*****
Rough transcripts of victim impact statements from Matt Severson, Mary Grant, Vicki Martin, Unnamed Child, Virginia Zamora, Frank Zamora, and James Brown who spoke to the ex-Father Mike at his sentencing hearing in Los Angeles Monday. The ex-priest preyed on at least 15 parishes between Southern California and Arizona in the eighties and nineties, continuing to create victims long after he’d admitted to and been treated for child molestation. -- ke
MATT SEVERSON: “I’d be getting ready to say 10 AM Mass and there’d be a 20 dollar bill on the pillow next to me”
In 1976 Michael Stephen Baker entered my life. I was nine years old. He paid a lot of attention to me and the other young boys, tickling us. His tickling felt different to me, he’d go close to the groin, but I didn't say anything.
Father Mike became more and more a part of our lives. He became close to my parents, and offered to baby sit --
I remember the first time, he took off my pajamas during the night, and he’d have his mouth close to my hear and whisper oh Matt how I love you. The touching escalated to masturbation and oral sex.
When I questioned him about it, he rationalized it as just his being too touchy feely and “that’s just the way I express my feelings.”
He turned it around to where it was me. I was too sensitive
My mother was in his grip and would listen to what he said about me wouldn't listen to what I said about him -- then he would tell her things and she in turn would rage at me.
On weekends I felt like a prostitute. I’d be getting ready to say 10 AM Mass and there’d be a 20 dollar bill on the pillow next to me.
My hair started falling out in clumps.
My mom’s closeness to Father Mike strained my parents. Soon Dad left and that only pulled mom and me tighter to Father Mike.
Just staying around the rectories on weekends after being molested, I was denied a normal adolescence. My grades suffered, I became depressed. My senior year in high school suicide became a viable option.
But at the end of my senior year, I started pulling away from Baker, and severely compromised my relationship with my mother -- she even resorted to violence to get me to spend time with him.
After high school I was able to distance myself from Baker and my family and “made a semblance of normal life” for myself hundreds of miles away
I was still under the impression it was all my fault. Father Mike was still sending me checks in the mail. It made me still feel complicit and guilty
All aspects of feelings about sex got messed up for me, in fact they still are. I went into drugs, drinking, increasingly anonymous and risky sexual behavior. I still have nightmares, it’s hard to express the destructive impact Baker has had on my life.
But I’m grateful that at least I am able to be here and so many others aren’t.
Baker is going to prison. It’s a symbolic victory for us. He’s only being arraigned on crimes against two victims, there are dozens of others like myself for which he’ll never be held accountable.
If a criminal case were pursued by all of us, he’d be in prison the rest of his life. But now as a 60 year old priest, going in for a few years will not be good. This is a day I’ll never forget.
MARY GRANT: 10 Years is Not Enough
I’m here to say a few words on behalf of survivors of Baker and part of a support group we all belong to. First thank you to the DA’s office for pursuing these charges.
The lives won’t be repaired, they won’t get their childhoods back.
Ten years is not enough.
Nevertheless every day he’s behind bars another day, he can’t hurt another child
Baker is not being sentenced for all his crimes, but a fraction of them. At this point with him being sentenced, the five and a half years these victims went through didn't have to happen. It didn't have to happen.
VICKI MARTIN: Baker should spend the rest of life in prison with Cardinal Mahony as his cellmate
I’m here to speak for Victim David B whose daughter went into labor this morning so he can’t be here.
Father Baker is a monster. He posed himself as a man of God and his intentions were evil. He robbed children of innocence -- in case of David D he wants the court to know this fact.
Baker forced him, in a motel room, sodomized him pushing his face into pillows to muffle David’s screams.
David wanted to scream at Baker here now in court.
People are told to forgive, but forgiveness a cheap grace when the person to be pardoned is not sorry.
He’s only sorry he got caught.
David B also cannot forgive Baker for starting David on a road of drugs, alcohol depression, PTSD, and an inability to obtain or keep employment.
I received calls from David in middle of the night, he’d call me with nightmares of Baker on top of him pushing his penis in his rectum.
Baker is a dangerous man to any civilized persons, a danger to children
Michael Baker should spend the rest of life in prison with Cardinal Mahony as his cellmate.
At least we know for a few years children will be safer as Baker will be in jail. I’ve spoken to so many of these victims. I have such contempt and hatred for this man. I don't believe God would even forgive this man.
I don't think anyone can understand the harm he’s done and the pain he’s caused.
A CHILD: We will never forgive you
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.
VIRGINIA ZAMORA: Look me straight in the face, don’t hide behind your attorney.
Mr. Baker, I have no words to call you a father or a priest. You took an oath, you knew right from wrong better than we did.
Look me straight in the face, don’t hide behind your attorney. It’s the same thing all over again.
You know who I am. I am your worst nightmare. I sentence you to live in prison. You know better than the rest of the people.
Do you remember me? Yes you do. I give you life. I do not want to be in your shoes or your attorneys’ shoes, because they helped you get the plea.
In my book you're guilty of all charges. If I did your crime I’d be in prison. You think because you wore a costume that you were immune, no. And that's all it is is a costume.
You made the children suffer, you took my life away.
You're not even worth the spit on the sidewalk and you think because you go in there and grin, 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.
FRANK ZAMORA: It’s better you put a milestone around your neck
I’m Dominic Zamora’s dad here to say a few words more. I just want to say. why did you ruin so many lives, so many marriages? You broke up and destroyed so many kids’ lives, 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 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.
You made my son lose his faith and as it says in the Bible, it’s better you put a milestone around your neck
JAMES BROWN: 20 years past and he finally started to talk about what happened
I’ve been a friend of Michael, a victim of Michael Baker, for 24 years. Mike and I met at La Mirada High School and Mike was real passionate about becoming a deputy sheriff. He even got me into the explorer department.
Mike would have made a great deputy and it’s ironic that the LA County Sheriff and DA’s office are the ones who put this man here today and now he’s going to go to prison.
I agree that Baker should spend more time in prison.
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.
Mike got into drugs, it affected his friendships, 20 years past, 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. The John Does that were involved, it took a lot of guts. I hope everybody affected by Baker can get peace and help.
You're going to have to meet your maker.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
(Transcripts of Victim Impact Statements from Dec. 3 sentencing hearing of Michael Stephen Baker will be here by noon PST today. == ke)
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Placa transcript: “Reporting laws don't apply to us"-Pedophile priest-lawyer re early strategies for pedophile priests, in1980s internal church video
*****
By Kay Ebeling
By 2002, there were enough credible child molest accusations against him for Monsignor Alan Placa to be stripped of his duties as a priest, but not defrocked. So Rudy Giuliani gave his lifelong pal Placa a job at his consulting firm. A few years earlier Placa had handled the legal ministrations for Giuliani to annul his 12-year marriage.
In a video that recently came in the mail, Monsignor Alan J. Placa tells “church leaders” in the early 1980s about new legal strategies for the church when priests are accused of sex crimes.
As it turns out, at the same time Placa was creating these legal strategies as counsel to the House of Affirmation, he was committing sex crimes against children himself.
Here are some select quotes from the video. The entire transcript is copy and pasted at the end of this post.
PLACA : I’m Father Alan Placa, a priest of the diocese of Rockville Center in New York and also an attorney admitted into practice in New York. The presentation that we're going to offer you is a very brief summary of some of the problems that are involved in the issue of child sexual abuse.
We may have a unique opportunity to observe children who have been hurt. Children who are suffering, children who need the ministry of the church.. . .
We're concerned that we as a ministerial community be ready to observe the harm that has been done outside of our place of work and be able to offer to those who have been harmed the opportunity to be healed.
In the second place we are also realistically aware that some of our own ministerial persons have sometimes been involved in instances of child sexual abuse.
////
My focus will be on the social policy and the legal issues but I’m an attorney in the state of New York, and I am not offering you specific legal advice obviously.
/ / /
The states have almost always found the value of child protection superior to the other values that they try to protect which affects our ministry very strongly.
(concern about) the balance that legislatures have tried to create between the value of protecting children and the value of confidentiality.
We know that there are confidential relationships protected by law in most of the states of our country between priest and penitent, between member of the clergy or ministerial person and a congregant. The law protects those relationships and says that whatever is communicated within the confines of that professional relationship may never be revealed.
Our society believes strongly that that kind of confidentiality encourages people in trouble to speak openly and freely to physicians and psychiatrists, and psychologists, and clergymen, and attorneys.
/ / /
Let me be concrete. Before the child abuse legislation that began to be passed in the last 12 years came into effect. The law of this country protected that communication and the helping person certainly was not required by law to report it. In fact it was considered unethical to make such a report.
In the last dozen years that situation has changed radically and in most of our states now there are laws called Child Abuse Reporting laws that require certain professionals to make reports
/ / /
It’s important to note that in the vast majority of our states that requirement to report does not apply to members of the clergy. In the Roman Catholic Church that would mean certainly and obviously priests and bishops but it also would include religious men and religious women when they receive this information in the course of their spiritual and ecclesiastical ministry.
These reporting laws do not apply to us in those situations.
(HE DESCRIBES WITH SOME DISDAIN THE NEWLY FORMED CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES OFFICES IN MOST STATES, THEN)
I’d like to speak more concretely about legal process and the kind of legal process that follows from a child protective services report.
That investigation itself is a difficult and damaging process in many ways, because typically if a child protective services investigation were conducted against one of us for example as a parish priest, regardless of whether the charge were true or not, those charged with making the investigation would be required by law to come into my community and begin interviewing children who I might have had contact with, and raise the question with them with their families about whether or not anything untoward had happened, whether or not I had been guilty of any kind of untoward act.
HE APPEARS HERE TO BE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PERPETRATOR THAN THE VICTIM AND WHOOOOOAAA
HE CHANGED OVER TO FIRST PERSON AT THE END OF THE QUOTE: “WHETHER OR NOT I HAD BEEN GUILTY OF ANY KIND OF UNTOWARD ACT.” MORE RAGGING ON CPS AS HE CONTINUES BELOW:
So the very first step in the legal process is going to be a CPS or child protective services investigation. And I want to emphasize that this is the sort of investigation that's going to be conducted not by attorneys, not by police personnel, not by anyone trained in the legal area or in the area of the kind of civil rights and personal rights that we are accustomed to understanding in our country.
It’s going to be conducted by sincere and well trained social services personnel, whose function and purpose is not to protect those who are being investigated but to look to the welfare of the person alleged to have been a victim.
PLACA DOES MANAGE HERE TO SAY THEY'RE “SINCERE AND WELL TRAINED” BUT HE SAYS IT WITH A SNEER.
/ / /
(with) The criminal process that's involved in accusations of child abuse. . .the individual who is charged with that act may have to serve as much as 20 years in prison
/ / /
(In a civil charge it must be proved that) negligently they permitted a particular individual to operate in the presence of children, which individual then caused harm by physically or sexually abusing a child.
(Since at the time of this video presentation there was no sex accusation insurance, Placa says:)
I believe it is important that we as the leaders of church groupings formulate clear policies for reporting incidents of child abuse by those who are required to report.
We must formulate clear policies for them to comply with the laws that require that they report incidents of child abuse
(NOTE: THOSE WHO HAVE TO REPORT “THEM” “THEY” -- HE’S CONTINUING WITH THE IDEA THAT THIS WHOLE REPORTING NONSENSE DOES NOT APPLY TO CLERGY. )
(THEN FINALLY CLOSE TO THE END HE GIVES THE CLINCHER: )
You (need to) be completely informed on the clinical aspects of this problem and also on the legal aspects,
On the liabilities that you face as a leader,
and on the techniques available to you and your attorneys
to try to avoid embarrassment to the church.
Here is the entire transcript of Placa’s remarks:
FOR-BISHOPACCOUNTABILITY
HOUSE OF AFFIRMATION DVD
“A PASTORAL APPROACH TO THE ISSUE OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE”
TRANSCRIBED BY KE (SEPTEMBER 30, 2007)
PLACA : I’m Father Alan Placa, a priest of the diocese of Rockville Center in New York and also an attorney admitted into practice in New York. The presentation that we're going to offer you is a very brief summary of some of the problems that are involved in the issue of child sexual abuse.
CHYRON: Rev. Alan J. Place, Legal Consultant to the Diocese of Rockville Centre
PLACA : Which is an issue that's of great importance throughout our entire country. Because of the church’s work of trying to administer to the needs of people all over our country and each of our dioceses as we believe that it is an issue that the church must attend to. Because the church has responsibilities in this area.
We hope that the presentation that I and [SOUNDS LIKE] Brother Sean Sammon who is a clinical psychologist will be offering you will be a presentation that focuses on this issue from two points of view.
In the first place we're very concerned about the church’s duty and responsibility to minister to children who may be the victims of child abuse, physical and sexual and emotional abuse, in their own homes or in other places outside of the church’s control. These are children who may come to us in our Catholic schools, in our religious education programs, in the social and cultural programs that we offer that affect so many young people’s lives.
We may have a unique opportunity through our teachers, through our religious men and women, through the priests of our parishes, to observe children who have been hurt. Children who are suffering, children who need the ministry of the church and the ministry of other organizations within our society.
In the first place then we're concerned that we as a ministerial community be ready to observe the harm that has been done outside of our place of work, and be able to offer to those who have been harmed the opportunity to be healed.
In the second place we are also realistically aware that some of those who work for the church, some of our own ministerial persons and some of our employees have sometimes been involved in instances of child sexual abuse and child physical abuse. We want to try to help you to understand who these abusers are, who their victims are, and what our society judges to be the core and the root of this problem. How our society through its legal system tries to address this problem.
My focus will be on the social policy and the legal issues that are involved in this problem of child sexual abuse. The social policy of most of the states of our union, and I must emphasize that I speak about most of the states. I’m an attorney in the state of New York, and I am not offering you specific legal advice obviously. I’m only trying to offer you general observations that apply in the vast majority of the 50 states of our union.
In most states the social policy of American government has been to place a very high value on the protection of children. To place a very high value on the prevention of acts of abuse of children. Emotional and physical abuse and sexual abuse of children. That social policy is such a serious one in our states that when the legislatures of the states have balanced the value of the protection of children against other important and prime values in our society the states have almost always found the value of child protection superior to the other values that they try to protect which affects our ministry very strongly
as a church is the balance that legislatures have tried to create between the value of protecting children and the value of confidentiality.
We know that there are confidential relationships protected by law in most of the states of our country, the physician patient relationship, the relationship between lawyer and client, the relationship between priest and penitent, between member of the clergy or ministerial person and a congregant. We know that the law protects those relationships and says that whatever is communicated within the confines of that professional relationship may never be revealed. That's a very high value in our society. Our society believes strongly that that kind of confidentiality encourages people in trouble to speak openly and freely to physicians and psychiatrists, and psychologists, and clergymen, and attorneys.
To tell them the whole truth of their trouble, so that their troubles may be healed, the whole truth of their physical illness so that they may be healed of their physical illness, and so that society may be protected from whatever physical ailment may be affecting that individual. Society places a high value on those confidential relationships.
A KIND OF MESMERIZING MISSTATEMENT THAT BLATANTLY CONTRADICTS ITSELF.
BECAUSE SOCIETY NEEDS TO BE PROTECTED BY THAT PERSON’S AILMENT IS THE VERY REASON THAT SPECIAL CONFIDENTIAL RELATIONSHIP NO LONGER EXISTS IN MANY STATES.
Society places such a very high value on the protection of children that society through the 50 states is generally willing to suppress the protection of confidentiality for many professional relationships in order to protect children.
Let me be concrete. Before the child abuse legislation that began to be passed in the last 12 years came into effect, if a child reported to a physician or to a psychiatrist that he or she had been abused physically or emotionally or sexually or if an adult reported to one of these helping persons that he had been guilty of abusing children, the law of this country protected that communication and the helping person certainly was not required by law to report it. In fact it was considered unethical to make such a report.
In the last dozen years that situation has changed radically and in most of our states now there are laws called Child Abuse Reporting laws that require certain professionals to make reports whenever they have reason to believe that a child has been abused -- physically, emotionally, or sexually. It’s important to note that in the vast majority of our states that requirement to report does not apply to members of the clergy. In the Roman Catholic Church that would mean certainly and obviously priests and bishops but it also would include religious men and religious women who are not members of what we define canonically as the clergy, when they receive this information in the course of their spiritual and ecclesiastical ministry.
These reporting laws do not apply to us in those situations.
They do apply however to physicians and nurses and psychiatrists and psychologists who they employ, they apply to our school principals and our school personnel and our schoolteachers, there are many people in our employ who are required by law to make reports when they receive information through observation or through conversation that seems to suggest that a child has been abused.
So the first point I’d like to make is that the social policy of this country through the legislatures, expressed through the legislatures of the various states, is so strongly in favor of the protection of children that it even invades a certain range of traditionally protected confidential relationships in order to get the information into the hands of public authority.
BUT NOT WHEN IT APPLIES TO PRIESTS
The public authority that is generally responsible for seeing to it that something is done about reports of child sexual abuse is an authority that is called by various names in various states, but for the most part, the name that's used to describe these agencies is Child Protective Services.
[WRITES ON CHALKBOARD]
Or CPS. Child Protective Services in the state of New York, the parallel organizations in the states of California or Massachusetts or Pennsylvania, certainly all of the major states, are organizations staffed by social work personnel, whose function it is under law to investigate all charges of child abuse -- physical, emotional, or sexual. And the investigations they conduct are conducted for the sake of discovering whether or not some act has been committed that did harm a child.
EXPLAINS WHAT CPS IS AS IT WAS APPARENTLY NEW AT THE TIME OF THIS TAPE
Based on the report of the CPS investigation other legal processes may follow and I’d like to move to the second area of concern that I want to share with you, the first was this social policy area. I’d like to speak now a little more concretely about legal process and the kind of legal process that follows from a child protective services report.
If one of our teachers makes an observation that a child in his or her classroom seems to have been the victim of child abuse, or if someone a parent or a neighbor makes an observation that suggests that a child has been abused by one of our employees or some personnel of the church, and makes a child protective services report, the very first thing that will take place is a child protective service or CPS investigation.
That investigation itself is a difficult and damaging process in many ways, because typically if a child protective services investigation were conducted against one of us for example as a parish priest, regardless of whether the charge were true or not, those charged with making the investigation would be required by law to come into my community and begin interviewing children who I might have had contact with, and raise the question with them with their families about whether or not anything untoward had happened, whether or not I had been guilty of any kind of untoward act.
HE APPEARS HERE TO BE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PERPETRATOR THAN THE VICTIM AND WHOOOOOAAA
HE CHANGED OVER TO FIRST PERSON AT THE END OF THE QUOTE: “WHETHER OR NOT I HAD BEEN GUILTY OF ANY KIND OF UNTOWARD ACT.” MORE RAGGING ON CPS AS HE CONTINUES BELOW:
So the very first step in the legal process is going to be a CPS or child protective services investigation. And I want to emphasize that this is the sort of investigation that's going to be conducted not by attorneys, not by police personnel, not by anyone trained in the legal area or in the area of the kind of civil rights and personal rights that we are accustomed to understanding in our country.
It’s going to be conducted by sincere and well trained social services personnel, whose function and purpose is not to protect those who are being investigated but to look to the welfare of the person alleged to have been a victim.
HE DOES MANAGE TO SAY THEY'RE “SINCERE AND WELL TRAINED” BUT IT’S WITH A SNEER.
This is a concrete expression of a social policy that favors the protection of children.
Once this sort of investigation starts, the legal process branches into two areas. In the first place there will be criminal process possible. If the CPS investigation reveals that the charge that was made is a founded charge, that there’s reason to believe it may be true, CPS will be required in some cases to make a report to the local prosecuting authority, the local district attorney, who will then investigate the possibility of bringing criminal process charges against the man or woman who has been accused of the act of child abuse.
The other branch of the legal process is civil process. Which implies the filing of civil suits, for damages, for money damages. The outcome of any criminal process is the possible loss of the liberty of the person accused of an illegal act. If I’m accused of harming someone or robbing something and go through a criminal process, the outcome of that process can be the loss of my liberty by imprisoning me.
If I am charged in civil process with negligence, negligently operating my automobile for example, the outcome of that will not be a loss of my liberty. The outcome if I am shown to have been negligent will be the loss of property. I’ll be required to pay money damages to those it is claimed I harmed. [COUGHS]
The criminal process that's involved in accusations of child abuse is a criminal process that makes a charge that a person has either physically abused or sexually abused the child. And if that charge can be proven, the individual who is charged with that act may have to serve as much as 20 years in prison in response to that charge.
The charges brought against the person on the grounds of negligence, the civil process, are charges that will lead possibly to money damages, and a charge of negligence requires that certain elements be proved. The elements that must be proved in order to make out a case of negligence, whether it’s a case of negligence against me for operating my automobile in a negligent way, or a charge against an individual for example a charge against a diocese and its bishop, or against a province and its major superiors, a charge that negligently they permitted a particular individual to operate in the presence of children, which individual then caused harm by physically or sexually abusing a child.
To bring that kind of a charge, there are four things that must be demonstrated. In the first place it must be demonstrated that there was a duty owed by the organization, institution, diocese, province, or congregation, a duty owed, by that body, to the child who was allegedly the ultimate victim of the abuse.
In the second place it must be proved that there was a breach of that duty. In the third place it must be shown that there were damages done to the child. And then finally to make out the case for negligence it must be demonstrated that it was the breach of the duty which caused the damages.
To be concrete if the charge is that an employee of a particular diocese has sexually abused a child, then the case to be made out for negligence must prove, first, that the diocese had a duty to protect a child committed to its care from all sorts of harm and abuse, an easy case to make. We're speaking of a child in one of our schools, or a child who comes for CCD instruction, or an altar boy who comes into our care for an hour or so to serve a Mass. If we're speaking of those children, our duty to care for them is clear.
The breach of duty must be made out by showing that the person who is accused of having abused the child did that, that those actions actually took place. And if it can be shown that some employee of a diocese or religious community in fact did cause some harm to a child by sexually abusing them, then the second point is proved and made out, that we were negligent in our duty, that we breached the duty we owed to the child, to see to his or her care.
In the third place, damages must be proved. And this is a clinical issue which Brother Sean Sammon will be talking about when he addresses you in the second part of this presentation. It must be shown that some damage was done to the child who allegedly was the victim of the act of abuse. And then finally
“The Causal Link,” another clinical issue, the causal link, between the breach of duty, that is the untoward action of the employee, it must be shown that that was the cause of the damages that were done.
I have for each of you some observations that I’d like to make about the future and about policies that we should be undertaking. In the first place I offer to you an observation with which I know you are very familiar. At the present time insurance coverage for sexual misconduct is unavailable to us and to anyone else. It’s simply impossible to say that insurance policies will cover us.
FIRST FIND A WAY TO GET INSURANCE TO COVER US FOR THIS
BUT UNTIL THEN: “WE AS CONCERNED CAREGIVERS ARE OUR OWN INSURANCE”
I believe that the most important kind of insurance we can take out today, since we can’t buy the policies, is to make ourselves clearly people committed to the care of children, and people who will with prudence and with courage face the difficulties that affect the children in our care, whether those difficulties come from outside our control, in other words children who were abused in their own families, in their own homes, or whether those difficulties come from inside the institutions under our care, if employees or agents of ours are guilty.
I believe it is important that we as the leaders of church groupings formulate clear policies for reporting incidents of child abuse by those who are required to report. Clear policies for our school administrators and our teachers and the psychologists and physicians who we employ. We must formulate clear policies for them to comply with the laws that require that they report incidents of child abuse as they observe them in their professional work.
Secondly I believe that we must formulate clear policies for clinical and legal interventions when employees and agents of ours are accused of acts of child abuse. We must be clear that we have available to our priests, or our brothers, or our religious women, clinical help, the intervention necessary if this is their problem. Clinical help that can be brought to them in a loving and concerned and Christian way, before they create problems.
And secondly we must make it clear that we have the legal intervention necessary. That our attorneys, that those who represent us in court proceedings, are aware of the dimensions of this problem, are familiar with the legal issues. And familiar also with the church issues, with the way that this accusation made against church personnel is even more damaging than it would be against other personnel in other professions.
NEVER ANY MENTION OF CONCERN FOR THE CHILD CRIME VICTIMS
I suggest to you very strongly that an important address to this problem for us is programs of education, vigorous ones, ones that will incorporate legal, social policy, and professional clinical insights. Incorporate them in educating three groups of people. For programs of education for our religious personnel, all of them, for our priests, for our religious men and women, for all of those who are our agents with the public, clear and well prepared programs of clinical education, so they can learn to recognize who are the victims of child abuse. Who are those likely to be, because of their emotional makeup, those who will abuse children.
That kind of clinical insight into the nature of the victim and the perpetrator of child abuse is absolutely necessary. I know Brother Sean will be speaking at some length about the profiles and characteristics of those classes. We need extensive education programs for our personnel to make them able to recognize these patterns of behavior as they occur when people are in our care.
Secondly I think that we need special programs of education for our religious personnel and for our clergy on the internal policies of our dioceses and congregations. We must communicate in a fraternal and loving way to the priests of our dioceses and to the members of our religious provinces and congregations our concern for their well being.
We must convince those who are our coworkers that we love them and respect them. And if they are in emotional trouble, they may come to us for the kind of intervention they need before their behavior begins to cause harm in the world outside. Our first focus is that.
And finally programs of education for the leaders of our church institutions, for our bishops and our provincials and our major superiors, so that you may be completely informed on the clinical aspects of this problem and also on the legal aspects. On the liabilities that you face as a leader, and on the techniques available to you and your attorneys to try to avoid embarrassment to the church.
SO THAT'S WHAT PLACA THINKS IS MOST IMPORTANT FOR THE BISHOPS AND PROVINCIALS: Know all the legal aspects and liabilities and “try to avoid embarrassment to the church,”N MEMEMEMEM
Now I don't want to make that the key focus of my remarks. I believe there are four priorities involved when we face the problem of child sexual abuse and I hope that all of us as church leaders are committed to these four priorities.
When it is reported to us that it is possible that some child has been harmed by some person who is an agent of ours, a priest or religious, the first concern of the church ought to be for the victim. The second concern ought to be for possible future victims, to protect them from the possibility of harm. The third concern ought to be for the church, not simply an institutional concern, but the concern for the church as a ministering body, to be certain that the rest of us are left free without scandal and cloud to conduct our ministry.
And the fourth concern ought to be for the person accused of the act of abuse, to see to it that that person has the kind of help he or she may need to recover fully.`
By Kay Ebeling
By 2002, there were enough credible child molest accusations against him for Monsignor Alan Placa to be stripped of his duties as a priest, but not defrocked. So Rudy Giuliani gave his lifelong pal Placa a job at his consulting firm. A few years earlier Placa had handled the legal ministrations for Giuliani to annul his 12-year marriage.
In a video that recently came in the mail, Monsignor Alan J. Placa tells “church leaders” in the early 1980s about new legal strategies for the church when priests are accused of sex crimes.
As it turns out, at the same time Placa was creating these legal strategies as counsel to the House of Affirmation, he was committing sex crimes against children himself.
Here are some select quotes from the video. The entire transcript is copy and pasted at the end of this post.
PLACA : I’m Father Alan Placa, a priest of the diocese of Rockville Center in New York and also an attorney admitted into practice in New York. The presentation that we're going to offer you is a very brief summary of some of the problems that are involved in the issue of child sexual abuse.
We may have a unique opportunity to observe children who have been hurt. Children who are suffering, children who need the ministry of the church.. . .
We're concerned that we as a ministerial community be ready to observe the harm that has been done outside of our place of work and be able to offer to those who have been harmed the opportunity to be healed.
In the second place we are also realistically aware that some of our own ministerial persons have sometimes been involved in instances of child sexual abuse.
////
My focus will be on the social policy and the legal issues but I’m an attorney in the state of New York, and I am not offering you specific legal advice obviously.
/ / /
The states have almost always found the value of child protection superior to the other values that they try to protect which affects our ministry very strongly.
(concern about) the balance that legislatures have tried to create between the value of protecting children and the value of confidentiality.
We know that there are confidential relationships protected by law in most of the states of our country between priest and penitent, between member of the clergy or ministerial person and a congregant. The law protects those relationships and says that whatever is communicated within the confines of that professional relationship may never be revealed.
Our society believes strongly that that kind of confidentiality encourages people in trouble to speak openly and freely to physicians and psychiatrists, and psychologists, and clergymen, and attorneys.
/ / /
Let me be concrete. Before the child abuse legislation that began to be passed in the last 12 years came into effect. The law of this country protected that communication and the helping person certainly was not required by law to report it. In fact it was considered unethical to make such a report.
In the last dozen years that situation has changed radically and in most of our states now there are laws called Child Abuse Reporting laws that require certain professionals to make reports
/ / /
It’s important to note that in the vast majority of our states that requirement to report does not apply to members of the clergy. In the Roman Catholic Church that would mean certainly and obviously priests and bishops but it also would include religious men and religious women when they receive this information in the course of their spiritual and ecclesiastical ministry.
These reporting laws do not apply to us in those situations.
(HE DESCRIBES WITH SOME DISDAIN THE NEWLY FORMED CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES OFFICES IN MOST STATES, THEN)
I’d like to speak more concretely about legal process and the kind of legal process that follows from a child protective services report.
That investigation itself is a difficult and damaging process in many ways, because typically if a child protective services investigation were conducted against one of us for example as a parish priest, regardless of whether the charge were true or not, those charged with making the investigation would be required by law to come into my community and begin interviewing children who I might have had contact with, and raise the question with them with their families about whether or not anything untoward had happened, whether or not I had been guilty of any kind of untoward act.
HE APPEARS HERE TO BE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PERPETRATOR THAN THE VICTIM AND WHOOOOOAAA
HE CHANGED OVER TO FIRST PERSON AT THE END OF THE QUOTE: “WHETHER OR NOT I HAD BEEN GUILTY OF ANY KIND OF UNTOWARD ACT.” MORE RAGGING ON CPS AS HE CONTINUES BELOW:
So the very first step in the legal process is going to be a CPS or child protective services investigation. And I want to emphasize that this is the sort of investigation that's going to be conducted not by attorneys, not by police personnel, not by anyone trained in the legal area or in the area of the kind of civil rights and personal rights that we are accustomed to understanding in our country.
It’s going to be conducted by sincere and well trained social services personnel, whose function and purpose is not to protect those who are being investigated but to look to the welfare of the person alleged to have been a victim.
PLACA DOES MANAGE HERE TO SAY THEY'RE “SINCERE AND WELL TRAINED” BUT HE SAYS IT WITH A SNEER.
/ / /
(with) The criminal process that's involved in accusations of child abuse. . .the individual who is charged with that act may have to serve as much as 20 years in prison
/ / /
(In a civil charge it must be proved that) negligently they permitted a particular individual to operate in the presence of children, which individual then caused harm by physically or sexually abusing a child.
(Since at the time of this video presentation there was no sex accusation insurance, Placa says:)
I believe it is important that we as the leaders of church groupings formulate clear policies for reporting incidents of child abuse by those who are required to report.
We must formulate clear policies for them to comply with the laws that require that they report incidents of child abuse
(NOTE: THOSE WHO HAVE TO REPORT “THEM” “THEY” -- HE’S CONTINUING WITH THE IDEA THAT THIS WHOLE REPORTING NONSENSE DOES NOT APPLY TO CLERGY. )
(THEN FINALLY CLOSE TO THE END HE GIVES THE CLINCHER: )
You (need to) be completely informed on the clinical aspects of this problem and also on the legal aspects,
On the liabilities that you face as a leader,
and on the techniques available to you and your attorneys
to try to avoid embarrassment to the church.
Here is the entire transcript of Placa’s remarks:
FOR-BISHOPACCOUNTABILITY
HOUSE OF AFFIRMATION DVD
“A PASTORAL APPROACH TO THE ISSUE OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE”
TRANSCRIBED BY KE (SEPTEMBER 30, 2007)
PLACA : I’m Father Alan Placa, a priest of the diocese of Rockville Center in New York and also an attorney admitted into practice in New York. The presentation that we're going to offer you is a very brief summary of some of the problems that are involved in the issue of child sexual abuse.
CHYRON: Rev. Alan J. Place, Legal Consultant to the Diocese of Rockville Centre
PLACA : Which is an issue that's of great importance throughout our entire country. Because of the church’s work of trying to administer to the needs of people all over our country and each of our dioceses as we believe that it is an issue that the church must attend to. Because the church has responsibilities in this area.
We hope that the presentation that I and [SOUNDS LIKE] Brother Sean Sammon who is a clinical psychologist will be offering you will be a presentation that focuses on this issue from two points of view.
In the first place we're very concerned about the church’s duty and responsibility to minister to children who may be the victims of child abuse, physical and sexual and emotional abuse, in their own homes or in other places outside of the church’s control. These are children who may come to us in our Catholic schools, in our religious education programs, in the social and cultural programs that we offer that affect so many young people’s lives.
We may have a unique opportunity through our teachers, through our religious men and women, through the priests of our parishes, to observe children who have been hurt. Children who are suffering, children who need the ministry of the church and the ministry of other organizations within our society.
In the first place then we're concerned that we as a ministerial community be ready to observe the harm that has been done outside of our place of work, and be able to offer to those who have been harmed the opportunity to be healed.
In the second place we are also realistically aware that some of those who work for the church, some of our own ministerial persons and some of our employees have sometimes been involved in instances of child sexual abuse and child physical abuse. We want to try to help you to understand who these abusers are, who their victims are, and what our society judges to be the core and the root of this problem. How our society through its legal system tries to address this problem.
My focus will be on the social policy and the legal issues that are involved in this problem of child sexual abuse. The social policy of most of the states of our union, and I must emphasize that I speak about most of the states. I’m an attorney in the state of New York, and I am not offering you specific legal advice obviously. I’m only trying to offer you general observations that apply in the vast majority of the 50 states of our union.
In most states the social policy of American government has been to place a very high value on the protection of children. To place a very high value on the prevention of acts of abuse of children. Emotional and physical abuse and sexual abuse of children. That social policy is such a serious one in our states that when the legislatures of the states have balanced the value of the protection of children against other important and prime values in our society the states have almost always found the value of child protection superior to the other values that they try to protect which affects our ministry very strongly
as a church is the balance that legislatures have tried to create between the value of protecting children and the value of confidentiality.
We know that there are confidential relationships protected by law in most of the states of our country, the physician patient relationship, the relationship between lawyer and client, the relationship between priest and penitent, between member of the clergy or ministerial person and a congregant. We know that the law protects those relationships and says that whatever is communicated within the confines of that professional relationship may never be revealed. That's a very high value in our society. Our society believes strongly that that kind of confidentiality encourages people in trouble to speak openly and freely to physicians and psychiatrists, and psychologists, and clergymen, and attorneys.
To tell them the whole truth of their trouble, so that their troubles may be healed, the whole truth of their physical illness so that they may be healed of their physical illness, and so that society may be protected from whatever physical ailment may be affecting that individual. Society places a high value on those confidential relationships.
A KIND OF MESMERIZING MISSTATEMENT THAT BLATANTLY CONTRADICTS ITSELF.
BECAUSE SOCIETY NEEDS TO BE PROTECTED BY THAT PERSON’S AILMENT IS THE VERY REASON THAT SPECIAL CONFIDENTIAL RELATIONSHIP NO LONGER EXISTS IN MANY STATES.
Society places such a very high value on the protection of children that society through the 50 states is generally willing to suppress the protection of confidentiality for many professional relationships in order to protect children.
Let me be concrete. Before the child abuse legislation that began to be passed in the last 12 years came into effect, if a child reported to a physician or to a psychiatrist that he or she had been abused physically or emotionally or sexually or if an adult reported to one of these helping persons that he had been guilty of abusing children, the law of this country protected that communication and the helping person certainly was not required by law to report it. In fact it was considered unethical to make such a report.
In the last dozen years that situation has changed radically and in most of our states now there are laws called Child Abuse Reporting laws that require certain professionals to make reports whenever they have reason to believe that a child has been abused -- physically, emotionally, or sexually. It’s important to note that in the vast majority of our states that requirement to report does not apply to members of the clergy. In the Roman Catholic Church that would mean certainly and obviously priests and bishops but it also would include religious men and religious women who are not members of what we define canonically as the clergy, when they receive this information in the course of their spiritual and ecclesiastical ministry.
These reporting laws do not apply to us in those situations.
They do apply however to physicians and nurses and psychiatrists and psychologists who they employ, they apply to our school principals and our school personnel and our schoolteachers, there are many people in our employ who are required by law to make reports when they receive information through observation or through conversation that seems to suggest that a child has been abused.
So the first point I’d like to make is that the social policy of this country through the legislatures, expressed through the legislatures of the various states, is so strongly in favor of the protection of children that it even invades a certain range of traditionally protected confidential relationships in order to get the information into the hands of public authority.
BUT NOT WHEN IT APPLIES TO PRIESTS
The public authority that is generally responsible for seeing to it that something is done about reports of child sexual abuse is an authority that is called by various names in various states, but for the most part, the name that's used to describe these agencies is Child Protective Services.
[WRITES ON CHALKBOARD]
Or CPS. Child Protective Services in the state of New York, the parallel organizations in the states of California or Massachusetts or Pennsylvania, certainly all of the major states, are organizations staffed by social work personnel, whose function it is under law to investigate all charges of child abuse -- physical, emotional, or sexual. And the investigations they conduct are conducted for the sake of discovering whether or not some act has been committed that did harm a child.
EXPLAINS WHAT CPS IS AS IT WAS APPARENTLY NEW AT THE TIME OF THIS TAPE
Based on the report of the CPS investigation other legal processes may follow and I’d like to move to the second area of concern that I want to share with you, the first was this social policy area. I’d like to speak now a little more concretely about legal process and the kind of legal process that follows from a child protective services report.
If one of our teachers makes an observation that a child in his or her classroom seems to have been the victim of child abuse, or if someone a parent or a neighbor makes an observation that suggests that a child has been abused by one of our employees or some personnel of the church, and makes a child protective services report, the very first thing that will take place is a child protective service or CPS investigation.
That investigation itself is a difficult and damaging process in many ways, because typically if a child protective services investigation were conducted against one of us for example as a parish priest, regardless of whether the charge were true or not, those charged with making the investigation would be required by law to come into my community and begin interviewing children who I might have had contact with, and raise the question with them with their families about whether or not anything untoward had happened, whether or not I had been guilty of any kind of untoward act.
HE APPEARS HERE TO BE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PERPETRATOR THAN THE VICTIM AND WHOOOOOAAA
HE CHANGED OVER TO FIRST PERSON AT THE END OF THE QUOTE: “WHETHER OR NOT I HAD BEEN GUILTY OF ANY KIND OF UNTOWARD ACT.” MORE RAGGING ON CPS AS HE CONTINUES BELOW:
So the very first step in the legal process is going to be a CPS or child protective services investigation. And I want to emphasize that this is the sort of investigation that's going to be conducted not by attorneys, not by police personnel, not by anyone trained in the legal area or in the area of the kind of civil rights and personal rights that we are accustomed to understanding in our country.
It’s going to be conducted by sincere and well trained social services personnel, whose function and purpose is not to protect those who are being investigated but to look to the welfare of the person alleged to have been a victim.
HE DOES MANAGE TO SAY THEY'RE “SINCERE AND WELL TRAINED” BUT IT’S WITH A SNEER.
This is a concrete expression of a social policy that favors the protection of children.
Once this sort of investigation starts, the legal process branches into two areas. In the first place there will be criminal process possible. If the CPS investigation reveals that the charge that was made is a founded charge, that there’s reason to believe it may be true, CPS will be required in some cases to make a report to the local prosecuting authority, the local district attorney, who will then investigate the possibility of bringing criminal process charges against the man or woman who has been accused of the act of child abuse.
The other branch of the legal process is civil process. Which implies the filing of civil suits, for damages, for money damages. The outcome of any criminal process is the possible loss of the liberty of the person accused of an illegal act. If I’m accused of harming someone or robbing something and go through a criminal process, the outcome of that process can be the loss of my liberty by imprisoning me.
If I am charged in civil process with negligence, negligently operating my automobile for example, the outcome of that will not be a loss of my liberty. The outcome if I am shown to have been negligent will be the loss of property. I’ll be required to pay money damages to those it is claimed I harmed. [COUGHS]
The criminal process that's involved in accusations of child abuse is a criminal process that makes a charge that a person has either physically abused or sexually abused the child. And if that charge can be proven, the individual who is charged with that act may have to serve as much as 20 years in prison in response to that charge.
The charges brought against the person on the grounds of negligence, the civil process, are charges that will lead possibly to money damages, and a charge of negligence requires that certain elements be proved. The elements that must be proved in order to make out a case of negligence, whether it’s a case of negligence against me for operating my automobile in a negligent way, or a charge against an individual for example a charge against a diocese and its bishop, or against a province and its major superiors, a charge that negligently they permitted a particular individual to operate in the presence of children, which individual then caused harm by physically or sexually abusing a child.
To bring that kind of a charge, there are four things that must be demonstrated. In the first place it must be demonstrated that there was a duty owed by the organization, institution, diocese, province, or congregation, a duty owed, by that body, to the child who was allegedly the ultimate victim of the abuse.
In the second place it must be proved that there was a breach of that duty. In the third place it must be shown that there were damages done to the child. And then finally to make out the case for negligence it must be demonstrated that it was the breach of the duty which caused the damages.
To be concrete if the charge is that an employee of a particular diocese has sexually abused a child, then the case to be made out for negligence must prove, first, that the diocese had a duty to protect a child committed to its care from all sorts of harm and abuse, an easy case to make. We're speaking of a child in one of our schools, or a child who comes for CCD instruction, or an altar boy who comes into our care for an hour or so to serve a Mass. If we're speaking of those children, our duty to care for them is clear.
The breach of duty must be made out by showing that the person who is accused of having abused the child did that, that those actions actually took place. And if it can be shown that some employee of a diocese or religious community in fact did cause some harm to a child by sexually abusing them, then the second point is proved and made out, that we were negligent in our duty, that we breached the duty we owed to the child, to see to his or her care.
In the third place, damages must be proved. And this is a clinical issue which Brother Sean Sammon will be talking about when he addresses you in the second part of this presentation. It must be shown that some damage was done to the child who allegedly was the victim of the act of abuse. And then finally
“The Causal Link,” another clinical issue, the causal link, between the breach of duty, that is the untoward action of the employee, it must be shown that that was the cause of the damages that were done.
I have for each of you some observations that I’d like to make about the future and about policies that we should be undertaking. In the first place I offer to you an observation with which I know you are very familiar. At the present time insurance coverage for sexual misconduct is unavailable to us and to anyone else. It’s simply impossible to say that insurance policies will cover us.
FIRST FIND A WAY TO GET INSURANCE TO COVER US FOR THIS
BUT UNTIL THEN: “WE AS CONCERNED CAREGIVERS ARE OUR OWN INSURANCE”
I believe that the most important kind of insurance we can take out today, since we can’t buy the policies, is to make ourselves clearly people committed to the care of children, and people who will with prudence and with courage face the difficulties that affect the children in our care, whether those difficulties come from outside our control, in other words children who were abused in their own families, in their own homes, or whether those difficulties come from inside the institutions under our care, if employees or agents of ours are guilty.
I believe it is important that we as the leaders of church groupings formulate clear policies for reporting incidents of child abuse by those who are required to report. Clear policies for our school administrators and our teachers and the psychologists and physicians who we employ. We must formulate clear policies for them to comply with the laws that require that they report incidents of child abuse as they observe them in their professional work.
Secondly I believe that we must formulate clear policies for clinical and legal interventions when employees and agents of ours are accused of acts of child abuse. We must be clear that we have available to our priests, or our brothers, or our religious women, clinical help, the intervention necessary if this is their problem. Clinical help that can be brought to them in a loving and concerned and Christian way, before they create problems.
And secondly we must make it clear that we have the legal intervention necessary. That our attorneys, that those who represent us in court proceedings, are aware of the dimensions of this problem, are familiar with the legal issues. And familiar also with the church issues, with the way that this accusation made against church personnel is even more damaging than it would be against other personnel in other professions.
NEVER ANY MENTION OF CONCERN FOR THE CHILD CRIME VICTIMS
I suggest to you very strongly that an important address to this problem for us is programs of education, vigorous ones, ones that will incorporate legal, social policy, and professional clinical insights. Incorporate them in educating three groups of people. For programs of education for our religious personnel, all of them, for our priests, for our religious men and women, for all of those who are our agents with the public, clear and well prepared programs of clinical education, so they can learn to recognize who are the victims of child abuse. Who are those likely to be, because of their emotional makeup, those who will abuse children.
That kind of clinical insight into the nature of the victim and the perpetrator of child abuse is absolutely necessary. I know Brother Sean will be speaking at some length about the profiles and characteristics of those classes. We need extensive education programs for our personnel to make them able to recognize these patterns of behavior as they occur when people are in our care.
Secondly I think that we need special programs of education for our religious personnel and for our clergy on the internal policies of our dioceses and congregations. We must communicate in a fraternal and loving way to the priests of our dioceses and to the members of our religious provinces and congregations our concern for their well being.
We must convince those who are our coworkers that we love them and respect them. And if they are in emotional trouble, they may come to us for the kind of intervention they need before their behavior begins to cause harm in the world outside. Our first focus is that.
And finally programs of education for the leaders of our church institutions, for our bishops and our provincials and our major superiors, so that you may be completely informed on the clinical aspects of this problem and also on the legal aspects. On the liabilities that you face as a leader, and on the techniques available to you and your attorneys to try to avoid embarrassment to the church.
SO THAT'S WHAT PLACA THINKS IS MOST IMPORTANT FOR THE BISHOPS AND PROVINCIALS: Know all the legal aspects and liabilities and “try to avoid embarrassment to the church,”N MEMEMEMEM
Now I don't want to make that the key focus of my remarks. I believe there are four priorities involved when we face the problem of child sexual abuse and I hope that all of us as church leaders are committed to these four priorities.
When it is reported to us that it is possible that some child has been harmed by some person who is an agent of ours, a priest or religious, the first concern of the church ought to be for the victim. The second concern ought to be for possible future victims, to protect them from the possibility of harm. The third concern ought to be for the church, not simply an institutional concern, but the concern for the church as a ministering body, to be certain that the rest of us are left free without scandal and cloud to conduct our ministry.
And the fourth concern ought to be for the person accused of the act of abuse, to see to it that that person has the kind of help he or she may need to recover fully.`
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Mike's Story: "Out came Father John Daly totally naked, holding the doors wide open."
=============================
Originally published March 31, 2007 at city of angels 3 blogspot dot com.
Mike's case is part of the San Diego settlements.
By KAY EBELING
It had been one short wet ride after another for days. Now they’d been on this onramp for hours. More rain came and the two boys held out their thumbs as occasional cars and trucks drove past. The Arizona-Calexico region got 14 inches of rain after Hurricane Heather in August 1977, but two teenagers hitchhiking to the Haight Ashbury weren't thinking about the weather.
Finally headlights approach and stop. The boys don’t even look inside the car, just jump in. The driver tells them in an Irish brogue that he works at a Catholic Church where hitchhikers can clean up, even have a bed to sleep in.
Around two AM the two boys burst out church doors. They tumble into the town of Holtville. Mike vomits on the side of the road.
“Police, open up,” the officers stood with weapons drawn listening to loud thumps coming from inside the room at the back of the church. Then…
Out came Father John Daly totally naked, holding the right and left doors wide open with the light pouring down on him, all 250 pounds of his body billowing in the rain and early morning light for all to see.
The naked priest snarled as Mike identified him through the police car window.
----------------------------------
Last summer the arresting officer testified in deposition for Mike’s case.
A: “I’ve looked at the report you've handed me and it’s incomplete.”
Q: When you say it’s incomplete, what do you mean?
DUTTON: Well the statements aren’t there, the evidence list isn’t there, the copies of the reports that I received from La Mesa and other places about him aren’t there.
Q: Are you talking about the NCIC?
A: No those are also not here. NCIC is not here CI&I is not here if I ran it, I’m sure I did, but also the police reports or whatever department reports from other law enforcement agencies are also not here in what they provided you. And we did receive those and those were made part of the investigative file.
===========================
Holtville is a small town today and in 1977 with no radio, TV, or news report, word got out that Father Daly had been arrested. Dutton testified that people from town started to call, with stories about Father Daly coming out of the rectory with a young boy, and his fly was open.
Mike and Mark stayed in a nearby motel sleeping for several days after John Daly’s arrest.
As they slept the Catholic protect-the-perpetrator machinery went into action.
=======================
This letter is in the exhibits from Mike Shoemaker’s case against the San Diego Archdiocese, a letter from the local church attorney to Bishop Maher in San Diego explaining how the local parish dispatched of the Father John Daly problem.
==============
To Bishop Maher
San Diego
Diocesesan office for apostolic Ministry in Alcalala Park, San Diego
“Mr. Flourd, attorney, contacted me, Mark A. Medaer, voluntarily, to engage my assistance in a legal matter.
“On Friday Father John and myself were called to the office of Mr. Flourd. We were told that the District Attorney considered the case “a chargeable criminal complaint.” Mr. Flourd echoing hints from other sources, advised us that if Father John would leave his post he thought some authorities could “argue down” the case with any dissenting parties.
Father John and myself consulted. At 2:00 PM Father Daly decided to go to El Carmelo Retreat, awaiting instructions from the Bishop. (sloppy typing here) Mr. Flourd was advised of the move. He would contact the District Attorney. At 3:00 PM Father John left.
I contacted Father Richard Duncanson and Msgr William Cooney.
“NO COMPLAINT BEING FILED, (their caps) I did not think it necessary to contact the Chancery, knowing furthermore that our Bishop and Chancellor were absent.
======================
DALY’S SENTENCE: A MONTH IN A RETREAT
John Daly went to El Carmelo Retreat House on August 17, three days after the incident, “upon the advice of Mr. Lewis Flourd, attorney at El Centro,
and myself
Mark Medaer episcopal vicar in the Imperial Valley.”
============
January 22 2007
Mike opens the package from his attorney, a copy of the church’s Motion for Summary Judgment granted last week on his case. Mike wasn’t as upset as he’d expected to have his case dismissed. It just meant a few more years of legal lunacy. Other cases had been appealed for disallowed testimony so it was just a matter filing an appeal.
It was the wording of the Motion for Summary Judgment itself, a collection of sentences in the first paragraph of the introduction by Brandy Stanton Cody of DiSante & Freudenberger in San Diego
that still to this day make Mike break out in a string on invectives:
==========================
15 YEAR OLD’S “LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP” WITH AIRLINE PILOT
“Nor was plaintiff a naïve, sexually inexperienced child when the events occurred," reads the first paragraph of the motion.
"A year before the alleged assault, when he was 15, Plaintiff began a long-term relationship with an adult male airline pilot in Arizona in which he exchanged sexual favors for flying time in the pilot’s plane,” writes Brandy Cody.
SHOCK.
“It's never consensual sex with a 15 year old.”
-- A.D.A. Alexandra Cabot
-- Law & Order Special Victims
======================
“I was set up like a bowling pin by this guy,” Mike said recently. “And Brom's lawyer places me on intellectual and chronological equal footing with him. I was just another adult, equal to his 30 years or so of college and government training....according to this attorney, I apologize, but this female lawyer is just plainly evil in my sight. I know of no other way to describe her.”
==
CHURCH ATTORNEY BRANDY STANTON CODY APPEARS TO BE SATANIC DEMON
For Mike at age 15 waking up in a room behind a church altar to find a burly Irishman sucking him off was traumatic, doubly so when he found out the ephebophile was a priest.
Brandy Stanton Cody denigrated Michael with a low blow attack that makes it now open season on Brandy Stanton Cody, Associate, Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger LLP, 2001-present.
Church attorneys investigated Mike’s life and found that when he was 15 and hanging out at an airport, he’d been molested by a pilot.
At age 15 Mike was a preying pedophile’s dream target: boy living in trailer with mom and grandmother, some neglect, starved for father figure and support. For Brandy Stanton Cody to represent this earlier molest as a consensual relationship between Mike and an older man --
To make a troglodyte statement that a 15 year old is responsible for whatever sexual situations he finds himself in --
Brandy Stanton Cody, church attorney, has apparently sold her soul to the devil.
I’m sure the San Diego Archdiocese paid Brandy Stanton Cody dearly to smear Mike and twist history, even call Mike a 15 year old predator himself, anything to protect the church’s assets and slam down on the plaintiffs.
MAYBE SHE REALLY IS A SATANIC DEMON
Then there’s the issue of Brandy’s face. If anyone has seen the movie Devil’s Advocate they know what I mean. Think of the scene where Charlize Theron is shopping and the woman from the devil’s law firm glances over and allows Theron a glimpse of her real face, her demon face.
Demons are able to change the way humans see their faces. The day I saw Brandy Stanton Cody argue this motion in court her face looked like Jane Krakowski. I made a note: if LA Clergy Cases is ever made into a movie cast Jane Krakowski as Brandy Stanton Cody.
Now I think I’d more likely cast Shelley Long, indeed now I don't even know if Brandy Cody Stanton is human. Because every time I’ve seen her since she’s looked like a completely different person.
Brandy Cody Stanton is a devil or one of the devil’s advocates herself. She can change her face just like the demons in the movie.
==============================
MORE ON BRANDY STANTON CODY
Church Attorneys Deserve Little Respect
As Brandy stood in front of the court, facing the judge, she was in a line of male lawyers, and I was staring at their backs:
Pants, pants, pants, pants, silky black sheen stockings covering calves and a skirt that barely touches the knees, pants, pants.
And the cut of her suit, from behind her, where I sat, I could not help staring at the way the tailored jacket touched right at the top of her hips. I couldn't stop looking at it, and I’m not even a little bit gay.
Don’t think for a minute that attorneys don’t plan their wardrobes for effect.
-------------
OPEN SEASON ON BRANDY STANTON CODY
Call her, or better yet, call or write her boss.
For Brandy Stanton Cody, Associate, Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger LLP, 2001-present to dig up a previous molest and infer that a 15 year old boy was in a long-term consensual relationship with a man in his thirties, she no longer deserves the respect usually afforded to attorneys, even if they represent the opposition.
she works at:
Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger
4510 Executive Drive, Suite 300
San Diego CA 92121
858 – 646-0007
Call her. Or better yet, call her boss.
========================
WHAT HAPPENED TO DALY'S ARREST RECORD?
Soon after putting some clothes on Father Daly, Dutton ran an NCIC on the station telex. The National Crime Index machine using 1977 state of the art technology printed out an arrest record of Fr. John Daly, for sexual molestation, one in La Mesa a few years earlier and another from San Antonio, Texas.
Where did the NCIC report go from Father Daly’s arrest record?
===================================
CLUES IN THE LETTER TO THE BISHOP
Dutton says that when word got out in Holtville that he'd arrested Father John Daly, several community members contacted him.
“A couple of them said that they recall him coming out of the children’s playroom where children were in the playroom, with his zipper down," he testified in Mike's case.
Q: Okay anything else they recall?
A: They were suspicious of him. But these conversations occurred from community inquiries after the decision had been made not to file charges
Eerily similar words were used in the vicar’s letter to Bishop Maher in San Diego:
“NO COMPLAINT BEING FILED, (their caps) I did not think it necessary to contact the Chancery
Daly spent a month at the retreat house then took another assignment as a priest, and apparently never acted out again. Or at least he never got caught.
===========================
WHY SUE THE CHURCH?
Mike talked recently about why he’d filed the civil case against the San Diego Archdiocese in the first place:
“In 2000 Boston was on TV every night. I did not think that I was affected by the abuse. I had never held a job longer than 18 months, had insomnia, was diagnosed bi polar, but anyway.....so these news stories reminded me of the past and I began to wonder what had happened to Daly. I was certain that he had gone to prison for what he did to me. I emailed the Holtville newspaper ( and only them ) asking what had happened to Daly. They never responded, but KFMB TV in San Diego did instead. The new producer told me that Daly had got off, pardon the pun. because the bishop interviened."
Mike hired an attorney and waited.
He described what happened when he and Mark ran out of the little room behind the church altar, where Daly had a pedophile's pantry of audio tapes of boys talking about sex (exhibits listed on what's left of the police report).
The room was not the rectory. Daly lived in a different building on the church lot. This room was a pedophile den directly behind the altar - a fold out bed, a room divider and another bed, a portable shower -- little else.
"Mark held a large coffee cup over Daly's head, ready to bury it in Daly's head per my profane instruction... while I got dressed...fast. Then I held the pipe I had found while Mark got dressed. During this time we made it very very clear to Daly that if he so much as twitched we do all in our power to stop/kill him."
It was only when he returned with Dutton that Mike realized there was another bed behind the divider. Daly had insisted he had to get in bed with the boys because it was the only bed, and the sleeping bags were drenched. He had to be naked as his clothes were wet too.
==================
WERE THE DOCUMENTS SHREDDED IN THE NINETIES OR IN 2003?
Did Callahan shred personnel files that were needed as evidence?
This is the case where Monsignor Steve Callahan of San Diego admitted in deposition that in the mid nineties he systematically destroyed personnel documents that dealt with crime or psychological problems such as alcoholism. He used a shredding machine in the basement of University of San Diego’s student pastoral center.
But Callahan did not become Chancellor of San Diego until 2002. The Chancellor is the person who maintains personnel records, so this destruction of files may have been after 2002, or even after 2003, after the one year window for civil action opened in California.
There’s a good chance the Chancellor was destroying files in 2003 after knowing those files would be needed for evidence in upcoming lawsuits.
ISN’T THAT ILLEGAL?
One way to find out when Monsignor Steve Callahan shredded personnel files would be to get him to testify again.
This much did come up in Callahan's deposition in Mike’s case.
Q: So did you keep a summary of the documents?
CALLAHAN: No.
Q: And did you have Bishop Brom’s full permission to do this?
CALLAHAN: Yes.
CHURCH ATTORNEY: Objection, asked and answered.
Too late. A fact about a bishop slipped through.
Callahan also mentioned destroying Servants of the Paraclete files with his shredder. Servants of the Paraclete is a spa in New Mexico that in the sixties and seventies was a “recovery center” for priests with sexual problems.
MONSIGNOR STEVEN CALLAHAN needs to talk at more depositions.
==================================
MY OWN PERSONAL RANT:
If only the church hierarchy had done the right thing as soon as they knew instead of avoiding prosecution and scandal.
They didn't even avoid prosecution and scandal, just put it off a few generations and created thousands of damaged people reeling through life
People like me, with diagnoses like mine: Prolonged PTSD with continued re-victimization (from age 5 to age 45), and now in my late fifties, just PTSD probably for the rest of my life…
My story is at cityofangels1.blogspot.com
Originally published March 31, 2007 at city of angels 3 blogspot dot com.
Mike's case is part of the San Diego settlements.
By KAY EBELING
It had been one short wet ride after another for days. Now they’d been on this onramp for hours. More rain came and the two boys held out their thumbs as occasional cars and trucks drove past. The Arizona-Calexico region got 14 inches of rain after Hurricane Heather in August 1977, but two teenagers hitchhiking to the Haight Ashbury weren't thinking about the weather.
Finally headlights approach and stop. The boys don’t even look inside the car, just jump in. The driver tells them in an Irish brogue that he works at a Catholic Church where hitchhikers can clean up, even have a bed to sleep in.
Around two AM the two boys burst out church doors. They tumble into the town of Holtville. Mike vomits on the side of the road.
“Police, open up,” the officers stood with weapons drawn listening to loud thumps coming from inside the room at the back of the church. Then…
Out came Father John Daly totally naked, holding the right and left doors wide open with the light pouring down on him, all 250 pounds of his body billowing in the rain and early morning light for all to see.
The naked priest snarled as Mike identified him through the police car window.
----------------------------------
Last summer the arresting officer testified in deposition for Mike’s case.
A: “I’ve looked at the report you've handed me and it’s incomplete.”
Q: When you say it’s incomplete, what do you mean?
DUTTON: Well the statements aren’t there, the evidence list isn’t there, the copies of the reports that I received from La Mesa and other places about him aren’t there.
Q: Are you talking about the NCIC?
A: No those are also not here. NCIC is not here CI&I is not here if I ran it, I’m sure I did, but also the police reports or whatever department reports from other law enforcement agencies are also not here in what they provided you. And we did receive those and those were made part of the investigative file.
===========================
Holtville is a small town today and in 1977 with no radio, TV, or news report, word got out that Father Daly had been arrested. Dutton testified that people from town started to call, with stories about Father Daly coming out of the rectory with a young boy, and his fly was open.
Mike and Mark stayed in a nearby motel sleeping for several days after John Daly’s arrest.
As they slept the Catholic protect-the-perpetrator machinery went into action.
=======================
This letter is in the exhibits from Mike Shoemaker’s case against the San Diego Archdiocese, a letter from the local church attorney to Bishop Maher in San Diego explaining how the local parish dispatched of the Father John Daly problem.
==============
To Bishop Maher
San Diego
Diocesesan office for apostolic Ministry in Alcalala Park, San Diego
“Mr. Flourd, attorney, contacted me, Mark A. Medaer, voluntarily, to engage my assistance in a legal matter.
“On Friday Father John and myself were called to the office of Mr. Flourd. We were told that the District Attorney considered the case “a chargeable criminal complaint.” Mr. Flourd echoing hints from other sources, advised us that if Father John would leave his post he thought some authorities could “argue down” the case with any dissenting parties.
Father John and myself consulted. At 2:00 PM Father Daly decided to go to El Carmelo Retreat, awaiting instructions from the Bishop. (sloppy typing here) Mr. Flourd was advised of the move. He would contact the District Attorney. At 3:00 PM Father John left.
I contacted Father Richard Duncanson and Msgr William Cooney.
“NO COMPLAINT BEING FILED, (their caps) I did not think it necessary to contact the Chancery, knowing furthermore that our Bishop and Chancellor were absent.
======================
DALY’S SENTENCE: A MONTH IN A RETREAT
John Daly went to El Carmelo Retreat House on August 17, three days after the incident, “upon the advice of Mr. Lewis Flourd, attorney at El Centro,
and myself
Mark Medaer episcopal vicar in the Imperial Valley.”
============
January 22 2007
Mike opens the package from his attorney, a copy of the church’s Motion for Summary Judgment granted last week on his case. Mike wasn’t as upset as he’d expected to have his case dismissed. It just meant a few more years of legal lunacy. Other cases had been appealed for disallowed testimony so it was just a matter filing an appeal.
It was the wording of the Motion for Summary Judgment itself, a collection of sentences in the first paragraph of the introduction by Brandy Stanton Cody of DiSante & Freudenberger in San Diego
that still to this day make Mike break out in a string on invectives:
==========================
15 YEAR OLD’S “LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP” WITH AIRLINE PILOT
“Nor was plaintiff a naïve, sexually inexperienced child when the events occurred," reads the first paragraph of the motion.
"A year before the alleged assault, when he was 15, Plaintiff began a long-term relationship with an adult male airline pilot in Arizona in which he exchanged sexual favors for flying time in the pilot’s plane,” writes Brandy Cody.
SHOCK.
“It's never consensual sex with a 15 year old.”
-- A.D.A. Alexandra Cabot
-- Law & Order Special Victims
======================
“I was set up like a bowling pin by this guy,” Mike said recently. “And Brom's lawyer places me on intellectual and chronological equal footing with him. I was just another adult, equal to his 30 years or so of college and government training....according to this attorney, I apologize, but this female lawyer is just plainly evil in my sight. I know of no other way to describe her.”
==
CHURCH ATTORNEY BRANDY STANTON CODY APPEARS TO BE SATANIC DEMON
For Mike at age 15 waking up in a room behind a church altar to find a burly Irishman sucking him off was traumatic, doubly so when he found out the ephebophile was a priest.
Brandy Stanton Cody denigrated Michael with a low blow attack that makes it now open season on Brandy Stanton Cody, Associate, Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger LLP, 2001-present.
Church attorneys investigated Mike’s life and found that when he was 15 and hanging out at an airport, he’d been molested by a pilot.
At age 15 Mike was a preying pedophile’s dream target: boy living in trailer with mom and grandmother, some neglect, starved for father figure and support. For Brandy Stanton Cody to represent this earlier molest as a consensual relationship between Mike and an older man --
To make a troglodyte statement that a 15 year old is responsible for whatever sexual situations he finds himself in --
Brandy Stanton Cody, church attorney, has apparently sold her soul to the devil.
I’m sure the San Diego Archdiocese paid Brandy Stanton Cody dearly to smear Mike and twist history, even call Mike a 15 year old predator himself, anything to protect the church’s assets and slam down on the plaintiffs.
MAYBE SHE REALLY IS A SATANIC DEMON
Then there’s the issue of Brandy’s face. If anyone has seen the movie Devil’s Advocate they know what I mean. Think of the scene where Charlize Theron is shopping and the woman from the devil’s law firm glances over and allows Theron a glimpse of her real face, her demon face.
Demons are able to change the way humans see their faces. The day I saw Brandy Stanton Cody argue this motion in court her face looked like Jane Krakowski. I made a note: if LA Clergy Cases is ever made into a movie cast Jane Krakowski as Brandy Stanton Cody.
Now I think I’d more likely cast Shelley Long, indeed now I don't even know if Brandy Cody Stanton is human. Because every time I’ve seen her since she’s looked like a completely different person.
Brandy Cody Stanton is a devil or one of the devil’s advocates herself. She can change her face just like the demons in the movie.
==============================
MORE ON BRANDY STANTON CODY
Church Attorneys Deserve Little Respect
As Brandy stood in front of the court, facing the judge, she was in a line of male lawyers, and I was staring at their backs:
Pants, pants, pants, pants, silky black sheen stockings covering calves and a skirt that barely touches the knees, pants, pants.
And the cut of her suit, from behind her, where I sat, I could not help staring at the way the tailored jacket touched right at the top of her hips. I couldn't stop looking at it, and I’m not even a little bit gay.
Don’t think for a minute that attorneys don’t plan their wardrobes for effect.
-------------
OPEN SEASON ON BRANDY STANTON CODY
Call her, or better yet, call or write her boss.
For Brandy Stanton Cody, Associate, Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger LLP, 2001-present to dig up a previous molest and infer that a 15 year old boy was in a long-term consensual relationship with a man in his thirties, she no longer deserves the respect usually afforded to attorneys, even if they represent the opposition.
she works at:
Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger
4510 Executive Drive, Suite 300
San Diego CA 92121
858 – 646-0007
Call her. Or better yet, call her boss.
========================
WHAT HAPPENED TO DALY'S ARREST RECORD?
Soon after putting some clothes on Father Daly, Dutton ran an NCIC on the station telex. The National Crime Index machine using 1977 state of the art technology printed out an arrest record of Fr. John Daly, for sexual molestation, one in La Mesa a few years earlier and another from San Antonio, Texas.
Where did the NCIC report go from Father Daly’s arrest record?
===================================
CLUES IN THE LETTER TO THE BISHOP
Dutton says that when word got out in Holtville that he'd arrested Father John Daly, several community members contacted him.
“A couple of them said that they recall him coming out of the children’s playroom where children were in the playroom, with his zipper down," he testified in Mike's case.
Q: Okay anything else they recall?
A: They were suspicious of him. But these conversations occurred from community inquiries after the decision had been made not to file charges
Eerily similar words were used in the vicar’s letter to Bishop Maher in San Diego:
“NO COMPLAINT BEING FILED, (their caps) I did not think it necessary to contact the Chancery
Daly spent a month at the retreat house then took another assignment as a priest, and apparently never acted out again. Or at least he never got caught.
===========================
WHY SUE THE CHURCH?
Mike talked recently about why he’d filed the civil case against the San Diego Archdiocese in the first place:
“In 2000 Boston was on TV every night. I did not think that I was affected by the abuse. I had never held a job longer than 18 months, had insomnia, was diagnosed bi polar, but anyway.....so these news stories reminded me of the past and I began to wonder what had happened to Daly. I was certain that he had gone to prison for what he did to me. I emailed the Holtville newspaper ( and only them ) asking what had happened to Daly. They never responded, but KFMB TV in San Diego did instead. The new producer told me that Daly had got off, pardon the pun. because the bishop interviened."
Mike hired an attorney and waited.
He described what happened when he and Mark ran out of the little room behind the church altar, where Daly had a pedophile's pantry of audio tapes of boys talking about sex (exhibits listed on what's left of the police report).
The room was not the rectory. Daly lived in a different building on the church lot. This room was a pedophile den directly behind the altar - a fold out bed, a room divider and another bed, a portable shower -- little else.
"Mark held a large coffee cup over Daly's head, ready to bury it in Daly's head per my profane instruction... while I got dressed...fast. Then I held the pipe I had found while Mark got dressed. During this time we made it very very clear to Daly that if he so much as twitched we do all in our power to stop/kill him."
It was only when he returned with Dutton that Mike realized there was another bed behind the divider. Daly had insisted he had to get in bed with the boys because it was the only bed, and the sleeping bags were drenched. He had to be naked as his clothes were wet too.
==================
WERE THE DOCUMENTS SHREDDED IN THE NINETIES OR IN 2003?
Did Callahan shred personnel files that were needed as evidence?
This is the case where Monsignor Steve Callahan of San Diego admitted in deposition that in the mid nineties he systematically destroyed personnel documents that dealt with crime or psychological problems such as alcoholism. He used a shredding machine in the basement of University of San Diego’s student pastoral center.
But Callahan did not become Chancellor of San Diego until 2002. The Chancellor is the person who maintains personnel records, so this destruction of files may have been after 2002, or even after 2003, after the one year window for civil action opened in California.
There’s a good chance the Chancellor was destroying files in 2003 after knowing those files would be needed for evidence in upcoming lawsuits.
ISN’T THAT ILLEGAL?
One way to find out when Monsignor Steve Callahan shredded personnel files would be to get him to testify again.
This much did come up in Callahan's deposition in Mike’s case.
Q: So did you keep a summary of the documents?
CALLAHAN: No.
Q: And did you have Bishop Brom’s full permission to do this?
CALLAHAN: Yes.
CHURCH ATTORNEY: Objection, asked and answered.
Too late. A fact about a bishop slipped through.
Callahan also mentioned destroying Servants of the Paraclete files with his shredder. Servants of the Paraclete is a spa in New Mexico that in the sixties and seventies was a “recovery center” for priests with sexual problems.
MONSIGNOR STEVEN CALLAHAN needs to talk at more depositions.
==================================
MY OWN PERSONAL RANT:
If only the church hierarchy had done the right thing as soon as they knew instead of avoiding prosecution and scandal.
They didn't even avoid prosecution and scandal, just put it off a few generations and created thousands of damaged people reeling through life
People like me, with diagnoses like mine: Prolonged PTSD with continued re-victimization (from age 5 to age 45), and now in my late fifties, just PTSD probably for the rest of my life…
My story is at cityofangels1.blogspot.com
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