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| How dirty are your hands bishop Myers?
Earlier
this year (2/21/1) I wrote about Newark Archbishop John J. Myers spending his
weekends at his 4,500-square-foot $800,000 home on 8.2 wooded acres in the
hills of Hunterdon County, NJ. If that wasn’t enough misuse of funds, parishioners
were angered when they found that the archdiocese was spending $500,000 for a
3,000 sq. foot addition with a 28-foot by 28-foot gallery and a "wellness
room" with a hot tub and a 14-foot by 7-foot Endless Pool. This is where Myers
will retire.
It
gets worse. Besides his obvious greed,
Myers has long been accused of sheltering abusive priests. A group of advocates
for molestation victims who call themselves the Catholic Whistleblowers, urged
Pope Francis to use the new Vatican tribunal he formed on negligent bishops to
investigate Myers. The Whistleblowers, who are priests, nuns and canon lawyers,
said they will present evidence to the Vatican that Myers has been persistently
hostile toward people who come forward with abuse allegations, and had left
guilty clerics in parishes in the Newark archdiocese and in his previous post
as bishop of Peoria, Illinois.
The
Associated Press article noted that Pope Francis will visit the U.S. in
September but the “unfinished business of the molestation scandal is hanging
over the trip. The Press went on to say, ”The crisis erupted in 2002 with the
case of one pedophile priest in the Archdiocese of Boston before spreading
nationwide, then engulfing the Roman Catholic Church.”
While
hundreds of accused clergymen have been barred from serving as priests there
has been no direct penalty for bishops who covered up allegations and kept the
clerics on the job. Myers came under heavy criticism in 2013 after he allowed Michael
Fugee, a now defrocked priest who had been accused of groping a teenage boy, to
attend youth retreats and hear confessions from minors –even though prosecutors
had barred him from contact with minors. Myers also had privately allowed
another priest who had been removed over molestation claims to live in the
rectory of a church with a school and youth groups.
In
Peoria, Larry and Helen Rainforth, parents of a son (one of 13 people) who
received a settlement over abuse by former priest Norman Goodman, said Myers
threatened people who came forward with libel lawsuits and excommunication.
While
the official Vatican itinerary for the pope's U.S. trip doesn’t say Francis
plans to address the issue of bishop cover-ups like that of Myers’ there are
those who think he will face it. Let’s just do it Francis – you owe it to the
children past and present who are abused by your clergy. You said the world is
filthy – well so are the hands of the bishops who enable sexual abuse of
children.
|
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Pope Francis: When you talk about the filthy world don’t forget the dirty-handed bishops
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Pope Francis you have company: other faiths and groups that abuse children
There’s
a saying, “birds of a feather flock together” and in this case the birds are
different religious groups and what they all do is sexually abuse children. Although Pope Francis and the catholic church
are notorious for abusing the most children for the longest time these
perpetrators are not alone.
It’s
good that the catholic church has had so much press and revelation of what goes
on behind closed church doors. Now, the
truth about other religious organizations (and Boy Scouts and athletic organizations)
is seeing the light:
Mennonites
SNAP,
the Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests has a new chapter: SNAP-Menno
an Anabaptist-Mennonite chapter formed by twelve survivors of sexual abuse and
their advocates. One of the founders, longtime victim-advocate Ruth E. Krall,
an emerita professor at Goshen (Ind.) College who dedicated decades of her life
to understanding and penetrating the deeply hidden plague of sexual abuse among
Mennonite clans. Krall wrote a book, The
Elephant in God’s Living Room, about Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder’s
sexual abuse of women.
Barbara
Graber, a former professor at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg,
Va., is an associate editor of ourstoriesuntold.com, a website devoted to
preventing sexualized violence among Mennonites. As a survivor of sexual abuse,
Graber was drawn to the “wealth of knowledge and hope” in the SNAP
organization. “I was overwhelmed with
emotion walking into a room of several hundred survivors who had, like me, been
sexually violated by the same persons who taught us about God and were members
of our faith community,” Graber says about the 2014 SNAP annual conference.* There are other SNAP chapters for
Presbyterians, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, children of missionaries, Orthodox Christians
and Boy Scouts, among others.
2015
Conference Information (July 31-Aug 2 in Alexandria, VA)
Mormons
and the Boy Scouts Link
Child
molester + Mormons = easy prey
The
Sins of Brother Curtis: A Story of Betrayal, Conviction, and the Mormon Church
by Lisa Davis is an account of one of the most prolific serial child molesters
in the U.S., Frank Curtis. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints, Curtis was a Sunday School teacher and Boy Scout leader, so
he had double access to children. He molested boys in several Portland, Oregon
from 1976 to 1991. At a lawsuit trial against the LDS Church is was discovered
that bishop had told the victim’s mother that they “knew” Curtis was a
pedophile and hadn’t warned the family—that it was discovered that the church
had known for years that Curtis was a danger to children. (Sound familiar Pope
Francis?) Curtis was excommunicated (for homosexuality rather than pedophilia) then
re-baptized and returned to the positions from which he preyed upon children.
So
what do the Mormons have to do with Boy Scouts (other than molesting
them)? According to Davis while the Boy Scouts of
America is a separate entity from the LDS Church, but the Mormon church is the
largest single sponsor of the BSA. So almost all Mormon boys are Boy Scouts and
many have been molested in both places. So the LDS Church decided that leaders of
church Boy Scout troops had to be checked out by the BSA – that’s like asking
the fox to watch the chickens.
The
LDS must have used the catholic church for a role model: it took so many years
before their crimes saw the light of day, there were so many victims, and the church
fought a battle to keep it secret and the perpetrator “repented” and was given
another chance to have access to children. Like the catholic church, the LDS had
the deep pockets and the lawyers to wear the victim’s lawyers down. [The LDS
Church’s lawyers] were fighting a war of attrition, in which one side wins just
because the other side can’t keep up.
It
turns out that Curtis had a criminal record from way back – stealing, armed
robbery in the same area where Al Capone did his dirty work. Curtis’ criminal
record said that he had inappropriate sexual behavior with boys. There was a
clue that was missed. If, in 1929, they say that he’s having sex with young
boys, and his last victim was molested in 1991, that’s more than 60 years.
Jehovah’s
witnesses
Again,
like their counterparts in the catholic church Elders in the Jehovah’s Witness
leadership have been covering up child sex abuse. Recently, a group of ex-Jehovah’s Witness
members put up a billboard calling out leadership in the church for failing to
adequately address sexual abuse — and even for actively covering it up. The
billboard points viewers to a website (www.JWAWAKE.com) that offers evidence
for the claims. The group hopes for the message to make an impact during
upcoming conventions, which thousands will attend.
They want to hold Elders accountable for failing
to report sexual abuse. Now, Elders are instructed to only turn over to
authorities cases in which there are two witnesses — which means that in
addition to the victim, either the perpetrator must confess, or the abuse must
have been performed where another church member could witness it — something most
sexual predators know how to avoid. They’re asking every Jehovah’s Witness to
contact the governing body of the church and call for change -- to call for
Elders to be ordered to report every incident, with or without a witness. The
billboard will be present through two Jehovah’s Witness conventions on July 31,
and August 7. Having the Elders be
accountable is a good step to take but direct reporting to the police would be
better for the children.
Revelations
on Rabbis
It
not only Christian denominations sexually abusing children, the Jewish
institutions in Israel and in the U.S. do their share of abuse.
In
Israel the past week, two men heading religious institutions in Israel were
added to the list of sex predators in the religious Jewish world. Rabbi Ezra
Scheinberg was caught by police two weeks ago at Ben Gurion airport trying to
avoid arrest on charges of rape, sexual harassment and indecent assault. Ten
women have come forward – with more expected because the court lifted the ban
on releasing his name. Scheinberg, 47, married with eight children raped women
who came to him for spiritual counseling, and told the women it was part of
their healing treatment. (We’ve heard that story before).
One
of his victims said, “After all these years of your intimidations, we are no
longer scared. Your scare-tactics no longer work on us….If you had one drop of
integrity of justice, of truth you would ask for our forgiveness. But your
heart was always made of stone.”
Scheinberg’s students, originally
shocked, threw his books in a big trash can, and staff are calling him “an
abomination.
Just
like Pope Francis and his bishops, the Chief Rabbi Eliyahu, was the cover for abusive
rabbis. Dr. Hannah Kehat, one of the founders of a group established by
Orthodox activists to investigate complaints of sexual abuse within the
religious sector, said Eliyahu “waged terror against any woman who dared to
complain.” The victims were called liars
in public and learned that rabbis support the offender and not them.
Like
their catholic counterparts, many rabbis advise and encourage victims and
survivors of child sexual abuse and their families to not report these crimes
to the police. They believe that incidents of child sexual abuse should be
addressed internally, led by the rabbi. To keep victims from going to the
police, they defend the perpetrators saying “he has a wife and children so why
make his entire family suffer?”, “the abuse happened many years ago,” “it was a
moment of weakness,” “he’s a righteous, God-fearing person,” “you’ll be
bringing shame on you, your family and our community,” “you’ll ruin your
marriage prospects,” and so on.
Because of the closed Orthodox society there is
greater opportunity for abuse and cover-ups – for example, having large
families, use of male mikveh (ritual bath-house), limited or no sexual
education, desire to protect the reputations of leaders/rabbis and
institutions, isolated communities that often reject the use of mainstream law
enforcement, the existence of extreme taboo/stigma etc. Some experts believe that around 50% of
Hassidic boys in Brooklyn are sexually abused. Much of the community is in
denial but like the catholic church, exposure will wake up the faithful.
Monday, July 6, 2015
Thirty years of the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Barbara Blaine, founder of SNAP talks to the National Catholic Reporter
 |
Barbara
Blaine, holding a photo of herself as a child, protests at the Vatican in April
2005. (ZUMA Press/La Presse/Mauro Scrobogna)
|
This
week the National Catholic Reporter is running a series about 30 years of child
sexual abuse by the Catholic Church. It
is a series worth reading. The first article is the sad but empowering story of
Barbara Blaine, founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
(SNAP). Barbara says, “A single issue of
NCR changed the course of my life and eventually led to my starting an
international movement of survivors of clergy abuse. I am extremely grateful to
NCR!” Please read the whole series – the
more people who read this story, the safer children will be all over the world.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Catching Cardinals in the clergy sex abuse scandal: next stop Pope Francis
 |
| Cardinal George Pell |
The
Royal Commission in Australia has been investigating how institutions like
schools, churches and sporting groups handle child sexual abuse cases. In the spotlight currently is Cardinal George
Pell. Pell has been under fire since allegations that he turned a blind eye to
abuse resurfaced last week at the royal commission into child sexual abuse in
Ballarat, Victoria. Pell has been
accused of bribing abused victims to keep them quiet and ignoring victim’s
complaints.
Peter
Saunders, a victim of sexual abuse himself, has broken his silence about Cardinal
Pell. Saunders established the National Association for People Abused in
Childhood in Britain 16 years ago. Last December, he was hand-picked by Pope
Francis to lead the Vatican’s commission for the protection of children.
Appearing
on Nine Network's 60 Minutes program*, Saunders described Pell as a dangerous
individual. Saunders said about Pell in the interview: “He has a catalogue of
denigrating people, of acting with callousness, cold-heartedness, almost
sociopathic, I would go as far as to say – this lack of care.” “Pell had shown disregard for victims of child
sexual abuse through his repeated denial of any knowledge of abuse within the
church”, Saunders said.
Judy
Courtin, from Australia’s Monash University’s law faculty, has extensively
researched abuse within the Catholic church. In response to the interview. Pell said he was considering his legal
options, a move which Courtin described as “highly insulting to victims”.
Courtin
said that for justice to be done, victims needed to be able to tell their story
and also to know that senior figures in the institution where the abuse
occurred were held to account. “He seems
more concerned with protecting his reputation than supporting victims,” she
said about Pell.
The
president of the Care Leavers Australia Network, Maureen Cuskelly, whose organization
supports survivors of sexual abuse within institutions, also said it was
concerning that Pell was considering his legal options.
Our
efforts are succeeding. We are exposing
the abusers of children and all those who ignore or cover up the crimes of
these abusers. Pope Francis is feeling the heat as the fires of justice get
closer and closer.
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