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.
You left off the "/s"...
If you look at most of the comments to which you object you will find that what they take issue with is the jumping from the guilt of individuals to the attempt to place that guilt upon the entire Church and also falsely imply that it is unique to the Catholic Church.
If you can point out the guilt an actual Fr. A or a Fr B or of a Bishop X or Bishop Y that covered it up then by all means go for it. Indeed, I will be at your side. It is the attempt to change this personal guilt to an institutional guilt that Catholics here find reprehensible.
Concise and to the point.
And to be denied in all likelihood.
LOL! Now that's a stretch - a bad one at that - to suite you own agenda or cover some man made teaching/doctrine of devils. Not wise.
God's Word is The Final Authority - surely, you know that.
OK, who's got the threads on this?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2489752/posts
http://open.salon.com/blog/lost_in_berlin/2010/07/16/bishops_resignation_shifts_attention_to_protestant_abuse
Here are a few to start you off.
These are the confessors who catholics are taught to obey, force themselves if need be, and never question. That would make it an institutional dilemma.
I'd also like to point out that everyone's "favorite" movie director is doing the exact same thing: Michael Moore's anti-Catholic Tweets (Free Republic thread)
I'm just saying...
No. No it doesn't.
Catholics, priest or otherwise, TRY to live up to what Christ preaches. Being human, we all fail.
The fact that vile hatred and lies pour from your lips like sewage says much more about you than anything you could say about anyone else, priest or otherwise.
I also observe that after their done using their favorite bat (the sex abuse scandals), they quickly turn to their real agenda, which is all their various doctrinal “issues” with the Church. Everyone with eyes to see can see through it.
About a year ago, I saw an article that suggested Joe Biden had threatened one of the USCCB leaders (Dolan, or another prominent bishop?) that if the USCCB started enforcing Canon 915, in response the Church could lose its tax exempt status or the government might step up its investigation of “pedophila.” (It seems to me this threat must have had something to do with the removal of Bishop Joseph F. Martino from the Scranton diocese in 2009. The Church did not back him up when he took on Biden.)
Does anyone remember the context of Biden’s threat, its substance, and/or can anyone locate a reference to it now.
I searched for it this week without success.
I expect to see pushback along these lines real soon if the USCCB continues its resistance to the HHS mandate.
And the unwitting allies of the Obama administration will continue posting threads like this on FreeRepublic to try to discredit the Church even in the midst of her fight for their religion freedoms.
If he were an isolated instance it could be laid to one man's bad judgment and/or ignorance but it was more often the norm as critic and monk, Richard Sipe pointed out.
I am calling it just as it is, in fact it's worse than I stated....You say NO No!...I then refer you to these catholic sites and statements made by the Pope:
Pope Benedict xvi states...."When he answers that call, the Pope continued, THE PRIEST REPRESENTS JESUS".
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=6023
From the Vatican Site:
1552 The ministerial priesthood has the task not only of representing Christ - Head of the Church - before the assembly of the faithful, but also of acting in the name of the whole Church when presenting to God the prayer of the Church, and above all when offering the Eucharistic sacrifice.31
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a6.htm and Here:
"The Priest is appointed Christ's representative upon earth, being set as a mediator between Him and men. In one word, the Catholic priest is, as it were, another Christ: Sacerdos alter Christus"
http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/priesthd/euchpr02.
and here:
"The text even makes clear how Confession is to be conducted. Christ's representative, the priest,.... must decide whether to forgive or retain."
http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/confession_of_sin_to_a_priest.htm
I am certain you realize there are a vast number of catholic sites which could further be depicted here.
Oh baloney!!! This isn't about Freedom...this is about criminal activities done by Priests of the Catholic church PERIOD....... and the 'tactic' to divert attention away from these criminal perverted Priests and Bishops just further attests to those who refuse to acknowledge these crimes and criminals and the huge infestation within the church. Worse it enables those in charge to continue with the cover-up.
The Catholic church is the only one responsible for it being "discredited".....the blame lays squarely on it's doorstep alone...none other.
And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him has written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing you know these things before, beware lest you also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.Note the emphasis added. I do this because, perhaps not so strangely, those who believe in private and personal interpretations of scripture also happen to be those who believe that their inclusion in the final roll of the redeemed is a sure thing, a matter about which Jesus, Peter, and Paul all strenuously warned.
A press release which was released at the hight of the Catholic Church opposing Obama-care mandates.
It's not "others do it too". I see you people really like fabricating quotes. What it is however, is an attempt to rebut the idea being put forth that child molestation is an exclusively Catholic problem.
The problem is, you people get mad when any evidence is presented that shows that it is a lot more widespread OUTSIDE of the Catholic church.
It's almost if you people *don't care* when a child is molested outside of the church. But that would be cyncical of me to state, and since you people have *so much* class, I would never make that accusation.
Lastly, this is an article about people who *are accused*, not convicted, released by a lawyer who has a finacial interest in children being molested, and seeing that those numbers are as high as possible.
Speaking of those who are accused and innocent -so what?
You are looking at this from a purely secular point of view. So what if people who TRULY belong to God are accused of something they did not do? The Word of God makes it very plain that is what will happen to those that truly love God. Joseph is a great example. Paul followers didn't whine either and call people "Paul bashers" when he was falsely accused. What did they do? What are you doing differently? What SHOULD you do?
WHO you stick up for and complain about when they are accused is just a huge neon arrow that points at the god that you are serving. How many of us do that? Instead, we should realize, as Joseph did that God is in control of all things, working thing out for His good pleasure. And as Paul exhorts us - to be content in all circumstances.
Be careful who (or Who) you defend. It speaks volumes.
Yeah, right.
But anyway, a press release from a lawyer who has a financial interest in the issue (the original post) should be taken at face value by Catholics, right? On the eve of the Obama-care birth control mandate issue?
That's why y'all get so frothing mad when people like Salvation show that your own side of the street isn't so spotless.
It also shows that protecting *the children* isn't quite at the top of your agenda.
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