Category: Priests In Trouble

by Matt Assad

Within hours of getting a report in August that images of nude children were found on computers owned by the pastor of St. Ann’s Church in Emmaus, the Allentown Catholic Diocese informed authorities. But for the next six Sundays — even as Lehigh County investigators sifted through photos on two laptops — parishioners were urged at Mass to pray for their pastor’s health.

Monsignor John Stephen Mraz’s arrest Tuesday on charges of possessing child pornography left some members of his congregation angry that they would be asked to remember him in their prayers without being told he was under investigation.

“It just feels like a betrayal of trust, not only by Monsignor Mraz, but by the church,” Kara Sterner said. “I was married at that church and all three of my kids were baptized there. And now I don’t feel right. I just don’t have trust anymore.”

So shaken was Sterner that she held her 11-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter from religious prep classes at St. Ann on Wednesday, and she’s considering switching churches. She was among several parents who held their children from prep that night and among many who called the diocese and church office to voice their unhappiness.

The Rev. Dominic Pham, who lived with Mraz and got him to the hospital before the monsignor went to convalesce at Holy Family Villa in Bethlehem, has been fielding many of those calls. And he has a surprisingly simple answer for why, as he urged parishioners to visit Mraz in his recovery, he never told them their pastor was being investigated for child porn.

“I didn’t know. I knew he was very ill with diabetes and kidney failure, but no one told us about this,” Pham said. “I had no idea. They called us together the morning he was arrested.”

That St. Ann parishioners and staff remained unaware their pastor was under investigation for child sex crimes raises questions of whether the diocese is keeping its promise to be more transparent in the wake of the Catholic Church child sex scandal ignited by a Boston Globe investigation in 2002.

During Mass at St. Ann’s on Saturday evening, Allentown Bishop John O. Barres told parishioners that when Mraz left the parish this summer to undergo medical treatment, the events that led to his charges were unknown to anyone in the diocese. He said he understood that many were concerned about being kept in the dark, but that diocesan officials were being careful to cooperate with authorities and not interfere with the investigation.

“What happened is not a reflection of you or this parish or the school,” said Barres, who intends to address the parishioners at Sunday Masses as well. “St. Ann’s parish and St. Ann’s school are the same wonderful, valuable holy institutions that they were a week ago.”

Mraz’s arrest came more than six weeks after he asked a friend and parishioner on July 25 to perform maintenance updates on a laptop computer. According to the criminal complaint, the friend found nude images of boys in the computer’s recycling bin but didn’t come forward until Aug. 1 or 2, after he discovered a file named “naked little boys” on a second computer Mraz asked him to update.

Feeling “uncomfortable,” the friend reported what he saw to the diocese. Spokesman Matt Kerr said the diocese reported the accusation within a day to Lehigh County Children & Youth Services and the state Welfare Department’s ChildLine. A letter from diocese attorney Joseph A. Zator arrived in Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin‘s office Aug. 12, according to the criminal complaint. By Aug. 18, county detectives were serving a warrant to confiscate all of Mraz’s electronic devices, including the computers, the complaint stated.

At that point, a credible allegation had been established and for many dioceses across the nation, the policy would be to suspend the priest and tell parishioners why he was gone, said Michael Sean Winters, who writes the “Distinctly Catholic” column for the Washington D.C.-based National Catholic Reporter. That has become standard procedure, he said, in part because it could prompt parishioners who have had contact with the priest to come forward with information relevant to the investigation.

“They did the right thing by going to authorities immediately, but then once the allegation is determined to be credible, they have an obligation to tell parishioners that an investigation is underway,” Winters said. “It’s the way it is being done in model dioceses in places like Washington and Chicago and it’s been this way for a decade. You don’t wait until charges are filed.”

But that’s where Mraz’s case gets muddy. More than a week before his friend was reporting what he’d found on those laptops, Mraz had taken sick leave to deal with serious medical problems that included diabetes and kidney failure, Pham said. He’d collapsed at his residence and Pham called an ambulance to rush him to the hospital.

The diocese didn’t have to suspend him because he was already out of service and living at Holy Family Villa, a retirement home for priests, Kerr said.

Instead, the diocese turned the report to authorities and took a hands-off approach, Kerr said.

That left Pham in the position of stepping into the pulpit each Sunday to make an impassioned plea for people to pray and visit his ailing colleague.

The diocese was right to keep the accusation under wraps until charges were filed, Martin said.

“Are you suggesting they should have told people an investigation was going on?” he said. “That’s ridiculous. Absolute nonsense.”

Juliann Bortz, Lehigh Valley coordinator of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, doesn’t see it that way.

She said Mraz’s arrest was an opportunity for the Allentown Diocese to prove that it has learned from the past. Instead, she said, it allowed Pham to unknowingly trot out the “health issues” excuse that dioceses around the nation have used over the decades to protect priests and keep allegations from the public.

“The way they handled this is still deceptive. It just gives you the impression that they wouldn’t have come forward if they thought they could hide it,” Bortz said. “It’s terrible for people to feel that way about their church. The only way they’re going to win back that trust is if they’re completely transparent. Unfortunately, they weren’t and we’re left to wonder.”

For Bortz, the issue of trust has always been at the heart of the sex abuse scandal. It was only inflamed again in March when a Pennsylvania grand jury report accused two Catholic bishops of allowing at least 50 priests and other religious leaders to sexually abuse hundreds of children for five decades in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

Based on the grand jury report, the attorney general’s office on March 15 charged three Franciscan friars with child endangerment and criminal conspiracy. The agency also set up a tip line for people to call the agency with abuse and cover-up allegations involving diocesan officials, and announced that it would be expanding its grand jury investigation into other dioceses across the state.

On Thursday, The Morning Call reported that the Allentown and Harrisburg dioceses are among those being investigated by a new grand jury in Pittsburgh, according to state Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks, an abuse victim who said he recently testified before the panel in Pittsburgh. Agents from the attorney general’s office recently interviewed at least two other victims from the Allentown Diocese, according to the victims, who did not want their identity disclosed.

On Friday, four more Catholic dioceses — Erie, Greensburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton — were added to the Pittsburgh grand jury investigation of clergy sex abuse and cover-up allegations.

Mraz, whose 41-year career includes stints as chaplain at Lehigh University and theology teacher at Central Catholic High School in Allentown before he arrived at St. Ann in 2008, was charged Tuesday with viewing and downloading child porn, which falls under the sexual abuse of children in the criminal code.

Mraz, 66, was released on $50,000 unsecured bond. His Allentown lawyer, John Waldron, said Mraz has told detectives he downloaded the images for sexual gratification.

“What he’s alleged to have done is illegal and very wrong, but there is no indication that he did anything inappropriate with a child,” Waldron said. “We expect to have him psychologically evaluated so that he can get treatment.”

The situation leaves St. Ann’s leaders to contend with the fact that some parishioners have lost trust in them. Pham said they’re fielding calls at the parish office for anyone who wants an explanation, and have made counselors available for students or parishioners who want help dealing with Mraz’s arrest.

“Some aren’t happy and some are just angry, period, that their priest is alleged to have done this,” Kerr said. “Some wish they had known about it before seeing it online.”

In some ways, knowing that Pham was kept in the dark is helping Sterner deal with it. Maybe her diocese wasn’t open with her, but Pham wasn’t part of that, she said.

“I’m not sure why,” she said, “but it makes a difference for me.”

Still, she’s debating whether to leave for neighboring St. Thomas More in Salisbury Township.

Pham will continue to step into the pulpit to ask people to pray.

“Pray for us all at St. Ann, pray for the monsignor and have faith in the Holy Father,” he said. “It’s OK to be confused. Believe that Christ is with us and the answers will come in time.”

Complete Article HERE!

By Dan Stamm

A Roman Catholic priest, who used to serve as pastor for a Lehigh Valley church and as an educator at various area Catholic schools, faces child pornography charges after asking a friend and parishioner to upgrade his computer.

Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin announced child sex abuse charges Tuesday morning against Monsignor John Mraz, 66, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Mraz faces the sex abuse charges in connection to downloading child porn, said investigators.

Some of the terms Mraz searched for online included “nude boys wrestling,” “teen boys spanked,” “small boy nudes,” “handcuffed nude boys,” “boy bondage” and other terms involving boys and sexual acts, said police.

The charges stemmed from when Mraz, who formerly served as pastor at St. Ann’s Church along S 6th Street in Emmaus, gave his HP laptop to a parishioner – identified by the DA as D.M. – to perform maintenance and upgrade the computer in late July.

D.M. discovered files depicting nude males of unknown ages in the computer’s recycling bin, said the district attorney’s office in a news release.

D.M. made the upgrades and returned the laptop to Mraz who then asked D.M. to upgrade a second, older laptop, said the DA.

“In the process of upgrading the second laptop, D.M. discovered a file with a name suggesting it contained obscene images of underage males,” said the DA’s office.  “These discoveries made D.M. uncomfortable, and he informed the Diocese of Allentown about what he had found on Mraz’s laptops.”

The diocese then alerted the district attorney’s office, which in turn investigated and searched Mraz’s home at the Emmaus church, taking various electronic devices, said the DA.

“As a result of the analysis, it is alleged that the user of the devices actively searched the Internet looking for images and videos of underage males engaged in sex acts,” said the DA’s office. “It is alleged that numerous image files of child pornography were on the devices as well.”

Among the numerous images of nude boys under the age of 18 recovered from Mraz’s computers was at least one photo of boys involved in a sex act, said an affidavit of probable cause.

Investigators determined Mraz downloaded the photos “for his own sexual gratification,” said the DA’s office.

In a statement, the diocese said it removed Mraz — who has been a priest for 41 years –and that he can no longer present himself as a priest.

Over his four decades as a priest, Mraz worked at various Catholic schools including Allentown Central and was vice principal at Marian High in Tamaqua. He also served as chaplain at the Newman Center at Lehigh University, said the diocese. He was a priest at St. Ann’s since 2008.

A judge arraigned Mraz, who now lives at Holy Family Villa for Priests in Bethlehem, Tuesday morning and set bail at $50,000. He faces an Oct. 3 preliminary hearing.

Reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Mraz said he couldn’t make any comment without his attorney present. He did however reveal he has been hospitalized since July 8.

Complete Article HERE!

By Andrew Duffy

The estate of a late Ottawa man has launched a $2-million lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Ottawa for sexual abuse he allegedly suffered as a child in the 1960s.

The unusual statement of claim was filed last month on behalf of the man, whom the Citizen will identify only as John Doe. He died at the age of 63 in November 2014.

According to the claim, Doe was a victim of Rev. Jean Gravel, a Catholic priest at Ottawa’s Saint-Rémi Parish.

Gravel pleaded guilty in September 1967 to charges of gross indecency involving two teenaged boys and resisting arrest.

The new court document contends that Doe was one of those teenaged victims.

Doe’s widow said her husband of 23 years did not tell her about the abuse until he was on his deathbed. He was in hospital for the final month of his life with pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung disease.

Only when she asked him about whether he was scared did her husband break down and relate his long-buried story.

“I need to tell you something,” he began. The story poured out over the next two hours.

“The anguish and the fear of having to hold that in for all those years was something I had never, ever seen: I had never seen him like that,” his widow said in an interview.

Her husband, she said, was not afraid of death but of the possibility of an afterlife in which he would have to explain to God why he had disavowed his faith.

“He was terrified, absolutely terrified,” she said. “That, for me, was heart-wrenching.”

Doe, a father of three who worked most of his life for a cleaning company, died two days after that conversation.

“I think until the day he died, he was ashamed,” she said. “He was terrified about what people would think of him.”

Doe’s widow said she launched the lawsuit on his behalf to gain recognition for his suffering: “I think it gives a sense of meaning for what he went through. I think he told me for a reason: because he wanted, at some point, for the church to be responsible.”

Under Ontario law, an estate’s executor has as long as two years to launch a lawsuit on behalf of a deceased person. There’s no provision that limits when a victim of sexual assault can sue for damages.

Lawyer Robert Talach, who has litigated more clergy sex abuse cases than anyone in the country, called it a first-of-its-kind lawsuit.

“I don’t know of any case like it,” said Talach, who represents John Doe’s estate.

The Doe case is one of four new lawsuits launched against the Catholic diocese in the three months since the Citizen published its series about clergy sexual abuse.

Three of the cases were filed by people who say they were victimized as children by Rev. Dale Crampton, the most notorious sex abuser in the history of the diocese. Those three victims are seeking a total of $6 million in damages.

The diocese has already paid out more than $740,000 in compensation to 10 of Crampton’s victims who were sexually abused by the priest between 1963 and 1982.

Crampton killed himself in October 2010 by jumping from an Ottawa highrise. At the time, the Ottawa Police Service was investigating sex abuse allegations made against him by five new complainants.

Twenty people have now come forward to say they were victimized by the priest, a two-term school board trustee.

Through interviews and court documents, the Citizen established that members of the Ottawa clergy were warned at least seven times about Crampton’s sexual misconduct, beginning in 1965.

Rev. Jean Gravel was the first priest convicted of a sex crime in Ottawa.

In September 1967, an Ottawa court heard that Gravel locked himself into his second-floor rectory apartment when police attempted to arrest him on two charges of gross indecency. The officers broke down the door, and a scuffle ensued.

Gravel was given a suspended sentence, placed on two years’ probation, and ordered to enter a treatment program for his alcoholism.

He was defrocked in 1970 — an unusual event at the time — and killed himself in August 1980.

The diocese has already been sued twice before for sexual abuse perpetrated by Gravel.

In response to a 2013 lawsuit, the Archdiocese of Ottawa issued a news release that said, “Jean Gravel’s story is tragic as it is scandalous. Ordained a priest in 1950, he exhibited behavioural problems which required diocesan authorities of the time to intervene, seeking his correction and rehabilitation.”

According to the statement of claim filed in the John Doe case, the sexual abuse began in 1962 when the victim was 11 years old. It continued, the claim says, for the following four years and escalated into rape.

To facilitate that abuse, Gravel made Doe “feel that he was special in the eyes of Gravel, the Church, and God,” the claim reads, and ensured the boy’s silence by making him believe his soul was in peril.

The allegations contained in the statement of claim have not been proven in court.

The Archdiocese of Ottawa did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Complete Article HERE!