In the mountainous north of New Hampshire, within spitting distance of both Canada and Vermont, is the village of West Stewartstown. It was there that John Joseph Labbé was born, in November of 1956. It was a rather peculiar start to winter, that year; New Hampshire experienced quite the warm spell, whereas the Southwest was frozen stiff and the Great Plains were blanketed with snow.
West Stewartstown, like the rest of Coos County, was historically a center of the lumbering industry. As the twentieth century grew on, the area shifted towards tourism, for those looking to escape the heat of New England’s humid summers. Work in West Stewartstown was drying up, prompting John Sr. and Marcelle Labbé to relocate ten minutes south to Colebrook, long-thought to be the hub of Coos County.
John Joseph Labbé settled into Colebrook with his brother and five sisters. From Monday to Friday, they attended the Colebrook Academy. Saturdays were busy days, spent either laboring or gallivanting in the vast New Hampshire wilderness. Sundays, however, belonged to Father George St. Jean and St. Brendan's Catholic Church, where the young John Labbé was an altar boy.
John Sr. often provided a shuttle service for fellow churchgoers, including Father George St. Jean. The priest would typically concede the passenger seat to another, opting instead to sit in the backseat with young John. More than once, Father St. Jean would place his hand upon young John’s lap, and he would covertly massage the boy beneath his altar robes.
The young John would sit, stiff and uncomfortable, while his priest fondled his genitals and his father—unaware of the molestation occurring behind him—shuttled them all to Mass. If ever young John appeared nauseated, Father George St. Jean would lean over, furrowing his brow with a convincing aura of confidence, and he’d whisper, “Easy now, John. God wants this.”
Rev. George St. Jean
John Labbé graduated from the Colebrook Academy in 1975. He moved south to Grafton County, where he attended Plymouth State College. It was there that he met his future wife, Rebecca Sue “Becky” Wolverton. They were married for eighteen years before his death.
Those who knew John Labbé described him as a hard worker, a handyman, and a lover of animals and the outdoors. He bought a home in Plymouth and spent months working on it and improving upon its value. He also found pleasure in gardening and landscaping. His neighbors knew him for his farm, with which he raised chickens, harvested eggs, and sold firewood.
Others described John Labbé as self-sufficient and courageous. Not only had he strove to build a sustainable life for Becky and himself, at their eleven-acre home in Plymouth, but John had been in the process of pulling the veil from the cowl of the Catholic Church. They had been playing a quiet shell game—shuffling and hiding priests accused of sexual crimes—in order to protect their vast, infallible, and authoritarian reputation.
In May of 2010, John Labbé filed a civil lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Manchester and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, alleging that a certain “Father George St. Jean” had molested him over a hundred times during a span of four years, in the mid-1960s. The suit asserted that the Catholic Church was aware of his misdoings during and prior to his assignment at St. Brendan’s in Colebrook.
It was said that John “carried the message for a lot of people.” He was “brave.” He broke the first big news about Colebrook since the Beauty Queen Killer had his cross-country murder-spree cut-short there in 1984 — long after Father St. Jean had been placed six feet underground.
There would be no justice for the Reverend, it seemed, and neither would there be any for John Labbé.
On September 8, 2011, a friend of John’s trekked to his Plymouth home, looking to do a spot of business. He circled around back, where he found John; he was splayed on the dusty wood deck of his backyard shed, soaked in his own blood. Three bullet wounds scorched his chest. His eyes were open, as if he were lost in thought.
His discoverer ran into the house, whereupon he found John's wife Becky and alerted her to call for paramedics. She placed a 9-1-1 call at 2:30 PM. John Labbé was pronounced dead twenty minutes later. He was 54 years old.
Becky had returned to the house shortly prior to John’s discovery; she had presumed—with some degree of accuracy—that he was in his workshop, and that he was fine. Investigators determined she was unaware of the incident and they absolved her of any suspicion. As for the friend, not only had he arrived to find a cold body, he had neither motive nor opportunity.
To make matters hairier, no weapon was found in the vicinity. Whoever the shooter was, they had come to John’s residence with the explicit intent of killing him. John was caught off-guard; given his final position on the shed floor, he had turned towards the doorway before taking three bullets in the chest and keeling over. The shooter then left the scene, as quickly as he or she arrived, disturbing neither the shed nor the home on their way out.
The Labbé Residence is located deep within the forested sprawl of Texas Hill Road, in a remote southwestern part of town. The nearest neighbor was a tenth of a mile down the road; in the opposite direction was Rainbow Falls—a serene feature of the Ruth Walter trailhead—and the southbound traffic of the Daniel Webster Highway. Furthermore, between Newfound and Squam Lake is a swath of rural life, where recreational gunfire is not uncommon.
There had been no witnesses; there had been no eavesdroppers; there had been no suspicious activity in the area, as far as anyone was aware. If there had been, it was unlikely anyone was around to observe it. John’s death was thus ruled a homicide.
Investigators called into question his whereabouts of the prior two days; his actions were under scrutiny, presuming he may have been involved in some shady dealings, but a retracing of his steps revealed nothing outside of his typical schedule. The autopsy similarly revealed nothing out of the ordinary: three bullet wounds resulted in shock and a significant loss of blood.
With no leads to follow, the case quickly went cold. Becky posted a $10,000 reward for any information that led to the arrest and prosecution of John’s killer.
The Tuesday following his death, at eleven o’clock in the morning, John Labbé was sprinkled with holy water and draped with a baptismal cloth. Words were spoken to honor his memory, typified by one mourner’s sentiment for an untroubled hereafter: “John, may you rest in peace and enjoy your new free life with God…”
John was interred at the St. Brendan Catholic Cemetery in Colebrook. It was here, between 1965 and 1969, that Father George St. Jean had sexually assaulted him over a hundred times.
John never told anyone of the abuses he endured. The Labbés were a devout Catholic family, and all nine of them had trusted and revered their priest. In their eyes, St. Jean was a messenger of God. Therefore, to some degree, when St. Jean asserted that his nefarious acts were “God’s will,” John Labbé believed him.
Father St. Jean had used this line and others like it to coerce his victims into silence. Nearly forty years after his abuse ended, in February of 2008, John decided to break this silence.
He reported the crimes against him between the ages of 9 and 13. The Diocese of Manchester and the oblate order of the United States told him they would look into his allegations. They failed to mention that he was not the first to come forward with such a story.
There were other victims. In 2009, a report filed by the NH Attorney General stated that Father George St. Jean was believed to have molested scores of other children, in towns across northern New Hampshire as well as in Tyngsboro, Lowell, and Dracut, Massachusetts.
Such a revelation was outrageous, and John Labbé was beside himself. The Catholic Church had failed him. Father St. Jean had been shuffled through a dozen assignments in his career, and there were sexual abuse allegations coming from every church he had once helmed.
The way John Labbé saw it, the diocese and oblate order alike either knew or should have known about St. Jean’s behavior.
In May of 2010, he filed a civil suit against the Diocese of Manchester and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Province of the United States, based in Washington, D.C. He was one of the first in New England, outside of the Spotlight revelations of 2002, to accuse the Catholic Church of covering-up sexual abuse against children.
Attorney Jessica Arbour represented John Labbé in 2010, for the firm Mermelstein & Horowitz of Miami. She now services the city of Minneapolis and is nationally recognized for her experience in bringing cases against the Catholic Church.
Arbour made it clear from the beginning that John was not seeking monetary reparations with his lawsuit. She admired his integrity, calling him “courageous… very simple, soft spoken… a very sweet guy and [a] brave man.”
She was floored when Becky called to inform her of John’s death. She had “no indication anyone would do this to him.”
David Clohessy, executive director of SNAP—the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests—was deeply saddened by the news, though he was not surprised. He said John “was more concerned with deterring future cover-ups than he was in quietly settling with the Catholic hierarchy.”
“The easier path for abuse victims is to secretly approach top church staff seeking well-deserved financial restitution. John chose the harder path — publicly exposing wrongdoing and inspiring others to do the same. We are grateful for his courage and compassion.”
Arbour was able to settle John’s case with the Diocese of Manchester, as well as another case—filed in July 2010, following John’s example—by a man going by "John Doe." The two lawsuits had sought an admission of guilt from the various church officials who had kept hidden hundreds of sex crimes against children. In particular, they sought a formal apology for the crimes perpetrated by Father George St. Jean in the 1960s and 1970s.
John Doe had been an altar boy alongside John Labbé at St. Brendan’s in Colebrook. Between 1967 and 1968, from ages 11 to 12, Doe was frequently molested by Father St. Jean. The priest had first lured young Doe into his office by offering to show him his coin and stamp collections. This tactic continued, as the lawsuit alleged, and Doe came to recognize that being pulled away from group activities “to discuss these hobbies” meant he was about to be molested once more.
Whereas John Labbé had filed his lawsuit under his own name, John Doe used his moniker to remain anonymous during the inquiry. He had long-feared blowback from the Catholic community if he revealed himself as a plaintiff against the Church. (The Hillsborough Court clerk has since released his name, as my associate came to discover during our investigation.)
John Doe made it explicit in his lawsuit that the courage John Labbé showed in his allegations of May 2010 was what prompted him to realize “that the Diocese and the Oblate Order were negligent in their supervision and retention of St. Jean as a Roman Catholic priest.”
(If you have an interest in reading further into their allegations, the two settled lawsuits are archived as JOHN DOE v. DIOCESE OF MANCHESTER, STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE Case No. 226-2010-CV-00471, HILLSBOROUGH, SS. SUPERIOR COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT and JOHN LABBE v. DIOCESE OF MANCHESTER , STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE Case No. 10-C-0464, HILLSBOROUGH, SS. SUPERIOR COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT.)
The two lawsuits were in their adolescence when John Labbé was killed. The New Hampshire Department of Justice has since been under the suspicion that his murder is somehow connected to his allegations against Father George St. Jean and the Catholic Church, though the evidence of such a link remains undiscovered.
While the Catholic Church admitted guilt by settling outside of court, the Reverend Father George St. Jean was never held accountable for his sins. He died in Lowell, Massachusetts, on September 19, 1982. He kept no record of his victims, but it’s speculated that he sexually abused somewhere between twenty and seventy boys during his career.
John Doe had experienced the majority of his abuses at an office adjoined to the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace — a Catholic church located on the southern edge of Colebrook, less than two miles from St. Brendan’s. (The Shrine of Our Lady of Grace shuttered its doors on July 1, 2014; St. Brendan’s continues to operate, although it’s now known as “North American Martyrs Parish.”) On the contrary, John Labbé endured the majority of his abuses at St. Brendan’s and in the backseat of his father’s car, when shuttling between the two churches.
The Reverend Father George St. Jean has been accused of molesting at least three boys during his priesthood in Colebrook. He had worked in this town from 1958 to 1959, and again from 1965 to 1972. He was assigned in the interim to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Retreat House in Hudson, New Hampshire. The OMI Retreat House, as it is today, was built in 1936 to serve as a residence for “religious leaders, lay persons, teens [seeking a career in priesthood], and individuals with special needs.”
The OMI Retreat House held various events throughout the year, and their doors were often open to the public. Families living in the area would often send their kids over to aid the resident brothers in their chores. Leo Demers, a long-time resident of Hudson, recalled frequenting the OMI House with his friend Fran to perform yard work in exchange for ice cream.
The reason for St. Jean’s sudden removal from Colebrook is unknown, though a gap of six years seems like long enough for rumors about his misdeeds to wither on the vine. This might, too, be speculation, but six years at a fraternal house seems like enough time to practice discretion.
Whatever the case, Father St. Jean returned to Colebrook in 1965 and renewed his molestation of boys in Coos County for seven years before being hastily reassigned to the Oblate Center in Natick, Mass. He was there for only two years before he was transferred once again—this time, to the Oblate Fathers Residence in Lowell, Mass., where he spent the remainder of his life.
The reports of abuse that came from Massachusetts and New Hampshire alike, all condemning Father St. Jean, had contended that the Manchester Diocese knew or should have known about the abuse allegations, yet they still found assignments for St. Jean that put him close to children.
No representatives of the Catholic Church have admitted to shuffling St. Jean around as a means to protect their reputation, but this practice had been performed—admittedly so—by the Diocese of Manchester, the Archdiocese of Boston, and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Their self-serving, cruel, and covert operations were publicized by the Spotlight investigations that led to the Catholic shake-up of 2002.
The Bishop presiding over the Diocese of Manchester during this turbulent era was John Brendan McCormack. He was ultimately forced to admit his involvement in this abhorrent practice of ignoring sexual abuse victims to protect the image of the Archdiocese. He was, however, unpunished; he remained the Bishop of Manchester for some time.
Mere weeks after John Labbé and John Doe filed their civil suits—thereby threatening to reopen this old wound on the Catholic body—Bishop McCormack unexpectedly petitioned the Pope to be granted an early retirement.
Bishop John B. McCormack
Oxford defines Alieni iuris (adjective) as “Subject to another’s jurisdiction; subject to the authority or law of a foreign power or sovereign.” On the contrary, Sui iuris indicates “legal competence,” or “the capacity to manage one’s own affairs.”
The Catholic Church allows their eastern branches to operate Sui iuris, under canon law, but all others in the western world are committed to their superiors. In essence, the Archdiocese manages all individual parishes and their crises.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester operates 94 parishes, six schools, and four colleges, in addition to serving the nearly 350,000 Catholics that comprise a quarter of New Hampshire’s total population, “with 215 priests, 72 deacons, 405 lay religious (57 brothers, 348 sisters), and 10 seminarians.”
The ninth bishop to helm the Diocese of Manchester was the aforementioned John Brendan McCormack, serving from 1998 to 2011. Prior to 2002, McCormack had a reputation for protecting the pristine image of the Church, and going through any lengths to do so — even if it meant shielding pedophilic priests from the blind eyes of Lady Justice.
McCormack would consistently defend and protect those of the cloth who were accused of sexual misconduct, in spite of the evidence against them. He had no qualms with refuting, downplaying, or outright ignoring the pleas of brutalized children and their parents.
In the instance of 2002’s revelations, a particular fourteen priests were arraigned for sex crimes against minors committed “while in a religious role of power.” Granite State prosecutors found that these fourteen men had been on record—the Church’s private record—as child abusers since 1960, at the earliest. McCormack admitted to being aware of these crimes against minors, and to concealing them from authorities in order to protect the Church.
One of these men—Rev. Cote—had been paying to have sex with minors, and Bishop McCormack admitted to being aware of that, as well. He then acknowledged that most of these accursed fourteen were introduced back into the liturgical community, despite their crimes. He acknowledged, too, that this practice was inappropriate.
The fourteen men included the Rev. John R. Poirier of Holy Family Parish in Gorham; he was actively working at the time but was suspended given the circumstances.
Nine of the men were already retired; they were subsequently barred from performing ministerial work. These nine were Albion F. Bulger of Nashua; Joseph A. Cote and Romeo J. Valliere of Berlin; Eugene Pelletier, Albert L. Boulanger, Gerard F. Chalifour, Robert J. Densmore, and Raymond H. Laferriere of Manchester; and Joseph T. Maguire of Hyannis, Mass.
Three other priests were already suspended at the time of the allegations: Paul L. Aube and Francis J. Talbot of Manchester, and Stephen Scruton of Dover. Another—Conrad V. LaForest of Winnisquam—was on “sick leave” at the time. (This was a common term used to remove a priest temporarily, following a criminal accusation, before reassigning them to another parish. Father George St. Jean had been placed on “sick leave” at least three times.) As a result of his crimes, Fr. LaForest, too, lost the right to celebrate Mass.
There were five priests of note, in McCormack’s records, who were not convicted among the fourteen. Three of them had already been tried, convicted, and imprisoned for their sexual misconduct against minors during the 1990s. The Reverends Gordon MacRae and Roger Fortier were incarcerated at the time of the revelations, while Rev. Leo Shea had finished his six-year term early and was living quietly in Danbury.
The fourth—Rev. Frederick Guthrie of Newbury—had been arrested that prior November, in my hometown, for online solicitation of a minor. The fifth and final priest excluded from the state prosecution list was a serial child rapist by the name of John J. Geoghan.
Geoghan was one of the key figures in the 2002 revelations, considering that his particular church record was so saturated with stains it read as horrifically as the screenplay for a snuff film. Geoghan had molested at least 130 boys during his priesthood, and the Catholic Church was aware of every incident. He was briefly given “treatment” for his pedophilia before being reintroduced to the liturgical community in the Archdiocese of Boston—inevitably shuffled between six parishes across three decades—under the coordination of the Cardinal’s top aide: the future-Bishop of Manchester, John Brendan McCormack.
The assault that ultimately brought Geoghan to justice was his groping of a ten-year-old boy while in the swimming pool of a Boys and Girls Club in 1991. This incident came to light a few years later, prompting Pope John Paul II to finally defrock him in 1998. Geoghan was found guilty in January of 2002—thereby kickstarting the momentum of the Spotlight team’s investigations—and he was sentenced to nine to ten years in prison.
The Boston Archdiocese—eager to sweep Geoghan under the rug—had agreed to a $30 million settlement with 86 of his victims, but they reneged on that deal and coerced the class action plaintiffs to accept $10 million instead. Four other victims had elected to continue with litigations, though only the one boy from the Boys and Girls Club saw his case earn a verdict. Two rape victims had their cases thrown out for an expired statute of limitations; the third feared persecution and ultimately decided against testifying.
Massachusetts state prosecutors had appealed the ruling of the two thrown-out rape cases, but they never had the chance to be heard. On August 23, 2003, John J. Geoghan was strangled and stomped to death by Joseph Druce. The two were sharing a protective custody unit at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center—a maximum-security prison in central Massachusetts—when Druce jammed the door to Geoghan’s cell shut, produced a length of cord, and garrotted the pedophile until he was incapacitated.
Druce then threw Geoghan to the floor and jumped on his chest until it caved-in. Over a dozen correctional officers fought to get into Geoghan’s cell while Druce cleansed the Earth of him. (The security camera footage of this was somehow uploaded to YouTube from the prison.) Druce later admitted that he had planned the murder for over a month, and that succeeding would have been comparable to winning a prize. He was subsequently given a second life sentence, though no tears were shed for the loss of John J. Geoghan.
As the Spotlight team unraveled the stole from the neck of the Archdiocese, it became apparent that the investigations were not deterring McCormack from his criminal shell game. He reassigned the Rev. Ronald P. Cote to St. Patrick’s Church despite Cote having admitted to McCormack that he’d raped a teenage boy. The Bishop himself was arranging a pricey settlement to quiet the accuser’s family.
After this came to light, McCormack instructed Cote to tell his parishioners that “he had been subject to an investigation that has concluded he did nothing wrong,” and to leave the issue at that. Cote did as he was told, but his words were not believed. McCormack visited St. Patrick’s to quell the herd but they lambasted him for protecting Cote and installing a pedophile as their priest. The crowd grew restless and called for his resignation. McCormack restated that he was innocent of any wrongdoing; he then told the parish, “I have no intention of resigning. I am here to serve.”
But McCormack’s career actions have inspired an antithetical question: Who was he serving? Us, God, or the Diocese?
From 1984 to 1994, John Brendan McCormack was the top aide to the Archdiocese of Boston, working for Cardinal Bernard Law as his Secretary for Ministerial Personnel. He then served as the ninth Bishop of the Manchester Diocese, from Sept. 22, 1998, to Sept. 19, 2011—incidentally, ending his reign eleven days after the death of John Labbé. (Those with crinkled brows may decry this as more than a coincidence, but I’m sticking to the facts for now.)
In early 2002, as a consequence of the Spotlight investigations, McCormack released the names of fourteen priests with histories of sexual abuse who were still active in his diocese. The NH Attorney General’s Office spent a year investigating the scandal, ultimately reaching a settlement with McCormack in May of 2003 wherein the diocese agreed to pay $15.5 million to 176 victims in addition to accepting full responsibility for a perpetuated cycle of child abuse.
The defense counsel for the Manchester Diocese was attorney Ovide Lamontagne—a former high school teacher who obtained his law degree in Wyoming. At the time of the revelations, Lamontagne was fresh off a loss in a New Hampshire gubernatorial race and he was looking for more political ammo. Since he was a Catholic, representing this case was a perfect opportunity to engender support from local community leaders who shared in his persuasion.
On the opposite side of the bench was the prosecution—the NH Attorney General’s Office—which included attorney Kelly Ayotte. She was fresh off a successful conviction of the two perpetrators of the 2001 Dartmouth College murders when she was swept into the Catholic Church scandal. Aiding the prosecution, she assembled mountains of evidence to prove that Bishop McCormack and the Archdiocese of Boston had knowingly shielded child predators and deployed them to positions of power where they could continue their abusive behavior.
McCormack understood that the diocese was up against a wall of incriminating evidence, and playing it all out in court meant the Catholic Church would have its image sullied on the front page of the newspaper for months on end. He decided the best strategy was whatever salvaged their image the quickest; this meant opening their books, conceding in questioning, relenting to the prosecution, and concluding the investigation as soon as possible.
Most defendants who wish to avoid conviction will have their legal counsel protest and refute each parcel of proof and each word of accusation. While the bishop wished to avoid conviction, he believed escaping the spotlight was more important for the Church than the appropriation of blame. Thus, in litigations, he behaved and cooperated with the prosecution, and he asked Lamontagne to make like a dog and lie down.
Lamontagne later admitted this strategy was “not typical in terms of client requests,” especially for the Catholic Church, which had a centuries-long penchant for muscling opponents, stonewalling auditors, and playing the “benevolent innocence” card that all religious officials wear sewn into their sleeves.
Keen to McCormack’s strategy, Ayotte and the prosecution formulated a win-win proposal for the Manchester Diocese: the bishop and his dominion could avoid all criminal charges on the condition that McCormack sign an agreement with the Attorney General admitting that the state “possessed sufficient evidence to win a conviction.” McCormack would also acknowledge that the diocese had failed to protect children from sexual abuse and that this was a violation of criminal law.
McCormack agreed to the terms, becoming the first diocese in the United States to admit to such irresponsibility. The investigations were concluded, however the Attorney General’s Office continued their audit of the Manchester Diocese.
In March 2009, the Attorney General—who was, by this time, Kelly Ayotte—released an 879-page report on the corruption of the Manchester Diocese. The ten-thousand pages of paperwork used to assemble this report were also made public, thanks to New Hampshire's Right to Know law. A summary of the audit can be found here. A comprehensive list of all priests accused of sexual misconduct while employed at New Hampshire parishes and schools can be found here, while a more detailed list of those priests who were protected by Bishop McCormack can be found here.
Ovide Lamontagne went on to run for governor once again, as a Republican, but he lost to the former majority leader of the New Hampshire State Senate.
Kelly Ayotte resigned from her position as Attorney General shortly after releasing the audit on the Manchester Diocese. She turned her focus towards a vacant U.S. Senate seat in 2010, narrowly winning the Republican primary against her opponent, Ovide Lamontagne. She held the office for six years.
On August 10, 2010, Bishop McCormack submitted his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI. He asserted that he was retiring, and that his departure was in no way related to the gross sexual scandals perpetrated and uncovered during his tenure.
Rev. John J. Geoghan
“Sadly, for the people of the Diocese of Manchester,” said Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, an advocate for the safety of children in the Church, “Bishop McCormack brought his same regrettable lessons he learned about dealing with sexual abuse in Boston to New Hampshire.”
“Today, I know that that man knew,” a victim said of McCormack, regarding his abuse under Rev. Joseph Birmingham of Salem, Mass. The Reverend was not only a predator in the church, but also in the surrounding neighborhoods. “If we saw it was a gold car, we would dive into the bushes… If he took the corner sharp enough, you were caught. You had to go for a ride.”
53 men made allegations against Birmingham, with one alleging that McCormack had watched idly as the Reverend lured him into a rectory bedroom. McCormack denied this. His victims, however, know McCormack had been friends with Birmingham since they were in the seminary together, and they believe he let Birmingham’s behavior slide given their treasured bond.
“From my knowledge of Father Birmingham and my relationship with him, I feel he would tell me the truth and I believe he is speaking the truth in this matter,” McCormack wrote in a letter to a worried mother, in April of 1987, assuring her there was no “factual basis” for her son’s claim of molestation under Birmingham. McCormack shuffled his predatory compadre to another parish soon after. (He was relocated at least four times throughout his career.)
“Father Birmingham was having a feast on young boys,” another victim said. “When he finished at one parish and things got a little too hot, they shipped him off to another parish and served up another platter of young boys for him. He was having a banquet and the caterers were McCormack and other higher-ups that knew about Birmingham and what he was doing.”
McCormack later apologized, during the revelations, and he added that he would remain the bishop of the Manchester Diocese so as to “help in the healing process.”
“I saw him with my own eyes as he looked at us,” one victim said of McCormack. “There is no way he can deny this. This man’s record speaks for itself. He should resign as the bishop of the Manchester diocese and go with Cardinal Law wherever they want to go.”
Under duress, the bishop eventually admitted to believing a molestation accusation lobbed at Rev. Joseph Birmingham in 1970s. He had ignored it, and he did not supply his concerns to the Archdiocese or to the parish Birmingham was then transferred to in Gloucester, wherefrom later arose nearly a dozen more allegations.
McCormack became the Secretary for Ministerial Personnel in 1984. As the Cardinal’s point man, one of his primary duties was to institutionalize his practice of ignoring crimes, concealing the accused, and shielding the Church from allegations. (One instance in 1993 saw McCormack working to smother thirty allegations simultaneously.)
With any accusation, McCormack made no effort to investigate or determine if there were additional victims; he later stated in his testimony that he “could not recall” doing anything of the sort. Even when the occasional priest confessed to him about a transgression, McCormack did not ask if there were any victims prior to this one episode of sexual misconduct.
Following the testimony that revealed all of this information, various regional and national newspapers reported on McCormack’s history of immoral inaction. This angered the bishop, who decried their publication of his wickedness as “unfair and one-sided.” Had he been given the chance to review their articles before they were released, he said, he could have made “the necessary corrections.”
One victim was a mother of four who suffered from depression. She sought her local clergyman for counseling in the early 1960s. This man—Rev. James D. Foley—manipulated her, emotionally, and the twosome soon formed an extramarital affair.
She became dependent on him, so it only worsened her depression when Foley would leave her, which he frequently did, thereby sinking her into a panic; a withdrawal, like an abandoned child. On one occasion, she tracked him down in San Francisco and showed up on his doorstep; another time, she followed him to Calgary, Alberta. And Foley liked the attention; he liked her devotion.
They produced two children together—her two youngest—and neither her husband nor her other two kids were aware of it. One night in August of 1973, after canoodling with Foley, the woman took a few sleeping pills in preparation for his absence. As Foley redressed, she fell unconscious and began to foam at the mouth.
Rev. Foley took note of her shuddering body, splayed naked on the bed, and her glassy eyes as they rolled back into her head… and he left.
She died, exposed and alone, barely a mile down the road from a hospital. Her youngest child was three years old and asleep in her crib in the other room.
Foley had a long history of womanizing, and every damsel had the same story: she’d depend on him, he’d exploit her, and he’d leave. This behavior is what got him thrown out of a parish in Calgary, and later in San Francisco; his thrill for stringing-along vulnerable women is why he returned to visit those cities in the 1960s.
The publication of Rev. Foley’s personnel file was the straw that broke the camel’s back in the persecution of Bernard Law, the Cardinal of the Boston Archdiocese. He resigned a week later.
Bernard Law was the kingpin of the Catholic Church for the northeast region of America; he had complete authority over his priests and parishes, and he knew everything that went on within them. He knew about offertory collections; he knew about weekly attendance; he knew about community involvement; he knew about sexual misconduct. He knew about pedophiles in his employ. He knew everything, and he had McCormack sweep it all under the rug.
During the revelations, McCormack requested his congregation to not judge him based on anything he did south of the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border — as if the Cardinal’s point man for pedophilic priests was a separate person from the Bishop of Manchester. But as Rev. Wilfrid Paradis, a scholar on Catholicism in New Hampshire, says, McCormack “came with this baggage. You have to look at the whole thing. You can't say there are two men.”
Protestors gathered outside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross—the Mother Church of the Archdiocese of Boston—in the South End. Bishop McCormack made a surprise appearance, and a testy dialogue ensued. Those who participated later said “it was an entirely unsatisfactory conversation.” McCormack dodged every accusation and refused to admit blame, despite his signature being on dozens of records that authorized the reassignment of Paul R. Shanley, James D. Foley, Joseph Birmingham, John J. Geoghan, and other known predatory priests.
The angry crowd called him a “hypocrite,” a “charlatan,” and a “bold-faced liar.” McCormack shrugged it off; unlike his boss—Cardinal Law, who had already resigned—McCormack wasn’t going to acquiesce to the demands of the people. This only inspired more vitriol from the crowd.
"We've decided his fate should be the same as Bernard Law's,” one protestor commented. “His name is on as many documents, if not more, than Bernard Law's name… He's as guilty as Law was. We managed to oust Law, and McCormack's next…” Another woman chimed in, “We're not leaving here until he resigns!”
Local folklore says the protestors stood on those cathedral steps for nine more years.
Cardinal Bernard F. Law
Bernard Francis Law was born in 1931; he became Cardinal and Archbishop Emeritus on March 23, 1984, presiding over the Boston Archdiocese and all Roman Catholic dominions in New England. He retained this post until December 13, 2002, when he stepped down amid revelations that he had orchestrated the proliferation and cover-up of sexual abuses [often against children] by those under his employ. Thousands of pages of documentation within the Archdiocese confirmed his extensive knowledge of these predatory priests, their misdeeds, and the protections they were awarded by the Church.
Those accused of misconduct were pulled from their parishes and relocated to one far enough away that they would be unaware of their new priest’s checkered past. The church’s annual directories would list these priests, as they were shuffled from one parish to another, as being “on sick leave,” “absent on leave,” and “awaiting assignment.” The 1994 edition listed 107 names in these categories. The Archdiocese employed 650 priests at the time.
With nearly one of every six priests pulled from the docket at any given time, the Archdiocese came into a bit of a staffing issue. This was made worse by the momentary revelations of 1992, following the investigation of sexual abuses committed by Rev. James R. Porter of Fall River.
“The cardinal was running scared after the Porter case,” said one of the attorneys involved in the affair, “so the archdiocese paid what amounted to ‘hush money’ to settle cases. Their motive was to avoid scandal and hope it would all go away.” Two other attorneys, independently representing their own clients against Porter, also referred to the settlements as “hush money.”
Cardinal Law and then-Secretary McCormack were spooked by the fallout of Porter’s trial. They were aware that this would become a catalyst for other victims to step forward against their other priests, and the possibility for an avalanche of scandal was nearing certainty. The only way to avoid the inevitable bad press was to keep the allegations from reaching the public, which meant coercing any would-be plaintiffs into signing a confidentiality agreement in exchange for a monetary supplement.
In the ten years between 1992 and 2002, hundreds of claims were quietly settled without the involvement of the courts, to the tune of millions of dollars. At least seventy priests had their careers sustained for another decade as a result of the confidentiality agreements. One settlement of note occurred in the mid-1990s, when the Archdiocese paid a family $400,000 in ‘hush money’ regarding a string of “sexually explicit telephone calls” that serial child-rapist John Geoghan made towards their son.
Early into January, 2002, Cardinal Law was asked how many pedophilic priests he had protected over the years. He replied, “I cannot estimate the number.” As for the number of victims, there’s no possible way to know, but investigators have reasonably surmised the amount to be well into the thousands. As for the final decade of secrecy, the number of victims whose claims were quietly settled was tallied at over two hundred.
“I’m ashamed I took their money now,” said a victim who settled quietly with the Church in 1995. “I should have gone and reported it to the police, or filed a lawsuit and called a press conference to announce it. If we had done that, this problem would have been exposed long ago.” An attorney known for his representations against John Geoghan noted that, “obviously, confidentiality agreements are good for the perpetrator and his or her enablers since the secrecy allows for further wrongful acts to continue.”
David Clohessy, executive director of SNAP, commented on the core issue of these settlements: they mask public awareness, thereby decreasing the likelihood that we could ever know the true extent of such a crisis. As bad as it was to have pedophilic priests still working alongside children, it was made even worse by the fact that parents were kept ignorant to the danger.
This was so reprehensible that even some of the pedophilic priests once-employed by the Archdiocese held disdain for it. One lamented how easy it was for McCormack to conceal his crimes, thereby leaving the public in a blissful state of naïveté. “If the archdiocese really wanted to protect its other priests from scandal,” he said, “they would have gotten those of us who abused children out of there much earlier.”
“What they were really protecting was this notion that the Church is a perfect society.”
The Archdiocese’s volcano of dirty secrets sat dormant for decades, swelling and boiling, until it was finally uncapped by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Investigations team in 2002, following the conviction of defrocked serial child-rapist John Geoghan. The Globe’s unexpected coverage of five Roman Catholic priests—all accused of sexual abuse against children—inspired other victims to speak-up, and the subsequent ripple-effect of admissions created a national uproar — the magnitude of which was not seen again until the #MeToo Movement fifteen years later.
What began as a local investigation by the Boston Globe quickly captivated and infuriated the whole of New England before ultimately spiraling into a nationwide scandal and a worldwide upheaval in the Roman Catholic Church. The tense, high-stakes, fervent researching that began the Spotlight Investigations have since been chronicled in the aptly-named film Spotlight, which received universal acclaim and took home “Best Picture” at the 88th Academy Awards.
Their dedicated coverage earned them the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003. An archive of their in-depth reports can be found online, for free, courtesy of the Boston Globe.
It’s incredible how infallible Law and McCormack believed they were, atop their gilded throne with the crown of thorns. They found they could bury bodies in the 1970s, and they kept up their scheme—despite a consistent increase in social progressivism, corporate transparency, institutional responsibility, and earth-shattering allegations—into the new millennium. Victims were smothered; predators were covered; and all was quiet on the Catholic front.
With the particular protection of Rev. John J. Geoghan, the Archdiocese had unwittingly laid the groundwork for their demise. It doesn’t matter how infallible you believe yourself to be: if you think you can keep a man like Geoghan a secret, you’re a fucking imbecile.
As I touched upon earlier, Geoghan had molested at least 130 young boys during his priesthood. After each series of offenses, the Secretary of Ministerial Personnel—eventually, John McCormack—would remove him from the parish, temporarily place him on some form of “leave,” and then relocate him to another parish. The occasional accusation was killed with a supplement of ‘hush money.’
This pattern repeated on a loop from the 1960s through to 1998, when he was finally defrocked. The Church had to pay-out over $10 million to fifty of his victims, while—at the time of his conviction—there were still 84 cases regarding Geoghan yet to be heard.
Law had been aware of Geoghan’s predatory behavior almost as soon as he donned the Cardinal's cap. Law kept records proving, as far back as 1989, that he knew about Geoghan's frequent molestation of young boys—typically poorer kids, as they were less inclined to speak-up against him—and yet he still moved Geoghan around, from parish to parish, thus granting him the opportunity to molest further boys. And Law had no reason to believe Geoghan would stop on his own.
Sure, Law himself molested no children, but he aided his employees in criminal acts; he hid their crimes from the public and the police; he authorized the destruction of evidence and the buying of victims’ silence; he relocated predators in and out of new feeding grounds where the prey knew not of their danger; and he institutionalized a practice of lawbreaking. So he may not have been the criminal, but he sure-as-shit was an accomplice to criminals — hundreds of them.
On December 13, 2002, Pope John Paul II—in regard to “the damage done to the Church by Law’s repeated failure to remove abusive priests” from their posts—accepted Bernard F. Law’s resignation as Cardinal of the Boston Archdiocese. He left the city entirely, in favor of Rome, to commune with the Pope for a spell while McCormack tried to stem the tide Law left in his wake.
“The spiritual damage is incalculable,” said the chairman of a national review board designated to oversee the Catholic Church’s compliance with abuse-prevention policies. “How many children have dropped out of Catholic school? How many parents have declined to put their children in Catholic school? How many people have left the Catholic Church? This is absolutely horrific.”
The spokesman for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said that Law’s resignation “represents a significant step forward in the healing process, for abuse victims not only in the Boston diocese, but in dioceses across the country,” and this decision “sends a strong message that all priests and bishops will be held accountable.”
As a result of this scandal, Bernard Law became the highest-ranking church official in American history to lose his job on the basis of misconduct. In his final written statement as Archbishop, he said, “To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes, I both apologize to them and beg forgiveness… The particular circumstances of this time suggest a quiet departure. Please keep me in your prayers.”
After his commune with the Pope, at the end of that tumultuous year—immediately followed by two years “on leave” in Tuscany—Bernard Law returned to Rome, where he was appointed Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore: the largest Marian Catholic Church in Rome, and one of the Pope’s four most treasured churches.
The former Archbishop remained in Rome until his death in 2017, at the age of 86.
Rev. Paul Shanley
It’s quite a challenge of subjectivity to crown one child-molesting priest as “the worst” child-molesting priest. Of course, every predatory pedophile is abhorrible—they’re committers of arguably the most reprehensible sin there is—and no one victim had a “worse” sexual assault than another, because any and all sexual assault is deeply and permanently traumatic.
Then there’s the qualifiers: what trait is most integral to “the worst” of the abusive priests? Are they prolific, like Geoghan? Are they manipulative, like Foley? Are they sinister, like Birmingham? Are they as cruel as Cote? Or as cunning as Guthrie? Or do they put on an aura of trustworthiness, the way St. Jean and many others did?
What if there were someone who did it all? Would that man not arguably be “the worst” of the abusive priests?
Paul Shanley began his career in the streets of Boston in the 1950s. Within twenty years, he was ordained and soon became known among the community as the “street priest.” He didn’t dress like a priest—typically eschewing his vestments for blue jeans and growing-out his sideburns—and he didn’t undervalue misfits the way most priests did. No—instead, Shanley went out of his way to find, teach, and nurture these young lost souls, many of whom were runaways, drug-addicts, or troubled about their sexuality.
He went on to serve at St. Jean's Parish in Newton, Massachusetts, in the 1980s. At the end of the decade, in 1989, he moved to San Bernardino, and the proverbial “clock” on the statute of limitations for his crimes in Massachusetts stopped ticking. These varied, colored assaults of his were publicized during the Spotlight investigations of 2002, and—in 2004—he was defrocked by the Vatican. The following year, Shanley was incarcerated for one particularly-violent rape of a young boy in 1980—a crime whose punishability would have expired had Shanley not moved to California. He served only twelve years of his sentence—reduced for good behavior—and he was released from prison on July 28, 2017. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself…
Paul Shanley was often described as a narcissist who “viewed himself as a Christ figure.” He believed he was entitled to whatever he desired, whether that was fame, friendship, or flesh. He was a rebel; he wore leather, he smoked Kool cigarettes, he styled his hair with pomade, and he went to clubs — gay clubs, like the Ramrod and the Eagle. He was one of very few priests in that era who attended to the homosexual community. He held Mass in the dead of night for students, and he whispered prayers over the corpses of abandoned youths.
Carmen Durso—an attorney who later represented many of Shanley’s victims—once said after deliberations, “Paul Shanley, if he weren’t such a damned pervert, would be my hero… He said all the right things.”
Shanley was such a charming and saintlike figure that he had fans not only in the streets but in the Church, in the suburbs, in the media, and in city hall. He didn’t pretend to be a straight priest, and he didn’t want the orthodox life; he was an advocate for homosexuality before it was socially acceptable to even talk about it. He taped a series of essays on the topic, under names like “Counseling Parents of Gays” and “Changing Norms of Sexuality.” He went so far as calling himself a “sexual expert,” and he advertised himself in the underground press using slogans such as “GAY? BI? CONFUSED?”
And then there was the second level of Paul Shanley: the calculating, snakelike, and surreptitious man who advocated for man/boy sex and took part in it. Randall Lee Gibson—a former minister with an outreach program for gay youths—would often see Shanley palling around with young men at the Beacon Hill meetinghouse. He once asked Shanley if he knew of the North American Man/Boy Love Association, to which Shanley replied, “Yes, I am aware of it, and I support that activity.” In fact, in 1978, Shanley had addressed the conference that soon after conceived and organized the association.
Many of Boston’s high society admired Paul Shanley from afar; he did, after all, appear Christlike. Whereas most priests lived a rigid and droll life, Shanley was walking the streets and tending to those who truly needed God’s grace. But it was those who knew him from the streets—those who interacted with him—who came to fear him.
It was no secret among the parishes and pariahs that Shanley had a hunger for young male flesh. Those who were more seasoned with street-living tried to warn the newer runaways before Shanley came and put his hooks in them. The same applied to the gay community, who were not eager to publicize a link between homosexuality and pedophilia, especially during this era of erasing stigmas, and especially because that link was a Catholic folk hero.
There was, however, one esteemed member of the gay community to speak-up against Paul Shanley. In the 1970s, Elaine Noble—America’s first openly-gay state representative—knew Shanley well, and she knew of his malfeasance. She reported him to various city officials, including the mayor and the police commissioner, but they shrugged her off. Not only had Shanley become too popular to denounce, his crimes were seen as “inconsequential.”
He may have been a predator, but his prey were “lowlifes” and “moochers” and “queers.” No higher-ups in the city cared to destroy a folk hero over his transgressions if they were merely against those who didn’t matter in the grand scheme of Bostonian society. “People didn't care about them,” Elaine Noble later said. “They were disposable children. No one cared about gay people, let alone gay children who had run away from home.”
In fact, that was precisely why Paul Shanley targeted street urchins above all others. Attorney Carmen Durso attested that Shanley was very shrewd about his selections, adding that he “went out and created a pool of kids he could go after. He advertised for them. He went after the kids at the bus stops; the runaways; the kids who nobody cared about and who had no one to talk to. Shanley was very instinctive about his victims, like finding the weakest member of the herd.”
Shanley himself later recounted his typical evening:
“I’d leave Warwick House in Roxbury around six or seven PM and drive through the Combat Zone—Scollay Square’s successor—watching for new kids who mistakenly thought that was where the action was. It wasn’t… I would park and hit all these areas and the popular eating places. A quick walk through Greyhound, Trailways, around the three ‘meat racks’ picking up the younger kids who were only seeking money for food. I tried to keep to a schedule. At each place usually ‘old’ kids who had been a few years in Boston would be waiting with the day’s disasters; the latest crop of runaways; who has OD’d; who was busted; what chick is spreading VD… In my last few weeks on the street, I would get thirty cases in the first thirty minutes. No social worker that I know gets that intake in a week, let alone of that urgency.”
To the Church, he presented himself as the most Christlike of priests. In one bloviated letter to Cardinal Medeiros, in the late 1970s, Shanley referred to himself as “a Pied Piper” leading the young and hapless; he decried his critics, whose “mean-minded judging of my motives...deserves no reply.” In regards to a particular allegation of molesting three boys in 1967, he wrote to Monsignor Francis J. Sexton, declaring most defensively “I am…filled with rage and determined to fight and to make an example of this type of behavior to which we priests are subject, in a civil court case.”
In his various newsletters, he’d extol his virtues—proud and paternal—as a shepherd for these lost kids. He thought so highly of himself, as a self-sacrificing saint, he once wrote “I could have done my Clark Kent thing—donned clericals and stolen off to suburbia for my own spiritual nourishment—but my kids couldn't. So I wouldn't.”
In another newsletter—in a rare moment of near-self-awareness—he once wrote, “Is it really so important for me to go on? The Letters say so. They warn: ‘If you give up, so must we. You are our hope.’ People shouldn't put such hope in a mere man; any man. It’s almost sacrilegious. If they knew the madness in me, festering below the surface, they would join the ranks of my accusers.”
Paul Shanley was more brazen in his youth. While he did eventually steal away to a suburban parish, where the kids came to him, in the 1980s, he spent the 1970s patrolling the streets of Boston and taking young boys back to his various residences: an apartment in Milton; a townhouse in the Back Bay; a retreat in Vermont he called “Rivendell;” and a cabin in the Canton Woods, near Ponkapoag Pond. The cabin belonged to the YMCA, as part of their Ponkapoag Outdoor Center, but Shanley told his guests that it had been “given to him by an old man.”
Arthur Austin was once brought to this cabin in 1968, when he was twenty years old and reeling from his first heartbreak; his gay lover had broken off their arrangement, and Austin took the severance like a knife in the chest. He found comfort in Shanley’s fatherly embrace, and Shanley offered to take him to a quiet retreat where he could do some soul-searching.
As soon as they arrived at the cabin, Shanley “granted” Austin “access to his body,” saying, “It is better for you to come to me for this than it is to be down on your knees in some dirty alley for a stranger.” He acted as if he were being generous; as if he were doing this for the boy’s benefit. Austin was grateful, too; he said to himself, “I was going to be saved. Saved by a priest.”
There, in that cabin, Shanley repeatedly raped Arthur Austin. The boy protested, but the assaults continued for days and nights… Once Shanley had had his fill, he loaded his wood-paneled station wagon and drove slowly down the dirt road, with his headlights off and with Austin walking ahead of the car; Shanley made Austin lead the way, in the dark, to keep his eyes peeled for any idling cops.
One of the stronger allegations to come against Shanley in 2002 was from Paul Busa, a former Air Force MP. Busa had quit his job in the military after an emotional breakdown prompted by his friend’s recollection of abuse under Shanley. Busa had repressed his own traumas until his friend’s memories, which had echoed his own experiences, brought those terrible days back into his conscious mind. “In the beginning, I questioned myself a lot,” Busa said. “I thought, ‘Was I making this up?’ The way my body was reacting, I knew it had happened.”
Another young man came forward, regarding the abuses he endured under Shanley in his adolescence, from 1983 to 1990. Shanley had plucked the boy from his Sunday School lessons at Newton’s St. Jean Parish, nearly every week, and took him to either the bathroom, the confessional, or the rectory, where he would grope, molest, and rape him. Shanley had told the boy there was no use in snitching: “If you told, no one would believe you.”
In Leon Podles’ book “Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church,” he remembered that, “in late 1993, Shanley was sent to the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut, for evaluation. The Boston archdiocese has refused to release this evaluation, but other released files show that Shanley admitted to nine sexual encounters, of which four involved boys, and that he was diagnosed as ‘narcissistic’ and ‘histrionic.’ Shanley admitted that he was ‘attracted to adolescents’ and on the basis of this confession, the Boston archdiocese secretly settled several lawsuits against Shanley. The archdiocese of Boston in 1993 had to admit to the diocese of San Bernardino part of the truth about Shanley, and the bishop of San Bernardino immediately dismissed him.”
Paul Shanley was finally incarcerated in 2005, only to be released in 2017. He now lives in a yellow three-story house in Ware, Massachusetts, shared with four other Level 3 sex offenders. (Level 3 indicates “the risk of reoffense is high,” though Shanley’s lawyer insists he is no longer dangerous.) Across from Shanley’s new domicile at 37 Pulaski Street is a dance studio specializing in training children ages two and up.
This neighborhood is the kind of run-down borough you would expect to find in every corner of central Massachusetts. The only thing in the area that hasn’t given-up yet is the electric company. The air reeks of blight and feels devoid of hope—and this depressive sensation is only exacerbated with Shanley’s presence. The police have had to double their patrols of the area with him here, but not for the reasons you’d think: they’re there to protect him from harassment, because apparently he hasn’t been protected enough in his lifetime.
No member of the public, especially his victims, are pleased to know he’s walking free. The Middlesex District Attorney sought to have this “sexually dangerous person” retained in prison, but Massachusetts authorities have “no reason” to detain him any longer. Two state psychologists—Katrin Rouse Weir and Mark Schaefer—determined Shanley did not “meet the legal criteria” for detainment; Massachusetts law states that a “sexually dangerous person” must have “a mental abnormality or personality disorder which makes such person likely to engage in sexual offenses if not confined to a secure facility.”
Weir and Schaefer concluded that Shanley is still a pedophile who deems prepubescent boys as sexually attractive. Normally, this alone would meet the requirements for a “mental abnormality,” but the two psychologists argued that, at the age of 86, Shanley’s sex drive is likely diminished.
“If Paul Shanley doesn't qualify as a sexually dangerous person,” said Carmen Durso, “then nobody will ever qualify.”
“While we understand and respect the American judicial system, we fear for the safety of children now that Shanley has been released,” said a spokeswoman with SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “Research and experience teach us that age does not cure pedophilia. Often, age gives predators an advantage. People may see an old man and assume he is harmless. That is not the case.”
“This is a guy, Shanley, who has manipulated the system, the Church, and the public… He knows how to manipulate people,” said one of Shanley’s victims, who was raped in 1979 at a retreat the “street priest” had created for homosexuals. “I’m concerned he's going to abuse again.”
The Boston Archdiocese has since stated that Shanley’s crimes “against children were reprehensible. No young person should ever have to experience such violations of their safety and dignity.” And yet, Shanley once again walks the streets.
Bishop McCormack had presided within the Boston Archdiocese during the Shanley unearthings, and he defended the pedophile throughout. When asked why he failed to inform the Diocese of San Bernardino of Shanley’s abuse allegations, McCormack had no response. Reports added that Shanley had warned McCormack of an imminent “media whirlwind” if certain aspects were to be publicized, and McCormack asked him not to speak of them.
Clearly, word got out, and in 1994 Shanley admitted to McCormack that he had raped at least four young boys. Shanley was psychologically evaluated while McCormack insisted that, if Shanley was guilty, he was only guilty of these four and no others. He said of Shanley, “He admits to sexual activity with four adolescent males, and then he talks about sexual activity with men and women over the years… So it doesn't indicate that, you know, it doesn't indicate that there was sexual activity with other adolescents.”
In 1985, McCormack was informed of a speech Shanley gave, wherein he claimed, “When adults have sex with children, the children seduced them… [It’s the children who] are the guilty ones.” McCormack instructed his subordinates to ignore the comment and leave Shanley alone. — In April of 2002, documents describing this and other incidents of negligence regarding Rev. Shanley were revealed, and a wave of shit washed over Bishop McCormack. He resigned as chairman of the US Bishops’ Committee on Sexual Abuse two weeks later.
Fathers A. Joseph Maskell & E. Neil Magnus
Crimen sollicitationis (or, crime of solicitation) is the title of a 1962 instruction from the Holy Office, establishing procedures to respond with if ever a priest or bishop were accused of attempting or performing a sexual assault while in their religious role of power. The instruction specified that dioceses were to evaluate crises to the best of their ability, document them, respond covertly, and archive the incident in the Church’s private files, with a particular emphasis on restricting the incidents and the instruction from publication. These responses were to be mandated for all cases involving homosexuality, pedophilia, and zoophilia.
This holy instruction was Canon Law until May 18, 2001, when it was replaced by the papal order “Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela,” which “required all complaints of child sexual abuse to be referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which would then instruct the bishop what to do.” (The CDF, headquartered in Rome, was originally founded to protect the Catholic Church from heresy; its role has since expanded.)
For nearly four decades, under Crimen sollicitationis, hundreds of pedophilic priests were able to exploit and traumatize thousands of children. The Church was more often than not aware of these incidents, as each diocese—per holy instruction—concealed and protected their laymen. With such a code dictating the Church’s responses, priests all over the nation were essentially given a free pass to brazenly practice child rape and molestation, knowing that, if caught, they’d be defended instead of condemned. Thus, after 1962, there was an explosion in pedophilia within the parishes of America—the fallout of which we wouldn’t understand until 2002.
In Boston, there were men like Rev. Robert A. Ward, who raped altar boys and snorted cocaine throughout the 1970s—and his diocese concealed it. He was ultimately exposed when a computer technician stumbled upon his stash of child pornography in 1999. On the opposite side of the country, in Spokane, Washington, Rev. John Leary spent his tenure as president of Gonzaga University racking up fifty rapes in the 1960s. The Church removed him from that post and assigned him to locations in New York City, Boston, and other cities along the West Coast, until his death in 1993. He was never brought to justice.
Those with a Netflix subscription may already be aware of the docuseries The Keepers, which chronicles and investigates the systematic sexual abuse of female students at Archbishop Keough High School from 1969 to 1975, perpetrated by Father Joseph Maskell and his associates. The priest was protected by the Archdiocese of Baltimore, even after his involvement in the murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik — a nun who taught at Keough before stumbling upon Maskell’s sexual assault racket.
Maskell had studied psychology in college, and he employed his expertise during counseling sessions with his students, so as to manipulate them into subservience. He and his secondary, Father Neil Magnus, would take turns raping the given student, who was conditioned to believe this was punishment for a sin she committed. Maskell and Magnus would bring in others—such as a gynecologist, and a police officer known as Brother Bob—to share in the assault.
One victim was fourteen years old when her abuses began:
“Father Magnus, who also taught at the school, appeared at the picnic in the passenger seat of a police car… I was given a drink that must have had drugs in it, because I became weak and dizzy… Then I was called over to the police car, and I saw Father Magnus sitting in it.
“He got out and came over to me and started taking my pants down. Then he put his knee between my legs and forced them apart and began raping me. Meanwhile, a second priest—Father Joseph Maskell, who had been my parish priest before becoming the chaplain at Keough High School and whom I’d known since the age of twelve—stood there looking on as Father Magnus raped me. And then Father Maskell decided to take his turn, and he raped me.”
Two weeks later, she was summoned to Maskell’s office at Keough. “He said he wanted to give me some tests, and he started by having me sit on his lap. Then he told me: ‘You don’t know how to love, and I’m going to show you.’ He started taking my clothes off…
“He raped me, and this pattern continued throughout my next three and a half years at Keough. He would call me to his office, and I dreaded those calls. It was a nightmare that happened again and again. Sometimes, when I go into his office, I’m raped. Sometimes he puts a gun in my mouth and warns me that if I tell anybody what is going on, he will kill my parents.
“What could I do? I was terrified all the time. Going to school each day was agony. I used to try to hide from him under stairwells and anywhere else I could hide. I didn’t dare say anything about the rapes. I thought he would kill my parents! One time a Baltimore City policeman joined us…and I saw him pay the priest some money. And then the policeman raped me.
“By that point, I didn’t care if I lived anymore.”
Fr. Neil Magnus died from cancer in 1988. Fr. Joseph Maskell died in 2001. Neither of them were ever held accountable for their crimes.
With the erasure of Crimen sollicitationis, the Catholic Church began a new era of responsibility. Part of this entailed governmental oversight, of which an example was put forth by the New Hampshire Department of Justice. In addition to the audit, the Attorney General sanctioned an assessment of the Diocese of Manchester's ‘Safe Environment’ Compliance Program. The report was released in January of 2009, reading—abbreviated—as such:
“In December 2002, the State of New Hampshire, through its Attorney General…reached a Non-Prosecution Agreement…with the Diocese relating to allegations of sexual misconduct with minors by priests and Diocesan leaders over a 40-year period. This Agreement established terms and conditions to facilitate the protection of minors and ensure a system of accountability, oversight, transparency, and training.
“The Agreement also specifies that the Diocese shall continue to…implement and revise, as necessary, policies and protocols for preventing [and reporting] allegations of sexual abuse. Furthermore, the Diocese is required to provide copies of its policies and protocols to the Attorney General on an annual basis, or as otherwise requested…
“Specifically, the Guidelines require the development of compliance standards and procedures to prevent and detect criminal conduct… Secondly, the Guidelines require the assignment of ‘overall responsibility to oversee compliance’ to a specific ‘high-level’ individual within the organization. This individual is charged with not only being ‘knowledgeable about the content and operation of the compliance and ethics program,’ but also ‘exercising reasonable oversight with respect to the implementation and effectiveness’ of the Program.
“As is appropriate, Bishop McCormack continues to have [this] ultimate responsibility for the Diocese’s Compliance Program…” (I found this to be infuriating.)
“The Agreement mandates that all church personnel serving in the Diocese must follow the mandatory reporting obligations…whenever they have reason to suspect a minor has been abused or neglected. In addition… church personnel must also report to local law enforcement…if they have reason to suspect any other Diocesan Personnel has sexually abused a minor, even if the identity of the alleged victim is unknown or if that person is no longer a minor.
“The Agreement requires that… ‘upon receipt of an allegation… the alleged abuser will be removed from any position in which there is a possibility for contact with minors.’ In addition, the Agreement provides that once a report has been filed with the proper authorities, the Diocese will cooperate completely in the investigation, supplying any and all information or documents relating to the alleged abuser in its possession.
“The Federal Sentencing Guidelines provide that organizations take corrective action when allegations are substantiated, which typically includes disciplining those who bear responsibility for the offense, remedying the harm caused by misconduct, and taking steps to prevent and detect similar violations in the future.
“The current Guidelines specifically require an organization to ‘use reasonable efforts not to include within the substantial authority of the organization any individual whom the organization knew, or should have known through the exercise of due diligence, has engaged in illegal activities or conduct inconsistent with an effective compliance program.’ The notes further explain that an organization has an obligation to ‘consider the relatedness of an individual’s illegal activities or misconduct to the specific responsibilities such individual is expected to be assigned,’ as well as to consider the recentness of such activity.” (Which is legalese for ‘try not to hire pedophiles.’)
“[Bishop McCormack] implemented a protocol requiring all Diocesan camps, schools, and parishes to be visited on at least a triennial basis [and furthermore has] prioritized and scheduled the site revisits over three years based on its Risk-Based Plan and Risk Assessment Matrix.
“Sixteen site visits were completed during Year 1 of the site revisit program… In July 2007, the entities visited were reassessed. Each individual entity was recategorized as ‘Satisfactory,’ ‘Needs Improvement,’ or ‘Unsatisfactory’…
“According to the SE Reports, each Diocesan site visit was coordinated in advance. [McCormack] sends a letter to the entity outlining the procedures for the visit and items the SE Coordinator should prepare. The letter is accompanied by a document containing additional details about the procedures that should be completed prior to the visit, such as a review of the applicable protocols…and the verification and organization of personnel files.” (Essentially, McCormack warns the sites in advance of what needs to be spruced and prepared for examination.)
“For each site visit, a [representative of McCormack] meets with the [site’s] pastor, principal, or director. [The representative] is to ‘randomly select 25% [of the personnel]’… For the individuals whose files were chosen for review, the reviewer examines documentation of a background check…which is maintained at the Diocese.”
Beyond the stipulations of the Compliance Program is an address from Bishop McCormack (required by the Attorney General’s Office) and the legal requirements of the Diocese of Manchester thereafter, as described by the Diocese:
“PREAMBLE: Child sexual abuse is a horrible sin and crime in our Church and society. It is a matter of the gravest concern for our Diocese. The objectives of this policy are to prevent child sexual abuse in our Church before it occurs, respond with compassion and respect to those who report that they have been abused by church personnel, ensure due process and respect for the rights of those who have been accused of sexual abuse, provide for cooperation with the civil authorities, and address allegations of child sexual abuse openly. … Responsibility for adhering to this Policy rests with the individual.” (McCormack’s last line takes the liability away from him.)
“APPLICABILITY AND GENERAL DEFINITIONS — Sexual Abuse: The term ‘sexual abuse’ is contact of a sexual nature that occurs between a minor and an adult.4 This term includes contact, activity, or interactions with a minor that is meant to arouse or gratify the sexual desires of the adult. ‘Sexual abuse’ can occur whether or not this sexual activity involves explicit force, whether or not it involves genital or physical contact, whether or not it is initiated by the minor, and whether or not there is discernible harmful outcome. ‘Sexual abuse’ includes any act constituting sexual abuse under New Hampshire law5 and is a grave delict (a serious crime) against the Sixth Commandment under the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the Essential Norms.
“FOOTNOTE 4: The term ‘sexual abuse’ would not include contact of a sexual nature between a minor and an adult who are married to one another.
“FOOTNOTE 5: The New Hampshire Child Protection Act, RSA 169-C:3, provides that ‘sexual abuse’ ‘means the following activities under circumstances which indicate that the child's health or welfare is harmed or threatened with harm: the employment, use, persuasion, inducement, enticement, or coercion of any child to engage in, or having a child assist any other person to engage in, any sexually explicit conduct or any simulation of such conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such conduct; or the rape, molestation, prostitution, or other form of sexual exploitation of children, or incest with children. With respect to the definition of sexual abuse, the term ‘child’ or ‘children’ means any individual who is under the age of 18 years.’
“Assignments of Priests and Deacons — Transfers for Residence. Before a priest or deacon can be transferred for residence to the Diocese from another diocese or religious province, the Diocese shall seek from that diocese or religious province any and all information concerning any accusations of sexual abuse of a minor and any other information indicating that the priest or deacon has been or may be a danger to children or young people.
“Compliance with Church Law and the Essential Norms — In matters involving allegations of sexual abuse of minors by clerics (deacons, priests, and bishops), the definitions and processes provided for…the Diocese of Manchester must be strictly observed. Clerics accused of sexual abuse are encouraged to retain the assistance of civil and canonical counsel…
“The Church affords an accused person every opportunity for conversion of heart and forgiveness through the Sacrament of Penance and other pastoral means. However, the Church also acknowledges that one needs to do penance for one’s sins, that consequences exist for wrongful actions, and that the safety of children requires certain measures to be taken even after there is forgiveness.
“In the event of even a single act of sexual abuse of a minor while a cleric, the cleric found guilty will be permanently removed from ministry. The cleric will be offered appropriate professional assistance for his own healing and well-being as well as for the prevention of further abusive conduct.
“Where an accusation of sexual abuse of a minor is determined to be unfounded… the Diocese will take appropriate steps to restore the good name of the accused as soon as possible.
“All records regarding sexual abuse of minors will be maintained for the life of the accused, or the longest period of time permitted by Church and civil law, whichever is longer. Records regarding allegations of sexual abuse must be kept in a format that facilitates their availability to church personnel with a legitimate need to know about the allegations subject to the discretion of the Bishop of Manchester under appropriate Church and civil law.” (Please read that last line once more.)
“Because of the nature of their positions, clergy assigned [by the bishop] are subject to these screening requirements. In addition, all those who serve as employees in diocesan administration and…who regularly work with minors (those under the age of 18) are subject to background screening. Individuals under the age of 18 are not subject to this screening protocol.
“An applicant convicted within ten (10) years of the application of fewer than three (3) misdemeanors involving moral turpitude, including possession of illegal drugs and assault, may be eligible for ministry regularly working with minors.”
The Diocese’s portion of the stipulations then give way to the Attorney General’s Office:
“THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE - HILLSBOROUGH, SS - SUPERIOR COURT Northern District - IN RE GRAND JURY PROCEEDINGS - No. 02-S-1154 - AGREEMENT
“NOW COMES the State of New Hampshire, by and through counsel, the Office of the Attorney General and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Manchester, a corporation sole (the ‘Diocese of Manchester’) and hereby respectfully submit the following Agreement…
“WHEREAS, beginning in February, 2002, the State of New Hampshire commenced a criminal investigation into the conduct of the Diocese of Manchester and its officials regarding the manner in which the Diocese responded to allegations that some of its priests had engaged in sexual misconduct with minors over a period of forty years;
“WHEREAS, in light of the documents produced, the testimony obtained, and the nature of the elements which are required to be proved to establish a criminal violation of the New Hampshire child endangerment statute, RSA 639:3, I, the Diocese acknowledges that the State has evidence likely to sustain a conviction of a charge under RSA 639:3, I, against the Diocese.
“NOW THEREFORE, the State and the Diocese of Manchester agree to resolve this matter without a criminal proceeding in accordance with the terms and conditions set forth below. Such a resolution accomplishes the following goals: (1) it will protect victims from the necessity of testifying in a criminal trial; (2) it will establish terms and conditions that will facilitate the protection of children to a greater extent than a criminal conviction and sentence; and (3) it will ensure a system of accountability, oversight, transparency, and training.
“In consideration for the promises made herein by the Diocese of Manchester, the Attorney General has agreed not to charge, seek an indictment against, or prosecute the Diocese of Manchester…or its individual agents, regarding the past handling of allegations of sexual abuse of minors by clergy. This Agreement is without prejudice to the State of New Hampshire's ability to indict and prosecute individual clergy for sexual abuse of minors as permitted by law. The Diocese of Manchester acknowledges that certain decisions made by it [regarding the assignments] of priests who had abused minors in the past resulted in other minors being victimized.
“The Parties agree that this Agreement is a public document and further the Parties are free to hold separate and distinct public announcements of this Agreement and to supply supplemental information and to respond to questions posed by the press or members of the public, except as prohibited by any laws governing the confidentiality of records…
“The Diocese of Manchester acknowledges that the Office of the Attorney General will issue, at some time in the future, a report on the scope and results of the investigation, which it has conducted since February, 2002, regarding the manner in which the Diocese responded to past clergy sexual abuse of minors (the ‘Report’). The Diocese of Manchester also acknowledges that the Office of the Attorney General intends to make public its own investigative file (the ‘Investigative File’). In order to provide the public an opportunity to evaluate and to understand the process and the information involved in this investigation, the Diocese agrees to waive Grand Jury confidentiality to allow publication of Diocesan documents obtained by the Office of the Attorney General from the Diocese pursuant to Grand Jury subpoenas (the ‘Documents’). The Office of the Attorney General will take all reasonable steps to ensure the confidentiality of the identity of the victims in the Report, the release of the Investigative File, and the disclosure of the Documents. The Office of the Attorney General will not disclose any mental health or other medical records, except that the Office of the Attorney General reserves the right to quote or cite in its Report those portions of such records that illustrate the information that the Diocese had and its response to information regarding sexual abuse of minors by clergy. The Office of the Attorney General will provide the Diocese with a copy of its Report, the Investigative File, and the Documents which the Office of the Attorney General intends to release to the public no later than ten business days prior to the release of the Report, Investigative File, and/or Documents.”
In the Compliance Report from 2009, the following communiqué from Attorney General Ayotte concluded the document:
“TO: Bishop John McCormack — January 23, 2009
“As our oversight comes to a close, I cannot help but reflect back to the initial settlement agreement discussions, the court challenges, and the very first audit in 2005. The progress and positive changes made over these last four years by the Diocese, and in particular in the last two years, is remarkable and commendable. It gives me confidence that the Diocese will proceed into the future with a strong commitment to sustain the program that has now been developed and implemented to protect children from sexual abuse.”
Archpriest Bernard F. Law
Following the settlement of John Labbé and John Doe’s civil suits regarding Father George St. Jean, SNAP—the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests—urged Bishop McCormack to do two things:
“Go beyond the bare minimum… Visit predators’ parishes” and “aggressively seek-out other victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers of this child molesting cleric and others.”
“Put names of pedophile priests on [the] diocesan website—like thirty other bishops have done,” specifically being “the names of proven, admitted, and credibly-accused pedophile priests (to help protect innocent kids and heal wounded victims).”
McCormack—as expected, given his long and combative relationship with SNAP—did neither of these. He did, however, update the diocesan website to include a video, suggesting it’s best when children are safe; a PDF of the reformed Child Protection Policy for the Archdiocese, which has taken effect on September 1, 2018; the names of two part-time investigators, retained by the Archdiocese for any future sexual crimes against children; and a paragraph saying they were required by law to announce that it’s best when children are safe.
Though where McCormack had failed in his final years as Bishop of Manchester—and where he and Bernard Law had failed throughout their entire careers—the new Archbishop of Boston has shown himself to be both competent and benevolent. Cardinal O’Malley has since “met with hundreds of survivors of clergy sexual abuse and family members to offer his personal apology.” Furthermore, he had the diocesan website updated with an albeit hard-to-locate list of many substantiated and even unsubstantiated claims of sexual abuse against children, committed by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston.
In his open letter to survivors, Cardinal O’Malley wrote, “The review of the names of clergy being published today will no doubt stir painful emotions among survivors and our Catholic community. It is my ardent hope that this also contributes to repairing your fractured trust and ensuring the safety of children. … We have taken steps of prevention at every level of the local church—and will continue to do so—in order to ensure that the tragedy of sexual abuse of children by clergy is never repeated.
“I realize that nothing I can say will be sufficient to heal the psychological and spiritual wounds you have endured. No matter how frequently expressions of apology and remorse are offered, it is never enough. You have shown great courage by telling a terrible truth, and we as a Church must with sincerity and humility ask for your forgiveness.”
Pope Francis addressed the issue on August 20, 2018, condemning sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. He wrote, to the People of God, “‘If one member suffers, all suffer together with it’ (First Corinthians, 12:26). These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power, and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. … Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.”
In a previous address, in September of 2015, Pope Francis said, “I hold the stories and the suffering and the sorrow of children who were sexually abused by priests deep in my heart. I remain overwhelmed with shame that men entrusted with the tender care of children violated these little ones and caused grievous harm. I am profoundly sorry. God weeps.”
Responding to the Pope’s earlier address, Boston’s Archbishop Sean O’Malley wrote that “society has learned much from the failings of the Church and our response to this tragedy, [and] we pray that our efforts may contribute to the protection of children in all settings and circumstances. I ask again for forgiveness from those who were harmed by the Church.”
The Pope’s recent commentary in August of 2018 was prompted by a Pennsylvanian “grand jury report, which used the church's own records to conclude that more than 1,000 credible victims had been abused by some 300 ‘predator priests’ across eight decades in [the state],” as NPR outlined soon after. “What's more, the report explained how the church apparatus enabled and covered up the abuse, often responding to complaints with cursory investigations and leniency toward the alleged abusers.”
The following are excerpts from that 1,356-page report, proving that we can never truly put behind us the exploitative abuses of children by predatory priests or the negligence of the Catholic Church that encouraged them:
“We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this. We know some of you have heard some of it before. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere.
“We heard the testimony of dozens of witnesses concerning clergy sex abuse. We subpoenaed, and reviewed, half a million pages of internal diocesan documents. They contained credible allegations against over three hundred predator priests. Over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church's own records. We believe that the real number—of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward—is in the thousands.
“Most of the victims were boys; but there were girls too. Some were teens; many were prepubescent. Some were manipulated with alcohol or pornography. Some were made to masturbate their assailants, or were groped by them. Some were raped orally, some vaginally, some anally. But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all. As a consequence of the cover-up, almost every instance of abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted. But that is not to say there are no more predators.”
As the report goes on, the grand jury outlines the practices of every American diocese during the era of Crimen sollicitationis:
“Special agents testified before us that they had identified a series of practices that regularly appeared, in various configurations, in the diocesan files they had analyzed. It's like a playbook for concealing the truth:
“First, make sure to use euphemisms rather than real words to describe the sexual assaults in diocese documents. Never say ‘rape;’ say ‘inappropriate contact’ or ‘boundary issues.’
“Second, don't conduct genuine investigations with properly trained personnel. Instead, assign fellow clergy members to ask inadequate questions and then make credibility determinations about the colleagues with whom they live and work.
“Third, for an appearance of integrity, send priests for ‘evaluation’ at church-run psychiatric treatment centers. Allow these experts to ‘diagnose’ whether the priest was a pedophile, based largely on the priest's ‘self -reports,’ and regardless of whether the priest had actually engaged in sexual contact with a child.
“Fourth, when a priest does have to be removed, don't say why. Tell his parishioners that he is on ‘sick leave,’ or suffering from ‘nervous exhaustion.’ Or say nothing at all.
“Fifth, even if a priest is raping children, keep providing him housing and living expenses, although he may be using these resources to facilitate more sexual assaults.
“Sixth, if a predator's conduct becomes known to the community, don't remove him from the priesthood to ensure that no more children will be victimized. Instead, transfer him to a new location where no one will know he is a child abuser.
“Finally and above all, don't tell the police. Child sexual abuse, even short of actual penetration, is and has for all relevant times been a crime. But don't treat it that way; handle it like a personnel matter, ‘in house.’”
The deep frustration and anger the grand jury felt as a result of their intensive investigations, regarding these six dioceses and their substantial archives of ignored sexual assaults against children, simmers beneath their grating, critical, and sometimes sassy commentary:
“In the Diocese of Allentown, for example, documents show that a priest was confronted about an abuse complaint. He admitted, ‘Please help me. I sexually molested a boy.’ The diocese concluded that ‘the experience will not necessarily be a horrendous trauma’ for the victim, and that the family should just be given ‘an opportunity to ventilate.’ The priest was left in unrestricted ministry for several more years, despite his own confession.
“Similarly in the Diocese of Erie, despite a priest's admission to assaulting at least a dozen young boys, the bishop wrote to thank him for ‘all that you have done for God's people… The Lord, who sees in private, will reward.’ Another priest confessed to anal and oral rape of at least 15 boys, as young as seven years old. The bishop later met with the abuser to commend him as ‘a person of candor and sincerity,’ and to compliment him ‘for the progress he has made’ in controlling his ‘addiction.’ When the abuser was finally removed from the priesthood years later, the bishop ordered the parish not to say why; ‘nothing else need be noted.’
“In the Diocese of Greensburg, a priest impregnated a 17-year-old, forged the head pastor's signature on a marriage certificate, then divorced the girl months later. Despite having sex with a minor, despite fathering a child, despite being married and being divorced, the priest was permitted to stay in ministry thanks to the diocese's efforts to find a ‘benevolent bishop’ in another state willing to take him on. Another priest, grooming his middle school students for oral sex, taught them how Mary had to ‘bite off the cord’ and ‘lick’ Jesus clean after he was born. It took another 15 years, and numerous additional reports of abuse, before the diocese finally removed the priest from ministry.
“A priest in the Diocese of Harrisburg abused five sisters in a single family, despite prior reports that were never acted on. In addition to sex acts, the priest collected samples of the girls' urine, pubic hair, and menstrual blood. Eventually, his house was searched and his collection was found. Without that kind of incontrovertible evidence, apparently, the diocese remained unwilling to err on the side of children even in the face of multiple reports of abuse. As a high-ranking official said about one suspect priest: ‘At this point we are at impasse—allegations and no admission.’ Years later, the abuser did admit what he had done, but by then it was too late.
“Elsewhere we saw the same sort of disturbing disdain for victims. In the Diocese of Pittsburgh, church officials dismissed an incident of abuse on the ground that the 15-year-old had ‘pursued’ the priest and ‘literally seduced’ him into a relationship. After the priest was arrested, the church submitted an evaluation on his behalf to the court. The evaluation acknowledged that the priest had admitted to ‘sado-masochistic’ activities with several boys—but the sado-masochism was only ‘mild,’ and at least the priest was not ‘psychotic.’
“The Diocese of Scranton also chose to defend its clergy abusers over its children. A diocese priest was arrested and convicted after decades of abuse reports that had been ignored by the church. The bishop finally took action only as the sentencing date approached. He wrote a letter to the judge, with a copy to a state senator, urging the court to release the defendant to a Catholic treatment center. He emphasized the high cost of incarceration.
“In another case [regarding the Scranton Diocese], a priest raped a girl, got her pregnant, and arranged an abortion. The bishop expressed his feelings in a letter: ‘This is a very difficult time in your life, and I realize how upset you are. I too share your grief.’ — But the letter was not for the girl. It was addressed to the rapist.
Further commentary concludes that the vast Catholic institution is not yet repaired:
“But the full picture is not yet clear. We know that child abuse in the church has not yet disappeared, because we are charging two priests, in two different dioceses, with crimes that fall within the statute of limitations. One of these priests ejaculated in the mouth of a seven-year-old. The other assaulted two different boys, on a monthly basis, for a period of years that ended only in 2010.
“And we know there might be many additional recent victims, who have not yet developed the resources to come forward either to police or to the church. As we have learned from the experiences of the victims who we saw, it takes time. We hope this report will encourage others to speak.
“What we can say, though, is that despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability. Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades.
“Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.”
Their final remarks offer both expectations and reasonable solutions for the state to consider adopting, so that justice can prevail despite the Church’s legacy of irresponsibility:
“We spent 24 months dredging up the most depraved behavior, only to find that the laws protect most of its perpetrators, and leave its victims with nothing. We say laws that do that need to change.
“First, we ask the Pennsylvania legislature to stop shielding child sexual predators behind the criminal statute of limitations. Thanks to a recent amendment, the current law permits victims to come forward until age 50. That's better than it was before, but still not good enough; we should just get rid of it. We heard from plenty of victims who are now in their 50's, 60's, 70's, and even one who was 83 years old. We want future victims to know they will always have the force of the criminal law behind them, no matter how long they live. And we want future child predators to know they should always be looking over their shoulder — no matter how long they live.
“Second, we call for a ‘civil window’ law, which would let older victims sue the diocese for the damage inflicted on their lives when they were kids. We saw these victims; they are marked for life. Many of them wind up addicted, or impaired, or dead before their time. The law in force right now gives child sex abuse victims twelve years to sue, once they turn 18. But victims who are already in their 30's and older fell under a different law; they only got two years. For victims in this age range, the short two-year period would have expired back in the 1990's or even earlier—long before revelations about the institutional nature of clergy sex abuse.
“We think that's unacceptable. These victims ran out of time to sue before they even knew they had a case; the church was still successfully hiding its complicity. Our proposal would open a limited ‘window’ offering them a chance, finally, to be heard in court. All we're asking is to give those two years back.”
The Catholic Church has had centuries of lawlessness, somehow being excused from the rules of society that every other American is expected to honor and obey. I have only highlighted a few known examples from New Hampshire, Boston, Baltimore, and Pennsylvania; the true number of those impacted or destroyed by depraved, perverted, manipulative priests is unknown but believed to be a palpable percentage of the population.
The gravity of this figure is gut-wrenching. Imagine how many children were corrupted and lost because of a single grotesque man given the trust of a community; and how many children, then, were discarded because the Catholic Church chose to protect its image instead of bringing a hundred, a dozen, or even one vile, godless man to justice.
If I could play ‘conspiracy theorist’ for a moment, I would argue that Bishop McCormack, in his final days of office, orchestrated the murder of John Labbé. However, in a figurative sense, the responsibility for John’s death still falls on the shoulders of the former bishop.
Had McCormack acted in the interest of his flock, thousands of children would have been safe from a lifetime of nightmares, heartache, and trauma courtesy of men like John Geoghan, Paul Shanley, and George St. Jean. Instead, he fought against children, victims, and his fellow man, in order to keep the reputation of the Catholic Church from being dragged through the dirt—and, ironically, it was a fight he was destined to lose anyway.
As the investigation into the murder of John Labbé wound down, due to a lack of evidence, his sister Carole Noyes addressed the local populace:
“I want you to know who John Labbé was. In many ways, he was a simple man. He loved his farm, his animals, and the mountains. He loved working on the land. And while he was not a perfect man, he was still precious to all of us.”
John Labbé
Special thanks to Marcus Ripley for providing additional, indispensable research.