We’ve filed a new Boy Scout Abuse Lawsuit.  Read more here

Big news was made this week in a Portland priest abuse case when a Vatican agency, the “Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of Apostolic Life,”  in charge of all religious orders throughout the world, released documents concerning pedophile priest Rev. Andrew Ronan. This release followed an order by a federal judge in Portland in April that the Vatican release such documents, so that the parties could better understand what role, if any, the Vatican played in the transfer of Ronan to Portland in the 60’s, after which he abused the plaintiff in the current lawsuit.  The judicial order is unprecedented in that no US civil court has ever ordered a congregation within the Vatican, a sovereign state, to release documents related to a civil lawsuit in the United States.  Now that the documents have been released, the Vatican attorney, Jeffrey Lena,  is claiming victory because, according to him, the documents (which are in Latin and Italian) show no Vatican knowledge of the priest’s sexual abuse of the plaintiff John Doe.  Furthermore, Lena claims that the documents also prove the Vatican did not authorize the transfer of Rev. Andrew Ronan to Portland in the 1960’s. 

With all due respect to Mr Lena, who is a good attorney, there’s more to the legal and ecclesiastical stories than simply whether the documents show a “smoking gun” kind of knowledge by the Vatican of Ronan’s history of abuse.  The question is one of “principal-agency” under Oregon law.  This is something I know more than a little about, since it was one of my cases—Fearing v Bucher and the Archdiocese of Portland—in 1999 before the Oregon Supreme Court that shaped this law, especially when it comes to sexual abuse of children by trusted adults.  So let’s look more closely at the case, and at Lena’s claims.

While it seems plain that the Sacred Congregation for Religious (the former name of the Vatican agency) did not directly make the decision to transfer Rev. Ronan from Chicago to Portland, this fact alone does not answer the central legal question in the case: whether Ronan, under Oregon law, can be considered an “agent” of the Vatican.  If so, then the Vatican, like any “principal,” can be liable for the acts of its agent, even intentional wrongdoing, such as sexual abuse.  And the test for “agency” under Oregon law is whether the principal has the “right to control” the agent in the means and manner by which the agent carries out his duties.  And here, of course, it is plain to anyone who has ever spent five minutes thinking about it, that the Vatican Congregation for Religious of course would have had the right to control—and did in fact control—the means and manner of Ronan’s priestly duties, as it did for all priests:  requiring him, for example, to live a celibate life and not to marry; setting out in great detail how and what he was to teach his parishioners in terms of Catholic doctrine and catechism; when and under what conditions he could marry a young couple, and when and under what conditions he could not marry an older couple with previous marriages;  how and in what manner he would celebrate the Eucharist or conduct baptisms—the list goes on and on of how, under canon law, the Vatican, through its Congregation for Religious, had the right to control the details of Ronan’s work.   Perhaps the most important fact is that it was the Vatican Congregation, and no one else, who had the sole power to decide whether Ronan would even remain a priest.  Indeed, one of the undisputed points in the case is that Ronan himself petitioned the Sacred Congregation for Religious to leave the priesthood.  Obviously, Ronan, his superiors in the Servite Order, the bishop in Portland, and the Vatican all understood that the power to grant such a leave remained solely in the hands of the Vatican Sacred Congregation for Religious. 

So if the legal question in the Ronan case is “agency” as understood in Oregon law—and I think it is—then in my view as a sex abuse attorney for hundreds of men and women abused as children by Catholic priests, Boy Scout leaders, Mormon Church leaders, and other trusted adults, the Vatican could be lawfully held liable by a federal jury in Portland for the acts of Ronan. 

Nor should those who claim that the Church has come in for special or discriminatory treatment under the law be taken seriously.  The Church gets the same analysis under civil law as any business or nonprofit organization.  In any large organization, a mid-level manager has the authority to monitor and perhaps transfer agents and employees from one department to another.  However, hiring and firing policies, and orders about how to carry out the work,  come from a higher source, namely, the top level administration of the company—the principal. The analysis is no different for any nonprofit organization or church—including the Catholic Church.

The question before US District Judge Michael W. Mosman concerns this principal-agent relationship.  If Judge Mosman rules that the evidence presented to him is sufficient to show that the Vatican had the right to control Ronan in the means and manner of his priestly duties, then Judge Mosman would allow the case to proceed to a jury, which would ultimately be called upon to decide if Ronan was under the direction and control of the Vatican.  Stay tuned: the case could get very interesting.

My colleagues Steve Crew, Peter Janci and I filed a new Boy Scout sex abuse lawsuit in Bend Oregon today.  The Oregon Boy Scout lawsuit was filed against the Boy Scouts of America, and concerned deceased Scoutmaster Ed Dyer, who was one of Oregon’s most notorious sex abusers.  During a span of 28 years, Dyer admitted to molesting at least 15 young boys, and we believe there were many more.  Like most pedophiles and sexual abusers, Dyer used his position of authority to attract and groom young boys before sexually molesting them.  Dyer was shot and killed by one of his victims, Louis Conner, in 1986.

 It’s a sad reminder of the enormous harm done by the sexual abuse of minors.  Twenty-five years after Dyer’s death, there is still pain and suffering.  Hopefully, today’s lawsuit filing is the first step in the quest for justice and healing for one courageous young man.

Kristian Foden-Vencil | July 6, 2011 | Portland, OR OPB News

Nine former students of a boarding school near Prineville, filed suit in Multnomah County Wednesday.They claim physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their teachers.

Mt. Bachelor Academy was a school for teenagers who had either tangled with the law or had behavior problems at home.Parents paid more than $6000 a month to give their kids a ‘tough love’ education. But the school was closed by the state in 2009 — after the Department of Human Services found what it called "nine substantiated claims of abuse."

The school quickly fired back with a lawsuit.

That case was settled last year. The state withdrew its findings, but still claimed it had a "reasonable cause" to investigate.

The school has not reopened.

Now Kelly Clark, a lawyer for nine students, is going to court for $14 million dollars in damages. The lawsuit lists numerous abuses.

"Unnecessary physical restraint, denial of meals, sleep deprivation, light deprivation, sound torture. They would play the same song, over and over again. Strip searches, forced marches. Forcing the plaintiffs to beat on inanimate objects until their hands bled," Clark said.

Clark concedes that the military may use some similar techniques to break down and then build up new soldiers.

But he argues, these were children, not adults.

"There’s no 15-year-old marines. You at least theoretically signed your own name on the dotted line. And you’re there of your own volition. And I would suggest that even the most aggressive boot camp out there does not have some of the things that we’re alleging here," Clark said.

Clark says he doesn’t plan to rely on the state’s investigation for his lawsuit. He says he’ll build his own case, using the testimony of the students who are now in their 20s and 30s. The state chose not to comment on Wednesday’s lawsuit.

Mt. Bachelor Academy’s attorney issued a statement (see the complete statement below) saying the school never condoned or participated in the mistreatment or deprivation of any students.

It also says the program was specifically designed for troubled students who had failed to progress in other settings. The statement says the program aimed to help kids confront the worst of their behaviors and take ownership of them. The school says its approach proved successful at producing positive, life-changing — and, in some cases, life-saving — results.

While we have not yet had the opportunity to evaluate the allegations in the complaint filed today, we would like to go on record that Mount Bachelor Academy was successful in resolving the dispute with the Oregon Department of Human Services last fall after abundant evidence was collected that showed the allegations of abuse made to the Department were unfounded. DHS initially took action based on students’ allegations, but withdrew its orders, including the suspension of Mount Bachelor Academy’s license, after further information became available. Given the favorable terms of the settlement agreement, we agreed to dismiss our various legal proceedings against the state. We also independently decided to leave Mount Bachelor Academy closed due to the fact that the sudden and erroneous closure of the campus effectively shut the program down the year prior.

For over two decades, Mount Bachelor Academy (MBA) positively changed the lives of over 1,000 troubled young people. MBA was a program specifically designed for troubled students who had failed to progress in other settings. It was designed to help kids confront the worst of their behaviors and take ownership of them, whether that be substance abuse, sexual acting out or other issues. This approach proved successful at producing positive, life-changing – and, in some cases, life-saving – results. The numerous positive testimonials provided by families and students over the years further attest to the success of MBA.

MBA and its parent companies never condoned or participated in the mistreatment or deprivation of any students. As we understand, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit attended MBA prior to its acquisition by a nationally recognized network of therapeutic schools and programs that espouse comprehensive best practices and safety protocols. While we cannot comment on specific allegations from individual students due to HIPAA privacy regulations, we vigorously deny any and all charges of mistreatment. Greg Chaimov

POSTED: 1:42 pm PDT July 6, 2011

PORTLAND, Ore. — Nine former students of one of Oregon’s best known “tough love” boarding schools, a facility east of Prineville that was shut by the state two years ago, filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging emotional, physical and sexual abuse.The suit is being brought by attorneys Kelly Clark, Steve Crew, Gilion Dumas, Kristian Roggendorf, Peter Janci and the Portland law firm O’Donnell Clark and Crew, who often bring child abuse cases in Oregon and around the nation.The suit alleges claims of battery, negligence, and infliction of emotional distress against Mount Bachelor Academy and its parent companies, Aspen Education Group and CRC Health. The suit seeks more than $14 million in compensatory damages, and punitive damages will be sought as well.An attorney for the school’s operator later issued a statement denying the charges. That statement is in full below, after the rest of the release about the lawsuit’s allegations:Located 26 miles east of Prineville, the controversial “therapeutic boarding school” known as Mount Bachelor Academy was closed by the state of Oregon in November of 2009 based on the findings of an investigation related to charges of systemic abuse and neglect.According to a report by the Oregon Department of Human Services, Mount Bachelor Academy reportedly used “punitive, humiliating, degrading and traumatizing” tactics as “treatment” 00– an approach some say stems from the Synanon self-help group of the 1960′s, which was rejected as a cult by mainstream mental health community by the late 1970s. At the time of its closure in 2009, Mt. Bachelor Academy reportedly had more than 75 staff supervising approximately 90 students who were being charged a tuition of $6,400 per month.“The so-called ‘treatment’ that these children were forced to endure on a daily basis at Mt. Bachelor Academy is obscene. Not only did the program ‘break kids down’, it did nothing to build them back up,” said Kelly Clark, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “We intend to prove that this wasn’t education, it wasn’t treatment and it wasn’t ‘tough love’ – this was abuse.”The plaintiffs in Wednesday’s suit, who all attended Mount Bachelor Academy in the late 1990s, allege: that they were subjected to regular psychological abuse and shaming, including being required to reenact traumatic experiences (such as prior instances of child sexual abuse) in front of their peers; that they were subjected to extreme isolation and prolonged deprivations of food, water, shelter, and basic medical care; that students were required to go days with little or no sleep and were also regularly forced into “chain gang” style labor; that phone calls to their families were limited and were monitored by Mt. Bachelor Academy staff; and that parents were instructed by staff not to believe their children if they claimed malfeasance or abuse – i.e., the children will lie, it is all part of the treatment process, parents were told.The allegations in the lawsuit are consistent with the findings by the Oregon Department of Human Services. In late 2009, following a seven month investigation, DHS found multiple incidences of “abuse and neglect” and “serious violations of Oregon’s licensing standards.”The DHS report cited nine substantiated claims of abusive practices, including “punitive, humiliating, degrading and traumatizing” activities such as “sexualized role pay and reenactment of traumatic events, such as prior physical or sexual abuse.” The state also found that these were not isolated incidents; instead, “many of [the abusive] behaviors fell within the range of behavior expected, encouraged or condoned by the Mount Bachelor Academy program itself . . . .”DHS determined that “MBA poses a serious danger to public health or safety of children . . . [and] should not be permitted to continue operating as a therapeutic boarding school for children.” Thereafter, in November of 2009, the state gave Mt. Bachelor Academy 72 hours to shut down its program and remove students from its facility. The facility closed on November 3, 2009. Later, in October 2010, as part of a settlement of a suit by Mt. Bachelor against the state contesting the DHS findings of abuse, Aspen Education Group and CRC Health Group (the parent company’s of Mount Bachelor Academy) agreed that DHS had reasonable cause to believe that abuse or neglect had occurred at the school, and that DHS had a reasonable basis to investigate and to seek corrective actions.The lawsuit names Mount Bachelor Academy and its parent companies as defendants. Those include Aspen Education Group – a national conglomerate of therapeutic boarding schools which, at its peak had nearly 40 youth programs throughout the United States – as well as Aspen’s parent company, CRC Health Group. CRC Health Group is a large national healthcare corporation owned by Bain Capital, a private equity firm with $65 billion in assets.4Wednesday’s lawsuit is part of a larger response to decades of abuse and mistreatment in so-called “tough love” facilities – both inside and outside of the Aspen Education Group.According to previous news reports, at least four children have died in Aspen-owned facilities since 2004. One of those incidences occurred in Oregon in 2009 – the death of student Sergey Blashchishen during a wilderness hike in the Redmond-based Sagewalk Wilderness School.Blashchishen, a minor at the Sagewalk facility, collapsed in August of 2009 while hiking on his second day Aspen’s Sagewalk program. Staff had reportedly ignored repeated signs of a serious medical problem, and the boy died at the scene. The lead sherif’s investigator on the Sagewalk case recommended that the Lake County district attorney file homicide charges. Sagewalk had previously been the subject of the nationally broadcast ABC television series “Brat Camp” in 2005.As Peter Janci, one of the Plaintiffs’ attorneys explained,“Many ‘tough love’ schools have been a breeding ground for abuse – isolating vulnerable kids and subjecting them to debunked so-called ‘treatments’ by unqualified staff, while their parents are kept in the dark and bilked out of tens of thousands of dollars.”Problems of abuse, injury and even death are present throughout the “tough love” industry. Some reports indicate that more than two dozen teenagers died in such facilities between 1990 and 2001.The lawsuit is one in a growing number of actions by individuals who survived these facilities, only to be left with serious, long-term psychological injuries. Several weeks ago, a civil suit was filed against Silverado Academy in Utah for claims related to a staff member’s sexual abuse of at least 10 boys.Previously, in 2006, attorneys for another group of individuals filed a major lawsuit alleging neglect, fraud and abuse against the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools and related entities. That suit is still pending in federal court in Utah, and now includes 353 plaintiffs who allege they were wronged by therapeutic boarding schools and their related entities.“This is a watershed moment in exposing organizations that have profited from broken promises to desperate families,” said Clark. “We believe that institutions like Mount Bachelor Academy need to be exposed for what they are and held accountable for the permanent damage they have done to the lives of vulnerable teenagers entrusted to their care.”Clark and his firm are among the most prominent child sexual abuse attorneys in the nation, having brought over 300 claims against such organizations as the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, the Boy Scouts of America and dozens of other youth-serving organizations.Clark has twice won landmark child abuse cases at the Oregon Supreme Court, and last year was lead counsel in a six week sex abuse trial against the Boy Scouts of America resulting in a jury verdict of nearly $20 million.—A response from Greg Chaimov, a lawyer with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, on behalf of client Mount Bachelor AcademyWhile we have not yet had the opportunity to evaluate the allegations in the complaint filed today, we would like to go on record that Mount Bachelor Academy was successful in resolving the dispute with the Oregon Department of Human Services last fall after abundant evidence was collected that showed the allegations of abuse made to the Department were unfounded.DHS initially took action based on students’ allegations, but withdrew its orders, including the suspension of Mount Bachelor Academy’s license, after further information became available. Given the favorable terms of the settlement agreement, we agreed to dismiss our various legal proceedings against the state. We also independently decided to leave Mount Bachelor Academy closed due to the fact that the sudden and erroneous closure of the campus effectively shut the program down the year prior.For over two decades, Mount Bachelor Academy (MBA) positively changed the lives of over 1,000 troubled young people. MBA was a program specifically designed for troubled students who had failed to progress in other settings. It was designed to help kids confront the worst of their behaviors and take ownership of them, whether that be substance abuse, sexual acting out or other issues. This approach proved successful at producing positive, life-changing – and, in some cases, life-saving – results. The numerous positive testimonials provided by families and students over the years further attest to the success of MBA.MBA and its parent companies never condoned or participated in the mistreatment or deprivation of any students. As we understand, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit attended MBA prior to its acquisition by a nationally recognized network of therapeutic schools and programs that espouse comprehensive best practices and safety protocols. While we cannot comment on specific allegations from individual students due to HIPAA privacy regulations, we vigorously deny any and all charges of mistreatment.

Nine ex-students sue, say they were mistreated at central Oregon school for troubled teens

Published: Wednesday, July 06, 2011, 3:02 PM     Updated: Wednesday, July 06, 2011, 8:16 PM

By Helen Jung, The Oregonian The Oregonian

Nine former students of a Prineville-area school for troubled teens are suing the now-defunct school’s parent company, saying teachers and staff humiliated, isolated and abused them as part of its curriculum.

The complaint, which was filed today in Multnomah County Circuit Court, detailed students’ accusations:

One teen, a girl who had suffered sexual abuse as a child, was forced to repeatedly engage in provocative role-playing with older males, the complaint states. Another student, who suffered from asthma, was forced to sleep outdoors in below-freezing temperatures. Staff members also denied him food, sleep and use of a restroom and withheld his asthma inhaler despite asthma attacks that were brought on by their tactics.

The suit seeks nearly $14.3 million from the Mount Bachelor Academy, its parent company Aspen Education Group, and Aspen’s parent company, CDC Health Group Inc.

The school shut down in December 2009, about a month after receiving an emergency suspension order from the state’s Department of Human Services, which had investigated the abuse allegations.

"The so-called treatment," said Kelly Clark, an attorney for the plaintiffs, "was not education, was not treatment and was not therapeutic. We intend to prove that it was abuse, pure and simple."

 The company issued a statement saying that it had not had the opportunity to review the claims. But it argued that it had resolved its dispute with the state and noted that the state withdrew its emergency order to close the school.

 That September 2010 settlement notes that the state agreed to withdraw its emergency suspension order because the school was already closed.

Clark and his law firm have pressed hundreds of claims against the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America. Clark last year won a nearly $20 million judgment from the Boy Scouts of America on behalf of a sex-abuse victim last year.

This story will be updated with more information.

– Helen Jung

Reading about a recent criminal sex abuse trial in Medford, Oregon recently, I was stunned at what I learned.  A child was asked to "demonstrate" how she was abused by her stepfather, complete with a mattress being brought into the courtroom.  Now, of course, I have no right to an opinion about whether the man is guilty or not.  But, as this well-written Mail Tribune editorial points out, assuming that the child was abused– which is what any judge must do in such a situation– did no one in the courtroom, judge, prosecutor, victim’s advocate, see what this was likely to do to a child who has been abused?  It is the worst kind of re-creation of trauma: done in public with hostile adults standing by ready to shame the child!  I don’t of course question the motive of the judge or prosecutor: I do question their judgment.   It tells me how far we still have to go in helping even the legal profession understand the life-scarring impact of abuse.

As a child sex abuse attorney who has represented many, many victims of priest sexual abuse, Boy Scout sexual abuse, Mormon sexual abuse, and child sexual abuse in a variety of other contexts, I have seen firsthand the deep need that survivors have for a genuine apology from those who harmed them—the perpetrators of the abuse and those in institutional positions of responsibility who failed to protect children from abuse. In my last blog, I posted on the nature of a true apology, and examined some pseudo-apologies, explaining why such half measures do not achieve any healing or forgiveness.  In this post, I want to tell a story of one of the very few true apologies I have ever seen in doing this work, and one of the most genuine apologies I have ever seen in any context.

A number of years ago, the parents of a four year-old little girl came to me deeply distraught at having learned that their daughter, along with several other children, had been repeatedly molested by an employee of a large athletic club, part of a national chain company. This 22 year-old man, who was soon after convicted of multiple counts of child sexual abuse, would often worm his way into the child care area of the club, and was allowed by unsuspecting childcare workers to play with the children.  During this play, he would frequently abuse these small children, as a hidden video camera later showed.  As the situation became clear during the criminal investigation, the parents became convinced that the club had been badly negligent, both in failing to do a full background check on this man, but also in failing to supervise the child care area, as the videos made plain.  The parents wanted accountability and they wanted change, so that this did not happen to anyone else, but they did not want to file a lawsuit if they could avoid it. So we made an out of court claim against the athletic club and they offered to mediate the claim. 

A few months later, after a day with a skillful mediator, we settled the claim—for a confidential amount of money for the future needs of the child. We also secured an agreement that the organization would do a comprehensive review of their child safety policies, bring in outside experts to assist with this project, and include my clients in the process every step of the way, allowing them to have input and to make suggestions.  And—most important of all to the parents—we negotiated that an executive of the company would come to Portland and meet with them face to face, to make a personal apology for the company’s mistakes. “An apology,” I said to the mediator, “not some meely-mouthed statement of regret.” I was thinking of all the half and pseudo apologies I had heard from so many people in positions of responsibility for the safety of children at the end of cases, so many bishops and bureaucrats and insurance executives.

So it was that a few weeks later we had a meeting in my office—the parents, me, two lawyers for the company and the executive.  I must admit, when I was first introduced to the executive, I was disappointed.  I guess I had expected some silver-haired CEO with an air of “top guy”—but instead here was a young woman, not much older than my clients, perhaps in her mid-thirties.  She introduced herself as the “Vice President for Human Resources”—meaning she was in charge of writing policies regarding the supervision of employees.  So, clearly she was the one who would head up the “policy review” process outlined in our settlement.  But who was going to make the apology? I wondered.  It didn’t take long to find out.

(Now, I should say at this point that I recreate this conversation from memory, not notes, which I did not keep, and so I might not have all the dialogue just right. But I remember it like it was yesterday, such an impact it had on me.)

”I’m so glad you agreed to meet with me,” started the young woman, clearly nervous and unsure of herself, “for I am absolutely committed to changing our policies so that nothing like this ever happens again, and we will do whatever it takes to make sure of that.”  Hmmm.  A little blunt, I thought, but so far, so good. 

She was then silent for a long time and looked down.  Her voice changed, she shook her head and looked directly at the parents.  “No, wait…Before we start that process,” said she, “I want to say something first.  I want you to know that I’m a parent, too. I have a five year old, a beautiful five year- old little boy”—at this her eyes started to well with tears– “and I just want you to know that, if this ever happened to my child, I would be so upset, so angry, so enraged, I don’t know what I would do.  I cannot even imagine what your life has been like for the last several months.  So I am here to say how very sorry I am at what happened to your daughter.  I just cannot imagine your pain and anger….”  Now, at this point I expected her to stop, as I had seen happen with so many other organizations, after a representative had given some version of “I’m sorry this happened to you.”   After all, though this young woman was obviously sincere, so far all she had really done was to show deep empathy for what had happened to this family. Now, don’t get me wrong– deep empathy is great, and I wish more organizations would practice it as genuinely as did this executive.  But so far, it wasn’t an apology. It was just an expression of empathy. 

But not for long.

“And I want you to know that I know, and my company knows, that we completely failed you here,  and we failed your daughter”— by now, real tears flowing down her face and her voice breaking—“ and I am so, so sorry. I would give anything if we could go back and prevent what happened to your little girl.  I know that we can’t do that, and so all I can offer you, on my own behalf and on behalf of my company, is a genuine, deep, unconditional apology.  I am and we are very sorry and apologize to you and your daughter.”

You could hear a pin drop. The parents were still. The mother slowly started to speak.  “You know,” she said, “that is all I really wanted to hear.  What you said really matters to me, and I believe you that you and your company are sorry….Thank you.”  “Yeah,” echoed the father softly, “I appreciate your kind words, and I accept your apology.  Now we can all go to work to change things so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”   And so we did, and the organization is now significantly safer for children than it was before.

The power of an apology is an amazing thing, if it is given sincerely and without equivocation, as this story shows.

As a lawyer and an advocate for survivors of Catholic priest abuse for nearly two decades, I read with interest Professor Thomas Plante’s article in the Huffington Post recently concerning the so-called John Jay study on the causes of the Catholic Church’s child abuse problem. Many readers will recall that the Study concluded, in part, that one of the causes was the turbulence and changing mores of the 1960’s—a conclusion that has drawn widespread derision amongst commentators. Professor Plante—who consulted on the project at the request of John Jay—took a more serious approach to his commentary, and his article deserves a serious response.

I agree with the professor that more needs to be done in terms of organizational oversight and accountability within the Church. I also agree that the John Jay Report was by all fair measures an independent research project that was not “rigged” as Plante puts it, by the Catholic bishops.

However, in his article, Professor Plante makes some conclusions that do require clarification and at times, correction. For instance, the John Jay Report is not comprehensive in the sense that it covers every aspect of the priest abuse crisis. It clearly passed over in silence the role the clerical culture played in the sexual abuse of minors. Plante states definitively that celibacy and homosexuality are not causally related to the crisis. While this is true as far as it goes, yet, celibacy, for sure, is an integral part of the Catholic clerical culture. Richard Sipe, perhaps the leading expert in the world on priest abuse and the clerical culture, has done extensive research on the subject of celibacy. As a former priest and a therapist, he has completed a 25 year study on the subject of celibate/sexual behavior of priests specifically.  Thomas Doyle, an ordained Catholic priest is also an highly learned expert on the subject. He has noted that, “…the influence of mandatory celibacy and the sub-culture of which it is an integral part play a major role in the socialization and maturation processes of the men who will eventually violate minors. The clerical culture should have been the subject of the $1.8 million venture because if looked at closely and honestly it would have yielded information that not only provided believable reasons for the abuse nightmare but valuable though radical steps to take to avoid similar travesties in the future.”

Professor Plante also claims, “The study also shows that the vast majority of abuse cases occurred between the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s. Ninety-four percent of all cases happened before 1990 and 70 percent of offenders were ordained before 1970.” This is simply not true. How do I know this? Certainly, it is well documented that the problem of child sexual abuse has haunted the Catholic Church for centuries, even millennia. (Interested readers will want to read “Sex, Priests, and Power,” written by Sipe, Doyle and canon lawyer and former priest Patrick Wall. ) So, for the study to pretend that the “problem” is one that arose in the last decades of the 20th Century is simply disingenuous. Moreover, I have seen too many Catholic Church documents that prove that Church leaders, at least some of them, knew full well the scope of the problem in the US back before 1950.. For example, Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald, founded the Paracletes in 1947 in order to deal with those priests who are abusing minors. In 1964, Fitzgerald wrote a letter to a bishop acknowledging that 3 out of every 10 priests he counseled were there for the sexual abuse of minors. In the early 1960’s the same Fr. Fitzgerald wrote a letter to then-Pope Paul VI warning him about the prevalence and sinister nature of priest sexual abuse of minors. Beyond that, I have seen candid letters from the 1950’s from bishops to heads of religious orders making clear that at least some bishops knew only too well about the abuse problem. Even the Vatican issued a letter to the world’s bishops in the early 1960’s about how to deal with the phenomenon of priests abusing minors.

In the Huffington Post article, Professor Plante states that the American Church has received the majority of sexual abuse claims that it will ever receive, because those who’ve been abused have had “incentive” to come forward recently. This statement is somewhat surprising from a psychology professor. For it is virtually beyond serious dispute in the mental health fields that most children aren’t capable of coming forward to talk about their abuse for long periods of time, even decades, because of the traumatic and confusing nature of the abuse itself.

Finally, Plante makes the following comment regarding the sociological make-up of priest abusers, “Let’s also be very clear that the report found that the vast majority of clergy sex offenders are not pedophiles, but rather situational generalists violating whomever they had access to and not seeking out young pre-pubescent children of either gender. They violated whoever was available to them at the time.”

So…. What’s the point? Is a “situational generalist” who abuses children better than a pedophile who does? Should Catholics breathe a sigh of relief about this? I think not. For what remains clear is that priests who abused minors took very specific and calculated steps to target them. These priests groomed their victims by showering them with attention, gifts, special favors, and a certain sense of specialness. The resulting damage—emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually—was profound. So, no matter what label Professor Plante wants to give these priests, they abused children.

I appreciate Dr. Plante’s willingness to share his insights concerning the John Jay Study. However, with respect, I do believe he raises more issues than he answers. The problems with the John Jay study cannot be simply explained away so easily—nor can the problem of priest abuse of children in the Catholic Church.

The news that the John Jay College has determined that the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church had as its cause under-trained and under-supported priests, coupled with the turmoil of the 1960′s–and not celibacy or homosexuality as its cause– has generated all sorts of comments and criticisms. Many of these comments are accurate, like the criticism from SNAP– Survivors’ Network of Abuse by Priests– that the report is wholly silent about the role that the bishops and their naivete, denial and cover ups played.

Now, it may come as a surprise, but I do not think the study is wholly wrong in its basic conclusion– that the pedophilia problem was not "caused" by celibacy or homosexuality. I have written on this very topic before. To state the obvious, the modern problem of abuse of children by priests was caused by extraordinary high numbers of pedophiles in the priesthood– either drawn to the priesthood because of their pedophilia or as "products of the system." Less obvious, the problem was made worse by the Church’s abysmal system for selecting, training and monitoring priests; by a systematic failure of the Church to educate priests about how to live a celibate life and yet still be balanced and whole persons; and by bishops who made the problem worse by recirculating dangerous priests. My friend Richard Sipe, a former priest who has studied and written about the abuse problem in the Church for forty years, and who has testified on behalf of victims in hundreds of cases, has written about all of this extensively– most interestingly that the "cause" is not celibacy.

But the question that the John Jay Study does not answer– indeed the question that John Jay was not apparently asked– is how did the pedophilia "problem" become a full on "scandal," one that not only devastated thousands of innocent children, but also deeply, irrevocably scarred the image and credibility of the Catholic Church? For I take it as a given that society would not have been wholly shocked over the last ten or fifteen years by revelations that the Catholic Church had an active pedophilia problem. Indeed, similar revelations have come out about the Boy Scouts of America, the LDS (Mormon) Church, and other such organizations, and as of yet no great national scandal has resulted. I say this because, as of yet, the public has not yet been saturated with story after story of how the hierarchies of these organizations engaged in a systematic and calculated cover up of the problem. But the "problem" of abuse in the Catholic Church became a worldwide "scandal" once it began to become clear that this was not just a problem of the actions of a number of sick and twisted priests, but was fundamentally a problem of disintegrating spiritual integrity, and the actions of too many bishops, cardinals and others in high places who, over and over again, here, there, and seemingly everywhere, refused to act in the Spirit of Christ and do the right thing. This is the "cause" of the scandal.

And it is truly tragic: not only did it visit unfathomable suffering upon the most vulnerable and innocent members of the Church, the children, but it scarred, perhaps permanently, the respect that society once bestowed upon the Catholic Church. As a Christian, when I hear radical secularists ridiculing Christianity, especially Catholicism, because of the child abuse scandals, I cringe at the knowledge that it was the actions of the Church leadership– at least if not moreso than the actions of the pedophiles themselves– that provided the ammunition for the Church’s enemies to use against it.

So the John Jay study is perhaps not so flawed, at least as far as it goes. The problem is that it does not go far enough. It does not ask the biggest question– not what caused the "pedophilia problem," but rather, what caused the "pedophilia scandal?" It is not John Jay’s fault that they did not answer this question; after all, they were not asked.

Here is an interesting piece exploring the various rationales that churches sometimes use to avoid reporting suspected child abuse. While the author concludes that these cases should be reported, it is remarkable the mental gyrations he has to go through to reach that conclusion. 

"Whether the Church is subject to the laws of civil government" is a strange question as phrased. Granted, there may be a fair question about the extent to which the Church–or any private organization of goodwill– is subject to an unjust law of civil government. But that is not one that can be fairly applied to child abuse reporting laws. No serious thinker would claim that child abuse reporting laws are unjust; and the author certainly does not so suggest.

 All in all, I wish more pastors, priests and bishops thought this way. At least they would get to the right result: suspected abuse would be reported to civil authorities.

Peter Robert Stibal, a former Boy Scout Troop Leader, has been found guilty of 4 felony counts of sexual assault on 4 former minor troop members. Stibal sentencing is likely in June. The first degree sexual assault charges carry with them stiff penalties including more than 14 years in prison each. Prosecutors have already vowed to seek the high end of the guidelines due to the aggravating circumstances of the particular crimes. In addition to the charges for which a jury found him guilty, Stibal will be tried on separate counts for the possession of child pornography on his computer. Stibal’s arrest and conviction is the latest of legal troubles for the Boy Scouts of America nationally. The sexual abuse of minor boys has plagued the organization for years now and the resulting lawsuits has demonstrated the Boy Scouts lack of adherence to their own mandated policies for the protection of children.

As a result of the Philadelphia Grand Jury’s Report released on February 10, 2011, four Philadelphia priests were criminally indicted for their role in the sexual abuse of minors.  One of those priests, Monsignor William Lynn had served the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as Vicar General (the Archbishop’s right hand man) from 1992-2004.  Lynn faces two criminal counts of child endangerment.  The criminal indictments are unprecedented in that a church’s “manager” has never before been indicted for his role in the conspiracy and cover-up that allowed the sexual abuse of minors to go on unabated for decades. 

In addition to the criminal indictments, the Grand Jury Report had another important consequence-the public revelation of an archdiocese’s modus operandi in concealing sexual abuse and covering up for the offending priest.  The Report reveals for the first time the extent to which the former Archbishop of Philadelphia, Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua was directly involved in the conspiracy and cover-up.  Decades before he became a cardinal, Fr. Bevilacqua was involved in the transfer of an abusive priest, Fr. Romano Ferraro to the Archdiocese of St. Louis where Ferraro abused three more minors.  In 1971, Ferraro was dishonorably discharged from the military for sexual abuse.  Bevilacqua welcomed him back to Brooklyn and gave him another assignment.  Throughout the 1970’s, Ferraro abused minors in the Diocese of Brooklyn.  In the early 1980’s Bevilacqua quietly arranged for Ferraro to be transferred to St. Louis. 

Bevilacqua became the bishop of Pittsburgh and was later transferred to Philadelphia where he was made a cardinal.  He was promoted through the ranks of the Catholic hierarchy while covering up for sexual predators.  It’s not as if Bevilacqua’s superiors in Brooklyn were not unaware of Bevilacqua’s actions.  Before becoming a bishop in Pittsburgh, he exchanged memos about Fr. Ferraro with then-Bishop Mugavero of Brooklyn. 

Anthony Bevilacqua has been rewarded throughout his career for protecting the interests of the Church while allowing minors to be preyed upon by sexually abusive priests.  This is what the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report has revealed.  We would never have known if such a grand jury had not been convened and the Church documents been made public.  That’s why the Church’s own internal documents are crucial to putting an end to the sexual abuse of minors.  Kudos to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office and the good citizens of Philadelphia who made this happen!

US Senator Scott Brown has made public the sexual abuse he endured as a child.  The Republican Senator from Massachusetts made the revelations to Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes in preparation of the release of his new book Against All Odds, which is set for publication next week. 

In the interview which will be aired this Sunday on 60 Minutes, Brown tells a tale that many of us working with abuse survivors have heard before-Brown was assaulted by a camp counselor and threatened to keep quiet or suffer the consequences.  As a child, Brown was vulnerable to sexual predators because of his living circumstances.

"When people find people like me at that young vulnerable age, who are basically lost, the thing that they have over you is, they make you believe that no one will believe you,” Brown said, who said the counselor touched him during several incidents. “Fortunately, nothing was ever fully consummated, so to speak, but it was certainly, back then, very traumatic.”

Despite anecdotal evidence—thousands of men standing up in the last decade to tell their stories of sexual abuse at the hands of priests, ministers, Boy Scout leaders and other trusted male mentors—the myth about child sexual abuse, that “it rarely happens to boys” is still prevalent.

But, as this excellent article points out, that myth is dissolving.  This is the point that came out so powerfully in the recent series of broadcasts done by Oprah Winfrey on male survivors of abuse.  Since I do so much work on behalf of child abuse survivors, often I have people ask me, “why are so many men coming forward these days?” The answer is the same one as for women—because they can no longer carry the secret, and because, finally, society is giving them permission to speak their truth. Except that for men, that permission has been slower in coming.

It is obvious that acceptable ideas of what it means to be a man in this society have been badly confused and repressive, until just the last few decades.  It was not that long ago—my boyhood, for instance—that the image of “a real man” given to boys was centered on war heroes, cowboys, athletes and other tough guys.  And, of course, much of that was, and remains, a powerful and in many ways positive ideal for men.  After all, society, families and children need men to be strong, resilient, determined. 

My own father, rest his noble heart, was one of these: one of the “greatest generation”—a WW II marine, a creative and energetic entrepreneur, an avid outdoorsman. As Tom Brokaw articulated so powerfully in his “Greatest Generation” book several years ago, men like my father weathered the depression, beat back fascism in all its forms, built an American economic powerhouse, and stared down communism.

So thank God for this kind of male strength.  But there was a cost to this as well, a deep and personal cost for entire generations of these men. They were not “allowed,” and certainly not encouraged, to be very open about their inner lives, their sufferings, their struggles. Big boys don’t cry. Indeed. 

But starting with the so-called “Men’s Movement” of the 1970’s and 1980’s, men began to question this motif. That this movement wandered around in the wilderness for a few decades before it began to be rooted and balanced does not change the fact that what was happening in the poetry of Robert Bly, the stories of James Hillman, the recovery literature aimed at men, the new theologies setting forth a different vision for male virtue, all were uncovering some very important truths and freedoms for men.  One of the most central insights from all this was the notion of “male authenticity,” the idea that, whatever else it means to be a man, it must include being authentic. 

That means that men, to be truthful and whole and alive, must embrace all aspects of themselves—outward energy and power and adventure, for sure, but also a rich inner life, which must include being able to understand and articulate their own emotions, struggles, and a living spiritual journey. 

All of which brings us back to male survivors of child abuse. In my work advocating for adults abused as children, probably 75% of those who have come to see me have been men.  Often I am the first person ever who they have told about their abuse—including their own wives, partners, parents, siblings, best friends, even counselors and ministers.  These men have carried a secret— one of the deepest and darkest secrets a man can carry, “As a boy I was sexually touched by a man” —for decades.  

It is significant, I think, that they come to tell a man, and in my case, a man with his own kind of past brokenness, one that I often freely tell them about, for in those shared struggles a bond is formed and they know they are not alone in their struggle for authenticity.

But it began a decade or two ago, with just a trickle of a few incredibly courageous men who began to break the secret. A handful of gutsy men decided, against all fear and shame, to take society at its word, that it is acceptable to talk about their inside struggles. And so they stared down their own demons and they defied society to call them unmanly for speaking out about the unspeakable things that happened to them as boys.  

Now, a second generation of men is standing on the broad and powerful shoulders of these early mythbusters.  They, too, are coming forward and breaking silence, naming abusers, demanding accountability from churches and youth organizations and the Boy Scouts of America, and from any other institution of trust that failed them by harboring child abuse. 

And they are getting healed, transformed and energized, even if it sometimes takes—as it has for many of the men I have helped—years, even decades, of hard work in counseling, in anger management, in drug or alcohol recovery, for them to find their own way.  These are some of the most authentic men I have ever met, and I salute—yes, that most traditional male gesture of respect and honor—I salute them.

And so the myth continues to dissolve.

One of the blogs I read as part of my personal daily spiritual meditations today had as its accompanying photograph an image of a child, an angelic girl of about six years, apparently on her first communion. She is dressed in a white lacy sweater, with a brilliant white scarf of some sacred meaning, and she is holding a framed icon of the Virgin and Child.  She is the very image of innocence and promise.  

When I see young children these days, whether in a photograph like this, or in a school play, or at the shopping mall, I am often both overjoyed and saddened. Overjoyed at the gift of innocence in a child, at the promise and hope in a sweet face, at the pure joy in young laughter and play. Saddened because I see in those faces the early images of the hundreds of boys and girls—now men and women —abused as children, for whom I have fought over the last fifteen plus years.

In that moment, I think what it means for them that they were not able to grow naturally and happily in those early years. They never had the chance to pass naturally into fair youth, through healthy adolescence and into the fullness of young adulthood.  They had that inner flame of childlike joy so present in this photograph snuffed out by the blunt instrument of child abuse, the flame never to be rekindled, at least not to its original radiance. 

One such woman, I will call her Samantha, was raped at age seven by her family’s trusted priest, a man who over the prior decade had repeatedly been reported to the Catholic hierarchy for “inappropriate attentions” toward young girls.

To this day, she is haunted by the memory of standing at the bathroom sink, frantically washing out her dress to remove all traces of the encounter,  while the priest was standing over her and scolding her because she—she, mind you—had made such a mess.   How does a girl recover from that kind of trauma?  How possibly in later adolescence or young adulthood try to learn healthy intimacy?  How does she find again the kind of total trust that she had placed in this representative of God? 

In Samantha’s case, miraculously, she has come a long way toward healing, has through years of therapy and hard work built herself into a strong and vibrant woman of insight and wisdom, and dedication to helping others.  But others are not so constituted, and are never ever able to cobble together anything like a normal life: perpetually dogged by dark depression, shrieking anxiety or the numbness of substance abuse.

And between Samantha and these there is a whole continuum of brokenness and healing.

So when I contemplate young children, such as the girl in the photograph, I ask myself: does this work I do make any difference? Since the laws of virtually all states do not allow for aged criminal prosecutions, is it enough to try to get these people some kind of justice—even civil, that is to say, monetary, justice?  Does it really do any good for these men and women to have society say to them, through the mechanism of a settlement or jury verdict, “this should not have happened to you, and here is a rough symbol of justice”?   Does any of this really help them, or help protect kids in the future? 

The men and women I represent think so.  They tell me so, often years later when they stop by to see me or I bump into them on the streets. They tell me stories, like Samantha’s, of how they are now freer than they were, how they found inside strength and courage they never knew they had, power to keep going and to rebuild their lives, inside and out. They tell me to keep on fighting, and they thank me. Irony of ironies: they thank me. 

No. It is I who should thank them— I who twenty years ago at the age of 34 had become a selfish and abusive alcoholic, and thus a prematurely washed up politician; I who thought I had forever thrown away any chance to make a positive difference for anyone; I who because of these men and women have been given a second chance at life, a chance to redeem myself.

So now, when I see the child in this photograph, or when I see all those kids running and laughing at the beach or in the snow, I stop and look. I take it in.  I send them all the positive energy I have, I utter all the fervent prayers that this old and scarred heart of mine can find, and I thank God—and the men and women who have asked my help—that I have been given such work as this, to advocate for children such as these, children young or old. 

A recently released1997 Vatican letter to the Irish Bishops reveals the Vatican instructing Irish bishops to keep allegations of priest sex abuse to themselves and not share them with civil authorities including the police. The Vatican letter is a response to a 1996 Irish bishops’ initiative to cooperate with police in apprehending priest sex abusers.

The letter undermines the Catholic Church’s credibility since they have always maintained that they never stopped bishops from cooperating with law enforcement in the investigation of priest sexual abuse cases.

As a Catholic priest abuse lawyer, I’ve heard bishops and archbishops swear in deposition testimony and in other court proceedings that they were never told by higher Church authorities that they were not to involve civil authorities. This newly revealed letter proves otherwise.

The letter was signed by no less than the papal representative to Ireland, a high ranking authority in the Church. He is the pope’s emissary to Ireland. When he signs such a formal letter, he is speaking in the name of the Pope himself. If the Irish bishops were told in no uncertain terms not to cooperate with police in child sex abuse cases involving priests, it’s safe to assume the American bishops were under the same orders.

The directive came from the very top of the church hierarchy. All along, I’ve been saying the church documents reveal the truth. This latest bombshell revelation proves it. There is no equivocation in the letter, it’s crystal clear. The Catholic Church has been involved in a massive cover-up in which thousands of children were sexually abused.

Here is a compelling story about a priest who has decided to stand with sex abuse victims, even if that means standing up to his diocese. It is, of course, a welcome thing to see, and Fr. James Connell is to be applauded for his actions.

But a deeper question arises: why is this news? Why unusual? Should it not be the case that this action– a priest standing with wounded members of his flock, speaking the truth even if it means taking on his own superiors — is the norm, and not the exception?

I have been a child sexual abuse attorney now for over 15 years; I have represented over 300 men and women abused as children, the vast majority of them victims of abuse in the Catholic Church.

And yet, aside from this story, I know of only one other active priest who has spoken out for victims, even if and when that means taking on the Catholic heirarchy: Fr Tom Doyle, the most morally courageous man I know. For nearly 30 years now, this relentless man has tirelessly taken a stand on behalf of victims, and against secrecy and cover-up. But how can it be that we almost never hear of this kind of thing happening?

Surely there are thousands of good and faithful priests in the Catholic Church. This is what the Vatican and the American heirarchy repeatedly tell us, and we all know good and holy priests. So why do so few stand up and speak out? The only answer I can come up with is that the pressure put on these men to stay quiet and "show obedience" is immense. If true, then that is a terribly wrong and misguided attempt by the heirarchy to protect the reputation of the Church.

I am a man of Christian faith– though a deeply flawed one, to be sure. But one of the things that this means is that I expect more from the leadership of the churches, especially the Catholic Church.

Anyone who holds the Christian faith in high regard, and the Catholic Church, expects the Church to do the right thing. And so I– we– have been especially disappointed over the years at the response to the abuse crisis. Surely the Church would have been better off to fling open the doors, get the truth out in the open– "we had and still have a serious child sex abuse problem in this Church, and even the bishops and heirarchy have sinned in hiding it; we apologize unconditionally and beg forgiveness, and we commit ourselves to doing whatever it takes to heal victims and protect children"– than to take the path of denial and cover up that it has taken.

People can and will forgive a wrong, even a serious wrong, if there is real remorse, repentance and change. But this is not the path the Church has taken. And, because of that, stories like this one are an exception, and not the rule. That is not only a tragedy for tens of thousands of victims; it is a tragedy of the first order for the Catholic Church.

Good for John Kroger. The Court’s decision, while unfortunate, probably was the only one it could have reached, given the language of the statute, remembering that the Court’s job is to interpret– not create– the law. The link between possession of child porn and child abuse is clear and immediate. When in 1991 we passed the first law in the nation making possession of child porn a crime– a law which I was honored to co-sponsor– this is exactly the link we were targeting. The Legislature needs to act immediately to fix this problem.