Clergy Abuse Tracker More Pre-11/2002 Archives

COLD SANCTUARY
How the Church lost its mission.
The New Yorker
by THOMAS KENEALLY
When I was a young candidate for the priesthood at St. Patrick's College in Sydney, Australia, our family doctor said to my mother, "Tom has idealized the Church. It's going to be a great shock to him when he finds out that priests are human."
I was as romantic a seminarian as any the world over. My desire to become a priest was influenced by the fact that a pretty girl in my neighborhood, whom I had incoherently desired, had chosen to become a Dominican nun. I had some grandiose idea, perhaps, of being St. Francis to her St. Clare. Like most of my fellow-seminarians, I also had a naïve piety and considerable generosity of spirit.
There were certainly elements of vanity at work, too. Australia, in the early nineteen-fifties, was a banal, suburban place, and to be at the center of the solemn liturgies of the Roman Catholic Church was to be connected to the universal Church of all times and all places. I had learned to sing "Faith of Our Fathers" from an Irish nun in the midst of a withering Australian drought; others had learned to sing it in the snows of Minnesota and the gales of Ireland. Moreover, it was exhilarating for an Australian kid from a plain suburb to look forward to being entrusted by Christ with the power to "bind and loose" sins.
My parents were observant Catholics, but they accepted my decision with resignation and perhaps with some uneasiness about my immaturity and flights of imagination. Unlike raunchier young Australians, I was full of what could be called sexual wonderings rather than any direct sexual experience, and the sacrifice involved in undertaking priestly celibacy seemed a minor issue, particularly since I would be surrounded by other men to whom sexual abstinence was the heroic norm. In strange ways, I resembled the squeamish gangster Pinkie in Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock." To Pinkie and me, sex seemed a grasping, howling, animal thing. Had there been an independent secular counsellor to assess my case, he would have advised me to enroll at the University of Sydney and meet as many genial Protestant girls as I could.



posted by Kathy Shaw on 8/19/2002 05:01:32 PM

RICHMOND (VA)
Clergy Sexual Abuse
The Catholic Virginian
by Bishop Walter F. Sullivan
When I became diocesan bishop, I chose as my motto, “To Unite All In Christ.” That pledge to reconciliation and unity now meets an enormous challenge. Never did I imagine back in 1974, when I began as your bishop, that clergy sexual abuse was growing like a cancer within the church. I could never have predicted the scandal that is disrupting our diocese, and dioceses throughout the country. Like a cancer, the disruption has spread. It tears at the heart of innocent victims and their families. It fractures the harmony of our diocesan community. It rips the spirit of our committed priests.
In recent months, I have been looking into instances where it has been proven, or there are allegations that some of our priests sexually abused minors decades ago. This included a two-month internal investigation into claims against Father John Leonard. The claims alleged that he was involved in sexual misconduct in the 1970s with students at our former seminary in Goochland County. During the investigation, I removed Father Leonard as pastor of St. Michael parish in Richmond. I reinstated him when I could not find sufficient cause to end his priestly ministry.
A large storm of controversy arose immediately when several persons went to the news media to criticize the investigation and protest my decision. The controversy has been nonstop ever since, with reports almost every day, many times a day, in the newspapers, on radio and TV. New and harrowing renditions of allegations flooded the news. Some members of the diocesan sex abuse panel publicly announced their resignations, holding up professional credentials to denounce my actions and judgment. Even as I write this Tidings, almost two months after my decision, a local editor just published false accusations that I by-passed the sexual abuse panel, did not follow the recommendations of the panel’s investigators and have cast aspersions on the accusers.
I want the people of the diocese to understand clearly that the sexual abuse panel had a team investigating allegations against Father Leonard. That team presented its full findings and recommendations to me. Any suggestions that I made my decision apart from the panel’s team, or without considering the report of that team are absolutely false.
It was only after I had deliberated, formulated and announced my decision that I was told the panel had not seen the team report. That team was supposed to report its findings and recommendations to the panel when it reported the same to me. That team never did so. What is worse, the panel member who resigned because the panel never got its report sat on the very team that failed to report to the panel. It is incorrect to say that I circumvented the panel. It is also noteworthy that the team was demanding a quick decision from me while leaving the panel without any information about its own investigation.


posted by Kathy Shaw on 8/19/2002 01:48:34 PM
RICHMOND (VA)
Law enforcement opens probe of abuse charges against priest
The Catholic Virginian
By Steve Neill
Of The Catholic Virginian
The Commonwealth’s attorney of Goochland County has directed the Virginia State Police and Goochland County sheriff’s office to investigate two allegations of sexual abuse against Father John E. Leonard when he served on the faculty of the former St. John Vianney Seminary in the county west of Richmond.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Edward K. Carpenter declined to name the two men who phoned his office Aug. 12 alleging sexual abuse by the priest. A representative of Bishop Walter F. Sullivan also called the commonwealth’s attorney’s office that day and requested an investigation of the charges against Father Leonard, pastor of St. Michael’s Church, Glen Allen, be made.
“Today complaints were made to this office by two persons alleging that the Rev. Leonard committed acts of sexual misconduct against them at St. John Vianney Seminary in Goochland County,” Mr. Carpenter said in a written statement. He added that he expected officers to question the two men later that week.


posted by Kathy Shaw on 8/19/2002 01:22:34 PM

RICHMOND (VA)
Abuse incidents force two priests to retire
The Catholic Virginian
By Steve Neill
Of The Catholic Virginian
Two priests of the Diocese of Richmond who have served since the 1960s have been barred from public ministry after admitting they were guilty of sexually abusing minors.
Bishop Walter F. Sullivan asked for the resignations of Father Julian B. Goodman, pastor of Holy Comforter Church in Charlottesville, and Father John P. Blankenship, chaplain at the Federal Correctional Center in Petersburg, after both had been accused of abuse.
Both priests will no longer be able to preside at Mass or wear the Roman collar. They will receive retirement benefits from the diocese, but unlike other retired priests, they will not be able to fill in for Mass when active priests are away from their parish.
Father Pasquale Apuzzo, diocesan director of communications, said at a press conference Aug. 7 that Bishop Sullivan had met the previous day with Father Goodman and asked him to retire after James Kronzer, a former student at St. John Vianney Seminary in Goochland County, had charged Father Goodman with sexual abuse over a three-year period from 1976 to 1979.







posted by Kathy Shaw on 8/19/2002 01:20:46 PM Priest counsels troubled clergy
Troy Record
By: Anne C. Fullam, The Record August 18, 2002
Rev. Canice Connors, of Rensselaer, an acknowledged expert in the field of clinical treatment for pedophilia, remembers his first encounter with a priest who sexually abused minors.
Editor's Note: The Catholic Church is in transition. This is the eighth in a series of stories that focuses on how the church, as exemplified by the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese, is coping with the changes is faces.
Rev. Canice Connors, of Rensselaer, an acknowledged expert in the field of clinical treatment for pedophilia, remembers his first encounter with a priest who sexually abused minors.
"The first person who ever sat across the table from me was in a treatment center in Canada," said Connors. "I had a list of his allegations. I kept expecting him to break down and cry."
Connors, who holds doctor's and master's degrees in psychology, paused. "He kept smiling," said Connors. "I remember thinking, 'This abuser doesn't have any empathy for his victims.'"

posted by Bill Mitchell on 8/19/2002 08:38:58 AM
Zero-tolerance forces priest out
Whitewater pastor removed for 'inappropriate behavior' 19 years ago
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By LEAH THORSEN and TANIA RUIZDELUZURIAGA
of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: Aug. 17, 2002
A Whitewater priest announced to his congregation Saturday that he is leaving active ministry as a result of the zero-tolerance policy toward sexual abuse of minors by priests that U.S. bishops adopted two months ago.


posted by Bill Mitchell on 8/19/2002 08:38:33 AM Church hit by another lawsuit by man who settled
Troy Record
By: Anne C. Fullam, The Record August 18, 2002
Albany - A man who received a $70,000 settlement from the Albany Diocese in 1997 has filed a lawsuit against the diocese in state Supreme Court.
Edward Oathout, 41, is claiming emotional distress from a 1970s sexual encounter with a diocesan priest. That encounter led to the settlement.
He now is seeking $500 million.
Serving a prison term of five to 15 years in Attica for sexually molesting two young girls, Oathout is also suing his two former lawyers and his sister.
"He signed an agreement with an attorney," said Bishop Howard J. Hubbard. "Whatever claim he had has already been settled, and with an attorney who he's now suing."


posted by Bill Mitchell on 8/19/2002 08:30:17 AM

TROUP (TX)
Minister's arrest rocks small Texas community
The Washington Times
By Hugh Aynesworth
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
TROUP, Texas — The killing of a minister's wife earlier this month has shocked the residents of this town of 1,800. Top Stories
• "I refuse to believe that fine man did this," Ossie Barnes said, "but if he didn't, I guess it's even scarier."
Mrs. Barnes was referring to the Rev. Mike Tabb, 41, charged with murder Wednesday in the brutal slaying of his wife Aug. 5 in the parsonage of Troup's First United Methodist Church.
The body of Marla Tabb, 35, was discovered lying in a pool of blood. Her husband said he had been to Tyler, about 15 miles northwest of the town and had returned home to discover his wife dead.
The Tabbs were relatively new in Troup, having moved here from Camp LeJeune, N.C., where Mr. Tabb had served as a chaplain. Mrs. Tabb had little contact with the community because of "difficulties" stemming from a recent childbirth.



posted by Kathy Shaw on 8/19/2002 07:55:06 AM

BOSTON (MA)
Accused priest asks for leave: Archdiocese judicial vicar denies abuse
Boston Herald
by Robin Washington
Monday, August 19, 2002
One of the highest ranking archdiocese officials to be implicated in the church sex abuse scandal was relieved of his duties after he requested to be placed on administrative leave, an archdiocese spokeswoman said last night.
Msgr. Michael Smith Foster, the Boston archdiocese's judicial vicar and presiding judge of its Metropolitan Tribunal, was accused in a suit filed last week by a former Newton altar boy. The suit alleges Foster molested him at Sacred Heart parish in Newton in the early 1980s.
Archdiocese spokeswoman Donna M. Morrissey said Bernard Cardinal Law accepted Foster's request to be placed on leave while the church investigates the charges under its ``zero tolerance'' policy on sex abuse claims.
posted by Jayson Landeza on 8/19/2002 04:42:02 AM

BOSTON (MA)
High-ranking priest asks to go on leave
Boston Globe
By Ron DePasquale, Associated Press
A high-ranking official in the Boston Archdiocese has asked for and been granted leave while he fights charges that he sexually abused a minor.
Monsignor Michael Smith Foster, the presiding judge of the archdiocese's Metropolitan Tribunal, which handles annulments and canon law issues, issued a statement Sunday denying the charges.
"I deny all of the allegations of sexual misconduct and any other wrongful conduct and I am devastated by these false accusations," Foster said. "I pray that the truth will be revealed as quickly as possible."
posted by Jayson Landeza on 8/19/2002 04:38:28 AM

Clergy Abuse Tracker More Pre-11/2002 Archives