(Warning: language is graphic w/R-rated outtakes)
By Kay Ebeling
(To show the extent of damage caused by pedophile priests, CofA Blog publishes what victims say in their own words, for the record. If details of a traumatic memory from early childhood are wrong, that does not prove the entire recollection false, research shows. This series of posts comes from three afternoons I spent interviewing Ted Lausche in Chicago 2012. My Take is in this post: Ted 2. Coming soon are “The Hebert Incident” (with R-rated outtakes) and “Hell Everywhere at Madonna Manor,” the next two segments of this full length feature story, which begins here: )
(To show the extent of damage caused by pedophile priests, CofA Blog publishes what victims say in their own words, for the record. If details of a traumatic memory from early childhood are wrong, that does not prove the entire recollection false, research shows. This series of posts comes from three afternoons I spent interviewing Ted Lausche in Chicago 2012. My Take is in this post: Ted 2. Coming soon are “The Hebert Incident” (with R-rated outtakes) and “Hell Everywhere at Madonna Manor,” the next two segments of this full length feature story, which begins here: )
 |
| Ted Lausche, self portrait 2013 |
In the late 1990s Ted Lausche realized he had to do something about abuse and molestation he lived through while at Madonna Manor / Hope Haven orphanage near New Orleans in the 1960s. Thanks to this new advancement, the internet, Ted found a specific place to report pedophile crimes he experienced from both male and female clergy to the Archdiocese. Ted called the number and Monsignor Ray Hebert answered the phone.
“As soon as I heard his voice, I
knew right away it was him,” Ted said.
I looked up stunned, “A priest who raped you was the guy who answered the phone?”
“Yep, the one in the confessional,” said Ted. “Now he was fielding
calls on perp priests. There
was an awkward silence and then I let loose on him. I said, I'm coming down there to do to you what you did to me. I'm on my f---ing way."
Years later, Ted had to drop the
name of Ray Hebert from his lawsuit against the Archdiocese, as did the other
three men who named the monsignor as a perpetrator in the early two thousands. Because as soon as the men named Hebert in
their lawsuits, the monsignor turned around and filed defamation claims against
all four plaintiffs.
“I
never heard confession,” Hebert said in an Aug 1 2008 deposition. “That was not
my responsibility. The sisters never asked me to do that.” (Read more of Hebert's deposition at bottom of post.) *
Hebert died January 2014 and my advisers tell me dead men cannot
file defamation lawsuits, nor can their families. So this story is going forward. Today Ted is a complicated man who has overcome great obstacles. He seemed smart and hardworking. He still claims that in spite of Hebert’s defamation lawsuits he remembers the man who
raped him in the confessional to be the man who answered the archdiocese hot line phone forty years later, Monsignor Ray Hebert.
 |
| Hebert |
As I heard Ted speak, I couldn't help but wonder. Could the monsignor have manipulated himself into that office just so he would be there to field calls that came in to report his own crimes? I know that is just speculation. I go on more here in My Take Ted 2 about Monsignor Hebert and his counter suits against pedophile priest victims.
This is Ted Lausche’s story.
When Ted went to New Orleans to
meet the first time with the archdiocese, he also went public in local TV news. The station would not name priests, but did mention Madonna
Manor and Hope Haven.
“I mentioned Gilbert Gauthe,
too,” Lausche said, “and you could tell that name was a symbol of all that's
wrong. He’d already been convicted in 85
so this was fifteen years later.” (CofA Blog published the Gauthe part of Ted's story in 2009 here)
After TV aired a report about Ted two
times in one day on local New Orleans station, within weeks about a dozen other victims came forward and filed lawsuits
for sex molestation at the Madonna Manor / Hope Haven, including three other men accusing
Monsignor Hebert, who by then had been removed from his role in Victim
Assistance.
Here is Ted’s story, in his own
words. He spoke and I took it down:
*************
IN TED’S OWN WORDS:
(From here on, questions from
City of Angels Blog are in all caps, the rest of this is Ted’s own words, I
took them down in this laptop as we met for three interview sessions in Chicago
summer 2012.)
The first time I called, when I
said the word Madonna Manor there was silence.
Then they connected me to Hebert. He was in his seventies, but the voice was the
same, you know the voice. They're
pampered their whole life.
I told him, I'm going to come
down there and do exactly what you did to me.
He did actually rape me not just the time in the Confessional but also
in another incident about six months later.
He was there at the orphanage for the feast of f---ing something or
other, so we’d have to serve and we’d clean up after.
As soon as I heard his voice,
this sissy singsong voice, I was blinded with rage, hyperventilating. I got up paced, really fast, got out a notebook
of information I’d already developed, the names of the perps, times and dates
on paper, what I’d been able to find at the time, which was limited.
The brutalness of several of
these incidences, it was painful.
I had to get up and pace while
I was talking, and one reason I had to hang up was because my asshole was
almost bleeding.
I have body memories.
**********
WHAT LED YOU TO MAKE THE CALL
AFTER SO MANY YEARS?
It was the late nineties early
two thousands, right after the incident where I threw the ashtray, I went to
the website, and contacted them. They
said, we don't believe what you're saying is true.
Hebert said it doesn't matter
what you do, I decide and I say whether it goes anywhere from here.
I said, I'm going to come down
there and do to you what you did to me.
I know where you work, who your friends are, I'm coming to get your ass,
literally me and my broomstick.
It probably had happened with
so many kids, he probably didn't know which one I was. But now this was me talking to him and I was
f---ing livid. This is what helped
destroy my family, because of things like-
I'm screaming “All f---ing five
foot of the broomstick, you mother f---er, until it comes out your damn
throat.”
And my kid was in the room.
(CofA: I look up from my notes stunned again when Ted says this as well. My daughter witnessed way too much of me screaming at phones while she grew up too.)
(CofA: I look up from my notes stunned again when Ted says this as well. My daughter witnessed way too much of me screaming at phones while she grew up too.)
In order for me to do this, to
report these crimes, my family would end up knowing about it. Anybody that was around heard what was going
on.
The first lawyer I called in
Chicago, Klepto or whatever his f---ing name is, said to me, It's very unusual
for victims to have more than one perp.
I said you're going to at least
make the phone call.
**********
WAIT. WHAT INCIDENT WHERE YOU
THREW THE ASHTRAY?
(IN TED’S OWN WORDS)
First time I realized I had a
problem I was living in Joliet with this girl, the late 1970s, I’d just gotten
out of service, just gotten out and was so f---ed up, I wasn’t thinking
clearly, and S was a stabling influence.
I was playing basketball and ended up at a Catholic school. The priest
came out and said go away it's private property and I went off on him. Threw him into glass, careening into a
hallway, I went berserk on him. I
snapped. He came out with that attitude
of there’s not a f---ing thing you can do and I grabbed his ass. My friends all freaked out. They’d never seen
anybody even talk back to a priest.
****************
They’d never seen this hidden
anger that I had.
****************
They’d never seen this hidden
anger that I had.
That was the first time I
confronted this hidden anger.
I violated everything about who
I was as a normal person by attacking this guy and I almost killed him. I head butted him and hurt my head, I was
black and blue in the face. That was the
first time I realized there was somebody else inside me that had nothing to do
with what I went through in the military.
They kicked me out of the Marines
because I wasn’t old enough, then kicked me out of Navy because I had a needle
in my arm. I ended up in Florida at a
navy base, NAS something or other, I don't even know, I was so f---ed up. I went AWOL in the Philippines they sent me
to Florida. I became a heroin addict in
the Navy. Before lying about my age and
joining, I had been doing acid and things like that, but then I got wounded and
the heroin really helped. Everybody had
heroinh. Marines were wearing their hair
long, we had a race riot on the ship. On
the way back to the States onboard were thirty thousand Vietnamese we were
bringing over to give them all Stop and Go marts.
Anyway, that was first
incident.
WHAT ABOUT THROWING THE
ASHTRAY?
Last incident before calling
the archdiocese was I was sitting with B who I'm now married to B [at the time
of the interview, now two years later Ted is divorced and engaged to a new
female]. B looks a lot like S.
Our youngest son was just born.
I'm sitting there and I never
watch TV early in the day, but this day I'm home doing an estimate for work and
on the news there’s a cardinal and he’s saying there are pedophiles in the
carpenters’ union.
It was like one of those movies
where the devil takes over the TV, I'm hearing something maybe nobody else is
hearing. It was some kind of interview where the cardinal was saying there are
pedophiles in carpenter unions and also among plumbers, and and all of them
have to be investigated.
At the time I'm a union
carpenter, card carrying, working with plumbers every day.
Here’s what I'm told
happened.
B says the room got quiet and I
turned.
She says I picked this ashtray
thing up and threw it at the TV. The
tubes exploded and it started the drywall behind it on fire. I threw it so hard, it blew backwards and
everything caught fire inside this area.
My mother-in-law was there. I freaked
everybody out.
Once I started having kids, you
didn't get in a lot of fights, I’d ask people nicely like to watch their
language.
This day I blacked out, I came
out of it, and I came back from wherever I was, started shaking. B came over and held me.
DID ANYBODY KNOW YOUR HISTORY?
No, nobody knew. I went afterwards and called S.
**********************
Back in the 1990s, it hadn’t entered my mind that priest rape of a child happened to so many other people
***********************
**********************
Back in the 1990s, it hadn’t entered my mind that priest rape of a child happened to so many other people
***********************
They say repressed memory
doesn't exist, I said, let me find somebody who I talked to about it in the
past. So I called S, and said do you
remember me talking about things that happened in the orphanage. She said, yeah you wouldn't go to my folks
for holidays.
All they knew was I was raised
at an orphanage and didn't like to be around Catholics
SO YOU SMASHED THE ASHTRAY,
B said that's when she first
saw there was someone else inside of me.
Within a week is when I went to
the website and left the email inquiry about the Manor. All I wanted was to get
back to normal. I tried that week, then
I sent that email.
About three weeks later a
website administrator contacted me with the archdiocese phone number, the
office to call with pedophile priest claims.
***********
I called S and then I called
whoever I could get hold of, these women I used to be with, I’d call and say, I
need to know, this is serious.
My mother-in-law watched this
happen and said, “It had something to do with what that cardinal said.” She saw me become another personality and she
would not leave me alone until I finally said, look, some terrible horrible
things happened at the orphanage, and when I heard this guy saying that
carpenters are worse pedophiles than priests.
She said, you have to do
something about it. It was about a week
later, I said, I can’t. I was just
getting back to normalcy, I’d had to take time off work, I was having
flashbacks. I'm like what the hell is
going on.
B said that in that ashtray
incident, in a minute everything changed, I had a different voice, a different
look, it was almost like my eyes changed color.
I had to take time off work.
Here’s my mother-in-law, who
earlier in the relationship had nothing but bad feelings for me. When she got to know me she saw I really
wasn’t a freak. I always held a job and
paid the rent and bills. We’d bought our
own house.
Now my mother-in-law is telling
me I have to do something about the way I reacted to the pedophile priest news
on TV. I said, you don't know what's
going to happen if I go down this path, I don't know either, but it won’t be
good. Nothing about this has been good,
why would it suddenly change, would they help?
******
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU WENT
DOWN TO NEW ORLEANS?
After the first time, I called
back next day to harass Hebert, but they already had another guy answering. So I talked to the secretary, and I asked
her.
How is it the guy taking calls
from victim is that guy who f---ed me and who knows how many other kids plus
Gauthe, I know you guys know who Gilbert Gauthe is. There was a ring of them, aside from the
violence and all the other bullshit.
The archdiocese woman says,
Have you spoken with a lawyer yet. I say
yeah and when I find one, I’ll sue.
Then later they wouldn't let me
in with a lawyer.
I say to the archdiocese
secretary, I want to come down and meet with the archbishop, and she goes, I
don't know if that's possible. I said,
I'm not meeting with Hebert.
Thing is, I still was thinking
at the time that they were going to do the right thing.
(In the early two thousands)
they paid for me to come down. First
time we drove, and they reimbursed me for gas. Two other times I came by train.
First trip I met with them in
New Orleans in these archdiocese buildings, ornate structures off downtown in a
ritzy old area. It was around 6 PM in
late October early November, dark when I got there, and it was an immense labyrinth
of places with a cathedral behind it, that kind of architecture.
I go into the office to meet
with them, my lawyer waits in the reception area.
**********************
Like I'm walking on a stain that I won’t be able to get off of me.
*******************
The whole thing is evil, you can hear the building breathing you know what I mean. Like I'm walking on a stain that I won’t be able to get off of me.
I go in to see this faggy guy
and a dike nun. They knew my wife and
lawyer were nearby.
YOU WENT IN BY YOURSELF?
Yeah. They go, What seems to be the problem.
I go, you know why I'm here, and
they say, yeah we read the assessment.
What do you guys propose we do?
I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, I'm trying to maintain. I was so contained in the beginning.
I knew I was dealing with
minions, so that's the role I kept them in, like you're really nothing to me, I
need to get to the next level.
WHAT HAPPENED?
I said, where do you want to
start, with people who were killed at Madonna manor, raped, assaulted? I went down my list. They let me talk.
I mentioned Gauthe and you
could tell that name is a symbol of all that's wrong. He’d already been convicted in 1985 so this
was fifteen years later.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE MEETING?
We're going back and forth,
they say give us names and I say, I can give you some, dorm mothers. At that point I hadn’t even thought about it,
it just started coming out, the dorms. I
named the four before Hope Haven, I named the dorm mothers, gave them names of nuns. I must have given them thirty names.
BECAUSE THEY HAD SAID YOU
WEREN'T THERE?
They said, we don't have you in
our records living at Hope Haven or Madonna Manor at that time. After me naming names, they knew it was true,
I had been there.
They had a spin for everything
I said. Because they are so deep into
it, they're so f---ing criminal.
At the end of this meeting,
they say, if we could resolve this, what can we do for you.
I wanted 3 things:
Public apology from whoever was
in charge of New Orleans Archdiocese at the time.
I wanted to address the
community that had provided the charity and thank them, but ask them to hold
people accountable and identify any of these predator priests and nuns.
I asked them to send my kids to
college
And the guy laughed and said, you
mean like Notre Dame?
I got up. Shut the f--- up, I said, like I’d send my
kid to that f---ing cesspool. One of my
perps went there.
HE LAUGHED? DID THAT MAKE YOU
SNAP?
I said, Shut the f--- up. That f---ing cesspool, my son is too good a
human being.
HOW DID THE MEETING END?
I got up and walked out. Then I met with the lawyer who was in the
reception area. I’d been in there 2
hours, my wife was waiting in the van.
We went to the hotel.
I am blessed to have survived
this long. I wasn’t asking for
money.
WHAT DID THE ARCHDIOCESE SAY
AFTER THE MEETING?
They said, We'll get back to
you. We had three meetings, next two I
took the train down.
They offered me a settlement a
number of times. I said not without
those three things.
One time while we were down
there, they brought Hebert in the room.
I was stunned and said, okay, but I wasn’t prepared for it.
Hebert came in and wanted to
shake my hand I said, don't even f---ing look at me.
You mother f---ers, I don't
know what game you're playing I'm going outta here to do interviews with W-W-W
whatever.
TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR LIFE
RIGHT BEFORE YOU MADE THAT FIRST CALL TO THE ARCHDIOCESE.
My third wife dragged me to a
Linkup meeting, she sensed something was wrong, knew I’d been in the orphanage,
didn't know details or times.
She took me to a Linkup meeting
and it was a disaster, I was so angry at
the people that did this. First of all I
wasn’t ready to acknowledge what had happened, I was so far in denial,
thinking, here they go again.
At that time back in the 1990s
it hadn’t entered my mind that priest rape of a child happened to so many other
people. I knew about the orphanage but
then hearing about priests coming into people’s houses so confused me, was so
disorientating to me. Juxtaposed with me
not being able to go anywhere when I was at the orphanage, imagine finding out
the priest was banging your son or daughter upstairs while you were watching
late night TV.
And the shape people were
in. Everybody was crying, grown adults,
I don't cry, I'm angry and embarrassed.
So I don't think I said a word at that Linkup meeting. That's how I was in those days.
DID YOU THEN HAVE OTHER
INTERACTION WITH LINKUP?
I went to more than one
convention, every one until they stopped having them. Louisville, Chicago, before Linkup broke
up.
Then there was the incident
with the ashtray. So I went to website a
place for comments, told them, some really bad things happened at Madonna
Manor.
And I call and hear this sissy
singsong voice, he sounded like a total f---ing queen.
*******************
HOW DID YOU GET TO BE SO WELL
SPOKEN WITH YOUR EDUCATION?
Sometimes I’ll spend all night
in the library reading. All librarians
have food in their drawers.
TELL ME ABOUT THE STICKERS
I wanted to put them in every
institution owned by Catholics where they're interacting with children, a
sticker with a hotline, saying, “These guys rape kids.”
Linkup had some back in the day
that said, “If you were raped by a priest or nun, call this number,” or
something like that or, “My friend was raped by a priest, call this number.”
Mine said, “I was raped by a f---ing
priest” and “priests here raped children.”
I made them up myself.
The third trip down there I
went back to Madonna Manor. It was dark.
I drove up and B stayed in the car.
I must have put up forty of
those stickers using them to seal doors.
I put my own seal on their doors.
I wanted to put those stickers in every institution owned by Catholics
where they're interacting with children, a sticker with a hotline directly to
my cell phone.
"Like God Bless You, Mister
Rosewater," Ted says leaning forward, and I see a little young boy first discovering that revolutionary book.
**************
“How did you
happen to hear of us?”
“There's this big
black and yellow sticker in the phone booth.
Says Don’t Kill Yourself, Call the Rosewater Foundation.” Such stickers were in every phone booth in
the country, and in the back windows of the cars and trucks of most of the
volunteer firemen, too. “You know what
someone else has written right under that in pencil?”
“No.”
“Says, ‘Eliot
Rosewater is a saint. He’ll give you love and money. If you’d rather have the best piece of tail
in southern Indiana, call Melissa.’ And then it's got her number. What are you, some kind of religion?”
(God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
p. 102-103 by Kurt Vonnegut, 1965)
END
**************************
Next
in this series:
"The
Hebert Incident" (with R-Rated outtakes )
and
"Everywhere
Was Hell at Madonna Manor"
(which will make more use of the deposition below)
(which will make more use of the deposition below)
**************************
Background;
** FROM DEPOSITION
of Monsignor Hebert Aug 1, 2008, regarding his defamation suits against his accuser:
(LISTEN TO A LITTLE TOO LOOOONG answer in Hebert's deposition below. In future posts in the Ted series, we will use more of three depositions of Ray Hebert from Aug '08, transcripts of which just arrived in my email this morning. -ke 8.29)
of Monsignor Hebert Aug 1, 2008, regarding his defamation suits against his accuser:
(LISTEN TO A LITTLE TOO LOOOONG answer in Hebert's deposition below. In future posts in the Ted series, we will use more of three depositions of Ray Hebert from Aug '08, transcripts of which just arrived in my email this morning. -ke 8.29)
Did
you ever hear confessions at Madonna
4
Manor?
5
A. I can remember one occasion, only one
6
occasion that I heard confessions, and it
7
had to be -- because of the nature in which
8
it occurred, it had to be while the Salesian
9
priests were away from Hope Haven. They
10
hadn't given up Hope Haven, but they would
11
send them off on vacation at certain times
12
if the children were not there, and I was
13
asked by the superior at Madonna Manor
14
whether I could hear confessions, because
15
the boys had not been to confession in quite
16
a while. So maybe it was because the
17
individual confessor, who was undoubtedly a
18
Salesian, that -- but the evening I went --
19
and I went on an evening because that's when
20
I was free. That's when I was in the Hope
21
Haven area. I went to hear confessions in
22
the residence where the boys were living at,
23
and I heard it not in chapel and not in a
24
confessional, but I heard it in a large
25 room, and the children were being sent
by
the
sisters from their residential area.
2
After one went to confession, another would
3
be sent down.
4
I remember that simply because I
5
remember dealing with a boy who had been
6
stationed at Madonna Manor after I got
7
there, and who had then become unhappy
8
because he was immature dealing with the
9
other boys and had been dismissed from Hope
10
Haven. And then after a period of time his
11
family said we can't -- we can't keep him,
12
he's still giving us problems, and they
13
decided to send him back to Madonna Manor.
14
And I remember dealing with that kid on that
15
particular occasion. I remembered him
16
because he had been at Hope Haven. I
17
wouldn't have known him otherwise.
18
Q. So are you testifying that you --
19
A. I was never a regular confessor for the boys
20
at Madonna Manor.
21
Q. I understand. Prior to becoming director of
22
Hope Haven, how many times do you think you
23
assisted either the Salesians or the nuns at
24
Madonna Manor by hearing confessions at
25 Madonna Manor?
…
A.
I never did prior to that time.
10
MR. DEARIE:
11
His last answer was in his
12 lifetime he heard one confession only.
THE
WITNESS:
18
No, I never heard confession.
19
That was not my responsibility. The sisters
20
never asked me to do that, and they knew
21 that wasn't my responsibility.
Related Links:
http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com/2014/08/repressed-memory-research.html
http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com/2014/08/defamation.html
http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com/2014/07/parallel-hells.html
Posted by
Kay Ebeling
The City of Angels Is Everywhere
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http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com/2014/08/repressed-memory-research.html
http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com/2014/08/defamation.html
http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com/2014/07/parallel-hells.html
Posted by
Kay Ebeling
The City of Angels Is Everywhere
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