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| Cardinal Dolan - Who Cares About the Victims? |
The
catholic church, its lawyers and its supporting politicians think that victims
of child abuse have short memories. But we
don’t - here is a report of “Don” an 80
year old man who says, “the pain is fresh.”
Just like my pain is fresh – I relive it every day: rape by a catholic priest,
beatings and being smothered by catholic nuns, the suicide of my brother who
couldn’t live with the abuse we suffered.
Don
told a priest who ran St. Michael’s Home for Children on Staten Island that one
of the church employees had molested him repeatedly for two years. All he got
was a lecture about damaging the man’s reputation.
Don
was beaten with a thick paddle: “He beat the back of my legs like he was really
mad. I thought he would never stop,” Don told NY Daily News reporter Michael O’Keeffe.
Even
though Don reported the abuse to the Archdiocese of New York a few years ago
it’s unlikely that he will receive any compensation or justice any time soon. Archdiocese
officials told him they were not responsible because a religious order, the
Sisters of Mercy, operated the orphanage during the seven years Don lived there
in the 1940s. The Dominican nuns who
abused me ran the St. Agnes Home and School in Sparkill, NY in the 1940s. This is the same old story from the
Archdiocese – that they or the Pope have nothing to do with the actions of
nuns. The Vatican regulates what nuns do
– how they pray, how they spend their money, how they conduct their lives. But they are all of a sudden “not responsible”
for nuns who are facing lawsuits.
New
York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan set up an Independent Reconciliation and
Compensation Program (IRCP) supposedly to resolve the abuse scandal of the last
40 years. But there are strings attached:
only those victims who already reported the abuse are eligible now –
others may be eligible sometime next year. The claim can’t be against a member
of a religious order. The claim can only be against a priest and only a priest
from the NY Archdiocese. There must be no previous settlements. It is up to the
diocese to say the allegations are credible. The victim has to agree to never
talk about the abusers, or ever bring another claim.
So
Don’s case was forwarded to the Sisters of Mercy. Because New York’s statute of
limitations on child sex abuse cases bars victims from pursuing litigation
after their 23rd birthdays, Don has no case with them. Archdiocese Church officials said that Don
was not eligible because he was sexually assaulted by a lay employee, not a
priest or deacon.
The Archdiocese says, “The IRCP has been
established only to cover cases of abuse by clergy (priests or deacons) of the
Archdiocese of New York. It does not cover members of religious communities,
priests from other dioceses, or lay people.”
I
made a report to the Archdiocese of the state where I live. They said that since my abuse took place in
New York, that it was New York’s problem.
The New York Archdiocese told me that unless I know the name of the
priest who raped me and the nuns who beat and smothered me that they would not
help me. I was three and a half years
old when I became a victim – too young to remember names. The same run around and denial of
responsibility.
Don’s
case and my case shows that the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation
Program is not the answer to child sexual abuse in New York. Getting rid of the
statute of limitations for child sexual abuse cases in New York by passing the
Child Victims Act is the only answer.
