The US Supreme Court has today turned down an appeal by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., seeking to keep its records on how it handled clerical sexual abuse cases sealed. Edward Cardinal Egan, the retired Archbishop of New York, was the bishop of Bridgeport during much of this time. The release of these records is going to be excruciating for him. Good. But at least some of this has already been reported, thanks to a leak. For example:
The expressions of concern for, and willingness to believe, accused priests stand in contrast to the absence of sympathy displayed for the accusers. For instance, regarding a dozen people who made complaints of sexual abuse and violence against the Rev. Raymond Pcolka of Greenwich, Egan said, "the 12 have never been proved to be telling the truth."Yet, nowhere in the documents is there evidence that attempts were made to seriously investigate the truth of such allegations - accusers were not interviewed, witnesses were not sought, and no attempt was made to learn of other possible victims. Egan allowed Pcolka to continue working as a priest until 1993, when he suspended him after Pcolka refused to participate in psychiatric treatment.
Egan also doesn't believe accusers have a right to know of other, similar accusations against the same priest: "We're dealing with them as a specific case, and I would have no reason to go into other people's concerns with them."
And he disagreed that a 1964 memo, instructing church officials that "hepatitis was to be feigned" as a cover for the sudden absence of a priest, was an attempt to hide the fact that the priest, the Rev. Laurence Brett, had left because he admitted biting a teenager's penis during oral sex.
"I wouldn't read it that way," Egan said of the memo, written long before he got there. "I would read it that this man is going away, and if anyone asks, say he's not well, he has hepatitis. That's quite a bit different than saying you are going to hide it."
Egan added that he wouldn't have made up an excuse about a priest's absence, preferring instead to simply tell anyone who inquired that it was none of their business.
Egan allowed Brett to continue working as a priest outside of the diocese until February 1993, three months after receiving additional allegations of sexual misconduct against Brett from the 1960s. When the allegations came in, Egan's aide, Bronkiewicz, wrote a letter alerting the archdiocese in Baltimore, where Brett had been assigned.
"At the present time, we have no reason to believe the accuser of Father Brett intends to take legal action of any kind, and there has been no publicity concerning the accusation," he wrote.
There is no evidence from any of the documents that the diocese under both Egan and Curtis alerted the police or state child protection authorities when parents or victims came forward with accusations of abuse. In all of the cases during Egan's tenure, the statute of limitations to bring criminal charges had expired.
But the failure to report those cases meant that police and state child protection authorities were never able to investigate the possibility of other victims or possession of child pornography, a federal crime. Under public pressure, Boston and several other dioceses recently began turning over names of all accused priests, no matter how old the incidents.
Egan deserves the millstone of the coming humiliation. And not only Egan. There is no pleasure in this -- see my last post -- but satisfaction in seeing the truth told, and perhaps some measure of justice done.
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Its an ugly thing to describe. I really think that it needs to stop. Are you defending anyone from this article?
From POKROV.org, A Resource for Survivors of Abuse in the Orthodox Churches
http://www.pokrov.org/default.asp
"Often times, you may hear people say that 'Abuse is unknown in the Orthodox Church!' or 'We may have problems, but we never move abusers around the way that the Catholics do.' This section provides the materials that can be used to teach the Orthodox both that abuse occurs, and that we have no right to point any fingers at our Roman brethren."
The Catholic Church's legal response is one of its least reported sins. The scorched earth depositions and the public attacks on likely victims are shameful.
I've defended people accused of similar crimes. It's hard to make sure that you are both defending your client and keeping in mind the possibility that your client might be guilty and that the "victims" might be victims.
But that's what you do. You give your client the benefit of the doubt, but inflicting unnecessary pain on potential victims is rarely good for your client. Plus, if kids are making sexual allegations, they are victims regardless of whether their allegations are true. Of course, some pain is inherent in any action defending your client, but you don't need to publicly attack the victims. You can ask tough questions and make your points respectfully and with care. And you do that in court and in your court filings, not in the press.
In the end, you do your job and trust the system to get it right. Sometimes I've been able to help clients charged with these kids of offenses. Sometimes not. That's the system I signed up for.
The Catholic leaders and their lawyers should be ashamed of their legal strategy. The lawyers should be doubly ashamed because not only did they inflict needless pain on actual victims, the lawyers made their clients' case worse. The lawyers' strategy justifiably enraged the victims and potential jurors, causing the cost of settlements to increase dramatically.
So the lawyers hurt their clients financially, hurt the reputation and standing of their clients, and hurt sexually abused children. On a much less important note, they also gave our profession yet another black eye. Despicable.
Many decades ago, when the closets were crowded and living one's life openly and honestly as a Gay man was virtually unthinkable, Straight Catholic men would get married, and Gay Catholic men would become priests.
Thank goodness we live in more enlightened times.
Gerard: Your constant focus back from whence you came...
Gerard, on the many occasions when I defend Catholicism and Pope Benedict on this thread -- including last week, when I pointed out the double standard present in the Polanski case (i.e., that if he had been a Catholic priest, not a voice would have been lifted in his defense from Hollywood or any other place) -- I don't recall hearing you or anybody else complain about my "constant focus" on Catholicism. So I am unmoved by the selective outrage here. But I quite seriously welcome your publicizing material from POKROV; as far as I'm concerned, any time that clergy sexual abuse and cover-up can be exposed, wherever and whenever it occurs, it is a good thing for the body of Christ.
I'm going to close this thread down, because I have been over a thousand times in the course of this blog my reasons for leaving Catholicism, and why I continue to blog from time to time on the sexual abuse story. If you want to find out what I've said, avail yourself of the search function. If I get dragged down this rabbit hole again, I'm going to end up saying things I'll regret later, because frankly, it makes me sick to my stomach to hear Catholics attacking the messenger. I'll say it again: I welcome anyone exposing sexual misconduct among Orthodox clergy, among Jewish clergy, among any clergy. No church is immune. But you have to understand that you are reading a blog, and blog comments are typically driven by what's in the news. I don't make it a habit to search for bad news about Catholic sexual abuse, or any other religion's problems, unless they make the news. I saw that the Supreme Court made an important ruling on the Egan case, which I know a lot about, and I thought it worth highlighting on this blog, because Egan was and is one of the top American churchmen, and he fought hammer and tongs to keep his vile stewardship of the Bridgeport diocese hidden from public view. It is good that he lost -- good for the truth, good for victims, and good for decent Catholics who are sick and tired of this garbage.
I am perfectly aware that the state of Connecticut is using the crimes of the Catholic clergy in an attempt to insert the state into religious life in ways it ought not. That should be resisted. But whining about how the big bad news media is being mean to Catholic bishops who covered up for child rapists is a pathetic and dishonorable response. I can remember back when many conservative Catholics publicly despised the Hartford Courant and its religion reporter, the late Gerald Renner, for being so biased and mean to the sainted Legionaries of Christ. Well, surprise, surprise: Renner and the newspaper turned out to be right about the Maciel gang.
Anyway, you Roman Catholic sensitivos would do well to read Lee Podles' amazing book "Sacrilege," which is extensively documented, and is far, far more damning of the Catholic clergy's abuse and hierarchical cover-up than anything I have ever written. And Podles is a faithful orthodox Catholic, so you can't fall back on the same old flimsy bias excuses you use to try to discredit my commentary.
Again, I'm going to shut this thread down because it'll blow up if I don't, and I've got a lot of work to do today. If you wish to have further words with me about this matter, you are welcome to email me at rdreher (at) dallasnews.com