Catholic priest compares paedophile priests to adulterous women

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‘Part of my concern with the current royal commission on the institutional sexual abuse of minors is that we may in the end gain justice for the victims but they will be denied healing,’ the Melbourne priest’s homily says.
‘Part of my concern with the current royal commission on the institutional sexual abuse of minors is that we may in the end gain justice for the victims but they will be denied healing,’ the Melbourne priest’s homily says.

A Melbourne Catholic priest has compared paedophile priests to adulterous women and said victims of sexual abuse would be “denied healing” because the “baying crowd” of media and lawyers don’t understand mercy, in statements published in a primary school newsletter.

The Malvern East priest Father Bill Edebohls, who under Victoria’s Catholic school structure is head of schools in his parish, made the comments in a homily delivered at St Mary’s church. It was reprinted in full in the March newsletter of St Mary’s primary school in Malvern East, Fairfax Media has reported.

“Part of my concern with the current royal commission on the institutional sexual abuse of minors is that we may in the end gain justice for the victims but they will be denied healing,” the homily says. “Why? Because both the media and the lawyers, like the baying crowd of men in the gospel ready to throw stones, don’t understand the need for a justice that is drenched in mercy.”

He made the comparison to extramarital affairs after recounting the gospel story about Jesus showing mercy to an adulterous woman who was to be stoned to death by saying: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

“For our generation, where adultery is not regarded as a crime – and many have lost the moral sense of the destructive harm adultery does to family and community – and the media dish adultery up night after night as playful entertainment – we probably don’t get the power of the gospel story nor the dramatic effect on the characters in the story,” the homily says.

“Remember this was a sin, a crime that carried the death penalty – by stoning. Maybe to get the real drama and effect of the story we ought to replace the adulterous woman with a paedophile priest. Then we might begin to understand the mob eager to stone and the outrageous and profligate mercy and compassion of God ever ready to forgive.”

Shane Healy, spokesman for the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne, defended Edebohls, telling Fairfax: “He tried to pick a contemporary example of what might have been a woman adulterer of 2,000 years ago, who would have been looked on entirely differently.”

Edebohls was dean of the Anglican church in Ballarat from 1987 to 1996 before converting to Catholicism and being ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 2003. At the time he denied the move was triggered by dissatisfaction with the Anglican church’s decision to welcome gay and women clergy, saying: “My journey into the Catholic church has been a lifetime pilgrimage and is not associated with simplistic one-off issue.”

The Catholic church in Ballarat has been the centre of one of the largest investigations in the royal commission, which last month saw Australia’s highest-ranked Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, questioned for four nights in Rome.

Ronald Mulkearns, who was the Catholic bishop of Ballarat between 1971 and 1997 and was accused before the commission of covering up some of the worst cases of sex abuse in the region, died aged 86 this month and was buried in a common grave, in recognition of the controversy surrounding his time as bishop.

Before his death he told the commission he regretted that he didn’t “deal differently with paedophilia”, adding: “We had no idea, or I had no idea, of the effects of the incidents that took place.”

Guardian Australia has contacted Edebohls and the school’s acting principal for comment.

Complete Article HERE!

Lawyers argue that statute of limitations has expired in priest sex-abuse case

By Peter Smith

Pictures of friars Giles A. Schinelli, Robert J. D’A’Versa and Anthony M. Criscitelli
Pictures of friars Giles A. Schinelli, Robert J. D’A’Versa and Anthony M. Criscitelli at a news conference as state Attorney General Kathleen Kane talks about the charges filed against them.

 

The day began with a 30-year-old witness describing how Franciscan Brother Stephen Baker befriended him and his family and repeatedly molested him from his early teens.

But even as prosecutors laid out their case involving the late friar’s molestation of as many as 100 youths at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown and elsewhere, the attorneys for three of his former superiors launched a vigorous defense at a preliminary hearing here Thursday.

Their clients, former minister provincials for a Hollidaysburg-based Franciscan province, face charges of conspiracy and endangering the welfare of children for assigning Baker to Bishop McCort and other ministry posts where he had regular contact with youths between 1992 and 2010. The charges followed last month’s release of state grand jury reports about the order and the surrounding Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

The attorneys not only argued that the statute of limitations should preclude the Franciscans’ prosecution, but they also managed to exclude a crucial piece of evidence from the hearing — internal notes from 1992 referring to restrictions on Baker’s contact with minors — and to cast doubt on the timing of when the Franciscans learned of another allegation against Baker in 2000.

All this took place Thursday at a day-long hearing before Blair County District Judge Paula Aigner to determine the strength of the prosecutor’s case. With testimony still in progress at day’s end, Judge Aigner recessed the hearing until April 27.

Charged are the Very Revs. Giles Schinelli, 73, who was minister provincial from 1986 to 1994; Robert J. D’Aversa, 69, who was minister provincial from 1994 to 2001; and the Very Rev. Anthony M. Criscitelli, 61, who was minister provincial from 2002 to 2010. They led the Franciscan Friars, Third Order Regulars of the Immaculate Conception Province.

All three sat impassively in dark clerical garb behind their lawyers.

Brother Baker committed suicide in January 2013 at the Hollidaysburg monastery when the enormity of his offenses became publicly known.

Deputy Attorney General Daniel Dye began the day by calling the 30-year-old witness, whose name was not disclosed.

The man said that Brother Baker worked as an athletic trainer and told Bishop McCort students to strip down and get on the training table, where he would fondle them and digitally penetrate them.

He said this practice was commonly known among athletes.

“After a while, it got normal,” he said.

He said that the nickname students gave the practice was “a bro job” because Brother Baker’s nickname was “Bro.” He said he was also abused by Baker in car trips and at the monastery.

But much of Thursday focused on what Baker’s supervisors knew and when they knew it.

Special Agent Jessica Eger of the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation testified about more than 30 documents seized from the order last year via search warrant.

The documents showed that Father Schinelli was aware of an accusation against Baker stemming from Baker’s work in Missouri and sent him for a 1992 psychological evaluation that found no evidence of any sexual pathology or risk to minors.

But handwritten notes by Father Schinelli indicated that the same psychologist recommended Baker have no ministry involving one-to-one contact with minors, nor to take any overnight trips with them — activities the earlier witness said were routine.

However, attorney Charles Porter, representing Father Schinelli, convinced Judge Aigner that these notes should be excluded because they were part of correspondence with the order’s lawyer and were protected by attorney-client privilege. Mr. Dye unsuccessfully argued that such privilege doesn’t apply under the “crime-fraud exception.”

“This is a crime in progress,” he said.

Mr. Porter went on to say Father Schinelli tried unsuccessfully to get more information to evaluate the Missouri allegation. Baker, he said, “duped” the psychologist that his client relied on.

Ms. Eger acknowledged there was no other documentary evidence that Father Schinelli, while in office, knew of any allegations against Baker.

Next up was attorney Robert Ridge, representing Father D’Aversa. Father D’Aversa himself had testified to the grand jury last year that he removed Baker from Bishop McCort after receiving a credible allegation in early 2000 of past abuse by Baker.

As Baker was being reassigned, Father D’Aversa wrote him: “Thank you for your efforts in the educational Apostolate. You have done an excellent job.”

Father D’Aversa put Baker in charge of vocations, through which he engaged in multiple overnight retreats with teens in mid-2000.

But Mr. Ridge questioned prosecutors’ reliance on his own client’s memory. He noted that there is no documentary evidence that Father D’Aversa knew of that allegation until November 2000, when he put Baker on more restrictions.

The hearing ended with testimony about Father Criscitelli’s tenure and conflicting claims about how well those restrictions were actually enforced.

Baker worked at a Catholic gift store known as the Friar Shop at the Altoona Mall. In 2006 when the order was seeking accreditation for compliance with safe-environment standards by an outside firm, the order was told it needed better controls on Baker’s access to children while at the mall. Father Criscitelli, in a document, sought ways to cushion the impact on Baker so as not to “alarm” co-workers.

And as late as 2006, Baker was still volunteering at St. Clare of Assisi Church in Johnstown, despite a 2002 Catholic Church policy against confirmed abusers being in ministry after 2002. The order took pains not to depict Baker’s Friar Shop work as “ministry.”

Some documents showed the order supervisors being sensitive to Baker’s feelings about his ministry restrictions, noting he got very defensive and would submit only when required to psychological care. Baker, according to one mental-health evaluation, felt “aggrieved and violated because of these allegations” and claimed one of his victims was “effeminate” and misunderstood his actions.

One letter from a minister provincial cited the need for restrictions to safeguard the integrity of Baker and the province, and “the resources of the province.”

Such comments infuriated Barbara Aponte of Poland, Ohio, who attended the hearing and who attributes her son’s suicide to his abuse by Baker when he worked at an Ohio Catholic high school.

The documents “always express concern for minimizing (damage to the order’s ) public image and financial liability,” she said. “There’s never a mention in these documents about the welfare of the kids and the safety of the kids.”

Complete Article HERE!

CNS Director Tony Spence Forced Out

by Kevin Clarke

Tony Spence
Tony Spence receiving the St. Francis de Sales award in 2010 from the Catholic Press Association, the association’s highest honor.

Tony Spence has stepped down from his position as Director and Editor in Chief of Catholic News Service, a position he has held since 2004, after a series of comments on Twitter drew the critical attention of web-based fidelity watchdogs at the Lepanto Institute, LifeSite news and other sites.

An emotional Spence said this afternoon that critics went after him “full-court on the blogoshere” over the past few days. Spence was told yesterday during a meeting with  Msgr. J. Brian Bransfield, the general secretary of the bishops’ conference, that he had “lost the confidence of the conference” and was asked to submit a letter of resignation.

The web-based publications, which in the past have frequently targeted Catholic Relief Services and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, began a drumbeat for Spence’s removal after he posted a series of tweets commenting on impending laws related to bathroom access and other rights for lesbian, gay and transgender people. The Lepanto Institute accused Spence of issuing “public statements decrying proposed legislation in several states that would protect religious freedom and deny men pretending to be women the ‘right’ to enter women’s bathrooms.”

Spence said that the web campaign provoked hate mail to his e-mail account, with messages urging his excommunication and calling him a traitor to the faith. Spence said he did not believe his Twitter comments would provoke such a backlash—“obviously”—but that he had been to his mind merely commenting on developing news on a subject frequently covered by CNS staff.

Spence said that he had anticipated ending his career at CNS. “Sixty-three and unemployed; not the brightest prospects,” he said with a grim laugh. “My plan now is to go home to Tennessee and start over,” he said.

He added, “My 12 years at CNS have been the best 12 years of my professional life; my staff is just amazing and I’ll miss it.”

In 2010 Spence was the winner of the Catholic Press Association’s St. Francis de Sales Award.

He said then that when Msgr. Owen Campion gave him his first Catholic press job at The Tennessee Register, diocesan newspaper in Nashville, Tenn., more than 30 years ago, “I thought I would give it a year.”

“It hardly took that long to realize it was much more than a job,” he added. “It was a vocation. And one I truly love.”

Spence thanked his colleagues in the Catholic press for sharing his “love of this vocation.”

Among other experiences Spence had been executive director for advancement communication at Vanderbilt University. He was editor-in-chief and general manager of the Tennessee Register Inc., publisher of the Tennessee Register, from 1989 to 1998. He also served as the diocese’s communications director in 1992-98.

He served as CPA president from 1994 to 1996 and oversaw the establishment of the Catholic Advertising Network and the Catholic Press Foundation. He also was a co-founder of the Appalachian Press Project of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Catholic News Service is an office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Spence was a member of the conference senior staff. Though part of the bishops’ conference, the news service is financially self-supporting by “providing news stories, features and reviews to paying clients that are both secular and religious news outlets,” according to a notice on the conference website.

Complete Article HERE!

St. John’s Abbey Hit With Two New Clergy Sex Abuse Cases


 
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.

Complete Article HERE!

Windows closing for clergy sex abuse victims to sue Catholic church

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

By 

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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.

Statute of limitations laws have made it nearly impossible for adults who were abused as children to put their claims before a court, even after revelations in 2002 about decades of widespread child sex abuse by Catholic priests.

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.

There are as many as 100,000 children in the US who have been victims of clerical sex abuse, according to a paper insurance experts presented to a Vatican conference in 2012.

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.”

Complete Article HERE!