Church allowed abuse by priest for years

В центрі уваги Church allowed abuse by priest for years January 06, 2002 This article was prepared by the Globe Spotlight Team: reporters Matt Carroll, Sacha Pfeiffer, and Michael Rezendes; and editor Walter V. Robinson. It was written by Rezendes. Since the mid-1990s, more than 130 people have come forward with horrific childhood tales about how former priest John J. Geoghan allegedly fondled or raped them during a three-decade spree through a half-dozen Greater Boston parishes. Almost always, his victims were grammar school boys. One was just 4 years old. ADVERTISEMENT Then came last July’s disclosure that Cardinal Bernard F. Law knew about Geoghan’s problems in 1984, Law’s first year in Boston, yet approved his transfer to St. Julia’s parish in Weston. Wilson D. Rogers Jr., the cardinal’s attorney, defended the move last summer, saying the archdiocese had medical assurances that each Geoghan reassignment was “appropriate and safe.” Sign up for the Today's Headlines newsletter→ The St. Julia’s assignment proved disastrous. Geoghan was put in charge of three youth groups, including altar boys. In 1989, he was forced to go on sick leave after more complaints of sexual abuse, and spent months in two institutions that treat sexually abusive priests. Even so, the archdiocese returned him to St. Julia’s, where Geoghan continued to abuse children for another three years. Now, as Geoghan faces the first of two criminal trials next week, details about his sexual compulsion are likely to be overshadowed by a question that many Catholics find even more troubling: Why did it take a succession of three cardinals and many bishops 34 years to place children out of Geoghan’s reach? Donna Morrissey, a spokeswoman for Law, said the cardinal and other church officials would not respond to questions about Geoghan. Morrissey said the church had no interest in knowing what the Globe’s questions would be. ADVERTISEMENT Before Geoghan ever got to Weston in 1984, he had already been treated several times and hospitalized at least once for molesting boys. And he had been removed from at least two parishes for sexual abuse. In 1980, for instance, he was ordered out of St. Andrew’s in Jamaica Plain after casually admitting he had molested the seven boys. In 1981, after a year’s sick leave, Geoghan was dispatched to St. Brendan’s in Dorchester, with little chance he would be placed under scrutiny: His pastor for most of his 3 1/2 years there, the Rev. James H. Lane, has told friends he was never warned that Geoghan had a history of sex abuse. In September 1984, complaints that Geoghan had abused children at the Dorchester parish prompted Law to remove him. Two months later, the cardinal gave Geoghan a fresh start at St. Julia’s. Law allowed Geoghan to stay in Weston for more than eight years before removing him from parish duty in 1993. But even that decision to recast Geoghan as a functionary at a home for retired priests did not prevent him from seeking out and molesting children, according to the multiple civil suits and criminal charges filed against the 66-year-old Geoghan. Finally, in 1998, the church “defrocked” Geoghan, removing him from the priesthood. Geoghan’s criminal defense attorney, Geoffrey Packard, said his client would have no comment on any of the allegations against him. Geoghan’s first trial on sexual molestation charges is scheduled for Jan. 14 in Middlesex Superior Court. The second, more serious set of charges are due to be tried in Suffolk Superior Court in late February. In the civil lawsuits, Geoghan has no attorney, and is not contesting the charges. The church’s likely legal defense, as Rogers hinted in July, will be that doctors deemed Geoghan rehabilitated. Church records obtained by the Globe note that Geoghan was indeed medically cleared for the St. Julia’s assignment - but not until he had been at the parish for a month. In 1984, there were still some clinicians who believed child molesters could be cured. But other specialists had long since warned Catholic bishops of the high risk that priests who had abused children would become repeat offenders. What’s more, specialists in child sexual abuse and attorneys who have represented victims said, it ought to have been apparent to the archdiocese by 1984 that someone with Geoghan’s record of habitual sexual abuse should not have been returned to a parish. “In Geoghan’s case, the church defied its own most basic values of protecting the young and fostering celibacy,” said A.W. Richard Sipe, a former priest. Sipe, a psychotherapist and expert in clergy sexual abuse, said he has long believed that the Catholic Church has been too slow to deal with priests who molest children. The Spotlight Team found evidence that one of Law’s top subordinates worried that Geoghan would cause further scandal at St. Julia’s in Weston, where he began work on Nov. 13, 1984. On Dec. 7, Bishop John M. D’Arcy wrote to Law, challenging the wisdom of the assignment in light of Geoghan’s “history of homosexual involvement with young boys.” Within the next week, two doctors cleared Geoghan for parish duty, according to an archdiocesan chronology that is in court files. It reads: “12/11/84 Dr. Robert Mullins - Father Geoghan `fully recovered.’ . . . 12/14/84 Dr. John H. Brennan: “no psychiatric contraindications or restrictions to his work as a parish priest.” The files also contain a poignant - and prophetic - August 1982 letter to Law’s predecessor, the late Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, from the aunt of Geoghan’s seven Jamaica Plain victims, expressing incredulity that the church to which she was devoted would give Geoghan another chance at St. Brendan’s after what he had done to her family. “Regardless of what he says, or the doctor who treated him, I do not believe he is cured; his actions strongly suggest that he is not, and there is no guarantee that persons with these obsessions are ever cured,” Margaret Gallant said in her plea to Medeiros. “It embarrasses me that the church is so negligent,” Gallant wrote. Archdiocesan records obtained by the Globe make it clear why Gallant wrote her irate letter two years after the abuse: Geoghan had reappeared in Jamaica Plain, and been seen with a young boy. The records note that the next month, “Another letter from Mrs. Gallant. Why is nothing being done?” RELATED: More coverage of the Spotlight report From the Jamaica Plain case alone, the archdiocese’s top officials were aware of Geoghan’s attraction to young boys, and how he picked his victims: The affable Geoghan usually befriended Catholic mothers struggling to raise large families, often alone. His offers to help, often by taking the children for ice cream or praying with them at bedtime, were accepted without suspicion. That is how 12-year-old Patrick McSorley, who lived in a Hyde Park housing project, allegedly became a Geoghan victim in 1986 - two years after Geoghan’s assignment to Weston. According to McSorley, Geoghan, who knew the family from St. Andrew’s, learned of his father’s suicide and dropped by to offer condolences to his mother, who is schizophrenic. The priest offered to buy Patrick ice cream. “I felt a little funny about it,” McSorley recalled in an interview. “I was 12 years old and he was an old man.” Riding home after getting ice cream, McSorley says, Geoghan consoled him. But then he patted his upper leg and slid his hand up toward his crotch. “I froze up,” McSorley said. “I didn’t know what to think. Then he put his hand on my genitals and started masturbating me. I was petrified.” McSorely added that Geoghan then began masturbating himself. When Geoghan dropped a shaken McSorley off at his mother’s house, he suggested they keep secret what had taken place. “He said, `We’re very good at keeping secrets,’ “ McSorley said. For years, McSorley has battled alcoholism and depression. And now, as the plaintiff in one of the lawsuits against Geoghan, McSorley is bitter. “To find out later that the Catholic Church knew he was a child molester - every day it bothers me more and more,” McSorley says. Many documents yet to be unsealed The letters from Bishop D’Arcy and Margaret Gallant were among documents found by the Globe during a review of the public files of 84 civil lawsuits still pending against Geoghan. But for all Geoghan’s notoriety, the public record is remarkably skeletal. That is because almost all the evidence in the lawsuits about the church’s supervision of Geoghan has been under a court-ordered confidentiality seal granted to church lawyers. In November, acting on a motion by the Globe, Superior Court Judge Constance M. Sweeney ordered those documents made public. The archdiocese appealed to the state Appeals Court, arguing that the Globe - and the public - should not have access to documents about the church’s inner workings. But the appeal was denied last month. The records, including depositions of bishops and personnel files, are scheduled to become public on Jan. 26. The cardinal and five other bishops who supervised Geoghan over the years have been accused of negligence in many of the civil suits for allegedly knowing of Geoghan’s abuse and doing nothing to stop it. Never before have so many bishops had to defend their roles in a case involving sexual molestation charges against a single priest. The five, all since promoted to head their own dioceses, are Bishops Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Robert J. Banks of Green Bay, Wis.; William F. Murphy of Rockville Center, N.Y.; John B. McCormack of Manchester, N.H., and Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes of New Orleans. Law and the five bishops have all denied the accusations in legal filings. No American diocese has faced a scandal of similar dimensions since 1992. That year, in the Fall River Diocese, more than 100 of former priest James Porter’s victims surfaced publicly with evidence that Porter’s superiors - including, in the 1960s, then Monsignor Medeiros - shifted him from one parish to another as parents learned of his compulsive abuse. Since 1997, the archdiocese has settled about 50 lawsuits against Geoghan, for more than $10 million - but with no confidential documents ever made public. Plaintiffs in the 84 pending lawsuits are refusing to settle their claims as easily, and the church’s internal documents are subject to being revealed in the litigation. So the archdiocese has moved aggressively to keep information about its supervision of Geoghan out of public view. One example: When Law was named a defendant in 25 of the lawsuits, Rogers asked a judge to impound any reference to the cardinal, arguing that his reputation might be harmed. The judge refused. On Dec. 17, Rogers sent the Globe’s attorney, Jonathan M. Albano, a letter threatening to seek legal sanctions against the newspaper and its law firm if the Globe published anything gleaned from confidential records in the suits. He warned that he would seek court-imposed sanctions even if Globe reporters asked questions of clergy involved in the case. For decades, within the US Catholic Church, sexual misbehavior by priests was shrouded in secrecy - at every level. Abusive priests - Geoghan among them - often instructed traumatized youngsters to say nothing about what had been done to them. Parents who learned of the abuse, often wracked by shame, guilt, and denial, tried to forget what the church had done. The few who complained were invariably urged to keep silent. And pastors and bishops, meanwhile, viewed the abuse as a sin for which priests could repent rather than as a compulsion they might be unable to control. Even Massachusetts law assured secrecy - and still does. For all the years that Geoghan was molesting children, clergymen were exempt from laws requiring most other caregivers to report incidents of sex abuse to police for possible prosecution. It was only after last summer’s revelations that the archdiocese dropped its long-standing opposition to legislation adding clergy to the list of “mandated reporters.” But the legislation died in committee. Until recent years, the church also had little to fear from the courts. But that has changed, as predicted in a 1985 confidential report on priest abuse prepared at the urging of some of the nation’s top bishops, Law among them. “Our dependence in the past on Roman Catholic judges and attorneys protecting the Diocese and clerics is GONE,” the report said. Since mid-December, the Globe has been requesting interviews with Law and other Church officials. But the answer was delayed until Morrissey’s call late Friday, in which she said she would not even accept questions in writing. Asked if that meant the Archdiocese had no interest in knowing what the questions were, Morrissey replied: “That’s correct.” In preparing this article, the Globe also sought interviews with many of the priests and bishops who had supervised Geoghan or worked with him. None of the bishops would comment. Of the priests, few would speak publicly. And one pastor hung up the phone and another slammed a door shut at the first mention of Geoghan’s name. After ordination, a record of abuse There is no dispute that Geoghan abused children while he was at Blessed Sacrament in Saugus after his 1962 ordination. The archdiocese has recently settled claims on accusations that he did, and the church records obtained by the Globe note that Geoghan in 1995 admitted molesting four boys from the same family then. The unresolved issue in the remaining suits is whether church officials knew of the abuse at the time. A former priest, Anthony Benzevich, has said he alerted church higher-ups that Geoghan frequently took young boys to his rectory bedroom. In news reports after accusations against Geoghan surfaced publicly, Benzevich was also quoted as saying church officials threatened to reassign him as a missionary in South America for telling them about Geoghan. Benzevich told his story to Mitchell Garabedian, who represents nearly all of the plaintiffs in the civil suits against Geoghan and church officials, according to an affidavit Garabedian filed. But court records reviewed by the Globe show that when Benzevich appeared in Garabedian’s office for a pre-trial deposition in October 2000, he was represented by Wilson Rogers 3d - the son of Law’s principal attorney. Then, under oath, Benzevich changed his story. He said he was not certain that Geoghan had had boys in his room. And he said he could not recall notifying superiors about Geoghan’s behavior with children. In a recent interview with the Globe, Benzevich said he does indeed remember Geoghan taking boys to his room. He said Geoghan often sought to wrestle with young boys - and liked to dress them in priest’s attire. But he repeated his sworn assertion that he does not recall notifying his superiors. Before his deposition, Benzevich said, Wilson Rogers 3d approached him, told him the church was trying to protect him from being named as a defendant, and offered to represent him. His earlier statements to reporters, Benzevich said, had been misconsTrued. Garabedian, citing the confidentiality order, refused to discuss the Benzevich issue with the Globe. The church’s financial liability in the pending suits could increase dramatically if there is evidence Geoghan’s superiors knew of his abuse. Geoghan’s second assignment - in 1966 to St. Bernard’s in Concord - ended after seven months, according to a detailed chronology of Geoghan’s service prepared by the church which does not explain why the assignment was so abbreviated. The pending lawsuits include accusations that Geoghan again abused young boys from several families in his next parish, St. Paul’s in Hingham, between 1967 and 1974. One of his alleged victims, Anthony Muzzi Jr., said in an interview last week that in addition to his own abuse, his uncle caught Geoghan abusing his son. The uncle ordered Geoghan to leave his house, and complained to the priest’s superiors at St. Paul’s. T