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PDF versionJust posted: A history of abuse in Bridgeport
by Tom Roberts on Feb. 04, 2010
BishopAccountability.org, the Web site that has gathered the most comprehensive documentation available of the clergy sex abuse crisis, has just posted a history of the scandal as it occurred in the Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn.
The history, prepared by lawyers for plaintiffs in a case in 1999, was compiled to show patterns of behavior within the hierarchy as it attempted to deal with abusive priests. It's bias, of course, is that it was done from the plaintiff's point of view. But the history and the documentation (exhibits that include memos, letters, reports and such) are compelling regardless of the subjective nature of some of the narrative.
One can understand why Bishop William Lori fought so hard, up to the Supreme Court, to keep the documents secret. The piece posted on the Web site is but one of thousands released on order of the court. The history compiled here demonstrates once more the value of documentation in getting at the truth of the scandal that otherwise remains buried in diocesan vaults and files. No bishop is going to volunteer this kind of narrative to any review board or bishop-appointed investigators.
Some day in the future, when a courageous investigative writer/historian has the time and the stomach for compiling a comprehensive history of this awful period in the life of the Catholic Church in the United States, BishopAccountability.org will be an invaluable source. It is the work of Co-directors Terry McKiernan and Anne Barrett Doyle, who work in relative obscurity. Someday the church might even thank them for so diligently keeping the record. It ultimately will be vital to the process of learning something from this difficult period.
The good folks at
The good folks at BishopAccountability.org are doing the church and the nation a favor. It is helping to protect children from predators and the bishops who enable them
Steve
Yes, Bishop Accountability
Yes, Bishop Accountability AND The National Catholic Reporter are EACH doing the duties that should be perfomed by the Roman Catholic Church.... OUR CHURCH!!! Church leaders failed miserably when it came to protecting me the hundreds of thousands of other victimized Catholic children, young people and vulnerable adults (Myself Included).And since the church hierarchy have learned nothing from their failures, incompetence and indifference to the sufferings of GOD's Children,we victims, along with our supporters, will continue to police the
clergy, bishops and popes who refuse to act.
No, I can't understand. One
No, I can't understand.
One can understand why Bishop William Lori fought so hard, up to the Supreme Court, to keep the documents secret.
To describe Lori's effort to protect his brother priests and bishops (and in particular Edward Cardinal Egan) from the light of day shining upon their actions and attitudes as understandable is absurd.
Unless of course one describes as "understandable" an individual who harbors a fugitive from justice for the crime of rape because he or she is a family member.
Lori's actions are not "understandable."
One cannot possibly "understand" why a bishop of the Church of Rome would seek to hide the truth about criminal priests and about those who protected them and about those who failed to protect children and vulnerable adults.
In doing so, he squandered thousands and thousands of Church dollars on legal fees in a vain effort to protect the ill-deserved reputation of some fellow churchmen.
I can't understand it either
I can't understand it either Greg, and I certainly do not accept it. To protect and enable criminally convicted, known or credibly accused sexual predators among the ranks of priests and bishops at the cost of the welfare of a child or a vulnerable young person is repugnant beyond belief.
More then that, ten years ago such behavior by any of our bishops would have been unimaginable to me but that was then and this is now. Today what I find incomprehensible is that so many of these same individual bishops have never, ever been held accountable for their sins and their crimes of putting thousands of children in harm's way, enabling the sexual abuse of children, covering it up while they harassed and intimidated victims and their families.
One thinks of the so called pre-election "Communion Wars." If anyone should be denied Communion for their mortal sins and criminal behavior it should be those who enabled the abuse of innocents in some misguided attempt to save an institution from scandal.
Good grief, church leadership did not obey society's laws or the church's own Canon Law. And what about the fact that the Holy See signed onto the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child or was that just for show falling into a catagory of "Do as I say not as I do?"
One comes to only one logical reason for Bishop William Lori's tenacious opposition to the unsealing of thousands of pages of court files concerning abusive priests, and, if truth be told, the reason was not to protect the many victim/survivors of clerical sexual abuse.
And now we know.
The continued opposition of the majority of bishops in the United States to tell the truth is disingenuous on its face because it contradicts what the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops promised in 2002 - accountability and transparency. But the bishops have never been truly accountabe and transparent and court actions in dioceses across the country attest to this fact.
The release of files, records and documents in places like the Archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts has shown just how deeply involved church officials like Bernard Cardinal Law and a number of his auxiliaries were in the covering up for the sexually abusive behavior of their priests. Nor did it stop with the New England area. The same type of behavior exhibited by Law, McCormark, Murphy and other Boston auxiliaries was repeated from coast to coast, with Mahony in Los Angeles to Krol, Bevilacqua and company in Philadelphia.
Catholics across this country are embarrassed and ashamed of such egregious behavior on the part of individual bishops like Mahony and Lori and can only liken their actions to that of rats on a sinking ship. Well, that ship has sunk. The Bridgeport Diocese's specious charges of anti-Catholic Church rhetoric have failed as well with the release of those 12,000 plus pages. I wonder if the good Catholics of the Bridgeport Diocese ever received an accounting of the total price tag for Lori's years of obstructing justice?
Individuals in leadership who have such difficulty in facing the Truth of what has happened and continues to happen in the Roman Catholic Church around the world today should not be in leadership and most assuredly some should have been criminally charged for their actions.
Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Victims' Advocate
New Castle, Delaware
www.childvictimsvoice.com
maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com
I did a quick scan of the web
I did a quick scan of the web site cited, "a history of the scandal" and the web site of the diocese. What a contrast. All seems well and good at Bridgeport, lilly white, and yet the "history of the scandal" non-existent. What a contrast, diametrical contradiction. Where is the confession, so necessary for contrition and reconciliation. So utterly consistent with all that has happened and is still happening. Regardless of whether the specific abuses have been halted, the scandal of the institution, the hierarchy lives on....
"One can understand why
"One can understand why Bishop William Lori fought so hard, up to the Supreme Court, to keep the documents secret."
Another middle management COMPANY MAN, just following orders from CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS.
Ecclesia semper reformanda? Yeah right.....and these are the same bozos who are now going to tell American nuns how to be good nuns and American Catholics how to pray in English!
I agree with Tom Roberts on
I agree with Tom Roberts on the value of Bishop-Accountability.org as a comprehensive resource on the history of the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic church. In fact, as an investigative journalist, I used it extensively in five years of research to produce my book, "An Irish Tragedy," which documents the causes and connection of sex abuse in Ireland and America. My book, available on Amazon.com, points out how Irish abuse has halped cripple the church in both countries. Incidentally, Bishop-Accountability, in addition to its ground-breaking work on the Bridgeport scandal, also introduced recently a first-ever database on priests from Ireland accused of sex abuse in the United States. The database is derived from my research for "An Irish Tragedy."
It warms my heart to see the
It warms my heart to see the first 5 replies (sympathizing with the victims and the burden we have born to expose this tragedy). I know 1st hand the devastating effects of being rebuffed, criticized, and looked down upon to bring this forward.
We victims want it to stop (the abuse) and we want the church to stop playing games with the lives of the victims. The church taking this to the supreme court does more harm than good in my humble opinion. The longer and more severely the church fights and looses you have to ask what is wrong with these guys? Do they think this is the right way to deal with this?
To act like they are not to be held accountable for some of the most heinous acts one can perpetrate on a child is amazing. I call it present day sins. The arrogance with which they defend the crimes committed against the children of their very own parishioners is mind twisting at best. If not for the victims coming forward what would the church be doing about sexual abuse right now? How many more children might be abused? Maybe your children.
Thank you to the 1st 5 posters. I'm glad you have to courage to speak out, this is what is needed. I hope the church listens.
Bishop-Accountability.org is
Bishop-Accountability.org is indispensable, both for source documents on the sex abuse scandal and the organization of the material in a user-friendly format. Depositions, attorney general and district attorney investigations, diocesan secret archives --- it’s all there with direct links to back-up documents.
As for the calculating Lori, BA.org researched how he unilaterally withheld 1,488 Bridgeport documents, 12% of the total, that the court ordered released in December. The full story is still not known as Lori continues hiding the truth. See the notations in red beside selected documents on the Bridgeport page identifying what was withheld. Even those documents that were released were in such disarray, it took extensive effort by BA.org to even identify what the pages contained, and organize them on a disk.
More basically, Lori’s distortion of the First Amendment maintains that bishops in effect have the right to criminally endanger children in order to freely exercise their religion. He must know the First Amendment protects religious belief, not criminal conduct. And that he is not exempt from neutral applicable laws to protect children.
But straining the gnats of interpretation and jurisdiction and liability and procedure is his specialty. Lori will exhaust every legal maneuver possible, and then some, to hold himself above the law. May the courts insist on all the documents it unsealed be released.
Lori is so removed from
Lori is so removed from pastoral concern for victim/survivors that he does not even inform them when their perpetrators die. He knew Raymond Pcolka died last year but never let the Rosado family or anyone else know. We in NH were busy exploring possible prosecution here for abuse decades ago because the statute of limitations can be suspended if the abuser leaves the state. Pcolka had a vacation home in NH where he brought his victims. For Lori, it’s secrecy, first, last and always, no matter the pain involved.
A review of Lori’s handling of the Rev. Michael Fay case for stealing over a million dollars in Greenwich is instructive. Lori’s humiliation of the priest who really exposed Fay caused that beloved priest, Michael Madden, to leave the priesthood. Lori’s spin was dizzying about how he instead was on the case, though Madden was blindsided. No corrupt corporate chieftain has anything on a dissembling bishop.
In case anyone thinks the scandal is history, check the daily abuse tracker run by BA.org of articles from across the US and around the world at http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTracker/ Abuse at exclusive Jesuit schools in Germany is currently among the breaking news.
For those who want to help BA.org continue its invaluable work, see
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/WhoWeAre/HowYouCanHelp.htm#donate
At my former all boys
At my former all boys Catholic high school, Calvert Hall College in Towson Maryland, Father Laurence Brett , the schools chaplain and most hungry sexual predator, was sent there by Bridgeport. Do you think they sent him there because they knew how much he liked to have sex with young boys? I do. For more info on this sordid tale read "Sacriledge" by Leon J. Podles. It's a barn burner. Kurt Gladsky Founder: Christian Brothers Sexual Abuse Survivors Network, Calvert Hall College class of 1971. P.S. I recently reminded C.H.C.'s new school president Brother Thomas Zoppo that Calvert Hall had never in 50 years reported any of the child rapes that ocurred there to the Baltimore County Police Department. He assured me that he would look into it. Sure.
These revelations should not
These revelations should not shock anyone. The question remains why no one has inquired about his complicity with the cover-ups during his tenure as auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. He has hard questions to answer both for his public and private relationships and misdeeds.
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