Priests Accused of Sexually Abusing Deaf Children in Argentina to Soon Face Trial
Belleville, Ill, priest who said he ‘never hurt a child’ accused for second time of sexually abusing a boy
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ezequiel Villalonga signs frantically with his hands to express the power he feels after years of suffering now that the priests whom he and other former students at an Argentine institute for the deaf accuse of abuse are finally going to trial.
Villalonga, 18, is one of about 20 ex-students of the Antonio Próvolo Institute for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children in Mendoza province who say they were sexually abused, including cases of rape, between 2004 and 2016.
Their alleged abusers go on trial starting Monday in a case that Pope Francis, an Argentine, has not commented on publicly despite its closeness to his papacy.
The complaints at the institute came to light at the end of 2016 and created a scandal that deepened when it emerged that one of the accused, the Rev. Nicola Corradi, had been reported for similar allegations at the Antonio Próvolo institute in Verona, Italy, and that the pope had been notified that Corradi was running a similar center in Argentina.
“Those of us from the Próvolo in Mendoza said: ‘no more fear. We have the power,'” Villalonga told The Associated Press with the help of an interpreter, explaining how others decided to come forward after an initial “brave” person did so.
The AP doesn’t name alleged sexual assault victims unless they make their identities public, which Villalonga did in an interview in the headquarters of the human rights group Xumek, which is the plaintiff in the trial.
Alejandro Gullé, chief prosecutor in Mendoza, called the trial “unprecedented, one of the most important in this province, one whose importance will transcend this country.”
On trial for aggravated sexual abuse of minors, sexual touching and corrupting minors will be: Corradi, an Italian who is 83 and under house arrest; the Rev. Horacio Corbacho, a 59-year-old priest; and Armando Gómez, 63. The latter two are Argentines and in prison in Mendoza. Corbacho has pleaded not guilty and the other two defendants have not entered pleas.
They are charged with 28 alleged crimes against 10 deaf minors and face prison sentences of up to 20 years. It is the first in a series of trials in which other former members of the now-closed school will be judged. Others implicated include two nuns who allegedly participated or knew about the abuses, as well as former directors and employees who are accused of knowing about the abuse but taking no action.
Prosecutors say that not only were children sexually touched and abused, but were sometimes forced to watch pornography or perform sex acts among themselves.
Jorge Bordón, an institute employee, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2018 in the case for rape, sexual touching and corrupting minors by forcing children to perform sex acts on each other. But the former students at the Mendoza school believe they can achieve the first prison sentences for priests and clergy at the Roman Catholic institute, which has other branches. They are also demanding Francis strip the alleged abusers of their status as priests in the canonical process.
“Francis was very quiet about the abusive priests, but now the sentence is coming,” said Villalonga. “I know that the pope is afraid because the deaf have been brave.”
The Vatican has not commented publicly on the trial. The Holy See would be loath to be seen as interfering in a criminal trial, and typically defers all comment, as well as the outcome of its own investigations, until after all investigations by civil law enforcement are completed.
In 2017, it sent two Argentine priests to investigate what happened in Mendoza. Dante Simon, a judicial vicar, told the AP that the acts denounced are “horrible” and “more than plausible.” He said the pontiff expressed his sadness and told him that “he was very worried about this situation and it would be a labor.”
In a report submitted to the Vatican in June of that year, Simon requested the application of the maximum penalty to Corradi and Corbacho, that they be made to “resign directly by the Holy Father.” The report must be reviewed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The case hits close to home for the Vatican, which is accused of having disregarded the warnings of the alleged Italian victims of Corradi, when just months earlier the pope had promulgated new rules to combat abuse in the church.
Corradi was singled out for similar abuses committed since the 1950s at the Provolo institute in Verona, Italy. His name appeared in a letter addressed to the pope in 2014 in which the Italian accusers mentioned several allegedly abusive priests who continued to exercise the ministry and said that Corradi and three other priests were in Argentina.
“Two and a half years have passed (since the Mendoza case was uncovered) and Francisco has not uttered a single word to the survivors of the Próvolo in Mendoza,” Paola González, whose 16-year-old daughter was an alleged victim at the institute.
According to the investigation, the alleged abusers especially targeted children who spent the night in the institute’s shelters, some of whom came from surrounding provinces.
Prosecutor Gustavo Stroppiana said one victim claimed to have been “tied with chains” while abused.
“We found prophylactics and birth control pills” in raids carried on the Próvolo institute in Mendoza, he said.
The crimes allegedly took place in the dormitories of the two priests and of the children, in a loft and in a small chapel called the House of God where the children took first communion.
The children, with limited financial resources, didn’t dare report the abuse because they were threatened with expulsion or the imprisonment of their parents, prosecutors said. Their communication skills were limited because they were not taught sign language at the school.
Seriously? How could it be called a school for the deaf?
Authorities in Buenos Aires province recently ordered the arrest of Corradi for alleged abuses in the Próvolo Institute in La Plata, a city about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from the capital, Buenos Aires. It is believed the Italian priest went to that center in the 1980s after he was transferred from Verona before heading to Mendoza in the 1990s.
The accusers’ relatives say the transfers of Corradi would follow the church practice at the time of moving accused priests around the world to different parishes and locations.
Many Argentines are wondering why Francis did not remove Corradi from the Mendoza institute after being warned about the allegations against him in Verona.
Not just Argentines!
Corradi’s name appeared publicly in 2009 when 67 deaf people said they had been abused in the Verona institute by 24 priests, lay workers and religious brothers. They said he had been moved to Argentina. The Italian priest’s name appeared again in a letter addressed to the pope in 2014 that pointed out the potential danger he represented to minors.
The Verona diocese sanctioned four of the 24 defendants, but not Corradi. There was no criminal case because of the elapsed time.
Faced with criticism by the families of the Argentine victims, the Archbishopric of Mendoza said it didn’t know the background of the Italian priest when he arrived in the province and that the priest didn’t depend on the local church but on a religious congregation based in Italy. It expressed its “solidarity and closeness” with the accusers and considered that “the corresponding responsibilities and sanctions” should be established.
Anne Barret Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, told the AP that she does not expect a response from the Vatican and the pope.
“Pope Francis will continue to pretend that he has no responsibility for the atrocities in Mendoza. If he does respond, it will be a pro forma statement about his commitment to ending child sex abuse in the Church.”
She added that when the crimes at the Verona school made world headlines in 2009 and 2010, “the pope was president of the Argentine bishops’ conference. He could have ordered an investigation of the Mendoza and La Plata schools then.”
“And certainly, as pope, he could have acted years ago. He was notified by the Verona victims of Corradi’s presence in Argentina.”
Villalonga said he hopes a conviction will restore his calm.
“The pope has ignored us, taken us the deaf for fools,” he said.
Belleville, Ill, priest who said he ‘never hurt a child’ accused for second time of sexually abusing a boy
Belleville News-Democrat
Catholic church leaders in the Belleville Diocese promoted a priest they knew as a danger to children until he was in charge of their largest parish and its grade school, where he is accused of sexually abusing students, according to a civil suit filed earlier this month.
Joseph Schwaegel, who was first accused of child sexual abuse in a 1999 lawsuit, has been named in a new complaint filed against the diocese July 19 in St. Clair County Circuit Court.
Schwaegel died in 2016. During his career, diocese officials had given him the elevated title of monsignor and eventually made him rector of Belleville’s St. Peter’s Cathedral and superintendent of Cathedral Grade School.
He was added to the diocese’s list of accused priests who were removed from their churches in 1994.
The latest plaintiff to come forward with allegations against Schwaegel filed under the pseudonym John Doe. A spokesman for the diocese could not be reached for comment. The lawyers representing the plaintiff were not immediately available for comment.
In August 1992, Monsignor Joseph R. Schwaegel of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Belleville sang the National Anthem before the Cardinals game. Belleville News-Democrat file BELLEVILLE NEWS-DEMOCRAT FILE
From 1987, when Doe was a 6-year-old starting kindergarten, until 1989, Schwaegel would call Doe and other students out of class to be alone with him, according to the civil lawsuit. The complaint states that is when Schwaegel sexually abused Doe on the diocese’s property.
Jeph Hemmer, who had also been a student at Cathedral Grade School, said Schwaegel abused him in 1973 at the school and rectory when Hemmer was 8 years old, according to his lawsuit in federal court. Hemmer’s lawsuit, which was refiled in federal court in 2001 after a year in civil court, ended in a settlement. U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford Proud dismissed the lawsuit against the diocese in that case. Proud died earlier this year.
Both lawsuits argue that the diocese should have prevented Schwaegel from spending time alone with children. There had been allegations made against him before 1973 that were covered up, according to the federal lawsuit. Schwaegel was later arrested for sexual misconduct with an adult in 1987 and served one year of probation while he was in charge of the parish and school, the civil lawsuit states.
He was arrested again in 1994 for requesting sex from an undercover police officer at a highway rest stop. At the time, Schwaegel told the Belleville News-Democrat that his arrests stemmed from an addiction to sex, adding that he wasn’t attracted to children.
“I have never hurt a child, nor would I,” he said in the 1994 interview. Schwaegel had also told the BND that he “never engaged in sexual misconduct,” which he defined as involving a minor or non-consenting adult.
Doe now has post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, according to the lawsuit. He is seeking damages in the civil suit.
PRIEST WAS FRIENDS WITH HIGH-RANKING CHURCH MEMBERS
Schwaegel announced his resignation from the parish in a letter in 1993. The announcement came after Schwaegel spent five months in a therapy program that he and the diocese said was for stress and anxiety.
He left St. Peter’s at a time when several priests in the Belleville Diocese had been removed from their parishes because of allegations of sexual misconduct. He denied that was the case for him. Later, Schwaegel said that he had actually been undergoing treatment for sex addiction.
Twelve priests and a deacon were removed from their ministries by a diocese review board following reporting by the Belleville News-Democrat in the mid-’90s.
The newest lawsuit accuses officials in the diocese, including Schwaegel, of trying to keep allegations against the priests quiet.
Schwaegel was known as the “singing priest.” He released multiple albums, including one he dedicated to former Bishop William Cosgrove.
His other assignments included St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Trenton, the Meredith Home in Belleville, Notre Dame Academy in Belleville, St. Bernard Catholic Church in Albers and St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Belleville.
Priests accused of sex abuse turned to
under-the-radar group in Michigan
By MARTHA MENDOZA, JULIET LINDERMAN AND GARANCE BURKE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DRYDEN, Mich.
The current headquarters of Opus Bono Sacerdotii is in Dryden, Mich. For nearly two decades, the small nonprofit organization, operating out of a series of unmarked buildings in rural Michigan.
The visiting priests arrived discreetly, day and night.
Stripped of their collars and cassocks, they went unnoticed in a series of tiny Midwestern towns as they were escorted into dingy warehouses and offices. Neighbors had no idea some of them might have been accused sexual predators.
For nearly two decades, a small nonprofit group called Opus Bono Sacerdotii has operated out of unmarked buildings in rural Michigan, providing money, shelter, transport, legal help and other support to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse.
And while powerful clerics have publicly pledged to hold the church accountable for the crimes of its clergy and help survivors heal, some of them arranged meetings, offered blessings or quietly sent checks to this organization that backed the abusers, The Associated Press has found.
Catholic leaders say the church has no official relationship with the group. But Opus Bono successfully forged networks within the church hierarchy.
The Associated Press unraveled the continuing story of Opus Bono in dozens of interviews with experts, lawyers, clergy members and former employees, along with hundreds of pages of documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests.
In recent months, two of the group's founders, Joe Maher and Peter Ferrara, were forced out after Michigan's attorney general found Opus Bono had misused donated funds and misled contributors. A third co-founder, Father Eduard Perrone, was abruptly removed from ministry earlier this month after the AP began asking about an allegation that he had sexually abused a child decades ago. Perrone denies the allegation.
Over the years, Opus Bono brought on as employees or advisers at least three clergymen accused of sexual abuse, and offered sympathizers a tax-deductible, anonymous method of sending money to specific accused priests.
When serial pedophile Jason Sigler, a former priest, was sent to jail for abusing dozens of minors, Opus Bono was there for him, with regular visits and commissary cash, said a former employee. When another priest, Gregory Ingels, was criminally charged with abusing a teen, Opus Bono made him a legal adviser.
The group's current and former leadership did not respond to questions from the AP.
In 2003, the fledgling group won backing from influential Roman Catholics, including Father Richard John Neuhaus, the editor of a conservative Catholic journal who served as an unofficial adviser to President George W. Bush, and Cardinal Avery Dulles, the son of a former U.S. Secretary of State. Dulles was a preeminent conservative Catholic theologian.
Maher met with Vatican officials in Rome, and had visits from them in his group's Michigan offices.
Still, since 2002, Opus Bono has played a little-known role among conservative Catholic groups that portray the abuse scandal as a media and legal feeding frenzy. These groups contend the scandal maligns the priesthood and harms the Catholic faith.
As it should be! You get what you deserve.
Opus Bono established itself as a counterpoint to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and other groups that have accused the church of trying to cover up the scandal and failing to support victims of clergy misconduct. Opus Bono focuses on what it considers the neglected victims: priests, and the church itself.
"All of these people that have made allegations are very well taken care of," Opus Bono founder Maher said in a radio interview, contending that many abuse accusations lodged against priests are false. "The priests are not at all very well taken care of."
As part of the legal settlement earlier this year with the state attorney general, Maher agreed to never again run a nonprofit in Michigan. But that agreement appears to have already been violated: He is now running a near-identical nonprofit group in a different part of the state, the AP found.
The new group is called Men of Melchizedek, a reference to an Old Testament figure who was thought to be both a king and a priest. It is registered in Indiana, but its website says its "principal office" is located in Michigan. The group lists Maher as its president.
In a March letter to the Michigan attorney general, Maher's attorney described him as a case worker whose labors "are a corporal and spiritual work of mercy; it is how he practices his Catholic faith." The letter said the new group will provide the same services as Opus Bono, but warned that "more vulnerable beneficiaries may be lost to suicide during the transition."
Both Opus Bono and Men of Melchizedek now list the same canon lawyer, the Rev. David L. Deibel, as their chairman. Deibel, Maher and Maher's attorneys did not return multiple messages from the AP.
On its website, the new group promises "non-judgmental support and life-time accompaniment for our priest-clients who are so very much in need."
"We turn no priest away," it says.
Former Victorian Catholic priest jailed for
historical child sex offences
By Charlotte King
ABCNews
Former Catholic priest Paul David Ryan, photographed in the 1980s, when he committed child sexual abuse
A former Catholic priest who showed pornographic images to children and assaulted a teenager while he slept has been jailed for two years and two months for historic sexual assault offences.
Paul David Ryan, now a 70-year-old pensioner, was charged after a 2016 police investigation sparked by the sex abuse royal commission.
The charges relate to three boys, who were aged 14, 15 and 17 at the time of the assaults.
The first boy was training to be an altar boy and the other two were students at the Warrnambool Christian Brothers' College, where Ryan worked as a school chaplain and provided sex education classes.
Apparently!
Victorian County Court Judge Susan Pullen described the crimes as "brazen", "humiliating and degrading", and said they occurred against a backdrop of careful grooming.
During his sentencing today, Judge Pullen told the court the former priest used the power he wielded "to facilitate" his crimes and that this power made his victims especially vulnerable.
The court heard Ryan asked one victim questions about masturbation during confession, bought the students alcohol and cigarettes, and showed them pornographic magazines that he carried around in a briefcase featuring naked men.
The offences occurred mainly in a religious setting.
Sent to US for 'treatment'
Ryan assaulted the 15-year-old boy in 1981 in the sacristy of St Joseph's church in Warrnambool where he worked as an assistant priest.
The court heard he grabbed at the boy's genitals after checking to see how well the altar boy's robes fitted and while the boy's mother waited for him in the car outside.
The 17-year-old student was confronted by Ryan in 1985 during a religious retreat for students at Lower Plenty. The boy woke up to find the priest with his head over the student's groin.
Ryan, who was aged 37 at the time, then proceeded to masturbate and orally rape the boy.
In 1992, Mr Ryan was appointed assistant priest at Ararat, where he found his third victim — a 14-year-old altar boy.
The priest would hold regular get-togethers with about six altar boys on Saturday nights at the presbytery.
One night, when the 14-year-old and Ryan were playing cards alone, Ryan changed the game to strip poker. When the boy was dressed only in his underwear the priest knelt down in front of him and rubbed his penis.
In sentencing Ryan, Judge Pullen noted the former priest had been sent to receive "treatment" in the United States after his ordination in 1976.
Catholic authorities were concerned about Ryan's sexual activity with other seminarians when he was training to be a priest in Melbourne, and the royal commission heard evidence that a mother had approached Ballarat's former bishop, Ronald Mulkearns, with claims the priest had assaulted her son almost immediately after his ordination.
The court heard that he was placed "on notice" from Catholic authorities not to reoffend in 1980.
"The speed at which you reoffended is alarming," Judge Pullen said.
It wasn't until 1993 that he was defrocked.
Judge Pullen told the court the sexual assaults happened against a backdrop of grooming. "Weapons were not needed to gain compliance," she said. "I do not accept you have accepted full responsibility of your offending."
A psychologist's report submitted to the court identified a range of cognitive distortions that underpinned Ryan's offending. It noted he held the view that the teenagers were able to make informed choice about whether or not they wanted to participate in the sexual activity.
"These misconceived beliefs provided a context in which Mr Ryan felt able to abdicate his adult responsibilities and prioritise his own pleasure," the report said.
'Joy of companionship' taken
One of the three victims attended court for Ryan's sentencing flanked by supporters.
The judge relayed the lifelong impact that the offences had on his ability to form relationships.
In his victim impact statement the now 51-year-old victim said he had never allowed anybody to get close to him as a result of Ryan's actions and said had been robbed of "the joy of companionship".
He said his trust had been breached and that he suffered from post-traumatic stress and had a fear of enclosed spaces.
Judge Pullen noted the victim had approached the former Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns in the 1990s to report the abuse and was specifically told not to go to the police.
The man said he felt guilty about the inaction, and believed there was "no cure" or healing possible for him.
Reading from the victim impact statement of Ryan's Ararat victim, now aged 42, Judge Pullen told the court the offences had changed the man's life forever and left him with visions which continued to haunt him.
Those visions "burned inside" him for years without anyone knowing, Judge Pullen read.
Ryan was sentenced to a minimum of 17 months' jail, which amounts to 13 months' after time served.
Wow! A lifetime of misery for at least 3 men and he gets 13 months, not 13 years. Crazy!
PA woman who kept her abuse by a priest secret for
66 years gets six-figure settlement
66 years gets six-figure settlement
The now 85-year-old victim is "strong as an ox" but
still feels ashamed by what happened to her
By Corky Siemaszko, NBCstill feels ashamed by what happened to her
For 66 years, she kept a dark secret about how her parish priest in Pennsylvania sexually abused her when she was just 6 years old.
It took a brush with mortality to convince the now 85-year-old woman to “put all of her ducks in a row” and file a report against the Rev. Martin J. Fleming, her lawyer revealed Wednesday.
Fleming in 1940 committed “two acts of childhood sexual abuse against 'Jane Doe' after her mother passed away,” attorney Michael Garabedian said in a statement. “She has been attempting to heal ever since.”
Of course, pedophile predators always go for the most vulnerable children.
Garabedian, whose crusade against abusive Catholic clergymen in Boston was dramatized in the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight,” said the woman, whom he did not name, has been awarded a six-figure settlement by the Diocese of Scranton’s compensation program.
“The sexual abuse of any child is wrong. The sexual abuse of a child by a member of the clergy, no matter when it occurred, is particularly abhorrent,” the Diocese of Scranton said in a statement Wednesday.
“The Diocese applauds her strength for coming forward and hopes that the compensation aids in her healing,” the statement went on to say.
Fleming was assigned to Holy Name Parish in Swoyerville, Pennsylvania, at the time of the alleged abuse, the lawyer said. He died in 1950.
But Fleming, who was born May 2, 1869, and ordained in 1898, is on the Scranton diocese’s list of priests credibly accused of sexually abusing a minor.
Garabedian’s announcement came on the last day that priest sex abuse victims could register for the dioceses’ Independent Survivors Compensation Program, which has already paid some $7 million to 44 survivors, according to the local Times-Tribune newspaper. The program was established in January of this year “to bring some peace and healing to survivors,” the Diocese of Scranton said.
“She’s as strong as an ox but she is terrified about anybody finding out that she was a victim, there is still a lot of shame there,” said Robert Hoatson, a former New Jersey priest and clergy sexual abuse survivor who now runs Road to Recovery, an organization that helps other victims. “She is not the oldest victim to come forward, but she is definitely among the oldest I have spoken with.”
Fleming’s accuser first told her story to a representative from the Diocese of Venice, Florida, which then reported the allegation on April 14, 2006 to the Diocese of Scranton, according to a summary Garabedian provided to the media.
Then on June 30 of that year, the accuser met with then-Scranton Bishop John Dougherty. “She noted that she was in heart failure and ‘wants to put all of her ducks in a row,'” the summary said. “She advised that this deepest secret came back again and again to trouble her spirit and cause her emotional distress.”
Dougherty, the summary said, “called the abuse an abomination, expressing his deep sorrow for the wounding of her child self. The victim was strongly encouraged to consult with a woman therapist or trusted female friend.” Dougherty retired in 2009 and could not be located for comment.
Fleming served as a priest in eastern Pennsylvania from 1898 until he died. He had served in seven different parishes before he arrived at Holy Name parish in Swoyersville, which was then known as “The Irish Church.”
Hoatson, who works closely with Garabedian, said he is not aware of any other abuse complaints against Fleming but added: “I’m sure my phone will start ringing once this story comes out.”
“As a Church, we must recognize the burden of what has happened and continue to encourage anyone who may be a survivor of abuse to come forward,” the Diocese of Scranton said.
Catholic Church in N.H. Publishes Names of Priests Accused of Sex Abuse of Minors
By NHPR STAFF The Catholic Diocese of Manchester is publishing a comprehensive list of priests accused of sexually assaulting minors.
The report includes the names of priests both living and deceased dating back to 1950.
While all of the names were previously public, the Diocese says it created a website page as an act of "ownership and accountability."
"This is meant as an act of ownership and accountability," Bishop Peter A. Libasci said in a statement. "It is my hope that by making this information available, we are holding ourselves accountable to the evils of the past, and offering timely assistance, support and resources to those individuals and families who have been affected by the sexual abuse of a minor.”
The online site also includes resources for survivors of sexual abuse. The diocese says it hopes to restore trust. It’s paid nearly $30 million in recent years to compensate victims.
In response to the new web page, the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence called for eliminating the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse crimes. Amanda Grady Sexton, a spokeswoman for the coalition, noted that 52 is the average age that a survivor of child sexual abuse discloses the abuse. "It's clear that laws in New Hampshire must be reformed in order to protect victims of sexual abuse and to hold their offenders accountable," she said in a statement.
Portland Archdiocese Settles 8 Sexual Abuse Claims Against Former Oregon Priest
by Conrad Wilson, OPBPortland, Ore.
The Archdiocese of Portland has agreed to settle eight claims of sexual abuse involving former North Bend priest Rev. Pius Brazauskas.
Together the settlements add up to nearly $4 million.
The alleged abuse stems from about 1975 to 1985 involving boys who at the time of the abuse were between 5 and 16 years old. At the time, Brazauskas was in his 70s.
Brazauskas died on March 1, 1990. He was 84 years old.
A January 2018 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon identified three victims as J.B., S.R. and S.F. They were the first sexual abuse allegations against Brazauskas.
After the lawsuit was filed, five more men came forward, said Peter Janci, attorney for the victims.
“We think there are a lot of other victims out there,” Janci said. “He was somebody who had an insatiable proclivity to abuse kids. In my career, representing hundreds of victims of child sexual abuse I don’t usually see individuals who develop that inclination in their 70s.”
Attorneys for the Archdiocese of Portland didn’t return interview requests.
On July 31, 2019, the Archdiocese of Portland settled a lawsuit involving eight alleged sexual abuse victims. The victims say Rev. Pius Brazauskas abused them in North Bend, Ore. between 1975 and 1985. Provided by Stephen Crew, Crew Janci LLP.
Most of the victims were altar boys, Janci said. “Some of then suffered abuse year after year, for many years,” Janci said. “For many of them that was a weekly, or more than once a week occurrence.”
Brazauskas had a similar pattern for how he abused the young boys, Janci said. He would isolate them either at the church or at his home, where he also said a weekly mass, Janci said.
“He would find ways to get boys alone and he would sexually abuse them,” Janci said. “He was known for his affection towards children, for his interest in children.”
A Register-Guard article from May 1957 profiled Brazauskas, noting his affinity for children at the hospital where he worked. “He always has candy and bubble gum for the youngsters, and to some he is known only as ‘Dr. Bubblegum,’” the article said.
Brazauskas was also an internationally known painter whose work hung in Catholic facilities around the Northwest.
“He would tell these boys that he was painting them into these religious scenes,” Janci said. “Of course, he would tell one boy that, he would abuse that boy; the next boy would come over and he would tell that boy it was actually him he was painting.”
Janci said he believes this is the largest group to come forward to credibly accuse a single priest in Oregon since 2004, when the Archdiocese of Portland declared bankruptcy. He said even though so much is known about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, this case represents what’s still out there.
“Unfortunately, the Pius Brazauskas situation is likely an indicator that there are many victims and probably many abusive priests we still don’t know about,” Janci said.
You can bet the farm on that!
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