Timothy Cardinal Dolan is in no rush to discuss efforts to change the child abuse law.
The time may not be right for Timothy Cardinal Dolan to talk about child sex abuse, but advocates say it’s long overdue.
Victim-turned-advocate Kathryn Robb says Dolan is putting a new generation of kids in danger by opposing legislation that would allow adult victims of child sex abuse to seek justice in claims that would likely affect predator priests.
Robb ripped Dolan after the leader of New York’s 2.6 million Catholics told the Daily News on Saturday at rally for farm worker rights that he was ready to discuss efforts to reform the law — but not just yet.
Time, however, is running out to eliminate the statute of limitations on child sex abuse since the state Legislature’s session ends June 16.
“It may not be time for you Cardinal Dolan, but it is time for survivors of sexual abuse and the children of the state of New York,” said Robb, who said she was molested by her eldest brother George Robb while growing up on Long Island. “We as responsible citizens who care about the safety of children and justice are not waiting for his call.”
Kathryn Robb, who was abused as a child, wants Dolan to quit stalling and discuss reform to the law.
New York’s statute of limitations bars victims of childhood sexual abuse from filing criminal charges or civil claims after their 23rd birthday. Victim advocates say it is one of the most restrictive in the nation.
Supporters of the Child Victims Act say the Catholic Conference, the lobbying arm of church’s bishops, has been the bill’s biggest obstacle. The CVA — one of a handful of bills under consideration — would eliminate the civil and criminal statutes of limitation for victims.
A spokesman for the archdiocese said he would discuss a Daily News request for a sit-down with the cardinal. The spokesman said Dolan declined to talk about sexual abuse Saturday because he did not want to overshadow the farm worker rights rally.
Attorneys representing hundreds of clergy sexual abuse victims are claiming the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis has a net worth of about $1.7 billion – far more than the $45 million divulged in court documents last year. The legal team of attorney Jeff Anderson says the archdiocese has taken “multiple, deceptive actions” to “divert and shelter funds from sexual abuse survivors” since the Minnesota Child Victims Act was passed in May 2013.
“They are under-representing their ability to pay by about 99 percent,” Anderson said. “It has been a scheme and a scam that has served them in the past.”
A legal motion filed late Monday in the archdiocese’s federal bankruptcy case includes a number of allegations, including:
That Catholic Cemeteries have never been disclosed as an asset of the archdiocese in bankruptcy filings, and that cemetery signs were painted over to remove any references to the archdiocese.
That the archdiocese created “optical insulation” by creating the Catholic Community Foundation in 1992 as a way to avoid paying sexual abuse claims. Anderson said the foundation also changed its name after victims filed their lawsuits
More than 400 people have filed lawsuits against the archdiocese ahead of the May 25 deadline for claims covered by the Minnesota Child Victim’s Act, which lifts the statute of limitations for people who say they were sexually abused. A judge ordered the parties into mediation in February 2015, but no settlement has been reached.
Attorneys expect the archdiocese to propose a Chapter 11 repayment plan that would significantly short-change the victims. According to a court document:
“Within the next few days, the Debtor will file a plan of reorganization that (i) seeks to prohibit more than four hundred survivors of clergy sexual abuse from reaching any of the assets that the Debtor alienated as a matter of civil law, but (ii) simultaneously provides more than 200 entities holding such assets with a complete and final release of liability for sexual abuse claims.”
The victims’ attorneys claim the archdiocese has put a shield around its most valuable assets by putting them into trusts or separate corporations that the archdiocese claims no control of. They also say the church’s court documents “vastly undervalue” some of the most valuable real estate, including the Cathedral of Saint Paul and three high schools – Benilde St. Margaret, DeLaSalle and Totino Grace.
Lobbying funds have gone towards opposing bills that would extend statutes of limitations for child sex abuse cases or grant temporary windows to take action
Since 2007, the New York bishops’ lobbying arms have poured more than $1.1m into ‘issues associated with timelines for commencing certain civil actions related to sex offenses’.
The US Catholic church has poured millions of dollars over the past decade into opposing accountability measures for victims of clergy sex abuse, according to state lobbying disclosures.
The lobbying funds have gone toward opposing bills in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland that would extend statutes of limitations for child sex abuse cases or grant temporary civil windows for victims whose opportunities for civil action have already passed.
In light of major child sex abuse scandals from Jerry Sandusky to Dennis Hastert, lawmakers nationwide are pushing to give victims other avenues to sue. In Pennsylvania, house representative Mark Rozzi, who was abused as a child by a Catholic priest, has led a campaign to extend the age before which child abuse victims can bring on cases. In New York, assemblywoman Margaret Markey is pushing to grant a temporary one-year window for those whose statute of limitations has already expired.
“Many child sex abuse cases are done gradually, under the guise of love or sex education, and so what happens is most victims don’t even realize until literally decades later,” said David Clohessy, a director with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “The overwhelming majority of us rationalize it. That’s how we as survivors cope with this stunning betrayal. We cope with it by denying and minimizing it.”
Since 2007, the New York bishops’ lobbying arms have poured more than $1.1m into “issues associated with timelines for commencing certain civil actions related to sex offenses”, nearly half of their total compensation for lobbyists in that period. Another nearly $700,000 also went towards lobbying for a package of church priorities, including but not limited to influencing the climate on “statute of limitations” legislation.
During this same time period, bishops’ conferences spent millions on lobbyists in states where the church is actively opposing similar legislative proposals. Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey spent more than $5.2m, $1.5m and $435,000 respectively on top lobbyists in the state capitols. Opposition effortsultimatelythwarted statute of limitations reform efforts in those states.
These states did not provide breakdowns of how much of that money was spent opposing these particular bills. The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference said in a statement: “The list of issues for which we advocate is long – services for the poor, education, access to healthcare especially for the poor, elderly and children, religious liberty, immigration, pro-life issues, death penalty, just to name a few.”
Under existing law, child victims sexually abused in New York have until the age of 23 to press civil charges, but those abused across the border in Connecticut have until the age of 48. In Maryland and Pennsylvania, victims cannot enter into civil suits after turning 25 or 30 respectively, but across the border in Delaware they can do so at any age.
Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests hold a press conference in Chicago.
“New York is trying to move into the 21st century,” explains Brad Hoylman, a New York state senator sponsoring reform legislation. “How do we expect a 23-year-old to have the wherewithal to take on their church or youth group?”
Reformers have faced staunch opposition from business advocacy groups, the insurance industry, and, most publicly, the Catholic church.
In states such as Pennsylvania and New York, bishops’ organizations make their influence felt particularly among state Republicans, wary of crossing an institution that mobilizes significant pro-life constituencies and channels diocesan revenues into robust lobbying efforts.
“The Republican-dominated Senate has always been the stumbling block for final passage,” said Mike Armstrong, communications director for Markey. “They have blocked even committee consideration of the bill over the past few years.”
Representatives of the church say that the proposals they are opposing go too far in both the time window and the number of institutions they allow individuals to sue.
Dennis Poust of the New York State Catholic Conference said: “While it is fair to argue that we should extend the statute of limitations going forward to give victims more time to sue, a wide-open ‘window’ allowing claims that are decades old is fundamentally unjust because the claims are impossible to defend.” Poust added that New York’s bishops support a law that would extend the statute of limitations cut-off date to the age of 28.
Amy Hill of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference worried about protecting other institutions from lawsuits. “We continue to have serious concerns about retroactively extending the civil statute of limitations against non-profit and private institutions, allowing lawsuits for cases involving matters that occurred decades ago,” she said. “In other states, such action has led to the closure of parishes, schools, and vital social service ministries.”
But Hoylman said that while these institutions “can take care of themselves”, victims don’t have the same resources. “Who is looking after these survivors who have had years of deeply seeded personal conflicts over a crime they’re not responsible for?”
Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo Law School, says fears about unjust lawsuits are overblown. ‘“Reviving expired statute of limitations has identified hundreds of hidden predators across the United States, but the number of cases has been modest. Out of a population of 35 million in California, only 1,150 claims were filed and in Delaware 1,175 claims were filed but 1,000 of those claims were against a single pediatrician, Dr Earl Bradley … False claims are a fantasy issue made up by church and insurance lobbyists.” As many as 100,000 US children may have suffered clerical sex abuse, according to an estimate by insurance experts presented at a 2012 Vatican conference. Nonetheless, only several thousand members of the US Catholic clergy have ever been accused of sexual assault, and only about 300 have ever been convicted. In past few years, the church has helped shoot down similar reform attempts in New Jersey, Colorado and Maryland. And over the past decade, bishops have opposed similar reform efforts in places such as Iowa, Virginia and Washington DC.
Many legal advocates and survivor groups have been particularly disappointed with the bishops’ lobbying efforts given the new era of reform promised by Pope Francis. “The pope announced last June he would be setting up a tribunal to investigate bishops who protected predators, but the tribunal reportedly hasn’t even been created yet,” says Anne Barrett Doyle of the watchdog group BishopAccountability.org.
In March, new revelations of abuse delivered fresh momentum for reform in Pennsylvania.
A Pennsylvania grand jury report revealed that as many as 50 church officials in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown had for five decades helped cover up the abuse of hundreds of children in collusion with police and county officials. In April, following some of the grand jury’s recommendations, the Pennsylvania state house overwhelmingly passed an extensive reform bill, abolishing the criminal statute of limitations for child sex abuse cases and permitting child sexual abuse victims as old as 50 to file civil claims.
“If the bishops continue to win,” says Clohessy, the survivors network director, many victims will “behave in destructive ways because they were violated as kids … And we as society tell them ‘tough shit’.”
Two devotees have undergone chastity exams to defend their sect’s ex-Catholic prelate, who stands accused of telling female followers his ‘holy’ semen would purify them.
ROME — Some people will do anything for love—even deny it. Or at least that’s what it appears two Spanish pseudo-nuns have done in an attempt to save Feliciano Miguel Rosendo, a priest who has been accused of forcing them to take part in orgies by claiming his semen was holy and represented the “body of Christ” and would “purify” them.
The nuns reportedly agreed to virginity tests in the Spanish town of Tui to prove that they hadn’t had carnal relations with the prelate, despite eyewitness accounts that imply at least some sexual contact.
Rosendo was arrested in December 2014 on charges of sex abuse and tax crimes associated with the Order of Saint Michael Archangel, a Roman Catholic sect whose choir performed for Pope Benedict XVI in 2011 during his apostolic voyage to Madrid. After allegations of sexual escapades and money laundering surfaced, the Vatican relieved Rosendo of his duties—after which the prelate simply changed the name of his sect to the Voice of Serviam and apparently carried on with business as usual, unusual as it might have been.
The prelate remains a Catholic priest, but the Vatican has disassociated itself with the sect. Prior to the 2014 arrest, a number of nuns testified that Rosendo persuaded them to perform sex acts on and with him, proclaiming the purifying properties of his ejaculate. One woman, who eventually left religious life and went on to marry, testified that Rosendo even forced her to have sexual relations the night before she got married and after she had wed. “I married Fernando to stop suffering abuse by Miguel, but I was surprised when, after the wedding, the abuse continued,” she told the court, according to the Spanish edition of The Local news website.
The original case’s court documents show that Rosendo apparently rotated the religious ladies through his bed in the house in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, north of Madrid, that they apparently all shared. According to local press reports, Marta Pax Alonso, a self-declared nun who has never been actually affiliated with any Vatican-recognized Catholic order, was his chief assistant and lover.
Alonso, however, is one of the women who took a virginity test to prove that she had never had vaginal sex. She was also arrested in 2014 for financial crimes. That year, several family members of the nuns in question reportedly pleaded with Pope Francis to persuade the women to leave Rosendo’s alleged sex sect, but the Vatican apparently never responded on behalf of the pope. However, Renzo Fratini, the papal nuncio (or Vatican ambassador) to Spain, is said to have offered his support.
Citing Madrid’s College of Physicians, The Local reports the chastity tests showed the non-nuns were, indeed, virgins, stating that they “have an intact hymen with no signs of having had sexual relations, recent or old. We can rule out that they had sex with vaginal penetration and there has been no deflowering.”
There are, of course, no tests to prove or disprove the act of fellatio or other sexual activities that fall short of intercourse. Rosendo awaits trial for both sexual abuse and financial crimes.
A Roman Catholic priest who served as the face of the church in New Hampshire during the sex abuse scandal was granted parole Tuesday on two of his convictions for stealing $300,000 from a hospital, a bishop and a dead priest’s estate. But he’ll still serve at least two more years in jail to complete his full sentence.
Monsignor Edward Arsenault pleaded guilty to three theft charges in 2014. He was granted parole on the first two charges but will not be eligible for parole on the third for two more years.
Catholic Health Assembly Philadelphia 2012. IN THIS PHOTO: Monday morning
Prosecutors said Arsenault, who has also been ordered to repay the money, billed the church for lavish meals and travel for himself and often a male partner. He was convicted of writing checks from the dead priest’s estate to himself and his brother and billing Catholic Medical Center $250 an hour for consulting work he never did.
Arsenault held senior positions in the New Hampshire diocese from 1999 to 2009. He had been the top lieutenant for then-Bishop John McCormack, handling both a clergy sexual abuse crisis in New Hampshire and orchestrating the church’s new child protection policies.
In 2009, Arsenault became president and CEO of Saint Luke Institute in Maryland. He resigned in 2013 as allegations arose over the misuse of church funds.
The investigation did not involve Saint Luke, a prominent education and counseling center based in Silver Spring, Maryland, with sites in other parts of the United States and in Britain. The center treats priests with a range of mental illnesses and has played a key role in addressing the problem of sexually abusive clergy.
