*****
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.`
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