No Compassion: Far-Right Catholic Group Gloats Over Defeat Of Bill To Help Victims Of Clerical Abuse

By Rob Boston
Americans United for Separatiof Church and State
July 19, 2016

http://blog.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/no-compassion-far-right-catholic-group-gloats-over-defeat-of-bill-to-help

Survivors of sexual abuse by priests are 'professional victims' to the Catholic League.

A few days ago, I receive the July-August issue of Catalyst, the newsletter of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

If you’re not familiar with the Catholic League, it’s a right-wing outfit that exists mainly to scream loudly anytime anyone anywhere dares to criticize the clerical leaders in the Catholic Church or the political goals of the bishops. The group, based in New York City, is run by William Donohue, a man who, when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse of minors by priests, is either deliberately provocative or remarkably tone deaf.

That’s a heavy charge, but I can back it up with a headline from the newsletter: “BIG LOSS FOR VICTIMS’ LOBBY; PERSISTENCE PAYS OFF.”

What Donohue is referring to here is the defeat of a New York state bill that would have expanded the statute of limitations in cases of child sexual abuse. Adults who suffered sexual abuse as children would have been given a one-year window to pursue civil cases in court.

The measure, Donohue asserted, “was a vindictive bill pushed by lawyers and activists out to rape the Catholic Church.”

Let’s be clear about this: As has been documented time and time again, many top U.S. leaders of the Catholic Church reacted to numerous charges of sexual abuse by priests by reassigning offenders to other parishes where they victimized other children. This pattern played out over and over again, as a recent report by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office made clear.

Church officials shielded the abusers. They did not report them to authorities, nor did they take steps to help the youngsters they victimized. Years later, some of the victims are seeking justice but find that the statute of limitations has expired.

These people, who as children endured horrific forms of abuse at the hands of religious figures they were taught to trust and look up to, are, according to Donohue, a “victims’ lobby” who seek to “rape” the church.

Has this man no shame? No empathy for the victims? Not even a scintilla of concern for those in pain?

Apparently not. This is the man, after all, who once argued that because many of the male victims were older than 12, they qualify as “post-pubescent,” so it’s not really pedophilia.

This year, Pennsylvania considered a similar bill dealing with expanding the statute of limitations and allowing it to be applied retroactively. Legislators there followed the lead of their counterparts in New York and rejected the latter proposal.

In the city of Altoona, a man named Brian Gergely heard the news about this vote and was despondent. Gergely began suffering sexual attacks from serial abuser Monsignor Francis McCaa in Ebensburg, Pa. when he was just 10 years old. The abuse continued for years.

Friends say Gergely had hoped the new law would provide him with a measure of justice. When he learned that wasn’t going to happen, Gergely apparently decided to hang himself, leaving his father to find his body.

“All he wanted was justice,” said Michele Gonsman, a friend of Gergely’s. “They decimated the bill and he struggled and struggled, and he killed himself.”

Such was the fate of a member of what Donohue in his newsletter calls the “professional victims’ lobby.”

Donohue is quite full of himself and boasts about the defeat of this kind of legislation. “This was a big win for our side and an equally big loss for theirs,” he crows.

I’m guessing that the friends and family of people like Brian Gergely feel differently. After all, they, along with lots of other people who have watched this scandal unfold and been disgusted by it, have something Donohue has always lacked: a measure of simple human decency.