Ongoing coverage of the pedophile priest crisis in Catholic Church
A bishop told me in 1955 to stop babbling about a pedophile priest. Another bishop told me in 2011 to stop blogging about pedophile priests. Today, read about pedophile priest crimes at CofA 1-30.
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Producing City of Angels Blog since Jan. 2007, first as coverage of the pedophile priest crisis in the Catholic Church as one of the survivors, then 30 other topics at CofA 1-30
. Mainstream news again reports that a bishop will not be prosecuted due to the statute of limitations in one particular state. When will some reporter somewhere realize that in every archdiocese in the country the same pattern of cover-up, and aiding and abetting of pedophile priests took place, so the crimes of the bishops happened across state lines, on a national level. The crimes of the bishops are Federal Crimes. So instead of we as a nation just throwing up our hands and saying the statutes of limitations are past on state and county levels, why are there no FEDERAL INDICTMENTS of bishops all across the country, since they carried out their crimes in exactly the same manner in every archdiocese across the country? This was criminal conspiracy on a national level. No county DA is ready to take on the Catholic Church, but the Federal Justice Department could. (In response to this story in yesterday's L.A. Times: )
Over the last decade, there have been numerous calls to prosecute Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and his top aides for their mishandling of clergy ...
-Posted by Kay Ebeling
.
Jay Nelson of New Mexico sent me this comment Thur afternoon via email:
It's a lovely dream. If we could find a real Elliot Ness federal
prosecutor to go after this criminal enterprise, he or she would
have plenty of dots to connect.
Here are a few that just occurred to me:
Baloney Mahony took over LA in 1985 -- the same time frame as:
1) The Manual was put before the bishops, but they declined
saying they already had a policy in place. Nonetheless, it
informed them of how to dispose of files without suspicion.
(Thanks, Fr. Doyle! Good job!)
2) The Servants of the Paraclete are advised by the bishops to do
just that.
3) Mahony writes the Paracletes in 1987 advising them not to
return a predator who could face criminal charges.
Gee, sounds like a conspiracy to avoid justice to me!
Jay
************
.
FRIDAY 01 25 13 ANOTHER comment came in by email from Gerald Slevin: Hello Kay: Thanks for your call on your website for a Federal investigation of the US bishops' abuse cover-up. You may find of interest my related statement of today, "How Much Longer Can the Vatican Avoid Priest Sex Abuse?", accessible at http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-fj
Please consider posting my statement or a portion of it or link to it on your site. Thanks so much for this and for all you do. Best, Jerry **************
Note, to comment here, email Kay at cityofangelslady@yahoo.com thank you
. The files from the 2007 L.A. settlements Have Still Not Been Released.
It's bothering me that there is a media frenzy going on about the docs from a more recent lawsuit that were released on Monday. Then buried in each story will be a mention that the 2007 files will be released "in the coming weeks." PR people know that the public attention span for news is about a half hour these days, so with all this frenzy about these docs now, when the REAL SHITLOAD finally does get released, the media and the public will think it's just more of the same. To me, this is all still being orchestrated by the Church. With so many stories like the NY Times one linked here, when the 2007 settlement docs do finally get released, I fear there will be no attention paid to them.
It's just not happening. Every time I develop a story for this blog, it gets stymied one way or another. I'll put in hours and days of work on posts, then when I'm about to put them up here, I get a phone call or an email saying, "Don't publish my story."
So last summer I decided to take all those interviews and fashion them into a fiction piece, but I could not do that either, because it felt too much like I was exploiting people.
I don't know why this phenomenon keeps happening. The paranoid part of my brain is certain someone behind the scenes is sabotaging this blog, finding out who I'm talking to and telling them not to talk to me, as the same pattern keeps being repeated.
No matter. Whether it's just human nature or it really is an effort by the Church, using agents disguised as advocates, the end result is nothing can get published here anymore.
Anyone can email me at cityofangelslady@yahoo.com to communicate with me, but for now I'm looking for a new project to arouse my passion.
As far as I can see, the Catholic Church won their battle to keep the pedophile priest crimes as secret as possible.
One pedophile priest survivor in Toowoomba, Queensland, gives City of Angels Blog his take on the Royal Inquiry.
"When the suicides were disclosed was the prompt for the Victorian Inquiry. At about the same time in New South Wales a policeman who’d been investigating this stuff about 30 years, got up and said, No! The police don't have it under control."
Reverberations
went around the world when the Prime Minister* announced on November 12 a Royal Inquiry into sex abuse of children in institutions and
churches nationwide across Australia. The
Royal Inquiry was sparked after thousands of pedophile priest survivors sent submissions
to The Victorian Inquiry which began last spring at the same time a police investigation in another state, New South Wales, was producing similar alarming results.
John Brown from Facebook
All last week, blogs and news storiesacknowledged that the Royal Inquiry is a result of two decades of activism on the part of victims and their families in states all over Australia as well as around the world. City of Angels Blog talked with John Brown, one of the Australian survivors who have been lobbying for pedophile priest victim justice for twenty years. We've also run excerpts from his submission to the Victoria Inquiry, of which we have run excerpts We asked Brown in a recent phone conversation for a local viewpoint on the Royal Inquiry as
it begins in Australia:
“The reason Victoria looked into it was more than 40 suicides in
two dioceses, the number since 2011 is now at 50 suicides, all of them male and
all related to sexual abuse by a small set of pedophile priests all friends of [Cardinal]
George Pell in the Ballarat Diocese in Victoria.
“A Royal Commission is the most extensive investigation that we
can have in Australia. It has a great
deal of power, to command witnesses come in and seize documents “
The Royal Inquiry may uncover long hidden crimes of pedophile priests and the bishops who protected them all over Australia.
MORE FROM MY TALK WITH JOHN BROWN: JB: When the suicides were disclosed, that was
the prompt for the Victorian Inquiry. At
about the same time in New South Wales in Newcastle south of Sydney, a
policeman, Peter Fox, who’d been investigating this stuff about 30 years, got
up and said, the police don't have it under control.
Calls for royal commission into institutional abuse have been
going on here for some time.
The press picks up something, it lasts a day or two, then there’s
nothing. The press couldn't even keep it
rolling, very piecemeal in that, news is very regulated and controlled
here.
Until the pressure becomes too great and they have to report the
story.
It could have gone on another ten years like it was going on,
politicians didn't want to know about it, people were lobbying everywhere about
it and politicians were being silent, and police were being silent.
Then a policeman in Victoria disclosed the suicides.
************************ (John relays a part of his own story that is also mentioned in his
submission below.)
I started Catholic school weeks after my fourth birthday.
The abuse started day one,
I found myself in a room facing a nun who I know has
done stuff to me.
It continued until age eight
Four years
Sexual things
(Some of John’s story is difficult to listen to. That's been my experience in producing City
of Angels Blog since 2007. A lot of the
stories I've heard are so horrible and so extreme, but the extent of the crimes
committed against children isn't realized unless some of the survivors can
publish their stories and make the evil known.
John recollected more in a recent conversation: )
In John Brown's own words, continued:
The woodshed at the convent was horrible, also being tied up and
being a part of sex games between a priest and a nun. I was made to observe a lot
Physical sexual abuse took place in the convent almost exclusively
but also in the presbytery I was made an observer. I was put in a chair to observe. The same people, but they never engaged me
while in the presbytery or at least I have no memory of that. It all happened between age four and
eight.
(Okay, I have to ask my readers now to stop. Before you say, oh balderash, it couldn't
have been that bad, I have to say, yes it could have. I've talked to enough different clergy sex
crime victims from different cities and different countries to know it did often
get this bad. As outrageous as what John
Brown is saying in those words above, that's how bad it did get for thousands
of children in Catholic school and orphanage care. )
Kevin O'Donnell ties into John Brown's story as well
Me: I noticed that Rev. Kevin
O’Donnell, who perpetrated on numerous children in Catholic schools in Australia,
was named in your submission.
JB: He was the priest who
abused me when I was eight. At eight he
raped me a number of times in one day, it was violent
He was a visiting priest and I had to go with him because he
needed an altar boy and someone to show him the way. Even though I’d never been to the place he
was going in my life, I had to go with him.
He wanted to leave early. He
needed time to stop along the way and rape me.
When your family has this belief, they don't question these
people.
I pleaded with my mother. I
didn't want to go, I knew what this bloke was about.
I was eight years old now and starting to realize I was being used
differently from other kids.
[On another occasion] my older brother tried to burn the church
down and the school, apparently he had several goes at it. I turned angry quite young and early and I
kicked and bit and threw stones through the church windows. I rebelled so my dad beat me, bang I'm
off. Then at school they’d be saying all
the good works they're doing, but they’d shut up about what they were doing to
me.
***********
I asked John Brown, tell me about your dad.
John Brown said “He was religious. He believed that stuff and once
you believe that stuff, you're subject to all the blackmail that comes along
with it. You have to accept that as
being part of the Catholic way, blackmail becomes communication.
(Here are excerpts from John Brown's Submission to the Victoria Inquiry, which has now morphed into the Royal Inquiry into sex abuse at institutions all over the nation of Australia.)
Inquiry into the Handling of
Child Abuse by Religious and Other
Organisations
Submission
– John
Anthony Brown, Toowoomba
I am a survivor of sexual abuse
by multiple nuns from before 4 years of age through to 8
years of
age and of violent rape by pedophile priest Kevin O'Donnell at age 8.
The problem of being referred to
by the Queensland Government inquiry to TASC
(Toowoomba Advocacy Service) when
I know that my previous dealings with them, my
counselling, government job
services have all been tainted with the problem of having full
knowledge that Toombs as an ex
Jesuit has sworn an oath to a foreign country and to his
religious order and to his
religion that authorises him to act first and foremost in the interests
of the
church and that he can be authorised to use mental reservation,
This is the cover up in action
and it functions fully and completely within government and
community
services
The
following information is questions answered from page 4 from the Submissions
Guide.
BROWN: I pulled out questions and rewrote some used their questionaire as
template.
Reporting
the abuse:
1. Could you tell anyone about
what happened?
I did tell my mother at the time
the abuse occurred and I have been able to tell people about
the incidents that occurred to me
and have done so since they first occurred.
2. Did you feel discouraged from
reporting the abuse?
Yes, I was excluded from local
sporting groups and received physical beatings in front of
Nun’s, by Nun’s and local
parishioners. Beatings were also given by older kids that I went to
school
with when I didn’t keep my mouth shut about my abuse.
5. Did you tell the religious body
or other organisation about the abuse?
Yes, I was very vocal about the
abuse to anyone that did or didn’t want to listen but there was
no
support from anyone in the local parish.
6. If you delayed in telling or
reporting what prevented you from disclosing earlier?
There was a delay in reporting up
until I was 8 years of age as my mother didn’t know how to
go about it. Mum was scared of
what would happen to us and she had no support from
anyone. Looking back at what
things were like, I totally understand the way my mother
handled
it.
Response to the disclosure;
7. What was the initial
response?
There was no positive initial
response to the disclosure from the Catholic Church or
Parish/local community.
One incident after the initial
disclosure was a beating that was ordered by the local priest by
my dad. My dad was ordered to
whip me with a stock whip, as I was ‘the spawn of Satan’
which he
did.
8. If there was an investigation of
the abuse, how was it conducted?
There was no initial civil
investigation as the policeman at the time was not Catholic and
could not be trusted according to
Catholic neighbours, nuns and clergy. The Church
supposedly removed the priest
Kevin O’Donnell from service at the time but my mother was
informed
that he was working in another area.
HERE ARE MORE Quotes from John Brown submission to the Victoria Inquiry:
Attempting to
disclose led to being branded as a sinner that would spend eternity in hell;
the
spawn of the devil,
the child of Hitler. I was deemed accident prone by clergy as this allowed
them to account for
any physical signs of injury and gave them the ability to blackmail by
saying that they
would beat me and no-one would believe me as I was accident prone.
I was belittled and
humiliated publicly from the pulpit before the entire Catholic congregation
((((((((((((((
Notes were often delivered to my home from nuns
by older family members or other classmates instructing my father to beat me
for made up misbehaviour ***************
I was forced to carry bread, groceries, alcohol and other wants such as
filling wood boxes, empty bins, sweeping up, lighting and stoking fires
and acting as an altar
boy by nuns and priests as a daily punishment for my evil behaviour.
**************
Disclosure of these crimes has simply overwhelmed
their ability to maintain this form of
hypocrisy in the public forum.
***************************** lifelong commitment forced onto those others in
the classroom and community to continue the cover up of these abuses ************************** ************* ELSEWHERE ON THE INTERNET
Something Related
The
Church is frustrating police attempts TODAY to prosecute pedophiles
From Australia video below: “You
could have an allegation against a priest today, and they would investigate and
not tell you?
November
13, 2012 –Paedophilepriests run for cover as Royal
Commission announced...Then they discovered that her
spiritual protector,Kevin O'Donnell,
had...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hMgY8z96dEJun
30, 2010 - 3 min - Uploaded
by JesusSavesAtCitibank PM Julia Gillard Speaks to Jon Faine (ABC Melbourne) "Australian
Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she has ...
Posted by Kay Ebeling
Producer of City of Angels Blog
Which is operating in different platforms these days. Click on
"And there is pride. Pride that in this highly flawed country, in this far from perfect world, Australian politicians took the high moral ground to address and eradicate real evil in our midst".
And about the cop leading an investigation in New South Wales that also sparked the Royal Inquiry:
“PETER FOX, NSW POLICE (Sept. 2012): I've been on the police force for 34 years. I'm not a kid that just joined yesterday. I've been involved in investigating the clergy for about 20 of those. There are very good reasons, let me tell you, that we need a Royal Commission.” Continue Reading:
,. Watch here full length feature film WINNER: BEST INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY - 2006 LOS ANGELES INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL. WINNER: BEST DIRECTOR for an INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY - 2006 NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL .
We wrote about Fr. Jerold Lindner, who was the subject of William Lynch's trial in Northern California last summer, at City of Angels Blog before, in October 2009:
. (David Pierre takes issue with me calling him a pedophile priest defender in yesterday's post. I sent him this answer: )
Be grateful, David. You should see what I deleted.
David, you perpetuate misinformation and grab any thread you can find to make these priests look innocent.
You publish Donald Steier's rambling legal motions as fact.
You claim victims are making up their stories because they can't remember specific details.
You side with biased judges instead of looking at the real story, such as with Poandl in West Virginia.
You find the one percent of questionable cases and amplify them as representing all the cases.
Really questionable, David, and yes you end up defending the pedophile priests, even if it is inadvertent. Plus you provide sound bites and a forum for prejudiced haters.
My question to you is who is paying you, David? If you are not being paid, what else would motivate a person to produce the information you produce?
It
was his Catholic conscience that caused Sargent Shriver* to create the Peace
Corps, Job Corps, and Head Start in the 1960s.
In 2011 it was his Catholic conscience that moved Paul Ryan** to oppose
Social Security and claim a passion for Ayn Rand’s Objectivist theories. Republican Newt Gingrich converted to
Catholicism so he could marry his third wife and run for president as someone
who is prayerful.
When
it comes to pedophile priests, on the right the Catholic League defends the “high
number of falsely accused priests,” along with David Pierre whose website and
books criticize SNAP for its “left wing” politics, as if it's a given that
left-wing means something bad.
What
happened to the socially conscious Catholics, the politically compassionate such as the Kennedys? This century Catholics are part
of the most extreme elements of the Republican Party in the USA, and somehow
siding with the priests in the pedophile crisis got tagged onto this right wing Catholic
phenomenon.
A Self-Perpetuated Authority
The pedophile priest apologists end up running each other’s talking points on each other’s websites. They self-publish books, and review each other's self-published books, and give the appearance that Catholics are Republicans who think pedophile priests have gotten a bad rap. A kind of legitimacy results from the redundancy.
Last summer during the Philadelphia priest abuse trial, NPR interviewed pedophile priest defender Pierre.
***************
The reporter who interviewed him, NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty, is part of this new Catholic right wing herself. So much for Left Wing Bias in the news, especially at NPR:
More troubling still is [Hagerty’s] association with Howard Ahmanson's Fieldstead and Co. and Fieldstead Foundation. Ahmanson is a California millionaire who uses his trust fund to finance right-wing Christian, anti-gay, anti-evolution groups and politicians. He was previously associated withChristian Reconstructionism, which advocates a Biblically-based governement for the U.S. (Neither Ahmanson nor his philanthropic endeavors have their own websites. Make of that what you will.) Hagerty has spoken twice at the Summer Institute of Journalism, a program run by theCouncil for Christian Colleges and Universityandfundedby the Fieldstead Foundation. Student reactions to her talks arehere. Hagerty has spoken twice at the Summer Institute of Journalism, a program run by theCouncil for Christian Colleges and Universityandfundedby the Fieldstead Foundation. Student reactions to her talks arehere. Hagerty's keynote address to the2003 National Student Media Conventionwas also sponsored by Fieldstead and Co. In 2003 she also spoke at theBaptist Press Student Journalism Conference, along with Terry Mattingly, a Scripps-Howard reporter who is also a Fieldstead grant recipient.( perhttp://betterangels.blogspot.com/2004/05/ballad-of-barbara-bradley-hagerty.html )
*****************
Some in the new right in the U.S. show a religious reverence in their political ideals. Republican candidate for President Mitt Romney and his running mate Ryan’s belief in the individual above the village seems to be as significant to them as accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.
************************************
New Right Catholics Entering a Vacuum
A
lot of level headed persons are leaving the Catholic Church in the shadow of
its cover up of a pedophile priest crime spree in the U.S. Still actual membership numbers are for the
most part staying stable in the Catholic Church nationwide and in some
geographic areas, such as Los Angeles, parish membership numbers are even
rising.
Who
are these wandering souls entering the vacuum of the emptying Catholic Church? Who wants to come in while so many others are
leaving? And why are so many of the defenders
of pedophile priests also part of the extreme ring wing of politics?
As
one of the pedophile priest victims, I see these new right wing Catholics as slick opportunists. A guy like Gingrich can write checks to a
parish and soon be leading his own version of Bible study.
What
really scares me about this embrace of the Catholic Church by the right is to
me, with my moderate knowledge of history, the movement resembles Germany in
the post World War II era when Hitler was rising to power.Like this from Wikipedia:
Raised by askepticCatholicfather and a devout Catholic mother,Adolf Hitlerceased to participate in the sacramentsafter childhood. In his bookMein Kampfand in public speeches he often made
statements that affirmed a belief in Christianity.[1][2]Prior
toWorld War IIHitler had promoted "positive
Christianity", a
movement which purged Christianity of its Jewishelements and instilled it with Nazi
philosophy.[3]
Today’s
new right Catholics seem determined to rid the Church of liberal and
progressive thinkers, which apparently includes anyone who defends the victims
of pedophile priests instead of the priests.The new right wing Catholics seem to refer to progressives and pedophile
priest victims with the same disdain the Nazis had for Jews.
* ABOUT SARGENT SHRIVER:
A devout Catholic, Sargent Shriver attended dailyMassand always carried arosaryof well-worn wooden beads.[11]During [John F ]Kennedy's presidential term, Shriver founded
and served as the first director of thePeace Corps.[4]Shriver then served as Special Assistant to
PresidentLyndon Johnson where he created the Office of
Economic Opportunity.Shriver is known
as the "architect" of the Johnson administration's "War on Poverty".[4]Shriver founded numerous social programs and organizations,
includingHead Start,[14]VISTA,Job Corps, Community Action,Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, Legal
Services, the National Clearinghouse for Legal Services (now the Shriver
Center), Indian and Migrant Opportunities and Neighborhood Health Services, in
addition to directing thePeace Corps. He was active inSpecial Olympics, founded by his wife Eunice. (Per Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargent_Shriver )
** RE PAUL RYAN:
Catholicism grounds his thinking about politics and the basic
relationship between the individual and the state. He has invoked a principle
called "subsidiarity" in justifying his view that people are more apt
to flourish under government that is limited in its size and reach. ( Per
Wall Street Journal August 17 2012 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444233104577595400789196454.html )
***
Plus it figures The Vatican’s new PR guy is a former
Fox News correspondent. The extreme
right neo-fascists are certainly finding a welcome home inside the emptying
Catholic Church, kinda scary actually.
Greg Burke, a native St. Louisan who had been
working for Fox News, will become the senior communications adviser at the
Vatican, officials said Saturday.
As
a pedophile priest victim, part of my own personal PTSD was a misdirected
passion for politics that was almost sexual in nature, much like today’s
neo-right-wing religious devotees in the U.S. seem to be experiencing.
In
late 1970s Texas, at the height of my acting out as a pedophile priest crime
victim, a lot of Texans broke from the Democrats to become Libertarians and
Republicans. I somehow became part of
that movement and there was sexual excitement mixed in with my foray into right
wing politics.
It
was revolutionary, it broke new ground, it was part of my compulsion, it was
breakthrough it was, it was-
For
example, I embraced Ayn Rand and her philosophy too. I voted for Ron Paul when he first ran for
Congress in Houston. I know there was a similarity
in my short-lived romance with the right wing, to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead
where Howard Roark blows up his construction project rather than allow any
left-leaning sympathies in its design.
The
confused mess in my brain was connected to the mish mash placed in there in
1953 by Father Horny, when he diddled me between the legs when I was five years
old. That sexual excitement entered and
confused everything I did in my life. So
my safari into right wing politics in the late 1970s had an element of sick
sexual perplexity attached to it.
I
just wonder what sick demented thing happened to right wingers like Paul Ryan
and Newt Gingrich that made them so passionate about their political theories
as they connect to their Catholic religion.
ONE
MORE DELETED PARAGRAPH:
As
a damaged former Catholic, watching in the last twenty years the legal
maneuverings of attorneys for the church in courts, and their manipulation of
the news media, I don't see how anyone can consider Catholicism a legitimate
religion anymore.
-Posted By Kay Ebeling, producer, City of Angels Network
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