Tag: Priest Abusers

By Andrew Duffy

A retired Catholic priest admitted, in an interview with the Citizen, that he sexually abused three young parishioners at Ottawa’s Holy Cross Parish in the 1970s and ’80s.

Rev. Barry McGrory said he was a sex addict who suffered from a powerful attraction to adolescents, both male and female.

Then Archbishop Joseph-Aurèle Plourde, he said, knew of his sexual problems before moving him to a Toronto-based organization dedicated to assisting remote Catholic missions.

Many of the missions were in native communities in Canada’s north.

Four years after leaving Ottawa, in 1991, McGrory was charged with sexually assaulting a 17-year-old native youth.

McGrory told the Citizen he was a victim of his illness, a sexual disorder from which he’s now cured.

“There was this terrible dark side that I had to confront — and I just didn’t handle it well,” McGrory, 82, told the Citizen during an hour-long telephone interview from Toronto, where he now lives as a retired priest.

“It could have been handled much, much better.”

In August 1993, McGrory pleaded guilty to sexual assault in a Toronto courtroom and was given a suspended sentence along with three years’ probation.

In the years after McGrory’s conviction, the Archdiocese of Ottawa settled out of court with two of his Holy Cross victims. One victim was paid $300,000 in one of the the largest settlements of its kind in the history of the diocese.

It negotiated confidentiality agreements with both victims. (A 2011 protocol on clergy sexual abuse, published by the Archdiocese of Ottawa, prohibits such confidentiality agreements unless requested by the victim.)

A third victim of McGrory’s sexual abuse is now suing the diocese for $1.5 million.

McGrory has neither been charged with a crime in Ottawa, nor defrocked by the Vatican.

The Citizen sent the Archdiocese of Ottawa an 11-point memo about this series in search of comment. A spokesman, Deacon Gilles Ouellette, responded: “The archdiocese prefers not to comment at this time.”

McGrory’s history of abuse at Holy Cross — one of the most disturbing chapters in Ottawa’s clergy sex abuse scandal — has never been publicly exposed until now. It came to light only when the diocese filed court documents as part of a legal dispute with its insurance company earlier this year.

Those documents named the victim, outlined the facts of her case, and revealed details of her $300,000 settlement.

The woman, who signed a confidentiality agreement as part of her 1997 out-of-court settlement, has never spoken publicly about the case.

Some old non-disclosure agreements negotiated by the diocese impose a $50,000 penalty for victims who retell their stories after accepting a settlement.

Court documents reveal her abuse began when the girl was 13-years-old in 1975 and continued for five years at Holy Cross Parish, where McGrory was pastor.

The Citizen, after investigating the claims, tracked McGrory to a condominium in Toronto’s fashionable Distillery District. He admitted to having a sexual relationship with the teenager.

Asked how many young people he sexually abused during his clerical career, McGrory demurred: “I have no idea,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve … I’m not going to answer that question. I don’t think … It’s not a very nice question to ask.”

Asked what it’s like to live with his history of sex abuse, McGrory said: “It’s pretty awful, it’s pretty awful. It’s absolutely disgusting, but I believe in a merciful God. And I would not have been able to survive that otherwise. But it was an illness, hebephilia.”

Hebephiles have a strong sexual attraction to adolescents. But the diagnosis is controversial, and hebephilia does not have official status in DSM-5, the American Psychiatric Association’s authoritative guide of mental disorders.

In the 1970s, Rev. Barry McGrory was a rising star in the Catholic clergy.

He was then a high-profile social justice and peace activist who wrote and lectured about human rights in Central America. He travelled frequently to Nicaragua and established a twin parish with St. Francis Xavier Church in Managua. For four years, he contributed to a popular Ottawa radio show, Focus Religion.

Ottawa-born and raised, he held a commerce degree from St. Francis Xavier University, a theology degree from the University of Ottawa, and a PhD in theology from Thomas Aquinas University in Rome. He taught at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Que. and St. Paul’s University in Ottawa.

He was also a sexual predator who preyed on troubled young people at Holy Cross Parish.

McGrory was pastor of the Walkley Road church from 1974 to 1986.

One girl, Karen (not her real name), a Grade 8 student at Holy Cross Separate School, met McGrory in 1975 when she sought counselling for problems that she was experiencing at home. She was 13-years-old at the time.

A former schoolmate told the Citizen that Karen was both troubled and beautiful. “She had a Katharine Hepburn kind of beauty,” said Jackie Cowan, a former classmate, who now lives in Victoria, B.C.

Court documents suggest McGrory’s abuse of Karen began while she was still in Grade 8.

McGrory insisted to the Citizen the sexual contact began a year later.

Karen’s former lawyer, Frank MacMillan, set out her allegations in a May 1997 letter filed in court by the Archdiocese of Ottawa.

“It will be our client’s evidence that she was seduced by McGrory when she was 13 years of age,” MacMillan wrote, “and thereafter was controlled by McGrory in a daily sexual-touching relationship at the church, which included some 25 instances of vaginal intercourse with physical violence, and an ‘all-the-time routine’ of McGrory’s forced acts of masturbation on Karen.”

Concluded MacMillan: “McGrory took advantage of this impressionable child and sexually abused and exploited her.”

McGrory denied using violence in any of his sexual encounters.

Jackie Cowan said Karen believed McGrory — then in his early-40s —was her boyfriend. He had convinced Karen, she said, that he was in love with her and would marry her one-day.

McGrory denies this.

Eventually, according to court documents, Karen’s parents sought counselling to address their daughter’s “despondent and inexplicable behaviour.” They turned to McGrory for advice.

McGrory suggested to them that Karen’s problems “arose from their lack of parenting skills,” MacMillan said. He recommended that she move out of the house.

“It is our position that McGrory’s counselling was calculated to further alienate Karen from her parents, protect him from discovery, and make her more susceptible to his control,” MacMillan charged.

McGrory denies the accusation and insists that he was close to the girl’s parents. He described them as “great people.”

Jackie Cowan told the Citizen that Karen moved in with her while they were both students at Brookfield High School. She would sometimes accompany McGrory and Karen when they went on drives or out to dinner.

“He (McGrory) was very charming before you saw the other side of him,” she said.

McGrory once came to a birthday party at the apartment Cowan shared with Karen. Cowan retreated to her bedroom, but it was so noisy that she moved to the extra bed in Karen’s room, which was further from the party scene.

Late that evening, Cowan said, McGrory came into the bedroom with Karen. Cowan pretended to be asleep, she told the Citizen, because she didn’t want to be dragged back to the party. Then she watched as McGrory and Karen began to kiss.

“I’m watching this, horrified,” she said, “and then the next thing I know he starts trying to force her to give him a blowjob. She didn’t want to give him a blowjob. So he started getting really angry and then he started banging her head against the wall, trying to force her to give him a blowjob.

“I still remember so vividly his hands on the side of her head, and her hair flying.”

McGrory said he can’t remember the party and denied forcing the teen to perform oral sex.

He repeatedly blamed the victim for “instigating” sexual contact.

Asked how he can blame a teenager for sex acts that happened when he was an adult priest, McGrory said: “That’s a good point. I certainly should take my own responsibility in saying yes to her. I don’t know what else I could have done.”

In her $1.5-million lawsuit, launched in 1996, Karen alleged that the diocese knew of the danger McGrory posed to young people but recklessly ignored it.

The diocese settled the case out of court for $300,000, according to the lawsuit filed by the diocese against its insurance company.

Karen was not the only one victimized by McGrory at Holy Cross.

The diocese settled out of court with another young woman, and is now being sued by a man, who alleges that McGrory sexually abused him as a boy during an 11-year period between 1974 and 1985.

McGrory has admitted to abusing the boy. He told the Citizen that his behavior in that case was an exception since the male victim was so young.

“That was a gross and horrific exception, and I’m terribly ashamed of that,” he said. “And I’ve worked very, very hard to get the diocese to do something about it.”

The man, Malcolm (not his real name), attended Holy Cross Catholic School as a boy.

Malcolm first met McGrory after giving a gospel reading at a school mass. According to a statement of claim filed in the case, McGrory praised and encouraged him, then began to insinuate himself into his life.

McGrory, he said, supplied his family with groceries and invited him to dinner at the rectory. At the age of 9 or 10, Malcolm said, McGrory began to offer him wine with dinner.

One evening, after several glasses of wine, McGrory escorted him to a bedroom, undressed him, touched his genitals, and performed oral sex, according to the statement of claim.

Malcolm was upset and ashamed, the claim alleges, but he continued to accept invitations from McGrory. The pattern repeated itself at subsequent dinners.

“Once (Malcolm) was intoxicated, he would invite him to a private space in the rectory and subject him to various sexual acts,” the statement of claim says.

The alleged acts took place both in the church rectory and at a cottage in Val-des-Monts.

Once, when he was 13 or 14, Malcolm returned home intoxicated from an outing with McGrory and driving the priest’s car. His mother called then Archbishop Joseph-Aurèle Plourde’s office.

Unable to reach the archbishop, she went to his office and demanded to see him. “He refused to meet with her and ordered his staff to forcibly remove her from his office,” the statement of claim alleges.

The sexual abuse continued throughout Malcolm’s teenage years, and only ended when he moved from Ottawa at the age of 20, according to the claim.

The allegations made in Malcolm’s statement of claim have not been proven in court.

McGrory told the Citizen that Plourde was aware of his predilection for adolescents.

“I do remember talking to Bishop Plourde, and I told him that I was attracted to these young people, and I said, ‘The problem is they’re attracted to me.’

“He said, ‘Well, that’s because they feel your love for them.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, wow, how does he know that?’”

McGrory could not pinpoint the date of his conversation with Plourde, who retired as archbishop of Ottawa in 1989.

McGrory said he also wrote Plourde a letter in 1986 or 1987 in which he asked for treatment and said he’d “pay any price” to get rid of his affliction. He did not get a response from Plourde, and McGrory said he regrets not being more explicit in his demands for help.

“I’ll never understand Archbishop Plourde, why he sent me to Toronto. Maybe he just wanted to get rid of me,” said McGrory.

Plourde died in January 2013.

McGrory left Ottawa on sabbatical in 1986. The following year, he was named president of a Roman Catholic organization — now known as Catholic Missions in Canada — dedicated to fostering the faith in remote communities.

After his 1993 criminal conviction, McGrory received treatment for his alcoholism and sex addiction at Southdown Institute, north of Toronto.

A 12-step program cured him of his sexual disorder, and God has since allowed him to find inner peace, he said.

During the past two decades, McGrory has continued to pursue his passion for social justice as a volunteer at the Don Jail, as an international peace activist, and as a native rights advocate.

In June 1998, McGrory appeared before a Queen’s Park committee and launched a broad attack on the then Conservative government and its “persecution of the most vulnerable and the most helpless among us” — mothers, children, aboriginals, and the poor.

Later, in an exchange with an MPP, McGrory demanded the kind of accountability from the government that he said he would one day deliver before God.

“I’ll face my maker,” he vowed. “I want to be judged and I expect to be accountable for everything I’ve done, and I won’t shirk it. I can’t shirk it. I don’t expect to shirk it.”

Complete Article HERE!

By Sara Bernar

A law firm representing sexual abuse survivors filed six more lawsuits against the Seattle Archdiocese on Tuesday, alleging that Archdiocese knew or should have known about the crimes, yet did nothing.

Five out of the six cases involve abusive priests outed on the list of 77 names that the Archdiocese released in January. And all six plaintiffs called the law firm after the list was made public, according to Seattle attorneys Michael T. Pfau and Jason P. Amala, who’ve filed hundreds of such cases over the years. (One case settled with the Seattle Archdiocese in late March for $9.15 million.)

The six victims whose cases were filed this week “all saw the names [of their alleged perpetrators] on the list and called with questions, many of them thinking that they were the only one,” says Pfau. That fact alone is worth noting, he says. The Archdiocese had, in its files, credible accusations of sexual abuse — enough to publish each priest’s name on a list — but none of the survivors who called Pfau’s law firm had spoken out previously, or had any idea that their perpetrators may have abused other children. “To see that they weren’t the people who had called the Archdiocese to complain,” says Pfau, makes it “obvious that there are other victims.”

Still, the breadth of the six alleged crimes is astonishing, and points, once again, to the culture of abuse and secrecy that many claim dominates the Catholic Church — both in Seattle and across the world. “It’s not six abuse survivors saying one notorious pedophile abused them during a limited time,” Pfau says. “It’s six different people accusing six different pedophiles spanning 30 years at parishes all over the [Seattle] Archdiocese.” As a result, thanks to today’s news and all of the news that came before it, “You can’t really say it’s just a few bad apples.”

He adds that these six lawsuits represent just a fraction of the calls his firm receives. Since the release of the list in January, he’s gotten some 25 to 30 calls from survivors, “either upset about the list, or [because] the list triggered memories or feelings,” and often wanting more information about their abuser; not all victims want to file a lawsuit. Some victims are looking for compensation, some are looking for an apology, and some are simply looking for answers, Pfau says — all the more reason for the Archdiocese to release the full, secret files it keeps on these alleged crimes.

One of the cases filed Tuesday, for instance, accuses Father James Gandrau, a former priest at St. Mark School and Parish in Shoreline, of sexually abusing the plaintiff while he was an altar boy in 1966 and 1967, usually in a side room where the altar boys got dressed. According to the complaint, Reverend Father Theodore Sullivan, a pastor at St. Mark Parish at the time, caught Father Gandrau in the act of abusing the plaintiff, but never reported the abuse to authorities, never reported Gandrau for his crimes, and never sought medical or psychological care for the plaintiff. The plaintiff alleges that the Archdiocese did nothing to protect him, and as a result, Gandrau continued to abuse him.

Gandrau remained a priest with the Seattle Archdiocese until 2002.

Today’s lawsuits are not the only ones his firm will file, adds Pfau. More lawsuits should appear in the coming months. In the meantime, the firm also intends to speak with officials at the Archdiocese to “resolve the claims of clients who would rather not file a lawsuit, but still want closure,” as well as help secure counseling for some victims.

Above all, Pfau says, “We’re continuing to give information to abuse survivors who want information… and perhaps want information from someone other than the Archdiocese.”

Complete Article HERE!

PARIS — Pope Francis has voiced support for a French cardinal who has faced allegations of covering up cases of pedophile priests in his Lyon parish, saying he shouldn’t resign.

Francis said in an interview with French Catholic daily La Croix coming out Tuesday that a resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin “would be a mistake, an imprudence.”

“Based on the information I have, I think in Lyon, Cardinal Barbarin has taken the necessary measures and has taken things well in hand,” the pope said. “He is a brave and creative man, a missionary.”

Francis said “we must now wait for the result of the proceedings before the civil courts,” but resigning now “would amount to admitting guilt.”

Barbarin, one of the most high-ranking officials in the French Catholic Church, has been targeted by two investigations for not reporting cases of child abuses by priests to judicial authorities. The cardinal has denied any cover-ups, but acknowledged “some mistakes in handling and appointing some priests” last month. Other church officials have been also investigated.

In the interview, Francis said that regarding cases of pedophile priests in general, for the church, “there can be no prescription” and that “tolerance must be zero.”

“Through these abuses, a priest, who is designed to drive a child to God, is destroying him. He spreads evil, resentment, pain,” the pope said.

Francis gave the one-hour interview to two La Croix’s journalists at his residence in the Vatican on May 9. The pope was speaking in Italian. The daily said the Vatican read the piece before it was published.

In September, the pope made a unprecedented statement on the church sex abuse scandal, in a wide-ranging press conference en route to Rome from his first-ever visit to the United States.

In an exchange with reporters on his plane shortly after take-off from Philadelphia, Francis called sexual abuse by priests “a sacrilege,” CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey reported.

As for victims and relatives who cannot forgive abusive priests, Francis said he fully understood.

“I pray for them,” Francis said. “I do not judge someone who is not able to forgive.”

On his last day in the U.S., Francis met with five abuse survivors of sexual abuse and issued a warning to bishops that they would be held accountable if they failed to protect their flocks.

“Those who covered this up are guilty,” he said. “There are even some bishops who covered this up. It’s something horrible.”

 Complete Article HERE!

By Brad Bumsted

HARRISBURG — State investigators are conducting “inquiries” into child-abuse allegations in Roman Catholic dioceses beyond Altoona-Johnstown, which was the subject of a hard-hitting grand jury report in March, Bruce Castor, solicitor general in the attorney general’s office, said Friday.

The grand jury report said nearly 50 priests molested hundreds of children over several decades in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese. Castor’s statement in an interview with the Tribune-Review is the first public acknowledgement by Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s office that other allegations are getting a serious review.

“Whether they lead to arrests is an open question,” said Castor, the former Montgomery County district attorney.

Besides Altoona-Johnstown, there are Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Allentown, Erie, Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Scranton.

As Kane’s top staffer, Castor said he is “getting updates every two weeks from (the prosecutor) in charge” of the inquiries, Deputy Attorney General Dan Dye.

“This is not surprising,” said David Clohessy, spokesman for SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.) “How can law enforcement not make inquiries about proven, admitted or credibly accused clerics, regardless of where they are in Pennsylvania?”

“Inquiries are good. Investigations are better,” said Clohessy of St. Louis, who has stated publicly he was a victim of abuse by a priest as a teenager.

Catholic priests are no more likely to abuse a child than people in any other group, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference said.

“Without specifics, I can’t directly respond to Mr. Castor’s statement,” conference spokeswoman Amy Hill said.

“The church has long encouraged all accusations to be reported immediately to law enforcement. We also have a policy that requires us to remove someone from ministry if there are credible allegations made,” Hill said.

But Terry McKiernan, president of Boston-based BishopAccountability.org, said, “The molestation and collusion revealed in the Altoona-Johnstown grand jury report are certainly problems in other dioceses, but secrecy has so far prevailed. The attorney general’s scrutiny is especially needed in the Harrisburg, Greensburg, and Erie dioceses, each of which have larger Catholic populations than Altoona-Johnstown.

“Clearly a broader investigation by the AG is needed,” McKiernan said.

Jerry Zufelt, spokesman for the Greensburg Diocese, said the size of Catholic populations does not determine the likelihood of priest abuse.

“I would say it’s based on how each diocese handles the cases,” Zufelt said. “We’re very comfortable with how we’ve handled them.”

The diocese has had a “zero-tolerance policy” and forwards every allegation to the district attorney, Zufelt said. It’s had that policy in place since the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ so-called “Dallas Report” on priest abuse in 2002, he said.

No charges were filed based on the initial grand jury report, though one of the priests mentioned, the former Rev. Joseph Maurizio, 71, of Somerset County, was convicted by a federal jury last year of traveling to Honduras on mission trips to abuse boys. He was also convicted of possessing child pornography and international money laundering. He is serving a 16-year prison term.

Prosecutors said cases frequently extended beyond statute of limitations for prosecution.

Attorney general’s investigators two weeks after the report charged three former religious leaders for participating in a conspiracy that allowed Brother Stephen Baker, a Franciscan friar, to abuse more than 100 children. In 2013, Baker killed himself by stabbing himself in the heart. Many of his sex crimes took place at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown. The three former “ministers provincial,” who oversaw personnel within the organization, have denied the allegations. They’ve been held for trial on charges of criminal conspiracy and endangering the welfare of children.

“One important thing that is often left out of these stories is that the Catholic Church does provide support and assistance for survivors and their families,” Hill said. “We have a sincere commitment to the emotional and spiritual well-being of individuals who have been impacted by the crime of childhood sexual abuse, no matter how long ago the crime was committed.”

Complete Article HERE!