This photo shows the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary in Duluth, Minn., Monday, Dec. 7, 2015. The Diocese of Duluth, a sprawling but sparsely populated Roman Catholic diocese in northeastern Minnesota, filed an emergency petition for federal bankruptcy protection Monday after a jury found it partially responsible for millions of dollars awarded in a clergy sex abuse case last month.
The Diocese of Duluth, a sprawling but sparsely populated Roman Catholic diocese in northeastern Minnesota, filed an emergency petition for federal bankruptcy protection Monday after a jury found it partially responsible for millions of dollars awarded in a clergy sex abuse case last month.
The diocese said the move for Chapter 11 reorganization was necessary after efforts to reach a resolution with all abuse victims were unsuccessful. The diocese is the 15th U.S. diocese or religious order to seek bankruptcy protection in the face of sex abuse claims.
“There is sadness in having to proceed in this fashion,” the diocese’s vicar general, the Rev. James Bissonette, said in a statement on the diocese’s website. He said given the “magnitude of the verdict, the Diocese was left with no choice but to file for reorganization.”
In November, a Ramsey County jury awarded $8.1 million to a man who says he was molested by a priest in northern Minnesota more than 35 years ago when he was a boy. The diocese was held responsible for $4.8 million.
Bissonette said the bankruptcy filing safeguards the diocese’s limited assets while allowing the church’s day-to-day operations to continue. The diocese has more than 56,000 Catholics in 10 counties of northeastern Minnesota, extending south to Pine City, north to the Canadian border and west to Cass Lake.
The diocese’s operating budget for the last fiscal year was nearly $3.3 million. Even with insurance coverage and some available savings, the diocese said it could not cover the verdict, and no money would be available for remaining abuse victims who have brought claims.
William Weis alleged he was sexually abused by the Rev. James Fitzgerald at St. Catherine’s parish in Squaw Lake in 1978. The lawsuit centered on whether the Diocese of Duluth was negligent in how it supervised Fitzgerald, who died in 2009.
Weis was identified as Doe 30 in his lawsuit. The Associated Press normally does not identify possible victims of sex crimes, but one of Weis’ attorneys, Mike Finnegan, said Weis agreed to the use of his name.
The jury found the diocese was 60 percent at fault. Fitzgerald’s order, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, based in St. Paul, was found to be 40 percent at fault.
Finnegan said Monday the bankruptcy filing delays attempts to force the release of church documents on clergy sex abuse that Weis has sought to make public. A hearing on the issue had been set for Dec. 17.
For Weis, releasing the documents “was the primary thing he wanted then and still wants now,” Finnegan said.
But Susan Gaertner, an attorney for the Duluth diocese, said the bankruptcy filing will not interfere with the diocese’s efforts “to be transparent and foster healing.”
She said the diocese faces six lawsuits, including Weis’, as well as 12 additional notices of claims. Attorneys said Weis’ lawsuit was the first lawsuit to go to trial under Minnesota’s Child Victims Act, passed in 2013, that opened a three-year window to file claims for older incidents of abuse. That window closes in May 2016.
Victim Troy Bramlage, with attorney Jeff Anderson, spoke to the media Tuesday. Their lawsuit forced St. John’s Abbey to release the files on priests credibly accused of child sex abuse. “So many offenders were allowed access to so many kids for so many years,” said Anderson.
One priest reported 200 sexual encounters, including some with students at St. John’s University and prep school.
Another recorded the names of dozens of boys he brought to a cabin, some of whom he sexually abused.
Another abuser was paid $30,000 by St. John’s Abbey to support him as he left the clergy.
These are among findings from the first batch of personnel files from St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville made public Tuesday. The abbey was required to release its internal files on priests credibly accused of child sex abuse as part of a lawsuit settled earlier this year. It marks the first time the abbey — implicated in clergy abuse cases for two decades — has opened its confidential files.
The files include the abuse accusations, abbey response, and psychological assessments of the men from roughly the 1960s to a few years ago. That includes a 2012 assessment of the Rev. Finian McDonald, who told a psychologist that he had about 200 sexual encounters as a priest.
McDonald reported that his youngest victims were 13- or 14-year-old prostitutes in Thailand, that he had 18 victims while serving as a prefect at St. John’s dormitories, and that he had acted out sexually and abused alcohol during most of his 29 years as a dormitory prefect. Sexual encounters also occurred with adults.
The abbey issued a written statement in response to the document release by victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson.
“There are documents in each file which may be quoted and framed in a lurid context,” wrote abbey spokesman Brother Aelred Senna. “But the huge majority of the documents in each of these files acknowledges the very real failures of some monks while showing each of the accused monks as a fallible, relatable person.”
The files “show that the Abbey did not try to cover up allegations and did a reasonable job of managing the monk and the problem,” he wrote.
However, Anderson, whose lawsuit forced the file release, said the magnitude of sexual encounters reported in just the five priest files indicates that many more students or other minors have not stepped forward to report abuse.
“So many offenders were allowed access to so many kids for so many years,” said Anderson at a news conference. “This reflects to us … that there are dozens and hundreds of survivors that are yet to be known.”
In addition to McDonald, files were also released on the Rev. Tom Gillespie, former priest Fran Hoefgen, the Rev. Bruce Wollmering and the Rev. Richard Eckroth. Eckroth and Wollmering are deceased.
Hoefgen was acquitted earlier this year of sexually abusing a boy while he was a priest in a Hastings parish. However, the files show that Hoefgen admitted to abusing a teen in the early 1980s. And in 1994, Hoefgen reported to then-Abbot Timothy Kelly that he had a sexual encounter with a St. John’s student in the student’s dorm room, the files show.
The abbey eventually gave Hoefgen a $30,000 “gift” to help him transition out of the priesthood.
St. John’s is one of the largest Benedictine monasteries in North America. It shares a campus with students at St. John’s prep school and those at St. John’s University. Many of its priests also have served Twin Cities parishes.
Both McDonald and Wollmering worked for decades as student counselors. The files show that Wollmering received a psychological diagnosis in 2004 of “sexual disorder with compulsive and exploitive behaviors.” A St. John’s student reported in 2006 that Wollmering bragged to him that he had 300 “sexual partners.”
Anderson said the abbey allowed known offenders to have access to minors, and he questioned the enforcement of the safety plans that are supposed to restrict the priests’ access to kids.
Gillespie, for example, abused a child in Stillwater in 1978 and had restricted access to minors, the documents show. But in 2013, a student complained that Gillespie was sending him e-mails and showing up unwanted at his school events.
Eckroth, meanwhile, brought boys to a St. John’s cabin for years, giving and getting massages to the boys while naked in the sauna.
Troy Bramlage is the St. Cloud man whose lawsuit against the abbey was settled with the provision that the personnel files be released. He said he hopes that more victims will step forward, as the scope and details of the abuse is revealed.
“People need to know they don’t have to suffer alone,” he said.
The abbey has identified 19 priests credibly accused of child sex abuse. Files on the others will be released in the months ahead, said Anderson.
Richard Sipes, a former priest and monk, is an expert on the sexual abuse of minors by clergy.
In the new movie “Spotlight,” a character describes Richard Sipe as a “hippie ex-priest shacking up with some nun.”
When the real Sipe heard this line, he laughed. The 82-year-old La Jollan is often called worse: Traitor.
Sipe never appears on screen in “Spotlight,” a dramatization of the Boston Globe’s 2001-02 investigation of the Catholic Church covering up the crimes of pedophile priests. Yet his insights, formed after decades of research on priests, permeate the film.
A psychotherapist who treated troubled clergy, Sipe drew on about 500 case files for his 1990 study of celibacy, “A Secret World.” Another 500 priests were also interviewed, plus an equal number of lay people who had been sex partners — as adults or children, willing or unwilling — of Catholic clergy.
His conclusions: At any one time, no more than half of priests are practicing celibacy. Most of the others are engaged in sexual relationships with women or men, but Sipe found that 6 percent prey on minors. (After further research, he revised that figure to 6 percent to 9 percent.)
A scholarly work from a small publishing house — New York’s Brunner/Mazel — “Secret World” nonetheless rocked a 2,000-year-old global institution.
“This is very important and has to be published,” an abbot told Sipe after reading the manuscript. “But it’s a good thing the church no longer castrates or burns at the stake, or you would be in trouble.”
While he escaped execution, Sipe has been verbally flogged for 25 years. TheMediaReport.com, a website decrying “media bias in coverage of sex abuse in the Catholic Church,” calls Sipe “an angry ex-priest” who uses “the issue of clergy sex abuse as a means to advance his attack on the Catholic Church, especially its teachings regarding human sexuality.”
Victims of sexual abuse, though, praise the man and his work.
“He’s an absolute hero,” said David Clohessy, executive director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). “He’s just a very wise and compassionate man who has made an enormous contribution to understanding and exposing this crisis.”
In his office at home, the walls are covered with reproductions of murals depicting the Last Judgment. A computer dominates one desk, a sculpted nude female torso another. In his lair, Sipe looks neither angelic nor demonic. He looks frail — a walker waits by his chair, thanks to old skiing injuries — yet joyful.
“I don’t have any regrets about what I went through,” he said. “I couldn’t have accomplished any of this without being a monk and a priest.”
‘What it’s about’
Sipe grew up in Minnesota, part of a large Catholic family. He remembers his parents as faithful, not fanatical. It was his idea, not theirs, for the naive ninth-grader to enter a Benedictine seminary.
“I was one of 10 kids,” he said. “You had to stand out in some way!”
He was allowed to date through high school, and 70 years later can still rattle off the names of girlfriends. His monastic preparations continued, though, through college. He became a Benedictine monk in 1953 and a priest in that order in 1959, vowing obedience, poverty and chastity.
That last vow didn’t worry him, Sipe said, thanks to his ignorance. “You don’t know what it’s about, what sex is about, what an adult sexual relationship is or what it’s like to fall in love.”
While studying psychiatry and religion in Rome, he grew fascinated by the question of why some priests — such as the Very Rev. Ulric Beste, a Vatican official and a mentor — remained celibate and others did not.
He continued his studies at St. John’s University Mental Health Institute in Minnesota and as a fellow at the Menninger Foundation. At Maryland’s Seton Psychiatric Institute, a hospital where struggling priests were sent for treatment, he collected data on the sexual lives of his patients.
In 1966, Margaret Mead toured Seton. The anthropologist encouraged the priest to study this matter in a dispassionate manner. To this day, Sipe doesn’t refer to errant priests as “pedophiles.”
“I say they are priests who have sex with minors,” he said.
Sipe’s tone, especially in “Secret World” and a 2003 sequel, “Celibacy in Crisis,” is free of outrage and judgment. Some victims are disturbed by this clinical approach, but not SNAP’s executive director.
“There’s just way too much blaming and shaming and anger by people from all sides in this crisis,” Clohessy said. “Richard does a superb job of focusing on behavior and not beliefs, on facts and not theories.”
He’s also more than a scholar. As a fellow priest, he understood his peers’ struggles.
“I was part of the culture,” he said. “And I was a data keeper.”
That data would help direct the Boston Globe’s investigation, which inspired similar probes. As the church’s sex scandal erupted around the world, it seemed that no diocese was free of predatory priests — including San Diego.
Persona non grata
In his 30s, Father Sipe fell into a severe depression. In therapy, he came to the conclusion that he could no longer serve as a priest. In 1970, he was granted dispensation from his priestly vows.
Soon after, he married Marianne Benkert, a former nun and psychiatrist who had worked at Baltimore’s Loyola University. He opened a private practice, taught, wrote and devoted himself to his new role as husband.
Soon, he was a father. Walter Sipe, the couple’s son, graduated from Harvard and enrolled in the UC San Diego School of Medicine. His parents bought a La Jolla home in 1996, where their son took up residence. Three years later, after he graduated, his parents moved in.
Sipe was in La Jolla when the Globe learned of his research. In October 2001, he and Marianne flew to Boston to meet with the journalists. After the Spotlight team’s first stories on sexual abuse by clergy appeared in 2002, Sipe was contacted by media from around the world.
He’s still sought as a source and an expert witness. To date, he’s testified in about 250 cases brought against Roman Catholic priests accused of rape and other sexual crimes. He’s also been invited to speak on college campuses, in public forums, in conferences addressing this crisis.
One place he hasn’t been invited: The offices of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego.
“I’ve been blackballed,” Sipe said. “Bishop Robert Brom sent his chancellor here to say I was not welcome in the chancery. If I came, it would only be in the presence of a lawyer.”
In San Diego, so many victims came forward that the diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2007. Later that year, the church agreed to pay $198.1 million to 144 victims. The diocese’s bankruptcy petition would be terminated in January 2014.
The diocese, Robert McElroy said when he was named San Diego’s bishop this March, had to do a better job of preventing these crimes.
“We can never relax on that issue,” McElroy said then. “We can never think we have done enough to have put that in the past.”
This week, the diocese declined several Union-Tribune requests to outline steps it has taken to prevent a recurrence.
In the long run
These crimes are not committed only by Catholic clergy, a truth that was underscored last week by two news stories. Former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle was sentenced to prison for possessing child pornography and having intercourse with two minors; and the Associated Press reported that military prisons contain more sexual abusers of children than any other type of offender.
Next year, Sipe himself will testify in child sex abuse cases involving two non-Catholic religious leaders.
Yet he is convinced that the crisis in the Catholic Church is unique, and rooted in that institution’s attitudes toward sex and gender. While he welcomes the new tone set by Pope Francis, he doesn’t expect any rapid changes.
“I think there is something starting,” he said. “But the real change will not come until the church allows optional celibacy and the ordination of women.
“And these changes will cause more problems, and then more changes. This is an evolutionary process.”
Change is constant, even in an institution that seems to move at a glacial pace. Those images of the Last Judgment on the walls of Sipe’s study? One is a reproduction of an 11th-century work, showing a welcoming Christ in a vast paradise. Hell is almost an afterthought, shunted to a small corner of the canvas.
“Now look at Michelangelo,” Sipe said, gesturing to the framed poster of the 16th-century painting on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. Half of this masterwork is devoted to souls being hurled into damnation.
Sipe laughed. “That says it all.”
Years ago, Sipe stopped attending weekly Mass. He’s not a member of any parish and doesn’t regularly partake of the sacraments. But ask if he’s given up on the faith of his childhood, and he smiles.
“My view of being a Catholic is that I am a Catholic in the long run of things,” said the former priest and ex-monk. “I am a part of the change.”
The Church wants clergy to be ready to help those for whom the film triggers painful memories
Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, left, with New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan in Rome in 2012. The US bishops have issued guidelines to help dioceses respond to questions about the “Spotlight” movie on clergy sexual abuse.
By Lisa Wangsness
Roman Catholic Church leaders in the United States have sent talking points to dioceses around the country to help them prepare for the release of the movie “Spotlight,” highlighting the progress the Church says it has made in preventing and responding to the sexual abuse of children by clergy.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops drew up the guidance and statistics in September in anticipation of the movie’s release, said Don Clemmer, a spokesman for the bishops. He said Church leaders wanted dioceses to be ready to speak to victims who experienced pain with the release of the movie, and to show them — and the wider public — that the Church has changed.
Letters from bishops and stories in diocesan newspapers issued in recent days endeavor to portray a Church dramatically — and permanently — transformed by the abuse crisis since The Boston Globe’s 2002 investigation of clergy abuse and the coverup by Church hierarchy. The film chronicles that Globe investigation.
In their public responses so far, the bishops reiterate apologies to victims and in some cases offer phone numbers they can call to seek counseling or report abuse. They also detail abuse prevention efforts, renew vows to immediately report abuse complaints to civil authorities, and highlight the American Church’s zero-tolerance policy that mandates the removal of predators from the Church.
“I can tell you unequivocally that anything that raises awareness of the crime of sexual abuse of minors and encourages transparency is a good thing,” Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger of Albany, N.Y., said in a statement. “I certainly hope ‘Spotlight’ will be a vehicle to communicate the truth and advance the dialogue regarding the protection of children.”
The diocesan newspaper in Orange County, Calif., hinted at the daunting scale of the task for the Church: In that diocese in 2014, it reported, 244 priests, 108 deacons, 1,741 teachers, and more than 27,550 school employees and volunteers underwent training to help prevent abuse, and nearly 55,000 children participated in “safe environment” education.
Because the movie will not open nationwide until Nov. 20, most bishops in the United States have not seen it. The film began showing in Boston and a few other cities last Friday.
“Spotlight” ends with a long list of dioceses in the United States and around the world where similar coverups of clergy sexual abuse of children came to light after the Globe’s revelations about the Archdiocese of Boston. A recent report by the National Catholic Reporter found that clergy abuse — which the Church once silenced by settling with victims and swearing them to secrecy — has cost the Catholic Church in America $4 billion since 1950 in settlements, therapy for victims, and other costs.
“In our experience, Catholics and others will take the movie as proof of what is happening today, not what happened in the past,” the “Spotlight Resources” memo from the bishops group said. “Do not let past events discourage you. This is an opportunity to raise the awareness of all that has been done to prevent child sexual abuse in the church.”
Clemmer said the memo was sent to “safe environment” coordinators in each diocese, who oversee diocesan programs and policies to prevent abuse. The aim was to prepare prelates and Church workers to help those for whom the film triggers painful memories, particularly victims who have never come forward before, he said.
“Anybody who comes forward should know that the Church is ready to accompany them,” Clemmer said. “It’s a spirit of gratitude for people who have the courage to come forward, and who make the Church and children safer.”
In late October, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston and a top adviser to Pope Francis on clergy sexual abuse policy, was among the first to issue a statement on the movie. He said the Church must continue to seek forgiveness from victims and to make amends. Terrence C. Donilon, a spokesman for O’Malley, said the cardinal wrote the statement himself and it was not issued as part of a coordinated campaign.
The advisory memo from the Conference of Catholic Bishops counsels dioceses to acknowledge the Church’s wrongdoing, as well as the role of journalists and victims in helping to uncover its harboring of pedophile priests. Bishops, it said, should “be open and transparent” about any abuse in their dioceses.
And it urges them to describe the policy changes that the American Church implemented after the scandal, including requirements that clergy, staff, seminarians, and volunteers working with children undergo background checks and safe environment training, and that children be educated on the issue.
“Remain vigilant,” the memo adds. “This is a reminder we cannot afford to become complacent.”
But Terence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, an organization that tracks the abuse crisis, said the bishops have failed to fully address issues related to the abuse crisis that remain unresolved.
For example, he said, the bishops could have agreed to make lists of abusive priests available nationwide. Only about 30 of the 178 dioceses have done so, he said. Boston is one that has provided a list, although advocates complain it is incomplete. More than 2,400 abusive priests nationwide have never been named, he said, and it is impossible to know how many are still living.
“In a way, the movie is all about that issue: Who are these men who have done these things, how many are there, what are their names? Where have they worked? What have they done? It’s all about making a list,” he said. “I think it’s such an obvious thing to address for the bishops, especially those who haven’t made a list yet.”
He said the bishops should have acknowledged some of the more notable failures to enforce the Church’s new zero-tolerance protocols — in Kansas City, Mo., and Minneapolis, for example — and suggest ways the Church could do better.
One bishop who explicitly spoke of the Church’s efforts as a work-in-progress, rather than a closed chapter in history, was Archbishop Michael Jackels of Dubuque, Iowa. He posted a statement on the diocesan website that was remarkable for its bluntness.
“Would I prefer that this not be played out on the silver screen? Sure. The trailer alone is painful to watch,” he wrote. “But that pain I am sure doesn’t even come close to what victims, their families, or the Catholic faithful have to suffer from the scandal of clergy sexual abuse.”
He continued, saying that even though failing to report or remove an offender is rare compared with past practice, “it too still happens, and when it does, a shadow is cast on the church’s efforts to restore trust and to provide a safe environment.
“And so I suppose the story told by the movie bears repeating until all of us get all of it right.”
The jury attributed 60 percent fault to the Diocese of Duluth and the other 40 percent to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a religious order based in St. Paul. The victim testified that he was molested by the Rev. James Vincent Fitzgerald for two weeks and that church officials failed to adequately supervise the priest, leading to the sex assault. It’s the first such case to go to trial under Minnesota’s Child Victims Act, which temporarily lifted the statute of limitations to allow victims to sue for sexual abuse which occurred decades ago. The award was less than the $11.7 million Weis had been seeking.
Attorneys said it was the first lawsuit to go to trial under Minnesota’s Child Victims Act, passed in 2013. That law opened a three-year window to file claims for older incidents of abuse.
In 1978, he traveled to the St. Catherine Parish in Squaw Lake, Minn., part of the Diocese of Duluth. It’s rare for a clergy sexual abuse case to actually reach a jury verdict. Anderson had asked jurors in his closing arguments Tuesday to find the diocese 90 percent responsible and the Oblates 10 percent responsible.
Diocese attorney Susan Gaertner declined to comment after the verdicts were read. They awarded Doe 30 $8.1 million for pain, suffering, loss of earnings and future medical costs. Fitzgerald, who worked at six parishes within the Diocese of Duluth between 1957 and 1983, died in 2009. “Through coming forward and standing up to them and taking this case to trial, that whole process was transformative for this survivor”, Finnegan said. “I think this verdict sends a clear message that juries are not going to stand still anymore and sympathize with the church”.
Anderson said he expects the diocese to appeal the verdicts and challenge the monetary award. Law experts say this verdict sets an important precedent for the hundreds of abuse cases that are pending right now against the Archdioses of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and other diocese in Minnesota. Wednesday, he said that he supported the jurors’ findings. “The reality is that the diocese has limited resources”, she said.
