Posted on 05/29/2004 5:51:06 PM PDT by zencat
After displaying a painting of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, a San Francisco gallery owner bears a painful reminder of the nations unresolved anguish over the incidents at Abu Ghraib -- a black eye and bloodied brow delivered by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to the art work.
The assault outside the Capobianco gallery in the citys North Beach district Thursday night was the worst, but only the latest in a string of verbal and physical attacks that have directed at owner Lori Haigh since the painting, titled "Abuse," was installed there on May 16.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Did she tape record the conversation?
Can she provide any proof that these witnesses were actually there in that house at the time?
Does she have any evidence to corroborate her claim that he told her to get an abortion, that he did so over the phone, that there were witnesses present who heard this?
My guess is that all she's got is her claim and a couple of her friends who are willing to perjure themselves on her behalf.
But forget about my speculations. Here's an even better question: Why would a priest who is trying to hush up a scandal, induce an underage girl to get an abortion during a phone conversation to which anybody could be a party, during a phone conversation that, for all he knew, might actually be getting recorded on tape?
Doesn't it make more sense that he would tell her to see him in person to discuss the matter?
In North Beach there are. Old School Italian. They don't stand no mess. "Outsider" moves in, puts up some "Anti American" art in a Neighborhood full of first and second generation immigrants, fugetaboutit, she lucky she's still walking without a limp. If this story is true, which I doubt, I'd be surprised if they found the guys that did it. I'd feel even sorrier for the person that fingered them.
Right. She probably ambushed him. I.e., "Hello, Father? Yeah, um, I've got a problem. I, uh, think I'm pregnant!". At this point, Father's got to think fast and stay in control of the situation. The right thing to do is act as if she's just a young parishoner with a personal problem. But he doesn't know about her friends, so he does what a normal boyfriend would do ...
Did she tape record the conversation?
Should have, but probably not. Also, possibly illegal (without telling him) depending on state law.
Can she provide any proof that these witnesses were actually there in that house at the time?
She would need their testimony, obviously, along with as much other corroboration as possible. E.g., did they tell their parents at the time?
Does she have any evidence to corroborate her claim that he told her to get an abortion, that he did so over the phone, that there were witnesses present who heard this?
My guess is that all she's got is her claim and a couple of her friends who are willing to perjure themselves on her behalf.
Quite possibly. The Church's lawyers would for sure look for chinks in their credibility, inconsistencies, corrupt motivations, etc.
But forget about my speculations. Here's an even better question: Why would a priest who is trying to hush up a scandal, induce an underage girl to get an abortion during a phone conversation to which anybody could be a party, during a phone conversation that, for all he knew, might actually be getting recorded on tape?
Doesn't it make more sense that he would tell her to see him in person to discuss the matter?
Certainly it does. He should have told her she was disturbed and she needs to come in for his pastoral and confidential counseling.
Stay Safe !
'I Was in This Alone'
* Lori Haigh's life spiraled downward after repeated sexual abuse by a Catholic priest in Orange County, while she says other clerics ignored her pleas for help.
Home Edition, Main News, Page A-1
Metro Desk
45 inches; 1601 words
Type of Material: Non Dup
By WILLIAM LOBDELL, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Lori Haigh couldn't stand the voice of Father John Lenihan any longer. So she sat among the congregants in the parish hall and stabbed a pencil into her left thigh again and again, until blood began to flow.
The 16-year-old was hoping someone at St. Norbert Church in Orange would ask her what was wrong. That's when she would blurt it all out:
Father John was molesting me. Three, four, five times a week for the past two years. He got me pregnant and then paid for the abortion. He set me up with another priest.
But no one asked.
It took Haigh 20 years and a million-dollar lawsuit to be noticed.
The dioceses of Los Angeles and Orange last week agreed to pay her $1.2 million to settle her accusations against Lenihan and the church. Though Lenihan neither admitted nor denied the allegations involving Haigh, he previously admitted to molesting another teenage girl and having several sexual relationships with adult women. He agreed last month to be removed from the priesthood.
Bishop Tod D. Brown of Orange County last week acknowledged that Haigh had been molested, saying, "I am deeply sorry for the hurt caused by the actions of Father Lenihan, and extend my apology to Ms. Haigh and all victims of sexual abuse by clergy."
The sexual abuse scandal now racking the U.S. Roman Catholic Church has many victims. But Lori Haigh stands apart on several grounds. The allegations that led to the settlement are among the most serious yet leveled against a priest. And while many victims contend that molestations haunted them for years, Haigh is among the few willing to detail how her life spiraled downward after repeated sexual abuse, while the church ignored her complaints.
She is now a San Francisco mother who appears to lead an enviable life as a video entrepreneur and songwriter.
But she says that she hates to wear dresses because they make her feel vulnerable--the same way she felt when Lenihan allegedly would take her in his silver Mercury Monarch and park on deserted roads. She picks at the skin around her fingernails, leaving them bloody, saying it distracts her from bad thoughts. She says she has tried to commit suicide more than 10 times, beginning at 16, when Lenihan allegedly got her pregnant.
Haigh grew up in a devoutly Catholic family. Her parents, Jane and Faust Capobianco, sent her to parochial school near their home in Villa Park, an affluent community in Orange County. The family attended Mass each Sunday at the Holy Family Cathedral in Orange.
Haigh played the guitar along with two nuns at her school, a talent that caught the eye of a 32-year-old priest from Ireland, Father Lenihan. He asked the 14-year-old to be part of the band at his "rock 'n' roll" Mass on Sunday evenings at St. Norbert Church in Orange.
"He showed a big interest in me," she said. "I felt special, like I was selected out of the crowd to be his confidant."
She was too young to drive, so Lenihan volunteered to pick her up at her home. Her parents said they were happy that a popular priest had taken an interest in their daughter's life.
"You look to them for guidance," said her father, a retired doctor now living in Tennessee. "You value the association."
Haigh said Lenihan almost immediately began hugging and kissing her in the car.
"I'd never kissed a boy before," she said. "It seemed like a safe situation. I knew he would never tell." And she did not imagine it would go further.
But it did, first to oral sex, then intercourse. Haigh said the molestations continued regularly until she was 17.
She said she didn't make him stop because, in some ways, he was her first love. He also gave her freedom: He had a car, and she could stay out late with him.
Giving Signs That She Needed Help
Haigh's parents didn't particularly like her friends from Villa Park High School, where she had recently transferred, so they encouraged her involvement with the parish and Father John.
Classmate Andrea Lamacki once watched Lenihan stare at Haigh from the rectory window and run out into the church parking lot to give her an expensive harmonica.
"I remember thinking that was odd, it wasn't right," Lamacki said.
Haigh started to give signs--both subtle and obvious--that she needed help. Her grades, normally A's, plummeted. She ditched classes. She wore an asymmetrical punk haircut and "Dead Kennedys" T-shirts.
Another classmate, Shannon Moser, remembers Haigh in tears, talking on the phone in a mutual friend's bedroom. When Moser asked another friend what was wrong, she was told that Father John had gotten Haigh pregnant and was telling her to get an abortion. Moser didn't believe the story until Haigh held up the phone and she recognized Lenihan's distinctive Irish brogue.
Haigh went to a Planned Parenthood clinic for the abortion.
She began to tell some adults about her relationship with Lenihan: the psychiatrist that her parents sent her to when her grades began to fall, and the abortion counselor at Planned Parenthood. Neither told her parents, though the psychiatrist--bound by doctor-patient confidentiality--did tell her parents to keep her away from the church and Father John. Haigh said her parents took the warning as anti-Catholic sentiment. It's unclear why the psychiatrist, now retired and unavailable for comment, didn't report the incidents to law enforcement.
"[At Planned Parenthood,] the counselor asked me how the father felt about the abortion, and I said, 'Well, he's my Catholic priest.' I don't know if she believed me or not, but she just kept on going," Haigh said.
Lenihan also told her he wanted her to meet a fellow priest and schoolmate from Ireland who had recently arrived, Haigh said. The priest, whose name Haigh could not remember, took her to dinner at a coffee shop. Afterward, she said, he tried to sexually attack her in his car.
She finds it hard to explain why she couldn't tell her parents. She rattles off some possibilities: She was afraid of getting Lenihan in trouble. She thought somehow she was doing a good deed for the church by providing Lenihan a sexual release. She thought "the needs of many outweighed the needs of me."
"Who wants to be the one to get this spiritual icon in trouble?" she asked.
'I Realized Then That I Was in This Alone'
Finally, Haigh said, she decided to tell another priest. She said she went to Father Lawrence J. Baird, a priest she said was revered by her family. Now a monsignor and diocesan spokesman, Baird was in residence at the Holy Family Cathedral in 1982.
Haigh said she told Baird about her relationship with Lenihan and he responded by kissing her and rubbing himself against her. She said she pushed him away.
Last week Baird adamantly denied the allegation, and threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against Haigh if she does not recant.
Haigh said she also met with Father John Urell, another priest at the cathedral. Urell is now a monsignor and vicar general, the third- highest-ranking priest in the Diocese of Orange. She alleges that Urell called her a liar and told to stay away from the church.
Haigh said her meeting with Urell did more lasting emotional damage to her than the four years of alleged abuse by Lenihan.
"I felt like it took so much courage to finally go to the church," she said. "I wanted at least to be absolved by a priest for my part in it."
Urell also has denied meeting Haigh.
The sexual relationship finally ended when Lenihan told her that he would deny it all if word leaked out.
"I thought he would [face] consequences for what he had done," she said. "I realized then that I was in this alone."
She barely graduated from high school in 1982 and started classes at Orange Coast College. She eventually landed a job with a Beverly Hills public relations firm. Among her duties were hosting parties for rock stars. She said she "self-medicated" with drugs and alcohol.
"My career and everything was really good, but I still felt horrible inside," she said. "I didn't believe in God."
Her roommate was writing a screenplay based loosely upon her relationship with Lenihan, and Haigh said she wanted to kill herself so the priest would have "my blood on his conscience." That would give her roommate the perfect ending for the movie.
In 1989, Haigh decided to start a new life in Nashville, where she did publicity for Christian music artists and began a video production business. She married a Hare Krishna, explored that religion and had a son. "Eastern religion was as far away as I could get from Catholicism," she said.
Haigh said she occasionally would get into her car, leave her seat belt unfastened and race down the country roads near Nashville. She crashed several times times and totaled a Jeep Cherokee. She hoped she would die.
"But I kept walking away," she said with laugh.
Haunted by the Past in San Francisco
Haigh divorced in 1991, and a few years later met her current husband in London while she was on a movie shoot. She moved with him and her son to San Francisco.
There, she shoots corporate and music videos, creates multimedia content for Web sites and has a weekly cable access show. She has another child, a 2-year-old boy. She's fixing up a four-story home she bought in the Twin Peaks area of San Francisco,
She has a music studio in the basement where she writes and plays her folk rock songs. On Monday night, she's often at the Hotel Utah, playing her guitar to small crowds on "open mike" night.
And when I wake he will be gone
And I won't see him until the classroom
It's just a tale of right and wrong
That they will whisper inside the bathroom
How she lost the game
She'll never be the same
Her hidden life is still with her. She says her second marriage is in trouble, for a variety of reasons. Aside from her children, she says she has problems with intimacy of any kind.
"I can't seem to have normal relationships with anyone," she said, "and I don't think I ever will. I just don't want to inflict myself on other people."
In the Mission district, she worked next door to Dennis Hodges' carpentry business for a full year until she even said hello.
"She holds everyone at arm's length," said Hodges, who's become a friend. "I just see the surface."
"Sometimes I look at the path I was on--cheerleader, Polo shirts, preppy--and the whole life I had ahead of me, and I feel like I've been tarnished and shunned by God," she said.
She filed the lawsuit in December, prompted by Lenihan's confessions about his previous relationships to Times columnist Steve Lopez. She was angry, she said, that he admitted to only one molestation of a minor and not to his alleged transgressions with her. On Monday last week, Haigh attended a press conference called by Baird to deny her charges. Diocesan officials and parishioners have rallied around Baird, and Auxiliary Bishop Jaime Soto stood next to him as he described Haigh's accusation as "absolutely without foundation."
"I state unequivocally that I have no awareness of ever having met or spoken with this person in my life and have absolutely no idea who Miss Haigh is," Baird said. "I have 100% memory that I have never made any inappropriate contact with any person during my 33 years as a priest. No one has ever made such a charge.
"I have no idea what motivates her to make such an insidious allegation." Baird turned to Haigh and said, "I pray for you."
Haigh said she felt devastated.
"I got this settlement, but they are still calling me a liar," she said. "That's the whole reason why I filed the lawsuit in the first place."
I don't deny that some or even all of it could be so, but while mere allegations may be good enough for the Times, they're not for me. Some of the questionable statements Haigh has made concerning these more recent incidents at her gallery do not ring true and call her credibility into question, not just for me but for many others on this thread.
Or having their hand cut off or their ear cut off .. Hmmm?
LOL. I believe they were!
You know something else...why is this woman just going to throw in the towel and close her stupid art shop so willingly without a fight? Isn't that kind of odd?
Why not stay in business unless you're going under and this is a last ditch desperate act of a sick demented twisted loser with a Kerri Dunn syndrome?
Did you have the same comment when the communist in SF sat in the streets and blocked traffic? Both she and the attacker expressed their free speech. The government did not stop either one. What you don’t realize is free speech, is NOT FREEDOM FROM REPERCUIONS. She spoke someone responded, the government did not interfere, both lived to interact another day.
Bet David Brock is one of those hooded, naked guys.
This must be a mistake! The person who committed this act certainly would have called Kofi Annan and sought the intervention of the U.N. to express a difference of opinion on the appropriateness of the ART!
Hang out on FR long enough and you'll find that many stories are debunked and proven to be fraudulant.
If you believe what this woman says without critically examining her motives and past history then you are a sheep who blindly accepts what the mainstream media feeds you.
I didn't say anything about a conspiracy, nor did I condone the assault as a valid expression. I'm simply pointing out that the large number rank-and-file Americans that are tired of the way this prisoner abuse thing has been portrayed in the media don't get any coverage, while the act of one wacko gets a prominent story. It's typical of the liberal media.
I especially love that backdrop painting...I'm sure that was purely coincidental.
That painting sucks, by the way.
San Francisco, brings to mind the scene from the original Dirty Harry, where the perp pays someone to pound him in order to frame Callahan.
This is definitely a local custom ~ well, there and Eastern Kentucky, parts of NC and VA, and certainly WV. Has to do with whiskey running.
I've always been a big fan of performance art. Very original, hit's you right across the nose. The NEA needs to support more of this type of work.
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