Church in
Crisis
Databases hold abusers’ names
By GILL DONOVAN
A group of church activists and a law firm have independently
compiled databases that each contains the names of some 2,000 priests accused
of abuse. Both groups have undertaken the project with the same basic premise
that before the crisis of clergy sexual abuse of children can be resolved it
must first be understood.
One database is being prepared by Dallas law firm Demarest, Smith,
Giunta & Howell. That list, said lawyer Sylvia Demarest, was started in
1993 after she first saw signs that led her to think the church was involved in
a conspiracy to protect abusers. She said she thinks her database is the most
exhaustive list of abusers yet created. Of the 2,000 cases she has recorded,
all have been reported in the U.S. media.
Paul Baier, founder of victims’ rights group Survivors First,
told NCR his group has found only about 500 of the priests accused
through media reports. He said the other 1,500 names in his database come from
other victims’ advocates groups. These victims have chosen thus far not to
tell their stories to reporters or, in many cases, to church officials, saying
they don’t want their lives turned upside down by the pressures such
accusations bring, he said.
Both groups have said they are searching for news stories
published no earlier than 1984, one year before the bishops received a report
co-written by Fr. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who consistently warned about
the growing crisis. The report urged the bishops to start keeping records of
such cases. The bishops ignored that idea. Since the clergy abuse crisis first
broke open in Boston last year, the bishops have yet to release results of any
new research into the problem.
Baier said he thinks the church’s moral authority has been
severely damaged by the scandal, and he thinks uncovering the facts about the
crisis is one of the steps necessary to restore moral authority. “It
can’t be done until we prove there are no more skeletons in the
closet,” he said. “The church is still asking mothers to trust that
children will be safe at religious education programs and so on, and
that’s damn hard now.
“In the corporate world, after an oil spill, we try to find
out how many barrels of oil went down. For the church not to have found this
sort of thing out is grossly irresponsible.”
There are some further fundamental differences between Demarest
and Baier’s databases. Baier said that his group has had the resources to
gather only the names of diocesan priests, while Demarest has listed religious
order priests as well when she has been able to find them, a relatively small
number of the total, she said. Further, unlike Survivors First, Demarest is
compiling the names of priests who are alleged to have abused as long ago as
the 1950s. Most of the cases recorded, she said, are alleged to have happened
in the ’60s or later.
Baier told NCR that though the Survivors First list is not
yet complete and is still being frequently updated, he believes it is not too
early to begin estimating the percentage of diocesan priests alleged to have
abused minors since 1965.
His group, he said, has had trouble estimating the percentage
because it hasn’t known the number of diocesan priests who have served
since 1965. His initial estimate, based on incomplete information uncovered at
libraries, was that there had been about 83,000 priests during that time period
-- which would have made the percentage about 2.4 percent. NCR obtained
an estimate from CARA, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, whose
more substantial records indicate there have been some 65,000 diocesan priests
since ’65. Using that figure, according to Survivors First’s
calculations, approximately 3 percent of U.S. priests have been accused of
abuse.
Since 1,500 of the accusations Survivors First has recorded have
not been made public, Baier said there is a chance that a small number may be
false. But as proof of the rarity of false accusations, Baier cited the
experience of Patrick Schlitz, dean of the law school at the University of St.
Thomas in Minnesota. Schlitz, quoted in a New York Times report Aug. 31,
said that while he has served as defending attorney for U.S. dioceses in over
500 cases, he believes that “fewer than 10” priests were falsely
accused.
Baier said that as a service to victims and the public, Survivors
First has published on its Web site, www.survivors first.org, the names
and some background information about 277 abusers whose cases have been or are
being currently decided in the courts.
Demarest said she wants to complete her database and allow
psychologists to study it before releasing it to the public or offering an
estimate of the percentage of priests accused of abuse.
“We’re a few months away from forming any
conclusions,” she said, but wondered, “What is an acceptable
percentage? If people can show less than 2 percent [of priests] abuse, some
think it is not such a big problem.” Yet, she said she thinks that only
about half of abusers are ever publicly reported.
She thinks that unreported abuse of girls is particularly high.
“We’ve seen substantial evidence the public is much more horrified by
abuse of boys,” she said. “I would not have said that two years ago.
But since then I’ve seen how difficult it is for [girls] to come forward.
Some can’t even write a letter about it. They are more isolated and feel
they don’t have the emotional support. There’s not this rallying
around that there is with boys.”
Since the Survivors First Web site has been operational, Baier
said, “a couple good things have happened. We’ve had five victims who
had never spoken to anyone of their abuse come forward. So we were able to send
them to get counseling.” Second, he said, the site has proven helpful in
at least one instance to prosecutors. “A detective in Philadelphia learned
two new names from us, two more names than he had. He said he and the district
attorney had been having trouble getting all the names from the
archdiocese.”
Putting the site together has brought some criticism as well, in
the form of scathing e-mails and letters. “[Some people] think I’m
dragging these names through the mud, that I’m overstating the problem,
encouraging false allegations. But we have scoured the Internet looking for
false allegations, and have found only three.”
The database, he said, has in some cases helped “move the
conversation away from the emotions.” He said that many Catholics --
perhaps half of them -- think the claims are false and that the database may
help prove this is not true.
“On the other hand,” he said, “if you have a
Catholic kid who goes to a public school -- well, many kids think that half of
priests are pedophiles. This database proves otherwise,” he said.
Baier, who works as a software entre-preneur in Boston, and is one
of the founders of the church reform group Voice of the Faithful, said he took
up the cause of calling for church reform when the crisis erupted again a year
ago, because he wants to raise his 4-year-old daughter in a church whose
leaders live by the same moral principles that they teach.
Survivors First has not had any contact with the bishops’
conference. As for Kathleen McChesney, the FBI agent chosen to head the
bishops’ new Office for Child and Youth Protection, Baier said he tried to
contact her when her appointment was announced but is yet to hear back.
McChesney is expected to begin her new job this month.
For Demarest, one of two lawyers who won a multimillion-dollar
judgment for victims of Dallas serial abuser Fr. Rudolph Kos in 1997, the
creation of a database has been a much more lengthy project. Last January, she
said, she devoted more resources to the project and has one staff person
working on it nearly full-time.
A book or Internet report might be written by the end of 2003, she
said, based on her findings. She said it would likely be referenced and
cross-referenced, according to dioceses and religious orders. She said there
are still has some legal questions that must first be answered about publishing
the names of accused priests, but she intends for the database eventually, to
“end up being the property of some nonprofit somewhere.”
She said that sexual abuse of minors is not a problem of Catholic
clergy alone. In other faiths, however, those who abuse are prosecuted and go
to jail to a far greater degree. In Catholic dioceses, she said, “You have
the secrecy that extends to the chancery.” When the chancery fails to take
action, she said, “you wonder, who is going to step up and discipline
them?”
Gill Donovan is an NCR reporter and writer. His e-mail
address is gdonovan@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, January 10,
2003
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