Category: Priests In Trouble

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San Diego priest charged with sexual assault of Minnesota woman during private mass

A Catholic priest from San Diego has been charged with criminal sexual conduct for an incident during a private mass for the victim in her parents’ Mendota Heights, Minnesota home back in 2010. Jacob Bertrand, 33, was charged by summons with two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct by clergy.

According to the charges, a 30-year-old woman contacted Mendota Heights police on April 28, 2016 to report sexual contact between her and Bertrand. The victim told police she met Bertrand in 2009 while studying spirituality at a university in Rome, Italy. Bertrand was also a student and a deacon at a Catholic church at that time. The victim asked Bertrand to be her spiritual guide, and the two began to meet every Wednesday for “holy conversation.”002

A ‘mystical’ proposal’

In the fall of 2009, Bertrand told the victim “the Holy Spirit was compelling him to tell her about his sexual past.” Bertrand gave the victim two of his personal journals, and she provided him with her own journals, in which she wrote about wanting to find a husband in Rome. After reading her journals, Bertrand told the victim that he was the man she was sent to Rome to meet. While at a church, he held her hand and “mystically proposed” to her.

In June of 2010, the victim and Bertrand flew to San Diego, where he was ordained as a Catholic priest. During their time in San Diego, they kissed on multiple occasions.

Minnesota visit

In July of 2010, Bertrand flew to Minnesota to spend time with the victim’s family in Mendota Heights. During the stay, he performed mass for the family, offered the sacrifice of the mass and heard their confessions.

During this trip, Bertrand and the victim went a family cabin in Wisconsin, where they had sex. But the criminal charges concern a private mass in the basement of the Mendota Heights home. According to the charges, Bertrand and the victim had sexual contact during the performance of the mass, and after this ceremony he told the victim they had “fulfilled the second holiest sacrifice next to Jesus and Mary on Calvary.”

Later that summer, Bertrand sent the victim a $1,000 check, telling her that God told him to give her the money for her studies. In December of 2011, he spoke to her by phone and said, “the devil tempts me to think that you will tell someone and ruin my ministry.”

Reports to Catholic Church

In 2012 and 2014, the victim reported the sexual contact with Bertrand to the Catholic Church. In 2014, the victim’s report was sent to officials in the San Diego Diocese for investigation. In a bulletin to his parishioners, Bertrand said he had undergone a psychological evaluation and was taking a leave of absence. He was later reassigned to a new church in the San Diego Diocese a few months later, and is currently serving as a priest at that church.

Apology

The victim provided Dakota County investigators with a letter of apology for Bertrand. He also said he had destroyed the journals they shared and prayed for their “release from any demonic attachments that were leading me into such a folly and were keeping me from protecting you as a true priest should have.”

Bertrand is scheduled to appear in court in Minnesota on Monday, Oct. 10.

The law

According to Minnesota law, consent is not a defense if: “The actor is or purports to be a member of the clergy, the complainant is not married to the actor AND the sexual penetration occurred during the course of a meeting in which the complainant sought or received religious or spiritual advice, aid, or comfort from the actor in private; OR the sexual penetration occurred during a period of time in which the complainant was meeting on an ongoing basis with the actor to seek or receive religious or spiritual advice, aid, or comfort in private.”

Diocese of San Diego statement

“Fr. Jacob Bertrand, a priest of the Diocese of San Diego, is facing charges in Minnesota stemming from a sexual encounter with an adult woman there in 2010. The facts behind the encounter are a matter of dispute and will be resolved by the courts and civil authorities. Fr. Jacob asked for and received a Leave of Absence when he learned of the possibility of these charges several weeks ago. There have been no allegations lodged against Fr. Jacob here in San Diego, where he remains on a leave of absence and currently has no faculties. The diocese is not involved in his legal defense. Out of respect for all parties and for the legal process, the diocese will make no further statement at this time.”

Bertrand’s attorney

In a phone interview, Christa Groshek, his co-counsel, said, “These are false allegations, they’re suspect. The woman behind them has a motive. our investigation has revealed the truth behind it. Father Bertrand is a young, reputable priest. He’s worked in large parishes in Southern California.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Wounds of sexual abuse run deep, psychologist says

By Kathleen E. Carey

child sex abuse

Many psychologists contend there are long-term impacts of childhood sexual abuse. Some individuals are able to overcome them. Some do not.

Dr. Richard B. Gartner is a New York psychotherapist and psychoanalyst who specializes in treating men who are childhood sexual abuse survivors. He is the author of several books, including “Beyond Betrayal: Taking Charge of Your Life After Boyhood Sexual Abuse.”

He has testified in New York and in New Jersey about the need to change the statutes of limitations in sex abuse cases. He’s written about the prolonged effects the crime has on men, although he explained the variety of outcomes is as wide as the number of individuals impacted.

Childhood sexual abuse is a worldwide problem that garnered much focus here in the United States in 2002 when the Archdiocese of Boston faced national exposure for the abuse and concealment there. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia came under scrutiny as the result of two grand jury reports, one in 2005 and another in 2011, that linked more than 60 priests with abusing dozens of minors over decades. Since then, legislative efforts have emerged to deal with the crisis.

Lawmakers in Harrisburg are currently debating HB1947, which could extend the statute of limitations for victims to sue their assailants and eliminates the statute of limitations for criminal charges. Whether those changes should be retroactive, or just apply to new cases, is a key element in the debate.

Gartner said the impact of sexual abuse is profound on its victims.

“I think the most important thing to remember is the real trauma of sexual abuse is the betrayal,” Gartner said. “It’s easy to think about the violence, the physical pain, the premature and terrible way of introducing sexuality into a child’s life. Often, the abuse is done by someone the child knows. The child is betrayed by someone he has trusted implicitly.”

That betrayal can lead to relationship challenges later in life.

Since the adult trusted their abuser as a child “that often results in him or her distrusting relationships in the future, especially with authorities and with loved ones,” Gartner said.

He explained that difficulties with intimate partners can arise.

“They always see sexual situations as a power situation rather than a partnership,” Gartner said.

Masculine socialization and its myths – such as men are not victims – can prohibit the revelation of abuse until well into the adult years, the psychologist explained.

“To acknowledge victimization is to say, ‘I’m not really a man,’” Gartner said as a way of explaining what is often the perception.

He said male victims will justify the abuse to themselves with such explanations as, “I was the one who changed; or, it didn’t bother me; or, I’m just moving on; or, Nothing happened.”

The psychologist said the victim’s logic may seem unreasonable to an outsider.

“How he was 6 at the time but he should have stopped it, he was the seducer,” Gartner said.

Yet, internally, these reasonings maintain a characteristic that these men think is integral to their identity.

Complete amnesia, he has found, is relatively rare, although he said many men need to reframe from what actually occurred to them.

“If I was in charge of something,” he said they tell themselves, “it wasn’t abuse and it wasn’t traumatic and sexually, I’m in charge.”

He said one out of six men report having had unwanted direct sexual contact by the time they are 16 years old. That increases to one in four men if non-contact behavior such as someone exposing him or herself is included.

Gartner said men can put their emotions into a frozen state or rely on addictions to cope.

When faced with their abuse, victims are conflicted about sexuality.

“(Victims are) familiar with the idea that boys don’t want to reveal themselves as victims,” Gartner said. “(Abusers will) say, ‘You’re gay if you say anything.’”

Complicating the matter is that straight men wonder why they were chosen as victims and gay men can be rushed into that identification or decide that the abuse is what caused it, resulting in difficulties in developing positive self-identification.

“Abusers,” he added, “do often know the laws.”

Due to the myth that those abused as boys will inevitably grow up to abuse, many who have no thought of becoming a sexual predator worry they will, Gartner explained.

More than 80 percent of sexually abused boys never become adult perpetrators, although 80 percent of perpetrators were abused as children, he said.

Gartner provided a list of some common symptoms in adults sexually abused as children such as guilt, anxiety, depression, interpersonal isolation, shame, low self-esteem, self-destructive behavior, post-traumatic stress reactions, poor body imagery, sleep disturbance, nightmares, eating disorders, relational and or dysfunction and addictions like alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling and sexual obsession.

Trust issues are multiplied if the victim reports the abuse and that is dismissed.

“It compounds it terribly,” Gartner said. “The faith and trust of this person is further damaged.”

In addition, he said women can be predators, too, although they are often given lighter sentences based on attractiveness.

He said a 1990s evaluation of a non-clinical group estimated that 61 percent of those abused were victims of men, 29 percent by women and 11 percent by both.

A large societal perception, Gartner said, is if a boy is abused by an adult woman he is lucky.

Yet, the child is confounded, left asking himself, “Why am I so anxious about this?”

One treatment he has found to be particularly effective for sexually abused men is male-only support groups.

“They still believe that they were the only one this happened to,” Gartner said. “(Then,) they see other men functioning in life and dealing with this. It’s validating.”

When asked if survivors can heal, the psychologist unequivocally answered, “Yes.”

However, he explained that different people have different definitions of healing and individuals have varying methods of doing so.

“Some,” he said, “wind up in prison and have a whole different journey…”

However, Gartner added, “Certainly in my practice, I’ve known many men with time who’ve really gotten strengthened by taking a look at how they handled what they had handled.”

And, as a group, they may have more compassion.

“Research shows that men who have been abused are more empathic than ones who are not,” Gartner said.

House Bill 1947 – Report of the Philadelphia Grand Jury – 2005 by Vince Carey on Scribd

Complete Article HERE!

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Court files reveal new details behind St. Paul Archdiocese troubles

Documents give more insight into investigation of former Archbishop John Nienstedt and ex-priest Curtis Wehmeyer.

By

Nienstedt02

Former Minneapolis-St. Paul Archbishop John Nienstedt, shown in 2015, drew concern over his interactions with seminarians during his time in St. Paul, according to recently released documents.

The Ramsey County attorney’s office released the final mountain of documents from its criminal investigation into the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis this week, providing new details of allegations of sexual advances by former Archbishop John Nienstedt and of the church’s mishandling of convicted sex offender Curtis Wehmeyer.

Nienstedt’s interactions with seminarians drew concern from young men and clergy leaders more recently than had been revealed before, including during his seven-year tenure in St. Paul ending in 2015, according to files. That’s in addition to the previously reported allegations of sexual improprieties with adult men made by former colleagues in the Detroit area dating to the 1970s.

Documents show that former Archbishop Harry Flynn — like Nienstedt — gave special attention to Wehmeyer, a former priest, including overriding a 1996 recommendation by the archdiocese’s vocation office that Wehmeyer not be admitted into seminary.

By 2013, and after multiple episodes of sexual misconduct, Wehmeyer was convicted of sexually abusing two boys in Wehmeyer’s camper when it was parked outside his St. Paul church. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Documents also indicate that Wehmeyer used that camper to visit the lake home of Joseph Kueppers, the archdiocese’s chancellor for civil affairs, where Wehmeyer would spend some weekends from about 2007 to 2012. According to a deacon with a lake home nearby, Wehmeyer sometimes performed Sunday masses at the lake home. Kueppers, a former parishioner of Wehmeyer, was noted for “not disclosing information” by attorneys investigating Nienstedt.

Curtis Wehmeyer, a former priest in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, pleaded guilty in 2012 to molesting two children.
Curtis Wehmeyer, a former priest in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, pleaded guilty in 2012 to molesting two children.

Nienstedt, who had a social relationship with Wehmeyer, has denied any sexual relationship with him. In files from the St. Paul police investigation also made available this week, Wehmeyer says the same, that he had no sexual relationship with the archbishop. He blames much of his troubles on his drinking.

The wide-ranging documents — edited for confidentiality — represent the final pieces of the investigation completed by Ramsey County Attorney John Choi this year. Choi had filed a criminal lawsuit against the archdiocese, charging it with failure to protect children in the Wehmeyer case. The charges were dropped in July in an agreement requiring the archdiocese to publicly admit its guilt and follow new procedures in dealing with abuse.<

The nearly 1,000 pages of documents were released in response to a freedom of information request filed by the Star Tribune.

The county looked into whether Nienstedt or the archdiocese gave preferential treatment to Wehmeyer over the years. The question arose because Wehmeyer had so many red flags — including soliciting sex in a bookstore, using boys’ bathroom in a parish school, apparent cruising for sex in a park and angry outbursts.

A team from Kinsale Management Consulting that was asked to review the personnel files leading up to Wehmeyer’s sex abuse charges concluded, “If he hasn’t offended already, he’s going to,” according to a St. Paul police investigator.

The files include archdiocese correspondence, interviews with archdiocese officials involved in clergy misconduct issues, statements filed in the Nienstedt investigation, and interviews by county attorney investigators. They follow a batch of court files released by Choi in July.

The documents indicate new allegations against Nienstedt. A former seminarian at St. Paul Seminary told investigators that before a group photo with Nienstedt at a 2010 event at the new Twins stadium, Nienstedt put his arm around him and “caressed my neck and back in a manner that was very uncomfortable to me.”

A former St. Paul priest reported he left the priesthood about 10 years ago because of a friendship with Nienstedt that became uncomfortable, and that the former archbishop seems to have derailed his attempt to become a priest again in another diocese.

Likewise, a seminarian from Nienstedt’s days in Michigan, who claimed he also rebuffed a Nienstedt advance, said he believes the former archbishop tried to undermine his career because he didn’t want to work in the same place as Nienstedt.

“There are troubling patterns suggested by the evidence thus far: alleged unwelcome advances, inappropriate interaction with seminarians, and reprisals among those that don’t reciprocate those advances,” wrote an archdiocese official in a 2015 memo to archdiocese leadership.

He notes that some archdiocese staff have noted “odd letters written to seminarians … in which warm and affectionate language is used.”

Nienstedt has repeatedly stated he has not engaged in sexual misconduct, and blamed some of the reports on the tough stance he has taken on gay marriage.

“I am a heterosexual man who has been celibate my entire life,” Nienstedt wrote in July. “I have never solicited sex, improperly touched anyone and have not used my authority to cover up, or even try to cover up, any allegation of sexual abuse.”

Rev. Kevin McDonough, the archdiocese’s longtime point person on clergy abuse, is discussed in some files. A consultant working at St. Peter Claver Church in St. Paul, which McDonough also served, recalled the priest there saying, “I have to get someone out of town quickly.”

This was after a priest had been accused of sexually abusing the daughter of a woman with whom the priest had been having an affair, said the consultant. Boxes of the priest’s belongings were stored at St. Peter Claver, the consultant said

Another St. Peter Claver consultant said that McDonough did not use his own computer for much or most of his work, but rather used his assistant’s. And McDonough refused to let the consultant recycle and reuse church computers.

In a 2013 letter to members of St. Peter and Incarnation Church, which he also oversaw, McDonough attacked abuse victims’ request for the archdiocese to make public the list of priests accused of sexually abusing minors. “This is a content-less issue,” he wrote, as many of the people on the list haven’t been criminally charged but didn’t have a chance to defend themselves. “Nothing in this issue, I believe, has any direct personal relation to me.”

Subsequent document releases indicated McDonough’s involvement in various cases.

The St. Paul police files include an interview with Wehmeyer speaking from prison to police investigators. The former priest attributed his egregious behavior to excessive drinking and to coping with his own personal issues, adding “I’ve got a lot to deal with.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Is the Rise of “Nones” Actually the Decline of Catholics?

By

catholicshirt

The Public Religion Research Institute is out with another fascinating report on one of the most significant religious trends of our time: the dramatic rise in disaffiliation, or, as some call them, the “nones.”

PPRI found that a fully a quarter of all Americans, and a whopping 39% of young adults, now say they have no religious affiliation, making the unaffiliated the largest “religious” group in a country long known for its high levels of religiosity.

And while the rise of the “nones” will continue to make headlines and shape culture for a long time to come, there is another largely unnoticed trend lurking in the numbers: just how much the growth in the nones has been fueled by the disaffiliation of Roman Catholics. According to PPRI:

While non-white Protestants and non-Christian religious groups have remained fairly stable, white Protestants and Catholics have all experienced declines, with Catholics suffering the largest decline among major religious groups: a 10-percentage point loss overall. Nearly one-third (31%) of Americans report being raised in a Catholic household, but only about one in five (21%) Americans identify as Catholic currently.

The Catholic rate of disaffiliation dwarfs the rate for any other faith tradition; the next biggest “loser” in terms of disaffiliation are the mainline Protestant denominations, which saw a 4.5-point loss, while white evangelical denominations saw a net drop of only 2.2 points, largely because they have both a lower rate of disaffiliation and a fairly robust rate of new adherents.

Meanwhile, the faith of no faith saw a nearly 16 percentage point increase. According to PPRI’s Director of Research, Daniel Cox, 36% of all those who left their childhood religion were Catholic. This means that Catholics are punching above their weight in adding to the growth of the nones in terms of their overall representation in the population.

And while 21% of the total population currently identifies as Catholic, only 15% of young adults ages 18–29 say they are Catholic, which is not a particularly encouraging trend line for the Catholic Church.

Overall, the majority of people (60%) say the reason they left their church of origin was because they stopped believing in its teachings. However:

…those who were raised Catholic are more likely than those raised in any other religion to cite negative religious treatment of gay and lesbian people (39% vs. 29%, respectively) and the clergy sexual-abuse scandal (32% vs. 19%, respectively) as primary reasons they left the Church.

Cox also notes mixed-faith households seem to be an especially important factor behind the high rates of Catholic disaffiliation. “Catholics who are raised in mix-faith households tend to disaffiliate at really remarkable rates—only 39% of Catholics raised in religiously mixed households stay in the faith, versus two-thirds of those raised in solidly Catholic households.”

The other point that the PPRI study makes clear is that while the “nones” are often portrayed as “seekers” or “spiritual but not religious,” the data present a far murkier picture. The study found that nearly 60% of the unaffiliated are what PPRI calls “rejectionists”: they “say religion is not personally important in their lives and believe religion as a whole does more harm than good in society.”

Another 22% are “apatheists” who say “religion is not personally important to them, but believe it generally is more socially helpful than harmful.” Only 18% were found to be “unattached believer” who say religion is personally important to them. That means that religion is unimportant for fully 80% of the “nones.”

In addition, “Only four in ten unaffiliated Americans identify themselves as being very (14%) or moderately (26%) spiritual. Nearly six in ten say they are only slightly spiritual (26%) or not at all spiritual (32%).”

“The bulk of the unaffiliated are not carrying on faith traditions or seeking different types of spiritual activity. Most don’t give a lot of thought to religion and God in general,” said Cox.

One of the more remarkable things about the growth of the unaffiliated, said Cox, is the recent surge in the unaffiliated. “Between the mid-1990s and the 2000s, the rate was relatively modest. But in the mid-2000s it goes gangbusters and you get a 10- to 11-point increase that is being driven by one factor: millennials.”

He points to structural reasons for the high rate of disaffiliation among millennials, including the high rate of divorce in the early 1980s when the millennials where children. “It’s more complicated raising children in a religious context in joint custody arrangements,” Cox said.

But it’s also worth noting, given the high rate of Catholic disaffiliation and the fact that one-third of Catholics gave the clergy sex-abuse scandals as their primary reason for disaffiliation, that the trend line begins to tick up just as wave after wave of revelations about hidden abuse scandals became public.

Complete Article HERE!

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Chicago priest charged with possession of child porn

Bond was set at $50,000 for a Chicago priest charged with one felony count of possession of child pornography.

Father Octavio Munoz, 40, was extradited from Maryland, where he had been relocated by the archdiocese, said prosecutors.

Munoz previously served as the director of Casa Jesus, a recruiting program for the Archdiocese of Chicago that was suspended in April. Munoz was moving to Saint Pancratius Church in Brighton Park when prosecutors say archdiocese employees saw his laptop displaying a webcam of child pornography on July 7, 2016. Munoz was not in the apartment at the time.

Octavio Munoz
Octavio Munoz

A week later, prosecutors say an employee reported the incident and the archdiocese contacted private investigators before notifying Chicago Police around July 30th 2015.

The laptop was not found, but authorities say they recovered “two movies that contained images of child pornography as well as hundreds of DVD’s and VHS tapes depicting minors, magazines containing images of minors, emails containing stories of sex with children, and children’s underwear.”

“What I heard was speculation and innuendo. Not proof,” said Raymond Wigell, an attorney representing Munoz.

The Archdiocese of Chicago released this statement:

We learned today that Father Octavio Muñoz Capetillo has been charged with one felony count of possession of child pornography. The charge comes in connection with a police investigation that began after the archdiocese reported that inappropriate material had been found on a computer in his possession. On July 28, 2015, Archbishop Blase J. Cupich removed Father Muñoz from ministry and withdrew his faculties, his authority to minister, after the archdiocese learned that the inappropriate material might involve minors. Given the nature of that material, the archdiocese reported it promptly to the civil authorities and have cooperated fully with their investigation.

Wigell says the archdiocese suggested that Munoz go into a program at Saint Luke’s in Maryland. A warrant for his arrest was issued on August 29. He was extradited on Tuesday.

Munoz is due back in court on October 12th.

Complete Article HERE!