BishopAccountability.org

Naming names makes Catholic sex scandal personal

By Haley Bruyn
Enterprise
February 01, 2019

https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Naming-names-makes-Catholic-sex-scandal-personal-13582176.php

Saint Anthony Cathedral Basilica in downtown Beaumont on Friday.
Photo by Ryan Welch

Saint Anthony Cathedral Basilica in downtown Beaumont on Friday.

[with video]

The Catholic clergy sex scandal, subject of lawsuits, movies and countless works of journalism, became suddenly personal in Southeast Texas this week after the Diocese of Beaumont released the names of 13 priests found to have been credibly accused of abusing minors over the last half-century.

“I was just devastated,” said Angela Mazzola-Burleigh of Orange after learning that former priest Earl Mudd, who married her parents and baptized her oldest sister, was among the presumed violators.

“When I saw his name on that list, he went from priest to predator in my mind,” she said.

It was a scene played out in an uncountable number of Catholic households, here and across the state, following the coordinated release of nearly 300 names from 14 Texas dioceses. It was one of the largest such reckonings in the nation.

Hilda Arisco of Nederland recounted her experiences with another accused priest, Henry Drouilhet, during his time at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Beaumont.

“He was mean,” she said. “I wasn’t surprised to see his name on there. He hated girls but was always nice to the boys.”

Arisco recalled picking up her daughter from catechism class and finding her and the other girls in her class outside. They said Drouilhet had made all of them wait outside while the boys stayed indoors.

“Things like that, you didn’t think about it at the time,” Arisco said. “Like when my brothers told my mother that the priest was slapping them on the butt, and it was like, ‘Well, that’s what the baseball coaches do.’ You just don’t really think about it.”

But as the scope of the scandal has become more clear in recent years, Arisco has developed her own theory about the prevalence of pedophile priests.

“I think they were predators before they joined the church,” she said. “Maybe they got into it to have power and to be around what they liked.”

Some congregants said that it become clear long before Thursday’s massive name drop that church leaders had covered up abuse for years. Beaumont native Anthony Villareal, 38, said he left the church more than a year ago after multiple reports of abuse kept appearing in the media.

“I wasn’t surprised by the list,” he said Friday. “I wish they would have been more transparent earlier, though. Why now?”

He acknowledged that Thursday’s list, released locally by Bishop Curtis Guillory, was an important step. But he said it made less of an impact because nine of the 13 men on the list are dead — gone before the public counting.

Michael Norris, director of the Houston office of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said he thinks the lists released in Texas are too short.

“I’m convinced this is not a complete list,” he said.

Between the releases on Thursday and an interview with the Enterprise on Friday at noon, Norris had received seven phone calls. Six were to report abuse by priests not named in the release and one was to add their name to the list of victims of another.

“The reason the list is so short is because in order to get on the list, the victims of the priest have to deal with the church,” he said. “And then they have to prove to the church’s standard that they are credible, and what does that even mean?”

Norris said an acquaintance who served on the board tasked by the church to evaluate claims explained part of the process to him. He said if the abuse is reported by a single person, it must be backed up by solid proof or eyewitness testimony, so it almost always takes multiple reports against a clergy member to spur action on the part of the church.

“These priests are smart,” he said. “No one is going to see them. It’s happening behind closed doors.”

This week’s disturbing revelations taken the scandal out of the abstract for lifelong Catholics like Mazzola-Burleigh, 46.

Mudd, she said, spoke at her Confraternity of Christian Doctrine class’ final retreat when she was 14 years old.

“In Catholicism, when take confession, the priest doesn’t know who he’s talking to, and that’s so it’s easier to tell him your sins,” she recalled. “At this retreat we had the option of taking confession face to face.”

Her voice broke as she began to cry.

“I trusted him so much that I felt comfortable confessing my worst thoughts and deeds while he looked at me dead in the face,” she said. “And to know that is who I trusted to bring me closer to God? I think of what he did, and what he did to children and I just know there is a special place in hell for him. It’s wicked, what he did.”

She’s has made the decision not to tell her elderly father about Mudd’s accusations.

“I just don’t think he could handle it,” she said. “He was his priest most, if not all, of his childhood. He married him and baptized his first born. My father loved him.”




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