraclete article
http://web.archive.org/web/20030927032601/theservants.org/priestlypeople/pp_11-2001_part2.html
but they still have done nothing new to their website in years.

Where did she go?

.
Just got this email:

"All the world wonders, where is Kay Ebeling?" ....take off on message from Adm Nimitz to Adm Halsey during the Battle of Leyete...."Where is, repeat, where is Task Force Thirty Four? The world wonders."

****

City of Angels will reactivate at full speed on Nov. 15th.

Rejuvenating

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More posts coming shortly, I am just catching up and adjusting to new location... watch here next week for more from City of Angels.

/ke

Sign Petition to UN: Systemic Child Abuse is Crime Against Humanity

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The Petition:

We, the undersigned call on the United Nations to define and include the “Systemic Sexual Abuse of Children” under Article 7 of its charter definitions of “Crimes Against Humanity”.

Sign petition at Survivors Voice website

Goodbye L.A. I will miss your jury pools. CofA is off to the land of Radioactive Pedophile Priests

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One thing I will miss about California is its compassionate laws and politics; for example, people with pedophile priest crime experiences as old as mine* were able to file lawsuits in 2003 and get settlements in 2007, thanks to a law passed by this state Legislature, an event not likely to happen in most parts of the country. The one Clergy Case in L.A. that got as far as jury selection in 2008 exemplifies how progressive the population is here compared to the rest of the world. Here is how we reported on the Salesian case that got as far as voir dire in May of 2008 at City of Angels 4:

‘One of the questions was, “How many of you believe the Catholic Church has covered up sex crimes?” Every potential juror in the first day of voir dire raised their hand, in the Salesian cases which settled before going to trial this week in LA. At another point attorneys asked, how many of you think a Catholic priest will lie under oath to protect the church and, again, every one of them raised their hands.’ (Read the coverage at CofA3.

Writing this blog is so therapeutic. I truly recommend to any survivor of a pedophile priest who feels stuck in a place where you're a victim all the time: Find a way to use your skills, whatever they are, to communicate the injustice, outrage, and shock the crimes of pedophile priests and their enabling bishops created in you.

As I pull out of L.A., towards New Mexico, taking CofA on the road, I know there are things I will miss about this place, and since my daughter is here, I’ll probably come back. For now, everything I ever did in my life led me to do this blog, and going from city to city to report on the similarities, patterns, and signs of collusion among hierarchy in these crimes is definitely the next step. After Albuquerque CofA Blog hopes to visit Boston, Chicago, Des Moines, Detroit, and who knows what other cities, in search of the total story.

There were a couple breakthrough moments in the birth of the blog that made it therapeutic, so starting this blog inadvertently took the place of therapy for me. Producing this blog caused me to evolve from a puffy introverted shaky perpetual victim into a spunky alert acknowledged appreciated … contributor to society for the first time in my life.

One breakthrough moment was after one of the L.A. Clergy Cases pretrial hearings in Judge Haley Fromholz’ courtroom downtown L.A. that I would cover at City of Angels 3 in 2007. Plaintiff attorney Tony DeMarco sat in the hallway on a bench next to one of the attorneys from Hennigan Bennett & Dorman, who are the L.A. Archdiocese’s lead law firm, or one of them anyway.

It was only a few weeks since I’d started City of Angels and I literally had no idea what I was doing, just knew it was the right thing to do, otherwise I’d be at home watching HBO and getting even fatter.

I listened in on the conversation between the two attorneys, who knew I was listening, taking notes even, and yet they continued talking. I ended up writing about their conversation at City of Angels 3 from that time, but I also ended up realizing how I fit into the entire picture, almost at that moment.

It was a breakthrough moment.

Maybe a turning point from survivor to one who thrives on one’s own trauma and the energy it creates.

Because even though I was just sitting and observing and writing things down, I got a sense that I was in exactly the place I was supposed to be at that time, that everything I had ever done in my life up to that date had prepared me for, and led me to this place, and writing down everything these attorneys were saying and doing to post on a blog was exactly what I was supposed to be doing at that time.

And then things at City of Angels Blog just kept taking off from there.

So I truly recommend to any survivor of a pedophile priest who feels stuck in a place where you're a victim all the time: Find a way to use your skills, whatever they are, to communicate the injustice, outrage, and shock the crimes of pedophile priests and their enabling bishops created in you. Imagine the sculptures someone could make if they were so inclined, the facial expressions, the body language of rage.

I can pinpoint another moment when this blog caused me to start having self esteem again after not having any for about thirty years. When I started writing this blog in 2007 I was this simpering rumpled waif emanating insecurity. Physically I was puffy and bloated from both pharmaceuticals and self-destructive eating habits.

It was at Superior Court downtown Los Angeles, maybe the third or fourth time I was there to cover a hearing, so I guess the individuals who work in Judge Fromholz’ court had started reading City of Angels Blog. It was in the afternoon when there was no hearing, and I went in and asked Fromholz’ courtroom clerk, “How do I find documents on these cases?”

He dropped everything to help me. He knew who I was and he treated me with this respect I hadn’t felt probably ever in my life. A Fromholz courtroom employee took me down to the document room, showed me how to log in to the special place where at that time documents in the Clergy Cases were easily available for the public to read. (Superior Court has since closed that public viewing area and new docs from L.A. Clergy Cases after Jan. 2008 are in a different building in a place you can't get to without a lot of money on your credit card....)

Thus at that moment, as the clerk showed me how to log in, how to search by date, or by title, the act of “document diving” began at City of Angels Blog.

Then I found myself with a thousand dollars, a few weeks later, through a fluke of a lump sum unemployment check that arrived weeks after I’d gone back to work. I’d seen the guy from the L.A. Times clacking away on a laptop at a hearing, and knew, that's what I need, so I took the unemployment lump sum and bought a laptop to carry downtown so I could copy type the documents and post them. (It so happens that for my job as a transcriber, I program in shortcuts, so I type almost as fast as a person speaks, see what I mean, everything I've done in my life led up to this moment?)

Somewhere I found a new identity and that elusive thing we call “self esteem.”

I got it somewhere between those two experiences at the courthouse described above, along with the way attorneys for both the Catholic Church and the plaintiffs suing the Church would speak to me with respect I had rarely received, as if I was a real journalist. Plus there has been the amazing readers’ responses to City of Angels Blog, especially when I figured out how to add a PayPal button in mid-2007. The PayPal clicks mean I make a little bit of money from the blog.

So I became a professional again.

Maybe for the first time in my life I was being treated with respect, as up until age 40 when I got sober long enough to experience a repressed memory about Father Thomas Barry Horne, I used to play act everything.

Before I experienced the “repressed memory” that explained all the mysteries of my life, I was never myself. When I was a mother, I played the role of mother, when I was editor on a magazine, I play acted how an editor should act, but I was never myself, not for about forty years, that's part of the phenomenon of experiencing a repressed memory, for me at least. The years between when the trauma happened at age five and when I let myself remember it at forty-five, I play acted, took on personas, pretended to be someone I wasn’t as a way to not be myself… it's hard to explain. It made me a dynamite actress back in the sixties, one of several careers I self sabotaged…

But I digress.

Somewhere between recovering the memory of what happened to me with Father Horne in 1994 and about February of 2010, I not only dropped all the adopted personas, but I also came into the person I could have been. Sure I'm 62 and I finally know who I am, in that respect, it's kind of pathetic.

But I have the Murmur, She Wrote project. as we reported October 16th.

Also on video and if anyone knows how to fix the focus on my new Toshiba webcam I got for this trip, please email me.

Going off to write the story of Radioactive Pedophile Priests as we reported October 5, 2010.

I am so glad to be getting out of L.A., which is my home town more or less, but the neighborhoods I once called my own are now peopled by immigrants from far flung lands where even the alphabets are different. Your politically correct progressive soul may think that shouldn't be a problem, but after living in this neighborhood five years, I don't know how to describe the extra added isolation that crept over me from living in a place where the only native English speakers are the crack whores. Over 60 months here, I learned to just tune out everyone, it became habit. I would go days and weeks without interacting with anyone longer than a broken, How you do? Weather nice, no?

Oppressive isolation, not a healthy place for a PTSD patient in recovery.

I am so glad to be leaving this apartment where I went through a low that it's hard to describe. Outside the door is a neighborhood where trash is piling up to levels that make the streets look like Calcutta, or the beginnings of Calcutta. Maybe Jerry Brown will allocate some funds for street cleaning in L.A. that includes the sidewalks. Meanwhile, in neighborhoods like mine there are festering piles that as I approach, I imagine all the vermin and bacteria that have been brewing there for years and years…

Something about living in the midst of these garbage filled streets, a layer of grime seems to cover everything nearby. And I've adapted. I even started wearing clothes that had stains on them, it didn't matter. It's part of the terrain around Sunset and Normandie in L.A. Just living your daily life, you go for a walk, you end up with trash and mystery particles blowing up onto you. It becomes part of you after awhile. Even now as I'm packing to leave, the past two weeks I've only been wearing the clothes that are stained as I packed any new clean clothes I have in the suitcase. Then the day I leave I’ll throw away every piece of linen, every fabric, every pillow, anything that could carry nits and ticks and bugs from this place. Throw it all away, wish I could burn it all. Trying to carry only new untainted fabrics with me to a new place, leaving behind the mites.

Not just mites, that grime outside literally blows in the window, in the form of dust, molecules, and fumes. I've grown accustomed to the smell of urine and rot. When it rains you can smell mold and mildew all over the neighborhood. We're working poor in this part of town, compared to the rest of Los Angeles. Slum landlords don't take time to maintain things like roofs. So the rot odor is just here, everywhere, and living inside of it, you start to become stained yourself, just to fit in.

This past week I took all those stained clothes and threw them in the trash.

I’ve bought new clothes over the past few months, but haven’t worn them because I didn't want to get them grimy just from being here. Now they're packed in a suitcase and I'm soon outta here.

Doing this trip to write Murmur, She Wrote reminds me of 1969 when I packed up a duffle bag and hitchhiked down the Santa Ana Freeway to Laguna Beach because I heard Timothy Leary was there someplace, and I found him. Just picked up, left Hollywood that time too, and went to Laguna Beach because I knew I was going to find something out by going there, and I did.

As to my first stop in New Mexico to write about Servants of the Paraclete, I am beginning to feel a deep connection with Father Gerald Fitzgerald, the founder of the religious order that tended to pedophile priests outside Albuquerque. I think he was genuinely a decent guy, he just existed on a plane that is other than earthly, but isn't that the goal of being a monk?

A friend emailed me that some “uber Catholics” in his small New Mexico town were asking him why I would come to Albuquerque to write these stories now.

I'm doing this blog as one of the victims of the pedophile priest epidemic in the Catholic Church who is also a journalist, and NM is just my first stop in this incredible true sex crime story that has never been fully reported. My own life was horribly skewered by my sexual behavior and my career is a series of failures. I truly worked my way down a career ladder, as a result of actions I took that I probably never would have taken if I hadn’t been sexualized by a priest when I was five years old.

Honest, I feel like God has given me this story to write, and put the steps to do it in front of me, as a way to kind of make up for the lousy life I ended up living as a result of my behavior. I emailed back to my friend, “If any of those uber-Catholics question why I'm coming to New Mexico, tell them I am being nudged by angels each step of the way." That's the honest truth. From the beginning CofA Blog has been nudged by angels, something uber-Catholics should respect.

About halfway into making train and hotel reservations for this trip to Albuquerque and points beyond, it hit me, not only will I be doing the blog and doing my transcription job over the internet, but…

I'm also going to be traveling!

Sure I’ll be in a hotel room doing my 4-6 hour a day job hopefully as much as 6 mornings a week. But the “Murmur She Wrote” project also means going to a dozen different cities over the next ten years, living there for a while, cities that I've never been to before in my life.

Wow, I created this thing for myself without even realizing it, kinda like City of Angels Blog Cityof Angels Blog itself.

Onward.

Don’t forget: PayPal high $5’s are what keep City of Angels Blog professional. Click a Donate Button on the left. All funds from this blog are reported to the IRS as free lance writing income, as at CofA we like to keep things legal.

Meanwhile, re the photo below, as I say goodbye to L.A. I use this time to say one more time, "Right back at ya, Lee Potts, lead attorney defending Cardinal Roger Mahony from his corporate law offices at Hennigan downtown L.A."

The photo below first ran at City of Angels September 15, 2010

That day CofA Blog had made one last trip to Superior Court to cover the L.A. Clergy Cases before leaving for Albuquerque and discovered yet another lawsuit where Cardinal Roger Mahony slipped away from a subpoena to testify in a deposition by settling a early. After the hearing that day, I got a photo of Lee Potts while he was talking with Michael Maddigan, of O’Melveny & Myers lawfirm, who appeared for defendants Claretian Missionaries (Potts is with Hennigan Bennett & Dorman).

I called out, “Lee!” to get the two Church Attorneys to look my direction and ended up with the picture at right.

Is Lee Potts giving me the finger?

Well, as I leave L.A., let me say, to you and all the lawyers who defend the corporate interests of the Roman Catholic Church and end up re-victimizing persons who have already been traumatized for life by your priests:

Right back at ya.

Read the post here that goes with the picture of Potts giving me the finger: from September 15, 2010.

Bonus: See Archbishop of Brussels get a pie in the face last week in Belgium.

-ke

* My case is in Illinois from 1949-1953. I live in L.A. but was not able to benefit from the California law and file suit.