--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dec 4, 2002 12:44 AM (ET)
By KEN MAGUIRE
BOSTON (AP) - Priests sexually abused teenage girls, used cocaine and other drugs, and one had an affair with a female parishioner, according to allegations contained in personnel files maintained by the Boston Archdiocese.
The 3,000 pages of files on eight priests were released Tuesday by lawyers representing people who claim they were sexually abused by clergy. The attorneys are seeking to show that Cardinal Bernard Law routinely transferred priests to other parishes even after accusations of child abuse or other wrongdoing.
Last week, the lawyers said they would begin releasing the personnel records of 65 priests, which they have access to via a court order. The priests are not targeted in the abuse lawsuit from which the court order stems.
Archdiocese spokeswoman Donna Morrissey said she could not comment on the specific allegations contained in the personnel files.
But she said, "Some of the information contained in those documents is truly horrible. We're committed to helping any and all survivors."
Attempts Tuesday to reach priests whose files were released were unsuccessful. Morrissey said she did not have contact numbers; the priests' phone numbers are not listed.
The files included those for the Rev. Robert Meffan, who allegedly recruited girls in the late 1960s to become nuns and then sexually abused them while assigned in Weymouth, Mass., according to 1993 letters from Sister Catherine Mulkerrin to her boss, the Rev. John McCormack, who was a top aide to Law and is currently the bishop in Manchester, N.H.
Meffan allegedly would tell the girls to perform sexual acts as a way of progressing with their religious studies. He also allegedly participated in sexual acts with four girls at the same time in a Cape Cod rental, one of the girls told Mulkerrin, according to a 1993 memo.
"They were all young girls planning to be nuns," said attorney Roderick MacLeish Jr., who represents 247 plaintiffs among dozens of lawsuits against the archdiocese.
Meffan told The Boston Globe the allegations in the files were true and that he still believed his sexual relationships with the teenage girls were "beautiful" and "spiritual," and were intended to bring them closer to God.
"What I was trying to show them is that Christ is human and you should love him as a human being," Meffan is quoted as saying. "I felt that by having this little bit of intimacy with them that this is what it would be like with Christ."
The Rev. Thomas Forry, who served in Scituate and Kingston, allegedly built a house on Cape Cod for a woman with whom he carried on an 11-year affair, the files show. The woman had gone to him seeking advice because of problems in her marriage. The woman's son later alleged that Forry made sexual advances on him.
An unidentified man who answered the door Tuesday at Forry's home in South Boston dismissed the abuse allegations and told the Boston Herald that Forry's "got nothing to say."
A 1992 memo from Mulkerrin to McCormack outlined the history of allegations against Forry. Seven years later, Law reassigned Forry from being a prison chaplain at a state prison in Concord to being a roaming, fill-in priest to cover various vacations by priests in the archdiocese. He's currently unassigned.
Plaintiffs' attorneys and victims advocates say the personnel files show that Law continued to transfer problem priests until recently.
"It's not ancient history, it's very, very recent," said David Clohessy, national director of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.
The Rev. Richard Buntel, who served at St. Joseph's from 1978 to 1983, allegedly used cocaine with boys while serving in Malden. Mulkerrin, in one memo to McCormack, said an alleged victim told her that Buntel provided cocaine to the boy when he was 15.
"He would snort it in the priest's room 'every time I went' and, in a way, it seemed like an exchange for sex which also happened every time," Mulkerrin wrote.
As of this year, Buntel was employed in a non-ministerial position as a business manager at St. Thomas of Villanova parish in Wilmington. Messages left at the parish and with the parish answering service were not immediately returned.
McCormack's spokesman, Patrick McGee, would not comment Tuesday, saying the bishop had not read the files. McCormack has said he often did not know about allegations against priests because of poor record keeping.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Report: 1,200 Priests in Sex Abuse Cases
Jan 11, 2003
NEW YORK (AP) - Since the Roman Catholic church
became embroiled in a sex abuse scandal a year ago, more
than 1,200 priests in nearly every diocese in America have
been accused of sexually abusing children, The New York
Times reported.
A survey conducted by the Times through Dec. 31 found
that 4,268 people have claimed publicly or in lawsuits that
priests abused them in the past six decades.
Most of the priests accused of abuse were ordained
between the mid-1950s and the 1970s, while the alleged
abuse occurred primarily in the 1970s and the 1980s, the
newspaper reported in its Sunday editions. Some
allegations date to the 1930s.
Since last January, when the Boston Archdiocese
disclosed documents showing that officials had protected
priests who molested, hundreds of people have come
forward with accusations of abuse.
The Times reported that more than 400 priests have
resigned or retired because of the scandal since last
January, including Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law. Law was
accused of transferring from parish to parish priests who
were accused, often repeatedly, of sexually abusing
minors.
A separate count conducted by The Associated Press
showed at least 325 priests had either resigned or retired
since the scandal erupted. The AP count relied solely on
statements from dioceses, while the larger Times figure
also includes court records, news reports and other
sources.
Experts say it is impossible to tell how many abuse victims
exist, saying many didn't report the abuse before the
1950s because of the social stigma and that many still
have not come forward.
"My assessment is it's only the tip of the iceberg," said
William R. Stayton, a Widener University professor who
teaches human sexuality. He was shown the results of the
Times study.
"You really don't have a true picture. I have worked with
many clergy sexual abuse cases over the years, and very,
very few of them were reported."
The Times survey also found:
- Half of the priests accused of abuse were accused of
molesting more than one child, and 16 percent were
accused of having five or more victims.
- Eighty percent of the priests were accused of molesting
boys. A majority was accused of molesting teenagers,
while 43 percent were accused of molesting children 12
and younger.
Experts who reviewed the Times study said it was possible
that the number dropped off in the 1990s only because
many victims have not yet come forward. But church
officials noted they began to more thoroughly address the
problem at that time, reporting sex abuse cases to law
enforcement, psychologically screening for candidates for
the priesthood and adding courses on human sexuality to
the seminary curriculum.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press.
-------------------------------------------------------
More
than 1000 children sexually molested
by
numerous CHRISTIAN priests.
No
charges will be filed.
(But Michael Jackson who has helped thousands of kids around the world will be charged, after spending over quarter billion dollars in investigation, I wonder how many children quarter billion dollars would have helped? Over 90% of child molesters and serial killers in the U.S. were brought up in a church going family. If you look at criminal records, children are statistically safer near red light districts, rather than in church.)
Posted
July 24, 2003
The
Associated Press and Press-Gazette
BOSTON — It is likely that more than 1,000 people were molested by priests and workers in the Boston archdiocese over six decades, a figure the Massachusetts attorney general termed “staggering” as he issued a report Wednesday blaming Roman Catholic leaders for the crisis.
“The mistreatment of children was so massive and so prolonged that it borders on the unbelievable,” Attorney General Tom Reilly said.
Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned as archbishop in December, “bears the ultimate responsibility for the tragic treatment of children that occurred during his tenure,” Reilly said in the 91-page report.
“But by no means does he bear sole responsibility. With rare exception, none of his senior managers advised him to take any of the steps that might have ended the systemic abuse of children.”
Bishop Robert Banks, now the head of the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, was among at least eight other top officials in the Boston archdiocese subpoenaed to answer questions about their handling of complaints against priests.
Banks said in a statement Wednesday that he had not seen Reilly’s report but understood that it examined his role in responding to sex abuse allegations in the archdiocese of Boston.
“While well-intentioned at the time, I deeply regret that I did not act more decisively in taking out of ministry those who abused our children and young people,” Banks said. “For this I am truly sorry.
“I want to assure people that in the Diocese of Green Bay we are taking the issue of child sexual abuse very seriously, which is evident in our compliance with the policies approved by the U.S. Bishops in 2002.”
The report ends a 16-month investigation by Reilly’s office and a grand jury session that was convened last summer to consider charging church leaders.
The extent of abuse the report outlines dwarfs what’s been found in other dioceses. Still, while the document provides a comprehensive look at what Catholic officials knew, when they knew it and how they covered it up, Reilly said he was hamstrung by state laws that were too weak to allow criminal charges to be filed against the hierarchy.
The cardinal, he said, was aware of the abuse even before he arrived in Boston as archbishop in 1984 — and he and his inner circle were actively informed about complaints against numerous priests. With only rare exceptions did any of Law’s senior assistants advise him to take steps that would put a halt to what became the systematic abuse of children, Reilly said.
“The choice was very clear, between protecting children and protecting the church. They made the wrong choice,” he said. “In effect, they sacrificed children for many, many years.”
Reilly also warned that the archdiocese’s new abuse policy, announced in May, is insufficient to guarantee the safety of children. Among other problems, the attorney general said the archbishop retains too much control over investigations, discipline and members of a lay review board.
The Rev. Christopher Coyne, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the church has already taken “substantial steps” to prevent child abuse. Law’s successor, archbishop-elect Sean Patrick O’Malley, is to be installed next week and has pledged to heal the fractured archdiocese.
“The Archdiocese of Boston reiterates its commitment that the archdiocese will treat sexual abuse of a child as a criminal matter, that it will end any culture of secrecy in the handling of such matters ... and that the archdiocese is committed to work at every level to ensure the safety of children,” Coyne said.
The archdiocese documented 789 allegations of sexual abuse made against 237 priests and 13 other church workers from 1940 to 2000. When evidence from other sources was included, the number of victims rose to at least 1,000, Reilly said.
About a dozen state grand juries nationwide, and many more prosecutors, have reviewed molestation claims against dioceses dating back decades. But none has come close to uncovering the scope of abuse that was found to have occurred in Boston, the nation’s fourth-largest diocese.
— Paul
Srubas/Press-Gazette
-----------------------------------------