September begins with 2 guerrilla tactics for the coming year. Plus, it was not a hiatus, it was self imposed lockdown

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By Kay Ebeling
Tues. August 12, I cut off the blog for a few weeks, or else I would have self destructed, lashing out and trashing every person and every organization I’ve encountered in the last year. Apparently going back to the scene of the crime by visiting your perpetrator church, as we did here last July, can affect you. After hitting Reply To All on several emails and alienating about 25 people, I could see I had to let the rage pass before I said anything more in public.

So I sat tight as mainstream journalists missed the story over and over again, for example, when attorneys in both California and Illinois found ways to get around statutes of limitations for child sex crimes. (We will run both those stories here at City of Angels Network this month.) From this dark internal place I opened an email from Rick Springer, a link to NBC5 in Chicago with Francis Cardinal George talking to reporters about the Chicago settlements saying:

“In 2006 I invited anyone who had been abused by a priest to come forward. I promised we would continue to settle cases no matter when they occurred or how far back they occurred and even if the perpetrator priest is deceased.” --

I sputtered - Who the- what the-????? and within seconds was screaming into the voicemail of Matt Hunnicutt, head of Victim Assistance in Chicago:

“How come in all the times I called the Chicago Archdiocese asking for help in the past year, no one mentioned these settlements in progress, no one said the cardinal wants to settle cases no matter how far back they occurred. All Victims Assistance ever gave me was a phone number for a therapist in LA. A 310 phone number! How am I supposed to pay for a therapist in the 310 area code. Who decides who gets a settlement and who doesn't, and what are the rest of us supposed to do, just live with all this damage? Huh? Huh? Snarrrll.” Funny thing is he called me back. More on my ongoing conversation with the Chicago Archdiocese in an upcoming post here at City of Angels Network.

The blog is back with two guerrilla tactics to plan the next year. Maybe we can talk them over in person at Hope in the Heartland in Wichita, Kansas, October 10-11. This is the third year Janet Patterson has put this conference together with the focus on survivors interacting with each other, and on food. Friday night is Open Mike Night, with pizza. Saturday starts with a buffet breakfast and features a long lunch --

A time and a place for us to eat and to actually confer, all included with your $25 dollars. For more information about Hope in the Heartland, Oct 10 and 11 in Wichita write to: snapkansas@hotmail.com

City of Angels Guerrilla Tactic One:

A Document Dump -

On one coordinated day, in early 2009 when the new US Congress is seated and settled, City of Angels readers print out as many documents as possible. Then in a coordinated effort, we'll all arrive at our local congressional offices, the one a few miles from your home -- and all of us DUMP THE DOCUMENTS on their desks, a big overwhelming unmanageable pile of documents -- and say:

“We demand congressional hearings into conspiracy and other federal crimes committed by the Catholic Church that caused thousands of children to be ceremonially raped in United States Catholic churches in the last 75 years .

“We demand a federal level investigation.”

Hopefully the press will be there with us as we dump documents on their desks.

Guerrilla Tactic Two:

Petitions of the People

They only do it in some Catholic churches at some masses but at that point before Communion where people in the pews call out for prayer for one thing in particular, you call out loud,

“For the Crime victims living with PTSD from being raped by pedophile priests.”

The parishioners in the pews are then supposed to repeat, “Lord hear our prayer.”

We tried it in Bartlett, Illinois, last July at St. Peter Damian Church’s weekday morning Mass, and my calling out caused the entire chapel to come to a standstill, silence for several long seconds, lots of suddenly tense backs in front of me. It would be more effective to keep going back to mass and doing it over and over again.

This to me is a truly underground grass roots type guerrilla tactic. Take a friend or two if you are scared and go to a church that does petitions of the people during Mass, and when you hear them start going “Lord hear our prayer” you call out

“For the church to finally confess its felonies”

or

“For Congressional hearings into crimes committed by bishops”

or something along those lines.

In each case, the goal is a criminal investigation -- on a Federal level -- because the pedophile priest epidemic spread through every diocese, almost every parish.

VOTF video featured above

Above the headline for this post is a video someone from VOTF put up last week at YouTube.

At the end of the VOTF video are phone numbers for

Illinois Attorney General
(312-814-3000)

and

Cook County State’s Attorney Richard A. Devine,
(312-603-7985).

In case you were not able to write them down.

To watch the VOTF video at YouTube just type in the title: Calling all Catholics.

In the video, VOTF says the deposition of Cardinal George reveals lawbreaking at the highest levels of the church.

We need a federal investigation.

City of Angels has a few more phone calls to make before posting our take on the deposition of Cardinal George, so our target for that post, with excerpts from the deposition and our commentary, will be in the next most likely Friday.

It’s a good thing I saved the cardinal's deposition when I downloaded it a few weeks back, because it’s not on the archdiocese website anymore. The cardinal and Jeff Anderson announced with much ballyhoo that they were putting the Cardinal’s deposition on the Chicago Archdiocese website,

Demonstrating how open and transparent the hierarchy is going to be from now on.

And now already the cardinal’s deposition has been taken down from the archdiocese website.

Just when people are getting back from vacation who never saw it.

Here is the link to the Cardinal’s announcement at NBC5 speaking to the press August 12th.

http://video.nbc5.com/player/?id=284744

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Yes I finally learned how to put links in my blog posts!
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NEWS:

Joey Piscitelli finally gets settlement he was awarded in June 2006

(The following is an excerpt from Joey Piscitelli's essay published August 26, 2008, at Voice From The Desert)

As I protested in many events at Catholic Churches in San Francisco in the last 6 years, the most memorable statement I have ever heard came from a Salesian Priest at St. Peter and Paul’s in San Francisco. I was handing out flyers about the World Record amount of child abusers at Salesians in the Bay Area, and a Salesian Priest came out of the Church, and grabbed a flyer from my hand, and tore it up and threw it at me and said loudly, “You will lose your case in Appeals Court because God is on our side!”

And what God would that be?

(In Appeals Court) as the Salesian attorney repeatedly denounced me as a liar, the appellate judges listened patiently. When she had finally finished, the judges addressed the real issues.

Yesterday, the judges posted their decision. I won the Appeal brought by the Salesians, and the jury trial decision was upheld.

Although the Salesians have never apologized to me, and never will, I can’t help but wonder…how do they feel about their Creator?

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From Los Angeles, Vicki Martin Letter to Editor published in Belleville News-Democrat

Don’t know if anybody else caught it, but Vicki Martin got this letter published in the Belleville News-Democrat after the recent $5 million jury award to a former altar boy there in late August:

To the Editor:
Truth sets us free

I was a childhood victim of clergy sexual abuse by a Roman Catholic priest, so I know what my Illinois brothers and sisters in suffering are going through.

As in Belleville, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of San Diego in California used every legal action imaginable to stop the victim's civil cases against the church from going forward. Why? The bishops of the Catholic Church didn't want the stories of the sexual butchery of children by priests, brothers, deacons and nuns to go public. The attorneys for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles even tried to get the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the victim's right to sue. The Supreme Court would not even hear their arguments.

The stories of clergy sexual victimization have slowed in recent years because, for the first time in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, her children are being protected. But the hierarchy of the church cannot take credit for this change of policy. No, these changes came by way of the determination of the survivors of these perverted crimes, the integrity of our democratic legal system and the courage of the press.

I hope that these civil court actions in Illinois, and particularly Belleville, will continue to go forward to the benefit of the victims. Then and only then will the Catholic Church learn that there are consequences for such perverse and ungodly crimes.

Victoria Martin
San Pedro, Calif

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I can’t even find the place to click to send letters to the Belleville News-Democrat or I would have written about this:.

A Belleville News-Democrat AUG 29 editorial said:

“This trial makes the Catholic Church and its priests look bad. But most priests are good -- men who have never abused a child and who are also appalled with the hierarchy's failure to protect children. Those priests need the public's support now more than ever.”

I tried to send the following letter to the editor and could not find the link anywhere at the News-Democrat site, so again, kudos to Vicki Martin.

Re: Priests needing the public’s support:

No they don’t. .

It’s impossible for priests to have gone through seminary and not seen the epidemic of pedophile priests going on right in front of them. There’s no way a modern priest does not know about pedophiles in their numbers. Guys talk, even during devotional mandatory silence periods, humans communicate.

Where were the whistle blowers?

Where are the whistle blowers?

No I don't feel any special compassion for men who continue to don a dress and stand in front of a parish of people and perpetuate the lie that is the Catholic Church.

No I don't feel any special compassion for men who watch standby and do nothing while children are being sodomized and otherwise raped.

No no no-no-no no-no-no no-no-no no-no-no no-no-no

Guess the anger is still sizzling,
bristling,

More to come,
as we cook it up here at City of Angels Network.