Parallel Hells, Ted 1

Raped by Multiple Clergy in Catholic Boys Home 
(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: )

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

If Ted's perpetrator was not Ray Hebert, it must have been some other short skinny Acadian priest who spent time at Hope Haven / Madonna Manor in the 1960s.

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.)

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
***********************

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) 

**************************

Background;

Times Picayune 08.25.05  

Times Picayune 03.14.06  

Times Picayune 06.28.06  

Times Picayune 03.18.10  

WWL 03.19.10 

** 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) 

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/2014/08/monsignor-who-takes-pedophile-priest.html 

http://cityofangels5.blogspot.com/2009/10/gauthe-forced-gun-in-my-mouth-and-said.html 

http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com/2014/07/parallel-hells.html

Posted by
Kay Ebeling
The City of Angels Is Everywhere
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