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  Newfoundland Confronts Its Priest Abuse Scandal
Settlement Costs Threaten Parishes

By Doug Struck
Boston Globe [Canada]
July 3, 2005

STEPHENVILLE, Newfoundland -- In the hardscrabble fishing villages of this remote island, the Rev. Kevin Bennett was "like a god," a former altar boy said. He was more important than a cop, and more feared than parents, said the altar boy, who was one of his victims. Dozens of boys kept Bennett's secret as he ordered each into his bed to fondle and rape them.

Now, 16 years after the priest was sent to prison, a $10.5 million settlement was reached last month over the sexual abuse claims of 39 former altar boys. The suit is causing the Roman Catholic diocese here to prepare to put churches, parish halls and priests' homes up for sale.

"We always thought we owned the church," said Theresa LaCosta, 78, who lives down the hill from Our Lady of Fatima Church in Piccadilly, a cluster of poor homes with rich views of emerald hills that plunge into St. George's Bay. She said her husband, now dead, badly hurt his back while helping to lay the church foundation. "Now they are going to take the church away?"

As churches in the United States and Canada grapple with the aftermath of sex abuse claims, similar anguish might be felt by Catholics far and wide.

"This is a wake-up call for the entire church," said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a Washington lawyer who has counseled victims.

Doyle said the Newfoundland case could be "potentially devastating" for dioceses in the United States. Canada's Supreme Court ruled that the Newfoundland diocese owned all of its parishes' property. US dioceses are fighting against having churches and property included in settlements.

Claims paid by US dioceses amount to more than $1 billion, according to a study of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Three dioceses have entered bankruptcy protection to satisfy sex-abuse claims.

One man, 31, whose identity is protected by a court order, paced as he told his experiences.

Beginning when he was 13, the man said, Bennett would summon him to his home. "It was: 'Wash my feet. Rub my belly. Rub my groin. Lay on my stomach,' " the man recounted.

Last year the man tried to hang himself; he was in a coma for eight days. He hasn't been able to hold a job or a relationship, he said.

"I will never get over it," the man said. As a young priest in the 1960s, Bennett enticed altar boys by roaring around on a motorcycle, starting a Boy Scout troop and inviting them to his cabin to swim or ride a snowmobile.

"If I told my grandparents, who raised me, that I was being abused by the priest, they would have smacked me for lying," Randy Johnston, 48, the only victim publicly identified, said in a telephone interview from Labrador City, Newfoundland.