Kelly: North Jersey Catholic Church Restores Memorial to Abuse Victims

By Mike Kelly
The Record
April 29, 2012

http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/149403435__Day_of_remembering_.html

'The Millstone,' a memorial to victims of sexual abuse, being rededicated in Mendham. It was recently destroyed by an act of vandalism.

They carried flowers and photos and their own silent history of abuse.

But the object of their attention was a rock.

As church bells chimed and a piper played "Amazing Grace," more than 70 people gathered Saturday outside a Roman Catholic church in Mendham to rededicate a vandalized memorial to children who have been sexually abused by priests.

The crowded North Jersey landscape is dotted with all manner of local shrines and monuments in town squares or parks, often commemorating war veterans or heroic police and firefighters. But the tire-shaped stone that sits at the western edge of the parking lot at the Church of St. Joseph in downtown Mendham may be one of the most unusual memorials anywhere.

"The Millstone," as the memorial is called, is believed to be the only monument to victims of sexual abuse on Catholic Church property in the world. Its centerpiece — a hunk of charcoal-gray Columbia River basalt cut in the shape of a millstone — was destroyed last November allegedly by a local man who police say got drunk and smashed the memorial with a sledgehammer.

The story of how the memorial first came to be erected in 2004, then was vandalized and rebuilt is viewed by a variety of observers as a rare example of cooperation between two groups often at odds — victims of clergy sex abuse and Catholic Church authorities often accused of covering up that abuse.

For Saturday's rededication, however, two Catholic monsignors presided — a former St. Joseph's pastor, who authorized the building of the first memorial after counseling local victims, and St. Joseph's current pastor, who vowed to restore the memorial after it was destroyed.

"It is a day of remembering. It is a day of prayer. And to be sure, it is a day of blessing," said Monsignor Joseph T. Anginoli, the current pastor who supervised the restoration with an abuse victim, Bill Crane, a Mendham native.

"Love goes a long way with survivors of abuse," said Crane, now 46 and a landscape designer in Oregon. "Love is really all we ask for."

Like the vandalized former shrine, the new memorial overlooks the church rectory where the Rev. James Hanley, a Paterson native, admitted to sexually molesting more than a dozen Mendham boys when he was the church's pastor in the 1970s.

Hanley, who was eventually dismissed from the priesthood, moved out of the area after sex-abuse victims protested outside his Paterson apartment. He never faced criminal charges, even though the Paterson Catholic Diocese agreed to a series of financial payments to victims to settle civil lawsuits. Passaic County prosecutors determined that the statute of limitations had expired.

After last November's vandalism, Mendham police arrested Gordon Ellis, 38, and charged him with a weapons charge, criminal mischief and desecrating a monument. Police said he was not a member of St. Joseph's Church and did not appear to know any victims. He was released on bail last December, and his case is being reviewed by a grand jury.

The new "Millstone" is heftier — more than 450 pounds and about 12-inches thick. And the memorial itself also now includes statues of a boy and a girl in what organizers said was an effort to highlight the lines from the Gospel of St. Matthew that say anyone who harms a child should have "a great millstone hung around his neck" and be "drowned in the depths of the sea."

Place of healing

For many victims who came to St. Joseph's on Saturday, however, childhood was a painful, decades-old memory.

Henry Coffey, now 82, sat in silence on a folding chair as he watched the ceremony. He had not been abused at St. Joseph's. But he came to the ceremony because the memorial offers him solace from the abuse he suffered as seventh-grader at a Catholic-run orphanage in Kearny.

Sitting near Coffey, Annette Nestler held a childhood photo of her father, Michael Kissell, and another photo of her father as a young man — just before he committed suicide in 1970 after being tormented by his memories of sexual abuse by a priest years earlier.

Nestler, now 48, said she drove up from Glassboro on Saturday morning to attend the ceremony.

"My father felt like God threw him away," Nestler said. "The fact that our society is reaching a place where people are starting to listen is wonderful."

Joseph Capozzi, formerly of Ridgefield, stood at the edge of a crowd of onlookers.

"This is where my healing started," he said afterwards, describing how he came to victims' meetings in Mendham almost a decade ago to discuss his memories of sexual abuse. The meetings, initially held at St. Joseph's, are now at a Lutheran church nearby.

Capozzi, now 43 and an actor and playwright in Manhattan, has written an acclaimed play about his abuse, which is scheduled for a series of off-Broadway performances in September.

"There is a lot of love. There is a lot of respect. At the same time, there is still a lot of pain," Capozzi said as he watched former victims approach "The Millstone" to leave forget-me-nots.

"This is another transition for victims in their recovery," said Monsignor Kenneth Lasch, the former St. Joseph's pastor who has received national acclaim for going public with news of the sexual abuse by his predecessor, Hanley, and later authorizing the building of the "Millstone" memorial.

"I would listen to their broken hearts," said Lasch, now 75, remembering his counseling of victims. "And it broke my heart to listen to their stories."

Patrick Kelly, one of the Mendham victims who shared his story of sexual abuse with Lasch, marveled at the number of people who came to the rededication, including many who were not victims but nonetheless wanted to show their support.Kelly, now 48 and a wealth-management consultant in Chatham, said he had been abused as a young boy along with three other brothers by Hanley and another priest.

One brother, James, committed suicide by sitting in front of a commuter train in Morristown on a Sunday morning in 2003.

That suicide led in part to the creation of "The Millstone." But at the first dedication in 2004, Patrick was away — serving in Kuwait with the Air Force Reserve.

"It's really heart-warming to see the community come together," he said at Saturday's ceremony. "But I hope there will be some healing for people who have never come forward."