Church in
Crisis
Archdiocese under fire over files access
By ARTHUR JONES
Los Angeles
Lines in Los Angeles archdiocese’s criminal and civil
clerical sex abuse cases are being more sharply drawn in a battle over access
to church documents. The files in question reportedly would show what happened,
or did not, among archdiocesan officials in cases involving some 130 Los
Angeles priests accused of sexual abuse.
Faced with the possibility of such revelations, and in a reversal
of an earlier stance, the archdiocese now claims that communication between a
bishop and his priests is privileged information protected by law.
In reaction, the local media, police and plaintiffs’ lawyers
have become more public in condemning the archdiocese’s intransigence
regarding access to its paperwork.
At a March 7 Voice of the Faithful/Call to Action e-mail
invitation-only gathering, Los Angeles Police Department detectives waded into
the fray describing how they had been barred in criminal cases from access to
the documents.
The archdiocese has already turned over files to the court. But,
explained Detective James Brown of the Juvenile Division, the documents are
under lock and key in the judge’s chambers in the criminal court. Church
lawyers -- by arguing that the documents are privileged -- have prevented the
police from actually reading what is in the files.
Brown said the greater worry is that when the documents are truly
released, it will be document-by-document, a process, that, in criminal cases
where a 12-month clock is already running, means the cases will become moot.
So, simultaneously, the district attorney is seeking legislation to stop the
clock during the delays created by the archdiocese’s strategy.
The archdiocese is aware that it has little to lose and everything
to gain from delay on criminal cases. There is an expiration date after 12
months for criminal cases pursued under California 803G, which lifted a statute
of limitation and permits criminal prosecution in older cases. Next month the
U.S. Supreme Court will consider a challenge to 803G. (This is not to be
confused with a California law that last year lifted the statute of limitations
in civil cases and permits, during this 2003 calendar year, suits against
institutions that employed known child molesters, regardless of the date of the
abuse.)
A major blast against the archdiocese for withholding access to
documents came in a March 5 Los Angeles Times editorial headlined,
“Do What You Say, Cardinal.”
The editorial stated: “After preaching candor at the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops last fall, Mahony is now practicing secrecy at
home.” It criticized Mahony for his evasiveness and a “stunning
disregard for the shock and betrayal experienced by many Catholics since the
scandal broke.”
Last July, faced with a third set of grand jury subpoenas, Mahony
had told the Times that the church wanted, “Every single thing out,
open and dealt with. Period.”
Not any more. His lawyers, in the second half of February, in both
criminal and civil case hearings, have argued that communications between a
bishop and a priest are protected by the First Amendment.
The Times, referring to the archdiocese’s First
Amendment argument, stated Florida, New Hampshire and Massachusetts courts have
all turned down that same argument.
Mary Jane McGraw, Voice of the Faithful Southern California
coordinator, opened the Voice of the Faithful/Call to Action meeting by quoting
Eli Wiesel’s comment, “There doesn’t seem to be a moral voice on
the planet.” She added, “If we all have a sense of morality, maybe
waiting for the one Gandhi, or Mother Teresa or John XXIII is not the way
we’re moving now. Maybe the Spirit’s calling all of us together and
maybe the voice we’re waiting for is our own.”
With that, McGraw, riffling through 42 pages of computer printouts
of the names of abusing priests, said, “The names that aren’t in here
would fill a book the size of this year’s tax papers. So let’s talk
about people who have known these things and done nothing.”
McGraw referred to the survivors of abuse as “the martyrs of
this age.” She introduced Mary Grant of Survivors Network of those Abused
by Priests, SNAP, Southern California region coordinator, saying, “This
Mary has stood at the foot of the cross and pondered at what happened to her,
and happened to all these children. If what has happened to them isn’t a
martyrdom, then I don’t know what is.”
Voice of the Faithful and SNAP’s goals, said McGraw, include
encouraging parishioners to open their eyes to the reality.
Grant said as a 13-year-old she was molested by Fr. John Lenihan,
who later stalked her, found her and abused her again. The Orange diocese was
notified by letter. She said when later she went to the diocese, the bishop
told her she was the only case and they didn’t handle isolated cases.
“I was the only one I knew of. I believed the bishop,” she said.
“They even said no other child had ever been abused in the
diocese.”
That silenced her, she said. As an adult, when she saw
Lenihan’s photograph in the newspaper, she was angry and sued the diocese
-- despite the expiration of the statute of limitations -- “to try to
force the diocese to do the right thing.” Another girl, 16-year-old Lori
Haigh, was both molested and impregnated and made to have by an abortion by
Lenihan.
Haigh’s case was settled by the [Los Angeles
archdiocese and] the Orange[, Calif.,] diocese in 2002 for
$1.2 million. [The Los Angeles archdiocese paid $200,000, the Orange
diocese $1 million.]
In her case, Grant early discovered that everyone was prepared to
give the diocese the benefit of the doubt. In 1991, she went to the local
paper, the Orange County Register. “Remember, this was 1991,”
she said. “No one was coming forward. I was blasted by the bishop. There
were threatening phone calls. My windows were smashed. That silenced me for
another year.”
Someone sent her a clipping on an abuse case like hers on the
other side of the country. She made contact with other victims, she said, and
gradually the survivors network grew into SNAP.
“Then I was really angry,” she said, “because I saw
it was widespread, priests were doing it all over the country and bishops were
hiding it all over the country. Nobody was talking about it. SNAP was the only
place we could go to talk.”
She found other victims in California and they met for lunch, and
gradually a West Coast contact and support group came into being. “Boston
finally validated what we’d been telling people for so many years.
“The church today better watch out,” warned Grant,
“because the survivors coming forward now are not like the early ones.
When we started we were just trying to find other victims.”
On attempts to suppress what is in archdiocesan documents, Grant
commented, “Pardon me, Cardinal Mahony, but all these special privileges
‘men of God’ have been given? Who gave them? These bishops are not
special. I don’t know why the law accommodates them.”
Thirty-year veteran detective Dale Barraclough, 20 years in the
Los Angeles Police Department Juvenile Division’s Sexually Exploited Child
Unit he now heads, said unit detectives understand how long it takes for some
victims to come forward. He referred to a case he investigated two decades ago
at the San Fernando Mission.
At that time, he said, young boys considering the priesthood
studied at the mission all week, spent the nights there on cots, and went home
on weekends.
Barraclough said the case emerged when one boy took home an
illustration of the international warning sign, a circle with a bar across, in
this case across a hand-drawn hand, with the note, “Father Fessard’s
hand.”
The priest was Fr. Gerald Fessard, the detective said, who on
night checks with his flashlight, would put his hand under the covers and
fondle the boys’ genitals.
“We interviewed the whole school,” said Barraclough,
“identified six or seven victims. But just today, almost 20 years later, a
couple more have come forward. I haven’t interviewed them yet, but
I’m sure they’ve been severely victimized through this whole last 20
years.”
A year ago, said Barraclough, “when what was happening on the
East Coast was creating such a roar, our police chief instructed my partner and
myself to get from Cardinal Mahony information on priests dismissed from the
priesthood.”
The chief also added four more investigators to the unit, just to
concentrate on clerical sex abuse, he said.
Barraclough explained the significance of the withheld
documents.
Within the city of Los Angeles alone, he said, the department has
67 priests suspected of sex abuse. Most cases are multiple victims. Even so, in
many cases the police so far may have only one name, that of the victim making
the charge.
In order to get a case moving and to prosecute, the detective
said, independent corroboration is required from another source. And if in the
archdiocesan documents an accused priest is mentioned in a different incident,
no matter how minor, that incident is the corroboration the detectives
seek.
Barraclough appealed to those at the meeting: “There is
confidentiality. If you know a victim who hasn’t reported the molestation
to the police department, they must do that. For their own sake, and for others
waiting for them to report. I feel very strongly about that.”
Brown, who has been with the police department 29 years, 22 of
them in the juvenile division, described the five criminal arrests of priests
already made, and said five more are imminent. He gave the details behind the
arrest of Fr. G. Neville Rucker, “our most notorious case.” Rucker is
accused of abusing 31 children, only one a boy. “He covers four decades
and four Los Angeles parishes,” Brown said. (A woman present at the joint
meeting identified herself as one of Rucker’s victims.)
Rucker, who lives in a retirement home, was on a 60-day cruise to
Russia when Brown, working through a variety of law enforcement agencies, the
shipping company and the liner’s captain, had the ship diverted to U.S.
waters in the Aleutian Islands, where Rucker was taken into custody.
Two plaintiffs’ lawyers, Tony DiMarco of the law firm of
Kiesel, Boucher, Larson of Beverly Hills, and John Manly, who practices in
Costa Mesa, addressed the group. DiMarco said lawyers pressed to have the
statute of limitations lifted “because children do not come forward.
People come forward in their 20s or later and, unfortunately, in many states
around the country age 26 is the cut-off.”
“We’re aware in Los Angeles of approximately 130 priests
where there are accusations at this stage,” said DiMarco. “We
represent multiple victims, and from meetings with others -- police, attorneys,
victims, support groups -- we’re aware these multiples are dwarfed by the
actual numbers out there.
“It’s not hard to understand why victims don’t come
forward. Their feelings of shame and guilt persist to this day. It is so much
to overcome. That is why those who come forward need encouragement and respect.
Others need to know they’re not alone out there.”
February this year ended for the archdiocese with the highly
popular archdiocesan Religious Education Congress. It was leafleted by Voice of
the Faithful and the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests.
Mahony was a major congress figure. In addition to fulfilling
official and liturgical functions, he enjoyed an extended walk throughout the
convention hall. In keeping with his reputation, he wandered alone along
corridors and through the exhibition hall, chatting, blessing, conferring with
those who approached him.
Many Catholics who see Mahony in such settings find it hard if not
impossible to join in the criticism of the church’s handling of the sex
abuse scandal. They stand with those committed to an adamant defense of the
institution despite everything.
Voice of the Faithful and SNAP are hoping to change that.
One approach is increased visibility and activity; another is the
creation of La Voz de los Fieles, a Spanish-language Voice of the Faithful
section.
Arthur Jones is NCR editor at large. His e-mail address
is arthurjones@attbi.com
National Catholic Reporter, March 21, 2003
[corrected 04/11/2003]
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