Priest kills himself in church after sexual
molestation accusations
RFI:– A 38-year-old French priest committed suicide in his church in Rouen, a northern French town, after being accused of sexually molesting a young woman, local prosecutors and police sources said on Wednesday.
Jean-Baptiste Sèbe killed himself on Tuesday in the church north of Rouen amid allegations from a local mother that her grown-up daughter had been a victim of “indecent behaviour and sexual assault,” a police source said.
The initial complaint was made to the archbishop of Rouen, and “police were not notified prior to the suicide,” the source added, stressing that investigators remained “very cautious at this stage.”
Local prosecutor Etienne Thieffry confirmed that an investigation was underway into “the exact reasons for the suicide” at the Saint-Jean XXIII church.
“At this point, no complaint has been filed,” Thieffry said.
A spokesman for the Rouen diocese, Eric de la Bourdonnaye, told the AFP news agency he could “neither confirm nor deny these reports.”
The Catholic Church has been shaken by a string of paedophile scandals over the past 25 years.
It was rocked in August by a devastating US report on child sex abuse which accused more than 300 “predator” priests of abusing more than 1,000 minors over seven decades in the state of Pennsylvania.
The most senior French Catholic cleric to be caught up in scandal is Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who is to go on trial in January for allegedly covering up for a priest accused of abusing boy scouts in the Lyon area in the 1980s.
Priest Arthur Perrault extradited from Morocco to New Mexico to face child sexual abuse charges
U.S. Attorney John C. Anderson for the District of New Mexico, Special Agent in Charge James C. Langenberg of the FBI Albuquerque Division and Special Agent in Charge Nicholas J. Dorval of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Detachment 814, announced today that Arthur Perrault has been extradited from Morocco to the United States to face federal child sexual abuse charges in New Mexico.
Perrault, 80, a former Catholic priest who served in New Mexico under the Archdiocese of Santa Fe from 1973 to 1992, is charged in a seven-count indictment with engaging in acts constituting aggravated sexual abuse and abusive sexual contact with a minor under the age of 12. The indictment alleges that Perrault repeatedly sexually abused the minor victim in 1991 and 1992 while on federally-protected land, Kirtland Air Force Base in Bernalillo County, N.M., and the Santa Fe National Cemetery in Santa Fe County, N.M.
“The indictment alleges a profound breach of trust by an individual who was widely perceived as a mentor to young people and a respected figure in the community,” said U.S. Attorney Anderson. “Although the indictment charges acts allegedly committed many years ago, this indictment should make clear that the U.S. Attorney’s Office will pursue justice for victims despite the passage of time or the many miles this defendant sought to put between himself and these alleged offenses.”
Former priest, Maine teacher due to go on trial
on child sex assault charges
By MEGAN DOYLE
Portland Press Herald
Michael Doherty remembers the moment he finally saw James Talbot in handcuffs.
Talbot has a history of alleged sexual abuse of children dating to the 1970s at Boston College High School in Massachusetts, then at Cheverus High School in Maine. The former Jesuit priest and teacher has settled lawsuits with more than a dozen victims, including Doherty, who is from Freeport.
But Talbot has been convicted only once. He was never prosecuted in Doherty’s case and many others because the statute of limitations at the time had lapsed. Then, in October 2005, Talbot pleaded guilty to raping and sexually assaulting two students decades before in Boston. When Talbot was taken into custody 13 years ago, Doherty made sure he was in the courtroom.
“It was an important moment,” Doherty said. “There’s a different level of satisfaction than there is in the civil litigation. When I had the ability to see him taken into custody in Boston, it was powerful.”
Now Talbot will answer to criminal charges for the second time.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in Cumberland County in his trial for gross sexual assault and unlawful sexual contact. Neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney has said whether Talbot will again take a plea deal like he did in 2005. If he does not, legal experts said he could face a challenging trial in the context of the broader sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, because jurors are not supposed to have prior knowledge of a case or past experiences that could create bias.
“Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you do know about it,” said Thea Johnson, an associate professor at the University of Maine School of Law.
ALLEGATIONS REACH BACK FOUR DECADES
A grand jury indicted Talbot on the two felony charges last year. He is accused of sexually abusing a 9-year-old boy on several occasions in the late 1990s at St. Jude Church in Freeport, where Talbot was a visiting priest. Although details about the current allegations have not been made public in criminal case filings, Talbot settled a lawsuit with the same victim last summer. The Press Herald does not name victims of sexual abuse without their consent.
Talbot, now 80, pleaded not guilty to the crimes in December. He then posted $50,000 cash bail and returned to the Vianney Renewal Center in Dittmer, Missouri, a Catholic Church-run residential facility for troubled or former priests, where he has lived since he was released from prison.
Talbot’s attorney, Walter McKee, declined to comment on the case. The prosecutor from the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for an interview.
The allegations against Talbot go back four decades. He taught at Boston College High School from 1972 to 1980, when he transferred to Cheverus, in Portland, and remained there until 1998. That year, Doherty came forward to say that Talbot had abused him in the mid-80s, when Doherty was a student at Cheverus. Talbot was fired from the school about two months after the accusations were brought to the bishop.
Doherty settled his lawsuit in 2001. Even though prosecutors could not bring criminal charges, his case prompted others to come forward. By 2003, 14 men had settled lawsuits totaling more than $5.2 million. Two years later, Talbot pleaded guilty to the first criminal charges and ultimately served six years in prison. He was later laicized by the Vatican, which means he is no longer a priest.
HOW MUCH WILL JURORS HEAR OF HIS PAST?
New criminal charges were possible in Maine because the statute of limitations for such crimes against a child younger than 16 was eliminated in 1999 – as long as the statute of limitations had not already expired.
Talbot was one of the priests targeted in The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the church’s abuse scandal, and the 2015 film “Spotlight” includes references to his victims. In a March 2002 article, the Globe reported that Talbot coached wrestling, as well as soccer, at Boston College High and that he engaged in a “bizarre habit” of wrestling with students who were in various stages of undress, including wearing only athletic supporters.
That investigation rocked the Catholic Church across the globe and led to similar findings in other dioceses. Just this year, a sweeping grand jury report in Pennsylvania revealed more than 300 priests sexually abused children over seven decades.
To ensure a fair trial for Talbot, his defense team is likely to try to weed out candidates who have negative feelings about the Catholic Church or Cheverus High School because of past allegations and investigations. “You have to peel back layers to determine whether or not a jury is going to reflexively condemn someone based on the allegations alone,” said Tina Nadeau, an attorney who also serves at executive director of the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Once the jurors are selected, it is unclear how much they would be told about Talbot’s past. State courts typically do not allow prosecutors to talk during trial about prior convictions for similar crimes, and standards vary across the country for presenting evidence about accusations that have not led to criminal charges.
“The policy rationale is that we don’t want to judge somebody based on their prior bad acts,” Johnson said. “We want to judge them on the facts of this case.”
But Johnson said there are exceptions to that rule. If a defendant testifies at trial, for example, his or her criminal history could be introduced. In other states, other accusers also have been allowed to take the stand to describe a pattern of behavior by the defendant, like the women who testified at Bill Cosby’s most recent sex assault trial.
Stephen Smith, a criminal defense attorney who specializes in sex abuse cases, said he would even ask a judge to exclude evidence about Talbot’s connection to the Catholic Church. “Once (jurors) heard this person was a former Catholic priest accused of this sort of crime, there may be some prejudices that should not be unleashed,” Smith said.
How pathetic is that for the Catholic Church that pedophiles will try to hide their association with the church because it just makes them appear more guilty!
‘IT’S VALIDATION FOR EVERY VICTIM’
Still, Smith said he almost always prefers to take a sex crime case to a jury trial, rather than a judge at a bench trial. While most people will have a negative gut reaction to allegations of sexual abuse against a child, he said many jurors also have heard about cases in which accusations turn out to be untrue. “That allows them to consider the possibility of a false allegation,” Smith said.
During the trial, both the prosecution and the defense would need to contend with the amount of time that has passed since the alleged abuse took place. “That’s a concern for both sides,” Johnson said. “You’re doing this 20 years down the road. How will that affect how people remember things, and how the jury perceives how people remember things?”
Whatever happens, Doherty will be in the courtroom again. He now lives in Florida, but he was traveling back to Maine this week to support the anonymous victim in this latest case.
“In my case, there was no one,” Doherty said. “The sense that you’re alone is one of the worst things. So that’s really become my focus, to make sure that people don’t feel that they are alone in this process.”
Also present will be Jim Scanlan, one of the victims from Boston College High School whose report of abuse led to the first criminal charges against Talbot. He did not publicly discuss the abuse until late 2015, after viewing the movie “Spotlight.”
Scanlan now lives in Rhode Island. He said the victim in this case should feel pride for bringing Talbot to court. “It’s validation for every victim, but especially for Talbot’s victims because most don’t get their day in court,” Scanlan said
Indiana abuse victim angry over Fort Wayne
pedophile priest list
ROSA SALTER RODRIGUEZ | The Journal Gazette
When Brian Cook was 11, he says, his divorced mother, having recently moved back to Fort Wayne, encouraged him to develop a friendship with their parish priest, thinking it would be good for him to have a male role model.
Cook says it was good – in the beginning. The priest asked him to sit on his lap while they talked and gave him a hug and a kiss. He didn't think anything of it because his family had friendships with priests before.
But during a subsequent meeting, the priest told him he looked tense and said he'd give him a massage if he'd lie down on the bed in the next room of the man's rectory living quarters. At a later meeting, the priest told him he should take off his clothes for a better massage.
By that time, Cook said, he was uncomfortable. He felt what was happening was wrong, and “I was getting the heck out of there,” he said.
But it was not until he reported what happened to a diocesan official in 2017 that he learned of any sexual abuse allegations against the priest.
Bishop D'Arcy
Last week, Cook found the priest's name among 18 priests and deacons “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of minors on a list released by the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. The list placed the number of allegations against the priest at six.
And Cook, who said he was told there were other victims of the same priest when he reported, is angry.
“I know if I had heard something, I would have come forward (sooner),” said the man, who no longer lives in Fort Wayne. “If (church officials) don't disclose, no one knows.”
The list has revealed the scope of alleged clerical abuse within the diocese – and mixed messages over the years.
Hardly a parish in Fort Wayne was not staffed at one time by a priest on the list of accused abusers. Sixteen separate parishes, some of which have closed, were named as having been an assignment of an accused priest – although the list does not specify when or where any of the alleged abuse took place.
Accused priests served as high school teachers and counselors of young people. Three were principals at area high schools – James Seculoff and Thomas Lombardi at the former Huntington Catholic High School and Edward Krason at Bishop Dwenger High School in Fort Wayne.
Seculoff, listed as having five credible accusations, held a position higher than that – he headed the diocese's Catholic schools beginning in 1970, after leaving the principal's position at Huntington Catholic.
Assignment records show all the clerics on the list were removed from parish ministry or the priesthood. Most of the removals took place during the tenure of the late Bishop John M. D'Arcy from 1985 through 2009. D'Arcy had come to Indiana from the Archdiocese of Boston with a reputation as a whistleblower on child sexual abuse by clergy.
In interviews with The Journal Gazette over the years, D'Arcy stressed he attacked the problem not only having priests removed from ministry where they would have contact with children and teens, but also by keeping a close eye on priesthood candidates to ensure only men of good character became diocesan priests.
In 2002, he released the number of credibly accused priests – 16. He also conducted a Mass and met with the congregation of St. John the Baptist Church in New Haven to say a woman's claim of abuse was deemed credible. The claim was made after the death of the priest, William Ehrman.
But D'Arcy did not routinely detail full circumstances when he announced in Today's Catholic, the diocese's weekly newspaper, the names of removed priests.
In November 2007, for example, D'Arcy announced six priests had been removed from the priesthood in 2006 and 2007. Five of the six appeared on the list last week – James Robert Blume, Brian Carsten, Robert J. Mahoney, Richard J. Stieglitz and Richard Thompson.
Some priests during D'Arcy's watch found their way into multiple assignments or other dioceses. Edward O. Paquette, who served at St. Mary of the Assumption parish in Decatur and was on the list released Tuesday, was sued civilly in Vermont.
Paul LeBrun, one of two priests listed as incarcerated, was jailed after being accused and convicted in Arizona, according to www.bishopaccountability.org, a nonprofit organization that tracks Catholic church sexual abuse.
As late as 2010, after retiring as bishop, D'Arcy conducted a Mass honoring Our Lady of Fatima, whose local society was led by Seculoff. In 2014, that priest was credibly accused of abuse that had occurred more than four decades before, church officials said then.
The diocese's current bishop, the Rev. Kevin C. Rhoades, wrote parishioners at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Walkerton, where the 77-year-old Seculoff was serving, that the priest had a credible accusation of sexual abuse and had “voluntarily resigned” and “officially retired.”
Seculoff was removed from public ministry in 2015 after three other accusers came forward, according to the diocese's list; news accounts say the additional people reported subsequent to the first accuser.
Then there is Thomas Lombardi, accused of conversation perceived as sexual with a male teen at St. Louis-Besancon at least 10 years before it was reported in 2011, after Rhoades became bishop.
The case was referred to child protective officials and law enforcement, church officials said. But no charges were brought because the victim did not come forward and it was unclear if a crime had been committed, a law enforcement official said then.
Lombardi was removed from public ministry in 2015 and had one credible accusation, the list says. After he died in December, his online obituary listed him as a “retired priest,” and his funeral took place this year at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne.
Last week's list followed the August publication of a 900-page report from an attorney general's grand jury in Pennsylvania, where Rhoades was bishop of the Diocese of Harrisburg immediately before coming to Fort Wayne.
He was named in that report for his handling of two cases, but it also included his defense of his actions. He also was alleged to have had an ''odd” relationship with a young man, now deceased, after the report was released, but the Harrisburg district attorney called the allegation unfounded after an investigation.
During an Aug. 17 news conference in Fort Wayne, Rhoades reiterated there would be “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse in the diocese. He said he had reported all allegations of which he became aware to law enforcement or child protection officials. Rhoades said he also publicly reported the names of all priests he removed from ministry.
Rhoades added that he'd had a change of heart and was releasing names of all priests with credible allegations. He went a step further by including records of their assignments. He said the diocese was one of only four or five that had released names.
Rhoades said a female victim from Mishawaka had been adamant that the name of the priest she said had abused her – Eldon Miller, who had been stationed at Queen of Peace and St. Joseph Catholic Church in Mishawaka – be released.
“I was so conflicted,” Rhoades said at the press conference about the conversations. But he said he came to believe that releasing names “for all to see, for everyone to know the pain these priests have caused,” validated victims' experiences and helped them heal.
The South Bend Tribune named and interviewed the victim, Carolyn Andrzejewski-Wilson, who now lives in North Carolina. She said she told the bishop she was repeatedly abused between the ages of 6 and 11. The Tribune said she reported the abuse after she discovered Miller was involved in planning a school and felt physically ill from the news.
Rhoades at the news conference also recommended victims report to law enforcement as well as church officials.
Last week, Don Schmid, a member of the diocese's review board that advises the bishop on sexual abuse matters and a former federal prosecutor and assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Indiana, said in a statement that releasing the list was proper.
“Bishop Rhoades has demonstrated great sensitivity and care for victims of sexual abuse, and has carried out a zero tolerance policy for priests credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable adults.
“In my experience, Bishop Rhoades has promptly and in all cases removed from public ministry and pursued canon law sanctions against priests under his authority where the allegations and available evidence warrant such removal and sanctions.”
Judy Jones, associate director for the Midwest Region of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said last week the church has not always kept track of removed priests.
That can be important, she said, because it's not unusual for victims to take years before reporting abuse because they fear no one will believe them.
Sometimes a trigger for people in their 40s and beyond is having children reach the age they were when the abuse occurred, she said.
Cook said that is what happened with him.
Cook said he told his wife early on about the abuse but said he didn't allow it to affect him. Then, as his children grew up, he made an appointment with a diocese staff member who assists victims.
That was after he began getting in touch with other kids from his childhood and started hearing more stories of abuse.
Now, Cook said, he's troubled that church officials apparently have not been vigilant in knowing the whereabouts of those who have been dismissed from ministry.
The priest whom he said abused him was dismissed during D'Arcy's tenure, according to the list. But, Cook said, he has not been able to locate him.
“What about credibly accused priests who are no longer with the church?” he asked. “They're still in the community – they could still do something. That's my issue.”
He worries what might happen to someone else's child.
“I ended it. With me, it was not a long-term thing, and it was never entirely sexual,” he said. “But after the fifth or sixth time, who knows what would have happened?” he said. “I stopped it.”
The despicable, Australian, paedophile priest
you’ve never heard of
by Candace Sutton
The Daily Examiner
WARNING: Graphic
SHE was just 13 years old and a concert violinist prodigy when, wearing priest's clothing, John Philip Aitchison first raped her in the church after playing the cruellest of tricks on her.
Georgie Burg was a talented but vulnerable girl when the paedophile priest raped her on a church pew after violin practice.
Aitchison had sexually assaulted other children before he deliberately targeted Georgie, and his abuse would later make her abandon an international soloist career.
The trick he played to get her close enough to pounce on her was both calculated and cynical. Aitchison told George that he could make God to materialise her beloved pet dog, which had been killed in an accident for which Georgie blamed herself.
It was just one of many betrayals.
Georgie would be abandoned by everyone including her own mother and Aitchison would get away with molesting children until she found the strength to put him in jail.
Even then until the last minute, church officials were promoting John Philip Aitchison as a trusted man of God and encouraging him to be with children.
The story of this despicable paedophile priest most people have never heard of, who molested children as young as seven, is also one of three different churches protecting him.
Right up until his imprisonment, as recently as 11 days after he was found guilty of repeatedly raping Georgie - he featured at a major Sydney church event promoted as "child friendly".
Georgie Burg with her beloved Lilly whose death prompted paedophile priest John Aitchison to cruelly trick her then rape her.
In truth, former Anglican Deacon Aitchison, now aged 67, has been sexually and indecently assaulting little girls and boys since about 1969.
But assisted by the church and the justice system, Aitchison has managed to fly under the radar as he destroyed children's lives.
In a string of court trials, judges have let him off gently dealt with probation or bonds.
One judge sympathetically described his "psychological imbalance", denied he was a paedophile and doubted the evidence of his child victims.
It was only in August, that Justice Michael Elkaim of the ACT Supreme Court declared Aitchison "unquestionably a paedophile".
In an almost unprecedented judgment, Elkaim cited Georgie's description of Aitchison as a "casual, commanding, authoritarian, and coolly arrogant" sexual abuser of children.
At the time of the verdict she could not be named, but Georgie Burg has decided to tell news.com.au her story and reveal her identity for the first time.
As Georgie Berg says, "He dehumanised me. And he got away with it for so long.
"I've been told I'm his eighth victim, but I know there are other victims out there."
There is much more to this story, too much for this blog. It can be found here.
Priest accused of CSA in Indiana may have continued working in India, Sweden & Kenya
Meredith Colias-Pete
Post-Tribune
A priest accused of sexually abusing children while working in the Gary Diocese during the 1970s and ‘80s may have continued to work for years in ministries and schools outside the United States, a Post-Tribune review has found.
Last month, the Gary Diocese said the Rev. George Kavungal had six “credible” accusations of child molestation after an internal review. He was a visiting priest from India from 1978 to 1985, church records show.
Of 10 accused priests, only Ambrose McGinnity had as many allegations. McGinnity died in 2000.
Kavungal and two others are still alive, church leaders said. Officials only said he was believed to be in India. No laicization date was given for him.
Allegations emerge in 2002
The Diocese received its first known allegation against Kavungal in March 2002, church records show.
In April 17, 2002, then-Bishop Dale Melczek sent a letter to Kavungal’s order superior in southern India informing him of a sexual abuse claim received three weeks earlier dating back to around 1982, according to Gary Diocese records.
Where the allegation occurred is not known. Between August 1981 and August 1984, Kavungal was assigned to S.S. Peter and Paul in Merrillville, according to information released by the Diocese.
How quickly the order responded to Melczek’s initial letter is not immediately clear.
During a meeting in March 2007, Melczek met with the Rev. Provincial Jerome Cherussery who personally assured him that Kavungal was no longer in their ministry in India, the Diocese said.
Earlier this month, Bishop Donald Hying again inquired about Kavungal’s status, church officials said. He sent a letter to India dated Sept. 4 to verify that he was not a practicing priest.
By Sept. 6, Hying received a response with a formal removal date: Sept. 1, 2018. He is double-checking the date’s accuracy, officials said.
Kavungal ‘is almost blind’
A native of India, Kavungal first arrived in Gary in January 1978 as one of five priests from India under an agreement between their superiors and late Bishop Andrew Grutka, newspaper archives and church records show.
All were members of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI) of the Syro-Malbar Catholic Church, based in southern India.
None of the other Indian priests have been accused of wrongdoing. Kavungal was not considered a Gary Diocese priest and was “never under the direct authority” of a Gary bishop, church officials said.
Nevertheless, over nearly eight years, he was assigned to three parishes: St. Thomas More in Munster in January 1978, S.S. Peter and Paul in Merrillville in August 1981, and St. Mary of the Lake in Gary by August 1984, church records show. By November 1985, he returned to India.
Kavungal, now 77, is believed to be in poor health, nearly blind and living in a remote village, said the Rev. Walter Thelappilly of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate via email.
Church superiors said once the Gary letter was delivered, a Provincial Council ordered Kavungal to be promptly removed from his priestly duties. He has also been removed from a recent job at the Paalana Institute of Medical Sciences, a non-profit hospital in southern India.
Specific dates were not provided. The hospital’s website indicates he may have worked there as late as 2017.
We “had taken action against George Kaungal (sic) as soon as we heard the news from the Gary Diocese,” Thelappilly wrote this week. “(He) is removed from his priestly and public ministry.
He is almost blind. He cannot read and he is sick. He is taken complete rest in a remote village. We informed the Bishop of Gary Diocese about this,” he said. They declined to elaborate on the nature of his illness or the village where Kavungal now lived.
An biographical page on the order’s website that listed extensive contact information including an address, email, cellphone and detailed work history appears to have been taken offline by Friday. Attempts to contact Kavungal directly via listed phone numbers and a detailed email were not successful.
After Gary: ministries — and possibly schools
Despite accusations that would later emerge, Kavungal’s employment history shows he may have worked for as many as five Catholic-affiliated schools for children between 1988 and 2011.
From 1988 to 1991, his resume states he worked in two schools for children — first as a boarding rector, then as a “moral science teacher” at another institution. Between 1991 to 2000, it states he worked at two monasteries.
By 2000, he headed to Sweden. In September 2000, he worked as a priest and stayed until January 2004, Diocese of Stockholm spokeswoman Kristina Hellner confirmed via email.
While there, a woman accused Kavungal of a sexual harassment incident “but did not want to go to the police,” Hellner said.
“The Bishop of the (Swedish) Catholic Diocese informed the CMI superior in India about this,” Hellner said.
By 2004, Kavungal moved to Kenya, where his resume states he worked for one year as director of the Mount Sinai School.
Aside from Sweden, the Post-Tribune was unable to independently verify Kavungal’s employment.
International calls to India and Kenya were often hampered by poor reception. Emails to five CMI-run schools in India and Kenya were not returned.
A man who answered the phone at Mount Sinai School in Kenya said staff there could not immediately confirm Kavungal’s employment history in 2004. When a reporter informed him of accusations from the Gary Diocese, the line disconnected.
Back in India again by 2005, Kavungal appears to have worked at another two religious schools until 2011, according to the resume. Email and Facebook messages to both were not returned.
The Pennsylvania grand jury report found over 300 Roman Catholic priests molested more than 1,000 children — and possibly many more — since the 1940s, and senior church officials, including a man who is now the archbishop of Washington, D.C., systematically covered up the abuse.
The grand jury probe was the most extensive investigation of Catholic clergy abuse by any state.
Its findings echoed many earlier church investigations around the country, describing widespread sexual abuse and church officials’ concealment of it. U.S. bishops have acknowledged that more than 17,000 people nationwide have reported being molested by priests and others in the church.
The Gary Diocese released its own list of 10 priests weeks later. It did not include the Rev. Raymond Lukac, a former teacher at Bishop Noll Institute in Hammond, who was named in the Pennsylvania report.
Any victim of clergy abuse is asked to call Kelly Venegas at 219-769-9292 or Steven Butera at 219-838-8001 with the Diocese of Gary.
Secret adult male and female sexual relationships with priests have left some with 'horrendous' consequences
Is it time for a #MeToo moment in the church?
Joanne McCarthy
Local News
Australia: A woman groomed for sex by the head of a Catholic order said it is time for women and men in abusive and exploitative sexual relationships with clergy to speak up in their own “Me Too” campaign as the Catholic Church deals with challenges to mandatory celibacy.
“Celibate priests, it’s a sham,” said the woman from a devout family who was in her 20s when Discalced Carmelite head Father John Venard Smith* requested she “pleasure” him while he “reverenced” her body during spiritual sessions at the order’s Varroville priory.
*Not to be confused with Marist Brother John Venard Smith who died in January, 2018.
The late Father Smith was in his 70s when he singled her out for attention as she trained to join the Carmelite secular order in the early 1990s, when she believed Carmelite priests were “about as close to heaven as you’re going to get”.
“I was a sitting duck,” she said.
The Catholic Church had to take responsibility for clergy who preyed on vulnerable adult male and female victims as it had been forced to acknowledge child sex victims, the woman who wanted to be known as Ann said.
“He put his arms around me. He held me. Then he asked ‘Is this how you would like to pray to God?’. He knew I was married. Women don’t want to talk about this because they’re ashamed, they’re scared they won’t be believed and they blame themselves, but God knows how many other women he’d been doing that with,” Ann said.
She came forward as the National Council of Priests of Australia confirmed its support for optional celibacy and married priests after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found mandatory celibacy was an “unattainable ideal” for some priests which contributed to a “culture of secrecy and hypocrisy” in the church.
Challenging: Clinical psychologist Dr Gerardine Robinson told the royal commission some men and women experienced 'horrendous' consequences from secret sexual interactions with Catholic clergy.
Clinical psychologist Dr Gerardine Robinson, who worked with the Australian Catholic Church’s Encompass program for a decade until 2008 treating 1100 clergy, said research suggested at least 5000 men and 10,000 women had been in secret sexual relationships or interactions with Australian Catholic clergy over decades, with “horrendous” consequences for some.
Her Australian research replicated American findings that “clearly indicates four times as many adult women and twice as many adult men are sexually abused by clergy than children”, Dr Robinson told the royal commission in February, 2017.
About 2500 people gave evidence at royal commission private hearings about being sexually abused as children by Catholic offenders. Dr Robinson used the figure, acknowledged as an under-representation of the actual number of children sexually abused, to estimate the number of adults in sexual interactions with Catholic clergy. Evidence to the royal commission included research indicating only 50 per cent of clergy practise celibacy at any one time.
Only 50 per cent of clergy practise celibacy at any one time
“Children are not the primary target; vulnerable adult men and women are,” Dr Robinson told the royal commission.
While some Catholic clergy were able to have healthy consensual sexual relationships with men and women, despite breaking their celibacy vows, others had abusive and exploitative sexual relationships with vulnerable, devout or troubled adult men and women that the church had difficulty recognising as abusive, she said.
Celibacy did not cause sexual abuse but was a contributing factor, she said. For some priests “filled with shame” about their sexual needs, held up on a pedestal and with ready access to devout and emotionally vulnerable adults, mandatory celibacy was “a recipe for disaster”, Dr Robinson told the royal commission.
”My personal opinion is that I think celibacy should be optional,” she said in evidence.
In a speech to the National Council of Priests of Australia last week Dr Robinson was more blunt.
“Those who resign themselves to mandatory celibacy as a necessary ‘sacrifice’ required at ordination are hugely at risk of sexual boundary violations,” she said.
It came only weeks after Pope Francis acknowledged the church’s duty to protect minors and vulnerable adults after damning allegations about the grooming and sexual abuse of altar boys and adult seminarians by American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
In 2015 Victorian Blessed Sacrament Congregation priest Tom Knowles became the first Australian Catholic priest defrocked for having a “long-term inappropriate sexual relationship” with NSW Central Coast woman Jennifer Herrick. She sought redress for a relationship that began with grooming by the priest when she was a vulnerable young woman with a disability.
In a 2018 study involving 23 women and six men who experienced clergy sexual misconduct as adults, Queensland University of Technology researchers argued the Catholic Church maintained “an overall attitude of victim blaming” by focusing on adults “consenting” to sexual interaction, while failing to acknowledge abusive clerics taking advantage of the vulnerable.
“Clergy sexual misconduct against adults does not occur because there is a vulnerable adult but, rather, because there is a cleric willing to misuse their powers to abuse adult vulnerabilities,” researchers Stephen de Weger and Jodie Death said.
Clericalism within the Catholic Church led to an “institutional tolerance for sexual misconduct and the protection of perpetrators” and a failure to see the sexual abuse of adults in the context of professional misconduct and boundary violations, they found.
“In comparison to other professional bodies the Catholic Church has not yet fully, officially or culturally accepted a framework for clergy sexual misconduct of adults that begins with the behaviour of the power-abusing cleric/professional, instead of with the status or behaviour of a vulnerable adult.”
Mr de Weger said the findings of a small but growing body of literature on the sexual abuse of adults in the church required a response from Australia’s legal profession “to investigate this form of professional sexual misconduct more closely”.
Sydney lawyer Jason Moody of Artemis Legal said his firm had received many inquiries from adults alleging abusive sexual relationships with clergy and “we have seen evidence of considerable harm arising out of this type of adult sexual abuse”.
In many cases there was a legal duty of care on the clergy and church, particularly where there was evidence of a power imbalance, he said.
A major barrier for personal injury claims against the church was they were often made out of time, Mr Moody said.
“The law was recently changed in most jurisdictions in Australia to largely remove the limitations period of child abuse, but for those who were adults when they were abused claims in NSW need to be made generally within three or six years from the date of the act,” he said.
In 2002 the Discalced Carmelite order gave its “deepest apologies for the grave wrong that has been done” to Ann, after she reported Father Smith’s “reverencing” of her body following his death in 1994. The apology letter included acknowledgement of “the steps you sadly had to take to bring this case to light”.
The sexualising of her spiritual sessions with Father Smith at the Carmelite Varroville priory started during their third session when he invited her from his office to his adjoining private room, and linked the contemplative life of the order with the spirituality of the “reverencing” of the body.
“He would talk about Mary (the mother of Jesus) and tell me I was blessed because this was the purity of the contemplative life. He would tell me I had to believe in this. He would say ‘I reverence you like I would be reverencing Mary’,” she said.
He stressed it had to be kept a secret and telling anyone about it would be “like throwing pearls to swine”.
Their extended sexual interactions did not include intercourse but he requested she “pleasure” him through oral sex. From that point the spiritual meetings focused on his requests for her to “pleasure” him.
At their last meeting only months before his death in 1994 Father Smith was depressed and said he was in a dark place, but asked Ann to “pleasure” him.
Ann said she experienced a breakdown after a psychologist described how child sex offenders groom children. “I was able to see the experience with Father Smith for what it was because I had a perspective about it I didn’t have while I was in it, that he had groomed me,” she said.
Acknowledgement: Discalced Carmelite Friar Father Greg Homeming told the secular order he had no reason not to believe Ann's allegations against Father John Venard Smith.
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