Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
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.
I’m dumbfounded. That thing you just posted has left me speechless. No comment is needed for those who can’t see the utter evil contained in that shameless justification for what has happened in the RCC.
Anti-Catholicism has always been good sport here in America. Nowadays, they just use popular media to do it, rather than the legal system (see Blaine Amendments).
And how is it that YOU know these things? The fact is that you only suspect because you are suspicious of everything Catholic.
Oh those poor, poor priests.
Nothing to see here. Move along, move along......
Interesting the differences in reaction between those evil heretic Protestants and the holier than thou Catholics.
When it's a Protestant minister, the calls BY PROTESTANTS are for prosecution, a fair and speedy trial, jail time, and advocating of stripping of the guy's credentials.
When it's a Catholic priest, the knee jerk reaction by Catholics is *everybody else is doing it too* and *once a priest, always a priest*. Never mind what the Scripture the Catholic church claims it wrote has to say about the immoral brother.
1 Corinthians 5
How ironic that the church which should be setting the example in moral behavior by not conforming to the world is just like the world in it's character.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
They are “poor,poor priests” if they have been falsely accused. A lawyer who with his clients stands to profit from accusation will accuse as many people as he can. The tendency is to strip away the rights of many of the accused. The statute of limitations has been amended to allow accusations for deeds performed decades again, which is a terrible practice. Accusations of pedofilia have been brought against men who have done the equivalent of touching a woman’s breast. Others against young men who have had carnal knowledge with other young men. In fact 80% of the convictions have been of relations of this sort. Yet the issue of homosexuality is never brought up. So we have the paradox of a society with opinion inflamed against priests for homosexual acts which applauds those who take part in Gay Rights parades and will that very night engage in similar acts. People talk about hypocrisy. Well this is hypocrisy of the highest sort. To deplore what some priests do and tolerate what most other homosexuals do.
Poppycock.You are talking about high profile preachers who get caught. What is the usual practice of congregational churches? To discharge the pastor in order to avoid a split, because he will have his defenders. He will then go away, and is able either to find a new pulpit, or go off and start his own church. He must be discreet of course, but he has little to worry about because a deal has been made just to let him go, A Catholic priest, by contrast, remains a clerk within the Church until he is formally removed. Hence it is possible to trance his history if prosecutors can gain access to the books. With most Protestant churches, the record will have been purged, as part of the deal.
With one important difference: when were homosexuals outside the church given the power to retain or remit the sins of their victims? When did the homosexuals outside the church claim the ability to change wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ? When were homosexuals outside the church held up to be an alter christus?
in principle easy divorce and birth control, and now homosexuality.
You don't know that at all... You just make stuff up based upon your hatred and conspiracy delusions.
I really, really, really don’t want to hear any more of justification. Stand with your priest if you want but please don’t ever think you are going to get me to feel anything but contempt.
I’m utterly stunned that Catholics obfuscate, make excuses, justify, and do whatever they can to take the heat off the priests and totally miss the fact that these men are supposed to be “from God” or even “vicar of Christ”. Yeah right. If that isn’t cultish activity and attitude I don’t know what is.
The Church does not ordain open-homosexuals,unlike other Christian bodies, so what you say is nonsense. We also have had priests are adulterers, fornicators, drunks, thieves, and even murders. I personally do not think that homosexual acts are necessarily worse than any of these crimes against God and the Church. One must indeed take care to avoid confessing to a priest of known bad character, but I do not believe that his sin strips away his power to absolve, for though he may have the right to withhold absolution, it is not he who actually absolves, but the Church . Confession is an act of humbling oneself, a good thing in itself, and we rest assured in believing that whatever the character of the man behind the screen, that God knows our hearts, and that the priest has been given the power to absolve.
Yeah, the victims are all liars, dontcha know?
We have seen how Rome dispenses justice ..they had the perps
Did the others hide the crime? Did they move them around? Did the send them to Rome or Tx to let the clock run out? Rome is Guilty
And some are. When someone comes forward forty years later because be was “pinked” by a priest now dead and is taken seriously, then this shows that something more is at work than a desire for justice.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.