Court baffled over what to do with blogger in press seat as jury selection begins for Salesian trial in LA Superior Court

By Kay Ebeling
I thought they were saying hello to me so I waved back. But those weren’t welcome smiles on the attorneys’ faces as jury selection began for the Salesian cases jury trial in LA Superior Court. As I hunched down I could hear whispering from the judge and lawyers at the front. You know how you can tell someone is talking about you.

The clerk said I had to move from the first to the second row. Then the judge and lawyers beckoned and he picked up a blue easy chair and lifted it over the railing so I could sit in the aisle. The blue chair was on wheels so I could move up and down the aisle as the attorneys argued over where it was okay for me to sit. I rolled down the aisle when jurors were lining up in back, I rolled up to the back when they were talking with a juror up front.

Then from all the way in the back I heard, "If she’s going to be in here all the time, we need to move to another room.” It was a female shriek, I doubt it was the judge, but I was too far in the back to see. I was drawing fast, as I knew I better finish this sketch quick. In a kind of ceremony, the attorneys got up and walked up the aisle, right past me, and out the back exit. After lunch, I sat in my blue chair in the aisle, but the chairs up front were vacant. The judge and attorneys were questioning jurors one by one in the other room.

The first issue for jurors is time, whether they can serve on a 30 to 35 day trial. The jurors still in the room want to plead hardship over serving 6 to 7 weeks. The other 300 or so potential jurors had gone home to return Monday May 5.

I hadn’t been there three minutes before I looked up and saw all the attorneys turned around and looking at me. Honest. I thought they were saying hello. So I waved hello and smiled. Okay not proper protocol in the middle of jury selection but I’d just fought metro rails and buses for more than an hour to get there, they're not always reliable, and I was flushed, it was hot, I was late. The two front rows may have been filled with reporters two hours earlier when proceedings began, but now as usual, I was the only one.

It was absurd. First they made me move from the front row to the second row, then out into the aisle. Then up and down the aisle and into the back. Now potential jurors who saw all that are probably Google searching to find out who I am. If the law had just left me alone, I would have heard very little. I watch Law & Order. I know not to interfere with jurors.

At one of the approved points on the aisle, I settled down to continue my sketch and a juror who was still within earshot of me said something like, Do you come here often? And I said, “Shh, I'm a journalist, I'm not allowed to talk to you.” But it was too late.

Javier stood over me with new orders from the judge. He and a security guard pushed my chair on wheels up the aisle all the way to the back. When they asked the jurors to start lining up ten at a time in the back, I just had to wheel down the aisle to the center of the room. But by then the judge and attorneys were gone.

Nobody can figure out what to do with me. I'm the press, for what it's worth, moreso than any other media in the city when it comes to the Clergy Cases, they have to let me stay there, but NOBODY wants me there, the judge plaintiff or defense lawyers.

I sit where Javier tells me to sit. He comes back a minute later and says sit in that seat instead. So I sit in the second row. Get settled, take out my laptop fold my case get out my sketch board look up see all those faces. I end up on wheels rolling up and down the aisles. That still doesn't satisfy them and they all get up and leave. All because of me and my blog.

That look on their faces stays with me until next morning. I settle down and start sketching.

If I go back next Monday I’ll be set up with my own little easy chair on wheels. But I won’t be able to see or hear anything as it will all be going on “in the other room.”

From my perch in the back, if I sat on my feet, I could barely see the proceedings up front. I angled, squirmed up to see over the heads so I could at least finish my sketch. I knew I better draw that picture fast as I could hear a little of what was being said, even from the back. There was a lot of tension about me being in the room.

Funny thing is I’ve felt that way so many times before. . .

We broke for lunch. Javier said come back at 1:30 but don’t be waving to the jurors. Maybe that was it. When I first sat down in my first approved seat, this black lady with white hair in the jury pool gave me such warm smile I had to smile back.

I promised Javier, "Don't worry, I won't even make eye contact with anyone."

The irony is not lost on me. You see, I started this blog mostly to try to break the concrete block of isolation that's bound my life for about 50 years. I want to meet people, get out more, sit over coffee and klatch. I don't do those things very often. Normal people do those things. I always end up in a room by myself.

Now here I am in a room with a few hundred people and it’s okay for me to be there, I even get the most comfortable chair, but I can’t interact with any person in the room. I thought the press covered jury selection.

Outside in the hall, I overheard the room number where they were sending jurors. I could have gone down there and followed a potential juror out of the room and gotten one or two to talk about the experience, tell me the questions they asked.

But hey, I watch Law & Order. I'm not stupid enough to mess with the jury.

It’s just, I'm just a blog. I don't know if the LA Times was there earlier, I got there late, I had to finish something for one of my other three jobs first.

As I left, Javier said to me, “She just doesn't want you to hear what they're saying to the jurors.” Isn't that my right? To hear what they say to the jurors?

Jury selection continues Monday May 5 in the morning and still on calendar for that afternoon at the Commonwealth courthouse is this (from online Superior Court Case Summary for JCCP4286)

05/05/2008 at 02:00 pm in department 308 at 600 South Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90005

Motion to Compel

(FURTHER RESPONSES AND PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS BY THE SALESIANS TOP'S REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS SET 5 AND PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS BY THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF L.A. (RE BC308472))

That's regarding the next Salesian Case Jury trial scheduled for August 25th. The remaining motions in limine in the Miani case coming up must have been worked out between attorneys behind closed doors. . . .

I’ll write about the upcoming motion to compel next post.

Onward. . .

Imagine All the Bishops, Doing What He Said To Do--ooh-ooh-hoo-ooh, You May Say I Have The Audacity To Dream.

By Kay Ebeling
In 1994 I fantasized that the church would respond exactly like the Pope told the bishops to respond last week, with compassion for the victims. When my daughter turned five and I started to remember what happened to me when I was five, I had The Audacity To Imagine I’d go to the Chicago Archdiocese and tell them what Father Horne did to me and my sister, and like the Christian loving community the Catholic Church is, they would welcome us with open arms. The archbishop of Chicago himself would lean over me and say, “What can we do for you to make up for this horrendous crime?”

Since the Archbishop of Chicago stood over me in 1955 when I was seven years old and told me to stop babbling (and showing other children the moves Father Horne had shown me), this more recent fantasy is poignant. I imagined, in 1994 and in 2001 and 2004 and 2005 and 2007 each time I tried, that an archbishop would reach out to me and this time it would be different. It never was.

IMAGINE: The true story comes out, including whatever the church is covering up so desperately that they allowed these pedophiles to get at us. Imagine the truth of the total damage to the victims comes out, in spite of the power of PR, pseudo-advocacy, and media control, whatever tactics the church has used, from the start, to shoot down the crime victims and keep the true felonies performed on children from ever being public.

IMAGINE: Cardinal Roger Mahony has a spiritual awakening, (not like the fiction book that came out last year). The cardinal’s background leaves him a perfect way out of the mess he’s helped make the church. Imagine Mahony resigning as Archbishop and doing social work in LA pro bono. He speaks Spanish. It could happen. Mahony could slip into the third world, in LA it's just below Wilshire, and disappear.

IMAGINE: As the now Mr. Mahony resigns, he makes a powerful speech about the horrendous Sex Crimes in the Catholic Church. He says he can no longer take part in the archdiocese cover-up of crimes, and he will answer any questions from now on candidly, even if he incriminates himself.

IMAGINE: As the new Mr. Roger Mahony leaves the temple, he brings with him mounds of incriminating evidence all boxed up and addressed to go directly to Kay Ebeling c/o City of Angels Network in East Hollywood).
*******
IMAGINE: It took a reader to tell me I wasn’t a flirt at age seven. I was squirming.
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In 2004 I had a new fantasy when I connected with someone in the LA archdiocese, that the church would reach out and ask, What can we do for you. Back then the thought of a lawsuit had never crossed my mind. I just imagined I would get help from the church which had damaged me, the church that preaches this message of Confession and Penance and Reconciliation. (To read the story of my encounter with the LA archdiocese’s Sister Sheila, read January 8, 2008 post.)

One reader pointed out about the last post, I referred to myself as “flirting” when I was 7 years old with Father Horne in a previous post. The reader reminded me a 7 year old girl does not flirt, as she doesn't know what flirting is.

I should have changed the word to “squirm” not “flirt.”

Weirder still, I left out the second half of my connection to “impure thoughts:”

Father Horne taught me to talk dirty, in the Confessional. He got me in that dark place and taught me these dirty words, fantasies that involve ideas no little girl would know, and yet those “impure thoughts” are with me to this day.

He had me talking dirty to him in the Confessional at age seven.

Then in 1953 we moved to from Illinois to California and I went to Confession in a new church for us, somewhere near San Marino. When I began repeating what Father Horne taught me to say, the priest ran out of the confessional with his eyes bugging out and his mouth wide open going ‘GAAAAAAH” I came out of my side and didn't understand what I’d done wrong.

He just wanted me out of that church that minute. One of my first experiences of people despising me when I didn't know why.

My mom came out from the pew where she waited, and biting her lip, she led me out of the church.

Hmm, it was Father Horne’s fantasies then,
But today
I IMAGINE MY OWN
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A lot of people have disappeared, been shot down not only by the church but by the movement. Write to me
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IMAGINE: Me starting this blog, after being shot down trying to be an advocate over and over again, even by persons who identify themselves as advocates. I almost had no imagination left in me at all in January 2007. Then I started the blog and got rejuvenated.

IMAGINE: Me instead of quitting, instead of letting them defeat me, starting a blog and turning into a new person.

If you're one of the victims of Sex Crimes in the Catholic Church, and you've tried to organize an event, and you've been shot down and because of that you quit, get in touch with me. I’ll teach you how to start a blog or we'll do something...

If you want to talk and go public and put your story out there forever,
What you've gone through with the church, what you've gone through with advocacy,
Once it’s out there on a blog, it’s out there. No one can take it down but you.
I’ll show you how to start a blog.
And begin publishing your own version of the truth about Sex Crimes in the Catholic Church.
*******
Don’t Be Scared
If you're doing what's Right, there’s nothing to be scared of
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In my ghetto Bible Study groups there’s another topic that keeps coming up, the Power of God, especially in the last few weeks, as in, DON’T BE SCARED to do what you know is right. A lot of us have to do things that are frightening, but if you're praying and God is with you, there’s no reason to be scared.

Whatever happens, if you're praying and in a relationship with God, do what you have to do, and whatever happens is all right.

Don’t Be Scared.

We need to be brave.

IMAGINE: Someone who is still a priest or monsignor, still inside the confines of the church, has a spiritual awakening and realizes it’s time to come forward with what they know.

And that brave soul will contact me and pass me a briefcase or a box or a blue dress, something that starts to tell whatever it is the church was covering up when they refused to stop the pedophiles.
*******
What were they covering up when they let the pedophiles get to the children? There’s more story here that needs to be dug out.
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IMAGINE: That priest or nun or accountant, or even a suddenly rejoiced Cardinal Mahony, will bring me the equivalent of Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress, so that City of Angels Blog nee Network can get more than 300 readers every post.

IMAGINE: Today that the true nature of the Sex Crimes in the Catholic Church will come out.

That all the powers of PR
And whatever tactics the church has used,
From the start,
Even pseudo-advocates
To shoot down the crime victims and keep the total details of the crimes from ever becoming Public --
That
We will be able to bypass all those obstacles
That
Even the “movement” seems to have put in front of us.
And be able to tell the total story of crimes committed from the bishops on down
*******
Put your story out in a blog. Then it’s there for the world to see freely. And once it’s published, what can the bad guys do?
**********
IMAGINE: All the victims and advocates who have felt shot down and quit coming, coming back, even the ones who just decided to quit after New York and Washington last week.

PLEASE.

Quitting accomplishes nothing except to let the bad guys win. There’s a couple more activists who quit after events Washington and New York last week. Please don’t quit.

If you feel like you got shot down trying to do something about your priest rape cases, contact me. I’ll teach you how to start a blog at least.

!!!!!!!
We have to do something.
We can’t let them get away with this
!!!!!!!!!!

Last week the pope told bishops around the country to look at the crime victims as individuals and reach out to them with mercy. So here I go imagining things again, that any minute the phone will ring and Cardinal George will be on the line saying, “What can we do for you to make up for this horrendous crime. The resources of the Church are here to help you.”
*******
MEANWHILE, I type every word everybody says, with every utterance on my paid job, perfect training for covering jury trials, first one the Salesian cases coming up.
**********
For the last 10 years I’ve had this job you have to call bizarre.
There are only about 30 of us in the world.
Transcribers for Reality TV shows.

See whenever they do reality TV, they go out to homes and far flung places and video ALL THIS STUFF, and someone has to go through it all. That's what I do. I go through raw videos for shows like E! True Hollywood Story and Extreme Makeover, and write down everything that's going on in the B-Roll, (with angles and time codes every 30 seconds) plus I write verbatim everything they say, word for word, including every “um” “you know”-- to get my pay rate up, I developed ways to transcribe faster and faster. Now it takes me about an hour to transcribe a half-hour tape.
*******
Here is where the
Nothing Happens In God’s World By Mistake part happens:
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As it so happens, as we begin the Salesian trial next week, I can sit in the courtroom and write down everything the lawyers and the judges and the witnesses say, because I now transcribe half the speed that people speak, the speed of speech if I can leave out the "uh's" and "you know's," a skill I learned long before I ever knew I'd be doing this reporting.

Do you see the miracle there?

Because I’ve been doing this weird job in reality TV for 10 years, I'm able to do this blog.

I'm one of 30 or so people in the world who do this kind of transcription.

It's a God thing.

Saturday night for a show called "America's Greatest Dog" I transcribed future lines of dialogue from a future male model in a bark park with his dog:

“No, [STAMMERS] my dog has been amazing, just, uh, putting me into like, you know, a pattern of like a schedule.”
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Dear Mr. Fantasy, like in the video box above, Imagine the whole story -- all the crimes, the total truth, published here at City of Angels Network.
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That picture at the top inside the post, that's me, Nancy Drew. And above that is a video box with Dear Mr. Fantasy, music that fed my nascent imagination.
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Onward. . .
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IT OCCURS to me that people don’t understand when I say “Please Click the PayPal Button”
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APPLAUSE
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PS My daughter’s boyfriend just told me some people might not know how PayPal works to applaud the blog. Anyone with a bank card or any credit card can go to my PayPal and use that card to send cash to City of Angels Network. We never see your bank card information, your applause gets put on our PayPal account for me to withdraw cash. So if you want to send money to City of Angels Network and help finance investigative reporting on Sex Crimes in the Catholic Church, please click the button that says “Subscribe” in the top left column under “Applaud the Blog.”
**********
We're like slapstick dancers, when you clap real hard, we dance even faster.
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Onward through the fog. . .

Paracletes Psychologist: I would ask, did your fellow priests question why you had kids around so much. Priests just did not discuss sexualty

*****
By Kay Ebeling
Went document diving today because the hearing on issues the defense does not mentioned was continued to Monday afternoon for the upcoming Salesian cases jury trial. Jury selection begins Monday morning downtown LA in the Stanley Mosk Courthouse Department 1, (110 North Grand Ave). Then the hearing on motions in limine starts back up at 308 S. Commonwealth that same day at 2PM.

Once they have a jury, the trial takes place in Judge Emilie Elias’ courtroom at the Commonwealth location. (Try not to step on people living on the sidewalk as you approach this looming mass of 20th Century concrete and glass that overlooks Lafayette Park. Across the street is a building that used to be a nightclub-hotel, where the likes of Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson would dance the night away. Today it houses Russian refugee families.)

Catch of the day in the Salesian case documents is this statement written by a seminarian who observed and complained about Father Jim Miani way back in the 1940s, copy typed here:

“One day of such vacation , alluding the company of the others, he (Miani) stopped together with a 13 year old youngster and, between a word and a joke, it seems in truthfulness that he tried to commit an indecent act.

The young fellow was able to resist but at the return in the seminary he candidly manifested everything to the Rectory. Thus all the consequences to Miani. The Superiors when questioned have not reported anything else.

I retain that Miani at that time suffered a crises and that advised of the hard realization and its disastrous consequences, has improved his behavior and is determined with his vocation.
Signed:
In the Heart of Jesus
Rev. Amadio Maurizio

*****
We Do Not Discuss Such Matters
SERVANTS OF THE PARACLETES PSYCHOLOGIST
to testify for the plaintiffs
*********

There will be a lot of discussion at this trial about EUPHEMISMS, because the words in these old documents don’t always mean what they say. In the 1940s no one discussed sex, let alone religious order brothers and priests.

For example, we can expect testimony from Jay Feierman, Ph.D. who was a psychologist at Servants of the Paracletes in the eighties and early nineties. Here is part of a deposition with Feierman that was attached to a plaintiffs’ motion:

Q: From your experience do priests when talking about sexual issues use euphemisms?

A: I would call them vague general statements that are not specific.

Q: Can you give some examples?

A: The best one is “impure thoughts,”

(PERSONAL NOTE: I had to stop and take a breath when I read that, as “impure thoughts” was a euphemism Father Thomas Barry Horne used to get to me. It was pre-First Confession First Communion class in the little church of the St. Peter Damian parish in Bartlett, Illinois. Since the area was rural in the early 1950s, there were only a handful of children along with me, all around age 5-6, getting ready for our big entry into the Catholic religion. By this age, I already had a secret sexual relationship with Father Horne. So I was flirting during this interchange:

FR. HORNE: Another thing you talk about in Confession is impure thoughts.

KAY AGE 5: (FLIRTING) What’s impure thought?

FR. HORNE: (AN ALMOST IMPERCEPTIBLE WINK) We'll talk about that later. . .

(KAY AGE 5 SQUIRMS AND GIGGLES. . . )

******
Enough of that
BACK TO DOCUMENT DIVING
More from Jay Feierman's deposition
******

Q: Can you define an impure act?

A: It can range from simply looking at a lady at a shopping center to putting a little boy’s penis in your mouth and everything in between.

Another item in a plaintiffs’ motion: this declaration of a fellow seminarian who witnessed Titian Miani’s flagrante behavior in Edmonton, Canada:

(NAME REDACTED) declares that some time in 1957 or 1958 he went to the infirmary for an injured leg and saw Father Minai orally copulating a fellow student who was “one of the younger boys at the school.”

(REDACTED) declares that he reported the incident to the director of the school Father John Dal Maso. He was later summoned to Dal Maso’s office where he was questioned about the incident. (This was in Edmonton, Canada)

Mr. Redacted will likely be a witness for the plaintiffs in the trial next month.

*******
Talk About Euphemisms: the 1967 Catholic Dictionary Definition of "Particular Friendship"
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(Particular Friendship is a particularly favorite euphemism pedophile priests use when discussing their prey.)

From Catholic Encyclopedia
1967 vol. 6

Definition of “friendship, particular”: Particular friendship is an exclusive association between two persons based upon emotional fascination. As such a particular friendship is perversion of God’s gift of good and wholesome friendship. It is a distortion of truth in that it is an exclusive association and therefore detrimental to the universal charity due to all.

A Particular Friendship is a friendship based upon emotional fascination and motivated more by the selfish interests of the “friends” than the desire of each to promote the good of the other.

The danger of a particular friendship is proportioned to a person’s emotional instability.

Such an association exists most often between those who are emotionally insecure. Particular friendships are an expression of the human tendency to love and be loved, which in this case is applied wrongly.

Such friendship can develop between those of the op sex and those of same sex. Characteristics of a particular friendship:

Exclusiveness, all attention on one person to exclusion of others.
Jealousy
Absorption of mind, they think of each other continuously.

Because this type of friendship has all the marks of a relationship between young lovers, the friends feel more and more desire to manifest ---

AAAAAAAARRRRHGHGHGHG
I CAN’T READ OR COPY ANY MORE

Why didn't they come out and say it and do something about it instead of pretending it was just a minor aberration!?!?!?!?

If plaintiffs make too big a deal about particular friendships, the defendants will bring in their big guns, a retired FBI agent who testified in deposition that the Salesians use the expression "particular friendships" because:

FBI GUY TESTIFYING FOR DEFENDANTS: They just didn't want cliques, they didn't want teachers’ pets, they didn't want those sorts of things.

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So the defense will put on a witness to use euphemisms while testifying about the use of euphemisms. Can’t wait
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At a hearing earlier this month they discussed jury selection and logistics for the upcoming trial: Transcribed by City of Angels Winging It Transcripts

JUDGE EMILIE ELIAS: Even if everything is ready to go in two weeks, do you have any idea how long this trial will last?

TOM DELANEY: I think a reasonable estimate is 4 to 5 months or 6 weeks.

TONY DEMARCO: Outside end is six weeks.

JUDGE ELIAS: (HER HAND ON CHEEK, RELAXED UP THERE, SO AT HOME ON THE BENCH) If we're not going to prescreen jurors, we’ll be calling in panels forever.

(She asked who will be the litigators. Ray Boucher will be in court for the plaintiffs, Wayne Mason and Steve McFeely will appear for the defense.)

JUDGE: Finding a jury is going to be difficult.

DEMARCO: It didn't take long in San Francisco

DELANEY: It took two days.

Once a jury is selected the civil trial for victims of sex crimes by Father Jim Miani begins in Judge Emilie Elias’ court on the 14th floor of the Superior Court building at 308 S. Commonwealth.

****
MORE FROM THE DEPOSITION OF JAY FEIERMAN
FORMER PSYCHOLOGIST
AT SERVANTS OF THE PARACLETES:
*********

"Priests were never specifically asked details about their own sexuality.

"A lot of the men had aspects of sexuality they didn't want to talk about and they knew if they didn't act inappropriately in a sexual way, no one was going to ask them about their sexuality.

"It was just the -- sort of the ethics of the institution in a way that nobody was going to probe into your sexual behavior as long as you were willing to live a chaste life.

"My recollection in talking to the men is that their sexuality was just not something that was talked about. Nobody asked them who are you sexually attracted to so. . . Sexuality was just not talked about among priests, within priests, or among themselves.

"I would say well why didn't your fellow priests say something, that, you know, why do you have these kids around so much, and the usual response was, well they never said anything.

“The priests could have blinders in terms of seeing things that they maybe should have said something about and they didn't.”

*****
I have got to get a travel budget going so I can go to New Mexico and research the Servants of the Paracletes. Please click my PayPal Button with $5 or more to help make this blog into all it can be, with investigative reporting from New Mexico, Chicago, and other parts of the country in the coming years.
*********

Onward. . .

Salesian Cases Jury Trial Update. Pretrial motions Thursday, jury selection begins April 28.

******
By Kay Ebeling
Hearings continue Thursday morning on remaining motions in limine for cases which were part of the LA Archdiocese settlement concerning the Salesians Religious order. Three of the remaining 17 cases are making their way to what will likely be a five to six week trial. Jury selection begins April 28th in the Stanley Mosk courthouse downtown LA.

The 17 victims of Salesian religious order brothers who were sexual predators received settlements for their cases last December along with the other 550-plus LA Clergy Cases plaintiffs. But the Salesian religious order still claims they had no knowledge of pedophilia among their priests and brothers the last 60 years.

If the Salesians lose these trials, they have to repay the LA Archdiocese moneys that were paid to the plaintiffs. If the Salesians win, the Archdiocese will accept the loss of up to $26.5 million dollars, as part of an agreement reached in December between plaintiff attorneys and attorneys for Cardinal Roger Mahony.

Hearings Thursday April 24 will focus a great deal on documents from the 1940s concerning the priest Fr. Jim Miani (aka Titian Miani) and evidence plaintiffs say proves the religious order knew Miani was a predator before they sent him to study in North America in the early 1950s.

A second trial is on calendar for August 2008.

City of Angels Network will be there reporting through all of it. . . -- Kay Ebeling

Levada said, before going to Vatican in 2005, bishops protected church over children. Now as Pope Junior, it never happened.

*****
By Kay Ebeling
"We are suffering for the mistakes of bishops and administrators who did not place the future protection of children above their desire to protect the reputation and service of priests who had proven themselves unfaithful to their duties.” -- Wm Levada, 2005

When William Levada left for the Vatican in 2005 to do Ratzinger’s old job, I thought the former bishop of San Francisco was running from the feds. Yet there he was back on US soil last week representing the pope with this quote: "I personally do not accept that there has been a broad base of bishops guilty of aiding and abetting pedophiles." Another blatant lie by a hierarchy spokesman reported over and over again as a fact in mainstream media.

“When I challenged Levada it was about investigating a former bishop,” said Jim Jenkins who resigned from the San Francisco Review Board and is now on the VOTF Survivors Support Working Group. “I didn't want to be part of an elaborate dishonest public relations scheme, and that's all that review board had become. Levada was becoming so disingenuous.”

Just talking off the top of his head, the San Francisco psychologist named a list of priests whose crimes Levada himself aided and abetted in covering.

“There’s Ingles, O’Connor, O’Shea, and Quinn. The former bishop of San Francisco in 2004 -2005 when I was on the review board was John Quinn.”

(Wikipedia calls John Quinn “popular” and an “irenic and liberal presence” in San Francisco.)

Jenkins tells me a convoluted story that again shows how tangled are these fronds in the stories of Sex Crimes in the Catholic Church the last 40 or 50 years. You barely touch a leaf and the flower opens, then it reveals layer upon layer of petals full of scandal about this priest was a buddy to that priest, and they all knew about each other and how can anybody believe them when they claim innocence.

No wonder I plan to spend another 16 years writing about Sex Crimes in the Catholic Church. It’s going to take that long to figure it all out.

Here’s another tangled web from --

Again--

The alumnae of St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, Southern California, late 20th Century.

“I was investigating a man named Ingles he was the canon lawyer for the archdiocese,” Jenkins said, Gregory Ingles during the 1970s was raping both boys and girls at Marin Catholic High School and I was investigating that one case.
-------
Quinn and Ingles live together in Menlo Park where they hold catered parties for a group of priests who are all accused pedophiles
=========
“We found out that Ingles was living in the same house at the same time as the former Archbishop John Quinn down at a seminary in Menlo Park.

“I don't know what their relationship was but I started asking questions. What is their relationship? What is this guy Ingles doing living at a seminary when he’s a risk to both men and women?”

Father Gregory Ingels, accused of sodomizing a teenage boy three decades before, as a canon lawyer was one of Levada’s closest advisors.

More about Ingels: in May 2003, a male student at Marin Catholic High School where Ingels taught in the early 1970s cooperated with police in recording phone conversations.

Ingles was about to be prosecuted when the Stogner decision in the US Supreme Court 2003 wiped out his charges.

Jenkins continued:

“As it turned out not only was Ingels keeping house with the former Archbishop John Quinn, but they were having banquet meals for accused priests.

“All these accused priests who had been suspended were going down there to have banquet meals at the house and they were being feted, it was like a support group I guess.

“I told Levada, you need to get him out of there, he can’t be living with the former archbishop. He’s had his name all over the newspaper for raping boys and girls and now he’s living with the former archbishop (who was also accused of rape children, but never prosecuted).
-------
Levada, the administrator, the archbishop, said, 'What am I supposed to do?' and he got promoted to the Vatican.
==========
“Levada said, Why do I have to do that?” Jenkins said. “I said because the whole church will come down down if people find out this is going on. They would be incensed. Again, Ingles was not just living there, but he and Quinn were having banquet meals for accused priests.

Levada said, what am I supposed to do?

Before going to Rome, at a special Mass William Levada spoke:

"We are suffering for the mistakes of bishops and administrators who did not place the future protection of children above their desire to protect the reputation and service of priests who had proven themselves unfaithful to their duties," the archbishop told an audience of some 400 priests and 2,000 parishioners, according to SF Weekly.

(NOTE: SF Weekly, and New Times in LA, LA Weekly, former vanguards in reporting on clergy sex crim, thanks to corporate buyouts in last two years no longer report on any of these crimes, not at all, nyet, nada, rien de tout.)

Levada was one of four U.S. church leaders who worked with- Pope John Paul in crafting a compromise sex-abuse plan, the "zero tolerance" policy in December 2002.
-------
Yes, folks, your leaders are lying to you in the press, surprise, surprise.
==========
Yet Levada could say with a straight face to the press last week:

"I personally do not accept that there has been a broad base of bishops guilty of aiding and abetting pedophiles."

Worse yet, the press reported it.

Jenkins continued: “Levada said, what am I supposed to do? Then he told us he’d spoken to Quinn and the former archbishop said there’s no reason Ingles should leave the house.”

A lot of the the perpetrators in San Francisco were monsignors, Jenkins told me. This is not the last you will read and hear in City of Angels about the graduates of St. John's Seminary in Camarillo.
=====
Monsignor Patrick O’Shea
Defrocked in 1994, has been jailed twice on child abuse and embezzlement charges. Last known to be living in a on Jack Hill Drive in a Kelly Ridge subdivision of Oroville (October 2005)

According to a June 29, 2003, article by the San Francisco Chronicle, there was a 224-count indictment against O'Shea in 2000. The indictments were dropped in 2003 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a California law extending the legal deadline for child-molestation charges was unconstitutional.
=====
John J. O’Connor
In August, 2002, O'Connor was "quietly for health reasons" placed on leave by San Francisco Archdiocese after recent allegation that he had had improper contact with a boy more than 30 years ago at St. Mary's Cathedral

(CREDIT: Bishop Accountability)

(TRIVIA: There are 63 priest in the Bishop Accountability database of sexual predators whose names begin with O apostrophe)
=======
Levada went to St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo in the late 1950s.
Patrick Ziemann, Bishop of Santa Rosa, was in St. John's Seminary arrived in 1963, the year after Mahony graduated.
=======
DON'T TELL ME
Levada did not know about Ziemann
------------
Bishop Ziemann forced a young priest to wear a beeper so that he could summon him for trysts in cars, hotel rooms, and even the Santa Rosa Diocese office. (Once, police reports reveal, Ziemann had the cleric orally copulate him on the eve of their joint celebration of a special Sunday Mass.)

The web is tangled, but City of Angels Network will straighten it all out over the next 16 years. Please click my PayPal button so I can buy some new glasses and read the fine print on these documents better.

Onward. . .

When the pope mentioned growing up in a sinister regime, did he mean Nazis or Catholics? Readers respond to the papal visit

*****
By Kay Ebeling
Here are reactions to the pope’s visit you won’t read in mainstream media, plus Bill Maher’s New Rule About Catholics in the video box above. (He sees FLDS and Pope as similar, except 'altar boys can't get pregnant.') First email: Mary Pitcher writes, “To those who so want the Catholic Church to be what it claims to be.”

I am truly pleased that the pope has mentioned the abuse and the victims so often on his trip. I think people have become tired of the topic and want it to be over. And it is so not over…and if we pretend it is, it is such a disservice to all of us, most especially those who had the courage to step forward, and to those who have not yet had found their voice.

And also to those who so want the Catholic Church to be what it claims to be…..a worldwide community example of Christ’s love. Until this scandal is confronted in all its ugliness and complexity, the church’s very existence is at risk. So having him highlight it, allows it to remain front and center. That’s a very good thing.

I am also so pleased that the pope has actually said that the pain and suffering of the survivors cannot be put into words. I have not heard ANYTHING like “get over it.” It seems to me Benedict has gone so far as to suggest that listening to the survivors is important and necessary for all in the community. I do wonder about the people he chose to meet. He didn’t meet with any of the leaders of the survivor’s groups. That’s a problem. It’s like a leader only wanting to surround himself with those who see things his way.

I have heard the words “Scandal in America, US scandal, US crisis,” too many times in his speeches. This is NOT a US problem. It is a worldwide problem. It is a worldwide problem that is deeply, deeply embedded in the structure of the church.

And all the pomp, the adulation by the press, the adulation by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, adds to my concern this is part of the problem. The elevation of the priest, bishop, pope, as someone who stands above us in all ways, but especially as the one who mediates between us and God, created and perpetuates the sickness of the structure.
-------
Requests for young boys as companions by priests based in Rome during John Paul's visit. . .
=========
Instead of adulation from the press I’d like to have Richard Sipe offer his commentary. Sipe is a former Benedictine priest, who in his 35 plus years after the priesthood as a therapist/author, has studied the priesthood and treated priests in trouble. www.richardsipe.com. In his book, Celibacy in Crisis, on page 242, he describes two horrible scenarios.

“I have already recounted the story of the young priest who was hospitalized with a severe depression. Mute for weeks, he finally confided his unbearable secret. His bishop-mentor-friend used him to procure young sexual companions from the streets. Evil, not illness, morality, psychology or situation, dominates this behavior.”

And then…this paragraph from Richard Sipe flew back to me as I thought about the pope’s visit:

“John Paul II has visited the United States on several occasions during his reign as pope. The preparations for his visits take years. Even the color and type of his vestments as well as each detail of his schedule are orchestrated by a team of emissaries, mostly priests from Rome.

"A diocesan team headed by the local bishop or cardinal coordinates the myriad details. I have fielded complaints from local workers that they had to respond to requests for sexual companions---usually young boys---from priests based in Rome.”

(On a personal note…when I first read these words a few years back I sobbed for what seemed like hours. My heart was breaking…..I no longer cry like that…..but I also no longer hold out hope that the church can be saved. I truly believe it has already collapsed. And some people simply aren’t aware of it as of yet. I also believe that what is emerging from the ashes what Clarissa Pinkola Estes talks about as the “church beneath the church.”

The pope talks about not letting pedophiles into the seminary….what about those who are the administrators and the teachers? What about those perpetrator administrators and teachers who know where they bodies are buried…..Those who have something to hold over the men currently in power.

In two years in the mid 70’s, more than 30% of the St. John’s Seminary graduating class were credibly accused perpetrators. We have not gotten graduates of that seminary still currently priests to admit that they saw or heard anything. I wonder if statistical analysis from classes in the 80’s and 90’s will show similar percentages of perpetrators….as more and more victims come forward as they reach the age when they can admit what happened to them as children.

I truly believe that the structure of the church hierarchy, with a basis is patriarchy, is evil. There is no resolution to this scandal, this manifestation of evil…. unless the structure is addressed.

And the pope’s very visit to the UN, the fact that the Vatican is considered to be a Nation State flies in the face of being able to topple the structure.
-- Mary Pitcher
=========
JAY NELSON WROTE:
=========
This from the Pope this afternoon:

"My own years as a teenager were marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers," he told the crowd at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers.

"Its influence grew, infiltrating schools and civic bodies as well as politics and even religion before it was fully recognized for the monster it was," the pope said.
-------
The horror of the destruction recounted for generations. . .
=========
"Many of your grandparents and great-grandparents will have recounted the horror of the destruction that ensued. Indeed, some of them came to America precisely to escape such terror."

So what was he talking about? Growing up Catholic?
-- Jay Nelson
=========
And Frater G contributed this copy and pasted from a political website:
=========
The papal visit had one major institutional crisis to deal with—the long-running scandal over the sexual abuse of children by thousands of Roman Catholic priests. This dimension of the visit brought another display of media adulation and ideological reaction.

The press portrayed Benedict—who adamantly rebuffed sex abuse victims for years while serving John Paul II—as deeply moved by their suffering. In his initial remarks about the scandal, however, as he flew to the US on board his personal jet, the pope bemoaned only the damage done to the Church, not to the victims themselves. The US Catholic Church has paid out more than $2 billion in legal settlements to some 13,000 victims, including $660 million in the Los Angeles diocese alone, and several dioceses have been compelled to file for bankruptcy.

The pope's closed-door meeting with five sex-abuse victims was presented by Church officials and the media as a major breakthrough, although the five had been carefully vetted by the Boston archdiocese to ensure a relatively harmonious session.

A spokesman for the archdiocese said the five had "ongoing relationships" with archdiocesan officials, and had "stayed engaged with the office"—i.e., they had remained loyal to the hierarchy despite the Vatican's continued defense of Cardinal Bernard Law.

As Boston archbishop, Law protected priest-abusers and allowed them to transfer from parish to parish when exposed, rather than removing them from the priesthood.

Benedict even sought to blame the sex-abuse scandal on the excessive sexual permissiveness of modern culture, rather than the repressive practice of priestly celibacy which the Catholic Church, alone of major religious institutions, continues to enforce.
-------
Priest rape reports in Poland, Mexico, Ireland, Austria, and Germany suggest common denominator not US loose morals
==========
Similar sex-abuse cases have been reported in countries as diverse as the United States, Poland, Mexico, Ireland and Austria. The common denominator is not the culture of the specific countries, but the atmosphere prevalent within the Catholic Church as an institution.

As the World Socialist Web Site noted when the sex abuse scandal in the United States first came to widespread public attention, some six years ago, "Every aspect of the sexual abuse crisis—the pain and suffering of the victims, the misery and sexual dysfunction of the priests, the callousness of Church officials—suggests a diseased institution whose practices and beliefs run counter to elementary human needs and inevitably breed the unhealthiest of psycho-sexual climates. The Catholic Church's essential being flies in the face of modern society."
-- World Socialist Web Site
-------
BONUS: This quote circulated Saturday, from Tom Doyle:
=========
They are probably going to make a couple of minor changes in the process and maybe even add to the years before the SOL runs out. On the other hand his remarks about the bishops are typical....he claims some bishops told him they didn't know the score etc. His sources for any information about this nightmare have been the bishops.....the guys who caused it. That's like the blind leading the blind. One lies and the other swears to it. They don't get it. They won't get it. They can't get it.
====================
ME: I’m glad it’s over. I have a jury trial to cover and don’t need distractions like the raging anger I felt all week because of the pope’s visit.
-- kay ebeling

Onward. . .

Papal visits to me are just a bunch of pap.

Now, Pope, for your penance. sell enough statues at the Vatican to start a foundation for ALL the victims of sex crimes in the Catholic Church

*****
By Kay Ebeling
The Catholic Church has to acknowledge its role in turning sexual predators loose on our society. Instead of criticizing us for our loose morals in America, the Vatican has to start recognizing the residual effects of its own crimes. I was a sexual predator all my life, when I look back on it. I forced men to have sex with me, although I thought it was seduction. So think about it. All 130,000 of us victims of sex crimes in the Catholic Church went into the world with our warped psycho-spiritual-sexual confusion and each of us affected anywhere from three to a hundred to more other people.

With all those pedophiles raping boys and girls in Catholic churches, don’t you think that enabled and empowered pedophiles all over America? Why do you think we have an epidemic of children being raped even murdered in America today? Maybe it’s because predator priests got away with it for 50 years and warped our entire society.

The only time I stop raging is when I write and post here, knowing someone is reading it vents my rage. But the other day I went ballistic on Sunset Boulevard. A bus went by without stopping and I ran after it and then stood in the street legs bent both arms in the air, flipped the finger with both my hands and screamed, “F--- you, f--- you” at the driver. Since it’s LA my behavior went almost unnoticed.

Still this is the rage I carry inside, always just under the surface ready to gurgle or burst out. This past week seeing constant looped footage of Benedict with that silly smile on his face didn't help. Considering there are about 130,000 crime victims like me to whom the church has never paid a settlement or even helped to get therapy, or even acknowledged in their statistics -- they only count 13,000 victims, the number of people they've helped. They don’t even count the rest of us.

Subtract 13,000 from 130,000 and you see there are okay say, 117,000 people out there like me with a lot of unresolved anger that could come out in other ways. The church HAS to do something for ALL the victims. Sell a few statues from the front of the Vatican and set up a foundation for ALL of us. Don’t make us go through five years of fighting your attorneys to get help, just set up a foundation for us to go to for grants and help ALL of us and stop pretending this was a small “crisis” for which you feel shame. It was an epidemic of predators set loose on the American population because they could disguise themselves as priests and YOU, POPE, you are responsible.

DO SOMETHING, don’t make one more statement to the press, don’t visit with one more victim, unless it is to TAKE ACTION.

My rage is so bad this week, I was glad to see the character Sugar, or Mr. Chigurh in the movie No Country For Old Men. He was a raging maniac but he could still walk through a drugstore with nobody noticing him. He had this way of walking. So I’ve been using my PTSD acquired ability to adopt other people’s persona, and I’ve been adopting his manner of gate, the look in his eyes-- I’ve been adopting the persona of Mr. Chigurh to maintain my own rage so I can go out in public. Luckily I don’t have a telephoto AK47 or whatever that thing was in my back pocket like Sugar does.

The church recently acknowledged 13,000 victims of Catholic priests who are sexual predators. Since 1 in 10 come forward the number is more likely 130,000. On top of that since more victims don’t come forward because it’s the Catholic Church and their families still go there, the number is likely much higher than 130,000.

Today for the first time I read in mainstream media a quote from an attorney in New York acknowledging that there are a lot of other victims that the church has done nothing for. NOTHING. So when I see a bunch of people reaching out and praising the leader of this church, I start throwing things.

That smile, that goofy smile on the Pope's face. I’ve used that same smile myself, when I was trying to purposely project happiness, but inside I really wasn’t feeling it. His smile said, yes, yes, just smile like me and you too can be like Christ. But he looks like some kind of wood nymph creature what body structure you can imagine under that white dress. Has he ever worn jeans, or done anything a normal person does? Oh right. He's holy. BS, get a job.

The Pope was able to say he just found out about how bad the priest sexual predator crimes are. How could he be pope and not know what was going on? I know I'm repeating myself. That's what unresolved anger does to a person. The Catholics are going to hear from all of us over and over and over again, until this gets RESOLVED.

The same media who are reporting what the pope says are the ones who told us there WERE weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

It was such a breath of fresh air to read one article last week, in the New York Times, where the reporter didn't just go to SNAP to get a quote. He wrote an entire article about the victims of priest sex crimes and the reporter never went to the professional media statement people, never even mentioned SNAP. It could be a good sign.

This one New York Times reporter actually dug a little deeper. He called an attorney not affiliated with SNAP and got a statement from him instead.

It’s a small step but it's a start.

At least E! has stopped using college interns to do my job and I'm working this weekend. I'm about to start transcribing a two hour interview with Charlize Theron. Too bad I'm not gay.

Onward. . .

EDITORIAL: Why are the pope, bishop and cardinals not in a West Texas Prison with the FLDS clergy sexual predators?

*****
By Kay Ebeling
Look at the way law enforcement is treating the sect in West Texas when their leaders are maybe one-tenth as guilty as Pope Benedict and his cadre of cardinals and bishops. There are maybe one-thousandth as many victims of the ephebophilia that went on in the FLDS as there are victims of pedophiles who operated openly in the Catholic Church in the last 50 years, yet the Pope gets to do Mass on television, the FLDS women get children torn from their arms.

The Pope finally acknowledges his crime victims with a SECRET MEETING for the select special few to go into a secret back room and be graced with a face to face private personal presence with the Holy most High. How many other crime victims felt totally revictimized, even triggered to re-experience the perpetration of their crimes as children, being selected and told we are special and able to go off into a secret room with this holy man and have an oh so special experience --

The Pope acted like until he got on the plane in Rome last week, he'd never even heard that there were thousands of pedophiles among his priests.

I do not trust Catholic Hierarchy for one minute. I do not want to hear anything the Pope says unless it is from behind prison bars.

If there was ever a movement that requires Transparency and Total Honesty and Openness, it's the movement of victims of sex crimes in the Catholic Church. Yet there they go into secret meetings right from the start.
-------
Why not meet with ALL 150,000 or so of us?
=========
If il papa really cared, he’d call for all of us to come, all at the same time, so he could see how many of us there are. Now, there’s a photo op for some media pop culture frenzied news group, gather all 150,000 or so of us, victims of sex crimes in the Catholic Chruch.

Put all 150,000 crime victims in Yankee Stadium and use a very wide angle lens to shoot a picture of ALL of us.

Maybe then the Pope would have to admit how big the problem really is.

Pope Benedict wrote the edict from the Vatican in 2002 when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, telling all bishops in the USA how to deal with sexual predators who are priests. Are we to think he then went into a room to prayer and eat spaghetti for six years and has no idea what happened afterwards?
-------
Why wasn't he arrested as soon as he stepped foot on American Soil, and taken to a West Texas prison?
=========
Lying scheming manipulating twits, all of them, and the news media of America are all the more scheming and suspicious for going along with them. After watching the reporting on the Pope last few days, along with that bizarre “debate” Wednesday night, where Barack Obama was pestered with questions fit for Entertainment Tonight, I'm beginning to suspect that the corporate heads of media organizations are doing this on purpose.

Trying to dumb us all down by repeating the same inane empty sound bytes over and over, until we are lulled to submission, when what we are all craving is REAL WORDS.

The timing of the raid in West Texas is very suspicious. As a result of the West Texas raids, anyone who goes on a news search about clergy pedophiles while the Pope is here, sees footage of the Mormons in the dust in their hand-sewn clothing, not cardinals and bishops on golden altars in robes.

They've still never confirmed who made the original 911 call that led to the West Texas raid.

I think it was all manipulated behind closed doors somewhere, a PR consultant working with the Bishops and Texas law enforcement, and once again, that bottomless briefcase full of cash.

The pope didn't count on the media response and the groundswell of noise from survivors he encountered on his US trip, one way and another, he had to do something.

So they arranged a secret meeting.
Shows they've learned a lot. . .
Met with as few people as they could, did as little as they could, and made as much noise about it as possible.

Had NO SENSITIVITY as to how their acts affected the hundreds of thousands of crime victims.

Meanwhile if you want to see thousands of people praying together in a wide open place, click the MaryMary video on the left, "Take The Shackles Off My Feet So I Can Dance." Who needs a pope?

Where do I come up with figure 150,000 crime victims of Sexual Predators in the Catholic Church? Well the church acknowledges 14,000 victims. For every one who comes forward and gets a settlement,

which is the only way the church counts you,

there are another 10 who do not. So add one zero to 14,000 and, add another 10 thousand or so for error error factor. . . 150,000 Crime Victims in the USA of Catholic Priest Sexual Predators.

Why aren't the Pope and his minions in prison?

Onward. . .

Jury Selection a challenge for LA trial re pedophile priests, with settlements in the news last year, and trial expected to last five to six weeks

*****
By Kay Ebeling
One tactic we can anticipate in the upcoming pedophile priest jury trial in LA: the defense will say plaintiffs’ diagnosis of PTSD as a result of priest sex crimes could be the result of “other stressors” in life. “It’s our belief he ignores other stressors with respect to these plaintiffs,” said Wayne Mason in motions in limine hearings today, trying to limit the testimony of a psychiatrist in the trial which begins jury selection next week.

Mr. Perp Defender, you have a lot to learn about the damage a pedophile priest’s antics do to the human psyche. I don't know too many people who hallucinate and see demons because of “life’s stressors” but for example, last Tuesday, I really did think I saw ulcerous bumps on one defense attorney’s skin and pock marks all over the face of another. I went home sure that the defense team members were a gang of demonic spirits gathered on Earth at this time to carry out some dark karma defending pedophile priests in the Salesian Religious Order. I wasn’t joking when I wrote that here Tuesday. I hallucinate on a regular basis, and I’ve learned to live with it.

I’ve never met anyone who has dissociation, shakes, hallucinations, manic episodes, and uncontrollable rages because of Life’s Little Stressors. A lot of clergy sex crime victims have the diagnosis of “Prolonged PTSD,” the mind and body reacting and internalizing trauma “For Prolonged Periods of Time” and you don’t get this sick due to a divorce or a death in the family.

PLEASE. It was bad enough having to listen to Cardinal Mahony’s personal attorney Lee Potts (sketched above reading briefs) and a couple other defense dweebs talk about TV coverage of the Pope in Washington before hearings started this morning in LA Superior Court. I overheard a whisper about the archbishop: “He didn't take any pictures of the Pope because he was too close to him, it would be tacky.” Then Lee Potts gurgled to Mason, “How are they going to give Communion to all those people in Yankee Stadium?”

Come on, Lee Potts, get real. You look more like someone with a secret life on Santa Monica Boulevard than someone with a secret passion for The Eucharist. Your interest in mass distribution of Holy Communion sounds as insincere as George Bush getting up after the pope made his speech in Washington last night, patting the pontiff on the back and saying, “That was an awesome speech, awesome speech.” (Yuck Yuck!) All this fake reverence over the pope, when at the same time Lee Potts, of Cardinal Mahony’s predatory defense team, spent most of 2007 filing so many motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment in the clergy cases, that he wore down the judge and got cases struck down that should have gone forward.

Potts never denied that the rapes of children by priests in LA took place, as he filed his motion after motion to strike. Potts argued that a certificate was filed after deadline by a matter of hours, or a signature was incorrect on another filing. Potts would file 20-30 briefs at a time one week after another, and yes, some of those cases got dismissed on paper. In the end most cases dismissed in 2007 were included in the final settlements anyway, because of another state law. There was no real victory for Cardinal Mahony, but there were a lot of empty words spoken, sort of like the pope waving his hand and mumbling over thousands of people in Washington today.

Last year during the LA clergy cases, I wrote here that Lee Potts’ shaking and jiving, his almost manic motion filings and spit fire speech in litigation, reminded me of a person with. . . prolonged PTSD.

*****
Judge Emilie Elias, USC Law School grad, runs such a relaxed courtroom that at one point today she entered in her robe and said, “Did they all run away?” as the whole gaggle of attorneys was out in the hall. They realized the judge was back and all rushed back to their seats, as Judge Elias sat down and the proceedings began, very unceremonial.

--------
Trial Expected to Last Five to Six Weeks
========

Remaining motions in limine will be heard next week, then begins jury selection. They have to identify a jury pool of persons who can serve for five to six weeks, then from that pool find persons with not too much knowledge about the clergy cases and settlements in LA last year. Jury selection will take two weeks itself.

Meanwhile City of Angels Lady is rediscovering a less literal side of my brain by bringing a sketch pad to court. The squiggles above represent Lee Potts in repose eyeing briefs as we waited for hearings to begin this morning, after he’d impressed everyone with his reverence for the Pope.

Give me a break. Thank God for movie channels on Cable, I'm skipping the news this week. When I heard five pedophile priest crime victims met in person with the Pope today and actually went off with him to describe what happened in private?

Man the thought of that gives me the creeps.

Onward through the fog. . .

The Pope lies, the media report the lies, meanwhile the Real News is on the Other Side of the Country

*****
By Kay Ebeling
The pope feels "shame." Ratzinger's job at the Vatican was to supervise priests all over the world as he wormed his way up the ladder of Catholic hierarchy to become today’s Pope. Under his administration, more than 4,500 priests in the USA got away with raping children, which resulted in 14,000 civil settlements, and considering that 1 in 10 victims comes forward, there are likely 140,000 Americans who grew up damaged from rape by a Catholic priest. If the Pope feels anything it must be "GUILT."

Worse is that the news media in America think the pope’s statements are news. His wimpy words, like “shame,” or saying that pedophilia is “incompatible” with the priesthood, are run over and over again, the only quote, as the lemmings who would provide us our free press, follow each other from one photo op to another, copy and pasting paragraphs from press releases and calling it news.

As a result this admission of “shame” is in headlines, at the top of every news org website, “POPE FEELS SHAME.” The real news is the pope blatantly lied in front of hundreds of cameras and got away with it, because in America people look but do not see, listen but do not hear.

Pope Benedict before he became pope supervised the pedophile priests that operated in the United States freely and unfettered. These predators disguised as your family pastor picked and chose from a field of children, as if we were provided for that purpose by parishes around the country.

Now this pointed eared freak of nature can titter down his airplane stairs into the arms of a giggling George Bush and all America watches and smiles.

The criminals have taken over. You can tell by what defense lawyers get away with in the clergy cases, including the jury trial preparing to start in LA this month.

Ratzinger ran the office that oversaw the transfer and coverup of these priests’ crimes. Common knowledge in America today is that the church simply moved the felons from one parish to another hoping no one would notice. The motive most people use to grasp these serial felonies is shortage of priests. What is a church to do? Now on his way to America, Ratzinger says it would be okay to have less priests? Couldn't he have realized that before 140,000 of us became behavioral problems for life?

Thank God for blogs.
Onward anyway. . .

TRANSCRIPT: Tuesday hearing for upcoming Salesians jury trial, Motions in Limine, with editing by City of Angels Wings It Transcription

*****
JUDGE ELIAS: Re number four, reference to the Catholic Church. I had no idea there were different orders that report to Rome. If I have that misconception, jurors will have that misconception too. What are you defining the Catholic Church to be? Who do you put under the umbrella? Maybe the term used should be “Catholic religion” with everybody under the Pope.

MASON: It’s not the Salesians society. It’s the Vatican, the archdiocese. Just because some Salesians go to Rome periodically for meetings. it’s a major jump to say they have all the knowledge of the Catholic Church.

BOUCHER: The Cardinal has to approve brothers who come in and say Mass and serve in the archdiocese.

JUDGE: This issue may be resolved by just calling it the Catholic Religion and the Pope is over the entire religion. If you can’t define it, I can’t define it. [LAUGHTER] But I think motion denied because it’s too broad. If they're saying Mahony knew it, so therefore the Salesians knew it, I'm not going to let them make that leap.

DEMARCO: Look at all their papers. They're part of the Catholic Church.

*****
ZUKIN: In this issue we have the T Family where all the children were abused by Miani, and the subsequent impact of learning that the others in the family were too is relevant to the impact-

DELANEY: There’s no proof the siblings knew about it. They assume the brother knew but point is nobody saw the abuse.

JUDGE: I'm going to grant it now. If somebody is going to testify let me know. Number 7, that's a grant. Number 8. At first I was going to do a 402, but Sipe goes with the other gentlemen, the priest, what's his name, Father Doyle, and then the FBI agent. Don’t these guys all go together?

MCFEELY: (UP ON HIS FEET) Absolutely not. I'm here to argue Doyle.

MASON: Plaintiffs desire through Doyle and Sipe to go back to the time of Mussolini. We have to have some limitations.

JUDGE: You want to wait and do Sipe and Doyle all together? Okay moving on.

MCFEELY: Our Le-gis-la-tu-r-r-r-e, in 2002 in its wisdom allowed people to sue about things that happened 10, 40, 50, and 60 years ago and what that allows -- it causes a lot of problems. We think it causes massive due process problems for the defendants.

We will make that case on the evidence piece by piece throughout this trial. All this evidence that the plaintiffs want to throw in, this 1962 thing from the Vatican that they never saw. Sixty years of evidence, oh they must have known everything.

I think this court needs to consider the passage of time and fundamental due process and fairness.

JUDGE: Okay. The law is what the law is, so therefore these cases are going to be tried in 2008 instead of 1968. It’s my mandate. I'm going to try them

------
“The Salesians did not know there was a problem of sex abuse in the church until 2002”
======

ZUKIN: The Salesian hierarchy say they did not know there was an issue of sexual abuse in their order. The current provincial says he didn't find out until 2002.

BOUCHER: If Mr. McFeely is going to stipulate that the problem of priests abusing children wasn’t known until 2002 and it was a new phenomenon, wait a minute. We have a catholic order established to treat sex abuse by priests in 1943. Servants of the Paracletes distributed information to orders around archdioceses around the world.

J: Okay this motion is granted. Next one. Now we get to the Italian. I think he gets to do this (EXPLAIN TRANSLATION) and let me explain why. Let’s assume we're talking about Shakespeare. We’d need an expert to explain the words of Shakespeare. Or a Chaucer expert could get on stand to explain because words are different. So I don't see why a person has to be alive at the time to testify about what was meant at another time. Words from 1947 are not used the same, so you have to go back and say how it was used at the time and it’s done all the time, so this doesn't bother me.

MASON: I think this makes the point moot. I believe Fromholz addressed this. I did go back and look at the order re numerous attempts on plaintiffs’ part to have this entered.

JUDGE: First of all, that's totally a misreading of his ruling. He does find it is notice.

MASON: I'm quoting from July 18, 2007.

J: It was a denial of a summary judgment. He found a triable issue of fact.

MASON: But it was not 1947.

J: First of all he found a triable issue of fact on notice based on other things. Therefore it’s dicta

(ME: Huh?)

*****
BOUCHER: Their provincials have testified that it would have been a red flag. Fromholz never ruled the evidence could not be entered.

NOURAMI: (UP ON HER FEET) I'm here to argue against Lorenzi, and it’s up to the jury to decide what that document means. The defendant doesn't have anybody alive who knows, everybody’s dead because it’s so old. The plaintiffs have one expert who translated the words literally and that's what it’s appropriate to do, to enter it as evidence and let jury decide.

MASON: There’s no evidence of what these words meant back then.

J: That's what I want to find. And I don't see where Judge Fromholz made a ruling that the Italian document cannot come in. Moving onto number 11:

------
Miani denies all allegations.
======

JUDGE: Miani denies all allegations.

MASON: Mr. H says he reported to higher ups that Miani was disturbing boys. A generic reference of disturbing boys could mean anything. The environment of St. Mary’s was troubled boys taken from homes. It’s not unusual for these kids to be troubled. The phrase disturbing boys, what does that mean.

BOUCHER: He can testify about what he said and what stopped him from continuing to talk. If this provincial stopped him from talking about it, they sure as heck had notice. He will come here to testify about what he--

MASON: He never talked about molestation. He said “disturbing boys,” that's it. he was deposed in this case, that he was disturbing boys.

J: What I'm hearing is that before he had a chance to say anything else he was stopped?

MCFEELY: Which deposition, your honor? He’s been depo’d twice with two different stories. Now he wants to testify that he told a Provincial, he never testified before that he told a Provincial. If he’s going to be here live, maybe we don’t need any further discussion about his deposition.

ME: AS ONE OF THE CRIME VICTIMS, I CAN UNDERSTAND SOMEONE COMING FORWARD WITH PART OF THE STORY AND THEN COMING FORWARD WITH MORE OF THE STORY LATER.

YOU CAN HAVE PARTS OF YOUR STORY COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH OVER SEVERAL MONTHS, EVEN YEARS

IT’S TAKEN ME 14 YEARS, 1994-2008, AND THERE ARE STILL MEMORIES COMING OUT, ESPECIALLY NOW THAT MY DAUGHTER HAS GROWN UP AND MOVED OUT. . .

JUDGE: Okay then we'll wait until we see whether he comes. Now Mr. A, he didn't tell anybody. He’s out.

DEMARCO: Your honor, we're trying to show the environment at the religious order. We've got all these persons making complaints. We're trying to point out that several complaints were made. One person was abused in an open and obvious manner, in an infirmary with the door open. That goes with the evidence of the environment. He talks about he was in bed for the entire next day. It communicates that there were things going on and persons in charge should have noticed.

J: Ah, but we can’t go there, to ‘things going on.’ The boy who watches something going on, he can testify. But we can’t have an ‘if there’s smoke there’s fire argument.’

DEM: It goes towards reprehensibility if someone walked in and saw it, combined with the other incidents, this victim--

J: We'll have to talk about reprehensibility over the lunch period.

*****

BOUCHER: We have convicted felons that are still in San Francisco standing next to the provincial, still part of the order. So there’s two different things going on.

(The Judge allows another witness for the plaintiffs.)

MASON: But this is somebody who goes to a protestant and tells them. That's not evidence of notice.

J: He testified he saw the police come and the rector made a phone call--

MCFEELY: The police came to what amounts to a reform school. I’d say if we went back we’d find out the police were there often. Talk about speculation, your honor.

J: That's funny because now you're arguing against what Fromholz said.

MCFEELY: I don't think so--

J: What about this witness for the plaintiff, who we can’t use the name. But this person is irrelevant anyhow. He didn't tell anybody.

DEMARCO: He’s relevant to a variety of issues. Not just whether he told them. Not just reprehensibility.

BOUCHER: (UP ON HIS FEET) Miani has denied that he ever molested a child. The defendants are calling our clients alleged victims.

J: Is Miani coming to testify? [DISCUSSION ] Okay the answer is, we don’t know.

DEM: Another ground for witness C: he was seen spending nights with Miani, regularly, and going on car rides. Coupled with complaints we've already received, that violated the Salesians’ own rules that were designed to protect children. They failed to recognize and failed to take reasonable acts. Later they see Miani taking this guy into his room, it shows they took no action.

MCFEELY: And there’s a lot to question. There’s no evidence anyone saw anything that Miani did with Mr. C. Where do we get that?

ME: IF NOBODY NOTICED IT, THAT'S NEGLECT AND MISMANAGEMENT ITSELF.

DEM: It was after complaints from Canada, after Italy. He’s in Bellflower and he’s still taking kids on overnights and still taking them in his office?

DELANEY: This is why we have to deal with these individually. He characterized it as a secret relationship.

J: I’m taking it as rebuttal.

More Motion in Limine hearings Tomorrow

Onward. . .

Judge breezes through motions to exclude evidence and testimony, in Salesian Religious Order civil case trial in LA, re pedophile priest Titian Miani

*****
By Kay Ebeling
The cops crouched behind squadcars with guns pointed, cordoning off the street down by Wilshire Boulevard. I had to sprint eight blocks to connect again with a rerouted bus, due to police activity. And that's just what I went through to get home at lunch to boost my laptop battery. The first of several cases against the Salesian religious order head to a jury trial in LA Superior Court Department 308 this month, and so far I'm the only journalist covering it.

At one point Tuesday Ray Boucher jumped up angry at Steve McFeely: “For him to say there’s no evidence when his defendant has destroyed evidence,” and I thought of a recent phone call with Joey Piscitelli. When Salesians finally turned over personnel files from his case in 2006, they were empty, he said. “30 years of personnel files with nothing in them.”

Judge Emilie Elias slammed through defendants’ motions in limine so fast in Tuesday's hearing, Wayne Mason, attorney for the Salesians hadn’t even gotten out of his chair to object before the judge denied two of them. Elias directed the hearing through 15 of the motions, and the other 15 or so will likely be resolved when the hearing continues Thursday morning.

Then begins jury selection and the trial.

Judge Elias did not appear familiar with Servants of the Paracletes. When the hearing got to defendants’ motion to exclude evidence or mention of the former New Mexico pedophile priest treatment center, Judge Elias said:

"Re servants of the Par-Par-- how do you pronounce it?"

EVERY ATTORNEY IN THE ROOM: Paracletes.

CHURCH ATTORNEY TOM DELANEY: They didn't start their infamous psycho sex abuse program until the 1970s.

JUDGE ELIAS: Not ‘til the 70s Do you agree?

PLAINTIFF ATTORNEY HELEN ZUKIN: What counsel is referring to is, the Servants of the Paracletes went to a different approach for dealing with pedophiles in 1977, but in the 1940s the Paracletes were treating pedophiles. In a 1952 letter a priest writes, “This is an old story for us, dealing with priests who deal with the young.”

JUDGE: This is when they wanted to buy the island?

ZUKIN: They dealt with pedophiles in a steady stream. In 1977 they went to a different approach. They weren’t going to put them on an island, but put them in a different treatment program.

Church Attorney Steve McFeely made his presence known:

MCFEELY: I have to object. There is NO evidence that the Salesians EVER sent ANYONE to this place for a sexual abuse problem. No foundation for it AT ALL. This is GROSS Speculation.

JUDGE: The question is, if this is going on at the facility in New Mexico, you're right. But these priests could have been sent there for alcoholism.

(ALL THE PLAINTIFF REPS IN THE ROOM AND ME WITH THEM GIVE OUT AN AUDIBLE SIGH.)

In the clergy sex crime “community” everybody knows, anyone sent to the Paracletes in their 30 years they operated was probably a pedophile.

Especially if the priest is also a party to these cases.

Judge Fromholz would have known that.

When Haley Fromholz retired in December, Emilie Elias inherited the Clergy Cases, what's left of them. There was one holdout in the 560 cases settled last year in LA. The Salesians Religious Order continue their battle even after the LA Archdiocese has paid out the 17 cases that were the Salesian part of the settlement. The Salesians never admit any of their priests are guilty. So if they lose these trials, they have to repay Cardinal Mahony, if they win, the Salesians' debt to the archdiocesee is forgiven. . .this is Reconciliation 2008 style.

JUDGE ELIAS: This motion is granted, the Servants of the Paracletes cannot be used in opening arguments but motions in limine can always be changed. The evidence can be entered if someone brings it up.

*****
'The 1962'
Salesians claim none of them saw the Crimen Solicitaciones document that the Vatican put out in 1962, a document the attorneys have come to call "1962."

Tony Demarco said, "It was sent to every parish and religious order throughout the world in 1962.

"For them now to say it wasn’t received by the Salesians. . ."

Wayne Mason replied: "The Salesians have testified none of them were aware of 1962."

*****
REPREHENSIBLE
There were 12 attorneys for the defense and four for the plaintiffs in court this morning and arguments were often about the legal concept of "reprehensibility." At one point the judge seemed to talk in circles saying the attorneys were talking in circles.

JUDGE ELIAS: “Reprehensibility is them not doing anything about it. Not that they did it but that Salesians did nothing about it. If they did nothing about it, that presupposes somebody had to know about it.”

MASON: With regards to BC, who has testified in deposition for this case, he did not provide notice about the relationship he had with Miani.

ME: Calling what happened to a young boy with Father Titian Miani a "relationship" is reprehensible in itself, Mr. Wayne Mason from Texas, flown in special to defend the incredibly reprehensible Salesian religious order.

In that same phone call, Joey Piscitelli described his cross examination by Wayne Mason during his Salesian case jury trial in San Francisco in 2006. “He’s a Bible banger,” said Piscitelli. “When I was on the witness stand, Mason said, do you believe in God. He screamed out, ‘I mean Our Lord Jesus Christ, do you believe in him?’ He was looking at the jury with big eyes.”

Because Joey had passed out a leaflet that mentioned God, Mason was able to run with this line of questioning. “He said, ‘Have you ever invoked the word of Our Lord Jesus Christ?’ in a l-o-o-n-g loud voice.”

*****
The way Steve McFeely Talks:
"There is NO evidence that the Salesians EVER sent ANYONE to this place."
Steve McFeely is a scary dude. I’d hate to have him stand over me hollering in that voice. The words in caps are triple decibles, with a tone that cuts, slices through any thought in your head. His tongue is sharp with a ripping force.

Thank God for the Justice System or guys like Steve McFeely would be able to boss everybody around just by throwing around their weight and volume.

DeMarco says: Two priests sodomized the boy on the same desk using the same words. Their constitution shows an expectation of reporting-

Then they all started talking at once, until Boucher burst out in anger:

“For him to say there’s no evidence when his defendant has destroyed evidence.”

*****
The Salesians claim none of their hierarchy ever saw Crimen Solicitaciones which the attorneys call “1962.”

MASON: The Salesians have testified that none of them were aware of this document. All the ones that are alive that were around at that time say they were not aware of this document. It may have been in the hands of the Catholic Church.

The judge stops the banter and looks at Wayne Mason.

JUDGE: Now. The Salesians are the third largest religious order in the church, is that correct? So isn’t it reasonable that the Salesians would have received a copy of 1962?

MASON: (STUTTERING) I don't think, uh--

DELANEY: [BABBLES SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT THE JURY WILL THINK]

JUDGE: I'm inclined to deny.

*****
JUDGE: Number 4: Reference to the Catholic church, the Salesians want to be considered totally separate from the Catholic Church:

A snicker goes around the courtroom.

CONTINUED WEDNESDAY:

Now here's a side trip, in memory of Hunter Thompson

In San Francisco the plaintiffs nicknamed Steve McFeely Mr. Eraserhead. The appearance of all the attorneys defending the Salesians deserves comment here.

All but two of the 12 defense attorneys are Ugly-y-y-y-.

I mean these Salesian Defense Attorneys have been worked over with a ugly stick. I apologize, guys, but it’s something you can’t help but notice.

Almost each defense attorney has something off kilter on their face, or a strange shaped body, hair that would be greasy except these demons give in to human practices such as daily bathing so they appear clean.

I don't know any other way to describe them. Every single one of the defense attorneys but the two from Northern Californa has an amazing trait of ugliness, such as a face totally covered with pockmarks, a face so elongated and oval with pointed appendages or covered with bumps that it appears to be a mask or the little witch girl in Little Lulu comics. Much has been said about Steve McFeely’s puffy face surrounded by a puffy bald head, it’s incredible.

It's like these individuals have collected themselves together to play out some horrific lifetime karma.

Even without the obvious demonic element one brings up, considering these defense attorneys are defending priests who used sacraments in the church to rape children, it is extremely strange that SO MANY of these defense attorneys are JUST PLAIN Ugly.

At the same time attorneys for the Plaintiffs stride in showing they come from Beverly Hills and they fit in that town, with the clothes, the faces, stunningly beautiful faces, the kinds of faces that make people stop in the street. The plaintiff attorneys glow.

IRONICALLY ENOUGH

Attorneys for the plaintiffs have karma to go through life beautiful, and all the good things that happen to a person because of that.

So even though there were 12 or more attorneys for the defense and 4 for the plaintiffs, you just know which ones have got God on their side.

It just has to be said, it's as plain as day

Sorry, guys, but when it's an 800 pound elephant in the room, I have to mention it.

*****
Speaking of Church Attorneys:
Lee Potts, attorney for Cardinal Roger Mahony, was there taking notes in a chicken scrawl

A couple lawyers showed up from Hennigan, the Archdiocese’s lead law firm. Lee Potts sat sort of in front of me squiggling on a yellow legal pad with a red felt tip pen. His penmanship keeps anyone looking over his shoulder from reading it.

Lee Potts took notes for Cardinal Roger Mahony throughout the hearing in red felt marker chicken scratches on the yellow sheets

I think Leila Nourami as she adjusts to life in America is beginning to realize she’s missed out on something. If she hadn’t been born in Iran, raised in England, then educated in Paris, she would not be so culturally deprived. She might have been a Southern California femme enjoying the topography here.

She'd get some sun on her face.

I think if Leila Nourami had grown up in LA or Orange County she would have ended up at Berkeley applying her jackhammer intelligence to radical political theology.

But for some reason she’s devoting a potentially stellar career to working with a law firm that has her defending pedophile priests in one of the sleaziest religious orders in the Catholic Church, the Salesians Religious Order.

Sleazy
The defense team has a greasy aura
And they defend pedophile Catholic priests in the Salesians

*****
My Perilous Trek Home For Lunch:
As I'm pulling my laptop on wheels up Western Avenue running away from the police activity on Wilshire, I remember the judge saying

“We'll have to talk about reprehsibility over the lunch period. I'm not going to allow in any 'where there’s smoke there’s fire' evidence.”

All the attorneys are sitting in the judge’s chambers munching on chicken salad sandwiches while I'm stranded out here at Third and Western with buses passing me by, I thought and cried.

Cried for about a half hour, added a good 27 more lines around my eyes.

Then at home with my laptop battery boosting, I listened to The Massage (linked at bottom of page), and then as I bent my head in prayer, Kevin Nash went over the first part of The Book of James, again. The Book of James gets quoted a lot in ghetto scripture readings.

Consider it joy when you face hardship.

I thought of how much more lean muscle mass I developed as I pulled my laptop up Western Avenue, then several more blocks to get from Western to my home.

All things ARE working for a greater good.

I don't know if Christ was really Son of God. I just know when you live a Christian life, wonderful spiritual doors open up for you.

PREVIEW OF PART TWO CONTINUED WEDNESDAY

BOUCHER JUMPS UP: Miani has denied that he ever molested a child. The defendants are calling our clients alleged victims.

JUDGE: Is Miani coming to testify? [DISCUSSION ] Okay the answer is, we don’t know.

(Tomorrow’s post, more from Tuesday’s hearing, will go up at City of Angels Blog in the afternoon Pacific Time)

Onward and don't forget to click my PayPal button. . .

Dear Pope, Read This: Victims of Rape by Catholic Priests Publish Comments Here for the Pope to Read

*****
One signs his name: “Sodomized by the great parish priest starting when I was ten years old from 1953 to 1956.” A Midwestern woman writes: “What I was not prepared to find out was that I was not alone. The most terrible truth of all was they knew what was happening. The pope knew and was complicit with the bishops.” A third writes: “Down in Georgia they're still taking priests into the home to spend the night with their four sons.”

Several victims of Sex Crimes in the Catholic Church sent poignant emails to City of Angels Blog which are published below. Meanwhile, Jury Trial in the Salesian cases begins tomorrow at 9AM in LA Superior Court and we'll be there reporting with video--ke

“This is about the only satisfaction I get, letting Ratzinger know what a lowlife I think he and all his cronies are,” an LA Plaintiff wrote. “And what hypocrites they are when they preach morality to us and yet can't seem to understand thousands of people have been seriously hurt by their inaction and cover-up on the priestly sexual deviancy problem. They preach about the sanctity of life and yet don't seem to care one iota about those so injured by the clergy. -- (NAME) - sodomized by the good parish priest from 1953 to 1956 starting when I was ten years old."

"Ding Dong The Church Is Dead," by a predator Priest crime victim writing under the name Nellie:

My upbringing as a Catholic girl in the 50's and 60's gave me a background in social justice and its role in a faith community. This together with a belief that being a Catholic was not only who I was but what I believed, made me vulnerable to the advances of our family friend and former parish priest.

When he sexually abused me, I knew it was wrong. I worried about how I might have tempted "Father."

I felt silenced by the fact that my mother had, to my great relief, been converted to Catholicism by this priest and my fear was if I told her about what "Father" had done to me, her distress might be so great that she would lose her faith. She would then be condemned to spend all eternity in hell because she was not a member of "the one true, holy Catholic apostolic church". I stayed silent and conflicted well into my adulthood.

I know that no matter what we do, there will always be people who abuse children and take advantage of vulnerable adults.

What I was not prepared to find out was that I was not alone. That many vulnerable souls like me were raped, molested and abused. The most terrible truth of all was they knew what was happening. The pope knew and was complicit in the bishops covering up. The priests fell into line and stayed silent. The average Catholic went on praying, paying and obeying.

The victims became the enemy in the parishes. The focus of pastoral intervention was damage control instead of accountability and compassion.

I know that no matter what we do, there will always be people who abuse children and take advantage of vulnerable adults. The shame of the matter is, the pope, bishops and laity are prepared to protect the church and abandon the victims. I know that no matter what we do, there will always be people who abuse children and take advantage of vulnerable adults.

What I will never understand and can't accept is that you, the complicit bishop, the silent priest, the Catholic parishioner have failed me and every other victim. You have failed to practice the teachings of Christ that I was so carefully taught.

For so long I held the faith that you would wake up. Now I know the awful truth. There is no longer a "Christ" in “Catholic,” or faith in or a representative of god on earth that is worth believing in.

Catholicism, what was supposed to be "the one true faith" is dead. Killed by a Catholic cover up and laity inaction.

*****
Another reader, frater g, who has also started a website at magickcatholic.blogspot.com/ wrote this:

I do think the Vatican itself is really pretty evil, I love their reaction to the crisis: This is from Saturday Yahoo News:

The Vatican insists that any meeting with the victims would reopen old wounds, and several senior aides have indicated that they felt the matter was "now closed".

Monsignor Pietro Sambi, the papal ambassador to the US who was in charge of planning the trip, said the Pope would turn 81 in America, and did not have the strength to visit Boston. "He just can't go everywhere," he said.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope's second-in-command, said the church had already "responded with great dignity" to the situation, and added that the "clamour created in the US around this scandal is really unbearable".

At least the UK media points out that the Pope is refusing to deal with this situation at all. That's why I want to keep protesting. They claim he's too old to face the situation, to me he's just a coward.

At least Mahony owned up to his own villainy and now that I'm going around to local churches I can see that he's keeping child safety out there as an issue, they're not taking the attitude of "just get over it." It’s not perfect, but compared to most other Archdioceses they're at least not in denial anymore.

Down in Georgia Catholics are acting like this never happened and brag on their podcasts about taking priests into the home to spend the night at their house with their four sons. The fact is we have no idea how many closeted pedophiles are still in the clergy, this is why LA is being really pro-active.

LA can't afford to keep getting sued, so they have to try to enforce zero tolerance.

The Pope wants to have his cake and eat it, too. He wants to ignore us, but then pontificate about abortion, which makes him sound like he's against abortion as it may rob him of a potential sexual partner.

The emperor wears no clothes, that's what is happening here, he's completely out of touch and insulated by the Vatican and his diplomatic immunity.

****
And here’s two cents from Kay Ebeling, Producer of City of Angels Network:

The church keeps releasing comments about the $2 billion dollars they've spent on settlements, not counting attorney and PR consulting fees. This is the Catholic Church -- a church -- summarizing 50 years of child rape in ways people can’t even imagine. Kids passed from pedophile priest to pedophile priest -- THINK for a moment the damage that was done.

The Catholic Church sums all that up as two billion dollar problem when they could sell a couple statues at the Vatican and make up the difference. Never is there mention of 14,000 plaintiffs and the other 140,000 victims who were damaged as individual human beings, or the residual damage that was caused to families and communities.

Maybe the Pope will actually read these.

Next Post:
The Salesians Jury Trial begins tomorrow.

Onward. . .