Posted on 01/18/2014 11:23:29 AM PST by Salvation
January 2, 2011 By TheMediaReport.com
In a stunning ten-page declaration recently submitted to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, veteran attorney Donald H. Steier stated that his investigations into claims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests have uncovered vast fraud and that his probes have revealed that many accusations are completely false.
Counselor Steier has played a role in over one hundred investigations involving Catholic clergy in Los Angeles. In his missive Mr. Steier relayed:
"One retired F.B.I. agent who worked with me to investigate many claims in the Clergy Cases told me, in his opinion, about ONE-HALF of the claims made in the Clergy Cases were either entirely false or so greatly exaggerated that the truth would not have supported a prosecutable claim for childhood sexual abuse."
(Capital letters are Steier's)
Mr. Steier also added, "In several cases my investigation has provided objective information that could not be reconciled with the truthfulness of the subjective allegations. In other words, in many cases objective facts showed that accusations were false."
Mr. Steier's declaration is a stunner. He is as experienced as anyone in studying the claims of abuse against Catholic clergy in the Los Angeles area. Also among Steier's eye-opening statements:
Steier signed and submitted the declaration "under penalty of perjury" November 30, 2010. Los Angeles County Superior Court officially filed it at 11 a.m. on December 15, 2010.
Steier also took aim at the outspoken advocacy group SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests):
They maintain an interactive Internet website with a user 'Forum' and 'Message Board,' among other features, where people can share detailed information between alleged victims pertaining to identity of specific alleged perpetrators, their alleged 'modus operandi,' and other details of alleged molestation. In effect, a person who wanted to make a false claim of sexual abuse by a priest could go to that website and find a 'blueprint' of factual allegations to make that would coincide with allegations made by other people. Law enforcement also uses the S.N.A.P. website to attempt to locate new victims and allegations against Catholic priests.
Needless to say, SNAP had a fit at the sight of Steier's declaration. In a frantic press statement dated December 13, 2010, SNAP derided Steier's declaration as a "legal maneuver" that was "among the most outrageous and hurtful ever made by a church defense lawyer." In addition to claiming it will file a complaint with the California Bar Association, it demanded that Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony "denounce Steier's claims and to disclose how much archdiocesan money has been paid to Steier." (Gee, the last time I checked, SNAP steadfastly refused to divulge how much of its income is derived from the number of lawyers with whom it closely collaborates!)
Yet there is a glaring absence from SNAP's statement. The organization does not refute nor deny any of the specific claims made by Steier. It simply labels them as "outrageous" and "hurtful." That is hardly a blow to the explosive declaration aired by the veteran attorney.
Yes, Catholic priests terribly abused minors, and bishops failed to stop the harm. That's an undeniable truth. There are few crimes that revolt more than sexual abuse. The abuse of minors is a dark episode that the Church will forever have to live with.
Yet major media outlets have largely ignored a major element to the entire Catholic abuse scandal narrative.
Here is Wall Street Journal writer Dorothy Rabinowitz:
"People have to come to understand that there is a large scam going on with personal injury attorneys, and what began as a serious effort has now expanded to become a huge money-making proposition."
Surprise: Ms. Rabinowitz made her remark in 2005. Since then, the Church has doled out an additional $1 billion in settlements.
Will 2011 be the year that the media finally begins to take a closer look at many of the claims being made? What about the suspicious relationships between SNAP, lawyers, and many in the media? (Vincent Carroll at the Denver Post is a rare voice of acknowledgement: "[F]raudulent or highly dubious accusations are more common than is acknowledged in coverage of the church scandals — although they should not be surprising, given the monumental settlements various dioceses have paid out over the years" (Oct. 10, 2010).)
Stay tuned.
It is sad when a priest as a school principal uses his office for abuse of high school aged males.
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/ny-ny/Egan-2002-04-a.htm
Especially in the church which claims it is the one true church. You would expect the matter handled instead of “lawyered” and then use transfers along with threatening the faculty to stop asking questions. Something out of Harvest Home.
**promoting lavender mafia types.**
Where are you getting this?
I posted something the other day that stated how very much Pope Francis, his name BTW, is vehemently against homosexuality.
And that means exactly what? That the one “true” church bathes in the same sewer water? Wow!
bkmk
No, it means that our entire society is surrounded by the same filth, but that the incidence of that horror in the current Catholic clergy is substantially less than other organizations like the ubiquitous government schools.
First rule of holes...stop digging. Comparisons to a fallen world is just saying “we have less sewer water in our pipes.”
Please continue with this losing strategy. Maybe we can discuss faculty intimidation techniques used by the archdiocese of NY as well. A nice display of threatening Sisters who begged to right the ship.
Again you are comparing your church with worldly sinful standards. It’s a losing marketing ploy. Especially when we see so much here on FR regarding the wonderful morals of the Roman Catholic clergy. There are better ways to defend scum who rape boys...It is called condemning such actions and prosecution.
Your postings tell me the following:
“Catholic schools...We don’t sexually abuse students as much as the other guys...”
Stop digging
It’s getting deep.
What perfect Church is it that you belong to that has no clergy that sins?
I get it. Pope Francis is against homosexuality, homosexual “marriage” and abortion...at least when those Vatican interpreters get it right. I was referring to who he is promoting and who he is not demoting or removing. Benedict was on a roll and then tossed in the towel. By stepping down when he did he gave Francis a good opportunity to toss out the lavender mafia. He has not.
There are no perfect churches or denominations. That’s the point. If one claims “one true church” that implies the “true” part means they do all things justly and right. Plus we are not just talking about teachers but men who took vows, hear confessions, oversee and perform holy sacraments. Much more is expected and required of these men.
So no church is perfect, but you can measure the effectiveness of their claims by how they follow their own rules and authority.
So why did you post it as if it were something new?
You may want to open a window in that glass house of yours, Sal.
Your consternation and PERSONAL attack is misdirected. Why not talk to your fellow religionists and ask them to stop posting OPEN Religion Forum threads about the Roman Catholic Church that invite opposing comments?
Oh noes!!!! You’ve been notified of an impending NOPPS (Narses’ Own Papist Posse Siccing)! ;o)
It is sad.
And Catholics wonder why people aren’t running back into the arms of the mother church.
Jesus told His followers to go and sin no more, not hide it, cover it up, and protect the sinners.
redleghunter is correct.
The horror in the current Catholic clergy is that it exists at all and the bigger horror is that the Catholic hierarchy is complicit in the cover up insetead of following the Scriptural directives laid out by Paul in the very Bible that THEY claim they wrote and deserve credit for giving to the world.
1 Corinthians 5:1-
It is absolutely heard, that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as the like is not among the heathens; that one should have his father' s wife. And you are puffed up; and have not rather mourned, that he might be taken away from among you, that hath done this deed. I indeed, absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged, as though I were present, him that hath so done, In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus; To deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Your glorying is not good. Know you not that a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste, as you are unleavened. For Christ our pasch is sacrificed. Therefore let us feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in an epistle, not to keep company with fornicators. I mean not with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or the extortioners, or the servers of idols; otherwise you must needs go out of this world.
But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother, be a fornicator, or covetous, or a server of idols, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to eat. For what have I to do to judge them that are without? Do not you judge them that are within? For them that are without, God will judge. Put away the evil one from among yourselves.
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