A Catholic priest entered a guilty plea Friday, court records show, to trying to lure a 14-year-old girl into his car as she was walking home from school in Vancouver’s Image neighborhood.
Michael T. Patrick, 59, the former pastor of St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church in Scappoose, Ore., entered the plea in Clark County Superior Court to attempted luring but did not admit to the conduct. Patrick initially faced a charge of luring in connection with the 2014 incident.
David Renshaw, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Portland, said Tuesday that Patrick is not assigned to a parish and has not been since his arrest. Renshaw said Patrick’s status will not change until the Archdiocese has completed its investigation.
Patrick will be sentenced May 23 in Superior Court. He could face up to a year behind bars and two years’ probation. However, the prosecution will recommend that he serve six months in jail and a year of probation, court records show. The defense is free to argue for a lesser sentence.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed in Superior Court, the teen was walking west on Northeast 28th Street near 138th Avenue on March 10, 2014, when she noticed a man looking at her “strangely” from inside a blue 2007 Honda Pilot that was traveling east on 28th Street.
A short time later, the girl said the vehicle passed her again, but this time it was headed west on the street. The vehicle then pulled over in the bike lane, and the driver opened the window and told her to get inside, the affidavit said.
She told the driver “no” and began walking faster. The man, later identified by police as Patrick, drove alongside her, asking her several more times if she wanted a ride, according to court records. She declined each time. Patrick continued to follow her as she turned north on Northeast 132nd Avenue, court records said.
Patrick allegedly said, “Come on, cutie,” which alarmed the girl and prompted her to run to an in-home day care center on the east side of the street, according to court documents. There, she called her mother for advice.
Her mother said the girl was crying and sounded frightened. The girl waited at the residence until the man drove away, then ran home, the affidavit said.
Vancouver police located Patrick the same day, based on his license plate number. He denied the accusations.
Police then brought the girl to the front of his Vancouver residence, and she identified him as the man who had attempted to lure her, according to court records. She said he was still in the clothes he had worn earlier when he spoke to her.
Patrick was arrested April 2, 2014, on a warrant at Los Angeles International Airport when he re-entered the United States after a trip to Australia. He was then extradited to Clark County.
There is a bill before the state Senate that would do something real – something lasting – for survivors of sexual abuse. Something that would allow so many the opportunity for justice they have long been denied. Something that could help them heal – that could help them ease and carry their burdens.
Passed by the House on April 12, H.B. 1947 would eliminate the criminal statute of limitations for sexual abuse and extend the civil statutes by 20 years, until victims turn 50. It would allow victims to sue over abuse that occurred decades ago.
The bill does not go far enough. As written, it would offer no recourse to the many victims of the Catholic Church abuse scandal who are older than 50. But it would represent real and significant progress.
“It would be a big victory,” said John Salveson, an abuse survivor from Wayne and the founder of the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse. “We have been trying to do this for years. The resistance has just been impossible to overcome.”
It has, of course, taken way too long for legislators to get to the point where the impossible now seems possible.
It took two scathing Philadelphia grand jury reports – one in 2005, another in 2011 – outlining decades of sexual abuse of children by priests and other clergy and decades of cover-up by the church hierarchy.
More recently, it took the equally indefensible revelations in a March grand jury report on the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, where church leaders, prosecutors, and police reportedly ignored decades of abuse allegations.
It took the indictments, a few weeks later, of three Franciscan leaders in Johnstown who prosecutors say covered up for a friar who abused at least 100 children over two decades.
It took too much.
And the bill would not be even a possibility if it were not for the committed leadership of State Rep. Mark Rozzi (D., Berks), the bill’s driving force and an abuse victim himself, who told the Inquirer that he is pushing for its passage with “full guns blazing.”
That is welcome news.
I have covered this story since the first whispers of scandal seeped from the Philly Archdiocese in 2002, first for Philly’s alternative weekly newspapers and then as a correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. Over the years, I have spoken with dozens of survivors.
People like Brian McDonnell, 70, who was abused by a priest at the now-closed St. Gregory’s in West Philadelphia. Brian suffered years of mental illness, the manifestations of which, his doctors said, were inextricably intertwined with his abuse. His family had to fight the archdiocese to help navigate the maze of mental health treatment.
Brian died in April, apologizing to his relatives for being a “burden.” He was the furthest thing from that to the people who loved him. But how could you blame him for thinking it? It’s exactly how the church he loved so much treated him.
I have spoken, too, with relatives of victims who did not survive, but were lost to drugs or suicide, to the toxic shame and anger that swallow so many victims.
People a bill like this could have helped.
Like James Spoerl, who was 44 and lived in Northeast Philadelphia. He suffered through years of depression and addiction stemming from abuse he suffered at the hands of a priest as a 9-year-old altar boy at St. Cecilia Parish.
The statute of limitations had expired when James stepped forward in 2002. It was too late for a civil suit. His mother, Catherine, became her son’s advocate, struggling with the archdiocese, she says, to get him the proper therapy and addiction treatment he needed.
“Their response has always been cold and formal,” she said of the archdiocese, a sentiment echoed by many Philadelphia survivors. “They have lacked compassion, attentiveness, empathy, and a repenting spirit.”
Meanwhile, James documented his anguish in his journals.
“I forgive you [expletive] for the cover-up of abuse and all the children you sent to hell here on earth,” he wrote of the church on one page.
James Spoerl died March 30, after battling diabetes and other illnesses.
His mother is now fighting for other mothers’ sons.
“My son did not live long enough to see a change,” she said of the bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations. “But I hope that others who are waiting to be heard are soon granted this right. No human being should be denied this right.”
Sylvia MacEachern’s website go-to gathering place for church abuse victims
By Simon Gardner
Sylvia MacEachern has dedicated years of her life to tracking and cataloguing convicted child molesters and alleged abusers connected to the church.
Mike Fitzgerald is a 60-year-old truck driver who grew up on a farm near Bancroft, Ont.
Mike Fitzgerald, 60, was in his teens when he says he was sexually assaulted by a priest in Bancroft, Ont.
It’s with some trepidation that I ask him if we can meet at the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica, a grand Catholic church located in Ottawa’s ByWard Market. He readily agrees, but when I meet him and his wife Marla on the steps of the cathedral he admits to feeling uncomfortable.
“The good father destroyed my faith in the Catholic Church forever,” he explains.
When I hear about what happened to Fitzgerald when he was a teenager in the early 1970s, his bitterness comes as no surprise.
Fitzgerald grew up in a devout Catholic family. There was even talk of him becoming a priest.
He was musical, and when he turned 17 he agreed to help the parish priest, Father Henry Maloney, form a choir.
Because his family’s farm was about 35 kilometres from Our Lady of Mercy Church in Bancroft, it was decided Fitzgerald would move into a room in the church rectory.
He says he and his family had no idea he was about to fall into the clutches of a child molester.
‘You are going to sleep with me now’
“I remember very clearly the day I came home to the rectory and Father had moved all my personal belongings into his bedroom and said, ‘You are going to sleep with me now,'” Fitzgerald recalls.
Father Henry Maloney was a member of the clergy until he died in 1986.
In his lawsuit against the Pembroke Diocese, he claimed Maloney repeatedly sexually assaulted him.
“It started out with groping, fondling and it eventually culminated in August of that year with anal rape. And there was some physical damage the next day. I had to go and see a doctor and [Maloney] told me I should not go to my own family doctor. I should go to his doctor, who turned out to be just the same.”
The lawsuit against the diocese was settled last year. The terms are confidential and Fitzgerald will only say it’s given him some degree of financial security.
In their original statement of defence, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Pembroke said it had no knowledge of any abuse by Maloney, denied anything occurred, and said that if there was abuse — the diocese was not to blame.
The archdiocese declined to comment for this story. (During negotiation between the diocese and Fitzgerald’s lawyer, it was revealed that another lawsuit claiming abuse by Maloney was filed. The allegations, which have not been proven in court, date back to the late 1940s.)
Fitzgerald’s focus is now on recovery. For years he was angry, bitter and racked with sexual insecurities.
Rogues’ gallery of abusers, suspects
Though unable to forgive, these days Fitzgerald seems more at peace.
He credits much of his recovery to an unlikely saviour: a grandmother of 11 who maintains a website from her home in Fitzroy Harbour, a community on the outskirts of Ottawa.
People who meet Sylvia MacEachern are typically struck by her intensity, her deep outrage at the plight of abuse victims — and her unshakable devotion to the Catholic faith..
For years MacEachern has been a familiar face at trials and investigations into church abuse scandals. As a result, she’s amassed a huge collection of files, transcripts and other documents.
Sylvia’s Site, as she calls it, is a WordPress-based blog and database launched in 2010.
Sylvia MacEachern runs her website from her home in Fitzroy Harbour, Ont.
Since then, the website has showcased an ever-expanding rogues’ gallery of Catholic Church abusers or suspects. As well, the site is increasingly becoming a conduit for victims to describe their painful memories, and often, to express their anger.
Father Maloney is one of about 350 people listed in the “accused” section of MacEachern’s website. The alphabetical catalogue includes clergy members who were charged and convicted for their crimes, but also those who have successfully appealed, who reached settlements with their alleged victims, or who have simply been named in investigations.
‘The Mother Theresa of Fitzroy Harbour’
MacEachern’s mission to document alleged crimes by Catholic clergy has made her a thorn in the side of the Church.
But her status as an outspoken critic predates her website. I recall speaking with a senior Church official about 25 years ago who was incensed over a publication called The Orator.
The magazine exposed divisions within the Church and criticized the more liberal practices that were taking hold. MacEachern was its editor.
“They don’t love me,” she says with a sly grin.
Hundreds of victims who have stumbled across Sylvia’s Site and made contact with her feel differently.
“I call Sylvia the Mother Theresa of Fitzroy Harbour, Ontario,” says Fitzgerald. “She has been the shoulder that hundreds of us have leaned on. I don’t know where she gets her patience from. She has been a godsend to us.”
MacEachern now describes herself as “Orthodox Catholic,” but she was born in Northern Ireland into a staunchly Protestant family. Much to the shock of her father, she married a Catholic man and converted to the faith.
Her doubts about the Church started in the early 90s when a popular and respected Ottawa priest was charged with molesting boys at a summer camp for underprivileged kids.
MacEachern says she was shocked by the “abysmal” way the archdiocese treated the victims, and disgusted by the level of denial among parishioners even after the priest pleaded guilty.
At first she didn’t realize how important the site would become to victims.
Website unites victim, alleged abuser’s relative
Father Henry Maloney died in 1986, but Sylvia’s Site has now drawn together Mike Fitzgerald and one of Maloney’s relatives.
“I got a telephone call from Sylvia. She said you are not going to believe this but an extended member of your abuser’s family has contacted me and would like me to release your telephone number to her,” says Fitzgerald.
He says he’s since formed a “warm relationship” with the priest’s relative. The messages between them, he says, are full of “love, compassion, kindness, everything I have been looking for for some time.”
There are now plans for the two to meet in person, possibly as soon as the mid-May. Fitzgerald predicts it will be an emotional moment.
MacEachern says she’s never seen a relative reach out to a victim like this, but she wishes it would happen more often.
Film Spotlight ‘stirring something in a lot of them’
MacEachern says the number of victims contacting her is growing. She credits the acclaimed film Spotlight.
Mike Fitzgerald grew up on his family’s farm near Bancroft, Ont.
The movie centres around a group of investigative journalists at The Boston Globe who expose how the Catholic Church covered up abuse perpetrated by a network of nearly 90 priests in the Boston area.
“It’s stirring something in a lot of victims. They are suddenly getting in touch,” MacEachern says.
MacEachern says Fitzgerald is one of hundreds of victims she’s communicated with since starting Sylvia’s Site.
“You will have a grown man or woman who one day decides to Google the name of their priest molester. Most of them can’t explain why. They hit the site and discover, ‘Gosh, he’s already been charged and convicted, gosh, he’s dead, but there has been several lawsuits.’ They suddenly realize, ‘I am not the only one.'”
She adds that many victims take their secrets to the grave, or only disclose their experiences near the end of their lives. It’s rare for her to hear from men in their 20s or 30s, she says.
Church ‘hijacked’
About a year ago, an 82-year-old man from Toronto contacted her and covertly described being abused in his youth by a priest.
“This man got in touch with me and had very specific instruction to call him at a certain time of day when his wife would be sleeping. He did not want her to know and he’s 82 years old. He had never told a soul. He didn’t want his wife to know because she is a practicing Catholic and he was afraid it would destroy her faith.”
Some question how she keeps her own faith, but she insists it’s not her devotion to Catholicism that’s been shaken, but her confidence in those in charge.
“I tell people our Church has been hijacked by these fellows.”
MacEachern firmly believes the only way forward is to clean house. She says clergy members who abuse children must be defrocked.
“Any priest who lays a wayward hand on any child, or on an adult for that matter, he doesn’t belong in the priesthood. Get him out.”
A Catholic priest removed from churches in metro Detroit after he was accused of sexually abusing a teenager is now the development director of a new Catholic center in Eastpointe he cofounded that counsels pregnant teenagers, prompting calls for him to step down.
The Rev. Kenneth Kaucheck, 69, was banned from public ministry by the Archdiocese of Detroit in 2009 after church officials determined he had sexual misconduct in the 1970s with a 16-year-old girl he was counseling as a priest.
Kaucheck is now a director at the Gianna House Pregnancy and Parenting Residence, next to St. Veronica Catholic Church in Eastpointe. Opened last year in a former convent, the center takes in teenagers and young women who are pregnant, assisting them and any children they might later have.
The website for Gianna House says it “is a sacred sanctuary for its residents, each of whom deserve to continue the life of her unborn child in an environment imbued with spiritual grace, emotional and social support, and knowledge.” The website says its “Board has been selected by Father Ken Kaucheck and Sister Mary Diane Masson to provide a wide range of ideas and skills.”
Joe Kohn, director of public relations for the Archdiocese of Detroit, told the Free Press last week that Kaucheck’s “position at Gianna House violates the restrictions placed on his ministry in 2009. We assert that he should not be allowed to continue in this position.” The archdiocese and advocates for children who are abused by priests are calling for Gianna House to remove Kaucheck.
Kohn said that Kaucheck could be removed under Catholic canon law.
David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said in a statement last month that it’s disconcerting that “a priest who was ousted because he molested a girl now works for a nonprofit that reportedly helps girls.”
“It’s inexcusable for any nonprofit to hire a credibly accused child molesting cleric. A simple Google search would have shown that Fr. Ken is potentially dangerous and should never be given any position or title that confers respect, much less gives him access to vulnerable people.”
Clohessy said there’s a pattern of Catholic officials allowing suspended priests to resurface in other roles, sometimes around children. Prosecutors declined to press charges against Kaucheck in 2009 because they said the girl was at the age of legal consent.
Clohessy also criticized the archdiocese and Archbishop Allen Vigneron for not being more active in alerting Catholics about Kaucheck.
Clohessy said that “Vigneron’s irresponsible secrecy is one reason” why Gianna House’s board chairman, Dr. Robert Welch, “says he was unaware of the accusation against Fr. Kaucheck and Fr. Kaucheck’s suspension.”
Welch told the Macomb Daily that he was not aware of Kaucheck’s history, calling it “shocking news.” Attempts by the Free Press to reach Welch at local hospitals and offices were unsuccessful.
A woman who answered the phone at Gianna House said she would not comment on Kaucheck and would not leave a message for its officials. E-mails sent to Sister Mary Diane Masson, executive director of Gianna House, and Sister Theresa Mayrand, associate director of Gianna House, were not returned. Kaucheck could not be reached for comment.
Masson and Kaucheck were listed as cofounders of Gianna House on the House website, and Kaucheck was also listed as an ex-officio member of its board of directors.
Kaucheck was ordained in 1976 and had served as a pastor or associate pastor at churches in Clawson, Dearborn, Detroit, Troy, Grosse Pointe Woods and Ferndale, according to information from the archdiocese. In 2008, he was appointed pastor at St. Mary Parish in Royal Oak and St. James Parish in Ferndale.
In 2009, a woman came forward with allegations that Kaucheck abused her when he was counseling her at Guardian Angels Parish in Clawson in 1976, when she was a teen.
MINNEAPOLIS — It’s been nearly three years since Minnesota opened a path for lawsuits by victims of long-ago childhood sexual abuse.
In that time, more than 800 people have brought abuse claims against churches, the Boy Scouts, schools, and a children’s theater company. Previously unknown offenders have been exposed.
Two Roman Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy. Lists of credibly accused priests and thousands of documents have been released. And the heightened scrutiny played a part in the downfall of two bishops.
Minnesota’s window, which closes this month, was strongly opposed by the Catholic Church and other institutions that are fighting to block similar exemptions to the statutes of limitations in Pennsylvania and New York, citing the effects in Minnesota and other states.
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for bankruptcy protection last year, and the Duluth diocese followed after a jury found it responsible for $4.8 million of an $8.1 million jury award to just one man.
‘‘This law has been one of the most transformative and far-reaching laws that have ever been passed — to not only protect kids in the community but to give survivors who have been hurt a voice and a chance to recover some power,’’ said attorney Jeff Anderson, who has filed the vast majority of the new cases in Minnesota.
As the May 25 deadline approaches, Anderson said his firm has been so busy that he hadn’t kept a running count of cases until asked. More than half of the claims his firm is handling involve abuse by Catholic clergy, he said, and have forced the release of names of more than 200 alleged molesters who hadn’t been publicly accused before.
‘‘For me all I really wanted was a voice,’’ said Lori Stoltz, one of Anderson’s clients, who says she was 11 when a Catholic priest in Willmar began abusing her.
Stoltz, now 56, had approached Anderson about a lawsuit in 2008, only to learn it wasn’t possible, so she jumped at the chance when Minnesota passed its Child Victims Act in 2013.
Her lawsuit against the Rev. David Roney ultimately led to a settlement that forced the Diocese of New Ulm to release documents including a list of credibly accused priests; the list included Roney, but also others whose names hadn’t surfaced.
FILE PHOTO 2005 – File photo of Rev. David. A. Roney from 3 Oct. 2005 article in the West Central Tribune of Willmar.
In St. Paul, the resignations last year of Archbishop John Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piche came days after the archdiocese was criminally charged with child endangerment over its handling of an abusive priest who ultimately went to prison.
The case wasn’t from an old claim filed under the new law, but it followed increasing pressure resulting from new disclosures in the lawsuits that the law made possible.
The archdiocese turned down an interview request with Archbishop-designate Bernard Hebda or other top officials for this story, instead issuing a statement saying the archdiocese is doing everything reasonably possible to prevent the sexual abuse of children.
States have taken two basic approaches to changing their statutes of limitations to allow new cases, said Marci Hamilton, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York.
California, Hawaii, and Delaware, like Minnesota, created temporary one-time windows. Connecticut and Massachusetts raised their age limits for filing claims and made the change retroactive, an approach she said can help more victims since it’s not temporary.
Passing Minnesota’s window took years of patience and persistence against ‘‘fierce opposition from very powerful institutions,’’ recalled Steve Simon, who authored the bill in the state House and is now Minnesota’s secretary of state.
Much of the discussion took place behind the scenes, and some of the Catholic church’s tactics backfired, he said. Simon said he was particularly rankled by lobbying of House members by the Senate chaplain, who was also the archdiocese’s point man for handling allegations of clergy misconduct.
The church’s opposition has been more public in Pennsylvania, where the House voted last month to raise the age limit for those who file cases from 30 to 50 and to make it retroactive. The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference is urging church members to write their senators in opposition, arguing that ‘‘unfair lawsuits’’ may bankrupt parishes but ‘‘will not provide healing nor protect children.’’ The conference declined an interview request.
