Case against Priest Is Filled with Questions

By Cheryl Lavin
Chicago Tribune
September 14, 1992

SERIES: In 1989, Matt Jamison told his parents, Mary and Tim, that he had been sexually abused three years earlier by their parish priest, Rev. Robert Lutz, when he was a 1st grader at St. Norbert's School in Northbrook. Allegations of sexual misconduct against Lutz had previously been made by Billy Gallagher, another student at St. Norbert's; and by Mildred Nigrelli, the principal of St. Mary Star of the Sea, the Southwest Side parish where Lutz had been assigned before St. Norbert's.

Mary and Tim Jamison took Matt's allegations to the Northbrook police, the Cook County state's attorney's office, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin told the parents that the allegations were unfounded. In April of this year, the Jamisons filed a civil suit against Lutz and the Archdiocese of Chicago. The names of the Jamisons and the Gallaghers have been changed. This is the second of two parts.

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Cmdr. Randy Walters of the Northbrook police headed the investigation of Rev. Robert Lutz. He says that Lutz was questioned several times but that his home was never searched, though Billy Gallagher said the priest made him look at pornographic pictures.

The case, Walters says, had certain problems. There were no witnesses to the alleged events; no one saw Lutz with Matt Jamison. In fact, there were teachers who said he never had access to Matt or to any children.

"For two years I went day to day changing what I believed," Walters says. "One day I believed it happened, the next day I believed it never did. I made my investigators interview and reinterview everyone."

Finally, the state's attorney's office decided enough was enough. "It was their call," Walters says. "They're the lawyers."

Then-Assistant State's Atty. Diane Romza-Kutz dismissed Walters' concerns, telling him he was being "fanatical."

"She said: 'Why are you driving yourself nuts? You did an excellent job,' " Walters recalls.

The offical status of the case is "inactive," but inactive or not, it's never far from Walters' mind.

"You go your entire career wondering if you let someone get away that you should not have."

In April, Romza-Kutz gave a speech at the Loyola University Health Law Institute. The subject was child abuse.

She said children are "some of the most credible witnesses." She said "psychological evidence" is corroboration of their allegations. She said a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder is "absolutely critical . . . in weighing whether or not there is sufficient evidence to convict somebody." "Nightmares, night terrors" are useful details, and "parents are the greatest sources of this."

"When I heard that speech, I cried," says Mary Jamison. "Everything she said we needed, we had."

In fact, the state's attorney's office had a child willing to testify.

It had psychological evidence. A report on Matt, prepared by neuropsychologist Gerald M. Stein, states that he has "significant emotional distress" and "tension, anxiety, bodily preoccupations, and safety concerns" that are "consistent with a history of sexual abuse."

They had a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder.

They had parents who could document nightmares and night terrors, and much more.

Still, the state's attorney's office did not indict Lutz.

Why?

The case has some "insurmountable problems," according to Mark Cavins, head of the office's sex crime division. At one point Mary Jamison had told the Gallaghers that Matt had recanted his story. Matt's allegations came only after questioning by his parents. Matt didn't make his allegations until three years after he said the events took place.

Matt never revealed any abuse to the first psychologist he saw after the alleged abuse. Originally, he said the abuse happened when he was in 2nd grade, then he changed it to 1st grade. He wasn't sure if Lutz took him out of class or out of recess line. He discussed the worst of the abuse only when his father was about to punish him for stealing some pencils.

(Romza-Kutz has said that it's common for children to reveal abuse "only after they start acting out the trauma.")

In addition, Cavins says there was "constant collusion" between the Jamisons and the Gallaghers.

"They only telephoned each other 10 billion times. What it looked like to us was, the Gallaghers encouraged the Jamisons to an extreme to make their allegations."

Although Cavins says the instances of a child fabricating sexual abuse are "few and far between," in this case, he was "very suspicious."

Most important, in a court of law, Cavins says the case would come down to Matt Jamison's word against Lutz's.

"And that adds up to not guilty."

After the Jamisons sued Lutz in April, he countersued for libel, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. His attorneys, Mary Dempsey and Susan Stone of Sidley & Austin, hired a private detective, Walter McWilliams of Metro Service in Oak Lawn, who contacted the Jamisons' neighbors.

"We got a phone call," says a neighbor, who asks not to be identified. "He told me about the case and said he was looking for 'juice.' He wanted to know what I knew about them, if Tim drank, stuff like that. He said he thinks Mary is real ambitious and maybe Mr. Jamison isn't that ambitious. He asked me if Matt has a tendency to lie."

"If I wasn't in the middle of all this, I'd never believe it," says Mary Jamison.

The archdiocese says Sidley & Austin "has the right and obligation to investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding the bringing of these allegations."

Maligning the parents, much in the way a defense attorney "dirties up" the victim of rape, is not unusual in such cases. It's typical, according to the Jamisons' attorney, Jeffrey Anderson of St. Paul, who calls himself "the priest-buster" and is equally aggressive.

"The church launches a counteroffensive," Anderson says. "They blame the victim, deny the conduct and attack the family."

James Serritella of Mayer Brown & Platt, chief attorney for the archdiocese, is handling the Lutz case. In June 1986, Serritella, who studied to be a priest, spoke at a seminar on pedophilia in the priesthood at the Dominican Priory in River Forest. He said that when parents bring allegations of sexual abuse against priests, the parents become "the enemy."

"I didn't speak from a prepared text that day," Serritella says. "The best I can say is that I don't remember saying it. If I did say it, it was out of context. In no way does it express my views on the subject. . . . I advise my client to approach with great compassion the victim, the victim's parents and the accused."

Although Serritella doesn't remember saying it, the sponsor of the conference, Rev. Thomas Doyle, remembers hearing it. Doyle, who has called pedophilia "the most serious problem that we in the church have faced in centuries" is a canon lawyer. He has studied it since 1984, when it first came to public attention.

"I was very disappointed by Serritella's whole attitude," says Doyle, who will be an expert witness for the Gallaghers. "He showed no sympathy toward the children and their families."

Doyle worked in the Chicago archdiocese for 10 years under Cardinal John Cody. He learned how the system works.

"The church has a lot of money, a lot of power and a lot of property. By the time a priest rises to the upper echelons, he thinks he can do anything - bend judges, politicians. It's all been done in the past.

The position is, 'We're the Roman Catholic Archdiocese; nobody's going to jerk with us.' Did you ever hear of Irish logic? 'I said it, therefore, it's true.' That's the way the church authorities operate. 'We're the church. What we say you have to believe.' It has always worked that way."

In October 1991, Bernardin appointed a commission to look into child sexual abuse by clergy. Their first mandate was to review allegations against priests still in parishes. To do so, they relied on "pertinent" information supplied by four priests, a member of the archdiocese's staff and the archdiocese's attorney, Serritella. Although some parents testified, the Jamisons were never called.

"First the archdiocese conducts their own internal investigation - and they don't reveal what they look at - and then the commission does the same thing," Doyle says. "Imagine Drexel Burnham Lambert saying, 'We've done an internal investigation of Michael Milken and he didn't do anything wrong.' How do we know that their report is objective?"

In June, Bernardin released the commission's report. Without naming Lutz, his case was discussed. The report said the charges against him were "unfounded" - not enough credible evidence to substantiate the allegations.

This conclusion was reached despite the commission's findings that children rarely lie when they make charges of sexual abuse (Doyle says he knows of not one case in which a young child falsely accused a priest of sexual abuse); child abusers almost always deny their guilt; and more than one accusation "significantly" increases the probability of truth.

Yet, the archdiocese insists, "We believe that Father Lutz did not commit the acts alleged and it is for that reason that we are defending him." It shows its confidence by allowing him to remain at St. Norbert's, where he continues to celebrate mass every Sunday.

"This is an innocent man," says his attorney Mary Dempsey. "The truth is a very easy thing to prove. That's what the trials are for."

There may be a simple way to determine whether Lutz has pedophilic tendencies. The cardinal's Commission on Clerical Sexual Misconduct With Minors reports that the Abel Screen, developed by Dr. Gene Abel, director of the Behavioral Institute of Atlanta, is 100 percent accurate in identifying men who molest young boys and highly recommends it. The screen takes one hour to administer and costs $1,000.

Although Bernardin said he would implement the commission's recommendations, Abel says the Chicago archdiocese has never been a client. The diocese declined to discuss whether, in light of the commission recommendations, it might use the screen in the future.

On July 1, the parents of Matt Jamison and Billy Gallagher met with Cook County State's Atty. Jack O'Malley. They asked him to reopen the case against Lutz. He agreed to review any evidence that the parents wish to present.

The second week in July, Diane Romza-Kutz left the state's attorney's office to take a position with the Chicago Board of Education. The Lutz case was then briefly assigned to another prosecutor and, now, has passed to another assistant state's attorney, Elizabeth Rivera. She met with the parents on Aug. 19. It was a meeting that the parents say left all four of them physically ill.

In addition to the volumes of material she already has, Rivera asked for the names of Billy Gallagher's grandparents. To the parents, it seemed like stalling. So did her contention that she has to read all the depositions in the civil cases, thousands and thousands of pages, many of which may be irrelevant to a criminal prosecution.

"We kept coming back to, 'According to your own protocol, you have everything you need to prosecute. Why won't you?' " says Mary Jamison. "She said she needed to bring herself up to speed."

That, Rivera said, could take months.

Meanwhile, Matt Jamison sleeps with a knife under his pillow.