*****
By Kay Ebeling
California Seminaries recruited boys into the priesthood and pedophilia at the same time in late 20th century. The more than 660 lawsuits in the L.A. Clergy Cases show that older pedophiles developed younger pedophiles who then became parish priests around Southern California. Church hierarchy did not just allow pedophilia to take place, but they regularly promoted known perpetrators to high places in Education, Recruiting, and Advocacy, with titles such as Director of the Office of Family Life.
Known California pedophile priests instead of going to prisons, got new assignments where they’d have even more access to children, and more freedom to propagate their crimes. There was more going on here than benevolent neglect.
A quick read of just one complaint filed in the LA clergy cases leaves one thinking there are probably thousands more crime victims of Baker, Rucker, Boyer, Wempe, Loomis, Martini, Miani, Roemer, Hagenbach, Reilly, Burbank, Caffoe, Henry, Miani, Rodriguez, Falvey and the other Jesuits at Blessed Sacrament in Hollywood -- the list of perpetrator priests is lo-o-o-o-o-ong in LA alone.
Here are excerpts from the original complaint for just one of the 506 LA cases, written by plaintiff attorney Tony DeMarco of Kiesel, Boucher & Larson.
DeMarco, by the way, got a bachelor’s degree in Journalism before going on to law school. . .
===
Quotes from the Complaint # BC307934, filed December 17, 2003:
From 1955 through 2002 at least 28 high ranking priests within the LA Archdiocese inner circle who have been accused or convicted of sex abuse, occupied the highest positions.
Well placed priests including Bishops Juan Arzube and G. Patrick Ziemann “used their prominence in the archdiocese administration to cover up for other priests.
Priests involved in education such as Leland Boyer and Gerald Fessard utilized their positions of authority to gain access to victims and then to funnel the children they molested into seminaries and the priesthood.
These 26 priests and likely many others occupied positions such as Auxiliary Bishops, Vicar for Clergy, Vicars General, deans, and teachers at local seminaries and as recruiters for seminaries.
The elevation of child molesters to these positions helps explain why so many child molesting priests were protected by the Defendant Doe Archdiocese, how so many child molesters became priests, and how so many seminarians and priests became child molesters.
THE PRESENCE OF SUCH A HIGH NUMBER OF MOLESTERS IN THE ARCHDIOCESE underscores the institutional and cultural acceptance and acquiescence that is concordant with the systematic failure of the Defendant Doe Archdiocese to take appropriate action to prevent further abuse.
EDUCATION:
Child molester priests congregated in three arms of archdiocesan religious education. Administrators, faculty at the Junior Seminary, members of the Cocations Commission who acted as recruiters for Junior and Major Seminaries.
In these capacities child molester priests had increased opportunities to seek out additional victims who they then steered into the seminary.
Once they were preyed upon and, for too many, inculcated into a perverse lifestyle, the only thing unacceptable about molesting children was being caught by someone that might complain.
There can be little doubt that this systematic molestation of children at the seminaries, grade schools and parishes, was known within the community of priests. Fellow priests did nothing to prevent the continuation of abuse because they themselves were molesting, or they feared reprisal from the high ranking priests who were child molesters.
More after this:
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents so Click, click, click.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
The complaint gives short bios on the following priests:
Leland Boyer
Joseph Sharpe
G. Patrick Ziemann
Gerald Fessard
Edward Dober
Richard Martini
John Farris
John Dougherty
Stephen Hernandez
Fidencio Silva
Patrick Roemer
All of these were associated with Our Lady Queen of Angels Junior Seminary
MORE FROM COMPLAINT:
For much if not all of this time the Defendant Doe Archdiocese and the Vatican have been aware of priests’ sexual improprieties with young boys.
In his capacity as Auxiliary Bishop, Arzube exercised extraordinary influence in promoting other pedophiles within the priesthood and in aiding coverups and transfers of molesting priests. One such molester that Arzube had a direct part in promoting was Joseph Pina, who for many years served at St. Alphonsus parish in Los Angeles.
Also:
Richard Loomis: Vicar for Clergy, received complaints re priests.
Clinton Hagenbach:
Not less than 11 children at several different parishes and hospitals that were molested by Clinton Hagenbach throughout his career have come forward. At his parish assignment, Hagenbach regularly had boys alone with him in his rectory bedroom in which he maintained a fraternity house like environment that was obvious to parish staff and fellow priests. In 1978 he joined McLaughlin, the pastor at his parish, as an
(Hagenbach in 1981 was) elevated to being a Judge in the Synodal Tribunals of the defendant Doe Archdiocese, where he remained until 1986 shortly before his death.
Several other priests are listed:
Thomas Havel
Michael Wempe - Scores of children who were molested by Father Michael Wempe throughout the late 1960s through the 1980s have come forward. In the late 1960s Wempe was made an “Advocate and Notary for the Archdiocese Courts.”
Peter Garcia
George Scott
David Cousineau
George Gunst
All elevated to high positions
Theodore Llanos - was not removed after complaints were raised in the 1970s and 1980s. Rather in the early 1990s he was elevated to the personnel board.
On the Personnel Board Llanos could influence decisions regarding whether child molester priests should go to treatment or evaluation, whether they should be removed, or transferred, and if so to where.
Louis Stallkamp
Micahael Baker - after returning from Jemez Springs for treatment assigned to the Office of Vicar for Clergy under his friend timothy Dyer who was Vicar for Clergy.
Rene Carlos Rodriguez
After complaints about abuse of 4 children he was promoted to Director of the Office of Family Life in Santa Barbara for the Los Angeles archdiocese. “in that post he had regular contact with Catholic families and children, often visiting them in their homes.”
In at least one case “Rodriguez molested the three -- brothers 1988 - 1994
On page 41 of 47 of the complaint: Conclusions
“As a result of dangerous conditions created by Defendant Archdiocese Defendant Does 2 - 16
“The sexual abuse of plaintiffs by the perpetrators arose from, was incidental to, and was in the course and scope of the Perpatrators influence with defendant archdiocese, Defendant Doe Schools, parishes and orders and Doe’s 16 - 1000
(YES, IN THIS ONE COMPLAINT THERE WERE ONE THOUSAND DEFENDANT DOE’S.)
“And each of these Defendants ratified or approved of that sexual contact.
(At all times Defendants) knew that the Perpetrators had a history of committing sexual assaults against children and that any child at, among other locations, Defendant Does 2-16 schools and parishes, and hospitals, were at risk to be sexually assaulted by the Perpetrators.
Archdiocese “Knew or should have known children were at risk to be sexually assaulted.”
More to come. . .
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents so Click, click, click.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Friday, December 7, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
New dates for Salesians cases, but Salesian victims get their checks with the rest of LA plaintiffs
*****
By Kay Ebeling
April 14 and August 25, 2008 are new jury trial dates for LA civil cases regarding the Salesians religious order, in Judge Emilie Elias' court, Division 310.
However, LA plaintiff attorneys, savvy from watching the Salesians’ past performance avoiding final justice, negotiated payments for the 17 Salesian related plaintiffs to be part of the total LA settlement. In other words the 17 Salesian victims whose cases go to trial in 2008, did get settlement checks this week with the rest of the LA plaintiffs.
“The Archbishop is to pay an average of $1.502 million to each of the 17 plaintiffs with claims against the Salesians,” as spelled out in Judge Haley Fromholz’ final order regarding the Clergy Cases, November 27th.
Attorneys for the Salesians last week tried to hold up all 506 payments to LA plaintiffs, but even the LA Archdiocese wouldn't stoop that low. “The Archbishop states that the $1.502 million amount is fair in light of what plaintiffs have received as jury verdicts in clergy abuse cases.”
More to come. . .
By Kay Ebeling
April 14 and August 25, 2008 are new jury trial dates for LA civil cases regarding the Salesians religious order, in Judge Emilie Elias' court, Division 310.
However, LA plaintiff attorneys, savvy from watching the Salesians’ past performance avoiding final justice, negotiated payments for the 17 Salesian related plaintiffs to be part of the total LA settlement. In other words the 17 Salesian victims whose cases go to trial in 2008, did get settlement checks this week with the rest of the LA plaintiffs.
“The Archbishop is to pay an average of $1.502 million to each of the 17 plaintiffs with claims against the Salesians,” as spelled out in Judge Haley Fromholz’ final order regarding the Clergy Cases, November 27th.
Attorneys for the Salesians last week tried to hold up all 506 payments to LA plaintiffs, but even the LA Archdiocese wouldn't stoop that low. “The Archbishop states that the $1.502 million amount is fair in light of what plaintiffs have received as jury verdicts in clergy abuse cases.”
More to come. . .
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
'We are not done,' said the LA DA. No wonder people want to beat up Mahony when they see him on the street
*****
Opinion. by Kay Ebeling
After Michael Baker’s sentencing Monday, the DA said, “I have reason to believe there are other victims who have not identified themselves to law enforcement, or to our office. I hope those victims will be willing to disclose to sheriff’s investigators what happened to them.”
In other words if we want Baker to stay in prison longer than two years, and other priests and hierarchy to join him, more victims have to come forward and talk to the Target Crimes division of the DA’s office.
Meanwhile, it's no wonder people want to beat up Roger Mahony when they see him on the street, after watching the Cardinal orchestrate limp justice in the clergy cases the past five years.
Former priest Michael Baker, who preyed on Southern California and Arizona parishes for decades, looked healthy and happy in court Monday as he was sentenced to 10 years 8 months, knowing that with time off for good behavior he’d be out in about two years. Baker was clean and fresh, serene, self-assured. Plus his sentencing was cut and dried, a bureaucratic procedure really. For the first hour or so a prosecutor stood at a podium droning out rote wording, “You will report to your parole officer within five days of your release, you will report every time you change addresses.”
Baker got away with brutally raping little boys on church grounds, even after he’d been ordered to stay away from children. Will California’s wimpy criminal justice system keep him down? Will “a couple” years in a California leisure prison reform Michael Baker?
At the press conference after Baker’s sentencing, it was the lone broke blogger, me, with my Goodwill tape recorder that, yes, worked -- in a room full of mainstream media reporters -- it was the broke blogger who asked the tough questions. When I realized the rest of them had no idea what to ask, I piped in:
“Now that we know Mahony lied under oath in depositions, since what he said does not match up with the truth that's come out in civil case documents, and now that we see he continued to transfer Baker and other known predator priests to parish after parish,
“When are you going to indict Cardinal Mahony?
A laugh trickled around the press room but I wasn’t joking. DA William Hodgman, seemed surprised at the question at first. He chuckled too, then answered, “We have to follow the evidence and we will go where the evidence takes us.”
He added: “As far as cases in the future, we are not done.”
Every time I see Hodgman I get a visceral reaction. Sorry, but I can’t help it. Hodgman headed the OJ Simpson prosecution, his face was on Court TV as we all watched OJ get off for murder. OJ walked out of court a free man with much the same saunter as Michael Baker’s lilted gait as he left court Monday afternoon.
Unless more Baker victims come forward and talk to the DA, Baker will be a free man in “a couple years” Hodgman said.
Hodgman said., “All along the way despite popular sentiments, we have to be ethical, we have to be professional, and we have to proceed responsibly. To date we have brought cases where ethically we could have brought cases, and where we have cases where we have the evidence to do so--“
(I’m reminded of Marcia Clark’s endless droning in long drawn out sentences that didn’t say anything throughout OJ’s prosecution.)
Hodgman, cont’d.: “The Baker case is a fine example. The sheriff’s department did an amazing job. The sheriff did an amazing job with follow through with the investigation, developing the corroborative evidence that we needed so we could bring the Baker case.
“As far as cases in the future, we are not done. Our work is not done.”
“As far as cases in the future, we are not done. Our work is not done.”
Hodgman repeated that. He WANTS more crime victims to come forward. He wants to slap Baker and others with more charges and keep them in prison for more years.
He needs more victims to come forward. We need more victims to come forward.
Hodgman: “I have to be necessarily circumspect about where we will go. But I can tell you this, we will be consistent like we've been before.
More on Baker and Mahony after this:
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents so Click, click, click.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Most likely Baker will go to a privately financed leisure prison.
In California thanks to overcrowding and a totally out of whack justice system, a guy who sells a bag of crack to feed his habit does hard time for ten years -- but if you have money you can pay your own way and go to an “outsourced to the private sector” leisure prison.
California prisons are so crowded there can be 110 men sleeping in what used to be a utility room, with cots on the floor and true Third World hygiene conditions -- (You know someone is dead by the blood spilling out on the floor).
However, in California, because of the overcrowded public prisons, and our Third World Economy and current power structure, people with money--
Like former priest. Michael Stephen Baker,
almost always go to private prisons, where they pay their own way.
These are the prisons where the guys play tennis and cook their own gourmet food
That's where people with money go to serve prison terms in California --
CARDINAL MAHONY, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT but that people will want to attack you when they see you?
When you play PR games with the justice system.
You take part in a national legal strategy that causes a SMALL FRACTION of your church's crime victims to be able to come forward and go through legal processes and you pay them with
puny portions of your church’s fortune.
At the same time the Catholic PR machine puts out a major lie in the national and international media--
Mahony has said, “We hope these victims can now find closure.” He and the rest of church hierarchy now want to turn their backs on all of us, including the thousands who never filed lawsuits and haven’t been able to file criminal charges.
Mahony thinks he can go back to business as usual.
Cardinal M,
YOU ALLOWED little boys to be brutally raped, forcibly sodomized with their screams muffled in your priestly garments shoved in their faces.
YOU PROTECTED predator priests and let children leave your rectories with blood draining from their bodies.
YOU DID NOTHING
And when there was a chance to come forward and admit your crimes and face the public with humility, instead you lied.
You hired legions (actually lesions) of criminal corporate attorneys to protect the assets and asses of Catholic hierarchy, including yourself.
WITH NO CONCERN AT ALL FOR YOUR CHURCH'S CRIME VICTIMS
You showed how shallow is your apology by the way you apologized last July, to microphones, not to human beings.
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT? I think even me, with my crippled nerves and lowered upper body strength.
Mr. Mahony, if I saw you unprotected on a street I’d probably pick up the first heavy object I could find and slam you over the head myself.
THAT is the kind of wrath you have incurred in people
BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID.
What did you expect.
Better lay low for the rest of your life.
OR COME CLEAN and admit what you did
And let the whole story come out.
Every time there’s a settlement before a trial, the only one who really wins is the archdiocese that made the settlement.
BUT THE CRIMINALS ARE STILL IN THE HIERARCHY sipping sherry in very luxurious private rooms, chuckling over what they just pulled off and thinking they got away with.
They didn't.
More from the press conference after this:
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents so Click, click, click.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Here are my crude notes:
Hodgman: “We're going to proceed ethically, we're going to proceed professionally and we will go where the competent evidence takes us.”
Hodgman: I feel Baker’s sentencing is fair. Our two charge victims were spared the ordeal of having to go through a trial being subject to cross examination and to some degree all that goes along with having to talk about very private things in a very public forum.
So I think the disposition, the sentencing, was very fair. We had to give up something, the defense through their attorneys had to give up something. And it was a fair resolution to the case.
Hodgman, answering a reporter’s question re one of the John Doe’: “There was evidence of trips that were taken by the victim to bring him close to the defendant, but actually it was a family that moved into the vicinity of a parish in Pico Rivera and the then Father Baker befriended the family. There was a number of children. The family turned toward him and that's how it all began.
REPORTER: WHERE WAS HE WHEN THESE TWO SETS OF CRIMES TOOK PLACE
Hodgman: Well that is a little bit difficult to re-create, given where he was during the charges, when the two victims were between 14 and 18. Part of the period of time was at St. Columbkille Parish which is in Los Angeles. And part of the time when he was in the rectory at St. Camillus (de Lellis, Los Angeles). The rectory at St. Camillus.
There were other assignments during that time period as well. (He refers reporter to report from the people of God available at bishop accountability dot org and numerous other places.)
ME: HOW MUCH TIME WILL HE ACTUALLY SERVE, AND WHERE?
“In terms of where he’s going to go, we're not sure, that's up to the Department of Corrections. In terms of actual time, he, of course, gets credit for the time he spent in custody, which is now about 22 months, a little bit more, then if he, in a sense, keeps his nose clean in prison, he will be entitled to 50 percent credits, they do what they call good time work time credits.
Hodgman: “So it appears to be like a couple more years.”
MARY GRANT- will this make it easier for other victims of Baker if there are any, and what would you say to them now if a victim came forward?
HODGMAN: “Well first of all I have reason to believe there are other victims of Baker who have not identified themselves to law enforcement, or to our office. And I would hope that those victims would follow the path of John Doe and John Doe 2 which took a tremendous amount of courage, to be willing to disclose to these investigators what had happened to them.
“Specifically with regard to John Doe 2, the drama and dynamics of how he disclosed to the sheriff’s investigators probably will never come to light, but I can tell you for those who were there it was very, very profound.
“Victim Number Two had never disclosed to anyone prior to being contacted by our sheriff’s investigators, what had happened to him. And it was very emotional, very profound, and even for seasoned investigators an experience that they will never ever forget.
“I hope that other victims not only of Baker but other clergy sex abuse victims will have that same sort of strength and courage to come forward and speak to law enforcement, because the district attorney’s office will be there, as I stated.
“We will go where the evidence takes us. If there’s evidence of crimes that we can charge and prosecute, we will charge them and we will prosecute them.
JOHN SPANO (LA TIMES): How much longer do you think the investigation will last ?
John, I’ve given up any hope of trying to quantify that. In the spring of 2002 I anticipated a couple of years. It’s been well over five and a half years now so I think we will simply follow the evidence. If new evidence turns up at my doorstep tomorrow, then we're going to follow it and off we go again.
SPANO: Any new evidence since the Baker case last year that led to these charges?
HODGMAN: Yes, we have been at work in ways that we can’t address publicly but yes, new evidence has been gathered.
More to Come. . .
Opinion. by Kay Ebeling
After Michael Baker’s sentencing Monday, the DA said, “I have reason to believe there are other victims who have not identified themselves to law enforcement, or to our office. I hope those victims will be willing to disclose to sheriff’s investigators what happened to them.”
In other words if we want Baker to stay in prison longer than two years, and other priests and hierarchy to join him, more victims have to come forward and talk to the Target Crimes division of the DA’s office.
Meanwhile, it's no wonder people want to beat up Roger Mahony when they see him on the street, after watching the Cardinal orchestrate limp justice in the clergy cases the past five years.
Former priest Michael Baker, who preyed on Southern California and Arizona parishes for decades, looked healthy and happy in court Monday as he was sentenced to 10 years 8 months, knowing that with time off for good behavior he’d be out in about two years. Baker was clean and fresh, serene, self-assured. Plus his sentencing was cut and dried, a bureaucratic procedure really. For the first hour or so a prosecutor stood at a podium droning out rote wording, “You will report to your parole officer within five days of your release, you will report every time you change addresses.”
Baker got away with brutally raping little boys on church grounds, even after he’d been ordered to stay away from children. Will California’s wimpy criminal justice system keep him down? Will “a couple” years in a California leisure prison reform Michael Baker?
At the press conference after Baker’s sentencing, it was the lone broke blogger, me, with my Goodwill tape recorder that, yes, worked -- in a room full of mainstream media reporters -- it was the broke blogger who asked the tough questions. When I realized the rest of them had no idea what to ask, I piped in:
“Now that we know Mahony lied under oath in depositions, since what he said does not match up with the truth that's come out in civil case documents, and now that we see he continued to transfer Baker and other known predator priests to parish after parish,
“When are you going to indict Cardinal Mahony?
A laugh trickled around the press room but I wasn’t joking. DA William Hodgman, seemed surprised at the question at first. He chuckled too, then answered, “We have to follow the evidence and we will go where the evidence takes us.”
He added: “As far as cases in the future, we are not done.”
Every time I see Hodgman I get a visceral reaction. Sorry, but I can’t help it. Hodgman headed the OJ Simpson prosecution, his face was on Court TV as we all watched OJ get off for murder. OJ walked out of court a free man with much the same saunter as Michael Baker’s lilted gait as he left court Monday afternoon.
Unless more Baker victims come forward and talk to the DA, Baker will be a free man in “a couple years” Hodgman said.
Hodgman said., “All along the way despite popular sentiments, we have to be ethical, we have to be professional, and we have to proceed responsibly. To date we have brought cases where ethically we could have brought cases, and where we have cases where we have the evidence to do so--“
(I’m reminded of Marcia Clark’s endless droning in long drawn out sentences that didn’t say anything throughout OJ’s prosecution.)
Hodgman, cont’d.: “The Baker case is a fine example. The sheriff’s department did an amazing job. The sheriff did an amazing job with follow through with the investigation, developing the corroborative evidence that we needed so we could bring the Baker case.
“As far as cases in the future, we are not done. Our work is not done.”
“As far as cases in the future, we are not done. Our work is not done.”
Hodgman repeated that. He WANTS more crime victims to come forward. He wants to slap Baker and others with more charges and keep them in prison for more years.
He needs more victims to come forward. We need more victims to come forward.
Hodgman: “I have to be necessarily circumspect about where we will go. But I can tell you this, we will be consistent like we've been before.
More on Baker and Mahony after this:
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents so Click, click, click.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Most likely Baker will go to a privately financed leisure prison.
In California thanks to overcrowding and a totally out of whack justice system, a guy who sells a bag of crack to feed his habit does hard time for ten years -- but if you have money you can pay your own way and go to an “outsourced to the private sector” leisure prison.
California prisons are so crowded there can be 110 men sleeping in what used to be a utility room, with cots on the floor and true Third World hygiene conditions -- (You know someone is dead by the blood spilling out on the floor).
However, in California, because of the overcrowded public prisons, and our Third World Economy and current power structure, people with money--
Like former priest. Michael Stephen Baker,
almost always go to private prisons, where they pay their own way.
These are the prisons where the guys play tennis and cook their own gourmet food
That's where people with money go to serve prison terms in California --
CARDINAL MAHONY, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT but that people will want to attack you when they see you?
When you play PR games with the justice system.
You take part in a national legal strategy that causes a SMALL FRACTION of your church's crime victims to be able to come forward and go through legal processes and you pay them with
puny portions of your church’s fortune.
At the same time the Catholic PR machine puts out a major lie in the national and international media--
Mahony has said, “We hope these victims can now find closure.” He and the rest of church hierarchy now want to turn their backs on all of us, including the thousands who never filed lawsuits and haven’t been able to file criminal charges.
Mahony thinks he can go back to business as usual.
Cardinal M,
YOU ALLOWED little boys to be brutally raped, forcibly sodomized with their screams muffled in your priestly garments shoved in their faces.
YOU PROTECTED predator priests and let children leave your rectories with blood draining from their bodies.
YOU DID NOTHING
And when there was a chance to come forward and admit your crimes and face the public with humility, instead you lied.
You hired legions (actually lesions) of criminal corporate attorneys to protect the assets and asses of Catholic hierarchy, including yourself.
WITH NO CONCERN AT ALL FOR YOUR CHURCH'S CRIME VICTIMS
You showed how shallow is your apology by the way you apologized last July, to microphones, not to human beings.
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT? I think even me, with my crippled nerves and lowered upper body strength.
Mr. Mahony, if I saw you unprotected on a street I’d probably pick up the first heavy object I could find and slam you over the head myself.
THAT is the kind of wrath you have incurred in people
BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID.
What did you expect.
Better lay low for the rest of your life.
OR COME CLEAN and admit what you did
And let the whole story come out.
Every time there’s a settlement before a trial, the only one who really wins is the archdiocese that made the settlement.
BUT THE CRIMINALS ARE STILL IN THE HIERARCHY sipping sherry in very luxurious private rooms, chuckling over what they just pulled off and thinking they got away with.
They didn't.
More from the press conference after this:
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents so Click, click, click.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Here are my crude notes:
Hodgman: “We're going to proceed ethically, we're going to proceed professionally and we will go where the competent evidence takes us.”
Hodgman: I feel Baker’s sentencing is fair. Our two charge victims were spared the ordeal of having to go through a trial being subject to cross examination and to some degree all that goes along with having to talk about very private things in a very public forum.
So I think the disposition, the sentencing, was very fair. We had to give up something, the defense through their attorneys had to give up something. And it was a fair resolution to the case.
Hodgman, answering a reporter’s question re one of the John Doe’: “There was evidence of trips that were taken by the victim to bring him close to the defendant, but actually it was a family that moved into the vicinity of a parish in Pico Rivera and the then Father Baker befriended the family. There was a number of children. The family turned toward him and that's how it all began.
REPORTER: WHERE WAS HE WHEN THESE TWO SETS OF CRIMES TOOK PLACE
Hodgman: Well that is a little bit difficult to re-create, given where he was during the charges, when the two victims were between 14 and 18. Part of the period of time was at St. Columbkille Parish which is in Los Angeles. And part of the time when he was in the rectory at St. Camillus (de Lellis, Los Angeles). The rectory at St. Camillus.
There were other assignments during that time period as well. (He refers reporter to report from the people of God available at bishop accountability dot org and numerous other places.)
ME: HOW MUCH TIME WILL HE ACTUALLY SERVE, AND WHERE?
“In terms of where he’s going to go, we're not sure, that's up to the Department of Corrections. In terms of actual time, he, of course, gets credit for the time he spent in custody, which is now about 22 months, a little bit more, then if he, in a sense, keeps his nose clean in prison, he will be entitled to 50 percent credits, they do what they call good time work time credits.
Hodgman: “So it appears to be like a couple more years.”
MARY GRANT- will this make it easier for other victims of Baker if there are any, and what would you say to them now if a victim came forward?
HODGMAN: “Well first of all I have reason to believe there are other victims of Baker who have not identified themselves to law enforcement, or to our office. And I would hope that those victims would follow the path of John Doe and John Doe 2 which took a tremendous amount of courage, to be willing to disclose to these investigators what had happened to them.
“Specifically with regard to John Doe 2, the drama and dynamics of how he disclosed to the sheriff’s investigators probably will never come to light, but I can tell you for those who were there it was very, very profound.
“Victim Number Two had never disclosed to anyone prior to being contacted by our sheriff’s investigators, what had happened to him. And it was very emotional, very profound, and even for seasoned investigators an experience that they will never ever forget.
“I hope that other victims not only of Baker but other clergy sex abuse victims will have that same sort of strength and courage to come forward and speak to law enforcement, because the district attorney’s office will be there, as I stated.
“We will go where the evidence takes us. If there’s evidence of crimes that we can charge and prosecute, we will charge them and we will prosecute them.
JOHN SPANO (LA TIMES): How much longer do you think the investigation will last ?
John, I’ve given up any hope of trying to quantify that. In the spring of 2002 I anticipated a couple of years. It’s been well over five and a half years now so I think we will simply follow the evidence. If new evidence turns up at my doorstep tomorrow, then we're going to follow it and off we go again.
SPANO: Any new evidence since the Baker case last year that led to these charges?
HODGMAN: Yes, we have been at work in ways that we can’t address publicly but yes, new evidence has been gathered.
More to Come. . .
Monday, December 3, 2007
‘You're not worth the spit on the sidewalk.’ Victims speak at Baker’s sentencing: For nine counts he gets ten years of which he'll serve two
*****
By Kay Ebeling
Ex-priest Michael Baker did not seem like a guilty man facing a just penance as he sauntered out of court Monday afternoon. Several victims at his sentencing observed he looked more like a guy leaving a business meeting, a successful one. Baker shook hands “so long” with his attorneys and left court with a lilt in his gait. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for oral copulation of two boys under age 18, but at a press conference after the hearing, Deputy District Attorney William Hodgman, calculated the amount of time Baker will actually serve.
“If he, in a sense, keeps his nose clean in prison, he will be entitled to 50 percent credits, that's good time and work time credits,” said Hodgman, who is head of target crimes in LA County.
“It appears the amount he will serve will be like a couple more years,” Hodgman said.
Baker gets 717 days served and work time, totaling 1075 days credit. Baker looked well fed and rested from his stay in LA county jail.
DA Michael Beart informed the slouching former priest that he’d have to register as a sex offender five days after release.
Baker’s face revealed he was already scheming what he’ll do when he gets out.
The former priest predator kept a little pout on his mouth, and as the hearing progressed the left side of his lips drooped into a half frown. His eyes were half lidded eyes, he was only half there, as several crime victims came forward to make impact statements, revealing how much he cared.
Baker appearance was crisp. He was fresh coiffed, with a trimmed beard, making him look like a college professor, even in his orange jumpsuit. Quite a change from last time he was in court almost one year ago, when his hair was long and shaggy, silver and grey blending in with a scraggly months growth of beard.
He’d glare out from the prisoners’ security bin with a scowl, eyes blazing like a madman.
Today Baker looked like a sedated TV preacher with plans for a quick comeback after prison.
Before the victims could speak, Donald Steier, main defense attorney for pedophile priests in LA, jumped up to say, “We are not waiving any finding of unconstitutionality in the future,” which made even the judge go quizzical and respond with, why are you saying that now? We can't even consider that here.
Why did Steier feel he needed to specify some future challenge of Baker’s conviction?
Then the victim impact statements began, read more after this.
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
(A quick transcript of victim impact statements from Baker’s sentencing hearing will be at http://cityofangels7.blogspot.com/ by tomorrow morning.)
“In 1976 when Michael Stephen Baker entered my life I was nine years old,” said Matt Severson, first Baker victim to speak. “He paid a lot of attention to me and the other young boys, tickling us. His tickling felt different to me, but I didn't want to say anything.”
Baker held Matt and his mother “in his grip” a good nine years. Then Matt, a senior in high school, was able to break away.
“I was still under the impression it was all my fault,” Severson said. “Father Mike was sending me checks in the mail which made me still feel complicit and guilty.”
“If a criminal case had been pursued by all of us he’d be in prison the rest of his life,” said Severson. “Now as a 60 year old priest, going to prison for a few years will not be good.”
“This is a day I’ll never forget,” Matt Severson said in closing.
Mary Grant then spoke “on behalf of survivors of Baker and part of a support group we all belong to.”
Almost tentatively Grant thanked "the DA's office for pursuing these charges," and added "But lives won’t be repaired, they won’t get their childhoods back.
"10 years is not enough."
Grant said, “At this point, with you being sentenced, the five and a half years these victims went through didn't have to happen. It didn't have to happen.”
Then Vicki Martin got up to speak for David D, a Baker victim, who couldn't be in court that day:
“Father Baker is a monster,” Martin said staring Baker in the face. The convicted pedophile stayed in one position, with his half-lidded frown, and stared back.
Martin said, “Baker posed himself as a man of god and his intentions were evil. He robbed so many children of innocence -- and David D wants the court to know this fact.
“Baker forced David into a motel room and sodomized him while pushing David D’s face into the pillows to muffle his screams.
“David wanted to scream at Baker now in court,” Vicki Martin stated to Baker’s face.
Baker barely blinked.
She went on: “People are told to forgive, but forgiveness is a cheap grace when the person to be pardoned is not sorry.”
“He’s only sorry he got caught, Martin said and Baker stared straight back at her.
Next speaker was a child, and photographers were ordered to stop taking pictures. The daughter of victim Dominic Zamora came forward.
As she approached the mike her eyes and mouth twisted in anger, like an adult woman who’d battled years of trauma, startling to see on her 12-year-old face.
“YOU HAVE RUINED not only my life but my father’s life and there’s no way that we'll ever forgive you. You have caused my father to be in a gang, do drugs, and become an alcoholic. We will never forgive you.” Dominic stood behind her and walked her back to her seat.
Flames came out of Dominic’s mother Virginia Zamora's mouth as she spoke next:
“Baker, I have no words to call you father or priest. You took an oath and you knew right from wrong better than we did.”
Virginia Zamora's voice filled the room.
“You know who I am,” she said in a slow melody. “I am your worst nightmare. I sentence you to live in prison.
“Do you remember me?” She grinned and snarled at him. “Yes you do. You remember me.” She nodded. “I give you life.”
Baker's other attorney Leonard Levine was blocking my view of the defendant.
“You think because you wore a costume that you were immune, no. And that's all it was a costume.
“You made the children suffer, you took my life away,” Virginia Zomora continued.
“You're not even worth the spit on the sidewalk and you think because you go in there and grin that nobody will touch you?
“I’m sorry mister, you know where you're going after here, you're going right to hell with Satan. You and the rest of your pact. May god have mercy on your soul.”
I had to practically lie down in my seat to see Michael Baker hiding behind Levine. The former Father Mike, didn't blink.
Then Frank Zamora, Dominic’s father, spoke in a calm, even voice:
“Why did you ruin so many lives? There are so many marriages you broke up and you destroyed so many kids, especially the ones that committed suicide.
“Here I have a picture of you holding my son.
“I have a picture here of you in my home.
“Because we invited you.
“Because we trusted you.
“We thought the safest place for our children would be in the church.
“My son now only has 10 percent of his liver. We don’t know if he’s going to live until next year. He’s living day-to-day and it’s all because of you.”
With shaking self control, Frank Zamora stared straight at Baker and said, “You made my son lose his faith and as it says in the Bible it’s better you put a milestone around your neck.
At this point Baker actually looked scared, he just gave a glimmer of fear.
Then he turned to confer with his lawyer Donald Steier and the expression on the ex-priest's face was “Why do I have to go through this?”
James Brown, a friend of Mike, another of Baker’s victims, then spoke:
“As I was growing up with Mike I noticed he was having a lot of social problems. I’m a paramedic now and I always knew Mike had a drive to help people but he had a problem.
“There was something he was hiding. He got into drugs, and it affected his friendships. Twenty years passed and he finally started to talk about what had happened. He started to fix himself. He’s getting help.”
“This is the first time I’ve met this man Baker,” Brown said. He stared at Baker: “You're going to have to meet your maker.”
The look on Baker’s face said, yeah, I’ll go to confession before I die, take care of that, no problem.
Aside from the left side of his mouth drooping lower into a frown (the right side of his mouth staying in an emotion-free line), Baker’s expression was mostly mute, blank, reflecting little but for a glint in the eye (I may never write for mainstream media but thank God as I’d never be able to say in the Times what I say here.)
Baker’s white bushy eyebrows jutted down towards the center of his face in a look of concern and anguish he probably practiced in front of a mirror for hours.
Baker held the same slouchy position throughout the hearing, being, in my observation, about as sincere as he probably was when he was hearing confessions from some of his victims when they were children, in the 1980s and 90s all over LA.
Roger Mahony transfered Baker 18 times in the convicted preist's career, with several months-long stays for Baker at Servants of the Paraclete, before he was finally defrocked.
The judge closed the sentencing hearing said, "This is a compromise but considering the pain and suffering that would have come with the trial, we've saved the victims future anguish.”
Right.
What Hodgman had to say about Mahony in a post coming shortly.
(A quick transcript of victims impact statements from Baker’s sentencing hearing will be at http://cityofangels7.blogspot.com/ by tomorrow morning.)
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
By Kay Ebeling
Ex-priest Michael Baker did not seem like a guilty man facing a just penance as he sauntered out of court Monday afternoon. Several victims at his sentencing observed he looked more like a guy leaving a business meeting, a successful one. Baker shook hands “so long” with his attorneys and left court with a lilt in his gait. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for oral copulation of two boys under age 18, but at a press conference after the hearing, Deputy District Attorney William Hodgman, calculated the amount of time Baker will actually serve.
“If he, in a sense, keeps his nose clean in prison, he will be entitled to 50 percent credits, that's good time and work time credits,” said Hodgman, who is head of target crimes in LA County.
“It appears the amount he will serve will be like a couple more years,” Hodgman said.
Baker gets 717 days served and work time, totaling 1075 days credit. Baker looked well fed and rested from his stay in LA county jail.
DA Michael Beart informed the slouching former priest that he’d have to register as a sex offender five days after release.
Baker’s face revealed he was already scheming what he’ll do when he gets out.
The former priest predator kept a little pout on his mouth, and as the hearing progressed the left side of his lips drooped into a half frown. His eyes were half lidded eyes, he was only half there, as several crime victims came forward to make impact statements, revealing how much he cared.
Baker appearance was crisp. He was fresh coiffed, with a trimmed beard, making him look like a college professor, even in his orange jumpsuit. Quite a change from last time he was in court almost one year ago, when his hair was long and shaggy, silver and grey blending in with a scraggly months growth of beard.
He’d glare out from the prisoners’ security bin with a scowl, eyes blazing like a madman.
Today Baker looked like a sedated TV preacher with plans for a quick comeback after prison.
Before the victims could speak, Donald Steier, main defense attorney for pedophile priests in LA, jumped up to say, “We are not waiving any finding of unconstitutionality in the future,” which made even the judge go quizzical and respond with, why are you saying that now? We can't even consider that here.
Why did Steier feel he needed to specify some future challenge of Baker’s conviction?
Then the victim impact statements began, read more after this.
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
(A quick transcript of victim impact statements from Baker’s sentencing hearing will be at http://cityofangels7.blogspot.com/ by tomorrow morning.)
“In 1976 when Michael Stephen Baker entered my life I was nine years old,” said Matt Severson, first Baker victim to speak. “He paid a lot of attention to me and the other young boys, tickling us. His tickling felt different to me, but I didn't want to say anything.”
Baker held Matt and his mother “in his grip” a good nine years. Then Matt, a senior in high school, was able to break away.
“I was still under the impression it was all my fault,” Severson said. “Father Mike was sending me checks in the mail which made me still feel complicit and guilty.”
“If a criminal case had been pursued by all of us he’d be in prison the rest of his life,” said Severson. “Now as a 60 year old priest, going to prison for a few years will not be good.”
“This is a day I’ll never forget,” Matt Severson said in closing.
Mary Grant then spoke “on behalf of survivors of Baker and part of a support group we all belong to.”
Almost tentatively Grant thanked "the DA's office for pursuing these charges," and added "But lives won’t be repaired, they won’t get their childhoods back.
"10 years is not enough."
Grant said, “At this point, with you being sentenced, the five and a half years these victims went through didn't have to happen. It didn't have to happen.”
Then Vicki Martin got up to speak for David D, a Baker victim, who couldn't be in court that day:
“Father Baker is a monster,” Martin said staring Baker in the face. The convicted pedophile stayed in one position, with his half-lidded frown, and stared back.
Martin said, “Baker posed himself as a man of god and his intentions were evil. He robbed so many children of innocence -- and David D wants the court to know this fact.
“Baker forced David into a motel room and sodomized him while pushing David D’s face into the pillows to muffle his screams.
“David wanted to scream at Baker now in court,” Vicki Martin stated to Baker’s face.
Baker barely blinked.
She went on: “People are told to forgive, but forgiveness is a cheap grace when the person to be pardoned is not sorry.”
“He’s only sorry he got caught, Martin said and Baker stared straight back at her.
Next speaker was a child, and photographers were ordered to stop taking pictures. The daughter of victim Dominic Zamora came forward.
As she approached the mike her eyes and mouth twisted in anger, like an adult woman who’d battled years of trauma, startling to see on her 12-year-old face.
“YOU HAVE RUINED not only my life but my father’s life and there’s no way that we'll ever forgive you. You have caused my father to be in a gang, do drugs, and become an alcoholic. We will never forgive you.” Dominic stood behind her and walked her back to her seat.
Flames came out of Dominic’s mother Virginia Zamora's mouth as she spoke next:
“Baker, I have no words to call you father or priest. You took an oath and you knew right from wrong better than we did.”
Virginia Zamora's voice filled the room.
“You know who I am,” she said in a slow melody. “I am your worst nightmare. I sentence you to live in prison.
“Do you remember me?” She grinned and snarled at him. “Yes you do. You remember me.” She nodded. “I give you life.”
Baker's other attorney Leonard Levine was blocking my view of the defendant.
“You think because you wore a costume that you were immune, no. And that's all it was a costume.
“You made the children suffer, you took my life away,” Virginia Zomora continued.
“You're not even worth the spit on the sidewalk and you think because you go in there and grin that nobody will touch you?
“I’m sorry mister, you know where you're going after here, you're going right to hell with Satan. You and the rest of your pact. May god have mercy on your soul.”
I had to practically lie down in my seat to see Michael Baker hiding behind Levine. The former Father Mike, didn't blink.
Then Frank Zamora, Dominic’s father, spoke in a calm, even voice:
“Why did you ruin so many lives? There are so many marriages you broke up and you destroyed so many kids, especially the ones that committed suicide.
“Here I have a picture of you holding my son.
“I have a picture here of you in my home.
“Because we invited you.
“Because we trusted you.
“We thought the safest place for our children would be in the church.
“My son now only has 10 percent of his liver. We don’t know if he’s going to live until next year. He’s living day-to-day and it’s all because of you.”
With shaking self control, Frank Zamora stared straight at Baker and said, “You made my son lose his faith and as it says in the Bible it’s better you put a milestone around your neck.
At this point Baker actually looked scared, he just gave a glimmer of fear.
Then he turned to confer with his lawyer Donald Steier and the expression on the ex-priest's face was “Why do I have to go through this?”
James Brown, a friend of Mike, another of Baker’s victims, then spoke:
“As I was growing up with Mike I noticed he was having a lot of social problems. I’m a paramedic now and I always knew Mike had a drive to help people but he had a problem.
“There was something he was hiding. He got into drugs, and it affected his friendships. Twenty years passed and he finally started to talk about what had happened. He started to fix himself. He’s getting help.”
“This is the first time I’ve met this man Baker,” Brown said. He stared at Baker: “You're going to have to meet your maker.”
The look on Baker’s face said, yeah, I’ll go to confession before I die, take care of that, no problem.
Aside from the left side of his mouth drooping lower into a frown (the right side of his mouth staying in an emotion-free line), Baker’s expression was mostly mute, blank, reflecting little but for a glint in the eye (I may never write for mainstream media but thank God as I’d never be able to say in the Times what I say here.)
Baker’s white bushy eyebrows jutted down towards the center of his face in a look of concern and anguish he probably practiced in front of a mirror for hours.
Baker held the same slouchy position throughout the hearing, being, in my observation, about as sincere as he probably was when he was hearing confessions from some of his victims when they were children, in the 1980s and 90s all over LA.
Roger Mahony transfered Baker 18 times in the convicted preist's career, with several months-long stays for Baker at Servants of the Paraclete, before he was finally defrocked.
The judge closed the sentencing hearing said, "This is a compromise but considering the pain and suffering that would have come with the trial, we've saved the victims future anguish.”
Right.
What Hodgman had to say about Mahony in a post coming shortly.
(A quick transcript of victims impact statements from Baker’s sentencing hearing will be at http://cityofangels7.blogspot.com/ by tomorrow morning.)
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Judge Haley Fromholz, retiring this week, issues one last order to stop Salesians from holding up entire LA settlement
*****
By Kay Ebeling
Judge Haley Fromholz retires this week and his last act in the Clergy Cases was to stop the Salesians from holding up all 500-plus payments in the $660 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
In a hearing Tuesday afternoon in Fromholz’ court, attorneys for Salesians Religious Order were denied their motion against the July settlement. Salesians argued the payout will be illegal as it includes payment to the 17 cases involving their religious order which are yet to be resolved, because the Salesians refused to settle. The judge shot them down one last time.
In the courtroom yesterday it was Hennigan’s firm for the Archdiocese on the defense against Steve McFeely and Robert Leventhal from Foley & Lardner for the Salesians. Several plaintiff attorneys were in the viewing area, occasionally jumping up to join the fray in front of the judge.
Tony DeMarco, plaintiff liaison, explained: the archdiocese is guaranteeing payment of the 17 Salesian cases “but plaintiffs are still obliged” to go forward pursuing their case against the religious order. The settlement as it is written is “a guarantee of payment by the archdiocese.” He added that the checks will go out to all the LA plaintiffs soon after December 1st.
The Salesians can better understand by watching more daytime TV. You know, like the commercials for pre-settlement loans, the archdiocese is saying: “If, and only if, you are successful with your case will you be required to repay ---. If you lose your case, you would owe us nothing!”
Judge Fromholz issued a 15-page tentative order, for one last time taking apart an already specious argument put forth by a church attorney. The Salesians continue a marathon of motions to obstruct progress toward the jury trial for their 17 cases, which was supposed to begin November 5.
City of Angels predicts the Salesians cases jury trial will just be beginning two years from now November 5, 2009, and McFeely will lose 20 more pounds from all that tap dancing.
Goodbye, Judge Fromholz, enjoy your retirement, and thank you for all your hard work.
My favorite part of Judge Haley Fromholz’ November 27 order was on Page 3:
“Further complicating matters is the fact that the Salesians ‘overlooked’ an email containing the revised agreement, and consequently did not address the revised agreement in their opposition brief.”
Judge Fromholz writes on Page 1 of the November 27 tentative:
“The Settlement Agreement provides that the Archbishop will make a payment of $504 million by December 1, 2007, a second payment of $28 million by March 25, 2008, and a potential third payment of $128 million five years after the effective date of the Agreement.
“This third payment is to be reduced by the amount received by the plaintiffs from non-settling defendants.”
So there really was no need for the hearing yesterday.
That didn't stop Robert Leventhal for the Salesians from saying, “The Salesians should be captains of their ship.” He stood up and declared that at least seven times. “The archdiocese is captain of its ship and is allowed to settle for whatever amount it wants to pay. Just like they are captains of their own ship, the Salesians likewise should be captains of their ship.”
Leventhal went on a good 15 minutes saying:
The archdiocese has no right to seek comparative indemnity for amounts it paid for several claims
It has no right to impede the Salesians’ ability to settle its own claims
There are No joint interests
The settlement agreement violates law and public policy
The archdiocese has no right to decide the amount of claims against Salesians.
Most of the time Leventhal slipped into a babble of corporate insurance gobbled language:
Can’t agree to third party ownership of claims with several indemnity, claims to right damages not subject to assignment under California law -- claims with several liabilities not intended for joint liability claims -- blah-blah-blah insurance liability indemnity co-joint -- several indemnity claims to right damages not subject to assignment under California law
Such is the state of corporate religion in America today.
More from Leventhal after this:
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Leventhal went so far as to say:
“The plaintiffs are serving as the archdiocese’s front man and we need to be able to have meaningful face-to-face negotiations with them without the archdiocese being involved.
“And we should be the captain of our ship --
Before the hearing could begin there was a good hour of argument whether they should even be there in the first place. Since the Salesian jury trial was transferred earlier this month to the courtroom of Judge Emilie H. Elias which is in a whole different part of town, there was some confusion. Just as I walked in Steve McFeely was chiming out, “I want to be clear, judge, I’m talking about the meetings with Judge Elias and liaison council, we weren’t even there.”
Judge Haley Fromholz: The result wouldn't have been any different. Judge Elias didn't feel she was in a position to hear the motion and wouldn't be for a reasonable time. So the chief justice restored the cases to me through the 27th.
Goodbye, Judge Fromholz, and it's been a pleasure watching you work.
Cards can be mailed to:
Judge Haley Fromholz,
LA Superior Court Department 20
111 North Hill Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Fromholz’ 15-page tentative will most likely be his last Order in the Clergy Cases I, II, and III. Now the dog and pony show that is Steve McFeely and Robert Leventhal from Foley & Lardner defending the Salesians against those pesky 17 plaintiffs moves to Dept. 308, Central Civil West Courthouse, 600 South Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles, Judge Emilie H. Elias and no one knows where the documents will be located for public viewing.
But in civil cases the documents are open to the public.
The CCW Courthouse is the one just off Wilshire near Lafayette Park. City of Angels is studying the Metro schedule and will be there next week.
Gotta go back to my other job now
More to Come. . .
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
By Kay Ebeling
Judge Haley Fromholz retires this week and his last act in the Clergy Cases was to stop the Salesians from holding up all 500-plus payments in the $660 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
In a hearing Tuesday afternoon in Fromholz’ court, attorneys for Salesians Religious Order were denied their motion against the July settlement. Salesians argued the payout will be illegal as it includes payment to the 17 cases involving their religious order which are yet to be resolved, because the Salesians refused to settle. The judge shot them down one last time.
In the courtroom yesterday it was Hennigan’s firm for the Archdiocese on the defense against Steve McFeely and Robert Leventhal from Foley & Lardner for the Salesians. Several plaintiff attorneys were in the viewing area, occasionally jumping up to join the fray in front of the judge.
Tony DeMarco, plaintiff liaison, explained: the archdiocese is guaranteeing payment of the 17 Salesian cases “but plaintiffs are still obliged” to go forward pursuing their case against the religious order. The settlement as it is written is “a guarantee of payment by the archdiocese.” He added that the checks will go out to all the LA plaintiffs soon after December 1st.
The Salesians can better understand by watching more daytime TV. You know, like the commercials for pre-settlement loans, the archdiocese is saying: “If, and only if, you are successful with your case will you be required to repay ---. If you lose your case, you would owe us nothing!”
Judge Fromholz issued a 15-page tentative order, for one last time taking apart an already specious argument put forth by a church attorney. The Salesians continue a marathon of motions to obstruct progress toward the jury trial for their 17 cases, which was supposed to begin November 5.
City of Angels predicts the Salesians cases jury trial will just be beginning two years from now November 5, 2009, and McFeely will lose 20 more pounds from all that tap dancing.
Goodbye, Judge Fromholz, enjoy your retirement, and thank you for all your hard work.
My favorite part of Judge Haley Fromholz’ November 27 order was on Page 3:
“Further complicating matters is the fact that the Salesians ‘overlooked’ an email containing the revised agreement, and consequently did not address the revised agreement in their opposition brief.”
Judge Fromholz writes on Page 1 of the November 27 tentative:
“The Settlement Agreement provides that the Archbishop will make a payment of $504 million by December 1, 2007, a second payment of $28 million by March 25, 2008, and a potential third payment of $128 million five years after the effective date of the Agreement.
“This third payment is to be reduced by the amount received by the plaintiffs from non-settling defendants.”
So there really was no need for the hearing yesterday.
That didn't stop Robert Leventhal for the Salesians from saying, “The Salesians should be captains of their ship.” He stood up and declared that at least seven times. “The archdiocese is captain of its ship and is allowed to settle for whatever amount it wants to pay. Just like they are captains of their own ship, the Salesians likewise should be captains of their ship.”
Leventhal went on a good 15 minutes saying:
The archdiocese has no right to seek comparative indemnity for amounts it paid for several claims
It has no right to impede the Salesians’ ability to settle its own claims
There are No joint interests
The settlement agreement violates law and public policy
The archdiocese has no right to decide the amount of claims against Salesians.
Most of the time Leventhal slipped into a babble of corporate insurance gobbled language:
Can’t agree to third party ownership of claims with several indemnity, claims to right damages not subject to assignment under California law -- claims with several liabilities not intended for joint liability claims -- blah-blah-blah insurance liability indemnity co-joint -- several indemnity claims to right damages not subject to assignment under California law
Such is the state of corporate religion in America today.
More from Leventhal after this:
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Leventhal went so far as to say:
“The plaintiffs are serving as the archdiocese’s front man and we need to be able to have meaningful face-to-face negotiations with them without the archdiocese being involved.
“And we should be the captain of our ship --
Before the hearing could begin there was a good hour of argument whether they should even be there in the first place. Since the Salesian jury trial was transferred earlier this month to the courtroom of Judge Emilie H. Elias which is in a whole different part of town, there was some confusion. Just as I walked in Steve McFeely was chiming out, “I want to be clear, judge, I’m talking about the meetings with Judge Elias and liaison council, we weren’t even there.”
Judge Haley Fromholz: The result wouldn't have been any different. Judge Elias didn't feel she was in a position to hear the motion and wouldn't be for a reasonable time. So the chief justice restored the cases to me through the 27th.
Goodbye, Judge Fromholz, and it's been a pleasure watching you work.
Cards can be mailed to:
Judge Haley Fromholz,
LA Superior Court Department 20
111 North Hill Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Fromholz’ 15-page tentative will most likely be his last Order in the Clergy Cases I, II, and III. Now the dog and pony show that is Steve McFeely and Robert Leventhal from Foley & Lardner defending the Salesians against those pesky 17 plaintiffs moves to Dept. 308, Central Civil West Courthouse, 600 South Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles, Judge Emilie H. Elias and no one knows where the documents will be located for public viewing.
But in civil cases the documents are open to the public.
The CCW Courthouse is the one just off Wilshire near Lafayette Park. City of Angels is studying the Metro schedule and will be there next week.
Gotta go back to my other job now
More to Come. . .
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe to City of Angels Blog 21st Century Style. Send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive. Also every time you click on a Google ad I make something like 2 cents.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Monday, November 26, 2007
Dear Cardinal George: Please take my call
*****
By Kay Ebeling
I have new hope with Cardinal Francis George stepping in as President of the American bishops, either new hope or I’m totally spun by the Roman Catholic Church PR machine. We'll see.
What gave me this hope was a show of spontaneity by George as reported by John Allen in National Catholic Reporter November 20th: The John Jay Report had just excused pedophilia in the church as no worse than in other places, plus free love in the sixties is the real culprit. Allen wrote, “Just as the session was drawing to a close, George, unprompted, signaled that he wanted to add something.” George said:
"The question is whether or not the church herself, particularly priests and bishops, should be held to a moral standard higher than the general populace. Is religion an independent variable? Or is it simply reduced to a cultural reality? If that's the case, secularists shouldn't be disturbed about religion, because it has nothing original to say anyway, and it's not going to impose itself on anybody's behavior.”
Cardinal George can show he has something original to say by taking my call next week.
You see, a few weeks back my landlord, Whiplash West tried to scare my daughter and me into moving so he could cash in on LA’s fired up rental market. I was in a frenzy until I got hold of LA legal aid. For the first time in my life, I think, I experienced the RUSH of getting help from an attorney. Endorphins all over me -- I wanted more.
So I jumped on the phone next day and tried for the seventeenth time at least to get a legal case going in Chicago for the abuse my sister and I went through there at the hands of a dilettante priest Father Thomas B. Horney c.1950-55.
But I ran up against the Statute of Repose. Didn't get that endorphin rush for my case after all. Still there’s hope in Cardinal George: More after this.
*****$$$???!!!
I hope you enjoy reading this blog. Please come back often and visit my advertisers. I also pass the Internet hat. You can support this blog by putting cash on my PayPal account. Just click the button in the top left corner. I report all income to the IRS. Thank you.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
The Statute Of Repose
It sounds like it would be good, but. . .
In spite of my renewed legal pursuits, we face not only the statute of limitations but also
The statute of repose
With the SOL there’s always wiggle room, a way to add a year or a month or two, up to a certain point.
Then it’s, lady, look in the mirror, see how old these allegations are. THAT'S ENOUGH already.
Our perp, Father Horney, died in the 1980s -- he got us going in the late forties early fifties when we were preschoolers, and neither my sister nor I stopped until around 1993. Today she and I are both dotty old ladies with wavering memories -- plus I don't know if I want a church attorney barking at me --
in my face
Wanting to know details of my sex life from 1955 on,
etcetera. . . .
HOWEVER,
As several attorneys in Chicago told me last couple weeks
I can still contact the Chicago Archdiocese Office of Victims Assistance. See I need therapy.
I used to say writing the blog was therapy
Now I may need therapy because of writing the blog.
I can’t stop writing the blog though, because I’m not really writing it. It’s a motor generating inside me and I can’t stop it. This stuff will keep me awake all night unless I write it and post it.
It’s a kind of weird karma -- Penance on Earth.
So
Another quote from Cardinal Francis George in the National Catholic Reporter story: “The media not only report, they also select, and in that sense they create a reality.”
(Me: Huh? Did Francis Cardinal George spend time with Tim Leary in the sixties?)
*****$$$???!!!
I hope you enjoy reading this blog. Please come back often and visit my advertisers. I also pass the Internet hat. You can support this blog by putting cash on my PayPal account. Just click the button in the top left corner. I report all income to the IRS. Thank you.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
Yes The Media Do Create Reality --
Especially in the Wide Open World of the Web and Blogs.
Especially New Media like Blogs
Anything goes here. I mean:
The Cardinal was born in Chicago to Francis J. and Julia R. McCarthy George,
Charles McCarthy my uncle was born in Chicago
My dad was born in Chicago -- his name was George. . .
Three degrees of separation . . . and apply some wicca philosophy to it.
I did spend time with Timothy Leary in the sixties.
OPEN QUESTION TO CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE
Can the Archdiocese of Chicago help? Can we tell you our stories and how they lead us to have the needs we have today that the archdioceses can provide --
And set up recovery centers around the country for survivors?
Can the Chicago Archdiocese set an example for the rest of the country, now that the Chicago bishop is president of the American bishops,
In the name and my sister and me,
Show that the Catholic Church can be “Held to a moral standard higher than the general populace”?
Can we approach the archdiocese with our story and get results, even if our cases don’t fall within “general populace” law?
The Chicago Archdiocese victims assistance ministry office at 312 -- 751-5205 has a new director, Matt Honeycutt.
I’m going to call next week to see if they are interested in helping me and my sister or better yet all the thousands of survivors who can’t file lawsuits, all over the country, who still need help.
We'll see.
The Archbishop of Chicago was made president of the American bishops in November 2007 and he seems to be able to think on his feet.
The first week of December seems like a good time to call.
So, Here’s my idea in advance, Cardinal George.
Therapy for the crime victims at least as good as the church provided for the criminals
The American Catholic Church can create regional recovery centers with all the therapies and treatments given to perpetrator priests -- recovery centers of the same caliber as the Paracletes in New Mexico, but for the priest rape victims.
Therapy for the victims, not the criminals.
God knows we need it worse than the perpetrator priests do. . . .
Cardinal George, I need six months in a spa . . . so do a lot of my fellow “survivors”
Stay tuned to see what happens when I call.
=====
AS TO SNIDELY WHIPLASH WEST: I dedicate the following to my Beverly Hills slumlord:
KILL MY LANDLORD
By Tyrone Greene
As performed by Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live c. 1981
Dark and lonely on a summer's night
Kill my landlord
Kill my landlord
Watchdog barking
Do he bite?
Kill my landlord
Kill my landlord
Slip in his window
Break his neck
Then his house
I start to wreck
Got no reason
What the heck
Kill my Landlord
Kill my landlord
C-I-L-L
my l a n d l o r d
====
Just Kidding
I don't plan to blow up any churches either. . . .
On a more spiritual note:
This is the post I was looking for when I wrote the story about Mike Shoemaker in Arizona last February.
For the past 20 years or so I always wondered why Jesus Christ made a special point of calling a child over to him, placing the child on his knee and saying, "If anyone hurts one of these, it would be better that a millstone be tied around their neck and they be tossed into the sea".
I realized about a year ago or so that it was prophetic. He saw this coming.
Then, literally as I was typing this post, I realized something else; it was also intended to comfort us. To let us know that He most definitely sees what is going on, that He is not happy about it at all, and that He will be dealing with these perpetrators. Severely.
I don't know about you all, but this just gave me some peace.
Thanks God.
I'm actually kind of frightened for these guys now. Oh well, God knows best.
-- Mike Shoemaker (Spring 2006)
More to come. . .
*****$$$???!!!
I hope you enjoy reading this blog. Please come back often and visit my advertisers. I also pass the Internet hat. You can support this blog by putting cash on my PayPal account. Just click the button in the top left corner. I report all income to the IRS. Thank you.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
By Kay Ebeling
I have new hope with Cardinal Francis George stepping in as President of the American bishops, either new hope or I’m totally spun by the Roman Catholic Church PR machine. We'll see.
What gave me this hope was a show of spontaneity by George as reported by John Allen in National Catholic Reporter November 20th: The John Jay Report had just excused pedophilia in the church as no worse than in other places, plus free love in the sixties is the real culprit. Allen wrote, “Just as the session was drawing to a close, George, unprompted, signaled that he wanted to add something.” George said:
"The question is whether or not the church herself, particularly priests and bishops, should be held to a moral standard higher than the general populace. Is religion an independent variable? Or is it simply reduced to a cultural reality? If that's the case, secularists shouldn't be disturbed about religion, because it has nothing original to say anyway, and it's not going to impose itself on anybody's behavior.”
Cardinal George can show he has something original to say by taking my call next week.
You see, a few weeks back my landlord, Whiplash West tried to scare my daughter and me into moving so he could cash in on LA’s fired up rental market. I was in a frenzy until I got hold of LA legal aid. For the first time in my life, I think, I experienced the RUSH of getting help from an attorney. Endorphins all over me -- I wanted more.
So I jumped on the phone next day and tried for the seventeenth time at least to get a legal case going in Chicago for the abuse my sister and I went through there at the hands of a dilettante priest Father Thomas B. Horney c.1950-55.
But I ran up against the Statute of Repose. Didn't get that endorphin rush for my case after all. Still there’s hope in Cardinal George: More after this.
*****$$$???!!!
I hope you enjoy reading this blog. Please come back often and visit my advertisers. I also pass the Internet hat. You can support this blog by putting cash on my PayPal account. Just click the button in the top left corner. I report all income to the IRS. Thank you.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
The Statute Of Repose
It sounds like it would be good, but. . .
In spite of my renewed legal pursuits, we face not only the statute of limitations but also
The statute of repose
With the SOL there’s always wiggle room, a way to add a year or a month or two, up to a certain point.
Then it’s, lady, look in the mirror, see how old these allegations are. THAT'S ENOUGH already.
Our perp, Father Horney, died in the 1980s -- he got us going in the late forties early fifties when we were preschoolers, and neither my sister nor I stopped until around 1993. Today she and I are both dotty old ladies with wavering memories -- plus I don't know if I want a church attorney barking at me --
in my face
Wanting to know details of my sex life from 1955 on,
etcetera. . . .
HOWEVER,
As several attorneys in Chicago told me last couple weeks
I can still contact the Chicago Archdiocese Office of Victims Assistance. See I need therapy.
I used to say writing the blog was therapy
Now I may need therapy because of writing the blog.
I can’t stop writing the blog though, because I’m not really writing it. It’s a motor generating inside me and I can’t stop it. This stuff will keep me awake all night unless I write it and post it.
It’s a kind of weird karma -- Penance on Earth.
So
Another quote from Cardinal Francis George in the National Catholic Reporter story: “The media not only report, they also select, and in that sense they create a reality.”
(Me: Huh? Did Francis Cardinal George spend time with Tim Leary in the sixties?)
*****$$$???!!!
I hope you enjoy reading this blog. Please come back often and visit my advertisers. I also pass the Internet hat. You can support this blog by putting cash on my PayPal account. Just click the button in the top left corner. I report all income to the IRS. Thank you.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
Yes The Media Do Create Reality --
Especially in the Wide Open World of the Web and Blogs.
Especially New Media like Blogs
Anything goes here. I mean:
The Cardinal was born in Chicago to Francis J. and Julia R. McCarthy George,
Charles McCarthy my uncle was born in Chicago
My dad was born in Chicago -- his name was George. . .
Three degrees of separation . . . and apply some wicca philosophy to it.
I did spend time with Timothy Leary in the sixties.
OPEN QUESTION TO CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE
Can the Archdiocese of Chicago help? Can we tell you our stories and how they lead us to have the needs we have today that the archdioceses can provide --
And set up recovery centers around the country for survivors?
Can the Chicago Archdiocese set an example for the rest of the country, now that the Chicago bishop is president of the American bishops,
In the name and my sister and me,
Show that the Catholic Church can be “Held to a moral standard higher than the general populace”?
Can we approach the archdiocese with our story and get results, even if our cases don’t fall within “general populace” law?
The Chicago Archdiocese victims assistance ministry office at 312 -- 751-5205 has a new director, Matt Honeycutt.
I’m going to call next week to see if they are interested in helping me and my sister or better yet all the thousands of survivors who can’t file lawsuits, all over the country, who still need help.
We'll see.
The Archbishop of Chicago was made president of the American bishops in November 2007 and he seems to be able to think on his feet.
The first week of December seems like a good time to call.
So, Here’s my idea in advance, Cardinal George.
Therapy for the crime victims at least as good as the church provided for the criminals
The American Catholic Church can create regional recovery centers with all the therapies and treatments given to perpetrator priests -- recovery centers of the same caliber as the Paracletes in New Mexico, but for the priest rape victims.
Therapy for the victims, not the criminals.
God knows we need it worse than the perpetrator priests do. . . .
Cardinal George, I need six months in a spa . . . so do a lot of my fellow “survivors”
Stay tuned to see what happens when I call.
=====
AS TO SNIDELY WHIPLASH WEST: I dedicate the following to my Beverly Hills slumlord:
KILL MY LANDLORD
By Tyrone Greene
As performed by Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live c. 1981
Dark and lonely on a summer's night
Kill my landlord
Kill my landlord
Watchdog barking
Do he bite?
Kill my landlord
Kill my landlord
Slip in his window
Break his neck
Then his house
I start to wreck
Got no reason
What the heck
Kill my Landlord
Kill my landlord
C-I-L-L
my l a n d l o r d
====
Just Kidding
I don't plan to blow up any churches either. . . .
On a more spiritual note:
This is the post I was looking for when I wrote the story about Mike Shoemaker in Arizona last February.
For the past 20 years or so I always wondered why Jesus Christ made a special point of calling a child over to him, placing the child on his knee and saying, "If anyone hurts one of these, it would be better that a millstone be tied around their neck and they be tossed into the sea".
I realized about a year ago or so that it was prophetic. He saw this coming.
Then, literally as I was typing this post, I realized something else; it was also intended to comfort us. To let us know that He most definitely sees what is going on, that He is not happy about it at all, and that He will be dealing with these perpetrators. Severely.
I don't know about you all, but this just gave me some peace.
Thanks God.
I'm actually kind of frightened for these guys now. Oh well, God knows best.
-- Mike Shoemaker (Spring 2006)
More to come. . .
*****$$$???!!!
I hope you enjoy reading this blog. Please come back often and visit my advertisers. I also pass the Internet hat. You can support this blog by putting cash on my PayPal account. Just click the button in the top left corner. I report all income to the IRS. Thank you.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Salesians Trial Update
****
As of November 14th the Salesians Jury Trial has moved moved to Dept. 308, Central Civil West Courthouse, 600 South Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles, Judge EMILIE H. ELIAS. No trial date has yet been set. Key persons in that court are on vacation until the end of the month. City of Angels will get more details soon. Happy Thanksgiving. . .
As of November 14th the Salesians Jury Trial has moved moved to Dept. 308, Central Civil West Courthouse, 600 South Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles, Judge EMILIE H. ELIAS. No trial date has yet been set. Key persons in that court are on vacation until the end of the month. City of Angels will get more details soon. Happy Thanksgiving. . .
Monday, November 19, 2007
No date yet for Salesians trial so reading about Mahony’s lies under oath, predators in Confessionals, priests who skin cats alive -- I need a break
*****
By Kay Ebeling
The Salesians cases November 5 jury trial still has no trial date and if that sounds Alice in Wonderland to you, it’s regular MO for the Salesians, according to Joey Piscitelli who battled the religious order in 2006 in San Francisco.
“Haven’t you noticed,” Piscitelli said, “there were hundreds of cases in LA that settled without even beginning depositions, those orders just accepted the agreement and settled, but not the Salesians.
“They take depositions of your cousins, uncles, parents, grandparents, grade school teachers, and they try over and over again to get the case dismissed.”
When I called the court clerk November 6th, he said, “Oh that case is trailing, it happens all the time. They're just waiting for a room to open up.” When I called last week his answer was more like, I have no idea what's going on. So I called Joey.
“They're stalling,” he said. “The first court date I had was in 2004, they postponed it to 2005. There were three different dates in 2005 that got postponed and then two different court dates in 2006 and then it finally went to trial.
“Any reason to drag it out, any reason to postpone,” he said as his signal was fading.
“They don’t want a settlement,” Joey said, “they want to take on each plaintiff, and they spend as much money as possible fighting and filing motions.”
“There’s no limit to what the Salesians will spend to fight a victim,” Joey said and then I lost his signal.
What happened to the blog the last few weeks?
I had ten word files going at once developing stories for this blog. The McGuire File: the Jesuit who now faces federal charges in Chicago held retreats all over the country including LA and Orange County. Father Donald McGuire was your plain vanilla pedophile back in the 1960s. But when the Catholic Church allowed him to get away with his blatant flagrantes over and over again, he got brave and pushed it to the limits. By the the 1990s he was raping little boys at family weddings where he’d just officiated, and creating victims in several states as conducted retreats all over the world.
McGuire’s travel agreement was to always have an adolescent male companion who assisted him even sleeping with him in his bedroom. What does it take for someone in Catholic Church hierarchy to notice criminal behavior?
McGuire got to many of his victims through the Confessional which is one way my perp got to me in Illinois in 1955, as did George Neville Rucker in LA in the seventies.
GEORGE NEVILLE RUCKER
This blog has not forgotten you
Rucker, who preyed in South Central LA, also took little girls and boys behind the altar where, as the original complaints filed in 2003 and settled last summer read, his victims remember statues of saints glaring down at them as they were being raped.
Some say using the confessional to prey on a target is more than pedophilia, it’s also sacramental abuse, or to push the line further, ritual abuse.
So I dug in my notes and called back a few people and now I have three women, one in Ohio, one in Pennsylvania, and one in California whose stories include several priests in black robes skinning a cat alive --
Skinning a cat alive? To frighten their target? As two woman remember it, as they skinned the cat they said, “This is what we'll do to you if you talk.”
Ritual abuse seems to be rooted in Pennsylvania, Ohio, other woodsy areas.
My Perp Father Thomas Barry Horne came to Illinois by way of Pennsylvania in the 1940s.
All this stuff was whizzing through my head, plus there’s a strike rattling my job security at work.
I’m trying to write all these stories at once clicking to bishopaccountability about ten times an hour trying to keep straight which perp is in which city which years --
And I crashed, FMS flare up -- pain all over the body haven’t been able to move now for a couple weeks. It’s okay though
Because
Since the Salesians Religious Order trial is still “trailing,” maybe someone upstairs wants me to take a break for a few weeks. Or if Joey is right, two years before the Salesians cases finally begin jury selection.
Some Roger Mahony testimony after this:
*****$$$???!!!
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END COMMERCIAL BREAK
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*****
I’m trying to get smart on the crimes of Father Titian Miani whose victims brought the complaint that led to this trial, five years later, that trial still is trailing as of a phone call I just made to Superior Court Dept 20.
I’m reading about Titian Miani and I find myself buried in trial testimony by Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles -- the man of God who blatantly lies under oath.
Q. Cardinal, when is the first time in your
12 entire life, as a layperson, as a deacon, as a priest,
13 that you ever heard of a cleric molesting a child?
14 A. The the best of my recollection would be in 1981.
Oh come on, Mahony, how could you rise from priest to bishop in California and not hear about priests’ inappropriate contact with children, when there have been thousands of cases settled and paid for by your own Church?
Father Roger Mahony was a social worker in Fresno before he went hierarchical; this guy is lying so outrageously why didn't the DA do anything about this perjury?
20 Q. When is the next time in your career as an
21 Ordinary, Your Eminence, that you had a priest in a
22 diocese that you were in charge of molest a child?
23 A. The next time, to the best of my recollection,
24 was sometime in the early part of 1984.
With priests bringing boys into seminary rectories up and down the Coast, Mahony never heard of another pedophile priest for three more years?
Mr. Mahony, you took an oath to God before you told that lie.
0024
2 Q. Your Eminence, my question is a little simpler
3 than that. I probably didn't articulate it well.
4 Did you conduct any kind of investigation or
5 inquiry upon finding out the accusation against
6 Father Munoz?
7 A. No, because Father Munoz was in Tijuana; he
8 was not in the Stockton diocese at the time.
Thank you for being so proactive.
&&&&&&&&&&&***
For the entire text of Deposition of Cardinal Roger Mahony November 23, 2004, go to
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/depo/2004_11_23_Mahony_In_Clergy_III_Pt_1.htm
He’s not my cardinal.
Maybe Mahony’s the one who sicced Snidely Whiplash West on me and my daughter. After this:
*****$$$???!!!
Cosmic Commercial break: For an ethereal renewal, click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to pay for “Readership” and keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Oh one more thing, click on some of these ads
Google Rocks
*****
I’m reading about Titian Jim Miani and trying to track down Jesus "Jesse" Armando Dominguez whose cases are set for trial January 28, 2008, another priest who escaped to Mexico, a Salesian this time.
Glad I didn't have to raise my kids in Mexico.
Meanwhile my landlord, Snidely Whiplash West is in his Beverly Hills high rise office scheming up reasons to put my daughter and I out of our apartment as soon as possible so he can raise the rent by 50 percent and cash in on the post-fires rental disaster that's happening in LA right now.
All this at once, and oh, yeah, the holidays, and I end up sick.
Damn PTSD induced body weirdness that so many priest rape victims live with. Sometimes no matter how many long deep breaths you take you can’t fight back the pain. I’m crippled totally, can’t walk -- haven’t left my block in weeks.
Last week I beat myself up a while for not posting anything in so long. Now it’s this week and I’m still sick and that's just the way it is. This is all there is for now.
In November 2006 I went to blogger dot com, but could not follow the instructions to start a blog at all. Then January 2007, I went back to try again.
Over the holidays last year Google bought Blogger and created Blogspot with Dashboard. So in January 2007 it only took me ten minutes and three clicks to start this blog. I put my personal story up first at cityofangels1.blogspot.com.
For about 13 years I’d been trying to write my own story but couldn't figure out who was the audience. Then I got on blogspot and just told my story to the world. Once I got it out one last time I left it there at cityofangels1 and never went back.
Then I wandered down to Superior Court to see what was going on in the civil cases pretrial hearings and covered a motion to dismiss on January 16, 2007, and the rest is history.
Or the rest is pre-history.
Imagine what we can do here in 2008.
I have no idea where the blog is going in 2008.
Soon I will have a digital camera and a travel budget so I can go around the country documenting stories and posting them as video blogs.
I have to get past this PTSD-FMS flare in time to cover the Salesians trials when they finally take place.
So I’m resting. Probably won’t post again until after Thanksgiving, but wanted to check in, say thank you to everyone who emails me and encourages me to keep writing.
City of Angels Blog hasn’t even been here a year. I think it’s okay if I take a short break. I never put up a post unless I’m moved to, so until I get moved again. . .
Oh that's part of the story of the blog. Every single one of these posts since January 16, 2007, has written itself. I’d just open a document and see what was there and it would jump up at me.
Well this week nothing is jumping up at me, other than low fat turkey stuffing recipes.
Right, low fat stuffing. . . denial, anyone?
More to come. . .
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, or have an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe 21st Century Style, send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
Oh wait, don't forget to visit some of the ads.
*****
By Kay Ebeling
The Salesians cases November 5 jury trial still has no trial date and if that sounds Alice in Wonderland to you, it’s regular MO for the Salesians, according to Joey Piscitelli who battled the religious order in 2006 in San Francisco.
“Haven’t you noticed,” Piscitelli said, “there were hundreds of cases in LA that settled without even beginning depositions, those orders just accepted the agreement and settled, but not the Salesians.
“They take depositions of your cousins, uncles, parents, grandparents, grade school teachers, and they try over and over again to get the case dismissed.”
When I called the court clerk November 6th, he said, “Oh that case is trailing, it happens all the time. They're just waiting for a room to open up.” When I called last week his answer was more like, I have no idea what's going on. So I called Joey.
“They're stalling,” he said. “The first court date I had was in 2004, they postponed it to 2005. There were three different dates in 2005 that got postponed and then two different court dates in 2006 and then it finally went to trial.
“Any reason to drag it out, any reason to postpone,” he said as his signal was fading.
“They don’t want a settlement,” Joey said, “they want to take on each plaintiff, and they spend as much money as possible fighting and filing motions.”
“There’s no limit to what the Salesians will spend to fight a victim,” Joey said and then I lost his signal.
What happened to the blog the last few weeks?
I had ten word files going at once developing stories for this blog. The McGuire File: the Jesuit who now faces federal charges in Chicago held retreats all over the country including LA and Orange County. Father Donald McGuire was your plain vanilla pedophile back in the 1960s. But when the Catholic Church allowed him to get away with his blatant flagrantes over and over again, he got brave and pushed it to the limits. By the the 1990s he was raping little boys at family weddings where he’d just officiated, and creating victims in several states as conducted retreats all over the world.
McGuire’s travel agreement was to always have an adolescent male companion who assisted him even sleeping with him in his bedroom. What does it take for someone in Catholic Church hierarchy to notice criminal behavior?
McGuire got to many of his victims through the Confessional which is one way my perp got to me in Illinois in 1955, as did George Neville Rucker in LA in the seventies.
GEORGE NEVILLE RUCKER
This blog has not forgotten you
Rucker, who preyed in South Central LA, also took little girls and boys behind the altar where, as the original complaints filed in 2003 and settled last summer read, his victims remember statues of saints glaring down at them as they were being raped.
Some say using the confessional to prey on a target is more than pedophilia, it’s also sacramental abuse, or to push the line further, ritual abuse.
So I dug in my notes and called back a few people and now I have three women, one in Ohio, one in Pennsylvania, and one in California whose stories include several priests in black robes skinning a cat alive --
Skinning a cat alive? To frighten their target? As two woman remember it, as they skinned the cat they said, “This is what we'll do to you if you talk.”
Ritual abuse seems to be rooted in Pennsylvania, Ohio, other woodsy areas.
My Perp Father Thomas Barry Horne came to Illinois by way of Pennsylvania in the 1940s.
All this stuff was whizzing through my head, plus there’s a strike rattling my job security at work.
I’m trying to write all these stories at once clicking to bishopaccountability about ten times an hour trying to keep straight which perp is in which city which years --
And I crashed, FMS flare up -- pain all over the body haven’t been able to move now for a couple weeks. It’s okay though
Because
Since the Salesians Religious Order trial is still “trailing,” maybe someone upstairs wants me to take a break for a few weeks. Or if Joey is right, two years before the Salesians cases finally begin jury selection.
Some Roger Mahony testimony after this:
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I’m trying to get smart on the crimes of Father Titian Miani whose victims brought the complaint that led to this trial, five years later, that trial still is trailing as of a phone call I just made to Superior Court Dept 20.
I’m reading about Titian Miani and I find myself buried in trial testimony by Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles -- the man of God who blatantly lies under oath.
Q. Cardinal, when is the first time in your
12 entire life, as a layperson, as a deacon, as a priest,
13 that you ever heard of a cleric molesting a child?
14 A. The the best of my recollection would be in 1981.
Oh come on, Mahony, how could you rise from priest to bishop in California and not hear about priests’ inappropriate contact with children, when there have been thousands of cases settled and paid for by your own Church?
Father Roger Mahony was a social worker in Fresno before he went hierarchical; this guy is lying so outrageously why didn't the DA do anything about this perjury?
20 Q. When is the next time in your career as an
21 Ordinary, Your Eminence, that you had a priest in a
22 diocese that you were in charge of molest a child?
23 A. The next time, to the best of my recollection,
24 was sometime in the early part of 1984.
With priests bringing boys into seminary rectories up and down the Coast, Mahony never heard of another pedophile priest for three more years?
Mr. Mahony, you took an oath to God before you told that lie.
0024
2 Q. Your Eminence, my question is a little simpler
3 than that. I probably didn't articulate it well.
4 Did you conduct any kind of investigation or
5 inquiry upon finding out the accusation against
6 Father Munoz?
7 A. No, because Father Munoz was in Tijuana; he
8 was not in the Stockton diocese at the time.
Thank you for being so proactive.
&&&&&&&&&&&***
For the entire text of Deposition of Cardinal Roger Mahony November 23, 2004, go to
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/depo/2004_11_23_Mahony_In_Clergy_III_Pt_1.htm
He’s not my cardinal.
Maybe Mahony’s the one who sicced Snidely Whiplash West on me and my daughter. After this:
*****$$$???!!!
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*****
I’m reading about Titian Jim Miani and trying to track down Jesus "Jesse" Armando Dominguez whose cases are set for trial January 28, 2008, another priest who escaped to Mexico, a Salesian this time.
Glad I didn't have to raise my kids in Mexico.
Meanwhile my landlord, Snidely Whiplash West is in his Beverly Hills high rise office scheming up reasons to put my daughter and I out of our apartment as soon as possible so he can raise the rent by 50 percent and cash in on the post-fires rental disaster that's happening in LA right now.
All this at once, and oh, yeah, the holidays, and I end up sick.
Damn PTSD induced body weirdness that so many priest rape victims live with. Sometimes no matter how many long deep breaths you take you can’t fight back the pain. I’m crippled totally, can’t walk -- haven’t left my block in weeks.
Last week I beat myself up a while for not posting anything in so long. Now it’s this week and I’m still sick and that's just the way it is. This is all there is for now.
In November 2006 I went to blogger dot com, but could not follow the instructions to start a blog at all. Then January 2007, I went back to try again.
Over the holidays last year Google bought Blogger and created Blogspot with Dashboard. So in January 2007 it only took me ten minutes and three clicks to start this blog. I put my personal story up first at cityofangels1.blogspot.com.
For about 13 years I’d been trying to write my own story but couldn't figure out who was the audience. Then I got on blogspot and just told my story to the world. Once I got it out one last time I left it there at cityofangels1 and never went back.
Then I wandered down to Superior Court to see what was going on in the civil cases pretrial hearings and covered a motion to dismiss on January 16, 2007, and the rest is history.
Or the rest is pre-history.
Imagine what we can do here in 2008.
I have no idea where the blog is going in 2008.
Soon I will have a digital camera and a travel budget so I can go around the country documenting stories and posting them as video blogs.
I have to get past this PTSD-FMS flare in time to cover the Salesians trials when they finally take place.
So I’m resting. Probably won’t post again until after Thanksgiving, but wanted to check in, say thank you to everyone who emails me and encourages me to keep writing.
City of Angels Blog hasn’t even been here a year. I think it’s okay if I take a short break. I never put up a post unless I’m moved to, so until I get moved again. . .
Oh that's part of the story of the blog. Every single one of these posts since January 16, 2007, has written itself. I’d just open a document and see what was there and it would jump up at me.
Well this week nothing is jumping up at me, other than low fat turkey stuffing recipes.
Right, low fat stuffing. . . denial, anyone?
More to come. . .
*****$$$???!!!
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*****
Saturday, November 3, 2007
‘It terrified me, I knew it was going to happen again.’ Ryan DiMaria, in his own words, about his 1997 case and Michael Harris, “Hollywood priest"
***
(Nov.17: I'm sick, hope to post again after Thanksgiving--kay)
*****
By Kay Ebeling
Ryan DiMaria held a gun to his head. He was 25 years old in a college dorm his head reeling. Father Harris had said he wouldn't really go to hell if he killed himself, but Father Harris, in that same role of priest and counselor, had also assaulted DiMaria sexually over and over again from his sophomore to senior year at Santa Margarita High School. Somehow DiMaria put down the gun that day and instead called his parents and told them everything. As devoted Catholics would do, they contacted the diocese.
Six years later Ryan DiMaria's 1997 case in Orange County settled for $5.2 million and DiMaria became a plaintiff attorney himself, attending law school as his case went through Orange County Superior Court. When he first approached the church there was no intent to file a lawsuit. Even after years of talking to blank faces and getting no response from church hierarchy, the DiMarias were still asking the church for help.
It was when Harris, finally removed from the priesthood, began operating non profit mobile home parks for low income families, with lots of playgrounds and activities for the children, that DiMaria became the aggressor. "I knew it was going to happen again."
Coincidentally DiMaria's family ran mobile home parks. So he had that conversations with Harris when he was in high school. He knew why Harris wanted to run mobile home parks for low income families.
He filed his lawsuit.
Recently he talked about the betrayal, the despair, trying to get his church to listen to his family's reports about Michael A. Harris, "the Hollywood priest."
The summer before his sophomore year in high school DiMaria’s friend kille,d himself. DiMaria was tormented, fearing his friend's soul was now doomed for eternity, as he'd been taught in the church. (I planned to write his story as a great work of novelization when I realized it was best told in Ryan DiMaria's own words:)
“My parents had heard all these wonderful things about Father Harris. They thought he might be the guy for me to talk to. He said, your friend is not going to hell.”
Harris was blue eyed, tanned, with brownish blond hair, “One of the most charismatic individuals I'd ever seen," DiMaria said.
"Adult women adored him. But girls were never around him, it was always just boys."
I went to talk to him about that stuff, first meeting, and he said, your friend is not going to hell.
It started with him as my therapist and spiritual counselor and there was a period there when it was good, the entire time that I knew him, the counseling was good.
Right after that first meeting we went downstairs and he pulled out his day planner and said to my parents, when can Ryan meet with me next. So we started a counseling relationship summer after my freshman year.
He suggested Santa Margarita High.
(The deadlines were long past.) Harris said, Let me see what I can do about the entrance exam and application deadlines.
Let me see what I can do?
Counseling sessions went all the way through to DiMaria’s Junior Year. Harris was known in upscale Newport Beach Catholic homes as “The Hollywood Priest.”
WHY DID THEY CALL HIM THE HOLLYWOOD PRIEST?
DIMARIA: He would take a group of kids out to dinner, to a game, and that was absolutely the most common thing.
His house operated like a dormitory.
It was a residential 3-4 bedroom house, every room was set up.
One night I went to an event with him and I’d just gotten my license. We were going to be out late, so Harris called my parents and said, why doesn't Ryan stay overnight.
My parents thought that's reasonable. Ryan will be with not only a priest but the principal of the school.
That night Harris pulled DiMaria aside.
He said, Do you want to sleep in my bed? I could see new recliner chair he’d gotten, his big screen TV in his bedroom. The chair had a woofer underneath it and speakers on the wing tips
It was going to be the “True movie experience” he’d be showing me the movie with the sound the way it was in a theater.
I was tired.
He said do you want to sleep in my bed and I said no -- and went to the other room. I woke up and he was rubbing my chest talking to me and started making bigger circles and ultimately . . .
(Edited to frustrate anyone reading this to get aroused.)
I was thinking he’s going to be so embarrassed that that happened. I went downstairs and took a shower. He was sitting in the front room. I said, “I don't understand what happened I don't want it to happen again.”
He said no it won’t
I said, I feel like I’ve almost blocked it out. He said oftentimes when we feel something traumatic we block it out.
My fear was he was going to go tell someone and I was going to get in trouble. I said promise you won’t tell anyone and he said it’s our little secret.
HARRIS THE MANIPULATOR
His victim feels sorry for him
RYAN DIMARIA CONT’D: So here I am I’m feeling horrible for him. It’s my fault. He’s almost a perfect human being.
He worked so hard to cultivate his persona
After that night, he’d sit next to me on a couch during the counseling sessions. When someone does that, you take it as, this person cares, not a sexual advance.
Then after some personal talk, he’d touch me on chest and . . .
People don’t understand why you go back.
I was always -- every time I went back I was hoping, I gotta talk to him to make sense of this in my mind. I was caught:
The only person who could understand was the perpetrator who was also my counselor, So maybe he can talk me through it.
After the second time it happened I was thinking it must be something I’m doing. I told him I didn't want it to happen and it’s still happening.
So I thought what is most powerful thing I can do and say that he can’t misunderstand.
I’m thinking he thinks I want this.
So I said to him, I don't understand why you keep doing this, I’m going to kill you. That's the most clear cut way you can say I don't want this to happen.
Harris managed to manipulate the situation so the abuse still continued. I asked DiMaria to tell me more about Harris.
DIMARIA: Harris would drink, but he was not a drunk. He drank in social settings.
With Catholics and non Catholics in Orange County, he would be invited to the biggest parties and the plays. (He now lives in Oceanside in a normal house.)
Harris had boys at his house all the time -- he had that movie theater in his house, it was the late eighties.
Going to Harris’ house was a real special thing. We’d have movie nights sodas, chips, ice cream, and everybody knew and felt special if he got invited to the principal’s house to watch movies.
Never ever once did I see or hear of a female being invited over there.
That's the way that I first came to know him, he’d call parents and say hey would Ryan like to come
During my freshman year I went to public school and I started there at Santa Margarita my sophomore year.
By the way he was friends with Michael Baker.
They were suite mates.
I think it was Llanos, Harris, a parishioner and I think Baker, he was suitemates at St. Johns Seminary in Camarillo
DIMARIA: What I believe is it (pedophilia) was and is such an acceptable part of the culture in seminary and priesthood that I think for these guys like Baker and Llanos they know it’s bad but it’s all done with a little bit of a giggle.
*****$$$???!!!
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DiMaria was close to suicide in his college dorm, when he called his parents and told them the whole story. They went to Monsignor John Urell to file a complaint through the diocese.
How did it go with Urell?
DIMARIA: It was surprising to me. There was no remorse or apology or sorry this happened. It was basically he asked questions and took notes the whole time and that's how it went. One question answered then another asked.
My parents weren’t supposed to come in, it was he and I only.
That's when Monsignor Urell said those famous words:
“Wow we've never heard allegations like this before.”
DIMARIA: There was no inkling given, even though at the time they’d been in four and a half years litigation over another plaintiff who’d complained about Michael Harris.
Many victims came forward a decade before me
He was very insincere.
I got together with a friend from high school where Monsignor Harris was principal. He went to Harris’ house (then on Lido I$le)
He went to get a jacket he’d left there and he said, Ryan has something to tell you.
Harris was living on Lido Island and this was after he was on administrative leave. He was living in a wealthy individual’s home who was allowing him to live there.
My friend went in and grabbed his jacket and this house was right on the water. Harris was there and my friend said Ryan has something to ask you
So I confronted him. I said, “I just want to know why you molested me?”
His response was “I thought that's what you needed at the time. I thought you needed a little extra attention.”
I immediately exploded and said what about counseling.
Harris said to me, I’m lucky to be alive and lived through this and quite frankly you are too.
DIMARIA AND his friend reported this incident and what Harris had said.
DIMARIA: So I’m thinking now the bishop has what they need, now he’s admitted it in front of two people
That wasn’t the original plan but it dawned on me afterward. So we called bishop and we met with him and I’m not sure if Urell was there.
And never heard from them after that.
*****$$$???!!!
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DIMARIA: We went to the church my mom went to daily St. Timothy’s Laguna Niguel and spoke to Father Bruce there.
My parents were very involved with that church there so they made an appointment to meet with Father Bruce.
Fr. Bruce knew what I was going to tell him.
I walk in and Fr. Bruce hugs and kisses me and says Sorry this happened. To me that was most inappropriate
Fr. Bruce said, How horrible it is that these priests are just being sent off to hospitals.
We knew there was admission in front of another person. We had met with bishop told him that and they said thank you very much see you later
A PERSON CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH
DIMARIA: You only go through that so much before you realize they really don’t care. It was only at that point that we started to look at the church hierarchy in a different manner.
So we looked to law enforcement, looked to a civil suit,
DIMARIA:
Since the years I knew him, Harris had gotten a PhD at Pepperdine and had actually started a nonprofit in Orange County where they’d buy a mobile home park with government bonds from a private individual and then run it as a nonprofit to provide low income housing.
The thing that alarmed me is I remember him telling me about how great it was that they had these mobile home parks with playgrounds and computer rooms.
And it terrified me. I knew it was going to happen again. The reason I filed the lawsuit was not to get beat up in press and no one had gotten money yet, it was.
After the church did nothing but interrogate me and treat my family like crap, and after having an admission in front of another person and not doing anything,
It was knowing Harris was buying these mobile homes that made me file the lawsuit.
AN EERIE COINCIDENCE
My mom and dad in early sixties and early seventies had invested in mobile home parks and since then had bought more. So we’d talked about them in the past.
I remember driving around the day and I was trying to decide if I wanted to file a lawsuit and I thought to myself this is going to be an unhappy thing and I need to feel like it’s a success otherwise I can’t do it. What if something goes wrong.
What I tell people today is when you get a settlement it’s not as if a light switch comes on and your life is suddenly bright.
I went to law school while my suit was going on, and it helped me understand the process. It didn't make me feel real comfortable but at least I understood the process, what it meant to be deposed. What else could happen.
But I’m still surprised at what the church attorneys do.
HOW DID RYAN DIMARIA END UP AS
A Plaintiffs’ Attorney?
*****$$$???!!!
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DIMARIA: I never had the intention of being a clergy abuse or even personal injury lawyer, I actually had to fight to get onto these cases. I came to Manly’s firm as a clerk to do real estate. He never pushed and I never pushed and I never thought of doing it. It came to a point, kind of like how I felt compelled to file a lawsuit myself.
I felt compelled to take on these cases --
You make yourself so good at keeping outward appearances
I did internships, jobs, while going to college. I worked really hard and people thought that I was a success
But I was doing that to avoid thinking about what happened with Fr. Harris.
======
We now know that a major player in the creation of Church policy for the pedophile priest crisis was Msgr. Alan Placa who now “whispers in Rudy Giuliani’s ear” as his close friend and $100K/year advisor. (See October 30 post.) A decade later in California John Urell was putting Placa’s policy into practice when Ryan DiMaria came with his family to report Michael Harris.
MICHAEL HARRIS’S CAREER:
FROM LEON PODLE’S BOOK: SACRILEGE
Harris, known as the “Hollywood priest” because of his good looks and charisma, was a wildly popular money raiser. At the 1987 opening of the Orange diocese’s new high school “to a roar of applause from the audience, he ripped open his black clerical shirt to reveal a Superman logo. The S stood for Santa Margarita High. Harris was the guiding force behind the new school and its first principal. He had raised $26 million for the school where he found several good candidates for his bed.”
-------
More to Come. . .
(Nov.17: I'm sick, hope to post again after Thanksgiving--kay)
*****
By Kay Ebeling
Ryan DiMaria held a gun to his head. He was 25 years old in a college dorm his head reeling. Father Harris had said he wouldn't really go to hell if he killed himself, but Father Harris, in that same role of priest and counselor, had also assaulted DiMaria sexually over and over again from his sophomore to senior year at Santa Margarita High School. Somehow DiMaria put down the gun that day and instead called his parents and told them everything. As devoted Catholics would do, they contacted the diocese.
Six years later Ryan DiMaria's 1997 case in Orange County settled for $5.2 million and DiMaria became a plaintiff attorney himself, attending law school as his case went through Orange County Superior Court. When he first approached the church there was no intent to file a lawsuit. Even after years of talking to blank faces and getting no response from church hierarchy, the DiMarias were still asking the church for help.
It was when Harris, finally removed from the priesthood, began operating non profit mobile home parks for low income families, with lots of playgrounds and activities for the children, that DiMaria became the aggressor. "I knew it was going to happen again."
Coincidentally DiMaria's family ran mobile home parks. So he had that conversations with Harris when he was in high school. He knew why Harris wanted to run mobile home parks for low income families.
He filed his lawsuit.
Recently he talked about the betrayal, the despair, trying to get his church to listen to his family's reports about Michael A. Harris, "the Hollywood priest."
The summer before his sophomore year in high school DiMaria’s friend kille,d himself. DiMaria was tormented, fearing his friend's soul was now doomed for eternity, as he'd been taught in the church. (I planned to write his story as a great work of novelization when I realized it was best told in Ryan DiMaria's own words:)
“My parents had heard all these wonderful things about Father Harris. They thought he might be the guy for me to talk to. He said, your friend is not going to hell.”
Harris was blue eyed, tanned, with brownish blond hair, “One of the most charismatic individuals I'd ever seen," DiMaria said.
"Adult women adored him. But girls were never around him, it was always just boys."
I went to talk to him about that stuff, first meeting, and he said, your friend is not going to hell.
It started with him as my therapist and spiritual counselor and there was a period there when it was good, the entire time that I knew him, the counseling was good.
Right after that first meeting we went downstairs and he pulled out his day planner and said to my parents, when can Ryan meet with me next. So we started a counseling relationship summer after my freshman year.
He suggested Santa Margarita High.
(The deadlines were long past.) Harris said, Let me see what I can do about the entrance exam and application deadlines.
Let me see what I can do?
Counseling sessions went all the way through to DiMaria’s Junior Year. Harris was known in upscale Newport Beach Catholic homes as “The Hollywood Priest.”
WHY DID THEY CALL HIM THE HOLLYWOOD PRIEST?
DIMARIA: He would take a group of kids out to dinner, to a game, and that was absolutely the most common thing.
His house operated like a dormitory.
It was a residential 3-4 bedroom house, every room was set up.
One night I went to an event with him and I’d just gotten my license. We were going to be out late, so Harris called my parents and said, why doesn't Ryan stay overnight.
My parents thought that's reasonable. Ryan will be with not only a priest but the principal of the school.
That night Harris pulled DiMaria aside.
He said, Do you want to sleep in my bed? I could see new recliner chair he’d gotten, his big screen TV in his bedroom. The chair had a woofer underneath it and speakers on the wing tips
It was going to be the “True movie experience” he’d be showing me the movie with the sound the way it was in a theater.
I was tired.
He said do you want to sleep in my bed and I said no -- and went to the other room. I woke up and he was rubbing my chest talking to me and started making bigger circles and ultimately . . .
(Edited to frustrate anyone reading this to get aroused.)
I was thinking he’s going to be so embarrassed that that happened. I went downstairs and took a shower. He was sitting in the front room. I said, “I don't understand what happened I don't want it to happen again.”
He said no it won’t
I said, I feel like I’ve almost blocked it out. He said oftentimes when we feel something traumatic we block it out.
My fear was he was going to go tell someone and I was going to get in trouble. I said promise you won’t tell anyone and he said it’s our little secret.
HARRIS THE MANIPULATOR
His victim feels sorry for him
RYAN DIMARIA CONT’D: So here I am I’m feeling horrible for him. It’s my fault. He’s almost a perfect human being.
He worked so hard to cultivate his persona
After that night, he’d sit next to me on a couch during the counseling sessions. When someone does that, you take it as, this person cares, not a sexual advance.
Then after some personal talk, he’d touch me on chest and . . .
People don’t understand why you go back.
I was always -- every time I went back I was hoping, I gotta talk to him to make sense of this in my mind. I was caught:
The only person who could understand was the perpetrator who was also my counselor, So maybe he can talk me through it.
After the second time it happened I was thinking it must be something I’m doing. I told him I didn't want it to happen and it’s still happening.
So I thought what is most powerful thing I can do and say that he can’t misunderstand.
I’m thinking he thinks I want this.
So I said to him, I don't understand why you keep doing this, I’m going to kill you. That's the most clear cut way you can say I don't want this to happen.
Harris managed to manipulate the situation so the abuse still continued. I asked DiMaria to tell me more about Harris.
DIMARIA: Harris would drink, but he was not a drunk. He drank in social settings.
With Catholics and non Catholics in Orange County, he would be invited to the biggest parties and the plays. (He now lives in Oceanside in a normal house.)
Harris had boys at his house all the time -- he had that movie theater in his house, it was the late eighties.
Going to Harris’ house was a real special thing. We’d have movie nights sodas, chips, ice cream, and everybody knew and felt special if he got invited to the principal’s house to watch movies.
Never ever once did I see or hear of a female being invited over there.
That's the way that I first came to know him, he’d call parents and say hey would Ryan like to come
During my freshman year I went to public school and I started there at Santa Margarita my sophomore year.
By the way he was friends with Michael Baker.
They were suite mates.
I think it was Llanos, Harris, a parishioner and I think Baker, he was suitemates at St. Johns Seminary in Camarillo
DIMARIA: What I believe is it (pedophilia) was and is such an acceptable part of the culture in seminary and priesthood that I think for these guys like Baker and Llanos they know it’s bad but it’s all done with a little bit of a giggle.
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, or have an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe 21st Century Style, send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
DiMaria was close to suicide in his college dorm, when he called his parents and told them the whole story. They went to Monsignor John Urell to file a complaint through the diocese.
How did it go with Urell?
DIMARIA: It was surprising to me. There was no remorse or apology or sorry this happened. It was basically he asked questions and took notes the whole time and that's how it went. One question answered then another asked.
My parents weren’t supposed to come in, it was he and I only.
That's when Monsignor Urell said those famous words:
“Wow we've never heard allegations like this before.”
DIMARIA: There was no inkling given, even though at the time they’d been in four and a half years litigation over another plaintiff who’d complained about Michael Harris.
Many victims came forward a decade before me
He was very insincere.
I got together with a friend from high school where Monsignor Harris was principal. He went to Harris’ house (then on Lido I$le)
He went to get a jacket he’d left there and he said, Ryan has something to tell you.
Harris was living on Lido Island and this was after he was on administrative leave. He was living in a wealthy individual’s home who was allowing him to live there.
My friend went in and grabbed his jacket and this house was right on the water. Harris was there and my friend said Ryan has something to ask you
So I confronted him. I said, “I just want to know why you molested me?”
His response was “I thought that's what you needed at the time. I thought you needed a little extra attention.”
I immediately exploded and said what about counseling.
Harris said to me, I’m lucky to be alive and lived through this and quite frankly you are too.
DIMARIA AND his friend reported this incident and what Harris had said.
DIMARIA: So I’m thinking now the bishop has what they need, now he’s admitted it in front of two people
That wasn’t the original plan but it dawned on me afterward. So we called bishop and we met with him and I’m not sure if Urell was there.
And never heard from them after that.
*****$$$???!!!
Have a cosmic experience, or have an ethereal renewal. Click the PayPal button at the top of the left hand column to subscribe 21st Century Style, send any amount of money you want to my PayPal account for “Readership” to keep the blog and the blog’s producer alive.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
DIMARIA: We went to the church my mom went to daily St. Timothy’s Laguna Niguel and spoke to Father Bruce there.
My parents were very involved with that church there so they made an appointment to meet with Father Bruce.
Fr. Bruce knew what I was going to tell him.
I walk in and Fr. Bruce hugs and kisses me and says Sorry this happened. To me that was most inappropriate
Fr. Bruce said, How horrible it is that these priests are just being sent off to hospitals.
We knew there was admission in front of another person. We had met with bishop told him that and they said thank you very much see you later
A PERSON CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH
DIMARIA: You only go through that so much before you realize they really don’t care. It was only at that point that we started to look at the church hierarchy in a different manner.
So we looked to law enforcement, looked to a civil suit,
DIMARIA:
Since the years I knew him, Harris had gotten a PhD at Pepperdine and had actually started a nonprofit in Orange County where they’d buy a mobile home park with government bonds from a private individual and then run it as a nonprofit to provide low income housing.
The thing that alarmed me is I remember him telling me about how great it was that they had these mobile home parks with playgrounds and computer rooms.
And it terrified me. I knew it was going to happen again. The reason I filed the lawsuit was not to get beat up in press and no one had gotten money yet, it was.
After the church did nothing but interrogate me and treat my family like crap, and after having an admission in front of another person and not doing anything,
It was knowing Harris was buying these mobile homes that made me file the lawsuit.
AN EERIE COINCIDENCE
My mom and dad in early sixties and early seventies had invested in mobile home parks and since then had bought more. So we’d talked about them in the past.
I remember driving around the day and I was trying to decide if I wanted to file a lawsuit and I thought to myself this is going to be an unhappy thing and I need to feel like it’s a success otherwise I can’t do it. What if something goes wrong.
What I tell people today is when you get a settlement it’s not as if a light switch comes on and your life is suddenly bright.
I went to law school while my suit was going on, and it helped me understand the process. It didn't make me feel real comfortable but at least I understood the process, what it meant to be deposed. What else could happen.
But I’m still surprised at what the church attorneys do.
HOW DID RYAN DIMARIA END UP AS
A Plaintiffs’ Attorney?
*****$$$???!!!
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DIMARIA: I never had the intention of being a clergy abuse or even personal injury lawyer, I actually had to fight to get onto these cases. I came to Manly’s firm as a clerk to do real estate. He never pushed and I never pushed and I never thought of doing it. It came to a point, kind of like how I felt compelled to file a lawsuit myself.
I felt compelled to take on these cases --
You make yourself so good at keeping outward appearances
I did internships, jobs, while going to college. I worked really hard and people thought that I was a success
But I was doing that to avoid thinking about what happened with Fr. Harris.
======
We now know that a major player in the creation of Church policy for the pedophile priest crisis was Msgr. Alan Placa who now “whispers in Rudy Giuliani’s ear” as his close friend and $100K/year advisor. (See October 30 post.) A decade later in California John Urell was putting Placa’s policy into practice when Ryan DiMaria came with his family to report Michael Harris.
MICHAEL HARRIS’S CAREER:
FROM LEON PODLE’S BOOK: SACRILEGE
Harris, known as the “Hollywood priest” because of his good looks and charisma, was a wildly popular money raiser. At the 1987 opening of the Orange diocese’s new high school “to a roar of applause from the audience, he ripped open his black clerical shirt to reveal a Superman logo. The S stood for Santa Margarita High. Harris was the guiding force behind the new school and its first principal. He had raised $26 million for the school where he found several good candidates for his bed.”
-------
More to Come. . .
Friday, November 2, 2007
Salesians jury trial "trailing"
*****
By Kay Ebeling
The November 5 Jury trial in the Salesians cases is now "trailing," as there are no courtrooms available, and according to the clerk in LA Superior Court Dept. 20, it will be about a week before jury selection and the trial can begin.
City of Angels Blog will keep you posted. The upcoming jury trial is for cases regarding the Salesians reglious order and Fr. Titian Miani, the last and only holdout of orders that would not agree to the LA settlement from July 16th. A second jury trial re Salesians is now on calendar for January 28, 2008.
We will keep you updated.
ke
By Kay Ebeling
The November 5 Jury trial in the Salesians cases is now "trailing," as there are no courtrooms available, and according to the clerk in LA Superior Court Dept. 20, it will be about a week before jury selection and the trial can begin.
City of Angels Blog will keep you posted. The upcoming jury trial is for cases regarding the Salesians reglious order and Fr. Titian Miani, the last and only holdout of orders that would not agree to the LA settlement from July 16th. A second jury trial re Salesians is now on calendar for January 28, 2008.
We will keep you updated.
ke
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Giuliani as president would mean advisors like Alan Placa, the pedophile priest/attorney who created Church policy for pedophile priests
*****
By Kay Ebeling
A New York grand jury ends its report on Alan Placa, pedophile priest, with these words: “Ironically, Priest F would later become instrumental in development of Diocesan policy in response to allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests.” Irony? More like criminal conspiracy. Below are more quotes from Suffolk County about Placa, who today whispers in Rudy Giuliani’s ear, plus an interview with Richard Tollner, one of Placa’s more vocal accusers.
This guy Placa is so devious. He's also Rudy's "long time friend." Placa who diddled little boys when no one was looking, got the church to send him to law school as a young priest, so he could craft legal strategy for the church’s handling of pedophile priests. He also created a devious MO for handling those pesky parish families who make complaints against the priests, and ways to keep the settlements as low as possible.
Imagine what Placa could do as President Giuliani’s advisor: he finds out an American city is going to be attacked and responds by moving the enemy’s cells into new cities before the bombs hit. Then he convinces families of the dead that the bomb never went off in the first place so they really don’t need any reparations. That's how he handled his fellow pedophile priests and their accusers.
Usually pedophiles target children who are meek, not likely to stop their advances. Placa miscalculated when he went after the teenaged Richard Tollner. The January 2003 Grand Jury Report described it: “The tragic death of a victim’s father led, finally, to the end of Priest F’s sexual abuse of him. At the funeral home, Priest F approached the boy and the boy told Priest F, ‘Don’t ever fucking touch me again or I’ll kill you.’"
How Tollner Describes It
Tollner described the funeral scene in a recent phone call: “My father had just died and I said, you know what, it’s all over now. He happened to be walking behind me and I poked him and said, ‘I’ll fucking hill you.’ “He said nothing I said nothing.”
With new determination, Tollner and a friend “picked a teacher we thought we could trust and brought it to the attention of the rector. All these years later the teacher denies we said anything to him.
“We turned Placa in the last week of April 1977,” Tollner said. “We turned him in again in May at the senior school retreat. I was told it would be taken care of.” He graduated, went to college, and went on with his life.
Then in 2002 a friend asked, “Hey, guess who’s handling the sex abuse crisis in the church?”
Tollner said "Placa" joking.
The friend said, “It is and I’m not joking.”
TOLLNER: "I found out this guy was still serving in the priesthood and I thought that's not possible. I thought they’d taken care of it."
“So I came forward.”
More of what happened to Tollner after this:
*****$$$???!!!
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END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
The case of Alan Placa is complicated. I keep getting mixed up as I do research and I end up writing long convoluted headlines when I finally do post.
I go to read documents about his pedophilia and find myself reading about his work as an attorney for the Roman Catholic Church of the United States, as legal consultant to House of Affirmation in Massachusetts among other things.
Placa crafted church policy for handling pedophiles while he was a pedophile himself.
Those words in the last paragraph about Priest F, in the Suffolk County Grand Jury Report jumped out at me. “Priest F would later become instrumental in development of Diocesan policy in response to allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests.”
How can mainstream media overlook something that blatant!!!!
The Grand Jury also reported Placa's collusion as an attorney:
“Do not disclose that I’m an attorney for the diocese,”
“There’s proven church documents,” says Tollner. “Read the June 2002 article in Newsday.
Placa would visit families of pedophile priest crime victims as a priest, not informing them he was an attorney for the diocese as well. The report has documents where he says, "Don't let them know I'm an attorney."
There’s an internal memo in same grand jury report where he states he severely reduced settlements.
It's all at bishop accountability dot org in several places.
The grand jury heard from 97 witnesses and reported that Placa’s main accomplishment was getting the diocese to settle potentially multimillion-dollar sex-abuse cases for $20,000 to $100,000.
When Tollner's friend told him Placa was on a review board to hear about complaints about pedophile priests in the diocese, Tollner went to the news media (after talking it over with his mother. Tollner also says he won't file a civil suit. The money would just be coming from people like his mother.)
Several stories ran in local media before the DA approached Tollner to talk to a grand jury.
-----
It Pays To Put Your Story Out There in the News, It Gets Results. Email me!
=====
“I can’t say where I testified because of security," Tollner said. "They brought us in through eight different doorways and through hallways and we were incognito and in disguise. To get into the building, from the parking lot into chair where I testified took 30 minutes.
“The people in the jury I felt sorry for them. When I came in, you could tell they were prepared to hear something horrible, like they’d heard so much before mine. They heard 50 cases in one summer.”
Tollner keeps using the word “considerate” to describe how law enforcement treated the crime victims.
“The Suffolk County DA, they were kind, considerate gave us time to do what we needed to do,” Tollner said. “They followed up with us three times the next week, calling the next day to ask how are you feeling, do you have any feedback, a few months later wanted to make sure we were okay.”
No wonder so many Americans have given up on religion in favor of just being human.
Tollner’s accusations against Placa, after this:
*****$$$???!!!
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END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
What did you say to the grand jury, I asked.
“The circumstances,” said Tollner.
“Simply put -- school was closed one day and a couple of us were called in to make right to life posters.” It was a regular high school gym at St. Pius on Long Island, where more than half the teachers have PhDs from places like Harvard, MIT, about half clergy, half layman.
“I wanted to go there,” Tollner says, “I strongly considered the priesthood, and even to this day would consider it again. I’ve been on a church board for 10 years in Upstate New York.”
Placa’s acts as a deviant predator pedophile are very revealing of his character.
Hold up your knee, pick up a book, hide what you're doing, and talk about something else while you're doing it so the victim is confused and unable to fight you off.
The way Placa preyed on Tollner is so similar to so many other attacks by Pedophile Priests
You’d think they had child molesters handbooks hidden in their Catechism:
“He said: You're laying on the floor, why don’t you consider doing the posters somewhere else. I said where and he goes, I’ll show you.”
Tollner describes their convoluted walk down a hall, out the front of the building, into another building to find a place “to put the posters up on a counter at chest level,” to make it easier to work.
“Then he starts pointing towards all the posters with one hand and I realized he’s feeling me with the other hand.
“And he continues talking about magic markers and posters and telling me what to do with the posters while he’s feeling me. You don’t have a chance to speak or say anything.
“It went on for a long period of time like 10 minutes and then he’s like well we've had enough with these posters, let’s go back to the auditorium.
Tollner proved his point 20 years later:
“I went back to the building four weeks ago and sure enough 10 feet away from where we were doing the posters was a stage that was chest high. We could have done the posters right there but he chose to walk over 100 steps away.
“The next time was after hours and he positioned himself where his body was blocking anyone’s view and he was showing something me in a thesaurus, being authoritative, talking, and you couldn't get a word in edgewise.
“I wasn’t mature enough to even know it was sexual.”
. . . . .
What kind of presidential advisor would Alan Placa be:
Another Criminal Presidency Is Possible,
8 More Years of Criminals in Office!
If Alan Placa is advising him, we can count on a Giuliani presidency full of deceit. People who align with perpetrators or the enemy will suddenly have full bank accounts. criminals and American enemies who Giuliani “likes” will thrive no matter how vile their crimes, and you can count on the interests of the parishioners, or the American people, being way down at the bottom of the priorities list. In short a Guiliani Presidency will look a lot like the Catholic Church in the way it handled pedophile priests.
Read the grand jury report at:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2003_02_10_SuffolkGrandJury/
More to come
By Kay Ebeling
A New York grand jury ends its report on Alan Placa, pedophile priest, with these words: “Ironically, Priest F would later become instrumental in development of Diocesan policy in response to allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests.” Irony? More like criminal conspiracy. Below are more quotes from Suffolk County about Placa, who today whispers in Rudy Giuliani’s ear, plus an interview with Richard Tollner, one of Placa’s more vocal accusers.
This guy Placa is so devious. He's also Rudy's "long time friend." Placa who diddled little boys when no one was looking, got the church to send him to law school as a young priest, so he could craft legal strategy for the church’s handling of pedophile priests. He also created a devious MO for handling those pesky parish families who make complaints against the priests, and ways to keep the settlements as low as possible.
Imagine what Placa could do as President Giuliani’s advisor: he finds out an American city is going to be attacked and responds by moving the enemy’s cells into new cities before the bombs hit. Then he convinces families of the dead that the bomb never went off in the first place so they really don’t need any reparations. That's how he handled his fellow pedophile priests and their accusers.
Usually pedophiles target children who are meek, not likely to stop their advances. Placa miscalculated when he went after the teenaged Richard Tollner. The January 2003 Grand Jury Report described it: “The tragic death of a victim’s father led, finally, to the end of Priest F’s sexual abuse of him. At the funeral home, Priest F approached the boy and the boy told Priest F, ‘Don’t ever fucking touch me again or I’ll kill you.’"
How Tollner Describes It
Tollner described the funeral scene in a recent phone call: “My father had just died and I said, you know what, it’s all over now. He happened to be walking behind me and I poked him and said, ‘I’ll fucking hill you.’ “He said nothing I said nothing.”
With new determination, Tollner and a friend “picked a teacher we thought we could trust and brought it to the attention of the rector. All these years later the teacher denies we said anything to him.
“We turned Placa in the last week of April 1977,” Tollner said. “We turned him in again in May at the senior school retreat. I was told it would be taken care of.” He graduated, went to college, and went on with his life.
Then in 2002 a friend asked, “Hey, guess who’s handling the sex abuse crisis in the church?”
Tollner said "Placa" joking.
The friend said, “It is and I’m not joking.”
TOLLNER: "I found out this guy was still serving in the priesthood and I thought that's not possible. I thought they’d taken care of it."
“So I came forward.”
More of what happened to Tollner after this:
*****$$$???!!!
I hope you enjoy reading this blog. Please come back often and visit my advertisers. I also pass the Internet hat. You can support this blog by putting cash on my PayPal account. Just click the button in the top left corner. I report all income to the IRS. Thank you.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
The case of Alan Placa is complicated. I keep getting mixed up as I do research and I end up writing long convoluted headlines when I finally do post.
I go to read documents about his pedophilia and find myself reading about his work as an attorney for the Roman Catholic Church of the United States, as legal consultant to House of Affirmation in Massachusetts among other things.
Placa crafted church policy for handling pedophiles while he was a pedophile himself.
Those words in the last paragraph about Priest F, in the Suffolk County Grand Jury Report jumped out at me. “Priest F would later become instrumental in development of Diocesan policy in response to allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests.”
How can mainstream media overlook something that blatant!!!!
The Grand Jury also reported Placa's collusion as an attorney:
“Do not disclose that I’m an attorney for the diocese,”
“There’s proven church documents,” says Tollner. “Read the June 2002 article in Newsday.
Placa would visit families of pedophile priest crime victims as a priest, not informing them he was an attorney for the diocese as well. The report has documents where he says, "Don't let them know I'm an attorney."
There’s an internal memo in same grand jury report where he states he severely reduced settlements.
It's all at bishop accountability dot org in several places.
The grand jury heard from 97 witnesses and reported that Placa’s main accomplishment was getting the diocese to settle potentially multimillion-dollar sex-abuse cases for $20,000 to $100,000.
When Tollner's friend told him Placa was on a review board to hear about complaints about pedophile priests in the diocese, Tollner went to the news media (after talking it over with his mother. Tollner also says he won't file a civil suit. The money would just be coming from people like his mother.)
Several stories ran in local media before the DA approached Tollner to talk to a grand jury.
-----
It Pays To Put Your Story Out There in the News, It Gets Results. Email me!
=====
“I can’t say where I testified because of security," Tollner said. "They brought us in through eight different doorways and through hallways and we were incognito and in disguise. To get into the building, from the parking lot into chair where I testified took 30 minutes.
“The people in the jury I felt sorry for them. When I came in, you could tell they were prepared to hear something horrible, like they’d heard so much before mine. They heard 50 cases in one summer.”
Tollner keeps using the word “considerate” to describe how law enforcement treated the crime victims.
“The Suffolk County DA, they were kind, considerate gave us time to do what we needed to do,” Tollner said. “They followed up with us three times the next week, calling the next day to ask how are you feeling, do you have any feedback, a few months later wanted to make sure we were okay.”
No wonder so many Americans have given up on religion in favor of just being human.
Tollner’s accusations against Placa, after this:
*****$$$???!!!
I hope you enjoy reading this blog. Please come back often and visit my advertisers. I also pass the Internet hat. You can support this blog by putting cash on my PayPal account. Just click the button in the top left corner. I report all income to the IRS. Thank you.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
What did you say to the grand jury, I asked.
“The circumstances,” said Tollner.
“Simply put -- school was closed one day and a couple of us were called in to make right to life posters.” It was a regular high school gym at St. Pius on Long Island, where more than half the teachers have PhDs from places like Harvard, MIT, about half clergy, half layman.
“I wanted to go there,” Tollner says, “I strongly considered the priesthood, and even to this day would consider it again. I’ve been on a church board for 10 years in Upstate New York.”
Placa’s acts as a deviant predator pedophile are very revealing of his character.
Hold up your knee, pick up a book, hide what you're doing, and talk about something else while you're doing it so the victim is confused and unable to fight you off.
The way Placa preyed on Tollner is so similar to so many other attacks by Pedophile Priests
You’d think they had child molesters handbooks hidden in their Catechism:
“He said: You're laying on the floor, why don’t you consider doing the posters somewhere else. I said where and he goes, I’ll show you.”
Tollner describes their convoluted walk down a hall, out the front of the building, into another building to find a place “to put the posters up on a counter at chest level,” to make it easier to work.
“Then he starts pointing towards all the posters with one hand and I realized he’s feeling me with the other hand.
“And he continues talking about magic markers and posters and telling me what to do with the posters while he’s feeling me. You don’t have a chance to speak or say anything.
“It went on for a long period of time like 10 minutes and then he’s like well we've had enough with these posters, let’s go back to the auditorium.
Tollner proved his point 20 years later:
“I went back to the building four weeks ago and sure enough 10 feet away from where we were doing the posters was a stage that was chest high. We could have done the posters right there but he chose to walk over 100 steps away.
“The next time was after hours and he positioned himself where his body was blocking anyone’s view and he was showing something me in a thesaurus, being authoritative, talking, and you couldn't get a word in edgewise.
“I wasn’t mature enough to even know it was sexual.”
. . . . .
What kind of presidential advisor would Alan Placa be:
Another Criminal Presidency Is Possible,
8 More Years of Criminals in Office!
If Alan Placa is advising him, we can count on a Giuliani presidency full of deceit. People who align with perpetrators or the enemy will suddenly have full bank accounts. criminals and American enemies who Giuliani “likes” will thrive no matter how vile their crimes, and you can count on the interests of the parishioners, or the American people, being way down at the bottom of the priorities list. In short a Guiliani Presidency will look a lot like the Catholic Church in the way it handled pedophile priests.
Read the grand jury report at:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2003_02_10_SuffolkGrandJury/
More to come
Sunday, October 28, 2007
I got a little scripture and couldn't do it. Better off not pleasing the bishops by eating our own. Focus on the 5 percent
*****
By Kay Ebeling
I had plans to write a scathing post today about one of the attorneys defending the Salesians in the jury trials that start November 5 in LA. I mean, why would someone whose family had to flee from criminal clergy in Iran end up defending criminal clergy in America? That same day I had an argument with a VOTF member yelling in his ear: just drop those two goals about reforming the church and supporting good priests, 'cause if the sheeples ain’t figured it out by now, forget about ‘em.” Earlier I interviewed a guy in Boston and had trouble keeping track of which victims’ advocacy group had splintered off which group going back to the beginning. And believe me if I wanted to I could write some scathing things about SNAP.
Then I happened to have free time on Friday morning to go to a neighborhood bible study and the passage happened to be: James 4:11 as translated here from The Message: "Don't bad-mouth each other, friends. It's God's Word, his Message, his Royal Rule, that takes a beating in that kind of talk. You're supposed to be honoring the Message, not writing graffiti all over it. God is in charge of deciding human destiny. Who do you think you are to meddle in the destiny of others?"
I’m really fortunate my daughter and I got to be homeless November 2003 to November 2005. Really. In homeless shelters you learn to get along with people no matter how much you disagree. You have to or you end up back out on the street.
At a shelter you have to get along with people you don’t like and don’t agree with but like it or not you have to spend time with them. Most the women living there were much more “street” than me, and a lot of them hated white people to start with, but add in my upper middle class educated accent -- I took a lot of verbal abuse the first weeks in that shelter. I almost got thrown out a couple of times for arguments that I was sure “weren’t my fault.”
Focus on the 5 percent
You learn that when people have a common goal, they may agree with each other on 5 percent of things, those things that have to do with the common goal. You probably disagree about everything else and if you waste time arguing about that other stuff, the common goal gets ruined. You learn to ignore that other stuff and focus on the common goal.
In the homeless shelter the common goal was keeping a roof over your head to save your ass.
In the crime victim community it’s justice.
I know we all have legitimate reasons to be mad as hell at different advocacy organizations: one might want to align with a bishop who 10 years ago was not on our side but now seems to be. Persons who dealt with that bishop 10 years ago are shocked and rightfully so. But that's part of the 95 percent you don’t agree about.
Focus on the 5 percent on which we do agree, at least long enough to attend a meeting and find common goals.
When I read about two different meetings taking place in Rhode Island last week, one inside with VOTF and one outside, I knew I’d probably be at the one outside.
But I also think the guys in robes with cognac glasses in their hands are laughing out loud as they watch advocates eating their own.
One thing about Hollywood.
People from all over the country come here to try to “save” us. So all over the city are these “church plants,” people from Minnesota, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, come to rescue people in Hollywood who, face it, really need saving. Although I often do a lot of saving back.
I wouldn't even know about these church plants if it weren't for my 11 months in the Hope Again homeless shelter.
They are all over Hollywood, little places where 10 or 15 people meet regularly to read the Bible and it’s really revolutionary, guerrilla God, bashing through ceremonies and sacraments and just once in a while passing a loaf of bread and grape juice to represent the last supper. I love it.
We're like the Christians in the year 100 or so before the Popes and bishops created themselves to muck it up.
You’d think Hollywood is godless but truth is even that crack head on the corner can quote you Scripture.
****$$$???!!!
I hope you enjoy reading this blog. Please come back often and visit my advertisers. I also pass the Internet hat. You can support this blog by putting cash on my PayPal account. Just click the button in the top left corner. I report all income to the IRS. Thank you.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK*****
I still go to Hope Again Tuesdays for Anger Management and when I can on Fridays for “chapel.”
So thanks to being homeless and landing in a fundamentalist Christian shelter -- where believe me the “onward Christian soldiers” vibe rankled me at first -- I live my life now based on Scripture.
It was at the kitchen table at the shelter that someone told me about “The Massage” on KJLH which is linked at the bottom of this page. They're an R&B station from deep in LA ghetto. The daily Massage and their radical Spread the Word broadcast on Sunday afternoons, bible studies -- these things wouldn't be part of my life if I hadn’t been homeless for two years.
KJLH - Kindness Joy Love Happiness.
Who says this isn’t the city of angels?
When we’d been in our car and motels for six months and the cash was running out, I leaned into the back seat and just dived my hand into the pile of rubble, and honestly, it was after saying a sort of prayer. I was totally godless at the time but we were parked facing uphill and as I reclined in the seat as far back as it would go I found a business card in this pile of rubble -- I’m a middle class lady, I don't know how to explain how I ended up in a pile of rubble, it happens when you live in a car.
My arm went back, I stuck in my hand and out came this business card. A few weeks back as I’d sat once again in yet another homeless agency waiting room -- waiting, this black lady next to me was humming. We talked a bit, unusual at PATH, not a social environment. But we talked enough for her to hand me this card and say, “these people will help you.” Then I lost the card. Now out of money, surrendering to gravity on a West Hollywood hill, I found it: Hope Again and a 323 area code.
It was a fundamentalist Christian place but they would take us. After six months of not fitting the demographics of any agency in town, these cracker ladies from Alabama with a shabby office on Sunset Boulevard took us in. Main requirement was we had to attend Bible studies daily and go to church at least once a week. And a whole slew of other rules, believe me.
That's why I’m grateful that we were homeless. If you get in too many arguments in a homeless shelter, you get thrown out. So you learn to get along with people even when you can’t stand them and hate everything they say.
You won’t get thrown out if you can’t pay the rent, they'll work with you (yes you do have to pay rent in homeless shelters.) Even if you hate the bible studies at Hope Again, they'll let you stay as long as you keep going to them and don’t get in arguments.
Last Friday I was planning a post called “Leila in Lala Land” where I was going to tear into an attorney defending the Salesians, and she really has some bare blatant places to rip into her and get away with it. But since I wasn’t on deadline I took a few hours off and went to Friday morning “chapel” at Hope Again instead and we talked about that James 4:11 verse.
(New King James Version)
Do Not Judge a Brother
Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
I like the Message translation better.
AND At the shelter I started work on Priest rape crime victim issues:
It was in bible studies, in Bible-based counseling, in mandatory morning devotionals at the homeless shelter --that I began again focusing on pedophile priest rapes and what they did to me.
And what I could do with the anger.
Over about three years the anger turned into this blog.
Often I combine ideas that strike me in the middle of bible studies with posts I write here. I try not to mention it too much as I know how priest rape crime victims can feel about someone pushing religion on them.
But pure Scripture minus the popes and bishops and other prelates, is so mind-blowing.
Take James 4:11 and apply it to priest rape crime advocacy:
It’s liberating to say, let God do the judging, and the attacking.
It frees me up to just point out all the blatant holes in their arguments and blatant injustices.
I don't have to lower myself to criticizing someone’s heritage or their nose or skin or obvious bad eating and drinking habits, like with McFeely.
I have to say this much, though, about Leila in Lala land.
Why would someone whose family had to flee from criminal clergy in Iran end up defending criminal clergy in America?
That's enough.
More to come. . .
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By Kay Ebeling
I had plans to write a scathing post today about one of the attorneys defending the Salesians in the jury trials that start November 5 in LA. I mean, why would someone whose family had to flee from criminal clergy in Iran end up defending criminal clergy in America? That same day I had an argument with a VOTF member yelling in his ear: just drop those two goals about reforming the church and supporting good priests, 'cause if the sheeples ain’t figured it out by now, forget about ‘em.” Earlier I interviewed a guy in Boston and had trouble keeping track of which victims’ advocacy group had splintered off which group going back to the beginning. And believe me if I wanted to I could write some scathing things about SNAP.
Then I happened to have free time on Friday morning to go to a neighborhood bible study and the passage happened to be: James 4:11 as translated here from The Message: "Don't bad-mouth each other, friends. It's God's Word, his Message, his Royal Rule, that takes a beating in that kind of talk. You're supposed to be honoring the Message, not writing graffiti all over it. God is in charge of deciding human destiny. Who do you think you are to meddle in the destiny of others?"
I’m really fortunate my daughter and I got to be homeless November 2003 to November 2005. Really. In homeless shelters you learn to get along with people no matter how much you disagree. You have to or you end up back out on the street.
At a shelter you have to get along with people you don’t like and don’t agree with but like it or not you have to spend time with them. Most the women living there were much more “street” than me, and a lot of them hated white people to start with, but add in my upper middle class educated accent -- I took a lot of verbal abuse the first weeks in that shelter. I almost got thrown out a couple of times for arguments that I was sure “weren’t my fault.”
Focus on the 5 percent
You learn that when people have a common goal, they may agree with each other on 5 percent of things, those things that have to do with the common goal. You probably disagree about everything else and if you waste time arguing about that other stuff, the common goal gets ruined. You learn to ignore that other stuff and focus on the common goal.
In the homeless shelter the common goal was keeping a roof over your head to save your ass.
In the crime victim community it’s justice.
I know we all have legitimate reasons to be mad as hell at different advocacy organizations: one might want to align with a bishop who 10 years ago was not on our side but now seems to be. Persons who dealt with that bishop 10 years ago are shocked and rightfully so. But that's part of the 95 percent you don’t agree about.
Focus on the 5 percent on which we do agree, at least long enough to attend a meeting and find common goals.
When I read about two different meetings taking place in Rhode Island last week, one inside with VOTF and one outside, I knew I’d probably be at the one outside.
But I also think the guys in robes with cognac glasses in their hands are laughing out loud as they watch advocates eating their own.
One thing about Hollywood.
People from all over the country come here to try to “save” us. So all over the city are these “church plants,” people from Minnesota, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, come to rescue people in Hollywood who, face it, really need saving. Although I often do a lot of saving back.
I wouldn't even know about these church plants if it weren't for my 11 months in the Hope Again homeless shelter.
They are all over Hollywood, little places where 10 or 15 people meet regularly to read the Bible and it’s really revolutionary, guerrilla God, bashing through ceremonies and sacraments and just once in a while passing a loaf of bread and grape juice to represent the last supper. I love it.
We're like the Christians in the year 100 or so before the Popes and bishops created themselves to muck it up.
You’d think Hollywood is godless but truth is even that crack head on the corner can quote you Scripture.
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I still go to Hope Again Tuesdays for Anger Management and when I can on Fridays for “chapel.”
So thanks to being homeless and landing in a fundamentalist Christian shelter -- where believe me the “onward Christian soldiers” vibe rankled me at first -- I live my life now based on Scripture.
It was at the kitchen table at the shelter that someone told me about “The Massage” on KJLH which is linked at the bottom of this page. They're an R&B station from deep in LA ghetto. The daily Massage and their radical Spread the Word broadcast on Sunday afternoons, bible studies -- these things wouldn't be part of my life if I hadn’t been homeless for two years.
KJLH - Kindness Joy Love Happiness.
Who says this isn’t the city of angels?
When we’d been in our car and motels for six months and the cash was running out, I leaned into the back seat and just dived my hand into the pile of rubble, and honestly, it was after saying a sort of prayer. I was totally godless at the time but we were parked facing uphill and as I reclined in the seat as far back as it would go I found a business card in this pile of rubble -- I’m a middle class lady, I don't know how to explain how I ended up in a pile of rubble, it happens when you live in a car.
My arm went back, I stuck in my hand and out came this business card. A few weeks back as I’d sat once again in yet another homeless agency waiting room -- waiting, this black lady next to me was humming. We talked a bit, unusual at PATH, not a social environment. But we talked enough for her to hand me this card and say, “these people will help you.” Then I lost the card. Now out of money, surrendering to gravity on a West Hollywood hill, I found it: Hope Again and a 323 area code.
It was a fundamentalist Christian place but they would take us. After six months of not fitting the demographics of any agency in town, these cracker ladies from Alabama with a shabby office on Sunset Boulevard took us in. Main requirement was we had to attend Bible studies daily and go to church at least once a week. And a whole slew of other rules, believe me.
That's why I’m grateful that we were homeless. If you get in too many arguments in a homeless shelter, you get thrown out. So you learn to get along with people even when you can’t stand them and hate everything they say.
You won’t get thrown out if you can’t pay the rent, they'll work with you (yes you do have to pay rent in homeless shelters.) Even if you hate the bible studies at Hope Again, they'll let you stay as long as you keep going to them and don’t get in arguments.
Last Friday I was planning a post called “Leila in Lala Land” where I was going to tear into an attorney defending the Salesians, and she really has some bare blatant places to rip into her and get away with it. But since I wasn’t on deadline I took a few hours off and went to Friday morning “chapel” at Hope Again instead and we talked about that James 4:11 verse.
(New King James Version)
Do Not Judge a Brother
Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
I like the Message translation better.
AND At the shelter I started work on Priest rape crime victim issues:
It was in bible studies, in Bible-based counseling, in mandatory morning devotionals at the homeless shelter --that I began again focusing on pedophile priest rapes and what they did to me.
And what I could do with the anger.
Over about three years the anger turned into this blog.
Often I combine ideas that strike me in the middle of bible studies with posts I write here. I try not to mention it too much as I know how priest rape crime victims can feel about someone pushing religion on them.
But pure Scripture minus the popes and bishops and other prelates, is so mind-blowing.
Take James 4:11 and apply it to priest rape crime advocacy:
It’s liberating to say, let God do the judging, and the attacking.
It frees me up to just point out all the blatant holes in their arguments and blatant injustices.
I don't have to lower myself to criticizing someone’s heritage or their nose or skin or obvious bad eating and drinking habits, like with McFeely.
I have to say this much, though, about Leila in Lala land.
Why would someone whose family had to flee from criminal clergy in Iran end up defending criminal clergy in America?
That's enough.
More to come. . .
Commercial: *****$$$???!!!
Please come back often to city of angels blog and check out the ads. I’ve added some new ones at the bottom.
The ads change continuously -- it's fascinating to watch.
The more you click and the more you click on add, the more pennies I get, and if I get more clicks on more ads then all the clicks are worth more each time -- all the way up to a total penny a click at some point.
So I’m on a mania to get more clicks.
And then more clicks.
And then clicks on the Ads and more clicks on the ads
CLICK CLICK CLICK!!
You can also support this blog by putting cash on my PayPal account. Just click the button in the top left corner.
Think of it as subscribing to a cosmic magazine and just every now and then when the spirit moves you, send me a high five -- or $50 -- or $500 or more!!!!!
Like we say at Google
Do no evil
I report all income to the IRS.
Thank you.
END COMMERCIAL BREAK
More to come. . .
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