Thousands more children will be raped by a thousand more Catholic priests if the church takes only the few steps it is taking

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By Kay Ebeling
I woke up with a start this morning thinking it’s going to happen again. The way the church wants to “put this all behind us” with a minimal amount of reform almost guarantees that in another hundred years there will be another 560 lawsuits going through the courts because another 560 plus children have been raped by Catholic priests in LA alone.

The Catholic Church noticed that April is Child Abuse Awareness Month so you can now get Bulletin Announcements at the bishops' website. Number one begins: "Did You Know? Take the Child Safety Quiz. Parents, guardians. . ." (Word for word the same as comments that used to arrive here after every post.)

The bishops put out a poster and a press release: "WASHINGTON—Child Abuse Prevention Month will be marked in parishes around the United States in April. Nationwide in safe environment programs 5,683,940 minors have been educated on how to protect themselves from harm and 1,844,681 adults have undergone background screening. . ."

Wait a minute. It’s the priests who raped the children, in most cases. It’s the priests who somehow got the message that they’d still be considered celibate as long as they only had sex with persons under 14, or better yet, persons too young to really know what they were doing like me at age five.

What has the church done about the priests?

Regular readers will recognize the Bulletin Announcements at the USCCB site are exactly the same, word for word, as comments that used to arrive automatically here at City of Angels Blog every time we put up a post. Several people said the comments sounded like they came from Todd Tamberg, the LA Archdiocese media rep. Well, apparently they were right, as the Bulletin Announcements at the USCCB site are "Courtesy of the Los Angeles Archdiocese."

Since it’s Child Abuse Awareness Month the Catholic bishops put out this press release:

"We can never rest when it comes to protecting children and teenagers,” said Bishop Gregory Aymond, chair of the bishops’ Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People. “They are gifts entrusted to us by God and our future is in their hands. The prevalence of child abuse in our society calls for vigilance of parents, pastors, teachers, indeed, all responsible adults. Child Abuse Prevention Month deserves our attention in both prayer and action.”

“The prevalence of child abuse in our society calls for vigilance,” they say.

There they go passing the buck again.

The prevalence of child abuse in our society today might have something to do with the Catholic Church turning loose 50 years of pedophile priests on the American population. Now the Church has discovered the joy of sex education, and now the Church announces their sudden awareness with a press campaign.

An awareness that the rest of American society has had for decades.

Thanks to Sex Education, which the church fought almost as hard as it is fighting civil lawsuits today.

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SIDE TRIPS
Scratching an Itch
I'm just going to tack these paragraphs in here now as it’s an idea that is just beginning to percolate inside me:

For every one victim who comes forward there are another 9, 10, 20, depending on who is talking, victims who can’t or won’t file lawsuits against the Catholic Church because of being raped by priests as children.

I think we all agree with that number. I read it in quotes all the time from SNAP, VOTF, numerous plaintiff attorneys.

So? Now that about 10 percent of the crime victims have received settlements from the church, how about setting up a fund for the rest of us.

What about the other 9 out of 10?

I mean, we get mentioned so often when you talk to the press, we're the other 9 out of 10 who can’t file lawsuits. So our lives haven’t changed. Some of us are still housing challenged, we still don’t have health insurance, we need all kinds of help.

Where is the foundation that we can apply to for a grant?

Someone told me a year ago that when people get settlements they take the money and run and I thought that person was awfully cynical. Now I almost see why they said it.

The rest of us, the other 9 out of 10 that advocates use to make their point about the prevalence of pedophilia in the church, that other 9 out of 10 have experienced no closure, no change, no improvement, no . . . advocacy, nothing.

Help is never going to come from the church unless Cardinal Mahony and the other crooks suddenly experiences a spiritual renaissance, the Church only acknowledges persons who approach them on the arm of a lawyer.

SNAP doesn't return our phone calls or emails, or encourage us, indeed, our "support network" acts as if those without lawsuits are not even alive, except to mention us in that 1 out of 10 quote every other day.

What about the rest of us?

I’m sure I’ll write more about this here in the future, as truth is, this morning I woke up with a start thinking what about the 9 out of 10. It was yesterday morning that I woke up with a start thinking about the thousands more rapes. . .

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When Matt Drudge started the Drudge Report he lived right around the corner from where I live today. He jammed away in the late nineties when the internet was still new, in a slummy studio apartment just blocks from where I am writing this blog right now, in a slummy 1-bedroom. He had the same 200-300 readers every day for years, just like I do.

Then someone gave Matt Drudge the story of Monica Lewinski’s blue dress.

And now he’s -- Matt Drudge.

Somewhere right now there is a priest or lay teacher who’s feeling a deep tug of conscience, because they know something, they have something that could do to the church what Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress did to Bill Clinton.

Somewhere there is a piece of evidence, a link, a story that will break this whole story wide open, prove that these priests networked, it was organized pedophilia, organized crime, and the bishops need to be prosecuted at a national level.

Someone out there has the equivalent of Monica Lewinski’s blue dress. In someone’s drawer, hidden away in a trunk, buried in the backyard, there’s a secret, a thing, some THING that will help break this story open. The church gets away with doing so much behind closed doors with no accountability. They release court ordered documents with everything redacted.

It’s going to take a blue dress.

Bring me the dress. Bring me the dress.

Email me.

If there’s any lay person or priest out there with a conscience who knows what really happened, call me. I'm available 6AM to midnight every day. The link is on the left. It is going to take someone from within the hierarchy getting in touch with me and doing the equivalent of bringing the blue dress to Matt Drudge.

I'm here from 6AM to Midnight LA time, and I'm easy to reach.

Bring me the blue dress, bring me the blue dress. . .

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Now that it's Child Abuse Awareness Month the church is teaching its players how to recognize child abuse.

It’s called Sex Education

And it’s been in public education programs, public libraries, Boys and Girls Clubs, daycare centers, rec centers and parks, just about every institution in America except those run by churches who opposed it for decades. Sex Education is the reason the rest of us could see what the priests were doing was wrong.

The priests, the main perpetrators, they now go to a seminar on child molestation, a four-hour seminar, announces the church bragging about its reform.

Has the church gotten rid of “the vow of celibacy”?

Or have they acknowledged how many priests thought they could say they were celibate as long as the only person they had sex with was under age 14?

What seminaries still let priests believe that?

Have we taken the priests out of those medieval robes where God knows what they are wearing underneath because now days hardly anyone can look at a priest without wondering what's flapping around under all that material? Do they realize that Catholic priests are now fodder for sick humor on the national landscape? Watch Comedy Central on any given night and you will hear a priest pedophile joke.

Has the church done anything to address the real problems at its core of secrecy and hidden crimes to really address this problem? No, and that's why I'm waking up early in the morning with a start, with something deep inside me saying, it’s not enough. It’s not enough.

If I were a volunteer in a church and had to go through screening and extra training about child molestation, when I’ve already had this education in a hundred other places as a lay person -- I've watched the Dr. Phil Show, for Pete's sake -- I’d be mad. It’s only the Catholics and other tunnel vision religious organizations that didn't want sex education in their schools when it was introduced decades ago.

Now it’s the cloistered Catholics who still don’t seem to get it, just how bad the epidemic of pedophilia was. And the church doesn't see that they themselves are responsible for “The prevalence of child abuse (read rape) in our society.”

They're responding in the smallest way they can, forever protecting the priests, the same way they protected the prietss in lawsuits filed against them.

As a result it’s almost inevitable that the pedophilia will run rampant in rectories again in another 50 years.

Their "Promise to Protect" posters will be tattered, yellowed with age, hanging next to the Workers Comp and Safety First posters in an employee lounge.

Accomplishing nothing.
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Bulletin Announcement Number One at the USCCB wesite reads:

"Did You Know? Take the Child Safety Quiz. Parents, guardians, and adults who care for children face constant challenges when trying to help keep children safer in today’s fast-paced world.”

Yup, word for word it’s the same as those comments that used to show up at the end of City of Angels Blog posts. They’d come in automatically as soon as I put up a post. The very first one said: Did you know, Take the Child Safety Quiz, and there they are those copy and pasted words from a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Here’s the explanation: Bulletin announcements are offered “Courtesy of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.” So it was Todd Tamberg, the LA Archdiocese’s PR guy, sending those comments after all. He copy and pasted them from somewhere in the public domain and put them on my blog, then sent them to the USCCB to be put in Bulletin Announcements, "courtesy of the Los Angeles Archdiocese." So that's what Todd Tamberg does in his 8 to 5 workday, I was wondering.

Is the secrecy gone? Is there now accountability and open books and a committee of non-priests who come in and audit everything like we would any other national organization that has recently produced more than four thousand felons? Is anyone even paying attention now to what goes on in the rectories and seminaries?

The Church fought sex education and refused to put it in their schools.

Well we all saw how well that worked.

Maybe if Cardinal Roger Mahony had taken sex education himself, by the second or third time Fr. Michael Baker told him he was a pedophile Mahony would have understood what that meant.

Maybe someone would have noticed something wrong in less than the 50 years it took the Catholic Church.

I'm telling you, if I was a volunteer putting hours in every week at a church and they made me go through sex molestation avoidance training and screening while the priests continued to run around in their robes with all their mysteries and secrets around them while they're taking children into the rectory, I’d BE PISSED.

The volunteers and lay teachers, for the most part, are not the perpetrators.

The sickness that said, you can call yourself celibate as long as you only have sex with children -- what's been done about that?

The years that young boys spend in all-boys’ environments with no one to look up to for guidance but a man running around with god knows what under his flowing robes? Has the church done anything about that?

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Church attorneys are jumping up down and doing somersaults off the ceiling, anything to keep the 1940's evidence about Titian Miani (Fr. Jim) from being entered in the upcoming jury trial in LA Superior Court. Motions in Limine now start April 14 and the trial soon after. Read a report on the Motion to Strike that was struck down in the next City of Angels Blog post.

Is there an aging reader in Italy who knew Titian Miani? Email me.

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The Church's new poster “Promise to Protect Pledge to Heal” has images of children that look like they're part of a Bill Cosby project -- then in medium print: “If you have been abused or victimized by someone representing the Catholic Church,.. (Then in smaller case print below the picture) "Please believe in the possibility for hope and help and healing. We encourage you to come forward and speak out. Every arch/diocese/eparchy in the United States now has a victim assistance coordinator who is available to obtain support for your needs, to help you make a formal complaint of abuse to the arch/diocese/eparchy, and to arrange a personal meeting with the bishop or his representative, if you desire. The victim assistance coordinator for your arch/diocese/eparchy is”

Again, they tell you to go to the archdiocese, not the police....

Posters are $1 each at the USCCB website. Groovy.

Onward. . .