Cover
story Post-Dallas: Santa Rosa priests, victims meet
By GUION M. KOVNER
Santa Rosa, Calif.
Catholic clerics from this scandal-battered diocese met June 18
with victims of more than two decades of child molestation, an era when bishops
and clergy alike formed a wall of secrecy around the crimes of five
priests.
You could see the pain in their eyes, said Fr. David
Shaw, pastor of Resurrection Parish, recalling the victims testimony at a
diocesan retreat.
Shaw, a priest for 34 years, and Bishop Daniel Walsh, who took
over the 140,000-member Northern California diocese two years ago, believe the
standards set by U.S. bishops and a reinvigorated laity spell an end to the
sexual misconduct revealed in lawsuits and criminal prosecutions since
1994.
The diocese already has implemented most of the reforms in the
national policy adopted by the bishops at their recent conference in Dallas,
including a lay-clergy review board to investigate sex abuse claims.
Walsh has encouraged sex abuse victims to go to the police, and
Shaw asserts that bishops, despite the absence of sanctions in the national
policy, will never again shield sex offenders from prosecution or transfer them
from one job to another.
The laity will hold their feet to the fire, Shaw
said.
But the sprawling diocese, which stretches from Santa Rosa to the
Oregon border, looks back on a sordid history of sex crimes, cover-ups and
payoffs.
Two priests have been sent to state prison. Another committed
suicide in 1995 and his accuser died in March 2001 of chronic drug abuse. The
diocese acknowledges paying $7.4 million to settle sex abuse victims
claims.
Court records show that two former Santa Rosa bishops -- Mark
Hurley and John Steinbock -- failed to discipline priests who were violating
the law and the trust of teenage parishioners. A third former bishop, G.
Patrick Ziemann, fired three priests accused of sexual misconduct but loaned
one of them $40,000 for his legal defense.
Hurley is deceased. Steinbock, now bishop of Fresno, Calif., has
taken a hard line on sexual misconduct in that Central California diocese.
Ziemann, who resigned after admitting a homosexual relationship
with another priest in 1999, left the diocese $16 million in debt. He lives at
a Benedictine monastery near Tombstone, Ariz.
Hurleys tenure from 1969-87 was marked by child molestations
the length of the diocese, but shrouded in secrecy.
Ive never gone to the police, Hurley said in a
1995 deposition. I think theres a danger in that and therefore, I
never reported anything on anybody to the police.
Hurley also testified that he tore up confidential personnel
records before leaving the chancery. He died last year after surgery at a San
Francisco hospital.
His brother, Frank Hurley, is the retired archbishop of
Anchorage, Alaska.
Under oath, Mark Hurley emphatically denied any knowledge of
wrongdoing by former priest Gary Timmons prior to 1994, when allegations by the
son of a Sonoma County judge and prominent Catholic were first reported.
That story in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat newspaper began
a revelation of the dioceses dirty secrets eight years before sex abuse
by priests and cover-ups by bishops became a national scandal.
The judges son, Stephen Gallagher, told a reporter in 1995
that he remembered Timmons taking him, at age 9, to his bedroom at St.
Eugenes rectory in Santa Rosa and Hurley turned to another priest and
said: Dont leave Fr. Timmons alone with that child in that
room.
Timmons, who faced civil and criminal charges for molesting as
many as 18 youths, was convicted in 1996. He served four years in prison and
was released in 2000.
Timmons left the church and is now a registered sex offender.
Another serial child molester, Fr. Austin Peter Keegan, was
accepted into Hurleys diocese in 1976. Accused of molesting boys as many
as 50 times in Santa Rosa from 1979-82, Keegan never faced charges there or in
San Francisco, where he was a notorious molester in three parishes in the 1960s
and 70s.
Suspicion lingers that Keegan, who allegedly sodomized young boys,
was dumped by the church in Santa Rosa. Keegan later turned up working as a
priest in Mexico, his last know address.
A Sonoma County man, Michael Pavelka, was paid $450,000 to settle
his claim of abuse by Keegan in 1995.
Two other accused molesters are dead. Fr. John Rogers committed
suicide in Belgium when called home for psychiatric evaluation in 1995. (His
accuser, Patrick McBride, died six years later of drug abuse.) Fr. Vincent
ONeill died of a brain tumor in 1998, a year after the diocese settled
abuse claims by five former altar boys for an undisclosed amount of money.
Steinbock, who headed the Santa Rosa diocese from 1987-91, was
called to testify this year in the trial of Don Kimball, the priest who used a
nationally known radio youth ministry to cultivate teenage victims.
You try to save a persons priesthood if
possible, Steinbock said in March, when asked why he had tried to
reassign Kimball.
Under oath, Steinbock said he suspended Kimball, who refused
reassignment, after Kimball admitted in 1990 to having sexual contact with six
young girls. The bishop said he had taken no disciplinary action three years
earlier, when he was first advised of Kimballs misconduct.
Kimball was sentenced June 7 to seven years in prison for
molesting a 13-year-old girl in 1981. Lawsuits filed by four of Kimballs
victims were settled for $1.6 million in 2000.
In the Fresno diocese, Steinbock has removed three priests in the
past 10 years, two of them for allowing themselves to be alone with boys.
But in a 1999 deposition, Steinbock admitted that he had never
tried to find all of Kimballs victims.
I didnt have knowledge, he said. You know,
we had so many people involved here now. I dont know, do we have them all
identified or not yet?
Guion M. Kovner is a newspaper reporter who lives in
Occidental, Calif.
National Catholic Reporter, July 5,
2002
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