Gauthe forced a gun in my mouth and said what he was going to do. He was at our orphanage for the summer- Louisiana Plaintiff

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By Kay Ebeling

Almost forty years after Father Gilbert Gauthe stuck a gun into his mouth and forced him into a violent sex act, Ted Lausche is part of the $5.1 million settlement for twenty-one persons this week in Louisiana, because of abuse at the hands of priests and nuns in and around New Orleans Archdiocese and Lafayette.

The charges from 1971 push the years of reported sex crime activity by renowned pedophile Catholic priest Gilbert Gauthe forward by several years.

"I woke up and Gauthe was doing me in the ass," says Lausche. "I couldn't breathe, because he had the pillow over my head. Then he said he’d kill me if I told."

That night when Ted got back to his Catholic boarding school near New Orleans, he still did try to tell what happened with Gauthe, but before he got the word "gun" out of his mouth, the nun at Madonna Manor was beating the anally injured thirteen-year-old in the face with her fist.

"At the orphanage you live in a world where the only touch you feel is violence,” Lausche said.

Recently, in the weeks before the October 13th settlement, the Catholic Church and its attorneys tried to claim Lausche was not even a student at their orphanage. Defendants finally turned over Lausche's school records with hundreds of pages redacted.

The crime survivor had to fly to New Orleans.

“They called me in so they could apologize,” Lausche said. ”I had to tell my story to a roomful of Catholic representatives.

“At least they didn't try to say it was not an admission of guilt."

City of Angels asked Lausche how his case involves Gilbert Gauthe, whose antics fill the pages of the 1992 book, Lead Us Not Into Temptation by Jason Berry.

"Gauthe was a seminarian who came to the orphanage for the summer," Lausche, a union carpenter in Wisonsin said by phone Thursday morning. "Without doing any kind of background check, they let him go out and play with us kids.

"This guy Gauthe was a kid’s size, he was five foot one, he was really short. I was bigger than him. I was almost six feet tall by that time, in 1971. I would have been about 13.

"They sent him out to supervise us while we were playing soccer and a couple of kids were giving him a hard time. I stepped in so we wouldn't get in trouble and he latched onto me.

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Gauthe pulled a 45 pistol out and stuffed it in my mouth and told me anything he wanted to do he was going to do.
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"Then one day the nuns said, you're going to go home with him, and he took me and another kid to a big house in Napoleonville. He and his parents lived in the Lafayette dioceses.

"He had a ham radio in his car there which I thought was pretty cool. He drove a Thunderbird, the one from the early 1960s that was a sports car.

"When we left the orphanage it was six o'clock, so by the time we got to the house, it was already dark. Ironically the house was next to a police station. Napoleonville is a real small Louisiana agricultural town along the bayou. Just a strip of road about a quarter mile long, with the original homes.

"He pulled a 45 pistol out and stuffed it in my mouth and told me anything he wanted to do he was going to do.

"We got to the house in Napoleonville and he separated us, put the other boy who was with us and I in different rooms. Then while I was asleep he put the pillow over my head, pulled the shirt over head to hold my arms back. He was restraining me, and then he-

"I woke up and he was f---ing me in the ass, I couldn't breathe, because he had pulled on my shirt pinning my arms with the pillow over my head, then he told me he’d kill me if I told. “

"When I got back to the school, I did try to tell what happened, but it didn't do any good. Gauthe had ripped my asshole apart, I was bleeding, and the nun didn't do anything,

"I told her what happened and without warning, I had no indication, she just slugged me in the face.

"That was her thing,

"She loved beating up on kids, this five foot one 190 pound female.

"I told her Father Gaute had a gun and had threatened me and that's as far as I got."

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"She loved beating up on kids, this five foot one 190 pound female.

"Her name was Sister Martin Marie."
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City of Angels asked Lausche he had any more interaction with Gauthe after that incident?

"Not with him. I stayed away from him after that.

“Gauthe happened just before I ran away. At those orphanages you were living in a world where the only touch you feel is violence.”

Named as defendants in Lausche’s 2005 lawsuit that settled this week are Catholic Charities, the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese, the Archdiocese of New Orleans, School Sisters of Notre Dame, and Hope Haven-Madonna Manor.

After a five year legal battle, Lausche is part of the settlement announced this week, where $5.1 million is to be shared between 21 adult victims of pedophile from primarily Madonna Manor and Hope Haven orphanages in Louisiana.

"I had to go down there around a month ago. I don't travel well so they had to sedate me, my son had to fly out from California, to be with me," Ted told me from the phone where he lives in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

"The Salesians staff were there, people from the archdiocese, 15 or 20 people."

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"They tried to tell me I wasn’t even at the orphanage, they had blacked out and withheld over a hundred pages of my personal records."
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Lausche said the Archdiocse first tried to claim he was not even a student at the school.

"They tried to tell me I wasn’t even at the orphanage, they had blacked out and withheld over a hundred pages of my personal records."

Now that he's part of the settlement, the money is not the issue for Lausche:

"I want a public apology

"I want a chance to address the community that raised us thanking them for their charity, but also to remind them to hold those who manage your resources accountable so this can never happen again.

"And I want to put up a cell phone number any place where these predator priests are working today unsupervised, so people can call me, if they need to report sex crimes."

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Above: Escorted by two sheriff's deputies, convicted pedophile and former priest Gilbert Gauthe walks out of the Lafayette parish jail in downtown Lafayette upon his release in February 2002. (Picture lifted from Boston dot com who lifted it from Times Picayune / Photographer: G. Andrew Boyd)

According to bishopaccountability :

"As of 2008, Gauthe was living near Houston, TX. He was arrested 4/08 because he failed to register as sex offender."

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Peeping in on the Paracletes


Jay Nelson pipes in
Where is the aluminum Mary?

Spies report and it is now confirmed that the enormous aluminum sculpture that towered over the Servants of the Paracletes' church in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, has been removed.

A rendition of the Virgin Mary and the dove, it stood in place of a cross ever since the place was built in the early 60s. Now it's said to be just laying in the dirt in front of the the steeple by the side of the road. Sad. Here's a picture of how it looked a year ago.

Funny thing is that in the last chapter of SONS OF PERDITION, I mention specifically that it still stands, even though the place is no longer their mother church. Gee, I wonder if they also chiseled out the dedication plaque I quote from in the very next paragragh...

It's probably just a co-incidence. Rather like the Archdiocese this spring replacing the stone cross atop the cathedral in Santa Fe. It was discovered to be corroded at the base, and could have fallen and killed someone.

You see, in the card that I sent to Archbishop Sheehan with a copy of my novel THE HARROWING, wherein the bishop nearly gets beaned by a cross falling from the cathedral, I said that not all was fictional. I had once been told that the cross was loose by a rock-climber I knew who claimed he had scaled up to it. And that I hoped he fixed it. Only took them several years to get around to it.

Yep, doubtless pure coincidence. Why to think the Church would be paying attention to little old me would be pure narcissism, wouldn't it?

The fact that they now only publish press releases for events on their calendar AFTERWARDS is doubtless just one of those things, too.

-- Jay Nelson

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FOUND AT GOOGLE IMAGES TODAY:

FOUND AT GOOGLE TODAY

Seven years of scandals? Try 25
GetReligion (blog) - E.E. Evans - ‎Oct 20, 2009‎
Gilbert Gauthe in a small Louisiana community more than 25 years ago. Read that story (or this article), and you get what was a fresh look at the tragedies ...

Our View-Pedophile priests lose in Supreme Court
Daily 49er - ‎Oct 7, 2009‎
In 1985, Gilbert Gauthe pleaded guilty to 11 counts of molesting boys under 18. In 2002, five Boston priests were accused of pedophilia and the church paid ...

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>UPDATE:

Found at Google October 23 at 7:45 AM

Cityof Angels 5: Hope 2009
Almost forty years after Father Gilbert Gauthe stuck a gun into his mouth and forced ... City of Angels asked Lausche how his case involves Gilbert Gauthe, ...cityofangels5.blogspot.com/ - Similar -

Abuse Scandal Still Echoes Through Catholic Church : NPR

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FOUND ON ONION

October 24, 2009:

Priest Shortage Forces Vatican To Hire Temps To Deliver Sacred Rites

MILWAUKEE—In an emergency effort to boost the dwindling number of Roman Catholic priests in the United States, the Vatican contracted with a nationwide staffing firm last week to hire thousands of temporary employees to provide liturgical services and administer holy sacraments in its American churches."The reduced number of active diocesan clergy has forced us to take unprecedented measures to stop parishes from closing," Pope Benedict XVI explained in a decree issued Saturday by the Vatican. "That is why, for the first time in two millennia, we're allowing pretty much anyone who is willing to show up at 9 a.m. and work for slightly more than minimum wage to act as a Vessel of Christ."

According to a statement issued by Manpower Inc., most of the part-time priest applicants are 18- to 26-year-old males with no previous clerical experience. After watching a 35-minute video on the Rite of Ordination and receiving Holy Orders during a brief phone conference, new hires are issued two sets of ecclesiastical vestments and assigned to fill a pastoral vacancy.

Randy Nelson, a recently hired temp priest at St. Joseph's Cathedral in Miami, said he was initially nervous about celebrating mass in front of a large congregation, but soon got the hang of it.

"I was a little intimidated on my first day because I had no idea what I was supposed to do during communion," said Nelson, referring to the transubstantiation of the Holy Eucharist, a miracle he is expected to perform at each mass in order to transform earthly bread and wine into the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ. "But basically I just have to pour some watered-down cabernet into the gold cup, wave my arms around, say some stuff about God, and give each person in line one of those wafer things."

It's really not all that different from a fast food gig," Nelson added. "Except maybe the uniforms here are a bit more humiliating."
Many temp priests told reporters they were only planning to work for the Church until they could land a more serious job, and that having the name of an archdiocese on their resumé was probably better than nothing.

"This is okay for now. They need somebody to do their grunt work and I need the money," said recent college graduate Justin Willingham, explaining that the vow of celibacy is "kind of a drag" but that he rarely has sex between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. anyway. "Plus, I make a ton in tips. The people here are super generous."

According to parishioners at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Fayetteville, AR, their recently acquired temp is unfamiliar with many of his priestly duties and frequently takes the Lord's name in vain when he loses his place during Gospel readings.

"These things never happened when Father Tom [Whelan] was here," said Gloria Huston, 67. "In the 45 years that I've been a member of this parish I never once saw a priest sitting on the altar eating McDonald's."

Ben Rosenthal, 23, who is a newcomer to Catholicism, said the most interesting part of his job is administering the Sacrament of Penance, because while sitting in the confessional he hears "all kinds of shit you wouldn't believe."

"My friends were totally cracking up when I told them how Doug Merchant confessed to having impure thoughts about his next-door neighbor's daughter and was almost caught masturbating in the bushes outside her window," Rosenthal said. "I feel like I should probably call the cops on some of these people, but during orientation they told us we would get fired if we broke the Seal of Confession. So I just make them say a lot of Hail Marys."

While a majority of temps said they were happy just to have a job, some, like Greg Purcell, believe the priesthood is simply too demanding.

"There's no way I'm working Sundays," Purcell said. "Not for what they pay."

(Click here to go to ONION)

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