‘I’m tired of being quiet’: Child Victims Act suit retraumatizes
and empowers Schenectady woman
By Zachary Matson | December 13, 2020
Colleen Garbarini, of Schenectady, stands outside the St. Paul the Apostle Church in Schenectady
PHOTOGRAPHER: ERICA MILLER
Colleen Garbarini has to make a plan before entering a grocery store: the mask can’t stay on too long. She knows the mask is there to protect her and others, but the feeling of it covering her face stirs deep emotions four decades in the making. At one point, she had to abandon her cart in a store as the oppressive feeling overtook her.
“The longer I had it on the more anxiety I had, which turned into a panic attack,” Garbarni said as she described the feeling. The mask takes her back to when she was a little girl and her abuser tried to quiet her when other people were nearby.
“There were times I was with him, and we could hear voices outside the room, and he would cover my mouth and tell me to be quiet,” she recalled.
Just as other daily minutia throughout her life has, the mask, now a central part of everyone’s day-to-day life, reminds her of still-healing emotional wounds.
“The whole idea of wearing a mask is very triggering,” she said. “I have had to work through and continue to work through in therapy that I’m not back in 1980. I’m 49 years old and the mask is for my safety, and I’m not being held down and I’m not having my mouth covered. Any of that stuff can be triggered by the mask.”
Garbarini, who grew up in Schenectady’s Catholic community in the 1970s and 1980s, in April joined thousands of other New Yorkers who have filed lawsuits, many against the Catholic Church, over allegations of child sexual abuse under the state’s Child Victims Act law. Last year the law opened the door to child abuse civil claims that previously were barred by statutes of limitation. She named Brother Clement Murphy, who worked at Notre Dame Bishop Gibbons, as her abuser. Murphy has appeared on multiple lists of credibly-accused child abusers in the clergy, including one maintained by the Albany Diocese, and as many as 10 suits have named Murphy as an abuser.
When the first round of child victim suits was filed in August 2019, Garbarini picked up a newspaper and read allegations disturbingly similar to her own experience as a child when she saw that a woman accused Murphy of sexually abusing her as a young girl.
“Seeing in the newspaper that somebody over a decade before me was abused and it was talked about and nothing was done about it at that point,” she said, crying as she recounted the moment she decided to come forward. “It infuriates me if it was a common thing they talked about; he sat on the frickin’ playground.”
Even as the child abuse law neared passage, Garbarini did not plan on coming forward, she said.
“I didn’t want to be public, I didn’t want to be whatever, then I read that in the newspaper, and I lost my damn mind,” she said. “Honestly, the anger and rage pushed me to move to the next step. When I saw it in black and white and someone else said it, it was like, oh my God.”
Garbarini’s story reflects the long and painful journeys of each of the thousands of child sexual abuse survivors who have stepped forward with allegations of sex abuse since the new law went into effect, some allegations dating to the 1950s. State lawmakers extended the filing window to August 14, and cases are gradually winding their way through the pandemic-hobbled court system. A local attorney handling hundreds of child abuse claims said the clergy abuse suits are moving more slowly than cases filed against school districts and other entities as the clergy lawyers track down scores of insurance policies.
Prosecutor drops rape charges against defrocked Catholic priest
By Richard Baker, The Age
December 13, 2020 — 7.40pm
Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions has abandoned the prosecution of a former senior Catholic priest charged with raping a disabled female parishioner, bringing to an end a nine-year effort by the woman to seek justice through the courts.
DPP Kerri Judd, QC, made the decision in July to discontinue the prosecution against Thomas Knowles, a former Australian provincial leader of the Order of the Blessed Sacrament, who had a long-running interaction with the woman that was later deemed inappropriate by a church inquiry.
Mr Knowles was charged with two counts of rape in May, a year after the woman contacted Victoria Police about the events of the 1980s.
Father Thomas Knowles in 2013. CREDIT: ANGELA WYLIE
Sources familiar with deliberations inside the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions said Ms Judd's decision was influenced by the alleged victim's delay in reporting matters to police and the amount of time she had spent with Mr Knowles after the alleged sexual assaults.
But the decision has outraged the woman, who is aged in her 60s and has asked not to be identified. Delays in contacting police had not stopped other historic abuse cases from proceeding, she said.
"I’m worried about the signal this sends to all the Victorian priests who have and do assault or rape parishioners, past and present. To me, its tells them that they're OK and no one is coming for them."
The story of the woman's fight to have Mr Knowles' conduct addressed by the church and the legal system encapsulates what lawyers and victims' rights advocates say is an often overlooked and under-reported facet of church abuse: adult parishioners who are targeted by their priest for a sexual relationships in situations where there is a power imbalance.
The DPP's citing of the 35-year delay in making a criminal complaint to police has also surprised some of Melbourne's top sexual abuse lawyers, who said such time lapses were relatively common in historic sex abuse cases.
RCT Law partner and head of abuse law Penny Savidis said while delay could in some cases make a prosecution more difficult, it "should not deter the DPP from at least attempting to pursue the matter through the justice system".
The woman's first unwanted sexual interaction with Mr Knowles was when she was 22 and he was a charismatic 30-year-old earmarked by his order for higher things. Her later psychological reports found she had been "groomed" since she was 19.
Because of her age at the time of the alleged offence, the woman's complaints fell outside the scope of the royal commission into child sex abuse. The commission's final report found sex abuse victims often took more than 20 years to report matters to police.
To take a case to trial, the DPP must be satisfied there is a reasonable prospect of securing a conviction. Sources told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that Ms Judd and other senior prosecutors believed the woman's delay in reporting to police and their apparent inability to exclude the possibility the sexual interaction was consensual had cast doubt over the strength of the case. The woman had continued to spend time with Mr Knowles after the alleged assault.
Ms Judd has, according to sources, sought to assure the woman that the decision did not mean she was not believed nor that what she had complained of did not happen. Rather, it was a reflection of the high standard of proof required in criminal trials.
But the woman strongly disputes the DPP's claim of possible consent and describes her interactions with Mr Knowles as "toxic" and "abusive". She was 19, extremely shy and suffered from a severe orthopaedic condition that caused her to walk with an abnormal gait.
American priest Father Thomas P. Doyle, whose work during the 1980s to uncover sexual abuse in the Catholic Church was instrumental in uncovering the issue in the United States, prepared an expert report to assist the woman's case. It said the betrayal of trust meant this was "not a normal boy-girl relationship, any more than a relationship between a doctor and his patient or client and their therapist".
The woman wondered if the High Court's 7-0 decision to quash Cardinal George Pell's historic child sex abuse convictions in April had made the DPP wary of pursuing her case.
Some of Melbourne's top sexual abuse lawyers say it is unlikely the Pell outcome has influenced other historic sex abuse prosecutions because there was nothing in the High Court verdict that established precedents or new tests.
"There is nothing logically or jurisprudentially from Pell which would have a bearing on prosecuting other historical abuse cases," said Mirko Bagaric, a former DPP lawyer, criminal law expert and dean of law at Swinburne University.
Respected sexual abuse lawyer Viv Waller, of Waller Legal, agreed, saying the High Court's Pell finding did not "represent a departure from existing law in sex abuse matters".
Another senior Melbourne sex abuse lawyer, who asked not to be named, said while delay and issues of consent could complicate prosecutions, they should not be seen as deal-breakers.
Several lawyers said not enough time had passed to make any assessment on the fallout from the Pell matter and the prosecution of other historic abuse cases. Regardless, they said Ms Judd and her team would make decisions based only on the facts before them in each case.
Ms Savidis said some clients had expressed concern about being believed by police and the courts in the wake of the Pell matter, and Ms Waller said it could be devastating to find out a prosecution was not going ahead.
"Witnesses in this situation have told me that they feel disbelieved, disappointed, invalidated and some have been so angry that they have wanted to take justice into their own hands," she said.
The Catholic Church in 2016 formally apologised to the woman for "the long-term inappropriate relationship" with Mr Knowles. She also received a confidential financial settlement. Mr Knowles was also defrocked by the church.
The Age and the Herald revealed how in 2013 the Order of the Blessed Sacrament had welcomed Mr Knowles back to full church duties after he had spent 16 months on "administrative leave" to receive counselling over his interactions with the woman and another female parishioner.
His return to Melbourne CBD's busy St Francis' church came despite then-archbishop Denis Hart stripping him of his faculties to minister in Melbourne.
Ms Judd's office declined to comment on the woman's case.
DOJ probe of Catholic church sex abuse in Pa. goes quiet 2 years later
MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press
DEC 13, 2020 11:43 AM
PHILADELPHIA — Two years ago, the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia joined the long line of ambitious prosecutors investigating the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of priest-abuse complaints.
The Justice Department had never brought a conspiracy case against the church, despite exhaustive reports that showed its long history of burying abuse complaints in secret archives, transferring problem priests to new parishes, silencing accusers and fighting laws to benefit child sex assault victims.
U.S. Attorney William McSwain sent subpoenas to bishops across Pennsylvania asking them to turn over their files and submit to grand jury testimony if asked. The FBI interviewed at least six accused priests, court files show.
But as McSwain’s tenure likely nears its end with President-elect Joe Biden set to take office next month, there’s no sign that any sweeping church indictment is afoot. So far, the case has yielded a single arrest: an 82-year-old defrocked priest, Robert Brennan, charged with lying to FBI agents who showed up at his door.
The filings in that case, though, are revealing. They show the FBI had reached a dead end in the broader church probe five months after Mr. McSwain set his sights on it.
“I can say with confidence that this team has been extraordinarily thorough and that this investigation is now on the wind-down,” an FBI agent wrote in a March 22, 2019, memo to Mr. McSwain’s office.
Victim advocates who have long sought a full reckoning over the alleged cover-up by church officials are disappointed, but perhaps not surprised.
Mr. McSwain is far from the first prosecutor to wonder if the Catholic Church’s handling of sex assault complaints, especially before it adopted its “Dallas Charter” for the protection of children in 2002, was the work of a criminal enterprise.
“Everyone wants a RICO investigation,” said victim advocate Zach Hiner, referring to the criminal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act statute.
“There’s no doubt that these kind of stories can get people’s hopes up, and when they fizzle out, it leads to a ‘People don’t believe us,’ ‘The church is going to win’ mentality,” said Mr. Hiner, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “But I think the mere fact that we’re even talking about it is something that people should be hopeful about.”
In Pennsylvania alone, at least four other state and local prosecutors spent years investigating the church and produced harrowing grand jury reports in 2005, 2011, 2016 and 2018, each time concluding they could not indict any bishops or the church itself because of the years that had passed.
The closest anyone came was the 2011 arrest of Monsignor William Lynn, an aide to the long-reigning Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. Lynn was convicted of child endangerment in 2012 and spent two years in prison, but twice had his conviction overturned. His third trial was getting under way in March when the city courthouse shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. McSwain’s investigation came on the heels of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s two-year probe, which culminated in an explosive report issued in August 2018. Mr. Shapiro detailed Catholic clergy abuse involving more than 1,000 victims over 70 years in Pennsylvania. Many of his peers around the country followed suit.
Just last month, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the Buffalo diocese and two former bishops over an alleged cover-up.
And, nationwide, U.S. dioceses have tallied complaints from 17,000 people and paid out about $4 billion to victims since the 1980s, a figure that could double given recent lookback laws that give them more time to sue. But few prosecutors have filed criminal charges against any church leaders or diocese, usually because of the age of the complaints.
Mr. McSwain may have run into the same problem. He declined to speak with The Associated Press about the case.
“Agents reviewed tens of thousands of documents from the archdiocese that local law enforcement had also reviewed in the previous investigations; those documents revealed no apparent prosecutable federal offenses, but suggested additional investigative steps were warranted,” Mr. McSwain said in a motion filed in Mr. Brennan’s case, explaining the need to interview him along with “numerous clergy, church personnel, victims, and other laypersons.”
David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture, thinks some of the recent investigations may be politically motivated, now that it’s popular to take on not just predator priests but those who enabled them.
“Fifteen years ago, you didn’t want to offend the bishop, you wanted to work with the diocese. Now, the political calculus says go for it,” Mr. Gibson said. “I’m all for taking dioceses to task, but … when is it grandstanding?”
The FBI agents had told Mr. McSwain’s office before interviewing Mr. Brennan that “none of the abuse allegations appear to have a federal nexus” needed to charge him. They nonetheless visited the home he shared with a retired priest in Perryville, Md., for more than an hour.
Public defenders Catherine Henry and Katrina Young in court papers called it “outrageous” that they spoke with Mr. Brennan and searched his computer without contacting his longtime lawyer. They want the charges thrown out. Mr. Brennan had been arrested by Philadelphia prosecutors in 2013, but the abuse charges were dropped when the accuser died weeks later. The same lawyer represented him in a related lawsuit for the next five years. Mr. Brennan gave the agents that lawyer’s contact information.
The judge has not yet ruled on whether to dismiss the case. Mr. Brennan is charged with lying when he said he did not know the accuser despite a graduation photo showing them together. Mr. Brennan, who said the student was just one of many at the large school, is free on bail.
Mr. Gibson believes the church is now belatedly taking steps to address the abuse problem, and thinks public officials should turn some of their attention to child abuse happening elsewhere. He called Mr. Shapiro’s report important, but “an excavation of the past.”
However, lawyer Mitch Garabedian, who helped expose the church abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese in 2002, still hopes to see a federal racketeering case.
“Many victims and survivors desperately want the federal government to prosecute the Catholic church for these crimes because it will help victims try to heal and make the world a safer place for children,” he said Thursday. “The RICO action probably would be appropriate.”
Add racism to church's sex-abuse scandals
“Too often the Catholic Church uses Native American communities to hide pedophile priests,” Phoenix attorney Robert Pastor said.
Written By: David McGrath
Duluth News Tribune
| Dec 13th 2020 - 2pm.
Environmental racism was a term coined to describe historical tendencies in the U.S. to store toxic waste on Native American reservations or build pollution-spewing incinerators in Latino or African-American neighborhoods.
An analogous term may now be required for the Catholic Church’s systematic dumping of sexually abusive priests into minority communities: Racist diocesan exile? Clergy abuse racism?
That’s because, as more information has been extracted through recent lawsuits against dioceses and investigations of abusive priests, it has become clear that the church often banished sex offenders to minority parishes as a way of burying them.
“It is amazing the number of priests whose assignment histories show them lasting a year or so at parish after parish until they get to an under-resourced, minority area, where, miraculously, they stay for a decade or more,” wrote Josh Peck, an attorney with Jeffrey Anderson & Associates, which has represented thousands of abuse victims.
Peck further explained in an email to me that the church knew there was less chance of exposure, not only because minority children assumed they wouldn’t be believed or would be labeled troublemakers, but also because parents felt powerless, and they feared losing standing or even benefits from their church affiliation — or even that their children might be taken from them.
“Our experience has shown us that minority communities, including Latino, African American, and Native American, have historically been very reluctant to come forward and report this type of sexual abuse,” Peck wrote.
He cited the case of Fr. Vincent Fitzgerald of the Oblates Missionaries, assigned to an Indian reservation in Minnesota, where he not only sexually abused Native children but was said to laugh when a victim threatened to expose him, telling the child that nobody would believe a “dirty little Indian,” as Peck wrote.
Before then, Fitzgerald had been transferred at least seven times between 1950 and 1968, after which he finally landed at the parish on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, where he settled in for 15 years, persisting in his criminal behavior.
As recently as Oct. 2, a lawsuit was filed by a Navajo man against the Dioceses of Phoenix, Arizona, and Lafayette, Indiana, accusing Fr. James Grear of sexually abusing him when Grear was the principal of Chinle High School where the victim was a student. Grear had been removed from Indiana and sent to the school on the Navajo Reservation after a parent reported he was abusing children at the Brebeuf Prep School in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis in 1975.
“Too often the Catholic Church uses Native American communities to hide pedophile priests,” Phoenix attorney Robert Pastor, who represents the Navajo man, referred to as “John T.J. Doe,” said, according to an Oct. 1 Associated Press report. “In this case the Diocese of Phoenix and the Diocese of Lafayette worked together to assign Father Grear to Native communities and hide his previous sexual abuse of children. In doing so, they knowingly endangered our local children, including John T.J. Doe.”
Closer to Duluth, Fr. Kenneth Gansmann, a Franciscan priest and pastor of St. John’s Catholic Church in New Prague, Minnesota, sexually abused me when I was 6 years old. He used gifts and the prestige of clergy to insinuate himself into my parents’ lives, dining, partying, and traveling with them.
It was the 1950s, and my parents never suspected Gansmann was a “double agent,” posing as a jolly, down-to-earth monk but savagely skilled in subterfuge from experience in having abused other children.
Inevitably, he was not able to keep a lid on his assaults of multiple children, and his superiors became aware. But as with countless cases of predatory priests, the Archdiocese of St. Paul kept it to themselves. They did not report Gansmann to the police, did not advise the parish, and did not notify parents of other likely victims.
Instead, they removed Gansmann from St. John’s, after which he was sent to St Peter’s Church in Chicago’s Loop, a friary for dozens of Franciscan priests, where he said Mass every day at the downtown church and heard confessions for whichever random tourists or Chicagoans might stop by. Less than two years later, Gansmann assumed the pastor’s position at an African-American parish in Nashville.
In other words, though he had been considered unfit to continue at St. John’s in Minnesota, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and the Franciscan Province in St. Louis allowed his appointment as pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, a position he would hold for 14 years.
From correspondence with Fransciscan Province administrators, I learned that Gansmann apparently continued abusing children with impunity at the minority parish in Nashville until his death in 1974.
At least two parishioners from St. Vincent’s came forward after Gansmann died, alleging sexual abuse. But that information was not reported to police or the Department of Children and Family Services, and it remains in the Franciscans’ files.
Cases like Gansmann’s, and examples cited by Peck, are the tip of the iceberg of a massive campaign, decades in the making, of hiding known sex abusers, manifesting the callousness, hypocrisy, and racism of church administrators in their unceasing attempts to cover up crimes by their priests against children.
German nuns accused of enabling child sex abuse by priests
Nuns in the city of Speyer "dragged" children to be sexually abused by priests and politicians, a survivor told a German court. His explosive testimony is the latest abuse scandal to rock the German Catholic Church.
Two nuns sit in a church in Germany
The scandal comes as the Archbishop of Cologne faces accusations of covering up allegations of child sexual abuse involving a now-deceased priest.
Catholic nuns who ran a former children's home in the German city of Speyer allegedly aided in the sexual abuse of the children who were under their care, according to a newly-surfaced court decision.
The latest scandal came to light after a victim filed a case to claim compensation from the Catholic church, prompting the Darmstadt Social Welfare Court to investigate. Although the court ruled on the case in May this year, it was not made public until now.
Protestant news agency EPD and Catholic news agency KNA acquired copies of the court's decision, which detailed claims of horrific abuse that children suffered at the hands of clergy members in the 1960s and 1970s.
Nuns were key in aiding the abuse, regularly bringing boys and girls to predatory priests and even receiving money to do so, the man testified in court.
On Thursday, the Bishop of Speyer, Karl-Heinz Wiesemann, went public with the allegations of abuse for the first time in an interview with Catholic magazine Der Pilger. He said that "several" abuse allegations had been filed.
Years of abuse at children's home
The court testimony in the court case stems from a 63-year-old man who lived at the nun-run children's home in Speyer for several years.
Much of the alleged abuse centered on one priest in particular — identified by the Bishop of Speyer as a now-deceased vicar named Rudolf Motzenbäcker.
The victim in the case was an altar boy at the Speyer Cathedral
During the 10 years that he lived in the children's home, nuns would allegedly take him to the priest's apartment once or twice a month and that they "downright dragged" him there.
The man estimated he'd been assaulted around 1,000 times.
Motzenbäcker was also alleged to have organized so-called "sex parties" that took place every three or four months that included several male clergy members and politicians.
Nuns would allegedly bring boys and girls — serving drinks and food to the men in one corner of the room while children were assaulted nearby.
"The nuns earned money from it. The men who were present would have donated generously," the victim's testimony reads, according to KNA.
The man suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the ordeal. He said that many of the children who were involved at the time are dead now, many of whom died by suicide.
The abuse commissioner for the religious order that ran the children's home, which closed down in 2000, said there were no longer any documents on the children in the Speyer home.
The court and the experts who interviewed the man said they had no doubt about the victim's credibility.
Other victims have separately come forward with their own allegations of abuse, the diocese of Speyer said, providing similar stories of abuse — particularly involving Motzenbäcker.
The diocese paid the man €15,000 ($18,100) in recognition of his suffering.
Good grief! That's a comment on just how much guilt and shame they felt over the astonishing abuse. There will be more reckoning in a higher court when they face He Whose Name they pretend to worship.
Speyer Bishop Wiesemann said that the archdiocese agrees with the court that the man suffered sexual abuse during his time in the church-run home. He said the church has been passing information to prosecutors and encouraged other victims to come forward.
The latest scandal to hit Germany's Catholic Church comes as the Archbishop of Cologne is facing accusations of covering up allegations of child sexual abuse involving a now-deceased priest.
