Category: Legal Shenanigans

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Monsignor: Philly cardinal shredded abuse list

A Roman Catholic church official facing trial in a priest child abuse scandal created a list of problem priests in 1994, but Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua had it destroyed, according to a defense memo filed Friday.

Monsignor William Lynn, who’s accused of keeping predator priests in ministry and transferring them from parish to parish, wants his child endangerment case dismissed because of new evidence turned over by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, including his list of 35 accused priests.

Lynn took it upon himself to review secret church files after becoming secretary for clergy in 1992, and he later gave a list of accused, still-active priests to his superior, Monsignor James E. Molloy.

Bevilacqua had Molloy shred four copies of the list, according to a memo signed by Molloy and a witness. But Molloy kept a copy in a locked safe at the archdiocese, where it was found in 2006, after Lynn had moved on, according to his motion.

“It is clear from the Molloy memo, and (its) belated production, that Monsignor Lynn has been `hung out to dry,'” the defense motion says.

Lynn, who is charged with conspiracy and child endangerment, maintains his innocence. He has long argued that he took orders from Bevilacqua and is being made a scapegoat for the church’s sex abuse scandal.

Prosecutors themselves blasted Bevilacqua in two grand jury reports but never charged him with a crime. They have called the archdiocese and others “unindicted co-conspirators.”

Bevilacqua appeared before the first grand jury 10 times in 2003 and 2004 and denied any attempt to obstruct the investigation, according to Lynn’s motion. He died last month at age 88.

Molloy also denied destroying any documents from the secret archives, according to an excerpt of his grand jury testimony. He also is dead.

Late last year, Bevilacqua, who was suffering from dementia and cancer, gave a videotaped deposition that can be used at trial, but the value of his testimony remains unclear. Lynn’s lawyers have fought to have it excluded, based in part on Bevilacqua’s dementia. They renewed that request Friday, saying they never had a chance to ask Bevilacqua if he had Lynn’s list destroyed.

Lynn is the first U.S. church official charged for his administrative action. Jury selection is under way, with testimony scheduled to start March 26. A priest and an ex-priest charged with rape are on trial with him, and they also maintain their innocence.

A gag order prevents prosecutors or the archdiocese, which serves 1.5 million Roman Catholics, from commenting on Lynn’s allegations. Lynn, 61, would faces up to 28 years in prison if convicted on all counts against him.

Complete Article HERE!

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Lawyers press for more SNAP documents, testimony

Attorneys who deposed the director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in January are requesting he be compelled to give more testimony and allege that the group is not covered by confidentiality protections afforded to rape crisis centers, court filings reveal.

The documents, dated Feb. 10 but obtained by NCR on Wednesday, relate to a Kansas City, Mo., court case that made headlines in December when it became the first where lawyers sought the deposition of a SNAP leader and requested that the organization hand over 23 years of internal records, correspondence and email.

Speaking to NCR, David Clohessy, the group’s director and subject of the Jan. 2 deposition, said the continuing legal battle over the case has left the group “basically broke” and “without enough money for the next payroll.”

Clohessy, who said after his deposition that he had refused to answer many of the lawyers’ questions and to submit many of the requested documents, also said the financial struggles led him to release his lawyer. He said he is currently representing himself in the case while he searches for a lawyer willing to serve pro bono.

The Feb. 10 motion, filed in the case of Kansas City diocesan priest Fr. Michael Tierney, requests that Jackson County, Mo., Circuit Court Judge Ann Mesle compel Clohessy to answer the questions he refused to answer in the deposition and provide the documents he withheld.

Mesle’s ruling in the case could have wider significance, as SNAP has also been subpoenaed to provide similar testimony and documents in a case involving allegations of sexual misconduct against a priest in the St. Louis archdiocese.

Clohessy and Barbara Dorris, SNAP’s outreach director, received subpoenas in January requesting their deposition in that case. Depositions were originally set for Wednesday but have since been postponed.

While some of the information contained in the suggestions made by Tierney’s lawyers in connection with the Feb. 10 motion has already been reported, the 34-page filing also seems to reveal key parts of the lawyers’ strategy, giving reasons why they believe Clohessy should be forced to answer their questions.

The motion also represents the first time information about the testimony has officially been made public. While court filings indicate that Mesle ordered parts of the proceeding’s transcript to be unsealed in late January, a clerk with the Jackson County courthouse said it had not yet been released because it is still under review by attorneys in the caseWhile Mesle had ordered Clohessy to turn over eight categories of documents from SNAP’s files during the deposition, the motion alleges the SNAP leader did not submit documents in six of the eight categories requested and only submitted a portion of those requested in the seventh and eighth.

The motion gives eight categories of arguments for why Clohessy should be compelled to answer more questions in the case. The motion devotes 16 pages to refuting SNAP’s arguments that it has confidentiality protections afforded by Missouri law for rape crisis centers.

Among nine separately developed points in that regard, the motion alleges that Clohessy’s answers to some of the questions in the deposition “demonstrate that SNAP is not an RCC [rape crisis center],” and proceeds to list 20 separate reasons from his testimony that the group such not be considered such an organization.

Included in those reasons is the fact that SNAP has “never advertised itself” as such a center, that Clohessy does not have any formal training or education in rape crisis counseling, that SNAP does not employ any licensed counselors in Missouri, and that the group’s tax returns for 2006-10 did not make reference to it being a rape crisis center.

Additionally, the motion alleges that public information demonstrates that SNAP is not such a center — specifically the fact that the group “does not appear” to be in partnership with the National Sexual Assault Hotline and that it was not found in the Yellow Pages under listings of rape crisis centers.

Among other reasons the motion gives for arguing that SNAP is not covered by Missouri’s protections for rape crisis centers is the fact that Clohessy allegedly said in the deposition that the group would not release confidential information about survivors even if they sign a waiver allowing him to.

Rebecca Randles, the attorney representing the plaintiff in the abuse case, said in a phone interview Thursday that she thought the motion’s arguments that SNAP could not qualify as a rape crisis center were not “very weighty.”

Referring to one of the arguments the motion makes against SNAP’s qualifications to fit into that definition because Clohessy works out of his home, Randles said the determination for protections under Missouri law come from the substance of what an organization does, not where it is located.

“You have to look at the substance,” Randles said. “The whole question really is: Do people go there because they’re in crisis from sexual assault? And the answer is absolutely, yes they do.”

“The vast bulk of what they do is support victims of rape and assault, so they have to be a rape crisis center,” she said.

Following news of the subpoena requesting Clohessy’s deposition in December, 10 victims’ advocacy groups filed an amicus brief on behalf of SNAP to Missouri’s Supreme Court, writing that Clohessy’s testimony would amount to a “violation of the anonymity and confidentiality” of SNAP members and volunteers and is “plainly unconstitutional.”

Included in that group of organizations were the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse, the KidSafe Foundation and The National Child Protection Training Center.

Beyond claiming that SNAP should not be considered a rape crisis center under Missouri law, the motion also alleges that were the group to be considered such a center, its conversations with some survivors would not be covered by confidentiality privileges.

Noting that lawsuits filed on behalf of abuse victims regularly include language about how victims have suffered some sort of mental injury from their abuse, the motion alleges that SNAP is “not entitled to the protection of a privilege due to the alleged victims placing their emotional state and mental conditions at issue.”

Specifically, the motion alleges that because several victims in the Kansas City cases claim their memories returned to them years after the abuse, the fact that Clohessy would not discuss the matter indicates they are “trying to shield the very information that would lead a jury to understand that person’s medical history.”

“The matter before this Court involves repressed memory, physical, emotional, and mental injuries,” reads the motion. “The Plantiffs have placed their physical, emotional, and mental conditions at issue, and, therefore, the information possessed by SNAP on these issues is clearly relevant, and any privileges, if any, have been waived.”

Among the additional information the motion confirms about Clohessy’s testimony is that lawyers representing five other Kansas City-area priests accused of abuse listed “cross-notice” for his deposition, allowing them to be present and ask questions.

The motion requests that each of those attorneys also receive copies of the requested SNAP documents.

Mesle had ordered Clohessy to submit documents and correspondence, including emails, from SNAP’s files referring to Tierney or the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese. Among other categories, Clohessy was also ordered to submit all documents containing references to either Tierney or the diocese from correspondence with the press and the public.

The motion alleges that Clohessy refused to turn over any documents referring to Tierney, and also alleges that he did not turn over requested records of his correspondence with Randles.

The motion also requests that “reasonable attorney fees” be awarded to Tierney’s lawyers for “expenses incurred to obtain” such a court order.

The motion suggests that a “special master,” a legal term for someone authorized to supervise the following of a court order, be appointed in the case to determine “what questions would be proper” to ask of Clohessy and to be present during any additional deposition in order “to make appropriate rulings.”

A hearing on the motion has been set for April 20. Brian Madden, one of the lawyers representing Tierney, said he could not comment on the matter because of a gag order in the case.

For his part, Clohessy said he was still considering what formal reply he might submit to the motion and said he was not sure what the next steps are for SNAP.

Part of the reason for the group’s financial struggles, he said, is that they “never had any inkling that church lawyers would come after us so fast and furiously and never budgeted for it.”

Asked what would happen if Mesle were to order him to answer questions he refused to in the deposition or to submit documents he claims are confidential, he said he would “cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“It’s just hard to imagine that we’ll be forced to violate the privacy of people who have come to us for help, especially people who are so deeply wounded.”

Complete Article HERE!

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200 priests suspected of abuse living in California, victims’ lawyer says

Some 200 Catholic priests suspected of sexual abuse are living undetected in communities across California, according to an attorney who represents hundreds of plaintiffs who sued the LA Archdiocese alleging molestation they say was inflicted on them by priests and clergy of the church.

Ray Boucher has mapped 60 locations where suspect priests live, in cities and towns from northern to southern California, and provided those locations to NBC4 exclusively.

“Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse,” Boucher said. “They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers.”

Since none of the priests has actually been convicted of sex abuse, none can be identified under Megan’s Law, or their whereabouts revealed in related public databases.

“What the issue is here, is how you weigh the right of the people,” said Boucher, who is also one of the attorneys representing students in the Miramonte Elementary School sex abuse scandal. “In particular the right of children to be protected from molestation versus the right of privacy.”

‘Public is often too squeamish’
Among Boucher’s many clients in the church action are Manuel Vega and Dan Smith.

Vega is a former police officer from Oxnard who took special interest in sex crimes investigations because, he says, he was sexually abused as a teenager by his parish priest.

“He forced me to masturbate while he took pictures of me,” said Vega, who believes that the public is often too squeamish to recognize what child molestation actually entails – and thus not properly outraged by it.

“When we talk about sexual abuse we’re talking about sodomy,” he said. “There’s pubic hair, there’s sweat, there’re smells, there’re grunts.”
Dan Smith, another alleged abuse victim, is reeling from the recent collapse of his marriage which he blames in part on the psychological effects of the molestation he says he suffered as a child – at the hands of his local parish priest.

“He would rape me and then say this is what God’s love feels like,” Smith said, struggling to hold back tears more than twenty years after the alleged incidents.

Both men helped make legal history by joining 500 other plaintiffs in suing the LA Archdiocese for sexual molestation, with Boucher as their lead attorney.

In 2007 the LA Archdiocese reached an unprecedented $660 million settlement with many of the plaintiffs without admitting any wrong-doing.
It also agreed to let the courts decide which of the case-related church files should be made public, including those identifying alleged and admitted predators.

But according to Boucher and court documents, the Catholic Church has since engaged in a cover-up. By Boucher’s account, church officials allowed priests suspected of sexually abusing children to retire, flee the country or hide in rehab clinics until the statute of limitations on prosecution ran out.

“What the church did is take these guys and send them off to facilities where they treat pedophile priests without ever alerting police,” Boucher said. “By enabling these priests to be hidden for so many years the church protected them from being prosecuted.”

Priests’ attorney: ‘That’s not fair’
Meanwhile legal disputes delayed the release of the promised personnel files, and Donald Steir, an attorney for several priests, went to court to argue that those who’ve been accused but not convicted should have their names and privacy protected.

“They are being punished as if they have been convicted, or at least that’s the desire – to punish them,” Steir said. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s difficult if you represent an alleged terrorist or a pedophile, because people don’t really care about the rights [including privacy rights] for these type of people,” Steir said. “But once we erode the rights of a group of people we don’t like, we effectively have started down a path where other people’s rights can be similarly denied.”

The courts, expressing concern for children, overruled most of these arguments and similar ones by the Archdiocese, which declined to comment for this story.

And a judge has ordered release of some personnel files, set for some time in the coming weeks. But he also credited the church for its increased sensitivity in dealing with molestation cases and decided to withhold the names of church officials who handled the earlier cases.

It is a ruling that reminds Boucher of the breakdown in accountability in the Penn state pedophile scandal.

“Look at Penn State and see how important and significant it is when people in authority enable sexual abusers to continue,” Boucher said. “That underscores how significant it is to get these names out.”

Under the judge’s ruling the church can also keep secret, subject to further court review, the names of priests who have not been convicted and who have only one or two allegations against them or have allegations disputed by the church.

To Smith that seems like a formula for further cover-up by church officials.

“If their interests were to protect the kids, they would have released the documents,” Smith said. “As a parent not knowing who your neighbor is — that is really scary.”

Many of these unidentified priests are included in Boucher’s location map.
“The danger,” said Vega, “is that you have a person who has this sickness in them who is amongst the children.”

The plaintiffs in the church scandal are planning to appeal the latest rulings to assure broader disclosure of suspects’ names and locations. But Boucher warned this could take time, allowing suspects to keep their privacy protected, as well as their undetected presence in neighborhoods across California.

Complete Article HERE!

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JOANN FITZPATRICK: Catholic church, political opportunists fail as role models and leaders

COMMENTARY

Catholic church, political opportunists froth over perceived affronts but repeatedly fail as role models and leaders.

You cannot be a woman and a Catholic without having a stiff set of blinders to screen out so much about the church that makes women fourth-rate participants.

The Catholic hierarchy operates in a bubble, reconfirming at every opportunity that these men have no awareness of how most Catholics live their lives.

The ruckus over the new health insurance law and contraception is just the latest and loudest example. Never mind that reputable surveys show 98 percent of American Catholics have used birth control, the official church rushes to the barricades, determined to keep reality at bay.

Never mind that the health insurance provision that caused this trumped-up outrage would not force Catholic hospitals or other religious institutions to dispense birth control. That would have been wrong, but that was not the case. The stipulation in the new health care law is that insurance companies will provide birth control to women at no cost. That meant insurance plans offered by religious-affiliated institutions would have to include the birth control provision. The link between the Catholic Church and federal government is that most large Catholic institutions – hospitals and universities – accept federal money for research or services.

The Catholic Church position on birth control would be harder to swallow if it did not have such disastrous results: It condemns the poor in Africa and Latin America to wretched lives in which children, at best, face a future of deprivation and at worst die within a few years of birth. Where is the compassion? The poor we may always have with us but it is painful to observe the church’s active role in perpetuating poverty.

Here in the United State the church rages against abortion while crusading against family planning in general and the organization Planned Parenthood in particular. The illogic of this position – given that family planning is the easiest, cheapest way to prevent abortion – is of no consequence to church leaders, none of whom will ever have a conversation with a gynecologist. Theirs is a unique set of blinders.

The contraception flap was a godsend to the Republican presidential candidates, coming as it did just when economic indicators showed the economy continuing to improve. Mon Dieu! Good news – what’s an angry candidate to do? One-up the Catholic bishops by accusing the president of “waging war on the Catholic Church,” as Newt Gingrich did with relish.

This is the same twice-divorced Gingrich who was baptized into the Catholic Church in 2009 by no less than the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Weurl. Newtie discovered Catholicism some years after discovering his then-mistress Callista, which happened at the time he was married and flogging President Clinton for discovering Monica Lewinsky. I don’t know whether Cardinal Weurl was among the church leaders who had called for denying Communion to Democrats Ted Kennedy and John Kerry – both divorced Catholics. But consistency is a fleeting thing with the Catholic hierarchy, especially where politicians are concerned.

The White House had little choice but to find a compromise that would calm the furor so it decided insurance companies would pay for birth control if women getting their medical coverage at a Catholic institution asked for it. Predictably, the more hard-line bishops continue to see red.

It’s fascinating to watch these men assert themselves so authoritatively as arbiters of personal morality when the fallout from the sex abuse scandal is still very much with us. Church leaders would like to think that’s ancient history but it’s not. Because most priests are good men who were not involved, I and other Catholics are sticking with the church, believing the same horrific actions will not occur again. But the anger over what happened – the enabling and concealing of crimes against children – simmers just below the surface.

Amid the howls over the contraception dispute, little attention was paid last week when one of the best-known American cardinals, Edward Egan, former bishop in Bridgeport and archbishop in New York, said he regretted his 2002 apology for what happened in Bridgeport. Egan, 79 and retired, now says, “I don’t think we did anything wrong.” And he maintains the church in Connecticut has no obligation to report sex abuse allegations to authorities.

This is stunning. It not only reopens wounds for dozens of Bridgeport victims but also reveals once again how impossible it is for some men of the cloth to acknowledge their responsibility in the real world and, most especially, to the law.

Those Republicans, including Sen. Scott Brown – who had better sense on the issue as a state senator – who think they can convert a woman’s health issue into a question of religious freedom are underestimating the good sense of the public at large, just as the Catholic bishops do.

Complete Article HERE!

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Whiff of scandal clouds Pope ceremony in Vatican

Pope Benedict XVI will place red hats on the heads of 22 new cardinals on Saturday amid an atmosphere of scandal-mongering, rumour and media leaks from inside the Vatican.

The leaks concern alleged internal divisions and even malpractice among the senior bishops and cardinals at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church.

Most of the new cardinals will be granted the right to take part in the election of Pope Benedict’s successor.

It is the fourth Vatican Consistory since Benedict was elected Pope seven years ago, and is being held to bring the College of Cardinals to its full electoral quorum of 120, after deaths and age disqualifications depleted its numbers.

It must be the world’s oldest exclusively male club – the average age of members is 78.

The Italian contingent will grow to almost a quarter of the total – more than that of any other country and making it more likely that the next pope will be Italian, after the choice of a Pole and Benedict – a German – in recent decades.

The Pope’s Italian aide, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has been instrumental in pushing Italians for promotion.

Key appointments among the new cardinals are the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, and the Bishop of Hong Kong, John Tong Hon.

During Saturday’s ceremony Pope Benedict is due to announce the date for the canonisation of the first Native American saint, a Mohawk girl called Kateri Tekakwitha who lived in the 17th Century.

Corruption allegations
In the run-up to this Consistory it emerged that the Pope’s current ambassador (nuncio) to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, had written to the Pope confidentially last March, alleging corruption, nepotism and cronyism inside the office where he worked.

Elderly men dominate the College of Cardinals
Nepotism is a word charged with heavy meaning inside the Vatican. For centuries popes were accustomed to appoint their own nephews as cardinals, sometimes when they were only in their teens.

Archbishop Vigano’s letter was leaked by an Italian investigative journalist during a TV transmission on the independent Italian Channel La Sette. The Vatican has not contested that the letter is genuine.

Another leak concerns attempts by the Holy See to combat suspicions of money-laundering by the Vatican Bank.

Published by the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, which has consistently reported on alleged suspicious transactions at the bank, the document bears the signature of Cardinal Attilio Nicora. He heads a new internal committee tasked by the Pope with helping the Holy See comply with international banking regulations, aimed at combating international financial crime.

The letter suggests serious divisions of opinion inside the Vatican over how best to prevent it becoming a fiscal paradise, a tax haven for dodgy commercial operations run by nominees who have no right to hold accounts at the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).

Whistleblowers criticised
During the 1980s the IOR – the formal name of the Vatican Bank – was at the centre of a major international financial scandal which resulted in a loss for the Vatican of $250m (£158m). Vatican Bank accounts are supposed to be held only by religious orders and members of the clergy.

The Vatican’s own daily newspaper Osservatore Romano wrote in a recent editorial that officials who revealed sensitive internal documents were “wolves” and that Pope Benedict was ready to stand up to their “irresponsible and undignified behaviour”.

The Pope’s spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, compared the leaks to America’s Wikileaks scandal and said they were intended to show the Vatican and its central government in a bad light.

The Pope himself appeared to refer to the poisonous atmosphere prevailing inside the frescoed halls of the Vatican this winter, when he told local Rome seminarians training to become priests: “There is a lot of talk about the Church, a lot of things being said. Let us hope there is also talk about our faith!”

Money clearly preoccupies the men currently running the Catholic Church.

A closed-door meeting of an internal Vatican watchdog finance committee this week formally expressed concern at the prevailing crisis, “which has not spared even the general economic system of the Vatican”.

While promising to “improve the administration of the goods and resources of the Holy See” the committee called upon the world’s 1.3 billion Catholic faithful to dig deeper into their pockets to continue funding the Vatican.

Complete Article HERE!