Gonzales answers Interrogatories 1-8 instead of Mahony, judge denies plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions, and the archdiocese adds on another law firm

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An eerie coincidence

By Kay Ebeling
At one point there were seven hearings on calendar for July 10th. Yesterday there was just one. Church Attorney Donald Steier slipped out of the frying pan uncharred, as Judge Haley Fromholz denied the motion for sanctions against Steier filed by plaintiffs. City of Angels Blog will report more on that decision next week when his ruling makes the public documents.

I went downstairs to see what has been added in the last few days. Found three more associations of counsel by defendant filed July 6th; that makes it 16 law firms and counting. The Hennigan firm announces the addition of Reback, McAndres & Kjar in Manhattan Beach, “Specially appearing for defendant Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles.” Motion for immunity of George Neville Rucker was taken off calendar by Steier July 3rd. Here’s what I’m looking for.

“Declaration of Monsignor Gabriel Gonzales” filed June 29th. This answers my question, what happened to Interrogatories 1 through 8 that Plaintiff Attorney Katherine Freberg has been trying to get since at least last August? These interrogatories were supposed to be answered by Cardinal Roger Mahony. Instead Mahony had Monsignor Golzales produce and sign responses.

(Does anyone else get an eerie feeling from this? President Bush is to AG Gonzales what Cardinal Mahony is to Msgr. Gonzales…even the spelling is the same. This Gonzales was ordained in 1984 and is now Vicar for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. I do not know if he has a chubby cheeked smile like the Attorney General as well, but I guess we'll see the monsignor when the trials begin. He’ll probably be there instead of Mahony….)

“I am submitting this declaration to explain the process undertaken by the archdiocese,” writes Gabriel G, “To comply with the Court’s order of August 17, 2006, with regard to Special Interrogatories 1 through 8 which asked for reports received between 1965 and 1982.”

As Vicar for Clergy, Gonzales is responsible for handling allegations of misconduct by priests, much like AG Gonzales’ job was to fire judges who didn't walk the Republican Party line...

Msgr. Gonzales writes that he had already reviewed the living priests’ files in 2002 and 2003. “We utilized that information to compile responses to Special Interrogatories 1-8 for living priests.” He reviewed the files of every single deceased priest, “a review of in excess of one thousand personnel files.

Then here’s another place where things get eerie to me:
“Because individuals’ and priests’ primary contact with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is through parishes,” writes Gonzales and I get the shivers. “We felt the most effective way to gather information was to communicate with them through parish Pastors and parish administrators.”

NOTE: These are the exact same words used by Church Attorney Sean Kneafsey in front of the judge June 21st.

So now we know that Kneafsey put the words in Gonzales’ mouth and they probably spent a few hours in some very luxurious room somewhere while Kneafsey coached Gonzales on what to say and how to say it. That's the American judicial system as manipulated by the American Catholic Church -- oh yeah the only true church according to Ratzinger yesterday….

Gonzales continues in more wording taken right out of the mouth of Church Attorney Sean Kneafsey:

He talks about this letter they sent to every parish telling the pastors about interrogatories 1-8 and asking them if they had any knowledge of sex abuse in their parishes.

“We requested that each parish pastor and administrator ‘read’ each of the interrogatories and that any responsive information be provided.”

MY ANALYSIS: They say “The most effective way” was to do it this way, and they avoid saying, “so we didn't do it any other way.”
The other way would have actually brought up evidence.

They sent a letter to each of the schools and asked the recipients to “read” the interrogatories and provide and responsive information.

(I don't get at all why he keeps putting quotation marks around “read” unless it’s to emphasize that he expected the parish priests to read this letter instead of just filing it. Is that what they usually do?)
They sent similar letters to all the administrators of their cemeteries, so thorough were they. . .

The letters asked for a response in two weeks.

HERE COMES THE MAD HATTER DRIPPING TEARS INTO HIS CUPS:

“This created a significant burden in these institutions which have limited resources.”

The Mad Hatter said to the judge, “I am not a wealthy man.”

Gonzales describes a scene where they've brought in 2-6 volunteers to call the 576 locations including Spanish translators.

“It was an extremely arduous and difficult process but one that we completed.”

(I know, the church can’t afford to hire clerical workers after paying for 16 plus law firms to be on hand at all times.)

“At the conclusion of that process, the information was compiled in the form of the Responses to Special interrogatories 1-8, which I reviewed and verified.”

And the Judge accepted them
And Mahony never had to say a thing.
July 17 hearing on this

Where is the Drama, continued after this:

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Where is the Drama?

The hearings ended. Donald Steier walked out of court and threw me a withering “what can I say?” smile. Reporters from both the LA Times and City News were about the only ones left in the room. I asked what about the motion to compel answers of Monsignor Purcell? The clerk says it was taken off calendar as well.

Spano from the Times was up and out calling out to the City News guy, “You on the Spector case again?” City News guy nodded and they both bounded out to go cover the real news story in LA, did Phil Spector pull the trigger or did this actress kill herself in his home three years ago. Since this story doesn’t have enough meat in it, they're cooking up theories about why an actress would be suicidal in Hollywood, (duh) and TV cameras from all over the world are comparing the dead actress to .... the Black Dahlia.

So pantingly the Times and City News went off to join the hordes. If there’s no cameras it can’t be news, that's exactly what the organized criminals want and it’s what they get.

(Side note here: Did anyone else see the humor in what happened in the LA Times over the weekend? Spano was on vacation so they put a new reporter on the Clergy Cases. He proceeded to make a few phone calls and copy and paste from previous stories to produce a Page One Sunday edition story, as is the custom of Mainstream Media in 2007.

The novice reporter gets hold of Jeff Anderson in Minnesota, who is not directly involved with the LA cases, but he is the granddaddy of civil lawsuits against the church. Anderson gave the green Times reporter a great quote about the archdiocese offering settlements, with no attribution, no factual basis at all.

The story of the settlements ran in the Times on Sunday and has since been repeated in regional newspapers around the area. And there’s not a lick of truth in it. Jeff Anderson probably laughed all day Sunday watching mainstream media’s reaction to his quote. The Times reporter came back from vacation and immediately went back to work on the Phil Spector murder trial.)

More document diving after this

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COMING UP AUGUST 8 TRIAL DATE
RE KREUTZER CASES
PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION IN LIMINE NO. 3 TO EXCLUDE EVIDENCE OF SUBSEQUENT GOOD CONDUCT

Steven Brady writes that the archdiocese “intends to put into evidence examples of its private repentance and subsequent good conduct in mitigation of its outrageous conduct toward plaintiff.”

That's about the Kreutzer cases with a trial coming up August 8th, I’ll believe it when I see it.

I leave the courthouse still feeling an emptiness. Where is the drama? My brain is not engaged enough.

There isn’t enough drama occupying my head

And instead my own drama comes in. This is how I posted it on a survivors’ message board, where I look plaintively for the help I would get if I could afford therapy.

JULY 11, 2007
Cityofangels1

A real reason why there should be no SOL on sex abuse as in Canada and Delaware and other civilized places is --

I'm 59 years old. I was five when it happened. I buried it for 40 years. My daughter turned 5 and I started to remember -- but I pushed it back again. It was damaging my daughter for me to remember.

Now my daughter has moved out and it's "okay" to remember now, or something. I'm having flashbacks now, 55 years later

PLUS it takes time even for the memory to unfold. Around May 1 I got this weird rash, in a strange place on the body to have a rash, a place that was involved with what the priest did to me. I've also been having other things "pop" into my head, like my weird relationship with my sister.

Yesterday I came out of court after hearings that fizzled and my mind was just not occupied enough.

Walking across Hill Street to the Metro, just as I stepped up on the curb, ALL OF IT poured in. The cameras, the stuff Father Horne did with both me and my sister while he pointed a camera at us, the weird compulsion I had in 1968 to get my sister and me into a porn shoot together, and then we did it, and then it was so weirdly anti-climatic...

Just like the hearings yesterday were anticlimactic.

Even weirder thing was I just took it. I stood there on the street with my music in my headphones, walked over to a architectural thing there that you can sit on and sat down, got a little excited, maybe my heart rate went up a bit. But I just took it.

It's true you don't remember the whole thing until you are able to remember it.

But I'm 59 years old. How do I even start to find justice when I've just now totally remembered what happened when I was five?

just keep writing I guess...but I still have the rash and it itches like hell...
kay
PS may put this experience in the blog, may not...
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For those with memory problems this is from this blog:
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Motion for Discovery Referee and to compel Roger Mahony to comply with discovery, both hearings May 16th as civil cases prepare for jury trials
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It takes a court order to get Roger Mahony to comply with discovery law. On May 16th Katherine Freberg asks Judge Haley Fromholz to compel the archbishop to answer interrogatory questions and produce documents needed for the July 9 Hagenbach cases jury trial. In addition plaintiffs request a Discovery Referee in a hearing May 16th as every time plaintiffs try to depose a witness, the church blocks them.

More to Come...