Posted on 02/11/2012 10:13:46 AM PST by RnMomof7
Some 200 Catholic priests suspected of sexual abuse are living undetected in communities across California, according to an attorney who represents hundreds of plaintiffs who sued the LA Archdiocese for molestation they say was inflicted on them by priests and clergy of the church.
Ray Boucher has mapped sixty locations where suspect priests live, in cities and towns from northern to southern California, and provided those locations to NBC4 exclusively.
“Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse,” Boucher said. “They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers.”
Since none of the priests has actually been convicted of sex abuse, none can be identified under Megan’s Law, or their whereabouts revealed in related public databases.
“What the issue is here, is how you weigh the right of the people,” said Boucher, who is also one of the attorneys representing students in the Miramonte Elementary School sex abuse scandal. “In particular the right of children to be protected from molestation versus the right of privacy."
Among Boucher’s many clients in the church action are Manuel Vega and Dan Smith.
Vega is a former police officer from Oxnard who took special interest in sex crimes investigations because, he says, he was sexually abused as a teenager by his parish priest.
“He forced me to masturbate while he took pictures of me,” said Vega, who believes that the public is often too squeamish to recognize what child molestation actually entails – and thus not properly outraged by it.
“When we talk about sexual abuse we’re talking about sodomy,” he said. “There’s pubic hair, there’s sweat, there’re smells, there’re grunts.”
Dan Smith, another alleged abuse victim, is reeling from the recent collapse of his marriage which he blames in part on the psychological effects of the molestation he says he suffered as a child – at the hands of his local parish priest.
“He would rape me and then say this is what God’s love feels like,” Smith said, struggling to hold back tears more than twenty years after the alleged incidents.
Both men helped make legal history by joining 500 other plaintiffs in suing the LA Archdiocese for sexual molestation, with Boucher as their lead attorney.
In 2007 the LA Archdiocese reached an unprecedented $660 million settlement with many of the plaintiffs without admitting any wrong-doing.
It also agreed to let the courts decide which of the case-related church files should be made public, including those identifying alleged and admitted predators.
But according to Boucher and court documents, the Catholic Church has since engaged in a cover-up. By Boucher’s account, Church officials allowed priests suspected of sexually abusing children to retire, flee the country or hide in rehab clinics until the statute of limitations on prosecution ran out.
“What the church did is take these guys and send them off to facilities where they treat pedophile priests without ever alerting police,” Boucher said. “By enabling these priests to be hidden for so many years the church protected them from being prosecuted.”
Meanwhile legal disputes delayed the release of the promised personnel files, and Donald Steir, an attorney for several priests, went to court to argue that those who’ve been accused but no convicted should have their names and privacy protected.
“They are being punished as if they have been convicted, or at least that’s the desire – to punish them,” Steir said. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s difficult if you represent an alleged terrorist or a pedophile, because people don’t really care about the rights [including privacy rights] for these type of people,” Steir said. “But once we erode the rights of a group of people we don’t like, we effectively have started down a path where other people’s rights can be similarly denied.”
The courts, expressing concern for children, overruled most of these arguments and similar ones by the Archdiocese, which declined to comment for this story.
And a judge has ordered release of some personnel files, set for some time in the coming weeks. But he also credited the church for its increased sensitivity in dealing with molestation cases and decided to withhold the names of church officials who handled the earlier cases.
It is a ruling that reminds Boucher of the breakdown in accountability in the Penn state pedophile scandal. “Look at Penn State and see how important and significant it is when people in authority enable sexual abusers to continue,” Boucher said. “That underscores how significant it is to get these names out.”
Under the judge’s ruling the church can also keep secret, subject to further court review, the names of priests who have not been convicted and who have only one or two allegations against them or have allegations disputed by the church.
To Smith that seems like a formula for further cover-up by church officials.
“If their interests were to protect the kids, they would have released the documents,” Smith said. “As a parent not knowing who your neighbor is -- that is really scary.”
Many of these unidentified priests are included in Boucher’s location map.
“The danger” said Vega, “is that you have a person who has this sickness in them who is amongst the children.”
The plaintiffs in the church scandal are planning to appeal the latest rulings to assure broader disclosure of suspects’ names and locations. But Boucher warned this could take time, allowing suspects to keep their privacy protected, as well as their undetected presence in neighborhoods across California.
It's not just on Free Republic either that the cover-up is the issue. Look at all the billions of dollars that have been paid out by the Catholic Church for just this reason. I dare say if the problems were not covered up and the suspects spirited away and hidden in order to avoid the publicity, consequences and embarrassment and the complicity of the hierarchy, there may not have been the grounds for such settlements.
But we know that the sexual crimes of the clergy is not a new phenomenon. Read St. Peter Damian's "Book of Gomorrah-----A Moral Blueprint for Our Times. The approximate date that Damian delivered the Book of Gomorrah to Pope Leo IX is generally held to be the second half of the first year of the pontiff's reign, i.e., mid-l049, although some writers put the date as late as 1051. Considering that the Book of Gomorrah was written in 1049 A.D. it borders on the miraculous to note how many of Damian's insights can be applied to the current pederast and homosexual debacle here in the United States and abroad, including the Vatican. His treatise certainly stands as a masterful refutation of contemporary homosexual apologists who claim that the early Fathers of the Church did not understand the nature or dynamics of homosexuality. Rather, as Damian's work demonstrates, the degradation of human nature as exemplified by sodomical acts is a universal phenomenon that transcends time, place and culture.
One of the main points of the Book of Gomorrah, is the author's insistence on the responsibility of the bishop or superior of a religious order to curb and eradicate the vice from their ranks. He minces no words in his condemnation of those prelates who refuse or fail to take a strong hand in dealing with clerical sodomical practices either because of moral indifferentism or the inability to face up to a distasteful and potentially scandalous situation. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/929551/posts
“You can’t win if you’re Catholic based on the threads I’ve read here today.”
Yes, it’s easy to get the impression that some people—no one here on FR, of course, but some people—hate the Catholic Church so fanatically that it has robbed them of their reason.
I’m not talking about any FR poster, of course, but some people seem to hate the Catholic Church so rabidly that no explanation, no evidence, no logic, no reference to the scriptures—nothing at all, it would seem—is sufficient to budge them one iota from their irrational, extreme, downright lunatic beliefs about the Catholic Church. None of the protestants here on FR, of course, but some people.
My Neighbor was concerned when I lived in NY. Our town had the county Jail which listed the molesters listed in our town. She read this then went nuts until I showed her they were listed as residences in the County jail. Some of the documents had addresses of Jail street and number.
You would be surprised how many there are in society in all careers and walks of life.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for this post.
I’ve been by-passing most of the religion forum in the past year because of the constant drumbeat of the posters who seem preoccupied with denouncing the Catholic Church.
It seems to be their raison-d’etre
I understand what you are saying.
Here we go again, the ‘everybody does it’ crowd shows up to whitewash over depravity. These ‘priests’ call themselves ‘Father’ in God’s HOLY Name.
As long as the RCC denies its loathsome problem and points its boney fingers elsewhere, it will get more of the same.
Almost as if that’s its goal.
As long as the RCC denies its loathsome problem and points its boney fingers elsewhere, it will get more of the same.
Almost as if that’s its goal.
For nothing is hid, that shall not be made manifest; nor anything secret, that shall not be known and come to light.
luke8:17
Exactly..I belonged to a church were the music director was accused of touching a pre teen girl.. the next week the pastor got up and told the church what had happened..and that the man was not allowed back into the church and police reports were made out.. simple.. church discipline , protecting the sheep, and the legal consequences..
each year of minors being sexually abused by Protestant clergy
Interesting what this really says..the protestants actually REPORTED the event ..unlike Rome who would rather cover their sin than protect the kids
I’ve been by-passing most of the religion forum in the past year because of the constant drumbeat of the posters who seem preoccupied with denouncing PRODDYS.
It seems to be their raison-d’etre
The results of seeds of deception sown - doctrines of devils manifesting...
1 Tim 4:1-3
Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
Forbidding to marry, [and commanding] to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
“some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
-—Jesus
When posters post vast links to other areas where this is a problem they are simply refusing to acknowledge it's their problem and a means of yet again the larger "coverup". It's just enables those who are in denial to continue...and those who coverup to continue. I think enabling is about right.
What catholics don't' get is all their claims to be the one and "only mouthpiece and representation of God to the world"..... is 'WHY' the outcry against the catholic church is so great...and what makes the difference between them and say the school system and other institutions.
They set the standard and failed....greatly failed...by covering for the Priesthood of Pedophiles and Homosexuals. It's really not as complicated as they make it....but complicating things comes natural for them I think....weave enough yarn and the truth will always get bound somewhere amidst it's wrappings.
Perhaps not...but then others don't claim to be Christ's Representatives either, as Catholicism claims their Priests are....and therein is the difference.
We can expect vile behavior from those apart from the Lord...it is their nature and they will and can do vile things.....but for the vast "Numbers" of those within the catholic church committing these crimes...and the frequency of, with the knowledge this is happening,.....
....while at the same time these same Priests wrap their filthy/evil fingers around the Wine glass and Waffer and then offer it to the church members... should give every member pause.
Furthermore once the acts are discovered in other institutes they are generally addressed...not hidden for ages and ages by shuffling the perverts to other areas where they can further their crimes against children...and then moved again and again....with the full knowledge these crimes ARE being committed against children.
There are no words to define that.....but worse are the Bishops who gave their seal of approval knowing these perverts had their hands on children where they don't belong and putting them in places that hurt these kids.
FYI, we use English here.
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