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Two-thirds of bishops let accused priests work 
Spokesman: 'Prudent decisions' made amid abuse allegations 06/12/2002
Roughly two-thirds of the top U.S. Catholic leaders have allowed
priests accused of sexual abuse to keep working, a practice that spans
decades and continues today, a three-month Dallas Morning News
review shows.
Church spokesmen did not dispute the results of the study, which is the
first of its kind and depicts a far broader pattern than has emerged this
year in Boston. That archdiocese's employment of known child molesters has
made international news and led Pope John Paul II to summon American
cardinals to Rome in April. Now, with the world watching and the crisis deepening, members of the
Catholic hierarchy are in Dallas to debate a draft policy on abuse – which
does not address church leaders' roles in concealing or enabling it. Meanwhile, recent polls say that most American Catholics believe that
church leaders involved in cover-ups should resign. Four bishops have
resigned this year after being accused of sexual misconduct, including the
head of the Diocese of Lexington, Ky., and an auxiliary bishop in New York
on Tuesday. Others who previously quit have returned to ministry. The News' review found that at least 111 of the nation's 178
mainstream, or Roman rite, Catholic dioceses are headed by men who have
protected accused priests or other church figures, such as brothers in
religious orders, candidates for the priesthood, teachers and youth-group
workers. The study did not include about 100 other members of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops, most of whom serve in supporting roles but
can vote this week in Dallas. Among the 111 are all eight cardinals who lead American archdioceses,
bishops in at least 40 states, and most members of the bishops committee
that drafted the policy up for discussion. Many members of the predecessor
committee – the bishops have been studying this matter for more than a
decade and got their first detailed report on it in 1985 – also have
employed accused priests. The Rev. Francis Maniscalco, a spokesman for the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops, expressed no surprise at the numbers. "Why should anybody's feet be held to the fire?" he asked. "The bishops
made what they thought were prudent decisions at the time. The decisions
were made on the best advice available. "This is a very complex matter that the bishops have been trying to
deal with for nearly 20 years," Monsignor Maniscalco said. Dallas Coadjutor Bishop Joseph Galante, a member of the current abuse
committee, acknowledged that some leaders repeatedly reassigned men in
spite of evidence that they were reoffending and that their therapy wasn't
working. "I can't defend that," he said. "It is not defendable." The problem, he said, is that "the sense of responsibility we had to
the priest has failed to be balanced with the responsibility we have to
the rest of the people." Agonizing decisions Bishops, he said, have agonized about how to handle accusations,
particularly when accusers didn't want to file civil or criminal charges.
Sometimes the solution was to put priests in administrative jobs or
adult-only ministries, he said. Bishop Galante said he sees two shortcomings with that approach. One,
he said, is "the affront to the victim," and the other is that the priests
retain a social status that may help them gain access to children while
technically off duty. He explained the latter phenomenon through a lament another bishop
shared with him many years ago, after reassigning pedophiles to nursing
home chaplain jobs and similar posts: "The problem is they all have
driver's licenses and cars." The Rev. Thomas Doyle, who helped write the 1985 report to the bishops
while working at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, said he thought
numbers found in The News' study were low. Nevertheless, he said,
the results point to a problem so pervasive that "the bishops don't know
how to fix it." Father Doyle now consults extensively with plaintiffs' attorneys and
has broken with top church leaders, saying that they did nothing to
address the issues he raised. He said he doubts the Dallas meeting will
result in major reform. "In the past, the bishops, the clerics from the pope on down, have said
many positive, apologetic things, and they have not followed through,"
Father Doyle said. Just getting to this juncture, where the only item on
the bishops' agenda is abuse, took "an avalanche of negative publicity
that was followed by a tidal wave of more negative publicity that was
accompanied by a massive hemorrhage of millions and millions of dollars."
What does he think it would take to bring about major change? "It will
take one of them going to jail for cover-up and obstruction," said Father
Doyle, a military chaplain who once screened American bishop candidates
and was considered bishop material. Bishop Galante, asked whether some diocesan leaders were too much a
part of the problem to be part of the solution, replied: "I honestly don't
know." In recent months, many bishops have announced zero-tolerance policies,
combed through personnel files and dismissed previously accused priests.
"I would be saddened and very much shocked," Bishop Galante said, "if
there are still bishops so caught up in the old way that they can't see a
new way." Therapists' advice Many cases coming to light involve decades-old allegations, and many
accused men were sent to treatment centers. But there is more to the
story, documents and interviews show. For starters, several bishops left suspect clergymen in parishes or
transferred them in the late 1990s and beyond, after a landmark civil
trial in Dallas' Rudy Kos case resulted in the largest clergy-abuse
verdict in history. Sometimes they did so after allegations of recent
misconduct. In Alexandria, La., for example, Bishop Sam Jacobs returned the Rev.
John Andries to a parish after a 1998 fondling accusation. By last year,
Father Andries was in trouble again, criminally charged with touching and
masturbating onto a sleeping boy at his rural home. And in southern Oklahoma, the Rev. James Rapp stayed on the job until
1999, five years after a previous boss in Michigan told Oklahoma City
Archbishop Eusebius Beltran that the priest had been treated for a sexual
disorder. During those five years, Father Rapp molested at least one boy
and has since been sent to prison. When it comes to the question of medical advice, Richard Sipe, a
prominent Catholic therapeutic expert, acknowledges that psychiatry has
advanced in recent decades and better understands the intractability of
abusers. But the bishops' insistence on this point, he argues, obscures a larger
one: that church leaders rarely alerted police and sometimes pressed
victims not to, allowing criminals to escape the consequences of their
crimes. "Is there any bishop who didn't know this was illegal?" asks Mr. Sipe,
a married ex-priest who has reviewed case histories on hundreds of abusive
clergy. As a priest and as a layman, he has advised Catholic leaders on
how to deal with offenders. Mr. Sipe also said many bishops have seemed more interested in putting
their priests back to work than making sure it was safe to do so. Some
bishops, he said, sent abusers to therapists who lacked specialized
training, or withheld information from professionals to minimize the
seriousness of a situation. Some simply did not heed experts'
recommendations or warnings, as seen from testimony in the Kos case and
other lawsuits. Finally, Mr. Sipe said, some treatment centers that bishops used were
staffed in part with priests who were accused of abuse. Similar scenarios have been revealed recently in Boston: Molesters were
moved from parishes to diocesan headquarters, where they made decisions
affecting more recently accused priests. And in Cleveland, one accused
priest was told to monitor another, who had been reassigned to his church.
They have since been accused in a lawsuit of ganging up on a boy in a
shower there. Keeping details hidden • Despite pledges of openness from Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville,
Ill., who heads the national conference of bishops, some Catholic leaders
have failed to provide a complete picture of clergy abuse in their
dioceses. In March, for example, Bishop William Curlin of Charlotte, N.C.
announced that he had "zero tolerance for child sex abuse" and that the
only misconduct case he knew about in the area happened a half-century
ago. A month later came the news that Bishop Curlin had reassigned a
priest in 1997 after paying a settlement to one victim. The bishop of Evansville, Ind., Gerald Gettelfinger, made a similar
no-tolerance pronouncement this spring, then soon admitted he had at least
three accused priests in parishes. One had a child-pornography conviction.
Another had been sent to treatment twice and still wasn't obeying orders
not to work closely with children. His accusers included his nephew. Still other church leaders, such as Indianapolis Archbishop Daniel
Buechlein, have refused to say anything about what they've done with
accused priests. • Some prelates continue to keep evidence of sexual abuse hidden from
law enforcement authorities. Omaha, Neb., Archbishop Elden Curtiss didn't tell police last year when
a priest admitted viewing child pornography on a work computer, a
prosecutor has said. The archbishop transferred the man from one Catholic
school to another, and criminal charges resulted only after a lay teacher
bypassed the archbishop and alerted authorities. Archbishop Curtiss has since been investigated for possible witness
tampering after he sought the whistle-blower's resignation. He has
apologized and won't be charged, the prosecutor said. • Some church leaders, through action or inaction, have helped
criminally accused priests leave the country. Several – from Texas, California, North Dakota, New Jersey and
elsewhere – remain at large. Another is in South America, where he got a
job after a molestation conviction in New York. A bishop there wrote the
priest a job recommendation after he had been indicted. The priest is
under house arrest, accused of molesting more children in Colombia. Staff researcher Darlean Spangenberger contributed to this
report. E-mail begerton@dallasnews.com and rdunklin@dallasnews.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
111 of 178 leaders of dioceses kept accused
priests working