Category: Clergy Sex Abuse

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NY cardinal’s new compensation program for victims will keep sex abuse hidden

By Anne Barrett Doyle  

Archbishop Timothy Dolan

Cardinal Timothy Dolan is trying something new. After years of successfully opposing legislation that would give New York abuse victims more time to sue, he has launched a victims’ compensation program — a first for the New York archdiocese.

This is the Year of Mercy, and the cardinal said he was inspired by the “grace and challenge” of this fact.

“I just finally thought: ‘Darn it, let’s do it,’ ” he told The New York Times.

The surprise move is winning the cardinal praise. The often critical New York Daily News commended him, citing his “remarkable moral courage.”

As a researcher of the Catholic abuse crisis, I see his plan differently. While the fund certainly will help some victims, its biggest beneficiary will be Dolan and his management team. This is a legal strategy in pastoral garb, a tactic by the powerful archbishop to control victims and protect the church’s assets and its secrets.

On its face, the plan is reasonable. A victim submits a claim form with documentation about rape or molestation by a priest or deacon. If deemed credible, the victim receives an award, which the archdiocese promises to disburse quickly — within 60 days.

The program is being administered by Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw the 9/11 fund and mediated the settlements between Jerry Sandusky’s victims and Penn State.

But there’s a catch — two catches, actually. Victims must sign a legal agreement to abide by “all requirements pertaining to privacy and confidentiality,” and they must release the archdiocese from future liability — i.e., never sue it. (See section III, paragraph G of the IRCP’s Protocol webpage.)

So the fund implements a strategy. If the Child Victims Act ever passes in New York — and Gov. Andrew Cuomo promises it will be a priority in 2017 — Dolan will have already flushed out and shackled many of the victims who might have filed suit.

And unlike the Penn State claimants, the victims in Dolan’s program will be signing releases without the benefit of any information about how their perpetrators were managed. Did archdiocesan officials know or suspect that the priest was a risk to children before the victim suffered abuse? Did the priest have other victims? What happened to him after the archdiocese learned of his crimes? Are children protected from him now? Under Dolan’s plan, all of this stays hidden.

Of course, agreeing not to sue is an easy concession right now for child sex abuse victims in New York. Thanks in part to lobbying by Dolan and his brother bishops, victims remain effectively powerless: the state’s restrictive civil statute of limitations gives them only until age 21 to sue complicit employers. For the vast majority of victims, this is not enough time.

In terms of its statute of limitations for child sex crimes, New York state is an outlier: only Alabama and Michigan limit victims as severely.

This is bound to change. While the Child Victims Act was defeated yet again last year, it generated tremendous public support.

When it passes, the Act will give future victims more time to take action, and it will include a “look-back” clause: for a limited period, it will revive the currently expired civil claims of all abuse victims in New York.

This retroactivity is what worries Dolan. Lawsuits by victims will result not only in payouts by the church, but the disclosure of its secret abuse files, revealing what archdiocesan managers knew and when.

To date, because of New York’s predator-friendly statute of limitations, the massive archdiocese’s abuse problem has appeared tiny. Its only tally of accused priests occurred in 2004, when Cardinal Edward Egan claimed an implausible total of 49 accused priests since 1950 — one percent of its active priests for that time period.

Consider that in Boston, with far fewer total priests, Cardinal Sean O’Malley conceded in 2011 that 250 priests since 1950 had been accused. In Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony counted 244 accused clergy. Even the small rural diocese of Manchester, N.H., concedes more accused priests than Dolan has acknowledged in New York.

Obviously, Dolan knows that his potential exposure is enormous, and one victim at a time, his new program will chip away at this perceived threat. Every participant will represent a case that will never be brought to light; a perpetrator’s name that may never be made public; and perhaps, a story of archdiocesan mismanagement that will never be revealed.

Inevitably, his plan will exploit those who are desperate: I’ll give you quick money, but you must keep my secrets.

Dolan has pre-empted victims before. In his prior post in Milwaukee, shortly before an expected state Supreme Court decision that would allow victims to sue for fraud, the archbishop quietly transferred $57 million in church funds into a special cemetery trust that would be off-limits to plaintiffs.

In this year of “grace and challenge,” the cardinal should do things differently. Mercy cannot come with chains. Dolan should eliminate requirements for the victim to stay silent about any aspect of the mediation. And he should accompany the fund with radical transparency.

After all, there is the promise of his fund’s title: the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program. The cardinal is using our church’s language to sacramentalize his scheme, so let him follow through. As every First Communicant knows, “reconciliation” occurs only with disclosure and confession. Dolan should come clean, before the courts force him to do so. He should publish a list of accused clerics, as more than 30 other U.S. bishops have done. He should release the archdiocese’s secret files on all of its abusers. And he should tell his lobbyist in Albany to cease and desist.

Without transparency and honesty, Dolan’s fund becomes just another tactic to make sure the New York archdiocese doesn’t answer for its actions — an accountability dodge that ultimately hurts children, victims, parishioners, and the church’s own chance for redemption.

[Anne Barrett Doyle is co-director of BishopAccountability.org, an independent non-profit based in Waltham, Mass., founded in 2003, to research child abuse by priests and religious and on the management of those cases by bishops, religious orders and the Holy See.]

Complete Article HERE!

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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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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!