Column: He Tried Speaking out about Priest Abuse in Catholic Church. Now He's Shouting about It.

By Paul Srubas
Green Bay Press-Gazette
February 8, 2019

https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/2019/02/08/catholics-abuse-norbertines-jason-jerry-green-bay-llama-news-survivor-speaks-out/2747719002/

The problem with Jason Jerry is he makes a lousy victim.

Victims are supposed to be subdued, repressed, sorrowful. It helps if they can look up at us with sad eyes, maybe bite their lower lip a little. Obviously, we don’t want them to be beaten down or crushed, but we’re used to thinking of them as tender and vulnerable, and that’s what we need to get our caring, nurturing instincts kicked into high gear.

Jerry, 44, of Howard, is none of that. He’s an angry victim. He’s mouthy. He can be, let's face it, kind of abrasive when he talks about how a priest molested him years ago and got away with it.

“What are you going to do about the Norbertines?” he shouted at Bishop David Ricken at a listening session in September. “And for you to sit there and nod? Your silence is deafening.”

Well, to be fair, it was supposed to be a listening session, and that’s what Ricken was doing.

Jerry shouted at St. Norbert officials at a campus event for victims of abuse by priests, when he couldn’t get an answer to why there were no Norbertines at the event.

“This is how we treat survivors?” Jerry shouted at college president Brian Bruess and public relations director Mike Counter. “You’re just gonna walk away from me? … This is how they treat victims. They run away from me in silence.”

One or both episodes apparently contributed to Jerry getting booted out of a press conference Ricken held recently. Ricken planned to announce the names of diocesan priests who faced substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of children. Jerry got wind of it and showed up in his NBC 26 jacket.

Jerry doesn’t work for NBC 26. He used to. (He claims he was not misrepresenting himself and that it's just a warm jacket that he likes.) Today, he runs a news blog on Facebook called the Greater Green Bay Society of the Llama, and he said he planned to attend the press conference not to confront anybody but simply to cover the event for his 1,700 Facebook followers. He probably should have worn a Society of the Llama jacket, but there’s no such thing.

Felton.jpg The Rev. John Felton asks Jason Jerry, left, to leave a Jan. 17 Catholic Diocese of Green Bay press conference announcing the release of the names of 46 diocesan priests confirmed to have sexually assaulted minors. (Photo: Jim Matthews/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin/@jmatthe79)

The Rev. John Felton wasn’t buying it. Minutes before the press conference, he approached Jerry, leaned in and placed both palms on his knees, while a room full of journalists and camera operators all pretended to be terribly interested in something else in the room.

“We’re going to have to ask you to leave,” Felton told him.

Felton met with no anger, no rage, no confrontation. Jerry, who had arrived early and already had at least 30 minutes invested in the ordeal, looked mildly irritated, but he packed up his gear and left quietly.

“I don’t blame them for being wary of my presence,” he said later. He has been known, he admitted, for getting a little … what?

“I wouldn’t say ‘confrontational,’” he said. “Volatile? Passionate!”

Abuse started with a back rub

It wasn’t always that way. He used to be able to talk about his victimization calmly, was even able to joke about it for years, he said.

“It was kind of a badge of honor,” he said.

It happened when he was about 15 and a student at the newly formed Notre Dame Academy, a recent amalgamation of the area’s all-boys’ Premontre and Abbot Pennings high schools and the all-girls’ St. Joseph Academy.

Jerry, an altar boy, a church lector with two years of Premontre schooling behind him, was well-aware there were some priests who were always the subject of rumors; priests who would let the altar boys finish the ceremonial wine after Mass, the ones who, during classroom quizzes, would whisper answers in certain boys’ ears while giving them back rubs.

“Always with the back rubs,” Jerry said.

And he knew the rumors surrounding some of his fellow students who were supposedly targeted, the so-called “prior boys” or “abbey boys,” who came from poor families that couldn’t afford private school tuition but would work off some of their expenses at the priests’ residences in the priory or the abbey.

“I was not an abbey boy,” Jerry said.

Jason.jpg Jason Jerry as he is being asked to leave a Jan. 17 Catholic Diocese of Green Bay press conference at the diocesan offices in Allouez. A press conference announcing the release of the names of 46 diocesan priests confirmed to have sexually assaulted minors was delayed until Jerry agreed to leave. (Photo: Jim Matthews/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin/@jmatthe79)

But at the start of Jerry’s junior year, his girlfriend transferred out of the school, temporarily ending their two-year relationship. He later reconnected with her and eventually married her, but at the time, he was crushed, distraught, went into a fit of depression serious enough to concern his parents. They and administrators decided he was a candidate for counseling, and one of the priests at the school was tapped for the duty.

At his first day of counseling, the priest told him “girls are bad” and suggested “maybe girls aren’t for you,” Jerry said. The man started giving him a back rub and suggesting Jerry should join the priesthood, because “the Norbertines are a brotherhood, where members take care of each other’s needs,” Jerry said the priest told him.

The back rub became a leg rub and the priest accidentally-on-purpose brushed him where he shouldn’t have.

“I stood up, shoved him out of the way and walked out,” Jerry said.

That was it. Over in a fraction of a second, not a big deal, and yet …

Jerry doesn’t recall reporting anything to the priest’s superiors. He remembers telling his parents, although, “They claim today they don’t remember me telling them,” he said. “My mom was always, ‘Why are you trying to cut down on my faith?’”

Jerry recalls telling at least a couple close friends. But he never made a big deal about it. He didn’t, in fact, regard it as a big deal.

Some victims of priest abuse “were raped,” Jerry said, but “mine was fleeting. A fender-bender.”

The anger came later

He finished high school without having any kind of contact again with that priest. Then he attended four years at St. Norbert College, with no problems, although with a good deal less commitment to the religion he was raised with. Maybe that was related, maybe it wasn’t.

But he never really regarded himself as having been much of a victim.

“There are levels of victimhood. I’d never claim to be a bad level of victimhood.”

That all started to change years later when Jerry was working for NBC 26, which was covering the case against the former Rev. James Stein.

Stein was convicted in Brown County Circuit Court in 2004 of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old old boy a decade and a half earlier in a hot tub at St. Norbert Abbey. Stein ended up getting probation for that and the fourth-degree misdemeanor sexual assault of another young man.

Watching Stein’s story unfold, with charges involving a boy Jerry had known, Jerry came to believe that diocesan officials were all part of a cover-up of Stein’s bad behavior. Similar stories across the country about offending priests, diocesan officials looking the other way or shifting those priests from parish to parish contributed to his feeling that he had been wronged.

He remembers being frustrated when local diocesan officials wouldn’t comment to the media on the Stein case.

“These are men of God. They should have been helping my classmate find justice, yet they hung up. They slammed the door. They wouldn’t talk,” Jerry said.

Felton1.jpg The Rev. John Felton asks Jason Jerry, right,to leave a Jan. 17 Catholic Diocese of Green Bay press conference announcing the release of the names of 46 diocesan priests confirmed to have sexually assaulted minors. (Photo: Jim Matthews/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin/@jmatthe79)

Then, about a year ago, Jerry, who works as a special events DJ, was playing music at a friend’s wedding when the friend confided to him he had been sexually assaulted by two men, a former Norbertine and a current Norbertine.

That’s what sealed the deal for Jerry.

“After hearing (the friend’s) story, I felt bad not pushing harder,” he said. “I should have done more. I had never made my story a secret, but it kind of turned into survivor’s guilt.”

That survivor’s guilt causes him to tell his story to anyone who will listen and to some people who appear to not want to listen.

“I had been telling my story since the 1990s. Only now I was shouting it.”

He's made himself into sort of a self-appointed advocate with a passion that comes from “a deep sense of being wronged, and I believe I know how to get a point across,” he said. He tells his story. He also tells other people’s stories. As his Society of the Llama website grew in popularity, he found it becoming a place for other people to post claims of having been victims of priest abuse.

Abbot takes notice

One or more of his postings on the Llama website prompted a response from the Right Rev. Dane Radecki, abbot of St. Norbert Abbey and Jerry’s old principal back at Notre Dame Academy. Radecki published a letter on the Norbertines’ website directed to his fellow Norbertines and “friends of the abbey” in which he assured them the abbey “stands with those who have been victimized by this grave sin” and that it has been cooperating with civil and church authorities when such accusations arise.

“I am aware of the recent social media postings and accusations made against Norbertines of our Abbey,” Radecki wrote. “Previous investigations have already established that current Norbertines named in recent postings are innocent of the claims made against them. There is no factual basis to the claims … As Abbot, I will never tolerate sex abuse by anyone. But I will also never stand by quietly when others are being slandered by false statements circulated widely through social media.”

Jerry was outraged. He believed Radecki was referring to postings on Jerry’s website and believed Radecki was calling him a liar, that his claims were unsubstantiated.

Well, he was at least partly right. Radecki told the Press-Gazette he had indeed been referring to Jerry’s website, but not specifically to Jerry’s claim of having been victimized.

“That accusation that individual brought to your attention, when it was brought here, was given over to police just as we always do,” Radecki said. “I understand it was investigated. I’m still awaiting the DA decision on whether or not it was credible.”

But Radecki’s letter dismissed online allegations raised by Jerry’s friend, the man who confided at his wedding that he had been abused by Norbertines. Radecki said those accusations were investigated by the abbey’s outside consultant group, Praesidium, and the abbey’s own Board of Review, made up of professionals who aren’t employees of the abbey. That process established “There is no factual basis to the claims” against a current Norbertine, Radecki told the Press-Gazette.

Jerry, of course, stands by the accusations leveled by his friend.

Radecki also dismissed Jerry’s claim that Bishop David Ricken last month should have identified not just diocesan priests confirmed to have assaulted minors, but also Norbertine priests.

The bishop and his staff are working from an entirely different set of personnel records and wouldn’t even have those of the Norbertines, Radecki said.

The abbey is conducting a similar internal investigation of its personnel records with the help of Praesidium. Radecki declined to say whether the abbey would publicize the list as the diocese had. That decision won’t be made until Praesidium makes a full report to the Board of Review, and the board has a chance to go over it, Radecki said.

Radecki may still be awaiting word on whether Jerry’s own accusation has merit, but Jerry has already gotten his answer. After meeting with police and prosecutors, he learned the priest who molested him is no longer in active ministry, is out of state and in failing health.

“We did receive a referral,” Brown County District Attorney David Lasee told the Press-Gazette in an email. “We were not able to prosecute that referral because, based on the nature of the alleged contact and the age of the alleged victim, any possible criminal act would be well outside the statute of limitations.”

That appears to be the end of the line for Jerry’s own case, though not likely for his telling of it.

“All I wanted was an admission,” he said. “That would have gone a long way. Now (the priest) is going to the grave with that secret.”