BishopAccountability.org
	Priestly Abuse of Parish Youth By James Ahearn NorthJersey.com [New Jersey] October 16, 2005 THERE HAVE been so many recent disclosures about priests sexually abusing teens and younger children, most of them boys, that we have grown numb. The time has come to renew our sense of outrage. Roman Catholicism is the biggest American religious denomination. It is the biggest in New Jersey as well, with 3.5 million adherents, representing more than 40 percent of the state population. The church is not just the focus of belief for members, it has served as an anchor of stability and continuity for the larger community. So it is not just embarrassing for the church but a cause for general concern and anger that so many supposedly celibate priests, ordained to lead parishioners in devotion to God, have been unmasked as sexual deviates and predators. One's first reaction is astonishment at the scale of the misconduct. The church can respond, as some of its leaders have, by noting that fewer than 5 percent of all the priests ordained since 1950 have been credibly accused of sexual contact with a minor. That figure may understate the scale of the problem, since some victims have not come forward and never will, and others died years ago, but it is a starting point. It means that hundreds of priests have taken sexual liberties or worse with young people who were entrusted by their families to revered, cassock-clad clerics. Some of these rogue priests were multiple offenders, abusing a dozen or more victims for years. What is perhaps most confounding is that their bishops, having been informed of these transgressions, treated them as evidence of sinful weakness, not heinous and perhaps criminal conduct. The sinners were counseled, were told to confess and repent, and were then sent back to their parishes, or to other, unsuspecting congregations, where they often resumed their shameful behavior. For the bishops, the overriding concern was avoiding scandal. Parents and victims were urged to keep mum for the good of the church, and were paid to do so. Hush money. The problem first came to public notice three years ago in Boston, where a couple of particularly egregious cases attracted media attention. The Boston archdiocese eventually settled claims by hundreds of victims for $85 million. To pay this bill, it had to close 62 parishes, selling churches and schools, in towns from Scituate to Needham, Gloucester to Salem. Sixty-two! The mind reels. Consider, by comparison, the fuss in New Jersey when the archdiocese of Newark contemplated closing one of two Hackensack churches separated by less than four blocks. Three American dioceses, in Portland, Ore., Tucson, Ariz., and Spokane, Wash., have been forced by settlements to file for bankruptcy, and others are expected to do so. The total paid out so far exceeds $1 billion. In New Jersey, each of the five dioceses has paid large sums for settlements, legal fees and counseling for victims. The Archdiocese of Newark has spent $3.2 million, the Diocese of Paterson $7.8 million, Camden $6.1 million, Trenton $1.5 million and Metuchen $800,000. The state total is nearly $20 million. The Paterson figure is as large as it is because the diocese had to lay out $5 million for victims of the Rev. James Hanley, the state's most notorious offender. Now have come the turns of the Archdioceses of Philadelphia and Los Angeles. The latter is the biggest diocese in the country, serving nearly 5 million parishioners. Last week it released summaries of documents implicating 126 priests in 560 abuse cases going back to the 1920s. The case that stands out here is that of the Rev. Michael Baker, who in 1986 disclosed voluntarily to then-Archbishop Roger Mahony a seven-year sexual relationship with two young boys. Mahony, now a cardinal, did not report this to police or suggest to Baker that he do so. Rather, Mahony referred him for counseling and told him to have no further contact with minors. Then Baker was assigned to other parishes. In a now familiar pattern, he picked up where he had left off. He was finally unfrocked in 2000, after it was learned that he had abused as many as 10 victims in the previous 20 years. In Philadelphia, a state grand jury three weeks ago delivered a blistering, detailed, 418-page report naming 63 priestly abusers. All had multiple victims, but none of the offenders could be brought to justice because the statute of limitations had expired. The report accused two former cardinals of concealing this conduct to avert bad publicity and lawsuits. Instead, the two convened bogus "non-investigations" designed to deflect true inquiry. The present cardinal, Justin Rigali, issued a measured response, saying the church would do all it could to protect minors. However, other church officials and lawyers called the report a vile, mean-spirited diatribe, biased and anti-Catholic. The report cited these offenders: a priest who repeatedly raped an 11-year-old girl and took her to get an abortion when she became pregnant; a priest who molested a fifth-grader inside a confessional, and a priest who groped a teenage girl as she lay immobilized in traction in a hospital. It is all sad, dispiriting, disgusting. James Ahearn is a contributing editor and former managing editor of The Record.
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