Fighting through tears on Tuesday, Todd Belrose recounted 35 years of pain resulting from alleged clergy sex abuse by Father Thomas Andert.
“Sadly, I just found out lately there are many more survivors, and as much as it breaks my heart, it also helps me,” Belsore said.
At a news conference announcing two newly-filed civil suits alleging priest sex abuse, Belrose and a former plaintiff said St. John’s Preparatory School priests should have helped young boys, not hurt them.
“Oh, they helped all right,” said abuse survivor Troy Bromlage. “They helped us drink more, use more and try to kill ourselves because we don’t feel whole.”
Andert was never put on the list of 18 credibly accused abbey monks that the abbey released back in 2003. That was despite the fact he was first accused of past abuse of a 14-year-old prep school student years earlier.
The abbey launched an internal investigation into the charge but later said it found no substantiation of abuse.
Instead, Andert was appointed prior and served as the Abbey’s second-in-command. He also served on the Abbey’s external review board and supervised other monks on restriction.
In February, Andert was reinstated into ministry after the abbey cleared him of past abuse claims.
“I can’t believe that Father Tom is back in a position where other people’s kids can be hurt,” Belrose said.
It’s not the first time Andert has been accused of abuse.
In 1994, he was forced out as headmaster of St. John’s Prep school after abuse allegations were made by a student, Ben Spanier.
Spanier battled depression and anxiety the next 20 years and took his life in December 2014.
“We thought we’d turned the corner here,” said attorney Jeff Anderson, who is representing Belrose and Doe 324 in the civil suits. “This is a turn back to the old ways and old times, it begs the question.”
The abbey released a statement saying, “Saint John’s Abbey denies the allegations set forth by the two Plaintiffs in today’s press conference and fully intends to defend both cases.”
Meantime, the clock is ticking on the Legislature’s Child Victim’s Act.
After May 25, the filing window expires, meaning no more civil suits from decades old abuse cases.
Minnesota and Hawaii created windows for abuse victims to file lawsuit even after states’ statute of limitations closed – but their time will be up in April
In Minnesota, the Roman Catholic archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis filed for bankruptcy last year in the face of dozens of potential sex abuse lawsuits.
The courthouse doors will soon close on victims of clergy sex abuse in Minnesotaand Hawaii when a brief window to bring charges against the Catholic church expires.
But in May 2013, Minnesota created a three-year window for past victims of abuse to file child sex abuse lawsuits against the church and other institutions, even after the statute of limitations has closed. This was a life-changing opportunity for people like James Hlavka, who told the Guardian he has “lived hell on earth” since being abused by a priest from age 10 to 15 in the 1960s.
Hlavka, who lives in one of four states that have created such windows, said a chance to appear in court gave him the courage to speak about the five years of abuse that sent him spiralling into a lifestyle of binge eating, starvation, promiscuity, drug abuse and alcohol addiction. This interview was the first time Hlavka spoke publicly about the abuse he suffered, having initially filed his case against the church as “John Doe 117”.
“Had it not been for that statute of limitations window, I would still be living a 40-plus-year lie,” said Hlavka, 63.
Hlavka is due to appear in court in October, months after the deadline to file a child sex abuse lawsuit in Minnesota expires on 25 May 2016. A month earlier, Hawaii’s window – which was extended for two more years in 2014 – closes on 24 April 2016.
But without these window laws, childhood sex abuse victims are held to state statute of limitations law that have in many cases long passed.
“We went through decades when powerful institutions, including a lot of religious institutions, ignored the signs that children were being sexually abused and finally, we’re turning the tide on that,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. “The only way we can possibly get justice for these victims is to permit them to revive their civil statutes of limitations.”
Statutes of limitations vary tremendously between states. In New York, for instance, people have until age 23 to bring a childhood sex abuse complaint, and across the border in Connecticut, people can bring such a complaint until they are 48 years old.
State legislators have pushed for wider windows and softened statute of limitations laws, but find themselves up against the Catholic church’s formidable lobby.
Critics say this type of legislation unfairly punishes churches for behaviors of past leadership and does not hold public institutions, such as schools, to the same standard. In Minnesota, the Roman Catholic archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis filed for bankruptcy last year in the face of dozens of potential sex abuse lawsuits.
The Catholic Conference of Minnesota said that questions about the window would be best directed to local archdiocese.
Archbishop Bernard Hebda said in an emailed statement that the archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis is working with people in the fields of victim assistance and law enforcement, and others who aren’t in the clergy to ensure they are doing “all that is reasonably possible to prevent sexual abuse of minors”.
“We know that we are powerless to change the past and undo the harm suffered by those affected by abuse, but we are committed to changing the future – in our churches, our schools and our communities,” Hebda said. “It is our unwavering daily objective to create and maintain safe environments for all God’s children and that work will never cease.”
In Pennsylvania, lawmakers are proposing a new special two-year window for past victims to sue the church. But Catholic churches have used pamphlets, the internet and editorials to encourage parishioners to contact their state representative and urge them to oppose the proposal.
State representative Mark Rozzi is leading an effort to force a vote on the window bill, as well as a bill that would prevent statutes of limitations in future childhood abuse cases. Rozzi, a survivor of childhood sex abuse, ran for office specifically to get these laws in place.
Supporters of these laws, like Rozzi, say statutes of limitations fail to account for the psychology of childhood trauma, which can take years to disclose because of shame and the victims may be too young to know how to express what has happened to them.
“What we’re seeing is an iceberg of information that’s been frozen because survivors, when they are finally ready to come forward, can’t get into the courthouse,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo School of Law.
She said that tearing down statute of limitations laws provides an opportunity to name the perpetrators and protect children.
In Minnesota and Hawaii, the battle for a window has been fought and won. This is why Hlavka, unlike the thousands of unknown victims of childhood sex abuse, will get his day in court.
At his deposition Hlavka plans to recount how from age 10 to 15 he was repeatedly raped by father Michael Skoblik, a priest at his school.
Hlavka will explain how the priest would drip wax on his genitals and commit other acts that he said would not even be found in a pornographic movie.
He will talk about his first attempted suicide at 15, and his second suicide attempt, which caused irreversible damage to his physical health. Hlavka said he now knows to check back in with a mental health facility if he experiences suicidal ideation again, in part because he has started seeing a therapist for the first time when he learned about the statute of limitations window in a newspaper article.
Because of that window, he may also tell the court about the binge eating, starvation, prescription drug abuse, promiscuity and alcoholism – a collection of habits that combined with his most recent suicide attempt, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder have put him on full-time disability.
Hlavka’s parents died not knowing about the abuse, which he believes the community he lived in knew about, but would not discuss.
And that is why he is coming forward, more than two decades after Skoblik died.
“I decided I am not going to let what that priest did to me control my life anymore,” Hlavka said.
Supporters of these windows say that in addition to creating a pathway for survivors to have their day in court, they also offer opportunities for child sex abuse survivors who were victimized by people beside clergy.
In Hawaii, the window has allowed people to file claims against Jay Ram, a man who adopted and fostered children he then abused in the 1980s and 1990s. The boys were removed from his home by Hawaii child protection services but sent back because the case fell apart.
Mike Reck, who is representing Ram’s accusers, said that once the window law passed in Hawaii, the same thing happened there that has happened in any jurisdiction that has had a similar law.
“You had the first brave survivor saying: ‘hey, this happened to me,’ and then other survivors of the same perpetrator who were suffering in silence knew they were not alone and they started to come forward,” Reck said.
This has also been the experience for Hlavka, who is concerned about the expiration of Minnesota’s window law.
“I wish they would expand it because May is coming forward far too quick and there are far too many people who need to come forward,” Hlavka said. “And the thought of just one victim not coming forward and getting justice doesn’t sit well with me.”
Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks County, and a victim of sex abuse as a child, speaks at the Crime Victim Awareness Rally in the Rotunda at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., Apr. 11, 2016.
The laws that govern how long victims of child sex abuse have to bring their predators to justice came one step closer to being reformed on Monday.
A bill that would reform the statute of limitations cleared a hurdle in the House as lawmakers approved an amendment to House Bill 1947, which would eliminate civil and criminal statutes of limitations to most sex crimes, especially child sex abuse cases – all going forward.
The House agreed to attach an amendment introduced by Rep. Mark Rozzi (D-Berks) that would retroactively raise the age limit for civil lawsuits in sex abuse cases from 30 to 50.
Speaking before a House session that was notably boisterous with chatter all day, Rozzi brought the chamber to a hushed silence as he spoke about friends and victims who had either committed suicide or suffered decades of anguish after being sexually abused by priests.
Rozzi’s amendment would raise the age limit for victims to seek charges – retroactively — from 30 to 50.
“This amendment allows past victims to likewise bring civil lawsuits,” he said.
House Bill 1947 was introduced by House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Ron Marsico (R-Dauphin) last week. The bill moved swiftly out of committee.
Under current law, victims of child sexual abuse are barred from seeking civil action after they reach the age of 30.
Victims can bring criminal charges against offenders until they reach 50 years of age — but only if the victim turned 18 years old after Aug. 27, 2002. The law allows victims older than that to report until their 30th birthday.
“This is a matter of fairness and justice for some,” said Rozzi, himself a survivor of clergy sex abuse.
In a poignant speech about his friend who committed suicide at the age of 44 after years of dealing with the ravages of abuse, Rozzi appealed to House colleagues to approve his amendment, speaking candidly and with graphic details about the horrors of children who have had priests squeeze their genitals or insert fingers into their anus.
He urged his colleagues to read the grand jury report out of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, “if you have the stomach to.”
he report released in early March found systemic and widespread clergy sex abuse of hundreds of children, and concealment by church officials. The Altoona-Johnstown report mirrors earlier grand jury investigations into the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
“Mr. Speaker, we know this problem will never go away, not while archaic and arbitrary statutes exist,” Rozzi said.
Victims advocates say victims of child sex abuse typically are not ready to come forth about their abuse long after it has happens – in many cases, decades after when the statute of limitations have expired.
Marsico’s bill – HB 1947 – would eliminate all statutes – civil and criminal – in cases of sexual abuse going forward. His bill also would waive the sovereign immunity clause that prevents child sex-abuse victims from suing state and local entities, such as school districts.
Two other amendments were withdrawn: one would have lifted expired civil statutes for a period of time.
While Rep. Tom Murt (R- Montgomery/Phila.) argued that as many as eight states had lifted expired civil statutes without the flood of false claims, he was withdrawn his amendment for the benefit of victims.
“I resent anyone saying this issue is driven by special interests,” he said. “It is driven by victims….some who have suffered in silence and humiliation and shame. The shame is not theirs. The shame is ours if we do not take action on this issue to help these victims and help victimization of any other children.”
He said he was withdrawing his amendment in order for Marsico’s bill to move quickly from the House in the hope that Senate colleagues would provide retroactivity measures to the bill.
Rozzi said that while his amendment did not help everyone, it “at least opens the door.”
Rozzi urged House colleagues “to stand with me” on this issue.
“It is way past time to do the right thing,” said Rozzi, who received a nearly full-House standing ovation.
The bill, which will now be reprinted to reflect the amendments, will be taken up for third reconsideration later this week, possibly as early as Tuesday.
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago on Oct. 28, 2015, after pleading guilty to one felony count of illegally structuring cash withdrawals to evade bank currency-reporting requirements.
I see parallels in the case of former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and the sexual abuse of children by priests. As Hastert faces sentencing, a judge must weigh whether the damage to Hastert’s reputation resulting from the revelations of alleged sexual abuse is punishment enough.
I have to choose my words carefully, because Hastert isn’t charged with sexually abusing children, and he hasn’t admitted to it. As part of a plea deal, he’s pleaded guilty to a bank structuring charge for withdrawing large sums. When federal authorities confronted him about the withdrawals, he allegedly lied about it. But that charge was dropped as part of the plea deal, in which he also admitted paying about $1.7 million to someone.
The federal investigation and a Tribune report revealed the reason for Hastert’s alleged hush-money payments. The recipient of Hastert’s illegal bank withdrawals was a student and wrestler in the 1970s at Yorkville High School, where Hastert taught and coached. The individual is one of four men who accuse Hastert of sexually abusing them when they were teens, the Tribune found.
My past work as a journalist includes extensive investigation of sexual abuse of children by priests of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet. Most of the stories I wrote were about men who were abused as boys during the 1970s and 1980s. As I related heartbreaking tales from abuse survivors, I often wondered how the criminal conduct occurred in the first place, and why it remained secret for so long.
My personal conclusion is that the terrible tragedy of childhood sex abuse remains a serious problem today because, far too often, abusers barely face any consequences for their actions. I’ve found that to be especially true when the accused are men in positions of power.
Justice for people who were sexually abused as children long ago often is denied because the statute of limitations prevents criminal prosecution of abusers. Yet civil lawsuits and internal investigations can establish the credibility of allegations. In its response to the abuse crisis, I believe the Catholic Church’s apologies ring hollow because they stop short of acknowledging full responsibility, for legal reasons.
I see the same model of empty apology playing out in the Hastert case.
Hastert — who was two heartbeats away from most powerful office in the free world while House Speaker from 1999 to 2007 — says through his attorneys he is “profoundly sorry” for the harm he caused others decades ago. But he doesn’t specify the behavior for which he is sorry.
His attorneys are pleading for leniency when U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin sentences the 74-year-old Hastert on April 27. Hastert’s plea agreement with prosecutors recommends a sentence ranging from probation to up to six months in prison, the lowest sentence possible under federal guidelines for a felony conviction, the Tribune reported.
I heard similar appeals for leniency from bishops and others for clergy who used their positions of authority to prey on children. The accused molesters are now old and frail, they’d say. Plus, they did tremendous good work in communities as priests, and that should be taken into consideration.
Stephen Reinboldt’s sister Jolene Burdge speaks out about her brother’s alleged abuse by Dennis Hastert decades ago when they lived in Yorkville.
Here are the words Hastert’s attorneys used in their plea for mercy:
“What we do know is that he will stand before the court having deteriorated both physically and emotionally, undoubtedly in part due to public shaming and humiliation of an unprecedented degree.”
“Mr. Hastert knows that the days of him being welcomed in the small towns he served all of his life are gone forever,” his lawyers wrote in a court filing. “He knows that, for the rest of his life, wherever he goes, the public warmth and affection that he previously received will be replaced by hostility and isolation.”
Forgive me for tempering my sympathy for Hastert, but his friends and neighbors and the people who voted for him would never have extended him the “warmth and affection” he enjoyed as an influential public figure had they known the truth about his conduct in the first place.
There are a number of reasons why children who are sexually abused remain silent. Everyone’s situation is unique, but there are commonalities. They’re ashamed. They think they won’t be believed.
Some feel culpable in the illicit behavior because their abusers let them drink alcohol, smoke pot, drive cars or do other grown-up things. They’re taught to believe they’re just as guilty as the men who used them to satisfy their sexual desires.
Men who use their positions of authority to silence their victims of sexual abuse tend to carry themselves with a sense of arrogance. They got away with it, and over time this contributes to a sense of invincibility. Their power and arrogance grows.
I can only speculate to what extent this may have contributed to Hastert’s ascent to power. It’s unlikely his political activities will be considered when he is sentenced. But Denny Hastert wielded power in government, securing a $207 million federal-funding earmark for the Prairie Parkway in his home district. The proposed $1 billion road was to connect Interstate 88 (the Reagan Memorial Tollway) with Interstate 80 through Kane, Kendall and Grundy counties.
Hastert’s power translated to clout after he left office to work as a lobbyist. He was criticized for partnering with speculators who earned more than $3 million by buying and selling land along the Prairie Parkway route, the Tribune reported when the Federal Highway Administration rescinded its approval of the road and killed the project in 2012. That left Illinois taxpayers on the hook for $21 million the state spent acquiring 15 parcels, including 300 acres and four homes for the project.
No one is likely to ask the judge to consider those actions when he is sentenced.
The judge might, however, hear statements from people more directly affected by Hastert’s deeds. Individual D, one of the four who allege Hastert sexually abused him as a boy, is considering testifying at the sentencing hearing, the Tribune said.
Also expected to testify is Jolene Burdge. Her brother, Stephen Reinboldt, told her Hastert sexually abused him while he was equipment manager for the wrestling team at Yorkville High School. Reinboldt died of AIDS in 1995. Burdge confronted Hastert when he showed up at her brother’s visitation in Yorkville, but he silently turned his back to her and walked away.
Burdge learned the truth about Hastert years ago when her brother told her, and she first tried to speak out publicly in 2006 when Hastert was criticized for his handling of a scandal involving improper advances by then-Rep. Mark Foley of Florida toward underage male congressional pages.
It may be small consolation, but Burdge plans to finally have her day in court on behalf of her late brother when Hastert is sentenced. Hastert faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
When handing down the sentence, the judge could confine his decision to the narrow parameters of a law designed to detect financial support for terrorists. That’s the crime to which Hastert has pleaded guilty.
On the other hand, the judge could make a statement on behalf of all victims of childhood sexual abuse who have been denied justice. After all, this case is about much more than a financial crime.
Maureen Powers, who said she was sexually abused by a priest as a child, decided to finally report her case.
Nearly 15 years after Boston suffered through a clergy abuse scandal dramatized in the movie “Spotlight,’’ Pennsylvania is going through its own painful reckoning.
From the state Capitol in Harrisburg to kitchens in railroad towns, people say they have been stunned to read evidence that priests they knew as pastors, teachers, and confessors were secretly abusing children — findings a grand jury report called “staggering and sobering.”
Victims are coming forward for the first time to family and friends, and alumni of parochial schools are pulling out their yearbooks, marveling at how smiling faces hid such pain.
By the age of 12, Maureen Powers, the daughter of a professor at the local Roman Catholic university, played the organ in the magnificent hilltop Catholic basilica here and volunteered in the parish office.
But she said she was hiding a secret: Her priest sexually abused her for two years, telling her it was for the purpose of “research.”
By her high school years, she felt so tied up in knots of betrayal and shame that she confided in a succession of priests. She said the first tried to take advantage of her sexually, the second suggested she comfort herself with a daily candy bar, and the third told her to see a counselor. None of them reported the abuse to the authorities or mentioned that she could take that step.
So when a Pennsylvania grand jury revealed in a report in March that the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, which includes Loretto, engaged in an extensive coverup of abuse by as many as 50 church officials, Powers, now 67, decided to finally report her case.
She called the office of the Pennsylvania attorney general and recounted her story, including the name of her abuser, a prominent monsignor who was not listed in the grand jury report.
“I just felt like now, someone will believe me,” said Powers, who retired after 30 years in leadership positions at the YWCA in Lancaster.
She was not alone. Powers was among more than 250 abuse survivors and tipsters who called a hotline set up by the Pennsylvania attorney general, Kathleen G. Kane. Twenty agents were needed to answer the phones, and a voice mailbox was set up to handle the overflow.
Multiplying the outrage, the grand jury report supplied evidence that the police, district attorneys, and judges in the Altoona and Johnstown area colluded with bishops in the coverup, quashing the pleas of parents who tried to inform on priests who sexually abused children. Some of those officials are named in the report, and some still hold public office.
“It really hit home for me when I realized that these victims are my friends, my classmates,” said state Representative Frank Burns, a Democrat, whose district includes part of Johnstown and who attended Bishop McCort High School, where the grand jury found that the abuse was rampant.
“Our region is devastated by drugs, suicide, alcoholism, and then you wonder — is this abuse tied into all of this?”
In the state capital, calls for full disclosure and accountability suddenly have new momentum. State Representative Mike Vereb, a Republican and a former police officer from Philadelphia, wrote a letter recently to the US attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania calling for an investigation under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO.
“This failure was colossal. It was nothing less than organized crime,” Vereb said in an interview in his office, where he keeps his old nightstick on his desk. “There was no chance, if you were a victim, that you were going to get justice.”
A flurry of negotiations has begun over bills that had been stalled for years to extend the statute of limitations for both civil and criminal cases of child sexual abuse. Abuse victims and their advocates have long argued that just as there is no statute of limitations on murder, there should be none on the sexual abuse of children.
The legislator leading the charge to extend the statute of limitations is state Representative Mark Rozzi, a Democrat from Berks County. Still boyish at 44, he is haunted by memories of being raped by a priest in middle school — a priest he later learned went on to sexually abuse some of his friends.
He said he decided to run for office in 2013 after the second of those friends committed suicide. On Good Friday a year ago, a third friend also took his own life.
