Posted on 06/18/2004 10:42:18 PM PDT by Polycarp IV
Runaway priests hiding in plain sight
By Reese Dunklin/The Dallas Morning News
APIA, Samoa
Frank! Frank!
About a dozen children circle around the Rev. Frank Klep after Mass on one sun-kissed Sunday. They chirp his name, trying to catch his eye as he begins handing out foil-wrapped candy. He calls them by name, too, beams and hugs some of them.
Few, if any, locals are aware that the friendly priest is a convicted child molester who has admitted abusing one boy and is wanted on more charges back in Australia. In 1998, his religious order placed him here in the South Pacific. Australian police cant touch him now because their country has no extradition treaty with Samoa.
Neither he nor the church feels an obligation to tell anyone about all that.
"I'd prefer to just leave it," Father Klep said recently. "If I felt I was still at risk to their children, then I'd think differently. But I don't think I am at risk anymore."
His order, the Salesians of Don Bosco, has long moved priests accused of sexual abuse from country to country away from law enforcement and victims. Indeed, it is how many others in the Catholic Church have dealt with the problem, an 18-month, worldwide Dallas Morning News investigation has found.
The Salesians, one of the largest Catholic religious orders, concentrate on educating and housing some of the worlds most needy and vulnerable children. Yet influential Salesian officials have spoken out forcefully against cooperating with law enforcement agencies investigating sex abuse allegations.
"For me it would be a tragedy to reduce the role of a pastor to that of a cop," said Salesian Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez of Honduras, a leading candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II. "I'd be prepared to go to jail rather than harm one of my priests."
Salesian officials in Costa Rica and Chile are facing criminal complaints, accused of protecting priests who were shuffled across international borders. A judge in Chile is reviewing whether there is enough evidence to try a Salesian bishop on obstruction of justice charges, which would be the first such prosecution of a Catholic leader anywhere.
In the case of one priest from Peru, his superiors have ignored a church panel's 1995 demand that he have no contact with children, as well as Chicago police's subsequent request to question him. Salesians officials in Peru say they dont know where he is, but The News found him working in Mexico his fourth country he's been in since he was first accused of misconduct more than a decade ago.
Even the Rev. Pascual Chavez, before he became the Salesians' worldwide leader in Rome, kept an admitted molester in ministry in Mexico. After a judge dismissed criminal charges against the priest, he was reassigned to Africa. Hes returned to duty in Mexico but could not be reached for comment. Father Chavez declined to be interviewed.
One of Father Klep's alleged victims, himself a former Salesian seminarian, draws a painful conclusion about his old order:
"This is a corporate sin that theyre feasting in," he said. "It must be the attitude of the Salesians worldwide."
'Best of our ability'
Father Klep is living in exile in Samoa, "not a paradise or a tropical resort," according to his boss, the Rev. Ian Murdoch, the orders leader in Australia and the South Pacific. The priest has no active ministry or unsupervised contact with children, Father Murdoch said, and is monitored to "the best of our ability."
"The Salesians as a community have done their best to respond to the allegations," he said before refusing to answer further questions.
But Father Klep enjoys his ministry on this tiny island nation. People here still respect their elders and honor the Sabbath. He's surrounded by a colorful, exotic landscape of orchids, poinsettias, and mango, banana and coconut trees. He has picturesque views of the blue Pacific waters and Mount Vaea.
"I have found a good measure of contentment," he said. "I'd be quite happy to stay here."
Father Klep's victims in Australia have tried unsuccessfully for years to have him removed from the priesthood. A church panel that recently investigated one abuse complaint asked the Salesians to consider suspending his ministry, but not even his admission in that case led to significant discipline.
"I made a mistake," Father Klep said in an interview, acknowledging that he touched one of his Australian students in the late 1970s. Two years ago, he wrote a letter to the former student, who is now an adult, and expressed his regret.
The priests penance was loss of his ceremonial title: "priest in charge" of the orders offices near Apia, the Samoan capital. The former student said it wasn't enough. "Prison is the only punishment deserving of this man," he said. "All along the way hes been protected, and no one seems to think its serious enough."
Druggings denied
The complaints against Father Klep date to the 1970s, when he worked at a boarding school north of Melbourne. At the time, Salesian College at Rupertswood was exclusively for boys, many who were from the farming communities in rural Victoria state.
The first boys came forward in about 1986, telling their parents that Father Klep had molested them. By then, they were young adults, and Father Klep was the schools principal.
Three former students told The News that the abuse occurred when they went to Father Klep in the infirmary for pain medication or prescriptions. He sexually assaulted them, the students said, while they lay sick or after he had given them incapacitating drugs.
"I remember being wasted out the next day," said the former seminarian. He and the other former students spoke on condition they not be named.
About a dozen parents confronted the Salesians and the Archdiocese of Melbourne in a series of meetings. One of the parents, the former seminarians mother, said church leaders were dismissive. She recalled a Salesian leader telling her: "This all happened very long ago. It has no foundation."
But when her husband threatened to sue, she said, within days Father Klep was pulled from the job.
Father Klep denied knowing about any of the complaints or druggin anyone. He said his supervisor described the departure as a routine sabbatical. "Maybe he was being charitable to me," the priest said.
The Salesians sent him overseas, first to an order facility in Rome for a few months, then to the United States. He enrolled in late 1987 at Fordham University, a private Catholic school near the Salesians' offices in New York City, and pursued a masters degree. While studying, he also helped at Masses in the area, he said.
Shortly after he graduated in early 1989, Father Klep returned to Australia. Within a few years, he was the top official at a youth center and hostel in a blue-collar suburb of Melbourne.
The mother of the former seminarian said she and the other parents were horrified. She complained in writing to the Salesians in 1992 and drew a scolding from the orders regional leader at the time, the Rev. Julian Fox. She dropped her protests.
"I just tried to do the right thing, but we never got anywhere," she said. "They absolutely had it covered like the Mafia."
Father Fox said in an interview this month that he investigated but couldnt remember what he found because the details were "history under a bridge." Father Fox also has been accused of sexual abuse while working at the boarding school in the 1970s and 1980s. He, too, was transferred abroad to Fiji for several years and recently to the order's Rome headquarters. He said a church review had exonerated him; advocates for his accuser said the Salesians paid a settlement.
Father Fox said a church review had exonerated him. "That's in the past. I'm not keen to be trolling through all of that again," he said, cutting off the interview.
Going to police
Starting in 1993, more young men alleged that Father Klep had abused them at the school. But these former students went to authorities.
First, two brothers complained to Victoria state police, whose area includes Melbourne. Officers filed four charges of indecent assault against Father Klep, dating to 1976 and 1979.
"He forced himself on them," said Senior Sgt. Steve Iddles, the prosecutor in the case. "Lie down and do as I tell you."
Father Klep denied touching the brothers. He accused them of fabricating much of their story to get money from the Salesians. He pleaded not guilty, and the Salesians left him on duty throughout his proceedings in 1994.
"At one stage [in the trial], my defense asked them pertinent questions, and one of them shed a few tears," he said recently. "I thought they were crocodile tears."
The judge declared Father Klep guilty and sentenced him to nine months of community service. The priest worked off his sentence gardening at nursing homes.
One of the brothers said he was let down by the criminal justice system. "When a man is charged on four counts and convicted on four counts and doesnt go to jail," he said, "you have to wonder whats behind it."
Not long after Father Klep finished his sentence in early 1996, another former student reported to Victoria police that in 1976 the priest had fondled him and performed oral sex on him. Detectives questioned and fingerprinted Father Klep, but did not arrest him.
Once again, Father Klep denied the allegations and accused the former student of trying to get money. The possibility of being prosecuted a second time worried him, though, he said.
So in 1998, with the investigation unresolved, he readily accepted a reassignment to Samoa. He said the move was the suggestion of his boss at the time, the Rev. John Murphy.
"I think he [Father Murphy] realized that I'd probably feel a bit more comfortable being removed from the situation there," Father Klep said. "I was happy enough to go."
Father Murphy, who's now assigned to Samoa as well, said the priest's account was "not altogether true" but wouldn't elaborate. He referred questions to Father Murdoch, who declined to comment.
Later in 1998, police sought to question Father Klep again and discovered that he had left for Samoa. They charged him with five counts of indecent assault and issued a nationwide arrest warrant.
"In hindsight, it'd been better if we charged him on the day [he was questioned in 1996]," said Investigator John Raglus, one of the Victoria officers now assigned to the case. He said he couldn't explain why it took authorities more than two years to file charges.
Case files show that Australian Federal Police were supposed to contact Samoan authorities on behalf of Victoria, according to the detective. But two officials in the Samoan government said the Australians told them nothing about Father Klep.
"I had no idea,"said Samoa Assistant Attorney General Raymond Schuster. Australian Federal Police would not answer written questions about the matter.
For some, life goes on
Beyond the reach of police and church discipline, Father Klep has worked freely.
He is the top financial official at the Moamoa Theological College, a two-story colonial-style house where seminarians and lay religious teachers train and reside. He helps during Mass at St. Anthony Church, one of the areas oldest and more prestigious, and at the nearby Salesian schools.
For a time, he supervised the Rev. John "Jack" Ayers, who was accused of raping a student at the Rupertswood boarding school in the 1960s. The Salesians paid the accuser a settlement in 2000, according to documents The News obtained. Father Ayers, who refused to comment, lives a few doors from Father Klep at the college.
Samoa's top Catholic, Archbishop Alapati Mataeliga, said he was startled to learn about both priests' pasts. He said the Salesians should not have kept the details from him.
"I think we have to do something about it; justice has to be served," said Archbishop Mataeliga, who became leader of the archdiocese last year. "Samoa should not be a place where they send priests like that."
But the archbishop changed his mind after speaking with the Salesians. He said Father Klep told him what happened was an accident. And he discussed Father Ayers with Father Murphy.
"Although these incidents happened with these two priests, they have dealt with it themselves and with their congregation," the archbishop's secretary wrote in a letter. "They are valid and allowed to work in our archdiocese, and we are grateful for their services and hard work up to this point."
The Company of teens
Upstairs, in the theological college's kitchen, Father Klep sat at a table and explained that when he gave candy to children after Mass the previous day, it was a spontaneous gesture.He still enjoys "young people's company," he said, but limits his contact mostly to adults.
Downstairs, a group of teenage boys lounged on concrete steps, waiting for Father Klep. One young man said he met Father Klep this spring when the priest pulled up at a bus stop where he was standing and offered him a ride. At the end of the short drive, Father Klep gave him some cash and invited him to church.
Since then, the 19-year-old said, Father Klep has "come to where I hang out in the evenings" and offered him small jobs around the college.
Also waiting on the steps was a 14-year-old who said he has known Father Klep for about a year and a 13-year-old buddy he said the priest wanted to meet.
The 14-year-old said Father Klep has given him spending money and regularly helped him with schoolwork alone in the priest's bedroom.
"He says to me, 'Any day I want help, I come to Father Frank's home,'" said the boy, who had a thin adolescent mustache and a shy demeanor.
Father Klep has even paid his tuition to Chanel College, a Catholic school near the priest's home, he said.
"He said to me, 'You are my best friend.'"
Staff writers Brendan M. Case in Mexico City and special contributor Andrew Faasau in Apia contributed to this report.
I meant Venice.
I'm glad the younger, newer Bishops seem to be handling things a better way, by not allowing them to get to the same point! Many of these young Bishops are having to clean up the messes left by the TOMs (Tired Old Men) before them.
I agree, as much as I hated the public scandal it seems that is what it took to wake some bishops up. I do know that our former priest is retired and though I don't know if he is officailly defrocked, I know he is not allowed to even say a private Mass.
Pope Sacola LOL
How sad your faith seems to be in a clearly fallible, and even (as in this case) unrepentent institution, not the infallible word of God.
I'm not wishing for Christians all to be Calvinists, merely Biblicists.
My Faith is in Christ, as head of the Body of Christ, His Church, which has handed down intact both the Word of God and its proper interpretation, i.e., Tradition.
The Bible without that Church Christ instituted and granted authority to lose and bind and interpret is...the mess of contraditictory and mostly apostate churches called protestantism.
I know most non-Calvinits, Catholic or Protestant, thoroughly despise Jean Chavin (to use his French spelling), however, quite apart from the doctrines many find intolerable (namely Augustinian pre-destination), one of his greatest contributions to the Church is a return to rule by elders...the model easy to see in the book of Acts and elsewhere in the New Testament.
When a local group of elders is holding a pastor accountable, not a long episcopal hierarchy above him (which by its very nature is not accountable)and the congregation, there are many less abuses possible...at least in the long term.
While its true that many Protestant denominations, by their own founders' standards (and certainly by the Bible) have become apostate, the most lively and growing churches in the world are evangelical Protestant...those who hold to the inerrancy (and sufficiency) of scripture. It has only been in as much as liberal Protestants have abandoned the authority of scripture--not as Rome has done, for Tradition, and the magisterium--but for the authority of the "scholar" or other "experts" over and above the Bible, have they arrived down in the filthy darkness of things like the homosexual bishop--or other teachings contra-biblical.
You don't even want to find these links. The sites you mentioned are awful, and chock-full of slanderous attacks on Cardinal Mahony and also on the Divine Word Missionaries (NOT the Salesians). These sites are run by a lunatic webmaster who was fired by the Missionaries, probably for good cause, and who is engaged in a fierce online vendetta against them, and for some reason against Mahony too.. It's not clear what his problems are with the Cardinal.
I'm no fan of Mahony (far from it!), but these sites are beyond belief, a mishmash of hysterical paranoia, crude sexual references, and outright slander. They made me sick when I happened to stumble upon them.
Christ and His word cannot be separated--nor is His church found strictly centered in Rome. The Eastern Church has as much historical claim to being the original organization as Rome too...yet officially its still technically excommunicated, is it not? And if not, how could that change in a generation? What if traditional Protestants (not the liberals, nor the fringe groups) have more in common with the beliefs of early Christianity than modern Rome? What if in the 15th Century the wrong Pope (after the 3 that simultaneously claimed supremacy) was chosen? Historically, so many institutional and political corruptions with that particular organization--surely God's people are known alone by Him, not strictly identifiable by a fallible human organization.
Another thing, amoung evangelical protestants...there is probably less of "mess of contraditictory and mostly apostate" doctrines, than those found within the organization--particularly in higher education--of the Roman Catholic Church.
One of the great things that bolsters my faith in an invisible church spanning various denominations--and headed by Christ Himself (needing no human vicar)--is the uniformity of doctrine in most evangelical churches. There is no need of a dictatorial structure--which has clearly contradicted itself in history many times--to force certain interpretations on scripture. When honest real Christians who trust the scripture (not liberal ones who don't) read it for themselves--they come to remarkably similar conclusions.
Protestants too believe in certain traditions--as long as they support, not contradict what's found in holy scripture.
On another note,how is Jackie? I pray for her often.
Yes they can, and I would think since the scandal every one of the bishops in this country would act as follows. Upon being informed that a priest in an order is accused of something the bishop would immediately remove the faculties of that priest so he could no longer function sacramentally. Further, the diocese could require any church using a priest from an order not to, even as a Eucharistic Minister, i.e. get him off the alter. It is up to the police authorities to arrest and to impose bail if their is a risk of flight or the crime the priest is accused of requires it. Believe me child molestation requires bail to be set.
I thought Allen's breakdown of the four groups was a very good 'view' of the situation.
Given that, I suspect that with this story breaking, the Cardinal is no longer eligible for much 'advancement,' if any.
The priest with the bathtub is on active duty in the National Guard in the US and I'm pretty sure that unless they get desperate, he's going to stay stateside. I saw him a couple months ago and he told me he doesn't even say Mass, he just does confession and that his CO was really tough and he was in trouble for being late to confession. He is a mess.
Jacquelyn has been tested every month and is still in remission. She only went to school one day a week but is playing baseball this summer. If you didn't know what she'd been through, you would never guess it by looking at her. She still gives big hugs and thanks people for praying for her.
Reading this post, I recall a post I read last week that mentions more molesters in the Texas public school system that the world-wide RCC. But do we read any stories about that? No. The DMN instead ignores what's going on in it's own state and focuses on the worldwide happenings of the RCC.
Who knows what is coming. I suspect there are worse stories, the first was just to get folks interested.
I agree. :o(
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