Posted on 02/11/2012 10:13:46 AM PST by RnMomof7
Some 200 Catholic priests suspected of sexual abuse are living undetected in communities across California, according to an attorney who represents hundreds of plaintiffs who sued the LA Archdiocese for molestation they say was inflicted on them by priests and clergy of the church.
Ray Boucher has mapped sixty locations where suspect priests live, in cities and towns from northern to southern California, and provided those locations to NBC4 exclusively.
“Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse,” Boucher said. “They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers.”
Since none of the priests has actually been convicted of sex abuse, none can be identified under Megan’s Law, or their whereabouts revealed in related public databases.
“What the issue is here, is how you weigh the right of the people,” said Boucher, who is also one of the attorneys representing students in the Miramonte Elementary School sex abuse scandal. “In particular the right of children to be protected from molestation versus the right of privacy."
Among Boucher’s many clients in the church action are Manuel Vega and Dan Smith.
Vega is a former police officer from Oxnard who took special interest in sex crimes investigations because, he says, he was sexually abused as a teenager by his parish priest.
“He forced me to masturbate while he took pictures of me,” said Vega, who believes that the public is often too squeamish to recognize what child molestation actually entails – and thus not properly outraged by it.
“When we talk about sexual abuse we’re talking about sodomy,” he said. “There’s pubic hair, there’s sweat, there’re smells, there’re grunts.”
Dan Smith, another alleged abuse victim, is reeling from the recent collapse of his marriage which he blames in part on the psychological effects of the molestation he says he suffered as a child – at the hands of his local parish priest.
“He would rape me and then say this is what God’s love feels like,” Smith said, struggling to hold back tears more than twenty years after the alleged incidents.
Both men helped make legal history by joining 500 other plaintiffs in suing the LA Archdiocese for sexual molestation, with Boucher as their lead attorney.
In 2007 the LA Archdiocese reached an unprecedented $660 million settlement with many of the plaintiffs without admitting any wrong-doing.
It also agreed to let the courts decide which of the case-related church files should be made public, including those identifying alleged and admitted predators.
But according to Boucher and court documents, the Catholic Church has since engaged in a cover-up. By Boucher’s account, Church officials allowed priests suspected of sexually abusing children to retire, flee the country or hide in rehab clinics until the statute of limitations on prosecution ran out.
“What the church did is take these guys and send them off to facilities where they treat pedophile priests without ever alerting police,” Boucher said. “By enabling these priests to be hidden for so many years the church protected them from being prosecuted.”
Meanwhile legal disputes delayed the release of the promised personnel files, and Donald Steir, an attorney for several priests, went to court to argue that those who’ve been accused but no convicted should have their names and privacy protected.
“They are being punished as if they have been convicted, or at least that’s the desire – to punish them,” Steir said. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s difficult if you represent an alleged terrorist or a pedophile, because people don’t really care about the rights [including privacy rights] for these type of people,” Steir said. “But once we erode the rights of a group of people we don’t like, we effectively have started down a path where other people’s rights can be similarly denied.”
The courts, expressing concern for children, overruled most of these arguments and similar ones by the Archdiocese, which declined to comment for this story.
And a judge has ordered release of some personnel files, set for some time in the coming weeks. But he also credited the church for its increased sensitivity in dealing with molestation cases and decided to withhold the names of church officials who handled the earlier cases.
It is a ruling that reminds Boucher of the breakdown in accountability in the Penn state pedophile scandal. “Look at Penn State and see how important and significant it is when people in authority enable sexual abusers to continue,” Boucher said. “That underscores how significant it is to get these names out.”
Under the judge’s ruling the church can also keep secret, subject to further court review, the names of priests who have not been convicted and who have only one or two allegations against them or have allegations disputed by the church.
To Smith that seems like a formula for further cover-up by church officials.
“If their interests were to protect the kids, they would have released the documents,” Smith said. “As a parent not knowing who your neighbor is -- that is really scary.”
Many of these unidentified priests are included in Boucher’s location map.
“The danger” said Vega, “is that you have a person who has this sickness in them who is amongst the children.”
The plaintiffs in the church scandal are planning to appeal the latest rulings to assure broader disclosure of suspects’ names and locations. But Boucher warned this could take time, allowing suspects to keep their privacy protected, as well as their undetected presence in neighborhoods across California.
“If you can agree that it is only the particular individuals involved who are guilty and not the entire priesthood we can have peace.”
Of course not all Roman Catholic priests are guilty of sexual crimes.
That said, now that I think of it, there does seem to be a system in place to protect accused/guilty priests from facing justice in a more timely manner.
Exactly.....they too conveniently believe this is something "new" when it's been ongoing for eons. Their problem is the refusal to see God is dealing with them. Rather they cry out yet again "victim". THEY are not the victims here. They ARE the criminal perpetrators, the deviants and the enablers and protectors of such.
In all other crimes if you aid and abet a criminal you are held responsible....it's only a matter of time before this too will become clearly documented and the courts will address in full view of the audiences. And even then they'll claim victim-hood......it's deplorable in every sense of the word!
Since the Catholic church self describes as “Apostolic”, “Holy”, I should think Catholics would ask at what point God would say, “Enough! I’m done with you”.
The same can be said of Christianity as a whole. If you have not noticed, sin is a permanent part of the human condition. I dare say it is also so in your denomination.
As for at what point God would say, "Enough! I'm done with you", I remind you of St. Paul:
For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.But I will point out what you wrote above that: "Over the past thousand years many attempts have been made to “clean up” priestly morals." Thus by your own admission the Church has been fighting, however unsuccessfully, against immorality within its ranks. Any suggestions that the Church actually approves of these actions should be fully rejected.
(Rom. 5:6-5)
“For some it seems their religion consists primarily of condemning and renouncing the Church, who, what, why, everything else is secondary.”
I take it by “the Church,” you mean the Roman Catholic Church, and not the larger collection of all those who’ve been adopted into God’s family?
I think most of us are “condemning and renouncing” sexual predators among your leadership, and “condemning and renouncing” the protection of those leaders, and the tactic of deflecting criticism of these leaders.
Stories like the original post give opportunities to either 1) condemn this kind of behavior, or 2) defend the Roman Catholic system. Instead of defaulting to #2, why isn’t #1 the initial response of more Roman Catholics?
I would suggest that it is not the system but rather individual bishops being negligent of their duties. If they had acted according to actual church discipline these abusive priests would have been identified and removed. The answer to all of this is to tell the bishops: DO YOUR JOB!
It's sad, really.
I don’t know what “most” are doing. What I said was some seem to practice their religion online almost exclusively by condemning and renouncing the Church - who, what, why, everything else is secondary.
This is just a very popular topic to use for this purpose, but almost any topic will do as evidenced on the RF.
Yes, it seems to me some don't think it through, the results of their actions on all religious and on the culture war all of us are engaged in. Either don't consider it or don't care; in any case the result is the same: score one for secularism, minus one for religion and Christianity.
What no Catholic seems to want to acknowledge is that the Catholic Church has been saying it will clean up its act for over a thousand years! How much time does it take to get Church discipline right? The dogmas and doctrines of the Catholic Church are fair game in a discussion such as this because it is obvious that there MUST be more than just words if claims are to be believed. I'll say it again, child rape is NOT just your plain old every day "temptation" and most people would not even need a law or commandment to prevent them from committing it, much less repeatedly committing it. Even unbelievers are repulsed by such an act.
But I would offer the ancient nation of Israel as an example.
It had traditions, sacred writings, holy men, a priesthood,...and a history of moral failure, sometimes opposed by the king, more often led by him.
Failure, repentance, chastisement followed by forgiveness and relapse in a rather predictable pattern.
Until Jesus says, “Your house is abandoned to you” and “The kingdom will be taken away you and given to a nation bearing it's fruits”.
Israel's favored position like a son, promises made to Abraham, etc. did not prevent judgment from being executed upon them.
So it wasn't a case of individual sins which a sacrifice at the temple and then Christ's sacrifice would cover but whether the individual would be part of a nation approved by God or not. Those that didn't want to suffer the fate of Jerusalem had to leave her.
First, child rape is not, nor ever has been, characteristic of the Catholic priesthood. As disgusting as even one occurrence is, these are, despite the publicity, very rare. Yes, I do insist that it is rare. And please do not attempt to say that I am downplaying these horrible acts. Even one cannot be tolerated and I wish all those guilty of such to be removed from the priesthood.
Second, sin will always be with us. No amount of laws or discipline will ever root it out completely. I dare say your denomination, whatever it is, has the same problem. If the Catholic faith is to be discredited because of the presence of these sinners then Christianity as a whole must be discredited. Look around, Christians have been sinning for two thousand years, starting with Judas.
If the Catholic Church is to be rejected on this account so should yours. And no, this is not a “you too” defense. I defend no one who is guilty. Those who are guilty of these vile acts are so guilty because they violated Catholic teaching, not because they followed it. The correct response is to call the priests to live their Catholic faith more fully.
It is a fact of our fallen human nature that there is not one church which can claim to be free of these sinners. So no, it is not fair game to question Catholic teaching because of these crimes.
Matthew 5:10-12
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)
Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake:
Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.
Thank you, BB. I very much appreciate the sentiment.
We have quite a struggle as Christians with the dark forces of radical secularism here in our country; but, it’s worse in ‘new’ Europe and much much worse in those areas on the frontline and behind the lines of Islam.
I’m afraid we are in for a very long bad time before the downward part of this cycle is complete.
thanks again.
Reading through this thread (rare for me these past months) I can’t help but think of a dear and close friend of mine who is a deacon in the Catholic Church and also a lawyer.
On more than one occasion he defended priests who had been unjustly and untruthfully accused of illicit actions.
He told me the name of two activist lawyers and an activist judge who had spent a lot of time and effort, in concert with a female lawyer from the east coast, in digging for prospective victims and bringing law suits. They were making an incredible amount of money.
My friend was successful in his defense of the priests and rightly so, thank God.
But the damage to those priests is irreparable.
So there are actually cases of innocence.
When I say this, I underscore that this is NOT and NEVER COULD BE a defense of those who are guilty. The reprehensible acts of those who are guilty has been visited on all of us—the lay people and especially the overwhelming number of priests who are innocent and who have remained faithful to their vows and their servanthood to their people for many, many years.
My son is one of those priests who have remained faithful to his vows and in servanthood to his people for many years now. Three times I have been able to visit him at his mission parish. His love for his people and their love for him is wonderful to see and experience.
I am making this my last post on this forum.
So, D-fendr and ArrogantBustard, and Petrosius, fill in for me.
PS: someone could come along now and say this isn’t my first “opus”, as they did to another poster here in the past. I’m prepared for that. :-) It’s still my last post.
Thank you for your posts - and yes.
May God bless and protect you and your son and all the faithful.
Godspeed, ROE...
Ah. Then I accept your apology, and I forgive you.
"But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil." Matthew 5:37
OK, I see that I’ve distracted you and others by asking:
“Why, in God’s name, are Roman Catholics so slow at just coming out against abuse committed by some of their religious leaders, rather than primarily coming out in defense of their denomination?”
Let me ask again, in a way that doesn’t distract you:
“Why are Roman Catholics so slow at just coming out against abuse committed by some of their religious leaders, rather than primarily coming out in defense of their denomination?”
FWIW, I used the phrase “in God’s name” as an intensifier, as a plea before the Lord for Roman Catholics to simply answer the question. Variations of the term are included throughout Scripture, in Colossians 3:17, John 14:14, 1 Samuel 20:42, 2 Kings 2:24, 2 Thessalonians 3:6, and elsewhere. Simply using the term is not in itself blasphemous, since Scripture uses the term (and variants of it) many times.
I’m starting to see that Roman Catholics consider their faith to be very fragile, and that denouncing their leaders’ sins may lead to the crumbling of the entire hierarchy. A human institution, built upon a human foundation, will crumble. But a Church built on Christ Jesus, our foundation and only high priest, will endure critique.
Is that what you were looking for?
Wonder why the RCC gets a pass on this travesty.
Colusion.
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