*****
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
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