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Monday, July 30, 2012

Pedophile Priests: True Crime Video Web Series Proposal

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(Originally mailed to several TV production groups in L.A. in 2009-2010 with no response, proposal is updated here:)

Mainstream media has barely reported the story of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church.  Most coverage is little more than a surface headline and paragraphs from press releases.  As a result most of the stories of hundreds of thousands of children abused by thousands of Catholic priests have not yet been told. 

An indepth look at cases in each city, such as in online videos based on reports at City of Angels Blog, would highlight patterns in these crimes, maybe even lead to a deeper investigation of the hierarchy's cover-up of these crimes and federal prosecution.  

After interviewing hundreds of pedophile priest victims for this blog since January 2007, and after watching the shallow coverage of these crimes in mainstream media, I know we could produce original episodes for years about these crimes, and never run out of new material.   Here is a sampling of stories I published at City of Angels Blog in recent years, that lend themselves to true crime series coverage:

From Boston: First Posted at City of Angels January 16, 2010:
"This year the number will go over 6,000," Terry McKiernan, president of Bishop Accountability in Boston, emailed me early this month. After we posted “The Public Has a Right to Know how Six Thousand Priests Got Away with Pedophilia” Jan. 2, people

From Santa Barbara: First posted at City of Angels Tuesday, January 26, 2010:

Predator Franciscan describes years he ran Santa Barbara Boys Choir, 'A constant supply of attractive little boys' (5 pages scanned here)

While reading through his Probation Report, we scanned five pages from Sexual Autobiography of Robert Van Handel Pedophile Franciscan and posted them here, for our readers to click enlarge and read, as a preview of upcoming stories. These tight single-space typed memories cover the time Van Handel was Director of Santa Barbara Boys Choir, which, he writes "was clearly my choir, and the fulfillment of one of my fondest dreams.  “Now I understand that it was also a constant supply of attractive little boys.”

From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: First Posted Monday, January 18, 2010
I took my son to the bishop. I said, you broke him you fix him. They said, not our problem as perp a Franciscan. Now my son is dead 
The day Pennsylvania passed a law that worked against most victims of pedophile priests in the state including Arthur Baselice III, he left the house for an NA meeting. Next morning police found him dead in a drug house in nearby Camden, New Jersey.  "When my son was an altar boy, (Fr. Charles) Newman gave him opiods so he’d go into a haze while the priest raped him, sodomized him," Arthur II said. "Then for about a decade, the priest gave the boy wads of cash.  My son became a hopeless drug addict, and now he is dead now, of an opiod overdose." 

From Upstate New York: First Posted at City of Angels October 26, 2008
30 more victims of 1 priest found when book published. Just the tip of the iceberg 
"I’ve sent the bishop eight survivors of Neary and each one said the bishop told them they were the only person that had come forward about Neary," said Charles Bailey. He is getting justice today for brutal sex crimes committed against him at age ten by Father Thomas Neary, by putting his story out in the public. His book In The Shadow Of The Cross gives graphic shocking disgusting PTSD-inducing detail of the serial felonies, and you cannot put it down. More alarming, Bailey went on a small book tour, in venue after venue, people came up after he spoke and said, "my brother was also raped by Neary," or my uncle, my husband, my dad. Dozens of people with the same horrid story  of the same…

From Orange County, CA: First Posted at City of Angels 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

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

From North Carolina and Georgia: First Posted at City of Angels February 8, 2009
Mom would drop us off with the priest for the weekend. He would get us drunk. He called it bug juice. Then he would start taking off his clothes
The affable priest convinced the mother of five it would be better to leave the children with him when she came to Ward, South Carolina, to visit her family, who were Methodists. The priest served a mix of Kool-Aid and alcohol he called “bug juice” and I know I’ve heard of that concoction before in other stories, maybe in New Orleans? Does anyone else remember?   “One thing my sisters and brother and I have all talked about is we know he had alcohol in there. We’d feel dizzy and kind of sick feeling, sick.” 

From Pennsylvania-Iowa: First Posted at City of Angels Wednesday, January 14, 2009 
This story makes me so angry it will take at least three posts to even begin to tell it. Here is part one of Peter Dunne, Flagrant Pedophile Priest 
Peter J. Dunne could be yet another "worst pedophile priest ever," as his series of crimes stretches one's already over expanded capacity to absorb. Here yet another predator maneuvers himself into the role of priest so he can use the sacraments and other resources of the Catholic Church to gain access to children.   In Philadelphia, Rev. Peter Dunne had several assignments that put him in the company of young boys.  Dunne ran the Boy Scouts, St. Francis vocational school for troubled boys, he taught in several parish schools, he counseled at summer camps, he had his own cabin in the woods where he took his victims. . . . .

From Santa Barbara, first published Monday, September 22, 2008
When 24 pedophile priests from one town rape 60 children, it is a Public Nuisance. SOL Breakthrough suit filed against Franciscans in Santa Barbara

{End of Story Samples}
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These online videos would include fascinating locations for B-Roll, Compelling interviews and OTFs.   The crimes took place on Catholic Church grounds in sacristies, confessionals, rectories, at campgrounds, on acreage still owned by Archdiocese corporations, there are documents that are yet to be discovered. 

The priests used Sacraments of the Church as well as lavish trips to get to children.  This was an epidemic of perversion and Today there are thousands of adult victims of pedophile priests all over the country stunned at the way the Church has managed news coverage of these crimes.  City of Angels Blog and your production company could end a great injustice by producing and web-casting this true crime video series.

Even though pedophilia can be found anywhere adults interact with children, what other organization than the Catholic Church is allowed to operate with no oversight or accountability in America while continuing to have trusted access to children?  What organization other than the Catholic Church would be allowed to handle serial sex crimes internally, with credibly accused perpetrators continuing to live in American communities, continuing to have access to children? 

Compare the coverage of Jerry Sanduski, one Pennsylvania perpetrator coach at one university, with coverage of Monsignor William Lynn’s trial, concerning the Philadelphia Archdiocese.  Both cases went through the courts at about the same time last month, but Sanduski’s charges dominated national news every day for months; the trial of Monsignor Lynn was a footnote, only making page one around the country on three occasions, when the monsignor indicted, convicted, and sentenced.  Yes, Sanduski’s crimes were horrendous, but they were nominal compared to the decades-long serial pedophilia that took place in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

The patterns of crime from Philadelphia are the same modus operandi as the pedophile priest crimes in every archdiocese in every city in the United States. 

This post today is a proposal to produce such a web series here at City of Angels Blog.

You can financially support this endeavor; in fact, this post of July 30, 2012, is a request for funds.  Click the PayPal links in the left hand column of this website to help keep City of Angels Blog in operation.   

Close to seven thousand Catholic priest perpetrators have been identified so far from the United States, with valid enough accusations for them to be included in the bishopaccountability database.  These priests preyed on families in parishes all over the country from at least 1940 to the present, and they left behind tens of thousands of crime victims, many of us damaged individuals.  

Many of us never made it to adulthood.  

The real felons, the bishops and other hierarchy who allowed serial sex crimes against children to take place in their parishes, still run archdioceses all over the world, and still hold influential positions all the way up to the Vatican.  They dictate public policy on sexual morality issues when they themselves are guilty of covering up one of the worst child molestation eras in history.  Only a handful of the perpetrator priests, and as of last month one monsignor from Philadelphia, have seen prison time.

But then God revealed to humans the Internet, so to speak. If there was ever a topic that needs the internet and webcast formats to get out its truth, it's the story of pedophile priest crimes in the Catholic Church. 

There are tens of thousands of victims of pedophile priests alive in the United States today, a few of us have experienced a modicum of justice in the form of cash, but settlements with the Catholic Church have been paid to only a fraction of the survivors.  A good 85 percent of us get no cash settlements because our cases are outside statutes of limitations, and the church only resolves cases when required to by civil law. 

Meantime, we watch mainstream media misreport the story, and wonder if the total extent of the crimes will ever really get told.  We watch corporate media print a few headlines, then go on acting as if nothing happened, quoting the Church as an authority on American sexual politics, in most cases printing and broadcasting whatever the Church wants released with no investigation.

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KAY EBELING, PRODUCER, 
of City of Angels Blog
Background

In January 2007, I began attending pretrial hearings in Los Angeles as some 700 child molestation lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church began their way through the Superior Court system.  I was a victim whose case took place in another state, and I went to the hearings at first to try to find other survivors. 

In L.A. Superior Court I found teams of corporate lawyers working for Cardinal Roger Mahony and the Los Angeles Archdiocese, performing astounding abuse of the justice system, abuse that continues today in new lawsuits.  The shenanigans in the Courtroom was going completely unreported. 

City of Angels Blog became the lone source of reporting on the L.A. Clergy Cases that settled in late 2007 with a $660 million payout to 510 victims, with dozens more cases resolved in the ensuing years. .

After the L.A. settlements, City of Angels Blog continued to investigate the cover-ups of pedophilia and other sex crimes in the Catholic Church around the country and later around the wordl. 

These are stories that have never been written before, about true crimes, where the perpetrators are dangerous and walking the streets of America today.  The subject of Catholic pedophile priests is not only often ignored by the mainstream media.  These criminals who enabled the sex crimes hold unparalleled influence in most American communities, so they're always able to prevent the story from even getting into the news. 

I’m part of a population of American crime victims that did not exist until the mid-1990s. 

We're adult victims of pedophile priests and there are tens of thousands of us still walking the planet looking for a way to find justice.  Posting our stories one after the other in video on the internet would bring about a kind of human justice not dependent on any promotion other than our desire to know and transmit the truth.

As I started to research our thousands of stories, I realized the criminal behavior of pedophile priests and the bishops who enabled their crimes was eerily similar in city after city.  Hierarchy figures in the Catholic church across the country have destroyed documents, obstructed justice, and lied under oath, to prevent the public from finding out the entire story.

There are enough stories about the epidemic of pedophilia in the Catholic priesthood and its effects on American society in city after city across the country to keep us in new material for the next thirty years.

I believe that once hundreds of these stories are written, other writers, researchers, and hopefully law enforcement, will be able to see patterns in the crimes and recognize where the real criminal activity took place, at a high level in the hierarchy of each individual local diocese, men who have as yet been untouchable by different institutions of justice.  These crimes call out for national level hearings, perhaps in the United States Senate.  But first the stories have to get past the roadblocks of the Catholic Church’s centuries of influence.

For the first time in human history we can prove that close to ten thousand  pedophile priests acted as if access to children for sex was an entitlement, and the commission of these crimes would be quietly protected by the monsignors and bishops. 

The rest of this story needs to be told.

-Kay Ebeling



Photo at left: John Wojnowski in his near fifteen-year-long demonstration in front of Vatican Embassy in Washington D.C.

Vatican Hague Crimes Filing Update, Spees talks to CofA Blog

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(Transcripts of interview below:)

Update on The Hague International Criminal Court filing September 2011 re Vatican Crimes Against Humanity, interviews took place July 28, 2012, in Chicago. First Pam Spees of Center for Constitutional Rights in NY, gives current status of case:


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 Here Spees gives background on the case:



Transcripts below.



Pam Spees heads the Center for Constitutional Rights in NYC.







Transcript:

TAPE ONE:

Q: You're Pam Spees from the- what is the name of the organization in New York.

A: The Center for Constitutional Rights.

Q: And tell us what the status is of the case that you filed in The Hague last year.

A: Well since we filed the larger submission in September along with twenty-two thousand pages of documentation, we have filed a supplemental communication to the prosecutor in April of this year. Which was intended to provide an update as things have come to light just since we filed in September. And that included the publication of an Amnesty International Report about the clergy sex abuse in Ireland, calling it torture and crimes against humanity. More evidence that had come to light around the notorious priest from Mexico, Father Marcel Maciel and to be able to show that Ratzinger played more of a role and actually protected him, that evidence had come to life. We, you know, notified the prosecutor that SNAP has received over five hundred contacts and communications from people in sixty-five different countries.

TAPE TWO:

Q: What is the status on that case? I understand when the old prosecutor stepped down, the new prosecutor threw some cases out, but your case did not get thrown out. Is that part of the good news today?

A: Well the- we did get a communication from the Office of the Prosecutor that they're still reviewing the communication and the evidence we submitted. And so, you know, we know it's still there and they're looking at it and taking it seriously and we feel hopeful.

Q: Have you had any communication with the new prosecutor? (NOTE: I was so distracted by trying to get rid of the glare on her glasses that I wasn’t listening the best, so sorry)

A: Well that letter we received was sent after the new prosecutor took office.

 Q: And it said again what?

 A: That they are reviewing the evidence, and continuing to analyze the legal framework and the whether the Court has jurisdiction and this is something that could take a while. But we're hopeful.

 Q: Well they're vacuuming now so-

(NOTE: Every video I tried to do in that Hilton Rosemont Hotel lobby was interrupted by a vacuum cleaner that would start up as I was trying to work….)
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Thursday, July 26, 2012

From 2009, notes found in a file

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Three times it’s happened now since I’ve been doing stories for City of Angels.  This image pops into my head that is so evil and obtrusive - the image usually comes when I'm talking to one of the former altar boys, or guys who were in early adolescence when the priests found a way to get to them. 

Pant pant pant, the guy is breathing hard and eyes, like a maniac.  Rolling eyes, with a jeer in them that says pure evil.  Then just off screen in my head is the rest of the body and it’s bouncing bouncing bouncing, obviously the guy is humping and getting lots of sexual pleasure from it.  What adds to the madness of the whole image is that he is wearing a priest collar, in fact as I describe it now, I see one of those rimmed black hats the priests wear in Europe. 

The image intrudes, not surprisingly, when these men are describing the actual sex act that took place.  Usually in the interview, we've been talking about how the priest groomed the young boy, and so often it’s the same - Joy Juice of one kind or another, alcohol sometimes with something in it, then the boy is wheezy maybe passes out then wakes up, suddenly realizes, “Father Horney is banging me.”


And into my head pops this panting panting clergy collared creature, his face twisting with extreme pleasure and extreme evil combined.  Panting over the tiny undefended child’s body.  Inevitably if this image continues in my head it will bring in scents - that salty sweet smell of semen and sweat.  It will include sounds, for me it’s wind in the trees.  But what makes me stop, bring everything to an immediate halt, is that panting panting panting combined with that corrugated mixed up face.

Guys who I’ve interviewed may have even noticed.  Usually before I know it I’ve taken the interview to a totally different topic.  It happened when I was interviewing Michael Baumann a few months ago.  He said, “It was like a monkey on my back,” when he was describing the memory of what Fr. Robert Gibson of Scranton did to him as a young teenager.  Michael was faltering, just about to get into deeper description, in fact he was READY to go into deeper description and probably needed to describe it for his own healing.  He repeated, “It was like a monkey on my back-“


In a split second I chimed in “Oh you know what I’m right in the middle of reading that book right now, isn’t that an amazing coincidence?”


Michael went, “Uh, huh?”

And babble away I did, that book The Man with the Golden Arm, I'm reading it right now, don't you know about it, Frank Sinatra was in the movie, he played this junkie, well he’s a returning World War two vet who got addicted to heroin in the hospital when he was endured, and in the movie, he’s trying to kick heroin walking around the city  - it’s Chicago, I think it’s Chicago - but he is walking around saying, “I got a monkey on my back, monkey on my back.”  That's the first time the saying came up, or maybe even sooner and Algren just used the expression and maybe it’s not in the book just in the movie but I'm pretty sure that's where that expression comes from.


And by now the mood is broken, there’s no way Michael is going to continue into that dark place he was about to enter, as now we're talking about the Nelson Algren revival going on in Chicago…

A while back I tried to get therapy, because I realized, while I'm doing City of Angels, some of the stories I hear are going to make me go insane if I don't have therapy.  But then I tried it, and realized the therapist was not in any better shape than I was, and it just felt awkward sitting in a waiting room then sitting in a room with a person and talking, I mean what is that going to do to solve the myriad problems I'm facing.  It seems silly to pay all this money for therapy when what I need is new teeth…

Anyway.  I don't go to therapy anymore.  I'm still writing City of Angels stories,

So better write the insane stuff over here in City of Angels 2, knowing someone will read it.


Somehow journaling works better as therapy if someone reads it.  If you just keep writing and writing to yourself, the message doesn't go anywhere.

The funny thing is, I started City of Angels blog originally because I wanted to do something about the isolation.  See, when you tell someone you're a priest rape survivor and it’s kind of taken up 90 percent of your life, they don't really want to spend time with you. I’ve lost so many friends since I started writing this blog.  Well, I can pretend the reason I lost the friends was the blog, even though I know it’s really something inherently wrong inside of me.

I’ve always felt that way, something inside wrong.

And I see it reflected in people. 

A kind of nausea, revulsion, when they look at me. 

I think I wear my damages out where everyone can see them.  I don't have the right kind of mirror to tell me where they are so I can apply some kind of concealer. 

It happens all the time though, people meet me, they look at me for the first time, and a kind of revulsion washes over their bodies, flashes through their eyes.  In polite company it will only last an instant, and the person recovers and smiles and acts polite, but still you sense they are looking for the quickest way to make an exit. 

What's really upsetting is when I found out the cause of the disgustingness, it did not make it go away or even get any better.  The damage is so deep inside, it’s just part of who I am.  That's why I really wish I could have gotten a settlement, as I’d like to just become a hermit, live somewhere that I never had to leave the premises, have things delivered, walk just a few feet for laundry, have enough yard space I don't need to go onto city sidewalks ever again. . .


Because I'm tired of seeing that reaction in people, and now that I know it’s never going to go away, I just want to find a way to avoid it. 

Funny thing is I’ve seen that same kind of damage in the few survivors I’ve met.  Truth is I haven’t really met that many survivors.  I started the blog out of frustration that SNAP wouldn't start an L.A. meeting, and wouldn't let me start one.  So I figured, I’ll meet people through City of Angels blog, there have got to be some other people damaged like me in Hollywood.  I mean, I ended up living in West Hollywood in the 1980s just because it was the only place a person of my sexual proclivities could be accepted.  When I brought a football team home for the night, my neighbors did not get outraged, they just got jealous.


Drip Drip, something about these memories involves dripping, leaking.  Body fluids exiting your orifices after a night or orgiastic sex, the smell of it in the rugs and couches. 

Thing that's not funny is writing the blog did nothing at all for my isolation.  I still have no one to call, no one comes by to pick me up and take me places.  I can’t understand how there could have been 500 plaintiffs in L.A. and not one person shows up when SNAP does hold an event downtown.  The three or four people you see all the time at local SNAP events have all traveled in from far flung  suburbs,  other counties, even other states.

Where did all the L.A. plaintiffs go?  Plus now and then I’ll read about a settlement in another city and it says so and so from Los Angeles, and I think where the hell are they? 

I thought there was supposed to be a community of survivors, I counted on there being a community to help me get through this.  After three years writing City of Angels, I still don't know how to get in touch with one other survivor in Los Angeles.  A couple breezed through my life for a day or two, a week or two, then disappeared.  Left no forwarding phone number… the illusive world of lost cell phones and people moving away…

If I got a settlement, first thing I’d do is move away too.  Some hermit place.

But I didn't.  So I'm still here.  And I don't know where everybody else went.  I spent those two years homeless, 2003 to 2005, and at the beginning of that period, there were SNAP meetings in L.A. where I understand hundreds of people came.  I didn't go to those meetings, because they were announced as being about the lawsuits, and I wasn’t part of the L.A. lawsuits.

Then we became homeless for two years and lived in utter chaos, forget lost cell phones, try lost roof over your head…

Anyway.  We get back in an apartment, I connect again with SNAP, and there’s one sleepy meeting out in the hills of Glendale that it takes me three hours to get to, including a hike or two between transits.  And then I get there and there are three people, two of them aren’t even survivors, but I think may be spies from the church…


Okay.  So I see now that probably the reason there is no SNAP meeting in L.A. is I am probably the only person here who wants one.  And since I'm doing City of Angels blog, I'm not the right person to run a meeting, and who would come?  I don't know where anybody is to find them…

So I start City of Angels thinking, I’ll meet other survivors in L.A. that way, and ???   I’ve met dozens of people, who I can call on the phone almost any time and they're there to talk, but they're in the Midwest and Boston and New Mexico, no one is in L.A.? 

Where did everybody go? 

I have this part of me that wants to put up a post and say, “I'm done.”  Because I'm not really getting out of it what I wanted.  But I'm getting something else.  There are all those people in other places writing to me, there’s the occasional PayPal click that gets me through a crisis and all of a sudden I'm able to pay pay the cable bill. 

I wish I was more exploitive.  I mean, all the people who’ve clicked my PayPal, I have their addresses and phone numbers, as usually that information comes to me with the Notice of Payment Received (God I love seeing those in my email).  If I were a wily person, I’d gather those names and addresses and have a regular mail out, fund raising campaign. 

If I were wily.  But I don't like fund raising.

So I have to leave it all in the hands of the Tao, the perfect Tao that I know is in the middle of all the chaos.  Again, be grateful I'm not in Iran or Darfur, if there are human beings in anguish, it’s not the ones in the slums of L.A. as bad as they are. 


I didn't get what I wanted out of the blog, but to drop it now would be suicidal, as it is giving me a launching pad, a platform from which to begin something better than City of Angels 5.  Maybe it will happen at City of Angels 6.   

See how well I changed the subject?

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Sleep Disrupted to post these comments at Philly Abuse Trial Blog

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Here is a dialogue from this post at Philadelphia Abuse Trial Blog last night (after a guy sat in front of me where I pecked at my laptop and said, "You've got to not give a f--- what people think of you."  I said, "You are right," hit the send button, and began this stream):  
You know what, Ralph, I have so much respect for you.

But:

After all that's been said in comments here, I'm surprised you would still resort to a press release from SNAP to get the survivors' side of a story. That's what mainstream reporters do, in the charade that is today's news coverage. Instead of going to a nonprofit spokesperson, why not take the time to find individual victims who have something to say. Most of us never get a voice. No matter how much SNAP claims to "give voice to victims," you never hear from anyone except the two or three people from SNAP in the news.

I'm just disappointed, Ralph, that you don't realize how much the corporate control of information, which you claim to be defying, is connected to nonprofits that claim to speak for a group of persons, the way SNAP claims to speak for pedophile priest survivors.

Someone is approving those press statements before they get released. SNAP press statements are edited and cleaned for public consumption... by someone.

I'm not saying call on me. I don't claim to speak for anyone.

But, Ralph, it's just too easy and, I hate to say it, kinda lazy, to go to SNAP and copy and paste one of their press statements to get the survivors' side of a story. SNAP has been using the same adjectives for years over and over, and a lot of us do not feel SNAP speaks for us.

I'm surprised you would not realize that, Ralph, since you are part of the non-corporate media world. SNAP is part of the problem, and they do not move the story forward with their statements. Most of the time their press releases are a collection of subjective adjectives that really don't say very much. SNAP rarely reflects the rage and frustration and sense of "justice interruptus" of the victims, especially those of us who have been systematically ejected from SNAP for being too vocal.

Please do a little more footwork, Ralph, and find someone who is not getting their statements cleared and edited for safety in advance when you want to get the survivors' side of a story.

Thanks
-Kay Ebeling

( http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com )

Ditto!
                                        https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWYozUDhm-b5YnjMj0zZvKxMbDG2Y_i0sitlvAQPbTrnKNK8BgTErSPiVYqzzoGCZVagkH-6cjIx6zbBbTnzedpDGQBmUBID9lpSTXq5EC2_vKSyG6nF6XtJIB_Dt05Y8FalP9o6jtYkLk/s45/kay%25252Bfacebook%25252Bpic.jpg
"Callous and reckless" ad nauseum.

Someone decided about two years ago SNAP should keep using those two adjectives. Look it up. They've used those two words about a thousand times since 2010.

As a parishioner and school parent, I can say that the "rigid Safe Environmental program" WAS NOT instituted by Lynn, but by the Archdiocese. It was a mandate!
If he comes back, I am out of the parish and school! And I know that I'm not the only one. Unfortunately, his main supporters are the bigwigs/money people of the parish & school and no one wants to speak up for fear of a backlash -- especially if it could be directed at our children.
http://img2.blogblog.com/img/b36-rounded.png
Thomasina, I agree with you about "Safe Environmnent." It was and is a mandate of the AOP. I'm a member of another church in Chester County, and a Volunteer, so I have to keep up to date on all my clearances and education.

Msgr. Lynn will never be coming back to St. Joe's. The man, the priest, has lost everything. Do you understand what the loss of one's reputation and ability to continue in their chosen profession does to a person? He is serving his sentence now, has been serving it since he was on trial, and will serve it for the rest of his life.

Maybe you should leave your Parish and your School for other reasons, but not for the reason that, Oh my God!, Monsignor Lynn might come back! Run for the hills!!! Let's be serious now, he's not a threat to you or your children.

Who will speak for the children and the direct link to health failures ,premature death and suicides ,murder from abuse by the clergy.
catholic cemeteries?,catholic hospitals?

Archie writes re Monsignor Lynn:

"The man, the priest, has lost everything. Do you understand what the loss of one's reputation and ability to continue in their chosen profession does to a person?"

Get real.

Lynn will never have to worry where his rent or food will come from, he will probably always have servants and drivers, access to cars, and luxurious vacations, plus a stipend that is higher than most people's Social Security check, and he won't have any real living expenses. He will never have to get up and commute and go to a real job where layoffs and outsourcing could make him homeless.

Priests are priests for life and even the ones known to have committed horrendous crimes live out their lives in luxury.

Don't kid yourself. The priests who serve a little time do not suffer. They are coddled 'til they die, and the Monsignor, now that he's taken the bullet for the cardinal, may kick back in a cell for a year, but he won't suffer.

Not anything like the victims suffer our whole lives.

Kay, I am not minimizing the victims and the horrors they have suffered! I pray for the victims every day, and am thankful that I, and my two brothers and sister are not among them!

I met Msgr. Lynn just once, but one of my best friends is best friends with him. And, he was a HUGE help to her family when her brother was sick, and eventally died. You never forget kindnesses to your family, and Msgr. Lynn was the King of Kindness to this particular family.

Death is so painful, sad, hard on everyone. Monsignor Lynn was an Angel. That particular family will always be grateful and never forget his tireless efforts, and friendship and love and tenderness.

I just popped awake knowing I have to write this:

That statement above from SNAP is exactly the same as every statement they've made in every city about every priest for at least the last five years, almost to the word.

They say the priest is "reckless and callous" and that (INSERT CLERGYMAN NAME HERE) compromised the safety of children.

That's it, city after city, the story breaks, the reporter goes to SNAP and SNAP makes that same comment, the reporter dutifully copies it down and publishes it and ... that's the news, folks, and now let's see what the Kardashians have been up to.

I would never deign to comment on the cases in Philadelphia, I've never been to Philadelphia, and I'll bet Barbara Dorris, SNAP spokeswoman, never has either, but she will release that same generic statement about Philadelphia or Des Moines or Boulder or wherever, and reporters- even you, Ralph, dammit- will dutifully write down what she says and publish it as the survivors' point of view.

And the true and total story NEVER GETS TOLD!!!!!

Ralph, go to the plaintiff attorneys, get the names of victims in Philadelphia, interview them. No, they won't be picture perfect on camera, we are not corporate spokesmodels.

The real victims swear, lose our tempers, maybe even foam a little at the mouth. I've interviewed maybe a hundred victims over the past five years, and we are some of the craziest, most dysfunctional, messed up in weird ways persons you'd ever imagine to find on the planet.

That's the story. Not Barbara Blaine looking perfect on camera. The damaged dysfunctional victims whose quotes you will have to bleep out for all the raging expletives that explode out of us, that's the story. The permanent damage that cut to us down to our very nervous systems so we twitch, and make strange noises, and erupt like we have Turret's Syndrome.

That is the story. Not the corporate spokespersons with sanitized statements that can be applied to any city in the country and never really say a thing.

PLEASE stop quoting SNAP's press releases and get out there and find the real story.

If anyone can do it, it's you, Ralph, and I have a feeling I'm not the only person who wants to say this to you.

Kay popped awake, Continued:

Weird CNS diseases that perplex our doctors. Strange boils and hives, protrusions on our bodies that make us look... strange. Scars and permanent damage from self-mutilation and botched suicide attempts. Extreme obesity or extreme skinniness from a life of eating disorders. The 65 year old man who blurts out he's had bleeding hemorrhoids since age five when the priest sodomized him.

Those are the stories that have never been published.

Wake up, Ralph, wake up.

Goodnight.

Mark Bukowski has a police record? That's nothing compared to the levels of dysfunction you find all over the country when you track down the pedophile priest victims.

Our screwed up lives are the main part of the story that has not yet been told. Yes, pedophile priest victims do not make good witnesses in the courtroom. Because of the deep visceral permanent unprecedented damages we live with.

That's the story!!!!!

Please write it. I need to be able to sleep.

One quick edit:

"That's the story. Not Barbara Blaine looking perfect on camera as she says, 'Kids need to be safe.'"


Well, we're really letting it rip today, aren't we? Listen, I didn't get the prosecution's filings until a little while ago (I will put them up this weekend) so I couldn't quote all those defense documents and not look for something to shall we say balance it. But we have a lot more to cover, so stay tuned.






It was easy, I admit it, reaching for that SNAP bottle that's always on the shelf, and drinking an all-too familiar concoction. I blame it on the prosecutors, who were no-doubt hand-delivering their latest filings to the Philadelphia Inquirer, and couldn't get to me in time for deadline. But we will regroup!


******************


Link to story from yesterday where these comments ran:  http://www.priestabusetrial.com/2012/07/defense-team-says-monsignor-poses-no.html 

******************

That's not the first time I got brave and posted what I feel after convincing myself I had to stop caring what people think about me:  

On July these comments came out of me at this post at Philadelphia Abuse Trial Blog: 

Criticism of SNAP by survivors is not a case of hating the advocates at all. It's questioning the legitimacy of the professional advocates, questioning who is really behind them, and what is their real agenda.

Why do the same two people always show up, always have all the travel budget they need to appear and make a statement wherever this story is breaking, and the statement is then always published as "speaking for victims"?

Look at how widespread these crimes are and how many victims there are. Then look at the size and effectiveness of the only advocacy group that has survived.

Something does not add up. Where did the rest of the activists go? A lot of us got silenced, not by the church, but by SNAP itself.

It's very hard to explain this to reporters and friends of the movement, as they always see it as some kind of infighting or jealousy. That's not it. Many of us have been trying for years to get someone to realize:

Something stinks here.

Otherwise there would be much more activism and much more being accomplished for and by the thousands of victims of pedophile priests. Instead we get the same 2-3 people making the same press statement over and over again.

It does not add up. Something is not right here.

My theory: Only one group knew in 1985 that there were about a hundred thousand victims, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and they knew something had to be created to control the victims and manage the outflow of information about the crimes. So they created something similar to "sweetheart unions" during the early 20th Century labor movement, groups that appeared to be advocating for the workers but were really working for the owners. They always showed up, always looked just right, and always stomped down the genuine demonstrators while appearing to be part of them.

So by the mid-1990s Linkup got wiped out and SNAP rose out of the ruins.

Something is not right here. Too many really active people got shot down and shut up when they were in the middle of creating something on their own after giving up on SNAP. Like me.

The victims of pedophile priests do not have genuine representation, there is no real network, and except for a few exceptions on a local level, there is no advocating organization.

Those of us who have seen what's going on from the inside Really Wish that some reporter with an investigative nose (like Ralph Cipriano?) would start looking into what some of us see as a counter-intelligence group that says it's one thing but is really another and the end result has been a nullification, so to speak, of any genuine victim advocacy.

Of course individuals like SarahTX and Judy Jones are sincere. The stink comes from the very top. Just ask one question. Who is the "we" referred to in Barbara Blaine's press statement above? When has SNAP ever done any kind of survey or asked the thousands of survivors what we want an advocacy group to do?

Never.

They operate in a cocoon out of reach or communication with the victims. They seem to have a preconceived agenda and be taking orders from someone somewhere. It's a very eerie experience for those of us who have had it, and we keep wondering when, oh when, will some reporter dive into this yet untold part of the clergy sex crime cover-up story.

I know, from my own experience, what happened to me while I was doing City of Angles blog. I wasn't harassed or stifled by the church, per se, I was silenced by SNAP.

What appears in SNAP press releases is not the same as what the victims at the grass roots level experience.

Sorry to have to write this again. I wish the story had not gone this way. I've written my whole experience with SNAP as best as I could describe it at City of Angels 2.
Suffice it to say, pedophile priest victims do not really have an advocacy group at all. We have a hologram that is run by someone, but not by the survivors.

Wonder who is really in charge ...
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City of Angels 2 is at http://cityofangels2.blogspot.com and it all really happened.


Kay that was the truth thanks. Thanks.

Kay, I've read through many of your blogs in the past and, in fact, I tried hard to understand what the claims are against SNAP. I think I was actually on your side in that for awhile and I became disenchanted with SNAP because of things you said. But upon reflection, it seemed like it was really just different viewpoints as to how to go about getting things done. Some personality types are better with group-think and some are better with individual action.

I think your City of Angels blogs are marvelous. I didn't see why City of Angels couldn't co-exist alongside SNAP's efforts and bishopaccountability's efforts and Catholics4Change's efforts, and One In Four in Ireland, etc. Did anyone really think that all victim/survivors' issues and hurts and endgoals could be lumped into one great big group where everyone gets represented exactly the same and every issue is equal?

I'm just trying to say that in this effort to stop this church abuse, the more the merrier. I have absolute respect for your investigative journalism and your City of Angels blog.
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It has nothing to do with personality types, Sarah.

Imagine what could have been accomplished if there had been a genuine network from the start. Over the last twenty years, there have been way too many survivors who tried to do things and were shut out.

As a result, no bishop has been prosecuted and most of the public still think there were only a handful of priests committing minor crimes.

Some of this marginalizing and stirring from within was being documented at the old SNAP message board around 2006. Then SNAP deactivated the board.

Consider the Hague hoopla last year. There was a group in Germany working in Spring of 2011 on contacting The Hague to prosecute the Pope. Then in the fall of 2011, SNAP did its own version of contacting The Hague prosecutors' office, and, well, what ever happened to that? Meanwhile the project in Germany got swallowed up in the SNAP media blitz.

Too many survivors got discouraged by SNAP's being unresponsive and noninclusive, and just quit. So those 2-3 persons who run SNAP guaranteed that the "movement" fizzled and was never more than the bare minimum it could be.

There are a few sturdy souls who were able to keep on going, like the SNAP group in Northern California, who, from what I've been told, keep going in spite of the national SNAP office.

A network is supposed to involve many, share resources, help people find each other... network. SNAP does the opposite, but the public only sees press releases and a website.

Think for a minute who the bad guys are here, before you think what I'm saying is not possible.
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At the same time they are silencing the more vocal survivors, they are releasing press statements that say, "We give voice to victims."

Who does that?

PS, Sarah, thank you for your compliments about the work I did at City of Angels Blog.

I needed a network and shared resources to continue to do it, and got the opposite. The support was never there.

Never.

They fly in wherever the story is breaking, take a position front and center for media and new survivors coming forward, then fly out taking all the contact information with them, leaving whoever originally broke the story at a local level in the dark, out of the loop.

The end result is damage control and as little of each story gets out as possible.

Who would do that?

Sometimes the readers write a better blog than the writer.

Entire July 5 post where these comments appeared is is here:  http://www.priestabusetrial.com/2012/07/judge-denies-house-arrest-for-monsignor.html 

Phew.