*****
By Kay Ebeling
One priest ranted in daily Mass sermons against “those who go to the media.” The monsignor visited choir practice and called them sons and daughters of Satan. Their sin? When they found out Father Mark Campobello who taught at their high school was an ephebophile with a predilection for eighth grade girls, they wanted to help the victims. Then the Rockford Diocese refused to cooperate with the local DA and a few church members spoke to the media. St. Peter’s parish responded by attacking the crime victims and anyone brave enough to be a victims’ advocate.
Campobello was released from prison in Illinois last week, after serving four years of an eight year sentence, and he now lives in Crystal Lake where he’s registered as a sex offender, but the damages his crimes caused at St. Peter’s parish are probably permanent.
“There’s people in the pews snapping pictures of us,” Frank Bochte said. A website obviously connected to the parish then prints the stalker photos. You can also listen to voice mail messages Bochte and his wife Kate left with St. Peter's parish priests with one click at the CTL-NYC website, so much for confidentiality. In the forum section at CTL, someone slyly identified a Campobello victim by stating her father’s job title. A “film crew” from CTL points cameras in advocates’ faces -- with press badges at the last SNAP meeting in New York last year. They claim to be making a documentary. . . .
Msgr. Joseph Jarmoluk who runs St. Peter’s says he has nothing to do with CTL. However, before entering the site you see a full screen dramatic profile of his face and the ongoing message “St. Peter’s is an affluent pioneering Midwestern Catholic parish, affected by the clergy abuse crisis.” His face and that message have been up there for more than a year.
“The people who started that website are connected to Jarmoluk,” said Jeff Anderson, longtime advocate and attorney in Minnesota. “They're trying to work their own agenda whatever it is. It hasn’t been clear.”
*****
In 2002 Catholic high school teacher Barbara Houston sat down and typed a six-page single spaced letter that came to be known as The Dear Ray Letter in both civil and criminal proceedings against pedophile priest Mark Campobello and the Rockford Diocese. In those pages you can read her anguish as one parish member, evolving from blind faith in her church to seeing these bishops as criminals who refuse to cooperate with law enforcement.
From The Dear Ray Letter:
“I have finally decided to specifically write out some very important events of the past years,” reads Mrs. Houston’s letter. “I think it is necessary for you to have more information in order to fully understand the nature of what you believe are attacks on the parish. I most definitely agree that we are under grave attack. However, I am no longer in complete compliance with our pastor. I know that in church history some others had similar experiences and they were not in a league with the devil. Sometimes God works through ordinary people who are just telling the truth.
“Father Joe knows everything that I have written. He has been clear in his approach to our family. No discussion is welcomed concerning this matter.”
It wasn’t his crimes that began the downfall of Father Mark Campobello, it was the lousy way he treated his victims. Another teacher, Alison Ward, told Barbara Houston about The Girl Who Later Became Jane Doe in court proceedings, and what Mark Campobello was doing to her.
From the Dear Ray letter:
“The girl was very upset that he had ‘dropped’ her and seemed to like another girl. She (Ward) had driven the then 15 year old girl to Aurora Central H. S where she was able to confront Father Mark. I was appalled and waited until the end of the day to inform our principal, Mrs. Deborah Bray.
*****
That was 1999. In 2004 Campobello was sentenced to eight years and now he’s served less than four. He’s maybe 43 years old, probably doesn't even need Viagra yet. . .
At the CTL site they paint Barbara Houston as a criminal school teacher because SHE didn't report Campobello fast enough.
“I was appalled,” she wrote, “and waited until the end of the day to inform our principal, Mrs. Deborah Bray."
From the Dear Ray Letter:
“The following Monday Mrs. Bray told me she had thought much about it and decided that it was not a valid report, because it was really ‘hearsay.’ I asked about the possibly of having hearsay investigated and she was not willing to make any report”
“Why I didn't just go to the Geneva police is a puzzle to me. I was a scared Catholic who didn't want to rock the boat.”
“September 20, 2002: I called Father Joe and asked if Mrs. Bray had ever told him about the Father Mark situation and he said he had never heard anything. I told him the story.
“He was angry that I was insisting the thing should be reported. He informed me that I was at risk of creating media problems and that others would attack our church. We were in a building campaign and this would hurt everything.
“I would not relent. Father did not understand that Fr. Mark should be stopped because I was afraid that he would re-offend. I wanted him reported and investigated.
“I had bothered Fr.Joe and he told me that he would report it to the Diocese.”
*****
Pedophile priest Mark Campobello’s career, so far, reflects the international crisis in the way the church handles sexual criminals in their midst while ignoring the victims. Ordained in 1991 Campobello transferred from parish to parish at least seven times before they finally put him in prison and took away his collar in 2004.
Here is a timeline we put together at City of Angels Blog of Mark Campobello’s career:
1991 ordained and went to Holy Family Parish in Rockford as Associate pastor until 1994
1994 sent to Geneva as Associate pastor at St. Peter.
1995 sent to Rockford as associate pastor Cathedral of St. Peter
1996 sent to Holy Angels in Aurora
1997 sent to Aurora Catholic high school as assistant principal and spiritual director
Also helped out at Aurora Catholic High school and at St. Peter’s in Geneva
2000 sent to St. Thomas the Apostle in Crystal lake
2001 sent to St. James in Belvidere
December 2002 arrested
According to Jeff Anderson, Campobello spent an undetermined amount of time at St. Luke Institute in Baltimore, one of many recovery centers in the US where the church used to send its deviant priests to be cured. (Now that we all know there is no cure for pedophilia, the church sends its deviant priests to Canada and Mexico.)
“He was also in Mooseheart in Aurora,” Kate Bochte said.
Mooseheart is a group home for foster children and adolescents.
From the Dear Ray letter:
“June 2000, a friend of mine told me Fr. Mark was relieved of his position during the school year because of many things. The students had been complaining that he was seen ‘chasing’ and flirting with a female 15-year-old student. Her own daughter claimed she’d seen them ‘holding hands’ several times. It must have been valid as all parents received letters about his departure. She had heard he left Holy Angels as a resident and was living at Mooseheart, where he was caught with the girl and then was sent away by the Diocese”
*****
Kate Bochte remembers: “Campobello was here before we moved to Geneva in 2000. He left, then he came back,” Kate Bochte said. “I remember him being pulled out of the high school in mid I think 2000. Then he was arrested in 2002.”
Again, the way the church reacted made the situation worse.
From The Dear Ray Letter:
“When Attorney General Gleason asked the Diocese for Fr. Mark’s files, they claimed that it was a first amendment violation. . . . I was really offended when Fr. Joe proclaimed from the altar that he was helping ALL of us by this ‘Contempt of Court’ situation.”
“I spoke to Father one time since then when I happened to be at St. Peter’s for Mass on November 23, 2003. I heard him reflect on his personal feelings about a letter to the editor written by a fellow parishioner. “I had read the letter and been in agreement (with its) feelings of anger. That did not mean that we left our church. We are lifelong committed, practicing, somewhat conservative Catholics.”
“I left the church during father’s reflection and was really upset. I did not think it was fair or appropriate to be speaking against a person who had the courage to write a letter expressing his reasonable, honest opinions. He also is a practicing Catholic. Father said the man was bearing false witness.”
*****
From the pulpit Monsignor Jarmoluk claimed Frank Bochte was bearing false witness by writing a letter to the editor about the church’s mishandling of Campobello’s case.
The letter was published in suburban Chicago’s Daily Herald on November 16, 2003, titled: “Legal Situation spurs concern at church.” In the letter Bochte questions “the Diocese of Rockford’s ongoing refusal to comply with Kane County judge Timothy Sheldon’s order to turn over documents.”
Bochte works for a federal agency as a public affairs spokesman, but he wasn’t afraid to write that the diocese was “paying their attorneys to stonewall the Kane County State’s Attorney.”
Bochte had the audacity to question, “the purported message that the Catholic Church preaches regarding themes of social justice, fairness, and the pursuit of truth.”
“Sadly, I find that in this situation and other sexual abuse allegations, that the Catholic church appears to live by a double standard. They seem more concerned with protecting the ‘reputation’ of the accused rather than providing a sense of compassion to the victim.”
The Bochte’s don’t spend much time at St. Peter’s anymore.
“What started the latest flurry of news stories,” Frank Bochte said, “was when Campobello was released. There were reporters who wanted to talk to Fr. Joe, but at St. Peter’s instead they say no comment. And same with the the Diocese of Rockford. Bishop Doran won’t comment.
“Basic Media 101 tells you that saying ‘no comment’ is the worst thing,” Bochte said. “It gives the impression you're hiding something.”
Instead of Answering Media Questions, This Parish Starts a Website Where It Can Slander Victims’ Advocates
CTL (Supposedly short for Christ The Lord) slanders the Bochtes and other victims’ advocates daily at its website.
Frank Bochte said: “Nobody knows who they are. They just exist in blogosphere land. None of the names are legitimate names.”
However, he said someone did trick someone from CTL into returning a phone call and then used reverse trace technology to identify the caller. So they now know the name of one person connected to CTL:
JAMES GRICE
“We know he’s a con man lot of white collar fraud,” Bochte said. Just Google his name and pay those people who pop up whatever on the internet to get the information.
Grice is probably the voice of "The Rock" in webcasts at the CTL site. "Rocky" does a poor imitation of Rush Limbaugh spouting favorable arguments for pervert priests.
Bochte said Grice has several convictions, one for a $45 million dollar con.
“I think he was operating out of the St. Louis area,” Bochte said. "He’d get investors for companies that didn't exist. He has several convictions.”
Now convicted con man James Grice is apparently on the Roman Catholic Church payroll running the CTL website.
“We actually went to New York to the SNAP meeting last year and we went to their street address,” Bochte said. “It’s a rundown Mail Boxes Etcetera type place. The way they describe it on the CTL website, you’d think it it’s a high rise suite in Manhattan.”
A Circus Atmosphere in the Courts
Jeff Anderson said sometimes the atmosphere at court during proceedings for hish clients', the two teenage girl victims, was a circus, because of Jarmoluk and Campobello supporters.
“Jarmoluk and a cadre of his supporters would stand outside the courthouse wearing yellow ribbons,” Anderson said.
Mary Lu O'Halloran, another advocate who gets slandered daily at CTL, describes the Jarmoluk-Campobello Courthouse Weirdo Groupies:
“We wrote letters to the parish with court dates, encouraging people to show up and be supportive of these girls and their family.
“All of a sudden these people started showing up and they would stare us down, snicker at us, make remarks in the hall. We learned to ignore them.
“The last day, the settlement day in Geneva in May 2007, they showed up. When you come in the door at the courthouse, they tell you no cameras. But the CTL people must have snuck in cameras.
“They followed us around the courthouse and took our pictures. I went to get a guard and they ran and hid in a courtroom.
“Finally they got caught and we all had to go down in the elevator together. The guards had to take their cameras out and erase the pictures.”
I asked her to describe these people, imaging them as huffing hausfraus in polyester pants suits who carry on secret fantasies about handsome priests while nibbling on potato chips watching soap operas in bed, but Mary Lu described them as the ordinary women in their late forties to sixties.
She knew the CTL harrassers from her Respect Life group at St. Peter’s.
CTL harassed victims’ advocates during Campobello court proceedings.
They represent themselves as documentary filmmakers, even have “CTL Investigative reporter” badges. CTL radio personality “Rocky,” probably James Grice, tells listeners at the CTL site, how to download a badge and then paste it to a button, and presto, instant press credentials.
Mary Lou said:
“We were having coffee on June 6th 2006 (6.6.06, hmm) and someone came in and said you have to get to the courthouse right now, they're doing a documentary on Campobello.
“I said that can’t be right, we would have known. But this person wouldn't leave us alone and said you have to go now. So we drove to the courthouse and here were these camera men and no one would answer any of our questions, but they kept pointing the camera at us to make us answer theirs.
“Then they took it out of context and put it at CTL.
“They identified themselves as CTL from New York doing a documentary. A guy who said his name was Roberto Serinni told me he was an investigative reporter.
“We were excited because one of our friends was trying to get someone to do a documentary, we never thought in million years this was a scam.
Those videos now run at CTL though no one ever got a release form signed by Mary Lou.
“There's another abuse going on in the church,” Mary Lou said.
“The abuse of anybody who stands up and says, you know what, you're not following the Dallas charter.
“We did everything, we went to Washington. Wrote to the national review board, contacted my brother-in-law in California who's a deacon.
“We did everything only to find out that nobody was going to protect us.”
Mary Lou still goes to Mass and Communion daily at St. Peter’s.
*****
After Kate Bochte and her husband had been slandered over and over from the pulpit at St. Peter’s and at the CTL Website site, Kate contacted Cardinal Francis George in Chicago. “I assumed he had some authority over his archdiocese,” she said.
“So I wrote to Cardinal George and he called me one afternoon,” Kate Bochte said.
ME: What Cardinal George called you?
“Yeah it’s really unusual for him to call,” Mary Lou agreed.
Both these women identify themselves right off the bat as "stay at home moms." You can hear the smile in their voices and they are both quick to laugh. A picture of Kate Bochte in a news story shows she’s got the blue-eyed reddish haired angel face of so many Catholics with Irish roots.
Yet to hear the people at the CTL website describe Kate Bochte and Mary Lu O'Halloran you’d expect them both to be shrill-voiced hard-swearing radical feminist lesbian barflies.
Kate Bochte continued:
“Cardinal George and I talked for quite a while about one, the bishop isn’t following the charter, he hasn’t addressed the parish, he’s done nothing for the victims.
“Number two we've got this priest Jarmoluk threatening to sue us, hiring attorneys, putting out reports about us with lies.
“Cardinal George says, well as far as the charter, that's not good if it’s not being handled, and George says, at least they're better than Rockford. He goes, what I can do is as a friend, as a fellow, as a brother bishop, I could just mention something to Bishop Doran if you want me to to.
“George says, as far as that pastor, I can’t tell him what to do with his priests, but if you want I could mention it to him as a friend.
“I go you're the cardinal and archbishop and he’s just the bishop I thought you’d have authority. He goes, no, it’s the Pope. Every bishop answers to the Pope and only the Pope
“That's when I realized if change is ever going to come it’s going to come from the laity,” Kate Bochte said, “the people in the pews, not from anybody in the church hierarchy.”
*****
Kate Bochte started a website of her own:
wearecatholics dot com
that today is like a localized version of the Abuse Tracker blog by Kathy Shaw.
“I started just saving articles and other things we’d get,” said Kate Bochte. “The pastor’s attorney put out this document, the second appellate court ruled against the diocese, all these documents.
“I just figured about a year ago to start a website. Now, I don't know anything about websites or computers, so I got a book and I got a software and I still don’t know half of what I'm doing. I was trying to get factual information and stuff about healing for individuals and the whole community.
“I just took whatever I had and uploaded it, newspaper articles, documents and stuff like that, and that took a while. But now what I do daily is every time there’s a newspaper article relating to the topic, I put it up there. Now it’s just kind of maintenance.
“This is what happens when the allegations are not properly addressed, it doesn't go away, it doesn't get better. We probably have 300 articles and letters to the editor from just this one year.
“It hasn’t gone away.
“If the church had responded properly this wouldn't have happened, if they had just been open and transparent from the beginning."
*****
From the Dear Ray Letter:
“I had a meeting with Father Simon last July (2003) and he and I talked about the use of the media to inform for the common good. I talked to him about my reluctance to use the media because it was a feeling of betrayal. He asked me who was betraying whom? However, after the reflection at Mass Nov. 23, I waited in the sacristy for Father and told him that I was very opposed to what he had done. He told me to take it up with the diocese.
“I told him that I was upset that he would not make the report. His response was, “Well, you didn't either.’”
*****
These CTL People Are Scary
At the CTL website they describe meeting in “prayer group” before going out to stalk the Bochtes and other activists, who they call “the Group of 14.”
There are pictures of Barbara Houston and Frank and Kate Bochte and Mary Lou O’Halloran all over the CTL-NYC website.
The two girls identified so far as victims of Mark Campobello got settlements of $1,150,000 and $1,050,000 in May 2007.
“We took Campobello’s deposition in prison,” Jeff Anderson said, “plus interviews of our clients. It was evident that he had relationships with other girls that were suspicious, but none of them ever came forward.”
Could other victims be intimidated by things like CTL and Monsignor Jarmoluk’s responses? I know when I heard about these creeps in Geneva as well as the polyester pant-suited suburbanites who came out in support of McCormack in Chicago two years ago, I was scared out of pursuing anything on my own case in Illinois. . .for a time.
“I’ve hand delivered things downtown to the Chancery in Chicago,” said Mary Lou O’Halloran, “but nobody’s doing anything.
The "Group of 14"?
"It's 14 people some of us knew each other before some of us didn't," Mary Lou said. "I was at the Mass when Father spoke about the letter Frank Bochte wrote. When we walked out of church, I was so angry at him.
"That caused us to do research and I met Frank and Kate, they told us their story how Frank got involved in this.
"All us just came together just out of concern."
Now they're good friends. They occasionally have each other over for dinner and they have a party around Christmas time. Who knows, they could be the plant of a new church in Geneva, Illinois.
From the Dear Ray Letter:
“I have a letter from the Bishop that denies any knowledge of ACC and it has a negative tone. If all people had told only the truth from the beginning of all these events, then none of these terribly sad things would have occurred.
“I am a committed Catholic who believes that truth is the answer. I can quote Scripture with the best of them, but Jesus says, ‘I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life.’ He has been with me every step of the way.”
*****
*****
HERE IS A TRANSCRIPT OF FRANK BOCHTE’S PHONE CALL TO FATHER SIMON:
For some reason CTL thinks linking a this personal phone message for anyone to hear somehow makes Jarmoluk and St. Peter’s look good:
Hello Father Simon, my name is Frank Bochte, I think you know my wife Kate from being on the Respect Life committee. I was at the Mass this morning at 7 o'clock and first of all I want to congratulate you on your appointment o er at St. Patricks I know this is your last day but I just want to make one brief statement and I hope you take this in, in the best of terms. You know, myself and then many otehrs think our, let’s say we're disappointed in you over the past few weeks and the past few months is an understatement.
I myself had faith that you were going to be a beacon of truth and a beacon of light to lead Father Joe through these difficult times and at least demand that the truth be told and that people, you know, are held accountable.
Something came over you the past few months, I don't know what it was, but Father Joe has obviously gotten to you the way he’s gotten to others. And I think that your statement today that some of these press reports are unwarranted was a really pathetic comment. There’s nothing unwarranted about exposing sexual abuse among clergy or among anyone else, for that matter.
And you know the truth as well as I know the truth, thanks to Barb Houston the truth is coming out and I just with that you were, that you would have been more of a man, stand up and be a man, and that Father Joe be held accountable before he destroys this parish any further.
So again I just want to say I’m very disappointed in your lack of respect toward the victims, your lack of respect for people such as myself and my wife, who have been trying to get the truth out. Now that the truth is finally out, you seem to still remain in your hole, and refuse to acknowledge reality. I think that's pathetic and I pray for you. I hope you sleep well at night knowing that you're turning away from a problem that could have been addressed. You could have been a man and you could have stood up and said the right thing that needs to be said.
Father Joe through his own egotistical ways is destroying this parish and you're going to stand by and let it happen, that's pathetic. And I pray fort the people at St. Pat’s that someday you're able to face reality and face the truth and deal with this issue the way it needs to be dealt with. So again good luck to you, I’ll pray for you, but again I feel badly and I’m ashamed that you didn't stand up and do what needs to be done here at St. Peter’s. Goodbye.
And by the way if you want to call me back, I know you won’t because nobody at the parish ever calls me back, but my number is --
(And then CTL proceeds to narrow cast his personal phone number on the website.)
*****
Here are some the messages from the Forum Section of the CTL Website, which again, apparently has the approval of the Rockford Diocese and Monsignor Joseph Jarmoluk. (Just Google CTL-NYC and you will get there.)
THESE ARE ALL COPIED AND PASTED:
07/06/07 at 06:57 PM #75
________________________________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by FOFJ
Hey Rocky and CTL! It's great to be able to catch up when I can't catch Rocky at the appointed time. Great show.
Not only was Mary Lu and her cohort Diane at Mass this morning but Barb Houston made an appearance. I gotta tell you Barb, it takes nerve for you to walk into Mass at St. Peter knowing what we all know about you and think about you and your self-promoted failures. And there you stand with Mary Lu and Diane, desperately hoping that people aren't thinking what they really are thinking of the three of you. If I didn't think you three were a cadre of intrinsically evil people, I'd feel sorry for you.
Rocky and CTL - keep up the great work!!
ANOTHER POST
Holy Toledo! Barb Houston had the rocks to show up at mass today??!!! I knew that Mary Lu had rocks bigger than most men but it looks as if her friend Barb out did her this time! Gadzooks! The absolute gall of these women. Shameless!!!!
A "Senior Member" called "Lou aka Agent 24/7" has this signature under each post he writes:
"Every single day, Every word you say, Every game you play,
I'll be watching you,
Every move you make, Every vow you break, Every smile you fake, Every claim you stake
I'll be watching you"
Lou aka Agent 24/7
------
Mary Lou said: "I have three or four huge files full of their posts."
======
*****
Here are some more.
Remember CTL-NYC website apparently has the nod of approval of the Rockford Diocese in Illinois.
*****
07/08/07 at 08:31 PM
#82
________________________________________
Mary Lou you have been a "bone of contention" with the parishioners of St. Peter for four long years. You are beyond being a bone of contention with us. You are a malevolent presence. You and that half wit sidekick of yours, Diane Anderson, have the audacity to show up for daily mass just to MOCK Father Joe and the parishioners of St. Peter. We are sick of looking at you and we're sick of you coming to OUR parish. It's not YOUR parish Mary Lou. YOU are not welcome. We've done our home work, we've gotten the facts and we know what YOUR agenda is. It has never, ever been about the children. It's been all about taking down Father Joe. But I guess the tables were turned on you weren't they Mary Lou? You are the one going down. You, your filthy unchristian friends, the Bochtes, Blacks, Diane
Marylou
Mary Lou, you DO know that what we heard tonight, the rest of the world WILL hear and see. You can no longer spin this and you can no longer hide out in the Adoration Chapel. You did this to yourself Mary Looooon. You and the rest of your ilk will be out there for everyone to SEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! "Now go run, tell that" to your rag newspapers
POSTED BY Elite or Roger rogue, hard to tell which
****
Oh heck here’s some more
A person called “another friend” posted the next one. Does anyone else notice that all the posts sound like the same person, although they are signed as being by different authors?
*****
Just when I think I've heard it all, I hear Mary Lou in her own words.
Mary Lou, I take extreme exception to on particular quote of yours - about Father Joe being "a friend, a former friend." You were NEVER his friend Mary Lou. Don't you ever try to portray yourself as such. You were NEVER, NEVER his friend.
A friend doesn't betray. A friends doesn't try to destroy. You were NEVER his friend Mary Lou, you were his ENEMY awaiting your chance to betray. You are no better than a scorpion.
Read your bible Mary Lou:
Here’s more:
06/22/07 at 09:54 PM
#35
_______________________________________
Mary Lu - Just wanted you to know that your more and more desperate behavior at Mass and around St. Peter is not going without notice. You do know, don't you, that the St. Peter grapevine is very well established. You come in to Mass with which ever over the top behavior you choose that day and make yourself noticed in the narthex for what Mary Lu? for what? I don't even have to be at Mass on any given day and by noon I've heard of your latest. Apparently you don't have eyes in the back of your head or you'd see the global eye rolling as you turn away.
Originally Posted by FOFJ
Mary Lu - Just wanted you to know that your more and more desperate behavior at Mass and around St. Peter is not going without notice. You do know, don't you, that the St. Peter grapevine is very well established. You come in to Mass with which ever over the top behavior you choose that day and make yourself noticed in the narthex for what Mary Lu? for what? I don't even have to be at Mass on any given day and by noon I've heard of your latest. Apparently you don't have eyes in the back of your head or you'd see the global eye rolling as you turn away.
Parishioners of St. Peter
The snickering about your "pr" article in the local rag went around the parish like a wave.
You see Mary Lu, everyone and I mean everyone is on to you. They may respond to you with Christian kindness (not that you deserve it but really, who wants to be the next person attempted to be arrested when you cry wolf?) They may try make a wide curve around you to avoid you unless you or Desperate Diane grab them against their will but believe me, they are trying to avoid you.
Have you seen the DVDs that went out Mary Lu? Priceless! I thought you and Kate looked bad on my little computer screen, on the big screen t.v. you're downright scary. I simply cannot, cannot wait to see your mugs on the silver screen.
Oh and Mary Lu, we all know crocodile tears when we see them. You don't fool us for a second.
Mary Lu, lest you think I'm being too hard on you, there is the possibility of redemption, even for you. Here's my suggestion: call up your friends at the Comical before they go out of business and purchase a full-page (I'm sure you'll get a discount, them being such fans of you) and write a public letter to Father Joe admitting your dirty dealings with Donald Bondick, SNAP and VOTF and apologize for your behavior, beg him for his forgiveness and plead that he intercede on your behalf with his parishioners asking us to forgive you.
Got it Mary Lu? It's as simple as that, because really, no amount of fake articles in any local rag will garner you as much good will as you admitting the truth would. And then maybe you will find a little relief after all those (fake) tears and all that (wasted) time in OUR Adoration Chapel.
=====
What on God's green earth have you been up to now, MaryLou? Tears at mass? Are these tears of repentance? Tears of sorrow for the dirty, dirty, stinky, stinky things you've done? It's very unlikely that you are sorry for any of the harm, the malicious damage, the lies, the underhanded things you've done. But, miracles do happen.
I have seen the dvd. I have watched it on my big screen tv. It seems larger than life when watching it on tv. You can't quite grasp the power of it on the tiny computer screen. It really does need to be watched on a tv or a big movie theater screen.
Oh and Mary Lu, we all know crocodile tears when we see them. You don't fool us for a second.\\\\
*****
More of what you can be subjected to if you advocate for victims of sex crimes by Catholic priests in a mid-sized city in Illinois:
*****
Originally Posted by FrankK
I remember the day SNAP protested at St. Peter's, to think that Kate Bochte and Mary Lu O'Halloran brought those people onto our parish grounds still makes my blood boil. Those two gals have done more to harm a parish than anyone else could. Rocky said today "great coreographic effort" it took and who orchestrated it - we all know. I;ve been saying it for a long time, the day Kate Bochte and Mary Lu O"Halloran brought SNAP and Voice of the Faithful into our parish was a day to live in infamy, as I heard today it is the tar paper that will stick to whoever touches it. I;ve had enough. Those two gals have gotten away with hiding their associations with antiRoman Catholic groups for far too long. I;d like to see if someone remembers a picture in a Chicago paper, either the Suntimes or the Tribune if I recall of Mary Lu sitting at the Cathedral in some sort of protest with members of Votf. Does anyone have that picture? I kick myself for not keeping it, who could know then what we know now? That after all these years those two are still protesting. If they are so out of line with Catholic doctrine that they would protest with antiRoman Catholic groups why do they claim to be Catholic? I'd like to know if Ctl has access to that picture, if you do you should put it front and center. No one cares about Mark, he done his time, why do we at St. Peter's and Fr. Joe still have to do time? Kate and Mary Lu should stop pretending to be what they are not and they are not faithful Catholics. Sorry for the long message, I have read for a long time and had my fill and thanks for listening.
=====
Hi FrankK!
When I saw that you had finally posted, I figured it was time for me to do so. I have been on other boards but have avoided this board, I figured I would end up on Kate's site, but really, who cares? I remember the photo you write about, it was in the Chicago Tribune. Like yourself I didn't save it, who knew? But I remember reading something about Mary Lu and VOTF on this site, I did a search and found:
"Friends, strangers come to help heal
By Leslie Hague Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted 11/8/2004
After Sue Black, a parishioner at St. Peter's Catholic Church, helped set up a P.O. box for people to write to two victims of sexual abuse in the area, the two young women were overwhelmed by the response.
Cards. Teddy bears. Buttons. Angels. And about 100 letters.
"People say, 'I don't know what to say,' " Black said. "Well, one of the letters just said, 'I have no words.' How profound is that?"
Some of the people who wrote those letters gathered Sunday night at Peck Farm Park in Geneva for a prayer service and candlelight vigil for those two women and all victims of abuse.
The community members who spoke talked about the two victims of Mark Campobello, a former associate pastor at St. Peter's in Geneva and former vice principal at Aurora Central Catholic, who pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in May, but stressed their prayers were for all abuse victims.
"It's just a big gift of love, because God is love," said Charles Todd, a parishioner at St. Peter's.
Some of the organizers were from St. Peter's, but others were not.
Those who spoke said they wanted to provide an atmosphere of healing and prayer.
"You can't just move on," said Barb Houston, one of the event's organizers. "What heals is prayer. There's always good to be found, and this is a really good place to start - in prayer."
Several members of the Catholic lay group Voice of the
Faithful, which has pushed for changes in the church's sexual abuse policies, helped plan the event and spoke as well.
"For all those who were abused by clergy, we embrace you," Voice of the Faithful member Ann Field said. "We pray that as the people of God we can in some real way be agents of your healing."
Toward the end of the vigil, one of the organizers, Mary Lu O'Halloran, read a statement from the young women thanking people for their support.
"We were and are overwhelmed and humbled by your response to us through your letters," she read. "They are helping us in our healing process. Thank you very much."
Black, who knows the two women, said that years ago they had felt "really alone."
"I don't think they feel alone anymore," she said."
Sorry I don't have the photo of Mary Lu at St. Peter's Cathedral with her VOTF friends. But here we have it that Mary Lu is active in VOTF.
=====
To "nwchgoburbs" - the dissidents are all involved with VOTF and SNAP. What "OutsideLookingIn" said is true, Mary Lu herself was at last year's SNAP convention. Keep reading the CTL site, you will be shocked and sickened by what Mary Lu O'Halloran, Kate Bocthe, Frank Bochte and their co-horts have done to our parish.
Peace,
AliceP
Onward. . .
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Would Tod Tamberg Say That? Catholic PR Spin Machine Works Overtime on the Internet
*****
By Kay Ebeling
“No decent human being should ever lose his or her initial revulsion at the accounts of children being offered up to predators again and again, over decades. It is not a ‘problem’ - it is debased behavior that should not be known to man.”
Marci Hamilton put into words what I’ve been trying to say for months in the quote above from "How to Solve the Appalling Problem of Child Sex Abuse: Why Catholic Priest Andrew Greeley Is Very Wrong to Suggest Church Self-Policing Is the Answer," posted on FindLaw today and immediately linked by Kathy Shaw in Abuse Tracker. In the article, Hamilton takes off on the Greeley piece with an argument against “self policing,” but in the quote above she points out the emptiness of Greeley’s referring to decades of organized crime in the Catholic Church as a “problem.”
The Catholic hierarchy must be spending millions in public relations to create this spin, that sex crimes by five thousand priests on God knows how many children, just in the last 60 years alone, is a “problem.”
A “problem.”
This Catholic PR spin is insidious, today finding new ways to use the internet to mutate the message. Articles pop up online in ways only a PR agent with lots of cash can do. They place stories designed to look like legitimate news on the paid side of websites.
Then, even on Sundays, Catholic flacks, apparently even Tod Tamberg in LA, monitor the Comments sections after real news stories so they can pop in with more of the same lies, and even worse, change the topic, turn the dialogue in a different direction. They say, Look at what a great job the church is doing, All but 1 percent of priests are innocent plus we've started these great programs. Spin, spin, quick look over there, not here. That's how Spin works, and the Catholic PR machine is working overtime on the internet.
Copy and pasted in full below:
Fake news story
and
Comments placed on a recent Sunday by Tod Tamberg.
So as Hamilton wrote in today's FindLaw:
When Greeley refers to "the problem," he is talking about the hierarchy's evil pattern of covering up child abuse by clergy, and about the dead silence of fellow priests who knew full well that their cohorts were taking children into their bedrooms and to their vacation homes.
===
At Irish Independent Online recently, while reading an article linked by Abuse Tracker, you could find an apologist piece running down the right hand column, on the Paid Side of Irish Independent Online. The story reads like a professional news article with one thing missing. Attribution. Not even a byline on this piece that puts forth the excuses that no longer work even in mainstream media: Pedophilia in the church is a small problem, only 1 percent of the priests do it, that was just the 1960s, it stopped in the 1980s.
Plus: Someone calling them self Tod Tamberg pops up wherever I go online to say, Kay Ebeling just needs anger management: Look at the great job the LA Archdiocese has done to clear out the pedophiles.
Hamilton points out the great job the church has done so far:
Perhaps by "self-policing," Greeley means the church process of defrocking. What a joke. One of the sickest pedophiles within the church to date, Fr. David Sicoli, whose crimes were detailed in the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on the Philadelphia Archdiocese, was defrocked just last week, which is a good six years after the Boston Globe first broke the coverup story and over two years following the Grand Jury Report - and thus decades after the hierarchy started hearing about him.
The Irish Independent online paid puff piece said basically that church hierarchy can’t testify or even give records to prosecutors: "to protect spiritual and confidential communications between priests and the Archbishop, privacy of which goes to the heart of the way the Catholic Church practices religion.”
Their Spin that Privacy is Their Religion is Criminal collusion.
Paid to PR firms with your parish dollars.
Many of those “Tod Tamberg” posts are in the comments section of recent City of Angels blog posts.
This person couldn't be the real Tod Tamberg, who is the full time paid person in charge of media at the LA Archdiocese, because if it is, these comments are extremely unprofessional.
Copy and pasted below is a little spar that took place at LAIst last month as well as the entire False News Story that ran in the paid column at Irish Independent, obviously placed there for spin purpose only by a PR firm, likely Stritch & Associates who are the LA Archdiocese’s PR firm in Century City.
Meanwhile you think this post is long?
City of Angels lady is tied up in her paid job but watch here this weekend for an in depth story of one parish in one small American city.
----
Tod Tamberg’s posts at LAIst and what followed:
TAMBERG: The facts: The 12-floor Catholic Center was sold for $31 m. The Archdiocese is renting back four floors. Cemeteries Department is moving to office space at one of our cemeteries. (They had been in separate offices prior to the move to the Catholic Center in 1996.) Thrifty-Payless gave the building to the ADLA when it moved to Oregon and then sold out to Rite-Aid.
In the past few days, Associated Press, La Opinion, and KPCC all mangled what should have been a simple story. AP said we got the building due to the riots. La Opinion said we sold 12 historic buildings and that all the staff were moving to a cemetery. KPCC also said the entire staff were moving to a cemetery.
We can now add another goof thanks to LAist, which claims that the Archdiocese abandoned its property on James M. Wood (1530-1531 West Ninth) because of the 1992 riots. Not so. That property was taken over by Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, and is still part of the Archdiocese.
All this would almost be funny, except that this kind of lazy reporting is par for the course when it comes to reporting on the Catholic church in Los Angeles. Perhaps some journalists should occasionally look up from the grinding wheel, put down the axe, and do a little old-fashioned research before making silly statements that aren't factually-based? What a nice change that would be.
Tod Tamberg, Director of Media Relations, Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
By Russ Bianchi
[2] | 01/25/08 01:59PM
We recommend www.bishop-accountability.or/abuse tracker for daily vetted and authenticated FACTS regarding the ongoing criminal cover-up of decades of pedophile rings in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, dating back (at the very least) to Bejanmin Hawkes, the late and known serial pedophile, and pedophile clergy ring enabler (under Timothy Manning) and continued and condoned under Roger Mahony from 1985 though the present.
Mahony is still enabling pedophiles on the LA Archdiocese payroll, as well as hush moneying, annuitying, pensioning, or diverting laity monies to many hundreds in Ireland, Asia, Mexico and elsewhere, to stop them from testifying against him (Mahony) and his ongoing crime spree(for free watch 2006 US Academy Award Best Documentary nominated DELIVER US FROM EVIL at www.youtube.com).
Are your children any safer now in the LA Archdiocese under criminal enabling Roger Mahony, than prior to a record $660 Million dollar out of court settlement (to squash public disclosure of Mahony's DIECT guilt) on many hundreds of cases (by the way there are still many hundreds of cases still pending in the civil and criminal courts spin artist Tod Tamburg doesn't talk about)? The answer is a resounding NO!
What is the real solution? Withhold all monies from the LA Archdiocese, until Mahony, like pedophile founder of the Legionnaires of Christ, Marciel, is removed from office, canonically censored for life, and sent off preferrably to a remote, dark, cold, bad food and hard labor monastic prison, OR if Rog Teflon Mahal resists further, he should be swiftly and irrevocably Papally EXCOMMUNICATED.
No Cardinal Or Bishop Accountability? No Laity Monies!
Respectfully submitted,
Russ Bianchi
Lay Member in the Diocese of Monterey, CA
Under The LA Archdiocese
By tod1
[3] | 01/26/08 12:09PM
The real solution is to speak truth to the falsehoods that Mr. Bianchi spews on every website he can get into. Not only has the Los Angeles Archdiocese settled ALL of the cases against it -- including those that the court dismissed -- the Archdiocese has enacted policies and procedures to prevent abuse in the future. 250,000 children have been trained in "good touch, bad touch" programs; all priests, employees and volunteers must be fingerprinted and background checked before working with children; 50,000 people and counting have undergone abuse prevention training; and all allegations of abuse against minors are immediately reported to the police.
Mr. Bianchi and other naysayers can't wipe away the facts by continuing to make outrageous and illogical statements from his tower somewhere in Monterey, which is not "under the Archdiocese," whatever that means.
As for "Deliver Us From Evil," try www.la-clergycases.com and read about the multitude of falsehoods, distortions and lies that went into the making of this so-called "documentary."
Finally, Mr. Bianchi, parish contributions in Los Angeles have gone up an average of four percent each year for the past six years. Our annual appeal which supports poor parishes and schools also has risen steadily each year. That should tell you that nobody believes your falsehoods down here in Los Angeles.
Tod Tamberg
By alumni
[4] | 01/26/08 10:23PM
"What a nice change that would be?" Maybe the Arcdiocense could sell the Cathedral for a nice chunk of change and enter a lease-back arrangement with the new owner? While you're at it, why not ask all convicted, or for that matter alleged, priests to forfeit their salaries for LIFE, as penance for their sins? How about that Tod? What a nice change it would be if all those abusing priests would keep their hands to themselves. What a nice change it would be if the archdiocese did not move them around from parish to parish. Church to church, and cover for them. What a nice change it would be if the Church actually HELPED and counseled the affected priests!! so they wouldn't abuse again, and would be content themselves. What a nice change it would be if the leaders in the Catholic Church accepted responsibility, beyond monetary settlement, and truly instituted changes from the top-down, including allowing priests and sisters to marry, cause if they don't, it's inevitable the church could be paying out forever....unless of course, the church doesn't settle and someone, better yet everyone convicted, is forced to face the sentence of a jury. What a nice change THAT would be.
By Russ Bianchi
[5] | 01/26/08 10:26PM
Mr. Tamburg is a either highly ill informed, intentionally spinning, and/or a paid for spokesperson, for an overt criminal, who is in a tradition, and documented history, of many curial LA pathological LIARS, harkening back to the late Vicar General, Benjamin Hawkes, of the LA Archdiocese, a known pedophile, and pedophile ring enabler, under Cardinal Timothy Manning, of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Mr. Tamburg does not go as far (as of yet) to invoking the 'imperial canon arrogance', and criminal posture, of Cardinal Francis MacIntyre, who threw entire nun religious orders onto the streets in the 1960's, in the LA Archdiocese, while stealing their life long assets and pensions, in the process, however the feable argumentation to refute REAL TRUTH & LIGHT, by Tamburg, on behalf of Mahony, is yet very young, and entirely without any merit.
In point of fact, the LA Archdiocese has a long history of criminal corruption, prior to, during, and to this day, which Mr. Tamburg does not want divulged, of his employer (with laity revenues) Rog 'Mahal' Mahony.
Tod Tamburg, is a paid for (by laity) PR spokesperson, for Roger M. Mahony.
Mahony is a documented 'Enabler' since the Diocese of Fresno, let alone the Diocese of Stockton ('DELIVER US FROM EVIL' at www.youtube.com, for free), of the likes of serial pedophiles like O'Grady, prior to taking over (and campaigning for the LA job, to John Paul II, with lots of money exchanging bank accounts, which is DOCUMENTED) for the 'chair' of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, in 1985 (to the present).
We also recommend the empirical book by Leon Podles, available for free, at your local library, or online, at: www.amazon.com, entitled: 'SACRILEGE'.
Mahony's enabling, pimping, and criminal co-conspirating, destruction of evidence, of the rape, oral copulation, physical assaulting, sexual assaulting, physical maiming, suciding, murder, kidnapping, perjury, liable, embezzling, felonious conspiracy to harbor felonious fugitives from justice, across state, federal, and international borders, and continued employment, pensioning, annuitying, and hush moneying, of these felons, as well as obstructing justice, by intentionally seeking to beat statutes of limitations, though overt and premediated racketeering, of THOUSANDS of children in California, from criminal prosecution, is very well documented.
In point of fact, The Devil Himself, must be very embarassed, by how well Roger M. Mahony, and Tod Tamburg, are showing The Prince Of Darkness up.
For daily VETTED and empirical coverage of the FACTS, we recommend:
www.bishop-accountability.org/abusetracker,
NOT the feable attempts by SPIN-MEISTER, Tod Tamburg.
"And the truth shall set you free." St. John
Respectfully submitted,
Russ Bianchi
Lay Member of the Diocese of Monterey, CA (which is canoncially under the LA Archdiocese)
TOD:
Mr. Bianchi is not a sexual abuse victim. Mr. Bianchi has never knowingly met a sexual abuse victim of the Roman Catholic Church. Mr. Bianchi is not, nor has ever been, in any litigation with the Roman Catholic Church. Mt. Bianchi is neither a member of, nor contributor to, any sexual abuse victim organization or advoacy group or campaign.
Mr. Bianchi's strongly held opinions, which he believes to be 100% factual, are protected under the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution, and further backed by publicly disclosed and published documentation (not hearsay).
*****
CITY OF ANGELS INSERT HERE:
ROGER?
ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?
Your Media Director at the Archdiocesse is attacking good Catholic people here on Websites on Sundays.
Dear Cardinal Mahony, I have a bachelor's degree in Public Relations. Maybe you could hire me to take Tod's place.
It would certainly help the LA Archdiocese's credibility and I could finally buy a condo.
*****
RUSS BIANCHI RESPONDS TO TOD'S ATTACKS:
Mr. Bianchi is the CEO and Managing Director of ADEPT SOLUTIONS, INC, a global food, beverage and pharmaceutical formulation corporation, who travels the globe annually for his profession, and has seen first-hand the OVERT EVIL, CORRUPTION, and CRIMINAL COVER-UP, of the institutional Roman Cahtolic Church, as exsemplified by Roger M. Mahony.
Mr. Bianchi is a family man, a daily Mass penitent, a lay Mass presider, and lay Communion Service presider.
Mr. Bianchi has direct family members, as well as close friends, that are vocationed, ordained, seminarial, ordered, secular, monastic, cloistered, scholared and academic, and yes, even currently Papally Curial, in Rome.
By tod1
[6] | 01/27/08 09:50AM
"Imperial canon arrogance"? What the heck is that? I have a degree in theology and never heard of it. Perhaps it is something that people exhibit when speaking of themselves in the third person -- something that Mr. Bianchi does quite a bit, it seems. How does traveling the world selling pepto bismol and other exotic potions give Mr. Bianchi a first-hand view of "overt evil" in the Catholic Church? Keep writing, Mr. Bianchi. This is great entertainment. Tod Tamberg. Tamberg, Mr. B, not Tamburg.
By tod1
[7] | 01/27/08 10:30AM
The Official Catholic Directory lists only one priest with the name "Bianchi" -- in Des Moines. "Seminarial"? "Papally Curial"? Those aren't even proper words. Be careful of making claims that others can fact-check, Mr. B. Tod Tamberg
FINALLY I PIPED IN:
By Kay Ebeling
[8] | 01/27/08 11:15AM
Tod Tamberg is the PR rep for the LA Archdiocese and he comes on these comments like gangbusters, firing shots right and left, ignoring the truth, just like Cardinal Mahony fought down plaintiffs in the civil suits settled last year. It's never about compassion or acting Christian, it's always been about beating down the crime victims and protecting the criminals with these bishops and cardinals. Tod Tamberg reveals the true fangs of this organized crime unit disguised as religion. Who cares about them, really, except to see the guys at the top finally go to prison. We won't stop until that happens. http://cityofangels4.blogspot.com
By Russ Bianchi
[9] | 01/27/08 12:05PM
Mr. T:
Direct relatives, or close friends, do not necessarily have the same family sir name, last time I checked; or perhaps your mother did not have a different family name than your father?
The 'Bianchi' you mention is not known to me, nor a relative. 'Bianchi' is a very common name in Italy.
Your demonstration, or attempts, to change the subject, remain feable, for all the read.
Keep going Mr. Tamburg, you, and Tef Mahal's self dug graves grow deeper (figuratively speaking), by the every falsehood you claim, or write.
Am I really even corresponding with the real spokesperson for the office holder in charge Archdiocese of Los Angeles?
Perhaps this is just some poor disturbed soul, or if the real Tod Tamburg, perhaps you do have a conscience, and the truth and light of thousands of children raped, sodomized, orallly copulated, sexually assaulted, physically maimed, kidnapped, mentally tortured, extorted, etc., on Mahony's, and your, watch, at 100% laity expense, since Mahony took over in 1985 in LA, some 23 years ago, with no personal accountability (thus far) is getting to you? But I doubt it.
Back to the subject at hand, the continued enabling of pedophiles in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and the global Roman Catholic Church, and still condoned by the Curia to this very day, as well as many perpetrators currently being hidden in religious orders, or in active ministries, with complete acces to more children to be assaulted, in Mexico, Ireland, Asia, Central & South America, Australia, Africa, the EU, Russia, and elsewhere, from LA and the USA, is documented daily at:
www.bishop-accountability.org/abusetracker for all to read.
A recommended additional reading list, for those of you with, or without, a "theology degree", but perhaps a proclivity to common sense, would include:
SACRILEGE by Leon Podles
SEX, PRIESTS, & SECRET CODES by Fr. Thomas Doyle, OP, A.W. Richard Sipe & Patrick Wall
GAY CATHOLIC PRIESTS & CLERCIAL MISCONDUCT by Donald L. Boisvert
SEX, PRIESTS & POWER by A.W. Richard Sipe
LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION by Jason Barry
PERVERSION OF POWER by Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea
SEXUAL ABUSE & THE CATHOLIC CULTURE by Myra L. Hildago
THE TRAGIC GRACE by Stephen J. Rosetti
SAVING THE SOUL OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH by Robert Grant, MD
VOWS OF SILENCE by Jason Barry
A CHURCH IN SEARCH OF ITSELF by Robert Blair Kaiser
SACRED SILENCE by Donald B. Cozzens
OUR FATHERS by David France
SLAYER OF THE SOUL by Stephen J. Rosetti
THE GOSPEL OF SHAME by Frank Bruni
SIN AGAINST THE INNOCENTS by Thomes G Plante
SURVIVORS OF PREDATOR PRIESTS by J.M. Handlin
COMING OUT & COVRING UP by Lisa Rene Reynolds
BETRAYAL: The Crisis In The Catholic Church by The Boston Globe
DOUBLE CROSSED by Kenneth Briggs
GOD VERSUS THE GAVEL by Marci A. Hamilton
BROKEN TRUST by Patrick Fleming
THE POWER & THE GLORY by David Yallop
IN GOD'S NAME by David Yallop
FAITH THAT DARES TO SPEAK by Donald Cozzens
THE SECRET WORLD by A.W. Richard Sipe
DELIVER US FROM EVIL, free trailers and previews at YouTube
RUSS BIANCHI CONT'D.
Mr. Tamburg characterizes this documentary as "multitude of lies" and then refers us to an LA Archdiocese run ans sponsored disinformation and propaganda web site. If the documentary is mostly "lies" Mr. Tamburg, then I guess you are calling the US Acadamy Award Nominating Judges & Most Of The Film Industry, "Liars" Also?
THE CHANGING FACE OF THE PRIESTHOOD by Donald B. Cozzens
LOYAL DISSENT by Charles E. Curran
The NCCB JJ Criminal Justice Report On The American Roman Catholic Church's Sexual Crisis
The Philadelphia Criminal Grand Jury Report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia
SEMINARY BOY by John Cornwall
THE RULE OF BENEDICT by David Gibson
AMBITION & ARROGANCE by Douglas O. Slawson
THE UNHEALED WOUND by Eugene Kennedy
TWIST OF FAITH by Matthew Simon
CARDINAL MAHONY: A NOVEL by Robert Blair Kaiser
SHAKEN BY SCANDALS by Thomas Paul Thigpen
THE RITE OF SODOMY by Randy Engel
MARRIED CATHOLIC PRIESTS by Anthony P. Kolwaski
SIN, SHAME & SECRETS by David Yonke
SEX, PRIESTLY MINISTRY, & THE CHURCH by Len Sperry
SCANDALS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH by Otto von Corvin
THE SILENCE WE KEEP by Karol Jackowski
VIEW FROM THE ALTAR by Howard Bleichner, PhD & SS
AMCHURCH COMES OUT by Paul Lidoukis
SEEKING WHOLENESS by Marie Evans Bouclin
CLERICAL CULTURE by Michael L. Papesh
KEEP THE FAITH, CHANGE THE CHURCH by James Muller
This non complete list will give all readers a better background of the FACTS of the ongoing criminal cover up in the Roman Catholic Church, but is by no means a comprehensive list.
The Bottom Line remains the only way to hold non accountabile pedophile enablers, like Roger M. Mahony, is to withold all funding, and all monies or donations, to the LA Archdiocese, and the Church at large.
It was not The Boston Globe coverage that drove Bernard Law from his office, but rather laity, who pay 100% of all the church bills, withholding over 75% of the income for two years in a row in Boston, and despite false claime to the contrary, by O'Malley and others there, that income has NOT returned to pre 2002 Sexual Crisis announcement and litigation levels.
Rome may pretend not to get much, but they move swiftly when the money dries up.
Such bills that all laity are paying include, but are not limited to, Mr. Tamburg's salary, all legal and lawyer fees, all insurance liability premiums, all assets sold off, and ministries slashed, all out of court settlements, all hush monies, all in court settlements, hiked school tutions, etc.
Until 1.1 billion global faithful laity stop donating, evil, and the totally corrupt and criminal activity, in the Roman Catholic Church, will continue unabated, with children STILL in direct, clear, and present danger, by less that 3,500 global miters and red hat enablers.
Russ Bianchi
Lay Member of The Diocese Of Monterey, CA, Which Is Part Of The Los Angeles Archdiocese
russ@adepthq.com
By tod1
[10] | 01/27/08 01:35PM
Well, Russ, Monterey has a bishop and a diocese. I doubt very much that you have any real relatives among the clergy here or anywhere else. Kay and Russ ignore the facts in the second post. Safeguards are in place and they are working. Go to www.la-clergycases.com to read about the lies and deliberate misinformation that went into the making of "Deliver Us From Evil."
Both Kay and Russ should know that their own personal vendettas are rooted in the past. The church has learned from its mistakes, and safeguards are in place. Russ and Kay might -- might -- have a bit more credibility if they'd acknowledge these programs and the lay people who run and monitor them. No matter, parish donations, parish school enrollment and religious education enrollment continue to go up in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The people of the Archdiocese are a lot, lot smarter and better informed than you think. You insult good parents who care about their kids' safety when you spread untruths and misinformation to the contrary. Time to move forward.
By Russ Bianchi
[11] | 01/27/08 02:51PM
It's indeed time to "move forward" when enablers like your boss, Roger M. Mahony, master multi- decade pedophile enabler, in Fresno, Stockton and now LA, and you, are GONE, Tod.
Your disinformation rivals that of the old Soviet Union (note: they not longer exists dure to body count and lack of truth), all at the expense of the "good parents" and laity, as well as their wallets, not yours, you seem to think support your continued obstruction of justice, and child endangerment.
I again encourage my fellow laity, throughout California, and the United States, and globally, not to donate any monies to any Roman Catholic Church cause, until the likes of Mahony (there are many dozens, if not hundreds, of such unaccountable miters and red hats in the USA) are indeed removed from office for past, present, and ongoing crimes against children, at 100% laity expense.
Your failure to ever discuss FACTS, TOD, speaks volumes to any thinking parent, or laity, as to your motives to deceive.
Your attempt to contain the dissemination of truth about what you and Mahony have done will not stand.
Russ Bianchi
Lay Member Diocese of Monterey, CA
A "Suffragan" of The Los Angeles Archdiocese
By Kay Ebeling
[12] | 01/27/08 03:38PM
It's not a vendetta. It's about getting the truth out in spite of a powerful criminal wealthy organization's obstruction, the corporate/religion that hired you, Mr. Tamberg. Those much touted programs started by the church that you say solved the problem: COLORING BOOKS? Try living with my life, Mr. Tamberg. Everything was and still is affected by being raped at age five by a pervert priest who was aided and abetted by your bosses. The fact you call this a "vendetta" shows how totally clueless you are, even after hearing our stories all these years. Please, Tod and Roger, get your noses out of martini glasses and pay attention to what happened to families and children in your parishes. Your coloring books and "How To's" for teachers don't even start to solve this problem. WAKE UP!
By Kay Ebeling
[13] | 01/27/08 03:54PM
If we all weren't seriously damaged, why did you pay out 660 million to just 500 of us last year. What's under all the black redaction lines in the documents you finally released. Of course there's more people coming to church in LA. People audition for American Idol every season too.
By tod1
[14] | 01/27/08 04:07PM
Both of you purposely ignore and deny the facts as stated in my earlier post about speaking truth to falsehoods. It is clear that when someone stands up to speak truth to your constant mudslinging you don't like it one bit. Russ talks about relatives who are close to the pope. Baloney. He's blowing smoke, and he knows it. Also, "suffragan" is a term used by the Episcopal Church, so that raises the question of whether Russ is even Catholic.
Kay, you should be pleased that lay people are in charge of the programs to protect children in the church. The fact that these programs exist to prevent in the future what happened to you in darkness so long ago, should at least get some acknowlegement from you that they are in place. But you seem to be not only uninterested in these programs, you feel compelled to belittle them and the people who run them. I am sorry that you've let your anger therapy -- as you've described your blogging -- to cloud your vision of the good work that is being done to protect children.
That's all I'm going to post or read. I know the rants will continue. I've said my bit.
By Kay Ebeling
[15] | 01/27/08 04:11PM
Your church LET priests rape children on your altars, in your rectories, in your confessionals at your summer camps, in motels -- and you think we should all just sweep it under the table and forget it? Have you ever thought about the effect 50 years of unfettered pedophilia in the catholic church had on the rest of American culture? Read cityofangels4.blogspot.com -- today's post, in fact, is about the residual effects; how pedophiles saw priests get away with it and became empowered, and now we have an epidemic of murdered and raped children. And coloring books.
Tamberg recommends you go to: www.la-clergycases.com. That is a website run by Hennigan et al, the Archdiocese's law firm, well one of them. No one puts a by line on any article there, no organization takes credit for any of the stories written there, there's no attribution, just a lot of anonymous "rebuttals" and lies. And Tamberg recommends it. 'nuff said.
RUSS BIANCHI THEN WROTE THIS:
"Suffragan" from Church if England Tod "with the theology degree" refers to any bishop to the archbishop or metroploitan, who is his superior, or as applied to an assistant of subsidiary bishop, who performs episcopal functions in a diocese, but has no ordinary (landed) jurisdiction.
We in the Roman Catholic Church would classify such a definition as an "Auxillary Bishop".
Suffragan, as defined on several Roman Catholic Diocese of California web sites, including Fresno's, Monterey's, and on the beginning pages of The Ordo(s) for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, specifically states, in writing, that Monterey is a "suffragan" Diocese, currently under Bishop Richard Garcia, formerly Sylvester Ryan, recently semi retired, to the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Again Tod, you pretend not to know, a typical curial, or across the Tiber, playbook trick.
By the way tod, how is Mahony's cancer doing?
Taht (false) rumor, that he was "dying" to gain sympathy has been going on since for at least 7 years.
Quick call the Vatican, it's a MIRACLE! Sains preserve us, Rog has been cured! Or was that a deal with The Devil?
By tod1
[20] | 01/27/08 07:28PM
Well, maybe one more post. Kay writes: "Sorry can't stop: Tamberg writes: 'all priests, employees and volunteers must be fingerprinted and background checked before working with children.' Big deal. Every organization does that and has for decades."
Wrong.
Kay, certainly you've read the Associated Press series on Public Schools. But it is probably info that you don't want people to know.
Well, there's another story published today re: public schools. Now, will SNAP finally agree to expand statute-lifting laws to include public institutions? Doubtful, since they've been fine with promoting such legislation that leaves public school victims completely unprotected.
Fact is, the Catholic church is at the forefront of organizations that protect kids. Don't believe otherwise, folks. Kay and Russ will throw angry words at this, but even they can't disappear 250,000 kids and 50,000 adults trained in abuse prevention in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.
By Kay Ebeling
[21] | 01/27/08 07:42PM
I'm not mad, I'm laughing out loud. You guys in church hierarchy are so isolated you don't see how blatant and obvious your lies and manipulations are to the rest of us. It's funny it really is and you make my work so easy. 'night.
By Kay Ebeling
[22] | 01/27/08 07:43PM
"the forefront of organizations that protec kids." i'm going to laugh on that one for hours...
From Russ Bianchi
"Some say he is TURKISH. Some say his father was GERMAN. Nobody believe he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick The Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Kevin Spacy's Character in 'The Usual Suspects'
What better place to hide The Devil, than in a red outfit, inside the most jaded city in the world, in the most modern, expensive, & largest organized religion and Cathedral, in an archdiocese with the highest per annum tax free laity collection of revenue, claiming to be at the forefront of child protection (when in fact the last statement is 180 degrees from it)?
By sebb
[24] | 01/27/08 11:38PM
wow - Ive stayed up past my bedtime just to read the comments here and its all been pretty insightful. Russ, youre amazing! Tod, youre not very good at what you do. And Kay, you go, girl!
And to think, usually I just wanna feed the christians to the lions!
By (Unknown Poster)
[25] | 01/28/08 08:17AM
In reading all the above commentary, I think Russ owes Tod an apology.
It's pretty clear to me that Tod and Cardinal Mahony have done a great deal in educating many of the LA Archdiocese and beyond.
Now that I'm retired, with extra time, though admittedly not a regular church goer, I must tell you all, I have benefited from the OLA Gift Shop self improvement book section.
Among my favorite titles are;
Must See Playgrounds Of Ireland by Oliver O'Grady
My Search For The Real Killers by OJ Simpson
Ethical Accounting by the late Vatican Bank head Paul Marcinkus, and forwatd by the late Enron CEO Ken Lay
Marital Bliss by Phil Spector
Organic Cooking by Jeffery Dahmer
Truth & Ethics by Cardinal Roger Mahony
Maybe, if I can get my recently completed manuscript published, it too can make this cutting-edge powerful self-help and improvement book section, everyone wants to be a part of, as the author, in my upcoming offering, FAMILY MATTERS.
Sincerely,
Charles Manson
*****
Here is the Paid Puff Piece that shows up at places like Irish Independent Online.
It claims, basically that the secrecy of the Conffessional applies to just about all communication between the priest and the bishop, so their mouths are nailed shut, or something like that, it’s ludicrous: They say they can’t testify or even give records to prosecutors:
-----
Several myths that need to be dispelled
1. The Archdiocese went to the Supreme Court in an effort to block public release of the proffers.
Some members of the media persist in getting this wrong.
No, the Archdiocese is not trying to block public release of the proffers. In fact, the Archdiocese very much wants to release them; it was the Archdiocese attorneys who prepared them in the first place.
Instead, the objections to the release of the proffers, which summarize the essential contents of priests' personnel files, were raised by a number of the priests named. It was their appeal, first to the California Court of Appeal and later to the state Supreme Court, which has delayed release. (These priests have legal representation completely separate from the Archdiocese. They are not told by the Archdiocese lawyers what course to pursue, nor, for that matter, do they ask.)
Again, it was the Archdiocese attorneys who proposed the proffer procedure. The goal was to provide the information needed for the parties involved to negotiate a fair and reasonable settlement of the clergy abuse civil cases while at the same time protecting spiritual and confidential communications between accused priests and their superiors in the Church. The alternative would have been years of litigation, which would have delayed a settlement.
Important note: All parties to the mediation and settlement process agreed to the proffer procedure.
2. The Archdiocese is deliberately impeding the prosecution of priests charged with abusing minors.
This myth arises from the fact that the Archdiocese is fighting to protect spiritual and confidential communications between priests and the Archbishop, Chancellor and Vicar for Clergy, the privacy of which goes to the heart of the way the Catholic Church practices religion. The District Attorney would have you believe - and some reporters have bought into this - that he needs these documents in order to prosecute.
The exercise of a little common sense will quickly show the fallacy in this. The simple fact is that for years all across California (and, for that matter, the United States) sexual abusers from all walks of life have been convicted without the kind of private and protected information the DA seeks from the Archdiocese.
The fact is - and this rarely gets reported - that the Archdiocese has offered to provide the District Attorney with the names of all accused priests, records of their assignments and other related information. On top of this, the District Attorney has available the testimony of the victims and others.
That should be enough for a competent prosecutor to make a case, if there is a case to be made.
3. The Archdiocese has done little to help victims of sexual abuse by priests.
Interest in allegations of abuse has been extensive; less so the attention paid to Archdiocese efforts to reach out to and aid victims. These efforts have been wide-ranging and intense.
Aiding the healing of victims and their reconciliation with the Church is a priority for everyone in the Archdiocese. Starting at the top, Cardinal Mahony himself has publicly apologized for the harm done by abusers within the Church and acknowledged the past mistakes that were made in dealing with abusive priests. He has participated in a number of private prayer and apology services with victims of clergy misconduct and their families.
The Office of Assistance Ministry works throughout the Archdiocese to find solutions for the needs of victims, working to arrange pastoral outreach, counseling, residential treatment, housing, schooling, insurance and child care. Representatives of the Ministry are constantly out in the community meeting with individuals who have been affected by abuse. Several victims of abuse act as advisors for the Office.
Since the beginning of 2004, the Office of Assistance Ministry has been involved in 125 cases. Interestingly, only 40 of these concerned allegations of abuse (either present or past) against clergy. The rest concerned allegations against teachers, coaches, volunteers and family members.
4. Sexual abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church is far more prevalent than in other institutions.
From the coverage by the media, you'd think that this was the case. But this contention is simply not supported by the facts, according to one of the country's foremost education researchers.
In fact, says Charol Shakeshaft, a professor at Hofstra University in New York, there are no reliable national statistics at all on what percentage of children have been exploited by Catholic clergy or employees.
Shakeshaft has, however, as part of a report for the U. S. Department of Education, set out the parameters of the problem in another major national institution, the school system, where she found that fully 7 percent of students report physical sexual exploitation by a teacher or other school employee. Shakeshaft notes that sexual exploitation of children has been reported in other religious denominations and in groups serving youth such as the Scouts.
In other words, sexual exploitation of young people is a universal problem.
In her research, Shakeshaft came to another interesting conclusion. The response of educators to the problem of abuse in the schools is now at about the same level that of the Catholic Church was in the 80s and 90s.
REMINDER: The story right above is written by the Church PR machine, not me. Right now I'm late for work, more to come.
Onward
By Kay Ebeling
“No decent human being should ever lose his or her initial revulsion at the accounts of children being offered up to predators again and again, over decades. It is not a ‘problem’ - it is debased behavior that should not be known to man.”
Marci Hamilton put into words what I’ve been trying to say for months in the quote above from "How to Solve the Appalling Problem of Child Sex Abuse: Why Catholic Priest Andrew Greeley Is Very Wrong to Suggest Church Self-Policing Is the Answer," posted on FindLaw today and immediately linked by Kathy Shaw in Abuse Tracker. In the article, Hamilton takes off on the Greeley piece with an argument against “self policing,” but in the quote above she points out the emptiness of Greeley’s referring to decades of organized crime in the Catholic Church as a “problem.”
The Catholic hierarchy must be spending millions in public relations to create this spin, that sex crimes by five thousand priests on God knows how many children, just in the last 60 years alone, is a “problem.”
A “problem.”
This Catholic PR spin is insidious, today finding new ways to use the internet to mutate the message. Articles pop up online in ways only a PR agent with lots of cash can do. They place stories designed to look like legitimate news on the paid side of websites.
Then, even on Sundays, Catholic flacks, apparently even Tod Tamberg in LA, monitor the Comments sections after real news stories so they can pop in with more of the same lies, and even worse, change the topic, turn the dialogue in a different direction. They say, Look at what a great job the church is doing, All but 1 percent of priests are innocent plus we've started these great programs. Spin, spin, quick look over there, not here. That's how Spin works, and the Catholic PR machine is working overtime on the internet.
Copy and pasted in full below:
Fake news story
and
Comments placed on a recent Sunday by Tod Tamberg.
So as Hamilton wrote in today's FindLaw:
When Greeley refers to "the problem," he is talking about the hierarchy's evil pattern of covering up child abuse by clergy, and about the dead silence of fellow priests who knew full well that their cohorts were taking children into their bedrooms and to their vacation homes.
===
At Irish Independent Online recently, while reading an article linked by Abuse Tracker, you could find an apologist piece running down the right hand column, on the Paid Side of Irish Independent Online. The story reads like a professional news article with one thing missing. Attribution. Not even a byline on this piece that puts forth the excuses that no longer work even in mainstream media: Pedophilia in the church is a small problem, only 1 percent of the priests do it, that was just the 1960s, it stopped in the 1980s.
Plus: Someone calling them self Tod Tamberg pops up wherever I go online to say, Kay Ebeling just needs anger management: Look at the great job the LA Archdiocese has done to clear out the pedophiles.
Hamilton points out the great job the church has done so far:
Perhaps by "self-policing," Greeley means the church process of defrocking. What a joke. One of the sickest pedophiles within the church to date, Fr. David Sicoli, whose crimes were detailed in the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on the Philadelphia Archdiocese, was defrocked just last week, which is a good six years after the Boston Globe first broke the coverup story and over two years following the Grand Jury Report - and thus decades after the hierarchy started hearing about him.
The Irish Independent online paid puff piece said basically that church hierarchy can’t testify or even give records to prosecutors: "to protect spiritual and confidential communications between priests and the Archbishop, privacy of which goes to the heart of the way the Catholic Church practices religion.”
Their Spin that Privacy is Their Religion is Criminal collusion.
Paid to PR firms with your parish dollars.
Many of those “Tod Tamberg” posts are in the comments section of recent City of Angels blog posts.
This person couldn't be the real Tod Tamberg, who is the full time paid person in charge of media at the LA Archdiocese, because if it is, these comments are extremely unprofessional.
Copy and pasted below is a little spar that took place at LAIst last month as well as the entire False News Story that ran in the paid column at Irish Independent, obviously placed there for spin purpose only by a PR firm, likely Stritch & Associates who are the LA Archdiocese’s PR firm in Century City.
Meanwhile you think this post is long?
City of Angels lady is tied up in her paid job but watch here this weekend for an in depth story of one parish in one small American city.
----
Tod Tamberg’s posts at LAIst and what followed:
TAMBERG: The facts: The 12-floor Catholic Center was sold for $31 m. The Archdiocese is renting back four floors. Cemeteries Department is moving to office space at one of our cemeteries. (They had been in separate offices prior to the move to the Catholic Center in 1996.) Thrifty-Payless gave the building to the ADLA when it moved to Oregon and then sold out to Rite-Aid.
In the past few days, Associated Press, La Opinion, and KPCC all mangled what should have been a simple story. AP said we got the building due to the riots. La Opinion said we sold 12 historic buildings and that all the staff were moving to a cemetery. KPCC also said the entire staff were moving to a cemetery.
We can now add another goof thanks to LAist, which claims that the Archdiocese abandoned its property on James M. Wood (1530-1531 West Ninth) because of the 1992 riots. Not so. That property was taken over by Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, and is still part of the Archdiocese.
All this would almost be funny, except that this kind of lazy reporting is par for the course when it comes to reporting on the Catholic church in Los Angeles. Perhaps some journalists should occasionally look up from the grinding wheel, put down the axe, and do a little old-fashioned research before making silly statements that aren't factually-based? What a nice change that would be.
Tod Tamberg, Director of Media Relations, Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
By Russ Bianchi
[2] | 01/25/08 01:59PM
We recommend www.bishop-accountability.or/abuse tracker for daily vetted and authenticated FACTS regarding the ongoing criminal cover-up of decades of pedophile rings in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, dating back (at the very least) to Bejanmin Hawkes, the late and known serial pedophile, and pedophile clergy ring enabler (under Timothy Manning) and continued and condoned under Roger Mahony from 1985 though the present.
Mahony is still enabling pedophiles on the LA Archdiocese payroll, as well as hush moneying, annuitying, pensioning, or diverting laity monies to many hundreds in Ireland, Asia, Mexico and elsewhere, to stop them from testifying against him (Mahony) and his ongoing crime spree(for free watch 2006 US Academy Award Best Documentary nominated DELIVER US FROM EVIL at www.youtube.com).
Are your children any safer now in the LA Archdiocese under criminal enabling Roger Mahony, than prior to a record $660 Million dollar out of court settlement (to squash public disclosure of Mahony's DIECT guilt) on many hundreds of cases (by the way there are still many hundreds of cases still pending in the civil and criminal courts spin artist Tod Tamburg doesn't talk about)? The answer is a resounding NO!
What is the real solution? Withhold all monies from the LA Archdiocese, until Mahony, like pedophile founder of the Legionnaires of Christ, Marciel, is removed from office, canonically censored for life, and sent off preferrably to a remote, dark, cold, bad food and hard labor monastic prison, OR if Rog Teflon Mahal resists further, he should be swiftly and irrevocably Papally EXCOMMUNICATED.
No Cardinal Or Bishop Accountability? No Laity Monies!
Respectfully submitted,
Russ Bianchi
Lay Member in the Diocese of Monterey, CA
Under The LA Archdiocese
By tod1
[3] | 01/26/08 12:09PM
The real solution is to speak truth to the falsehoods that Mr. Bianchi spews on every website he can get into. Not only has the Los Angeles Archdiocese settled ALL of the cases against it -- including those that the court dismissed -- the Archdiocese has enacted policies and procedures to prevent abuse in the future. 250,000 children have been trained in "good touch, bad touch" programs; all priests, employees and volunteers must be fingerprinted and background checked before working with children; 50,000 people and counting have undergone abuse prevention training; and all allegations of abuse against minors are immediately reported to the police.
Mr. Bianchi and other naysayers can't wipe away the facts by continuing to make outrageous and illogical statements from his tower somewhere in Monterey, which is not "under the Archdiocese," whatever that means.
As for "Deliver Us From Evil," try www.la-clergycases.com and read about the multitude of falsehoods, distortions and lies that went into the making of this so-called "documentary."
Finally, Mr. Bianchi, parish contributions in Los Angeles have gone up an average of four percent each year for the past six years. Our annual appeal which supports poor parishes and schools also has risen steadily each year. That should tell you that nobody believes your falsehoods down here in Los Angeles.
Tod Tamberg
By alumni
[4] | 01/26/08 10:23PM
"What a nice change that would be?" Maybe the Arcdiocense could sell the Cathedral for a nice chunk of change and enter a lease-back arrangement with the new owner? While you're at it, why not ask all convicted, or for that matter alleged, priests to forfeit their salaries for LIFE, as penance for their sins? How about that Tod? What a nice change it would be if all those abusing priests would keep their hands to themselves. What a nice change it would be if the archdiocese did not move them around from parish to parish. Church to church, and cover for them. What a nice change it would be if the Church actually HELPED and counseled the affected priests!! so they wouldn't abuse again, and would be content themselves. What a nice change it would be if the leaders in the Catholic Church accepted responsibility, beyond monetary settlement, and truly instituted changes from the top-down, including allowing priests and sisters to marry, cause if they don't, it's inevitable the church could be paying out forever....unless of course, the church doesn't settle and someone, better yet everyone convicted, is forced to face the sentence of a jury. What a nice change THAT would be.
By Russ Bianchi
[5] | 01/26/08 10:26PM
Mr. Tamburg is a either highly ill informed, intentionally spinning, and/or a paid for spokesperson, for an overt criminal, who is in a tradition, and documented history, of many curial LA pathological LIARS, harkening back to the late Vicar General, Benjamin Hawkes, of the LA Archdiocese, a known pedophile, and pedophile ring enabler, under Cardinal Timothy Manning, of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Mr. Tamburg does not go as far (as of yet) to invoking the 'imperial canon arrogance', and criminal posture, of Cardinal Francis MacIntyre, who threw entire nun religious orders onto the streets in the 1960's, in the LA Archdiocese, while stealing their life long assets and pensions, in the process, however the feable argumentation to refute REAL TRUTH & LIGHT, by Tamburg, on behalf of Mahony, is yet very young, and entirely without any merit.
In point of fact, the LA Archdiocese has a long history of criminal corruption, prior to, during, and to this day, which Mr. Tamburg does not want divulged, of his employer (with laity revenues) Rog 'Mahal' Mahony.
Tod Tamburg, is a paid for (by laity) PR spokesperson, for Roger M. Mahony.
Mahony is a documented 'Enabler' since the Diocese of Fresno, let alone the Diocese of Stockton ('DELIVER US FROM EVIL' at www.youtube.com, for free), of the likes of serial pedophiles like O'Grady, prior to taking over (and campaigning for the LA job, to John Paul II, with lots of money exchanging bank accounts, which is DOCUMENTED) for the 'chair' of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, in 1985 (to the present).
We also recommend the empirical book by Leon Podles, available for free, at your local library, or online, at: www.amazon.com, entitled: 'SACRILEGE'.
Mahony's enabling, pimping, and criminal co-conspirating, destruction of evidence, of the rape, oral copulation, physical assaulting, sexual assaulting, physical maiming, suciding, murder, kidnapping, perjury, liable, embezzling, felonious conspiracy to harbor felonious fugitives from justice, across state, federal, and international borders, and continued employment, pensioning, annuitying, and hush moneying, of these felons, as well as obstructing justice, by intentionally seeking to beat statutes of limitations, though overt and premediated racketeering, of THOUSANDS of children in California, from criminal prosecution, is very well documented.
In point of fact, The Devil Himself, must be very embarassed, by how well Roger M. Mahony, and Tod Tamburg, are showing The Prince Of Darkness up.
For daily VETTED and empirical coverage of the FACTS, we recommend:
www.bishop-accountability.org/abusetracker,
NOT the feable attempts by SPIN-MEISTER, Tod Tamburg.
"And the truth shall set you free." St. John
Respectfully submitted,
Russ Bianchi
Lay Member of the Diocese of Monterey, CA (which is canoncially under the LA Archdiocese)
TOD:
Mr. Bianchi is not a sexual abuse victim. Mr. Bianchi has never knowingly met a sexual abuse victim of the Roman Catholic Church. Mr. Bianchi is not, nor has ever been, in any litigation with the Roman Catholic Church. Mt. Bianchi is neither a member of, nor contributor to, any sexual abuse victim organization or advoacy group or campaign.
Mr. Bianchi's strongly held opinions, which he believes to be 100% factual, are protected under the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution, and further backed by publicly disclosed and published documentation (not hearsay).
*****
CITY OF ANGELS INSERT HERE:
ROGER?
ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?
Your Media Director at the Archdiocesse is attacking good Catholic people here on Websites on Sundays.
Dear Cardinal Mahony, I have a bachelor's degree in Public Relations. Maybe you could hire me to take Tod's place.
It would certainly help the LA Archdiocese's credibility and I could finally buy a condo.
*****
RUSS BIANCHI RESPONDS TO TOD'S ATTACKS:
Mr. Bianchi is the CEO and Managing Director of ADEPT SOLUTIONS, INC, a global food, beverage and pharmaceutical formulation corporation, who travels the globe annually for his profession, and has seen first-hand the OVERT EVIL, CORRUPTION, and CRIMINAL COVER-UP, of the institutional Roman Cahtolic Church, as exsemplified by Roger M. Mahony.
Mr. Bianchi is a family man, a daily Mass penitent, a lay Mass presider, and lay Communion Service presider.
Mr. Bianchi has direct family members, as well as close friends, that are vocationed, ordained, seminarial, ordered, secular, monastic, cloistered, scholared and academic, and yes, even currently Papally Curial, in Rome.
By tod1
[6] | 01/27/08 09:50AM
"Imperial canon arrogance"? What the heck is that? I have a degree in theology and never heard of it. Perhaps it is something that people exhibit when speaking of themselves in the third person -- something that Mr. Bianchi does quite a bit, it seems. How does traveling the world selling pepto bismol and other exotic potions give Mr. Bianchi a first-hand view of "overt evil" in the Catholic Church? Keep writing, Mr. Bianchi. This is great entertainment. Tod Tamberg. Tamberg, Mr. B, not Tamburg.
By tod1
[7] | 01/27/08 10:30AM
The Official Catholic Directory lists only one priest with the name "Bianchi" -- in Des Moines. "Seminarial"? "Papally Curial"? Those aren't even proper words. Be careful of making claims that others can fact-check, Mr. B. Tod Tamberg
FINALLY I PIPED IN:
By Kay Ebeling
[8] | 01/27/08 11:15AM
Tod Tamberg is the PR rep for the LA Archdiocese and he comes on these comments like gangbusters, firing shots right and left, ignoring the truth, just like Cardinal Mahony fought down plaintiffs in the civil suits settled last year. It's never about compassion or acting Christian, it's always been about beating down the crime victims and protecting the criminals with these bishops and cardinals. Tod Tamberg reveals the true fangs of this organized crime unit disguised as religion. Who cares about them, really, except to see the guys at the top finally go to prison. We won't stop until that happens. http://cityofangels4.blogspot.com
By Russ Bianchi
[9] | 01/27/08 12:05PM
Mr. T:
Direct relatives, or close friends, do not necessarily have the same family sir name, last time I checked; or perhaps your mother did not have a different family name than your father?
The 'Bianchi' you mention is not known to me, nor a relative. 'Bianchi' is a very common name in Italy.
Your demonstration, or attempts, to change the subject, remain feable, for all the read.
Keep going Mr. Tamburg, you, and Tef Mahal's self dug graves grow deeper (figuratively speaking), by the every falsehood you claim, or write.
Am I really even corresponding with the real spokesperson for the office holder in charge Archdiocese of Los Angeles?
Perhaps this is just some poor disturbed soul, or if the real Tod Tamburg, perhaps you do have a conscience, and the truth and light of thousands of children raped, sodomized, orallly copulated, sexually assaulted, physically maimed, kidnapped, mentally tortured, extorted, etc., on Mahony's, and your, watch, at 100% laity expense, since Mahony took over in 1985 in LA, some 23 years ago, with no personal accountability (thus far) is getting to you? But I doubt it.
Back to the subject at hand, the continued enabling of pedophiles in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and the global Roman Catholic Church, and still condoned by the Curia to this very day, as well as many perpetrators currently being hidden in religious orders, or in active ministries, with complete acces to more children to be assaulted, in Mexico, Ireland, Asia, Central & South America, Australia, Africa, the EU, Russia, and elsewhere, from LA and the USA, is documented daily at:
www.bishop-accountability.org/abusetracker for all to read.
A recommended additional reading list, for those of you with, or without, a "theology degree", but perhaps a proclivity to common sense, would include:
SACRILEGE by Leon Podles
SEX, PRIESTS, & SECRET CODES by Fr. Thomas Doyle, OP, A.W. Richard Sipe & Patrick Wall
GAY CATHOLIC PRIESTS & CLERCIAL MISCONDUCT by Donald L. Boisvert
SEX, PRIESTS & POWER by A.W. Richard Sipe
LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION by Jason Barry
PERVERSION OF POWER by Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea
SEXUAL ABUSE & THE CATHOLIC CULTURE by Myra L. Hildago
THE TRAGIC GRACE by Stephen J. Rosetti
SAVING THE SOUL OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH by Robert Grant, MD
VOWS OF SILENCE by Jason Barry
A CHURCH IN SEARCH OF ITSELF by Robert Blair Kaiser
SACRED SILENCE by Donald B. Cozzens
OUR FATHERS by David France
SLAYER OF THE SOUL by Stephen J. Rosetti
THE GOSPEL OF SHAME by Frank Bruni
SIN AGAINST THE INNOCENTS by Thomes G Plante
SURVIVORS OF PREDATOR PRIESTS by J.M. Handlin
COMING OUT & COVRING UP by Lisa Rene Reynolds
BETRAYAL: The Crisis In The Catholic Church by The Boston Globe
DOUBLE CROSSED by Kenneth Briggs
GOD VERSUS THE GAVEL by Marci A. Hamilton
BROKEN TRUST by Patrick Fleming
THE POWER & THE GLORY by David Yallop
IN GOD'S NAME by David Yallop
FAITH THAT DARES TO SPEAK by Donald Cozzens
THE SECRET WORLD by A.W. Richard Sipe
DELIVER US FROM EVIL, free trailers and previews at YouTube
RUSS BIANCHI CONT'D.
Mr. Tamburg characterizes this documentary as "multitude of lies" and then refers us to an LA Archdiocese run ans sponsored disinformation and propaganda web site. If the documentary is mostly "lies" Mr. Tamburg, then I guess you are calling the US Acadamy Award Nominating Judges & Most Of The Film Industry, "Liars" Also?
THE CHANGING FACE OF THE PRIESTHOOD by Donald B. Cozzens
LOYAL DISSENT by Charles E. Curran
The NCCB JJ Criminal Justice Report On The American Roman Catholic Church's Sexual Crisis
The Philadelphia Criminal Grand Jury Report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia
SEMINARY BOY by John Cornwall
THE RULE OF BENEDICT by David Gibson
AMBITION & ARROGANCE by Douglas O. Slawson
THE UNHEALED WOUND by Eugene Kennedy
TWIST OF FAITH by Matthew Simon
CARDINAL MAHONY: A NOVEL by Robert Blair Kaiser
SHAKEN BY SCANDALS by Thomas Paul Thigpen
THE RITE OF SODOMY by Randy Engel
MARRIED CATHOLIC PRIESTS by Anthony P. Kolwaski
SIN, SHAME & SECRETS by David Yonke
SEX, PRIESTLY MINISTRY, & THE CHURCH by Len Sperry
SCANDALS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH by Otto von Corvin
THE SILENCE WE KEEP by Karol Jackowski
VIEW FROM THE ALTAR by Howard Bleichner, PhD & SS
AMCHURCH COMES OUT by Paul Lidoukis
SEEKING WHOLENESS by Marie Evans Bouclin
CLERICAL CULTURE by Michael L. Papesh
KEEP THE FAITH, CHANGE THE CHURCH by James Muller
This non complete list will give all readers a better background of the FACTS of the ongoing criminal cover up in the Roman Catholic Church, but is by no means a comprehensive list.
The Bottom Line remains the only way to hold non accountabile pedophile enablers, like Roger M. Mahony, is to withold all funding, and all monies or donations, to the LA Archdiocese, and the Church at large.
It was not The Boston Globe coverage that drove Bernard Law from his office, but rather laity, who pay 100% of all the church bills, withholding over 75% of the income for two years in a row in Boston, and despite false claime to the contrary, by O'Malley and others there, that income has NOT returned to pre 2002 Sexual Crisis announcement and litigation levels.
Rome may pretend not to get much, but they move swiftly when the money dries up.
Such bills that all laity are paying include, but are not limited to, Mr. Tamburg's salary, all legal and lawyer fees, all insurance liability premiums, all assets sold off, and ministries slashed, all out of court settlements, all hush monies, all in court settlements, hiked school tutions, etc.
Until 1.1 billion global faithful laity stop donating, evil, and the totally corrupt and criminal activity, in the Roman Catholic Church, will continue unabated, with children STILL in direct, clear, and present danger, by less that 3,500 global miters and red hat enablers.
Russ Bianchi
Lay Member of The Diocese Of Monterey, CA, Which Is Part Of The Los Angeles Archdiocese
russ@adepthq.com
By tod1
[10] | 01/27/08 01:35PM
Well, Russ, Monterey has a bishop and a diocese. I doubt very much that you have any real relatives among the clergy here or anywhere else. Kay and Russ ignore the facts in the second post. Safeguards are in place and they are working. Go to www.la-clergycases.com to read about the lies and deliberate misinformation that went into the making of "Deliver Us From Evil."
Both Kay and Russ should know that their own personal vendettas are rooted in the past. The church has learned from its mistakes, and safeguards are in place. Russ and Kay might -- might -- have a bit more credibility if they'd acknowledge these programs and the lay people who run and monitor them. No matter, parish donations, parish school enrollment and religious education enrollment continue to go up in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The people of the Archdiocese are a lot, lot smarter and better informed than you think. You insult good parents who care about their kids' safety when you spread untruths and misinformation to the contrary. Time to move forward.
By Russ Bianchi
[11] | 01/27/08 02:51PM
It's indeed time to "move forward" when enablers like your boss, Roger M. Mahony, master multi- decade pedophile enabler, in Fresno, Stockton and now LA, and you, are GONE, Tod.
Your disinformation rivals that of the old Soviet Union (note: they not longer exists dure to body count and lack of truth), all at the expense of the "good parents" and laity, as well as their wallets, not yours, you seem to think support your continued obstruction of justice, and child endangerment.
I again encourage my fellow laity, throughout California, and the United States, and globally, not to donate any monies to any Roman Catholic Church cause, until the likes of Mahony (there are many dozens, if not hundreds, of such unaccountable miters and red hats in the USA) are indeed removed from office for past, present, and ongoing crimes against children, at 100% laity expense.
Your failure to ever discuss FACTS, TOD, speaks volumes to any thinking parent, or laity, as to your motives to deceive.
Your attempt to contain the dissemination of truth about what you and Mahony have done will not stand.
Russ Bianchi
Lay Member Diocese of Monterey, CA
A "Suffragan" of The Los Angeles Archdiocese
By Kay Ebeling
[12] | 01/27/08 03:38PM
It's not a vendetta. It's about getting the truth out in spite of a powerful criminal wealthy organization's obstruction, the corporate/religion that hired you, Mr. Tamberg. Those much touted programs started by the church that you say solved the problem: COLORING BOOKS? Try living with my life, Mr. Tamberg. Everything was and still is affected by being raped at age five by a pervert priest who was aided and abetted by your bosses. The fact you call this a "vendetta" shows how totally clueless you are, even after hearing our stories all these years. Please, Tod and Roger, get your noses out of martini glasses and pay attention to what happened to families and children in your parishes. Your coloring books and "How To's" for teachers don't even start to solve this problem. WAKE UP!
By Kay Ebeling
[13] | 01/27/08 03:54PM
If we all weren't seriously damaged, why did you pay out 660 million to just 500 of us last year. What's under all the black redaction lines in the documents you finally released. Of course there's more people coming to church in LA. People audition for American Idol every season too.
By tod1
[14] | 01/27/08 04:07PM
Both of you purposely ignore and deny the facts as stated in my earlier post about speaking truth to falsehoods. It is clear that when someone stands up to speak truth to your constant mudslinging you don't like it one bit. Russ talks about relatives who are close to the pope. Baloney. He's blowing smoke, and he knows it. Also, "suffragan" is a term used by the Episcopal Church, so that raises the question of whether Russ is even Catholic.
Kay, you should be pleased that lay people are in charge of the programs to protect children in the church. The fact that these programs exist to prevent in the future what happened to you in darkness so long ago, should at least get some acknowlegement from you that they are in place. But you seem to be not only uninterested in these programs, you feel compelled to belittle them and the people who run them. I am sorry that you've let your anger therapy -- as you've described your blogging -- to cloud your vision of the good work that is being done to protect children.
That's all I'm going to post or read. I know the rants will continue. I've said my bit.
By Kay Ebeling
[15] | 01/27/08 04:11PM
Your church LET priests rape children on your altars, in your rectories, in your confessionals at your summer camps, in motels -- and you think we should all just sweep it under the table and forget it? Have you ever thought about the effect 50 years of unfettered pedophilia in the catholic church had on the rest of American culture? Read cityofangels4.blogspot.com -- today's post, in fact, is about the residual effects; how pedophiles saw priests get away with it and became empowered, and now we have an epidemic of murdered and raped children. And coloring books.
Tamberg recommends you go to: www.la-clergycases.com. That is a website run by Hennigan et al, the Archdiocese's law firm, well one of them. No one puts a by line on any article there, no organization takes credit for any of the stories written there, there's no attribution, just a lot of anonymous "rebuttals" and lies. And Tamberg recommends it. 'nuff said.
RUSS BIANCHI THEN WROTE THIS:
"Suffragan" from Church if England Tod "with the theology degree" refers to any bishop to the archbishop or metroploitan, who is his superior, or as applied to an assistant of subsidiary bishop, who performs episcopal functions in a diocese, but has no ordinary (landed) jurisdiction.
We in the Roman Catholic Church would classify such a definition as an "Auxillary Bishop".
Suffragan, as defined on several Roman Catholic Diocese of California web sites, including Fresno's, Monterey's, and on the beginning pages of The Ordo(s) for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, specifically states, in writing, that Monterey is a "suffragan" Diocese, currently under Bishop Richard Garcia, formerly Sylvester Ryan, recently semi retired, to the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Again Tod, you pretend not to know, a typical curial, or across the Tiber, playbook trick.
By the way tod, how is Mahony's cancer doing?
Taht (false) rumor, that he was "dying" to gain sympathy has been going on since for at least 7 years.
Quick call the Vatican, it's a MIRACLE! Sains preserve us, Rog has been cured! Or was that a deal with The Devil?
By tod1
[20] | 01/27/08 07:28PM
Well, maybe one more post. Kay writes: "Sorry can't stop: Tamberg writes: 'all priests, employees and volunteers must be fingerprinted and background checked before working with children.' Big deal. Every organization does that and has for decades."
Wrong.
Kay, certainly you've read the Associated Press series on Public Schools. But it is probably info that you don't want people to know.
Well, there's another story published today re: public schools. Now, will SNAP finally agree to expand statute-lifting laws to include public institutions? Doubtful, since they've been fine with promoting such legislation that leaves public school victims completely unprotected.
Fact is, the Catholic church is at the forefront of organizations that protect kids. Don't believe otherwise, folks. Kay and Russ will throw angry words at this, but even they can't disappear 250,000 kids and 50,000 adults trained in abuse prevention in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.
By Kay Ebeling
[21] | 01/27/08 07:42PM
I'm not mad, I'm laughing out loud. You guys in church hierarchy are so isolated you don't see how blatant and obvious your lies and manipulations are to the rest of us. It's funny it really is and you make my work so easy. 'night.
By Kay Ebeling
[22] | 01/27/08 07:43PM
"the forefront of organizations that protec kids." i'm going to laugh on that one for hours...
From Russ Bianchi
"Some say he is TURKISH. Some say his father was GERMAN. Nobody believe he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick The Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Kevin Spacy's Character in 'The Usual Suspects'
What better place to hide The Devil, than in a red outfit, inside the most jaded city in the world, in the most modern, expensive, & largest organized religion and Cathedral, in an archdiocese with the highest per annum tax free laity collection of revenue, claiming to be at the forefront of child protection (when in fact the last statement is 180 degrees from it)?
By sebb
[24] | 01/27/08 11:38PM
wow - Ive stayed up past my bedtime just to read the comments here and its all been pretty insightful. Russ, youre amazing! Tod, youre not very good at what you do. And Kay, you go, girl!
And to think, usually I just wanna feed the christians to the lions!
By (Unknown Poster)
[25] | 01/28/08 08:17AM
In reading all the above commentary, I think Russ owes Tod an apology.
It's pretty clear to me that Tod and Cardinal Mahony have done a great deal in educating many of the LA Archdiocese and beyond.
Now that I'm retired, with extra time, though admittedly not a regular church goer, I must tell you all, I have benefited from the OLA Gift Shop self improvement book section.
Among my favorite titles are;
Must See Playgrounds Of Ireland by Oliver O'Grady
My Search For The Real Killers by OJ Simpson
Ethical Accounting by the late Vatican Bank head Paul Marcinkus, and forwatd by the late Enron CEO Ken Lay
Marital Bliss by Phil Spector
Organic Cooking by Jeffery Dahmer
Truth & Ethics by Cardinal Roger Mahony
Maybe, if I can get my recently completed manuscript published, it too can make this cutting-edge powerful self-help and improvement book section, everyone wants to be a part of, as the author, in my upcoming offering, FAMILY MATTERS.
Sincerely,
Charles Manson
*****
Here is the Paid Puff Piece that shows up at places like Irish Independent Online.
It claims, basically that the secrecy of the Conffessional applies to just about all communication between the priest and the bishop, so their mouths are nailed shut, or something like that, it’s ludicrous: They say they can’t testify or even give records to prosecutors:
-----
Several myths that need to be dispelled
1. The Archdiocese went to the Supreme Court in an effort to block public release of the proffers.
Some members of the media persist in getting this wrong.
No, the Archdiocese is not trying to block public release of the proffers. In fact, the Archdiocese very much wants to release them; it was the Archdiocese attorneys who prepared them in the first place.
Instead, the objections to the release of the proffers, which summarize the essential contents of priests' personnel files, were raised by a number of the priests named. It was their appeal, first to the California Court of Appeal and later to the state Supreme Court, which has delayed release. (These priests have legal representation completely separate from the Archdiocese. They are not told by the Archdiocese lawyers what course to pursue, nor, for that matter, do they ask.)
Again, it was the Archdiocese attorneys who proposed the proffer procedure. The goal was to provide the information needed for the parties involved to negotiate a fair and reasonable settlement of the clergy abuse civil cases while at the same time protecting spiritual and confidential communications between accused priests and their superiors in the Church. The alternative would have been years of litigation, which would have delayed a settlement.
Important note: All parties to the mediation and settlement process agreed to the proffer procedure.
2. The Archdiocese is deliberately impeding the prosecution of priests charged with abusing minors.
This myth arises from the fact that the Archdiocese is fighting to protect spiritual and confidential communications between priests and the Archbishop, Chancellor and Vicar for Clergy, the privacy of which goes to the heart of the way the Catholic Church practices religion. The District Attorney would have you believe - and some reporters have bought into this - that he needs these documents in order to prosecute.
The exercise of a little common sense will quickly show the fallacy in this. The simple fact is that for years all across California (and, for that matter, the United States) sexual abusers from all walks of life have been convicted without the kind of private and protected information the DA seeks from the Archdiocese.
The fact is - and this rarely gets reported - that the Archdiocese has offered to provide the District Attorney with the names of all accused priests, records of their assignments and other related information. On top of this, the District Attorney has available the testimony of the victims and others.
That should be enough for a competent prosecutor to make a case, if there is a case to be made.
3. The Archdiocese has done little to help victims of sexual abuse by priests.
Interest in allegations of abuse has been extensive; less so the attention paid to Archdiocese efforts to reach out to and aid victims. These efforts have been wide-ranging and intense.
Aiding the healing of victims and their reconciliation with the Church is a priority for everyone in the Archdiocese. Starting at the top, Cardinal Mahony himself has publicly apologized for the harm done by abusers within the Church and acknowledged the past mistakes that were made in dealing with abusive priests. He has participated in a number of private prayer and apology services with victims of clergy misconduct and their families.
The Office of Assistance Ministry works throughout the Archdiocese to find solutions for the needs of victims, working to arrange pastoral outreach, counseling, residential treatment, housing, schooling, insurance and child care. Representatives of the Ministry are constantly out in the community meeting with individuals who have been affected by abuse. Several victims of abuse act as advisors for the Office.
Since the beginning of 2004, the Office of Assistance Ministry has been involved in 125 cases. Interestingly, only 40 of these concerned allegations of abuse (either present or past) against clergy. The rest concerned allegations against teachers, coaches, volunteers and family members.
4. Sexual abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church is far more prevalent than in other institutions.
From the coverage by the media, you'd think that this was the case. But this contention is simply not supported by the facts, according to one of the country's foremost education researchers.
In fact, says Charol Shakeshaft, a professor at Hofstra University in New York, there are no reliable national statistics at all on what percentage of children have been exploited by Catholic clergy or employees.
Shakeshaft has, however, as part of a report for the U. S. Department of Education, set out the parameters of the problem in another major national institution, the school system, where she found that fully 7 percent of students report physical sexual exploitation by a teacher or other school employee. Shakeshaft notes that sexual exploitation of children has been reported in other religious denominations and in groups serving youth such as the Scouts.
In other words, sexual exploitation of young people is a universal problem.
In her research, Shakeshaft came to another interesting conclusion. The response of educators to the problem of abuse in the schools is now at about the same level that of the Catholic Church was in the 80s and 90s.
REMINDER: The story right above is written by the Church PR machine, not me. Right now I'm late for work, more to come.
Onward
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Extreme Makeover Home Edition Builds Priest Rape Crime Victim Rehab Centers, but in the end, it’s all a dream, or is it...
*****
By Kay Ebeling
TY PENNINGTON: We're here today to visit the Ebeling family in Los Angeles and here’s the deal. Kay, the mother, is a single mom who works two jobs, and not only has she raised her children to be promising adults, but she’s done so while dealing with sometimes devastating physical and mental problems. Kay was raped by a Catholic priest at age five and has been diagnosed with long term PTSD, in her case 40-plus years of PTSD, her nerves damaged from responding to the crime for 40 years. Long term PTSD is a diagnosis many priest rape victims receive, so we wanted to see what we could do about that here at Extreme Makeover Home Edition.
Now, normally you would expect an organization like the Catholic Church to step forward in a case like this, since, well, they are a church. So we sent two members of our design team over to meet with Cardinal Roger Mahony at the temple on Temple Street in Los Angeles. We wanted the cardinal to tell us how he thought we should design the recovery center and how much the church would participate in the costs.
CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: This is the first I've heard that there are still victims of these unfortunate incidents here in Los Angeles. I thought we settled all this last July.
TY PENNINGTON: As is true with many of our families, this mom Kay Ebeling devotes hours of her time as a volunteer to a cause that's important to her. She’s a journalist who just happens to also be a victim of Catholic Priest pedophilia, so Kay produces City of Angels blog where she is determined to get out the truth, about sex crimes in the Catholic Church.
So here at Extreme Makeover we are going to reward the Ebeling family with a brand new home
AND
We are also going to build a recovery center for victims of priest pedophilia here in Los Angeles.
CUT TO:
CARDINAL MAHONY: In the settlements last summer, as you know we were so generous and willing and caring for these poor victims, and so I thought we could put this all behind us. We gave as much money as we could, willingly, without question.
TY PENNINGTON: We thought that now you might sell several churches and put that money in a fund that we could use to build more recovery centers.
CARDINAL MAHONY: Honest, Mr. Pennington, we thought with the settlements last summer we could put this issue behind us. I had no idea there were still victims of this unfortunate incidents living in Los Angeles.
TY PENNINGTON: You already said that. And they're not incidents they are sex crimes where --
MAHONY (Raises his hand for Ty to stop) Even though Ms. Ebeling’s perpetrator was in Illinois, we acknowledge that the church is a national, nee practically an international source of wide open support of Christians no matter what denomination--
TY PENNINGTON: You are going to pay for some of this?
MAHONY: We will throw open our doors and our hearts to Ms. Ebeling. Anything we can do to help.
TY PENNINGTON: So you will sell severael churches and give those resources to your crime victims?
MAHONY: Well, we've already arranged the transfer of most of those church real estate assets to the Vatican, in fact I finished the paperwork just before meeting with you. But we do have one church we can donate.
CUT TO TY PENNINGTON: Well Sears and ABC provided the materials and most of the financial support needed to do this particular makeover for the Ebeling family. And Cardinal Mahony said the church could not do more, they just no longer have the money or the assets.
However, one of our interns, while doing research into the Catholic Church here in Los Angeles, discovered that there is a strange connection between the Los Angeles Archdiocese and owners of a piece of real estate on Sunset Boulevard. We're talking about:
The Crossroads of the World
-- touted as America’s first mall. The collection of shops and offices sits directly next to Church of the Blessed Sacrament on Sunset Blvd, one of many churches where a Jesuit priest’s Father Mark Falvey sexual molestation of nine children resulted in civil lawsuit and a settlement in 2007.
Crossroads of the World is also birthplace of the pornography industry in Los Angeles.
CARDINAL MAHONY: I had no idea. Is it true, there really is a thriving industry of pornographers in Los Angeles? And the church may have helped them get their fledgling industry off the ground?
TY PENNINGTON: In the late 1960s the main tenant at Crossroads of the World was Pretty Girl International, an agency that connected women with what seemed like legitimate jobs, new modeling and film jobs that opened up when movie industry censorship and ratings standards changed in the 1950s.
Right there directly under the church tower of Blessed Sacrament, in this development of offices that was obviously carved out of the church’s property was the birth of the pornography industry in Los Angeles in 1968-1969.
TY PENNINGTON (CONT'D:) As a designer I noticed that Crossroads and Blessed Sacrament church even have the same architectural touches in their roofs and tiles, and inside the Crossroads property we found several signs that this land used to be part of the church.
This beautiful fountain is dedicated to a saint and is obviously more than a hundred years old.
It was right here at Crossroads of the World under the church tower of Blessed Sacrament that the pornography industry took off in Los Angeles.
CARDINAL MAHONY: Well in that case, we feel doubly responsible. Somehow the American culture has lost its way, even though the Roman Catholic Church in this country still has hundreds and thousands of members left.
MAHONY: Thank you, Ty, if it weren’t for you, I would not have even know there were still victims of clergy sex abuse in Los Angeles who have not seen justice. And I also would have never know that church property may have been used for non-church purposes such as the production of mainstream pornography back in the 1960s and 1970s which actually I can say that sale and continued operation of that piece of land on Sunset Boulevard did bring us a nice chunk o' cash.
CARDINAL MAHONY: We do see now that maybe we owe some recompense. (He hangs his head in a gesture of penance grasping his $80K gold cross, his body spasms with dry sobs. Then Roger Mahony raises his head.)
MAHONY: I'm going to let you demolish one of our Los Angeles area churches so you can use the land to create a national institute for research and treatment of sex abuse victims.
TY PENNINGTON: The centers will be places where these crime victims, who are so often isolated and in need of support, can come and work on their unique problems together, and maybe even begin some sort of social action to get justice at the same time.
CUT TO:
EXT. LARGE PIECE OF CHURCH REAL ESTATE IN LOS ANGELES.
Thousands of people in blue shirts stand on the streets and nearby rooftops cheering. The church building shows signs of neglect, the grounds are unkempt and there is mold on the walls. A fish pond is full of algae. On either side of the church are two large electronic structures pointed at the church.
TY PENNINGTON: Since we're in Los Angeles, home of so much of our nations’ aeronautic and astrophysical research and at the same time home of Hollywood and the movie industry,
This week we are going to demolish a church using these giant sound ray boom devices designed by NASA JPL in Pasadena. And to make things even better, George Lucas has come down out of the redwoods of Northern California to join us here and try out his new sound wave special effects device, to make this demolition the most astounding and amazing one ever here at Extreme Makeover Home Edition.
CUT TO:
TY PENNINGTON IN FRONT OF HUGE CROWD, THE NASA JPL ELECTRONIC SOUND WAVE DEMOLITION DEVICES ARE POISED, GEORGE LUCAS' SOUND EFFECTS ENHANCEMENT ANTENNA IS SET
TY PENNINGTON: So let the demolition begin!
No one knows exactly how to explain what happened that day. Scientists say it was a combination of the extreme power of the JPL sound wave device combined with the electronics of George Lucas’ sound effects enhancement machine.
As the church disintegrated where these devices were pointed, at the same time Catholic Churches in cities across the country disintegrated in exactly the same way. National news reporters realized that the same crimes were committed using the same modus operandi in each church across the country that disintegrated, they had aided and abetted pedophile priests while lying to the victims.
National news reporters finally realized the connection between these crimes across the country and a wave of news stories resulted in Senate hearings. Today in 2015 several dozen bishops are behind bars in American prisons.
Weeks after the synchronous demolitions, Pope Benedict stood at one of these Ground Zero Halos as they had come to be called, because of the strange glow that remained where each of the disintegrated churches had stood.
The pope raised his arms in supplication saying, Lord, what is it you are telling me. His face went red with rage and then as white as his own robes. He turned to the assembled crowd, bishops and other hierarchy, and said, “The message is clear. We need to start over from square one.”
The bishops and the pope stripped off their vestments and began to dig with their hands in the rubble, then someone turned on a radio and The Village People began singing YMCA and these newly bare chested priests and bishops started dancing --
And I woke up.
And realized I was late. Gotta run, no time to blog I’m doing these 16-hour shifts with about three hours sleep a night--
WORKING Extreme Long Hours
On Extreme Makeover Home Edition
We're all trying to get through House 522 - 525 so we can all take a three month hiatus.
It never ceases to astound me how this one TV show on one network is doing more for the poor and needy in this country than either the US government or the Catholic Church, both of which are obviously asleep at the controls while families in this country are living in Third World conditions.
I'm only a sub-sub contractor for Extreme Makeover Home Edition, but I'm still more proud right now to be working for them than I ever would be of being Catholic.
These days I have Ty Pennington and Pedophile Priests in my head all the time. No wonder I had this weird dream.
Onward.
(When Extreme does go on hiatus in a few weeks I’ll have about 20 more hours a week to put into this blog.)
In the end all we want is justice, which will happen when the whole story comes out. Me, I plan to write about this until I die, and I’ll be able to retire in a few years and do this blog full time.
So stay tuned.
By Kay Ebeling
TY PENNINGTON: We're here today to visit the Ebeling family in Los Angeles and here’s the deal. Kay, the mother, is a single mom who works two jobs, and not only has she raised her children to be promising adults, but she’s done so while dealing with sometimes devastating physical and mental problems. Kay was raped by a Catholic priest at age five and has been diagnosed with long term PTSD, in her case 40-plus years of PTSD, her nerves damaged from responding to the crime for 40 years. Long term PTSD is a diagnosis many priest rape victims receive, so we wanted to see what we could do about that here at Extreme Makeover Home Edition.
Now, normally you would expect an organization like the Catholic Church to step forward in a case like this, since, well, they are a church. So we sent two members of our design team over to meet with Cardinal Roger Mahony at the temple on Temple Street in Los Angeles. We wanted the cardinal to tell us how he thought we should design the recovery center and how much the church would participate in the costs.
CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: This is the first I've heard that there are still victims of these unfortunate incidents here in Los Angeles. I thought we settled all this last July.
TY PENNINGTON: As is true with many of our families, this mom Kay Ebeling devotes hours of her time as a volunteer to a cause that's important to her. She’s a journalist who just happens to also be a victim of Catholic Priest pedophilia, so Kay produces City of Angels blog where she is determined to get out the truth, about sex crimes in the Catholic Church.
So here at Extreme Makeover we are going to reward the Ebeling family with a brand new home
AND
We are also going to build a recovery center for victims of priest pedophilia here in Los Angeles.
CUT TO:
CARDINAL MAHONY: In the settlements last summer, as you know we were so generous and willing and caring for these poor victims, and so I thought we could put this all behind us. We gave as much money as we could, willingly, without question.
TY PENNINGTON: We thought that now you might sell several churches and put that money in a fund that we could use to build more recovery centers.
CARDINAL MAHONY: Honest, Mr. Pennington, we thought with the settlements last summer we could put this issue behind us. I had no idea there were still victims of this unfortunate incidents living in Los Angeles.
TY PENNINGTON: You already said that. And they're not incidents they are sex crimes where --
MAHONY (Raises his hand for Ty to stop) Even though Ms. Ebeling’s perpetrator was in Illinois, we acknowledge that the church is a national, nee practically an international source of wide open support of Christians no matter what denomination--
TY PENNINGTON: You are going to pay for some of this?
MAHONY: We will throw open our doors and our hearts to Ms. Ebeling. Anything we can do to help.
TY PENNINGTON: So you will sell severael churches and give those resources to your crime victims?
MAHONY: Well, we've already arranged the transfer of most of those church real estate assets to the Vatican, in fact I finished the paperwork just before meeting with you. But we do have one church we can donate.
CUT TO TY PENNINGTON: Well Sears and ABC provided the materials and most of the financial support needed to do this particular makeover for the Ebeling family. And Cardinal Mahony said the church could not do more, they just no longer have the money or the assets.
However, one of our interns, while doing research into the Catholic Church here in Los Angeles, discovered that there is a strange connection between the Los Angeles Archdiocese and owners of a piece of real estate on Sunset Boulevard. We're talking about:
The Crossroads of the World
-- touted as America’s first mall. The collection of shops and offices sits directly next to Church of the Blessed Sacrament on Sunset Blvd, one of many churches where a Jesuit priest’s Father Mark Falvey sexual molestation of nine children resulted in civil lawsuit and a settlement in 2007.
Crossroads of the World is also birthplace of the pornography industry in Los Angeles.
CARDINAL MAHONY: I had no idea. Is it true, there really is a thriving industry of pornographers in Los Angeles? And the church may have helped them get their fledgling industry off the ground?
TY PENNINGTON: In the late 1960s the main tenant at Crossroads of the World was Pretty Girl International, an agency that connected women with what seemed like legitimate jobs, new modeling and film jobs that opened up when movie industry censorship and ratings standards changed in the 1950s.
Right there directly under the church tower of Blessed Sacrament, in this development of offices that was obviously carved out of the church’s property was the birth of the pornography industry in Los Angeles in 1968-1969.
TY PENNINGTON (CONT'D:) As a designer I noticed that Crossroads and Blessed Sacrament church even have the same architectural touches in their roofs and tiles, and inside the Crossroads property we found several signs that this land used to be part of the church.
This beautiful fountain is dedicated to a saint and is obviously more than a hundred years old.
It was right here at Crossroads of the World under the church tower of Blessed Sacrament that the pornography industry took off in Los Angeles.
CARDINAL MAHONY: Well in that case, we feel doubly responsible. Somehow the American culture has lost its way, even though the Roman Catholic Church in this country still has hundreds and thousands of members left.
MAHONY: Thank you, Ty, if it weren’t for you, I would not have even know there were still victims of clergy sex abuse in Los Angeles who have not seen justice. And I also would have never know that church property may have been used for non-church purposes such as the production of mainstream pornography back in the 1960s and 1970s which actually I can say that sale and continued operation of that piece of land on Sunset Boulevard did bring us a nice chunk o' cash.
CARDINAL MAHONY: We do see now that maybe we owe some recompense. (He hangs his head in a gesture of penance grasping his $80K gold cross, his body spasms with dry sobs. Then Roger Mahony raises his head.)
MAHONY: I'm going to let you demolish one of our Los Angeles area churches so you can use the land to create a national institute for research and treatment of sex abuse victims.
TY PENNINGTON: The centers will be places where these crime victims, who are so often isolated and in need of support, can come and work on their unique problems together, and maybe even begin some sort of social action to get justice at the same time.
CUT TO:
EXT. LARGE PIECE OF CHURCH REAL ESTATE IN LOS ANGELES.
Thousands of people in blue shirts stand on the streets and nearby rooftops cheering. The church building shows signs of neglect, the grounds are unkempt and there is mold on the walls. A fish pond is full of algae. On either side of the church are two large electronic structures pointed at the church.
TY PENNINGTON: Since we're in Los Angeles, home of so much of our nations’ aeronautic and astrophysical research and at the same time home of Hollywood and the movie industry,
This week we are going to demolish a church using these giant sound ray boom devices designed by NASA JPL in Pasadena. And to make things even better, George Lucas has come down out of the redwoods of Northern California to join us here and try out his new sound wave special effects device, to make this demolition the most astounding and amazing one ever here at Extreme Makeover Home Edition.
CUT TO:
TY PENNINGTON IN FRONT OF HUGE CROWD, THE NASA JPL ELECTRONIC SOUND WAVE DEMOLITION DEVICES ARE POISED, GEORGE LUCAS' SOUND EFFECTS ENHANCEMENT ANTENNA IS SET
TY PENNINGTON: So let the demolition begin!
No one knows exactly how to explain what happened that day. Scientists say it was a combination of the extreme power of the JPL sound wave device combined with the electronics of George Lucas’ sound effects enhancement machine.
As the church disintegrated where these devices were pointed, at the same time Catholic Churches in cities across the country disintegrated in exactly the same way. National news reporters realized that the same crimes were committed using the same modus operandi in each church across the country that disintegrated, they had aided and abetted pedophile priests while lying to the victims.
National news reporters finally realized the connection between these crimes across the country and a wave of news stories resulted in Senate hearings. Today in 2015 several dozen bishops are behind bars in American prisons.
Weeks after the synchronous demolitions, Pope Benedict stood at one of these Ground Zero Halos as they had come to be called, because of the strange glow that remained where each of the disintegrated churches had stood.
The pope raised his arms in supplication saying, Lord, what is it you are telling me. His face went red with rage and then as white as his own robes. He turned to the assembled crowd, bishops and other hierarchy, and said, “The message is clear. We need to start over from square one.”
The bishops and the pope stripped off their vestments and began to dig with their hands in the rubble, then someone turned on a radio and The Village People began singing YMCA and these newly bare chested priests and bishops started dancing --
And I woke up.
And realized I was late. Gotta run, no time to blog I’m doing these 16-hour shifts with about three hours sleep a night--
WORKING Extreme Long Hours
On Extreme Makeover Home Edition
We're all trying to get through House 522 - 525 so we can all take a three month hiatus.
It never ceases to astound me how this one TV show on one network is doing more for the poor and needy in this country than either the US government or the Catholic Church, both of which are obviously asleep at the controls while families in this country are living in Third World conditions.
I'm only a sub-sub contractor for Extreme Makeover Home Edition, but I'm still more proud right now to be working for them than I ever would be of being Catholic.
These days I have Ty Pennington and Pedophile Priests in my head all the time. No wonder I had this weird dream.
Onward.
(When Extreme does go on hiatus in a few weeks I’ll have about 20 more hours a week to put into this blog.)
In the end all we want is justice, which will happen when the whole story comes out. Me, I plan to write about this until I die, and I’ll be able to retire in a few years and do this blog full time.
So stay tuned.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Kathy Shaw is back at Abuse Tracker: The tracker lady just has to keep on tracking
“Kathy Shaw (pictured above) is "the one constant through three host servers" --Bill Mitchell, Poynter Institute
By Kay Ebeling
It has taken a string of miracles, what atheists call coincidences, for the pedophile priest story to unfold. The internet allowed individuals to find each other, persons were in the right place at the right time, others persevered.
A key player from the beginning has been Kathy Shaw, who covered the story from the beginning working the religion beat for Worcester Telegram & Gazette. A resourceful reporter, Shaw found Abuse Tracker as soon as Poynter Institute started it as a research tool for journalists in 2002. Shaw was one of the first to contribute to the Tracker and she just stayed with it.*
Today Shaw produces the daily Abuse Tracker, a 24-hour 7-day a week volunteer post which was covered by Anne Barrett Doyle and Terry McKiernan of Bishop Accountability the last six weeks while Shaw recovered from a fall on “black ice” that left her with two broken bones in her right wrist.
A graduate of Assumption College in Worcester, Shaw says, “I have never left the church, still consider myself to be a Catholic, I accept the faith. But I also still stand for justice and Christian principles.” Shaw became a reporter for the Worcester paper while she was in college and worked there her entire career. In 1991 the Gazette Telegram created a new beat, covering churches.
“The Massachusetts Council of Churches met with the editor and asked for a religion reporter,” Shaw said in a recent phone interview. “Everybody else scoffed, but I said I’ll take it. Right after that what I call ‘The Porter Wave’ of allegations started. People started coming forward in the Worcester diocese.
“All the other reporters were saying, gee I kinda wish. . . .” Shaw stayed on the religion beat for more than ten years, covering the Boston scandal from the beginning.
The Poynter Institute Foundation provides “everything you need to be a better journalist,” so they were experimenting with ways to use the internet as a research tool, especially new platforms coming about known as web logs (blogs).
“We did something similar in the early stages of the Iraq War,” said Poynter Institute founder Bill Mitchell, who started the Tracker in 2001. “I think we called them dispatches. But the Iraq War blog didn't sustain itself the way Abuse Tracker did.
“Kathy Shaw was one of the reporters whose stories I was linking,” Mitchell continued, “because the story at that point was in Boston and Massachusetts in general and she was covering it.”
Mitchell, an academician and scholar, explained to me, “Blogs execute the principle of aggregate content in multiple places with multiple links.” I said, yeah, and isn’t it cool the way I can hook my readers up now with YouTube videos?
After six months, Poynter Institute conducted research and learned that its experimental research blog Abuse Tracker attracted not only journalists, but attorneys, plaintiffs, families involved in cases, curious parishioners.
“It became less a service Poynter should provide,” Mitchell said. “I’m on the board of National Catholic Reporter. It occurred to me it was a fit for them and so NCR took it over.” Soon after that Abuse Tracker went to Bishop Accountability.
Throughout it all Kathy Shaw continued to post.
Mitchell said, “Kathy was a religion reporter for the Worcester Telegram and she got very involved in tracking what was going on.
“She really made it go, she was relentless, seven days a week, holidays, just constantly.
“The one constant through the three host services has been Kathy Shaw, now that you mention it,” Mitchell reflected.
Kathy Shaw looks back on those early days: “Back in 2002 there was no Google News. With Poynter we had a 9:30 AM deadline.
“I’d get up at six and you’d have to go to every newspaper site where you thought there might be a story. In those days you really relied on people sending submissions.
“Poynter thought it was going to be short term. But within weeks we had half a million hits a month. Then Google News came along in 2003.”
Shaw would get up every day and meet the 9:30 AM deadlines for Abuse Tracker before going to her job as a reporter for the Telegram Gazette.
When she told me that I was stunned, stopped taking notes, froze in awe. Kathy Shaw is not even a crime victim, has nothing to gain, yet here she is missing sleep every day for 10 years just because she sees it needs to be done.
She said, “Tracker has always been volunteer And Bishop Accountability too, they're all volunteers.
"We do it because we know it’s important. We understand the value of it and we do it because it’s what needs to be done.
“I’m a pensioner now, so depending on what's breaking if there’s a news cycle with all kinds of scandal I could be sitting there all morning, then another news cycle hits around 4 in the afternoon.
A DAY IN THE LIFE:
“I wake up sometime between 7 and 8 and go to the coffee pot where my coffee is premade, and with my Labrador Pup Noel under the desk I start. I have a set routine because it’s early in the morning.
“I call up the Moveable Type page, call up Google News, and start my email. At Google I have a set bunch of key words that give you the stories from all the cities. It’s all done through Google
“I have keywords that I’ve used for years. I type them in every day: Sexual abuse. Priests. Pastor, which will give you the protestants.
“There’s a website I use called Catholic Doors Ministry, a search engine that goes through all the Catholic entries. I always manage to find a story there that I missed.
“Then when that's all done I hit my email, submissions people sent over night. If something is running hot there’ll be a lot of entries from different people, various advocacy groups, moms and pops that find something in their local media.
Shaw Likes It When People Send Her Stories
“My name at the end of each article links you directly to my email,” she says.
“When we started in 2002 there might have been 10 or 15 stories a day. We used a blog program. Then as the scandal started burgeoning the blog program couldn't handle it and the software kept breaking down.
“So Poynter moved it to Moveable Type. Now there’s no deadlines. Whenever anything happens, we can post it.
“We now post more than 7,500 stories a year,” Shaw said.
“Poynter never expected it to last more than a few weeks, then it took on a life of its own.
"I knew, because I’d covered this for years, that we were only hitting the tip of the iceberg. I said back then to Poynter, we're talking 20 years, and they didn't believe me.
“One journalist I talk to in Boston is predicting another wave in five years,” Shaw said. “And as for the ‘drop off in reports of abuse in the 1980s, the reason is those victims haven’t come forward yet, journalists who cover this believe. I’m sure victims are being abused even as we speak. People abused in the eighties and nineties are still dealing with it and haven’t come forward.”
I asked, Do you get the perpetrators confused from city to city the way I do?
“More strange is a remember them all,” Shaw said. “Don’t ask me why but I do. I know Bob Hoatson was abused by two Christian Brothers.”
She remembered my perpetrator, Father Thomas Barry Horne, of Chicago Archdiocese, off the top of her head. (I prefer to call him Father Horny.)
“Most touching is stories from survivors,” Kathy Shaw says. “People write to me and say I’ve been reading and I need to tell you my story. Not for publication, they just want to tell me their story. It reminds me continually of what we're doing and why we're doing it.”
Shaw is no newcomer to community service. She was a crisis counselor in mental health during her early career, a newspaper reporter by day and counselor by night. “Massachusetts has a network of crisis counselors,” she explained.
“It’s important for survivors to tell their stories. Most of them don’t expect me to post it to the public when they talk to me. These are private conversations where they say, we want you to know --
“If they do want to go public I tell them to go to their local media.”
One more question:
How Do You Get The Stories from Italy Translated????
Another volunteer, a translator, a former worker for Alitalia Airlines, a big Abuse Tracker fan. I believe he went to a Salesians school in Italy.
“He does the translation for me.” So stories translated from Italian show up in her email regularly.
Shaw does use translation software for other languages. “It gives you the gist of the story but I could use a volunteer for the other languages, especially French and Spanish.”
And what is Kathy Shaw going to do for the next few years?
“The tracker lady just has to keep on trackin’
*Epimeno is Greek for “To Persevere”
Onward. . .
PS, It is Commercial Free Sunday, but the PayPal Account always needs high fives...
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Skip Shea performs one-man show with art, his story of pedophile priest rape survival, now at City of Angels Blog
***** Click the video square at the side of this blog to watch nine minutes of "Catholic Surviving Abuse," a theatrical memoir of original art and poetry as performed by Skip Shea of Boston. In the segment at the top of this page, Shea discusses his rape by priests and his later discovery as a teenager that "you can communicate through art." Shea conducts this one-man show with art and music in venues around Boston. He tells his story of molest by two priests at St. Mary's Parish in Uxbridge, diving right into some of the most wretched details, still being able to make the viewer laugh. We hope you enjoy this video, our first "production" here at City of Angels Blog, where we now also do Narrowcasting. -- Kay Ebeling
Sunday, February 3, 2008
They Still Just Don’t Get It.
*****
By Kay Ebeling
Reading the latest book on pedophile priests, I was with the author all the way up to this quote in Chapter One, “Furthermore, Church leaders have finally recognized the scandal and taken aggressive action. The sex abuse of minors by Catholic priests is much less widespread today than it was 10 or 20 years ago.” He then goes the direction so many have gone before, the way of tipping tea with the bishops to get Catholic reform. They just don’t get it.
The quote is from the new book The Faithful Departed by Philip Lawler and his next sentence is: “The second scandal is the prevalence of homosexuality among Catholic priests.” Huh? I’d much rather have a pastor who is gay than one who is lying to families to get to their children and rape them. How can anybody equate the two “crises” when the gay priest isn’t doing anything illegal and is doing it in private with a consenting adult?
It amazes me that a religion with a sacrament called Confession doesn't see that it can’t skirt around its own guilt. It is not enough to say we've changed our policy and we're never going to let this happen again. Raping thousands of children in sacramental venues is not a venial sin. (It also amazes me that a church would think giving money to some of the victims would solve a problem.)
Lawler sort of rescues himself by the end of the paragraph with the argument we've read in so many places before, that gay priests were afraid to report the pedophile priests and that's why the problem got so bad: “The existence of such a ‘lavender mafia’ could help to explain..."
Mm, maybe one reason pedophilia flourished in the Catholic Church is gay priests afraid to complain about pedophiles lest their own sins come out. To me it goes so much deeper than that
To the secrets
The mystery
Apologist Catholics argue, there are pedophiles in all religions, but an epidemic of pedophiles wouldn't take place in a church like say the Southern Baptists to the extent it has with Catholics.
Once people in a Baptist parish or just about any American evangelical church find out their pastor is having sex with anyone other than a spouse, let alone a child, the people bring that pastor up in front of the whole parish, question him unsparingly, and throw the guy out on his ear if he’s guilty.
No, it’s centuries of secrets that makes the Catholic Church pedophiles so special, so extremely sinful, so deeply deviant it takes most humans a few years to grasp what they've done.
It took Americans 50 years to accept that there was a second shooter when Oswald shot John F. Kennedy, it will be decades before we realize who really brought down the Twin Towers (and Building Nine).
It will also be decades before the depth and breadth of damage done by pedophile priests in the catholic church registers in the American conscience.
Lawler almost lost me as a reader with that worn out Blame it on the Homosexuals stuff, but he went on to write:
“While a small minority of American priests have been involved in sexual abuse, a clear majority of bishops were party to the cover-up.”
More good quotes from Chapter One which is available free online (linked in the column at left).
“Bishops who betrayed their own sacred trust by countenancing sexual abuse remain in office.”
“The third scandal, the scandal of episcopal misconduct, is today the most serious of all.”
THE THIRD SCANDAL?
I would call that “The Real Scandal”
-----
(This is non-commercial Sunday, but it wouldn't hurt you to put five or so on my PayPal account now would it?)
-----
More quotes from Chapter One:
“Bishops who showed an icy insensitivity to the suffering of young victims, and lied repeatedly to conceal their own guilt, remain in power today.”
========
CONFESSION.
Lawler wonders, still in the first chapter, why the bishops would even think that protecting pedophile priests rather than children was “for the good of the church.”
He writes: “The Catholic Church sees herself as the mystical Body of Christ; how could it be helpful to the body to ignore a cancerous growth within?”
That's where we need the Confessions.
Someone from inside the hierarchy can tell us what really happened.
Someone from the inside has to come out and talk.
Come to me, come to City of Angels Lady, talk to me. I’ll clear your conscience and put it out there for the world to see.
===
Lawler writes: “The bishops made a fool's bargain. They were prepared to sacrifice the essential elements of the Catholic faith: the moral teaching, the clerical discipline, even the loving care for the faithful. In return, they hoped to prop up the prestige of the institutional Church.”
Lawler is an editor from Catholic World News and he’s writing for Catholics.
Here my eyes half close, I sigh, and throw the book aside never to be opened again. (Well close the website where I'm reading it for free.)
They still just don’t get it.
The problem is deep at the core, and as soon as a speaker starts repeating phrases like “the essential elements of the Catholic faith” and “the Catholic Church sees herself as the mystical Body of Christ,” I know that speaker is looking in the mirror talking to themselves, and they just don’t get it.
That institutional lie, that “We are the one and only church” lie,
As long as a person holds onto that, they'll never be able to see how guilty are their bishops, how much parishioners and families have been deceived as have their fathers and grandfathers who poured all their support into this criminal organization, the Roman Catholic Church.
Sorry. I have to say this.
Go back and reread the New Testament and read it again after that.
I’m continually amazed at how almost everything the Catholic Church does as an organization is the opposite of what Paul and others wrote to first century Christians about how to carry on Christ’s work.
It’s supposed to be about honesty, openness, and egalitarianism. That only lasted a few centuries.
Then they formed a hierarchy and started building the secrets and mysteries into the structure, bringing lies and the influence of evil right into the foundation of what ended up being today’s Catholic Church.
CONFESSION
I feel sorry for people like Philip Lawler, so stuck in the structure they'll probably never get out and see the light.
I remember at a visceral level the fear of God the priests put into us. They’d say, Don’t even walk into a church that is not Roman Catholic,
equating the sin of being non-Catholic right up there with
heck
Being Protestant is almost as bad as being Homosexual!
I was lucky. My dad saw the damage as his two daughters became teenagers. The two daughters who were diddled by Father Horne were now out of control, wearing see-through clothes, staying out all night, getting “reputations.” I used to see the guilt and loss in my father’s face, from the time I was 14 all the way up to the day he died in 1997
My dad realized the damage that was done to my sister and I and stopped making us go to church.
So by age 13 I stopped being indoctrinated as a Roman Catholic.
AND
Even though I went on to have sex with probably more than a thousand men and now most of the physical problems I have are because it’s not healthy to have sex with more than a thousand men, I can see that it would have been worse if we’d remained Catholics as a family.
Because then I might too think that all we need is a little reform.
Well maybe not a thousand but after the first 300 or so it gets blurred.
------
(THIS PARAGRAPH WAS CUT FROM ABOVE:
“The priest came wrapped in the smoke of church incense, he wore a collar and flowing robes that in the child’s mind blended with pictures of saints and angels and even Jesus himself. His touch opened doors and feelings the child had never imagined and since it came from a priest, the sexual sensations came tied with desires to go to heaven, to contact god.
Oops, getting off topic
By the way
My church, Kairos, meets at 5PM Sundays in a room, set up like a coffee house, in the church at the corner of Fountain and Edgemont in Hollywood. No Catholic vibes at all. This Sunday another group is having a Super Bowl party in that room so we'll be upstairs, but other Sundays at 5 PM we're there, singing glorious music, hearing intelligent interpretation of Scripture. Hope someone joins me there soon.
---
This is non-commercial Sunday, but it wouldn't hurt you to put five or so on my PayPal account now would it?
-----
Onward. . .
By Kay Ebeling
Reading the latest book on pedophile priests, I was with the author all the way up to this quote in Chapter One, “Furthermore, Church leaders have finally recognized the scandal and taken aggressive action. The sex abuse of minors by Catholic priests is much less widespread today than it was 10 or 20 years ago.” He then goes the direction so many have gone before, the way of tipping tea with the bishops to get Catholic reform. They just don’t get it.
The quote is from the new book The Faithful Departed by Philip Lawler and his next sentence is: “The second scandal is the prevalence of homosexuality among Catholic priests.” Huh? I’d much rather have a pastor who is gay than one who is lying to families to get to their children and rape them. How can anybody equate the two “crises” when the gay priest isn’t doing anything illegal and is doing it in private with a consenting adult?
It amazes me that a religion with a sacrament called Confession doesn't see that it can’t skirt around its own guilt. It is not enough to say we've changed our policy and we're never going to let this happen again. Raping thousands of children in sacramental venues is not a venial sin. (It also amazes me that a church would think giving money to some of the victims would solve a problem.)
Lawler sort of rescues himself by the end of the paragraph with the argument we've read in so many places before, that gay priests were afraid to report the pedophile priests and that's why the problem got so bad: “The existence of such a ‘lavender mafia’ could help to explain..."
Mm, maybe one reason pedophilia flourished in the Catholic Church is gay priests afraid to complain about pedophiles lest their own sins come out. To me it goes so much deeper than that
To the secrets
The mystery
Apologist Catholics argue, there are pedophiles in all religions, but an epidemic of pedophiles wouldn't take place in a church like say the Southern Baptists to the extent it has with Catholics.
Once people in a Baptist parish or just about any American evangelical church find out their pastor is having sex with anyone other than a spouse, let alone a child, the people bring that pastor up in front of the whole parish, question him unsparingly, and throw the guy out on his ear if he’s guilty.
No, it’s centuries of secrets that makes the Catholic Church pedophiles so special, so extremely sinful, so deeply deviant it takes most humans a few years to grasp what they've done.
It took Americans 50 years to accept that there was a second shooter when Oswald shot John F. Kennedy, it will be decades before we realize who really brought down the Twin Towers (and Building Nine).
It will also be decades before the depth and breadth of damage done by pedophile priests in the catholic church registers in the American conscience.
Lawler almost lost me as a reader with that worn out Blame it on the Homosexuals stuff, but he went on to write:
“While a small minority of American priests have been involved in sexual abuse, a clear majority of bishops were party to the cover-up.”
More good quotes from Chapter One which is available free online (linked in the column at left).
“Bishops who betrayed their own sacred trust by countenancing sexual abuse remain in office.”
“The third scandal, the scandal of episcopal misconduct, is today the most serious of all.”
THE THIRD SCANDAL?
I would call that “The Real Scandal”
-----
(This is non-commercial Sunday, but it wouldn't hurt you to put five or so on my PayPal account now would it?)
-----
More quotes from Chapter One:
“Bishops who showed an icy insensitivity to the suffering of young victims, and lied repeatedly to conceal their own guilt, remain in power today.”
========
CONFESSION.
Lawler wonders, still in the first chapter, why the bishops would even think that protecting pedophile priests rather than children was “for the good of the church.”
He writes: “The Catholic Church sees herself as the mystical Body of Christ; how could it be helpful to the body to ignore a cancerous growth within?”
That's where we need the Confessions.
Someone from inside the hierarchy can tell us what really happened.
Someone from the inside has to come out and talk.
Come to me, come to City of Angels Lady, talk to me. I’ll clear your conscience and put it out there for the world to see.
===
Lawler writes: “The bishops made a fool's bargain. They were prepared to sacrifice the essential elements of the Catholic faith: the moral teaching, the clerical discipline, even the loving care for the faithful. In return, they hoped to prop up the prestige of the institutional Church.”
Lawler is an editor from Catholic World News and he’s writing for Catholics.
Here my eyes half close, I sigh, and throw the book aside never to be opened again. (Well close the website where I'm reading it for free.)
They still just don’t get it.
The problem is deep at the core, and as soon as a speaker starts repeating phrases like “the essential elements of the Catholic faith” and “the Catholic Church sees herself as the mystical Body of Christ,” I know that speaker is looking in the mirror talking to themselves, and they just don’t get it.
That institutional lie, that “We are the one and only church” lie,
As long as a person holds onto that, they'll never be able to see how guilty are their bishops, how much parishioners and families have been deceived as have their fathers and grandfathers who poured all their support into this criminal organization, the Roman Catholic Church.
Sorry. I have to say this.
Go back and reread the New Testament and read it again after that.
I’m continually amazed at how almost everything the Catholic Church does as an organization is the opposite of what Paul and others wrote to first century Christians about how to carry on Christ’s work.
It’s supposed to be about honesty, openness, and egalitarianism. That only lasted a few centuries.
Then they formed a hierarchy and started building the secrets and mysteries into the structure, bringing lies and the influence of evil right into the foundation of what ended up being today’s Catholic Church.
CONFESSION
I feel sorry for people like Philip Lawler, so stuck in the structure they'll probably never get out and see the light.
I remember at a visceral level the fear of God the priests put into us. They’d say, Don’t even walk into a church that is not Roman Catholic,
equating the sin of being non-Catholic right up there with
heck
Being Protestant is almost as bad as being Homosexual!
I was lucky. My dad saw the damage as his two daughters became teenagers. The two daughters who were diddled by Father Horne were now out of control, wearing see-through clothes, staying out all night, getting “reputations.” I used to see the guilt and loss in my father’s face, from the time I was 14 all the way up to the day he died in 1997
My dad realized the damage that was done to my sister and I and stopped making us go to church.
So by age 13 I stopped being indoctrinated as a Roman Catholic.
AND
Even though I went on to have sex with probably more than a thousand men and now most of the physical problems I have are because it’s not healthy to have sex with more than a thousand men, I can see that it would have been worse if we’d remained Catholics as a family.
Because then I might too think that all we need is a little reform.
Well maybe not a thousand but after the first 300 or so it gets blurred.
------
(THIS PARAGRAPH WAS CUT FROM ABOVE:
“The priest came wrapped in the smoke of church incense, he wore a collar and flowing robes that in the child’s mind blended with pictures of saints and angels and even Jesus himself. His touch opened doors and feelings the child had never imagined and since it came from a priest, the sexual sensations came tied with desires to go to heaven, to contact god.
Oops, getting off topic
By the way
My church, Kairos, meets at 5PM Sundays in a room, set up like a coffee house, in the church at the corner of Fountain and Edgemont in Hollywood. No Catholic vibes at all. This Sunday another group is having a Super Bowl party in that room so we'll be upstairs, but other Sundays at 5 PM we're there, singing glorious music, hearing intelligent interpretation of Scripture. Hope someone joins me there soon.
---
This is non-commercial Sunday, but it wouldn't hurt you to put five or so on my PayPal account now would it?
-----
Onward. . .
Friday, February 1, 2008
SNAP Mexico City challenge unique: find protection and safe haven for victims before going to the police
*****
By Kay Ebeling
“To accuse a priest in Mexico is like going to the White House and saying I’m going to kill the president.”-- Eric Barragan.
Among pedophile priests who’ve evaded prosecution in the US by running to Mexico: Nicolas Aguilar, Gerardo Beltran, Jesus Armando Dominguez, a Salesian whose cases are set for jury trial in LA August 2008, Jose Luis Urbina, Xavier Ochoa, and Fidencio Simon Silva, who is discussed at the end of the first video in the top row above. (We found 10 short videos about pedophile priests and linked them here at the top of City of Angels Blog, for your weekend viewing.)
“There's more than a hundred priests accused of molesting kids who fled from the US to Mexico,” said Eric Barragan who since July of 2007 has run an office of SNAP* in Mexico City. Barragan founded the branch with money from a settlement with the LA Archdiocese in Fall of 2006. He’s already working with 15 families there.
Priests wanted for sex crimes in the US today work in Mexico in orphanages, schools, hospitals, as psychologists, as teachers. “Also they have churches in provincia,” he added, “which means out in the boonies, where there’s no TV, no radio, where people don’t have access to information about who’s working in their community.”
HALFWAY HOUSES
Unlike SNAP’s US approach to opening new regions with press conferences and leafleting, in Mexico the first job is to get victims and families into halfway houses.
“Society down there is so Catholic,” said Barragan. “A lot of times when someone denounces the perps, they get threatened, thrown out of their homes, thrown out of their jobs, thrown out of their communities.”
The street location of SNAP Mexico City has to be kept secret.
“It’s really a Catch 22 with the work we're doing down there,” Barragan said, “because we want to help the victims, but then they have even more damage done to them by the community and the society.
“A lot of them are really scared. We have to work with the victims, make sure they have enough strength and courage.
“We have to create a lot of halfway houses.
“We're working right now with offices of the state and federal government in Mexico to provide support so that when survivors do go to the police, they have somewhere to go and they have money to live on.
“Because again, they're losing their homes, they're losing their jobs, and they're getting kicked out of the communities.”
“To accuse a priest in Mexico is like going to the White House and saying I’m going to kill the president,” Barragan said. “The priest is not only the god of the community, but he is mayor, he is sheriff. He is the priest, the courts, and he is the do all and say all, whatever he says goes.”
As we stand outside LA Cathedral talking, the bells start to toll.
“They do that down there all the time,” Barragan said.
“Whenever we have a press conference outside the cathedral they start ringing the bells,” he says and laughs.
More on priests hiding out in Mexico after this:
COMMERCIAL
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END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
Cardinal Norberta Rivera, the Roger Mahony / George W Bush of Mexico
Barragan and his colleagues in Mexico are following the case in LA where Cardinal Norberto Rivero of Mexico, the most powerful bishop hence most powerful man in Latin America, and LA’s own Roger Mahony conspired to protect pedophile priest, Nicolas Aguilar.
Nicolas Aguilar abused 80 kids in Mexico, was moved to LA, abused 24 kids in LA, then was transferred back to Mexico, where he was charged with forcing four more children to have sex with him.
The charges in Mexico did not stick.
“We're working with some of those victims now,” Barragan said.
To Call SNAP Mexico City: Call 55 1993 3678
The web page for SNAP Mexico is snapmexico.org but it is still in production.
==========
PRIESTS ON THE LAM IN MEXICO
JESUS ARMANDO DOMINGUEZ
Likely fled to Mexico right before Riverside County prosecutors charged him in January 2005 with 58 counts of unlawful oral copulation, sexual penetration and sodomy. A conviction on all charges could carry a prison sentence of 43 years.
Civil cases regarding the former Salesian Dominguez were set to take place in January 2008, but when Judge Haley Fromholz retired late last year, the Salesian jury trials moved to Dept. 308, Central Civil West Courthouse, 600 South Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles, Judge Emilie H. Elias.
The Dominguez Jury Trial is now on calendar for August 25, 2008. (we’ll see. . .)
=======
JOSE LUIS URBINA
Has served as a priest in his hometown parish in Navojoa, Mexico, for more than a decade.
While in the Sacramento diocese, Urbina molested a boy over a period of several years. In one episode, he pointed a gun at the boy before raping him. Urbina admitted guilt and was convicted of sex molest of a minor in 1989.
Urbina left the country before sentencing.
====
NICOLAS AGUILAR
According to: Houston Chronicle
Nicolas Aguilar is believed to be hiding out in his native Puebla state, where witnesses say he surfaces occasionally to officiate Mass and sell religious music outside churches.
In 1997, he was charged with sexually abusing four boys in the state, according to Mexican news reports.
Aguilar was convicted on one count in 2004, but the Mexican judge waived the sentence, citing the statute of limitations.
In Mexico the statute of limitations on sex crime charges expires in some cases after a year.
In 1987, got a fresh start in Southern California, after he developed problems in his home parishes in Mexico. Nine months later, he was back in Mexico again. He left behind a reputation as one of the fastest pedophiles in LA Archdiocese.
In California, police say Aguilar molested at least 26 boys. There were more matters was pending in Mexico, even after his conviction in 2003.
Cardinal Rivera famously wrote to Cardinal Mahony in a letter dated March 17, 1988. "I can tell you that the (Fr. Aguilar ) was in San Sebastian Cuacnopalan parish for over 10 years, and surely the police there can find much information."
From: The Dallas Morning News, June 22, 2004
By 1997, Father Aguilar was back in his home Diocese of Tehuacan, working on the outskirts of town. His base was the chapel of San Vicente Ferrer, a spare, concrete building in San Nicolas Tolentino Parish.
One day, a 12-year-old boy who'd become active in the parish ran away. His frantic parents found him at a relative's house 75 miles away, where he'd gone by bus with a 14-year-old friend.
The son told his father why he ran: Father Aguilar had been molesting him for months, according to the boy's statement to police. Soon, his friend and two other boys said Father Aguilar had abused them, too.
=====
GERARDO BELTRAN
Disappeared in 1991 after Sacramento police began investigating allegations that he molested two young girls. Beltran was known to be serving as a priest in a remote region of southern Mexico as of March 2005.
A CBS 13 (Sacramento) investigation revealed that Beltran has been hiding out in the tiny village of Igualita, Mexico for more than a dozen years.
The people of Igualita told CBS 13 numerous stories of how they believe Gerardo Beltran continues to molest children there.
Their investigation also revealed that 15 years after filing charges against Beltran the Sacramento county district attorney's office, headed by Jan Scully, has still not filed the necessary paperwork with federal authorities to have Beltran arrested by Mexican police and extradited back to the United States.
FROM the CBS 13 Website:
One week before we flew to Mexico, A CBS 13 producer placed a phone call to Igualita Mexico and personally spoke to Beltran. Beltran's name is engraved on the front of the only church in Igualita. More than a dozen people who live in Igualita confirmed to us, on-camera and off-camera, that Beltran has been living there and saying mass there for more than a dozen years.
Scully also writes none of statements about Beltran's alleged conduct in the village of Iqualita, Mexico made by the people of that village appear to be reliable. Margarito Leon Merino chief of police in Igualita told us that not only is Beltran suspected by many in Igualita of molesting children there for years, but that villagers were so concerned they tried to meet with their bishop to have Beltran removed from their village, but the bishop refused to meet with them.
Then there's Juan Leon Aviles, the Assistant Police Chief who told us that he and others in Igualita believe Beltran impregnated his daughter when she was 17-years-old.
=====
FIDENCIO SIMON SILVA
Accused of abuse of boys from 1979-1985. Criminal charges dropped due to Supreme Court ruling in 2003.
Believed to be in Mexico.
He molested at least 15 persons at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Oxnard from 1977 to 1992.
15 plaintiffs in the recent LA cases had claims against him from that Oxnard parish from 1977 to 1992.
June 30th 1993 Silva was assigned tto Hispanic Young Adult Ministry in the Archdiocese's Office of Hispanic Ministry, residing in Long Beach.. . .
====
XAVIER OCHOA
Sonoma County district attorney's office prepared a criminal complaint and requested an arrest warrant for Sonoma priest, Francisco Xavier Ochoa
He was charged with committing lewd acts against three underage boys.
Ochoa, 67, is believed to be in Mexico.
The complaint alleges 10 felony offenses and one misdemeanor offense, including forcible sodomy and forcible oral copulation, against three alleged victims between 1988 and the present.
Sonoma County District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua said Ochoa faces life in prison if convicted of the offenses against two or more victims.
Ochoa admitted the most recent alleged sexual assault at a meeting with Santa Rosa Diocese Bishop Daniel Walsh and other priests on April 28 and Ochoa was relieved of his duties, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department. Ochoa then left for Mexico and arrived by May 4.
From: CBS 5 [Santa Rosa CA]
June 22, 2006
Onward. . .
*SNAP is Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
By Kay Ebeling
“To accuse a priest in Mexico is like going to the White House and saying I’m going to kill the president.”-- Eric Barragan.
Among pedophile priests who’ve evaded prosecution in the US by running to Mexico: Nicolas Aguilar, Gerardo Beltran, Jesus Armando Dominguez, a Salesian whose cases are set for jury trial in LA August 2008, Jose Luis Urbina, Xavier Ochoa, and Fidencio Simon Silva, who is discussed at the end of the first video in the top row above. (We found 10 short videos about pedophile priests and linked them here at the top of City of Angels Blog, for your weekend viewing.)
“There's more than a hundred priests accused of molesting kids who fled from the US to Mexico,” said Eric Barragan who since July of 2007 has run an office of SNAP* in Mexico City. Barragan founded the branch with money from a settlement with the LA Archdiocese in Fall of 2006. He’s already working with 15 families there.
Priests wanted for sex crimes in the US today work in Mexico in orphanages, schools, hospitals, as psychologists, as teachers. “Also they have churches in provincia,” he added, “which means out in the boonies, where there’s no TV, no radio, where people don’t have access to information about who’s working in their community.”
HALFWAY HOUSES
Unlike SNAP’s US approach to opening new regions with press conferences and leafleting, in Mexico the first job is to get victims and families into halfway houses.
“Society down there is so Catholic,” said Barragan. “A lot of times when someone denounces the perps, they get threatened, thrown out of their homes, thrown out of their jobs, thrown out of their communities.”
The street location of SNAP Mexico City has to be kept secret.
“It’s really a Catch 22 with the work we're doing down there,” Barragan said, “because we want to help the victims, but then they have even more damage done to them by the community and the society.
“A lot of them are really scared. We have to work with the victims, make sure they have enough strength and courage.
“We have to create a lot of halfway houses.
“We're working right now with offices of the state and federal government in Mexico to provide support so that when survivors do go to the police, they have somewhere to go and they have money to live on.
“Because again, they're losing their homes, they're losing their jobs, and they're getting kicked out of the communities.”
“To accuse a priest in Mexico is like going to the White House and saying I’m going to kill the president,” Barragan said. “The priest is not only the god of the community, but he is mayor, he is sheriff. He is the priest, the courts, and he is the do all and say all, whatever he says goes.”
As we stand outside LA Cathedral talking, the bells start to toll.
“They do that down there all the time,” Barragan said.
“Whenever we have a press conference outside the cathedral they start ringing the bells,” he says and laughs.
More on priests hiding out in Mexico after this:
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Cardinal Norberta Rivera, the Roger Mahony / George W Bush of Mexico
Barragan and his colleagues in Mexico are following the case in LA where Cardinal Norberto Rivero of Mexico, the most powerful bishop hence most powerful man in Latin America, and LA’s own Roger Mahony conspired to protect pedophile priest, Nicolas Aguilar.
Nicolas Aguilar abused 80 kids in Mexico, was moved to LA, abused 24 kids in LA, then was transferred back to Mexico, where he was charged with forcing four more children to have sex with him.
The charges in Mexico did not stick.
“We're working with some of those victims now,” Barragan said.
To Call SNAP Mexico City: Call 55 1993 3678
The web page for SNAP Mexico is snapmexico.org but it is still in production.
==========
PRIESTS ON THE LAM IN MEXICO
JESUS ARMANDO DOMINGUEZ
Likely fled to Mexico right before Riverside County prosecutors charged him in January 2005 with 58 counts of unlawful oral copulation, sexual penetration and sodomy. A conviction on all charges could carry a prison sentence of 43 years.
Civil cases regarding the former Salesian Dominguez were set to take place in January 2008, but when Judge Haley Fromholz retired late last year, the Salesian jury trials moved to Dept. 308, Central Civil West Courthouse, 600 South Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles, Judge Emilie H. Elias.
The Dominguez Jury Trial is now on calendar for August 25, 2008. (we’ll see. . .)
=======
JOSE LUIS URBINA
Has served as a priest in his hometown parish in Navojoa, Mexico, for more than a decade.
While in the Sacramento diocese, Urbina molested a boy over a period of several years. In one episode, he pointed a gun at the boy before raping him. Urbina admitted guilt and was convicted of sex molest of a minor in 1989.
Urbina left the country before sentencing.
====
NICOLAS AGUILAR
According to: Houston Chronicle
Nicolas Aguilar is believed to be hiding out in his native Puebla state, where witnesses say he surfaces occasionally to officiate Mass and sell religious music outside churches.
In 1997, he was charged with sexually abusing four boys in the state, according to Mexican news reports.
Aguilar was convicted on one count in 2004, but the Mexican judge waived the sentence, citing the statute of limitations.
In Mexico the statute of limitations on sex crime charges expires in some cases after a year.
In 1987, got a fresh start in Southern California, after he developed problems in his home parishes in Mexico. Nine months later, he was back in Mexico again. He left behind a reputation as one of the fastest pedophiles in LA Archdiocese.
In California, police say Aguilar molested at least 26 boys. There were more matters was pending in Mexico, even after his conviction in 2003.
Cardinal Rivera famously wrote to Cardinal Mahony in a letter dated March 17, 1988. "I can tell you that the (Fr. Aguilar ) was in San Sebastian Cuacnopalan parish for over 10 years, and surely the police there can find much information."
From: The Dallas Morning News, June 22, 2004
By 1997, Father Aguilar was back in his home Diocese of Tehuacan, working on the outskirts of town. His base was the chapel of San Vicente Ferrer, a spare, concrete building in San Nicolas Tolentino Parish.
One day, a 12-year-old boy who'd become active in the parish ran away. His frantic parents found him at a relative's house 75 miles away, where he'd gone by bus with a 14-year-old friend.
The son told his father why he ran: Father Aguilar had been molesting him for months, according to the boy's statement to police. Soon, his friend and two other boys said Father Aguilar had abused them, too.
=====
GERARDO BELTRAN
Disappeared in 1991 after Sacramento police began investigating allegations that he molested two young girls. Beltran was known to be serving as a priest in a remote region of southern Mexico as of March 2005.
A CBS 13 (Sacramento) investigation revealed that Beltran has been hiding out in the tiny village of Igualita, Mexico for more than a dozen years.
The people of Igualita told CBS 13 numerous stories of how they believe Gerardo Beltran continues to molest children there.
Their investigation also revealed that 15 years after filing charges against Beltran the Sacramento county district attorney's office, headed by Jan Scully, has still not filed the necessary paperwork with federal authorities to have Beltran arrested by Mexican police and extradited back to the United States.
FROM the CBS 13 Website:
One week before we flew to Mexico, A CBS 13 producer placed a phone call to Igualita Mexico and personally spoke to Beltran. Beltran's name is engraved on the front of the only church in Igualita. More than a dozen people who live in Igualita confirmed to us, on-camera and off-camera, that Beltran has been living there and saying mass there for more than a dozen years.
Scully also writes none of statements about Beltran's alleged conduct in the village of Iqualita, Mexico made by the people of that village appear to be reliable. Margarito Leon Merino chief of police in Igualita told us that not only is Beltran suspected by many in Igualita of molesting children there for years, but that villagers were so concerned they tried to meet with their bishop to have Beltran removed from their village, but the bishop refused to meet with them.
Then there's Juan Leon Aviles, the Assistant Police Chief who told us that he and others in Igualita believe Beltran impregnated his daughter when she was 17-years-old.
=====
FIDENCIO SIMON SILVA
Accused of abuse of boys from 1979-1985. Criminal charges dropped due to Supreme Court ruling in 2003.
Believed to be in Mexico.
He molested at least 15 persons at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Oxnard from 1977 to 1992.
15 plaintiffs in the recent LA cases had claims against him from that Oxnard parish from 1977 to 1992.
June 30th 1993 Silva was assigned tto Hispanic Young Adult Ministry in the Archdiocese's Office of Hispanic Ministry, residing in Long Beach.. . .
====
XAVIER OCHOA
Sonoma County district attorney's office prepared a criminal complaint and requested an arrest warrant for Sonoma priest, Francisco Xavier Ochoa
He was charged with committing lewd acts against three underage boys.
Ochoa, 67, is believed to be in Mexico.
The complaint alleges 10 felony offenses and one misdemeanor offense, including forcible sodomy and forcible oral copulation, against three alleged victims between 1988 and the present.
Sonoma County District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua said Ochoa faces life in prison if convicted of the offenses against two or more victims.
Ochoa admitted the most recent alleged sexual assault at a meeting with Santa Rosa Diocese Bishop Daniel Walsh and other priests on April 28 and Ochoa was relieved of his duties, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department. Ochoa then left for Mexico and arrived by May 4.
From: CBS 5 [Santa Rosa CA]
June 22, 2006
Onward. . .
*SNAP is Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
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