INVITATION

Subj: SJCS Alumni

Date: 2/25/2003 2:30:15 PM Eastern Standard Time

To: EHarold

From: "St. Joseph Alumni" <alumni@stjosephschool.org>

******************************
This is going out to all SJCS Alumni!

FRIDAY, MARCH 28th
Alumni Mass and Breakfast - 8:15am
Please let me know: Of Alumni that has passed away or is sick, so that we can pray for them. If you are a Eu-charistic Minister (trained in Atlanta) - we need 4 more Alumni to participate in this part of the Mass.

Invites will be mailed out the first week in March - if you know of any Alumni, please let us know or have them contact us!

Career Day at SJCS - After the Alumni Mass and Breakfast.
The students would love to hear what the Alumni have been up to. We will work with your schedule - 30 minutes of your time. Come on, you will really get a kick out of the questions they ask - a few laughs. It's good for the soul.

MONDAY, APRIL 28th
SJCS 7th Annual Golf Tournament - if interested, I will send/e-mail you more information!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11th, 2003
SJCS 50th Anniversary Celebration - Mark your calendars! Our beloved school is 50 years of keeping the faith! A committee of Alumni is being formed to help plan this celebration - interested? let me know. We will keep you updated on all the happenings!

ONE MORE THING: We are looking for memorabilia of decades gone by such as uniforms, football jerseys, trophies, articles, pictures, art work, school work - anything. In Alumni Hall there is a display case that is just waiting to be filled. It would be great to have memorabilia in there for the Mass and yes the 50th!

E-mail me or give me a call at 770.428.3328 x74 if you have any questions, concerns, information, or anything!

Huge thanks! Maureen O'Reilly ~ Alumni Committee

ELLIE'S RESPONSE

Subj: 50th anniversary

Date: 2/25/2003

To: alumni@stjosephschool.org

From: EHarold

I graduated from St. Joseph's in 1964. I have some memorabilia that I'd like to share with you. But first I'd like to give you some background.

I'm sure you are aware of the scandal caused by the discovery of widespread sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. It's easy to believe the clergy abuse scandal happened elsewhere and involves people you don't know. But it didn't. It happened right there at your very own school, to people who still live in Marietta and nearby.

At least a dozen other women besides me were sexually abused at St. Joseph's by the pastor, Clarence Biggers Many of us lived in the neighborhood, attended school and church at St. Joseph's, and were traumatized by what happened to us. Most of us were never able to tell anyone about the abuse until last year. I think you'll agree with me that forty years of silence is too long!

(My abuse took place when I was ten years old over a period of a year. The youngest victim was six. If you go to www.WhereTwoOrMore.com and click on the link to "Clergy Abuse Chronicles," you will learn how the situation has been handled since coming to light in 1963.)

A group of us (alumnae of another sort, you might say) came together last June after forty years and now meet together on a regular basis. We are supported in our efforts by the former Sister Mary Clare (now Lynn Hughes) who was our teacher at St. Joe's at the time. In our meetings we have learned that we've each suffered the effects of what happened to us in different ways; we've also discovered that the most healing way to recover is to tell the truth of what happened.

I think it would be quite powerful for both speakers and listeners alike if we could share this part of St. Joe's history with the larger alumni group. This would offer your group the opportunity not only to learn about this crisis in the church in a personal way, but also how you can make a positive healing response to it. I would like to discuss this possibility with one of your alumni representatives as soon as possible. I believe it is of the utmost importance for Catholics to understand fully the impact of such abuse, so that we can all join together for the protection of children everywhere.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best wishes with your efforts.

Ellie Harold
678.421.1981
eharold@aol.com

RESPONSE FROM ST. JOSEPH'S CURRENT PRINCIPAL

Date: 3/3/2003 4:40:17 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: ckraft@stjosephschool.org
To: eharold@aol.com
File: DavidBrown.DOC (32768 bytes) DL Time (TCP/IP): < 1 minute
Sent from the Internet (Details)

Dear Mrs. Harold:

Thank you for responding to the recent communication sent to all St. Joseph alumni announcing our school's capital campaign and the overall celebration of the school's 50th anniversary. I recall reading with considerable sadness the recent newspaper reports in which you describe your encounters with Father Biggers when you were attending St. Joseph School in 1962. I have also reviewed the information that you have posted on your website concerning this terrible experience. As traumatic as I am sure this situation has been for you, I remain hopeful that with proper prayer and reflection you could find it in your heart to assist this school in its current and much needed capital campaign. St. Joseph School relies on its alumni for continuing assistance including that of a financial nature. I certainly realize that there may be any number of reasons why you may not be in a position to provide that support and whatever those reasons are I assure you that I will respect them.

In any event, I do hope that I will have opportunity to personally meet you at the dinner dance that the school is planning to host as part of its 50th anniversary celebration this fall. Because of the social nature of this event, we are not having any type of "speaker's forum." Instead it is intended to be an entertaining and fun event to celebrate the school's golden anniversary.

God Bless

Charles A. Kraft
Principal

ELLIE'S RESPONSE TO PRINCIPAL'S REQUEST FOR MONETARY SUPPORT OF ST. JOSEPH'S

Subj: Your letter
Date: 3/7/2003
To: ckraft@stjosephschool.org

From: Rev. Ellie Harold, P.O. Box 803, Norcross, GA 30091, eharold@aol.com

March 7, 2003

Dear Mr. Kraft,

Thank you for your response to my letter to the Alumni Association of St. Joseph's Catholic School. I note with curiosity that the attachment containing the letter is labeled "DavidBrown.doc." The only David Brown I know of is the attorney for the Archdiocese of Atlanta. Am I to presume that Attorney Brown was privy to the contents of the letter I sent to the alumni, as well as your letter to me? Please let me know if I am mistaken. If I am not, let me congratulate you on the consistency of your response with others in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, whose correspondence you examined on my website. By consulting legal counsel rather than your heart, you have chosen a route designed to alienate those whom you should consider your constituents. Unfortunately, this is a response we who were abused at St. Joseph's Catholic School in the 1960s have come to expect.

Your reply to my letter, however, has outdone your archdiocesan colleagues in one respect. Archbishop Donoghue's response to my repeated letters to him was limited to a legally careful letter of apology. A few days after this came the very succinct assurance from Lisa Ballentine (Mr. Brown's co-counsel for the Archdiocese), that "…under no circumstances will our client provide monetary payment with regard to any civil claims that Ms. Harold might make in the future." But you are the only one with the audacity to actually request that someone who was systematically molested on the premises of your school give that institution money!

In other circumstances, I might admire your transparency. As it is, however, I feel compelled to communicate with you how distasteful such a request is to me and others who were molested at your school. One of the other Biggers' victims, upon reading your letter to me, said this: "My, my, [his] empathy was overflowing. Kind of like, 'I am so sorry you were beheaded….By the way, can I have your earrings?' " Perhaps you are unaware of the more recent history which makes your request for a donation to your capital campaign so outrageous. If so, I hope you'll bear with me as I share some background that may not be explicit on the web pages you read.

In going to the Archdiocese with my allegations of sexual abuse by Father Biggers, the only request I made was for an apology. No request to the Archdiocese for money has ever been made by me, or, to my knowledge, by any of the other Biggers victims. The first and only specific mention of money was initiated by the Marists.

Last April, Father Dennis Steik, the Marist provincial, offered me and one other victim reimbursement for our past therapy expenses. We each then undertook the painful task of adding up the cost of, respectively, 30 and 20 years of therapy. We submitted this amount to Steik, only to be told, in August, that he had made the offer without authorization and there was no way the Marists could afford to reimburse us anything as they have many elderly priests who must be cared for, and what if more abuse survivors came forward seeking compensation. Let me be perfectly clear: we did not approach the Marists for money - it was offered and we undertook to accept the offer, only for it to be reneged upon almost as soon as we did.

It turns out that one of the Marists responsible for their financial dealings is Tim Sugrue. Father Sugrue was also a priest at St. Joseph's when we were kids. Fortunately for us, however, he waited until 1978, when he was an Air Force chaplain, before he raped an eight year old girl in another state. A judgment of $1.5 million was handed down in the civil case. Apparently, this judgment was never paid due to the vow of poverty Sugrue had taken upon ordination. One might reasonably conclude that Sugrue's influence in the Marists' finances make it no coincidence that the Marists now claim poverty as a reason from backing out of the promised compensation.

All of this is to say, we never sought financial compensation from the Marists or the Archdiocese of Atlanta. Yet, we and many thousands of other victims across the nation, are consistently portrayed as golddiggers. Would we appreciate financial compensation for the pain and suffering of what happened to us? Sure. I figured that I'd spent the equivalent of $80,000 over thirty years of therapy. I never had insurance coverage for these expenses so this represented a huge personal investment in my recovery. I paid the price because I very much desired a life worth living. If the Marists had been willing to reimburse me (as they had the Biggers victim in Louisiana who received a $60,000 settlement from both the Marists and the local archdiocese), I would have accepted. But this was not my point in coming forward with my allegations last year, nor is it my intent in continuing to expose what I consider to be the marginalization of the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests by those associated with the church. We are not money-grubbing monsters and should not be treated as pariahs.

I wrote to the alumni of St. Joseph's in the hopes of engaging them in a serious discussion of the crisis that the Catholic church is confronting today. Given this, your request for money from me is completely and repugnantly out of line. I do not and will not give money to any institution associated with the church until there is a demonstrated willingness to see the matter in the context of the human suffering it has caused. It is clear to any thinking person that the refusal to engage with the past victims of clergy sexual abuse threatens vulnerable children everywhere. Unless those who have unwittingly colluded in this system can begin to see their responsibility for what happened in the past, we cannot be assured that anything will be different in the future. Until then, all children are at risk.

Mr. Kraft, I sense that you have been truly saddened by the story of what happened to me and the others at St. Joseph's. It must be frustrating to know that you might have done things differently had these events happened on your watch. But while the past cannot be undone, you can play a part today in righting the wrong that was done then. It would not be appropriate to spoil the fun of the school's golden anniversary with a discussion of the crisis in the church, but I would like you to consider creating a forum in which the issues I raised in my original letter might be addressed.

Specifically, I am requesting your support in helping us victims bring light to the shadow cast by the institutional church by sharing our experiences. Our stories are not pleasant, but they are important for all of God's people to hear and consider. As you listen to "the silenced ones," I believe you will see how the truth sets us all free. Please remember, the dozen or more of us who were molested by Father Biggers are also alumnae, and as such, we are your constituents and will remain so. Won't you find a way to include us so that at some point we might actually want to give money to your efforts?

I will consider your invitation to meet you at the anniversary celebration. Regardless of my attendance at that event, I would appreciate meeting with you to discuss how we might co-create a forum such as the one suggested above. I am out of town at the moment but may be reached through email until I return on March 17. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Rev. Ellie Harold

P.S. Last May I was contacted by a woman named Lynn Hughes. She is the former Sister Mary Clare, a beloved teacher from our days at St. Joseph's. When we met she embraced me and said, "I wasn't there for you then, but I am here for you now. How can I help?" As one who has educated herself about the issues we face and offered unconditional support, Lynn stands with those of us who were abused by Father Biggers as the kind of advocate all victims of abuse by clergy need. Won't you follow her lead?

cc: David Brown
Fr. Dennis Steik

CLICK HERE to read the response letter from the Archdiocese of Atlanta Attorney.