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  LA Settlement Checks Close, Salesians Still on for Jury Trials, Jeff Anderson Holds National Meeting Nov. 3: Friday Roundup at City of Angels Blog

By Kay Ebeling
City of Angels
October 25, 2007

http://cityofangels3.blogspot.com/2007/10/settlement-checks-close-salesians-only.html

City of Angels Lady is once again awash in reality TV raw video at work, so happy Friday, here is a roundup of notes from my files:

The LA Archdiocese is ready to fund the $660 million Clergy Cases 2007 settlement for 508 plaintiffs on December 1st, according to plaintiff attorney Kathy Freberg. Two weeks ago words of the settlement became final and a statement went out to plaintiffs for signature. "As long as we have everything to them on time," Freberg said, "the diocese will release the money on December 1st. The final thing now is make sure all the plaintiffs sign the agreement," she said.

In Minnesota, where they have lots of water and one area code, Jeff Anderson is taking his organization national with a meeting next weekend. NAPSAC is "a volunteer self-help organization of survivors of sexual abuse and their supporters," reads the website. "We work to end the cycle of abuse in two ways: support one another in personal healing, pursue justice and institutional change." They want to hold perpetrators responsible and make organizations accountable. They meet Saturday November 3rd at Hamline University Saint Paul Campus. You can read more about them at NAPSAC dot US.

Upcoming jury trials: All religious orders have joined the LA Archdiocese settlement except the Salesians. So jury trial for the Miani Cases is still set for November 5th. However, the January 28th date for Dominguez cases is iffy, as last summer the Riverside diocese had the cases severed and half of them stayed as the Salesians in Riverside decided they were part of the San Diego Archdiocese for the bankruptcy. Now that San Diego can't go bankrupt the cases are again active

BUT: the Riverside diocese needs more time to recover from the trauma of contemplating San Diego's bankruptcy, or something like that, so they filed a motion asking for all the Dominguez cases to be postponed, or maybe it's just some of the Dominguez cases, stay tuned. By the way, I thought the Salesians didn't have anything to do with archdioceses?

Speaking of Aargh: Excerpt from Comment by City of Lost Angels Survivor:

This comment about Silent Victims showed up on the October 18th post titled, "Aaaarrrggggh," a comment so evocative and important I have to reprint it here,

by "Anonymous" City of Lost Angels Survivor

What steps has the church taken? How have they reached out? Would they stake their existence on the fact that there are NO other incidents of child sexual abuse other than the ones enumerated within in this self survey?

I can tell you, they haven't reached out to me. Nor to the other two men that have so far come forward to acknowledge surviving abuse at the hands of the same "priest". That is 3. Experts will tell you that the "average" child molester will commit 120 (+/-) offences before he is caught AND STOPPED! That means that my perpetrator has approximately 117 victims that have not been able to acknowledge their survival, or maybe some didn't survive.

And what of our "3 victim child molester" , Thomas Marshall, now that there is public allegations of his serial abuse? If you call the rectory at St. Peter's Church, he may answer the phone in Ontario Canada where he is retired next to a secondary school! Because criminal charges were dropped in California due to the recent Supreme Court ruling leaving only civil charges which the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (has settled).

To my knowledge, there was not one reported case in the entire John Jay Study that was not previously known by the media or legal authorities. The majority of cases that were included are "1 victim molesters". Do I hear anyone say bullshit (pardon my French)?

They tried it once and didn't like it?

They never did it again?

Spontaneous remission?

This truly is a miracle. (And I thought the age of miracles was over!) This abuse has a 20-40 year self destructive incubation period. VICTIMS CANT COME FORWARD! Laws limiting statute of limitations for these violations are fundamentally unjust!

"By Anonymous, of City of Lost Angels"

Oh yeah the church has solved this problem:

Two new victims of Donald McGuire in Chicago came forward in a press conference Tuesday. Two brothers are filing lawsuits against Donald McGuire and the Jesuits. The news conference was at law offices of Kearns Frost and Pearlman in downtown Chicago.

MORE FROM PAUL KELLEN of Boston:

"The grand jury report said there were 521 litigants in Boston. Plaintiff attorneys anecdotally agreed for every case brought forward there are three others where they talked to the person, believed their story was true, but for some reason, usually the statute of limitations, they couldn't go to litigation.

"So 512 in Boston were litigated and if that number is right they must have looked at 2000, and those are the ones that came forward.

"That means there are 20 thousand victims walking around the diocese of Boston."

ALSO FROM PAUL KELLEN INTERVIEW THIS WEEK:

I asked:

I HAVE THIS THEORY: the reason the bishops don't want to turn over documents, especially when they're on perps who everyone knows are guilty, they don't want to turn over those documents because we're going to find leads to other crimes:

Paul Kellen said:

There was one case I know of where they handed over a file on a guy who had been with an adult woman. And it was a history and it went on for years and years and it contained the fact that two of the children in her family were actually hers and the priests.

It Also turned out that once during a liaison she overdosed on drugs and instead of calling for help he got up and left.

And she died.

So yes when they turn over documents some other crimes do leak out."


But then on Thursday Jeff Alexander disagreed:

By the time we get the documents they've been so whitewashed by the dioceses, everything's been redacted. And if we did find anything we'd turn it over right away to law enforcement.

So scratch that idea for a story.

AND FINALLY

Let's bust Newsbusters:

Church apologists like Newsbusters have been asking, why plaintiffs wanted to depose Bishop Brom on the Andrade lawsuit when the crimes actually took place a year and a half before Brom took office.

"That's a legitimate question," says Ryan DiMaria of Newport Beach. "You'd expect a new bishop to go through the files, understand the priests they have, become apprised of whether they have a priest that is a danger to the parishioners."

DiMaria knows from experience that "around the time a victim comes forward you get a flurry of activity in the form of emails, written memos." So yes there is at least one reason to depose a bishop who didn't take office until a year after a crime was committed in the diocese.

Back to Celebrity Fit Club raw video for me, oh my. . .

More to come. . .

 
 

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