By Kay Ebeling
Did anyone else notice, the first news in months about the Grand Jury investigating Cardinal Mahony came out right after the U.S. Attorney in L.A. announced he's retiring and going into private practice last week?
City of Angels will post with videos pics and interviews next week from Portland. I jumped at the chance to join the annual Walk Across Oregon to End Child Abuse after talking to Virginia Jones, the woman who began it last year, as I could see she and I had a connection at a soul level. People like us, as soon as we learn about sex crimes and felony coverups in the Catholic Church, we immediately pick up a torch.
The way Virginia started the Walk is a lot like the way I started City of Angels in 2007, not knowing where it was going to lead, what it was going to do, just using the resource that was in front of me. I just knew I had to do something much like Virginia. At the end of this post is more about Walk Across Oregon where City of Angels will take part in Portland next weekend: Aug. 22-23.
The quote from Cardinal Roger Mahony's lawyers that raised questions in Sworn Enemies of the Catholic Church posted here last week was this:
“The cost of defense in time, money, and public opprobrium in cases like childhood sexual abuse places extreme pressure on Defendants [the Church] to settle cases irrespective of their merits.”
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"Irrespective of their merits"
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The quote is from the Archbishop of Los Angeles Roger Mahony, through his attorney, in a letter to the state Supreme Court about the 2006-7 settlements in Los Angeles.
“That pressure is necessarily exacerbated as the number of cases reaches into the hundreds and the Defendants are relentlessly held up to public scorn, ridicule, and contempt by the mass media,” writes Lee Potts of Hennigan lawfirm in L.A, speaking for the Archbishop.
Somehow that argument is supposed to persuade the state high court to side with the the Church and prevent more crime victims from coming forward.
The letter was filed with the State Supreme Court last April by the Hennigan, Hennigan & Dorman lawfirm in L.A., in support of the Bishop of Oakland’s attempts to get Quarry v. Doe 1 (the Bishop of Oakland) de-published, as we reported here:
The letter proves the Church is conducting a behind the scenes campaign to spin this message: Claims filed by sex crime victims against the Church are often weak and lacking merit, but the Catholic Church, being pastoral and humble, pays out millions to plaintiffs just to "put this behind us" and be good Christians, forgiving everyone, no matter how bad the sin.
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Not sins,
Felony sex crimes.
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Priest Extradited to London last week arrived in L.A. into welcome arms of Roger Mahony in 1985
(AP) – Aug 8, 2009
LONDON — A former California priest extradited from the U.S. appeared in a British court Saturday, charged with sexually abusing young boys.
James Robinson, 71, is alleged to have carried out the abuse when he served as a Roman Catholic priest in Britain between 1959 and 1983.
He moved to California in 1985 and was arrested there in January after he was tracked down by a BBC program and challenged in person by one of his accusers.
Robinson was taken into custody after a two-minute hearing at a court in Birmingham, 120 miles (190 kilometers) north of London
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Post Coming Monday, Aug. 17th
Lobbyists for the U.S. bishops against the New York Child Victims Act use the same dirty tricks as lobbyists against health care reform, busing blue-haired bubble heads to demonstrations, after coaching them to chant, holler, and disrupt genuine public discourse.
(For preview see Video of Vido Lopez, state assemblyman from Brooklyn, New York, at Bottom of the Blog today)
It usually ends up the hecklers do not even know what the demonstration is about, and are just doing what leaders tell them to do. With health care it's people on Medicare hollering they don't want government interference in their medical care. At Vito Lopez' Brooklyn Office it was persons from the neighborhood disrupting demonstrators without even knowing there is a Child Victims Act, or in some cases understanding enough English to find out.
Organized around a message of hatred, the actions of Vito Lopez against the Child Victims Act in New York and the antics of Anti-Health Care Reform activisits around the country smack of fascism.
FASCISM
Where leaders get people riled up by filling crowds with a common hatred, then turn the mongers loose on an unsuspecting oppressed people.
Scary
Read more manana here at City of Angels
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IDEA FOR THE BISHOPS
Ebeling Rant #7,395,99999999999
The Church is still more concerned about covering its assets than tending to its damaged former parishioners, adult victims of pedophile priests. That's the real reason so many of the sex crime victims end up getting an attorney and asking for money in settlements. It is not passionate knee jerk anti-Catholic prejudice that drives thousands of lawsuits against the church, as Mahony and other bishops imply.
There is no pastoral outreach for those of us who prefer not to return to the Catholic Church. We have to get cash and find pastoral outreach elsewhere.
In the last twenty years, the amount of money the Church has spent on attorneys et al to battle plaintiffs could have been used to build recovery centers all over the country, in every region, employing survivors, the ones of us who are functioning enough to still work. But that would have been too ... Benevolent, Decent, Humble, Reconciliatory ... for the Catholic Church. Did they ever even consider it?
Because think of it.
What entity in the world knew, as early as the 1980s, that there were not just a handful, but thousands of adult victims of pedophile priests in the world? What group knew from the start that those thousands would be reaching out trying to find each other to compare stories, and in the end, see patterns of criminal activity that go way beyond one man inappropriately touching a child?
The only group who knew there were thousands of pedophile priest sex crime victims back in the 1980s is the American Bishops. And from the start, they battled the claimants with hostile lawyering and hush money, using PR and other consultants. As a result, the bishops are still able to control the news that gets to the media and keep quiet the total truth, as well as keep survivors around the country from finding each other.
The bishops could have put that entire effort from the start in the 1980s into recovery and healing of the people who were damaged by these crimes. Imagine how much better things could have turned out if all the money the church has spent on attorneys and PR and other contractors, to beat down the plaintiffs, had been spent instead on setting up sex crime PTSD clinics around the country, to help the victims.
Yeah, why not, PTSD clinics for sex crime victims around the country
There is a connection. Every pedophile priest the Catholic Church allowed to operate created dozens of victims, sexualized children who grew up more confused than even other children who were sexually molested. Because when it's a priest molesting a child, you have that extra added confusion for the victim of how sex is connected to religion and God.
The Church has to see its role in the growth of Sex Crimes all over the country.
And make amends.
Setting up PTSD clinics for Sex Crime Victims, not just the Church’s victims, but all sex crime victims who need PTSD treatment, now that would be genuine pastoral outreach.
I'll take the job as Executive Director...
One good thing that has come out of the Clergy Cases nationwide is a new understanding of how child sex crimes affect an adult in later years.
When a sex act is perpetrated on a child, the victim often internalizes the experience, and ends up living a life of PTSD induced reactions.
The discovery of child sex crimes in the Catholic Church HAS contributed to mental health studies on recovered memory and associative disorders.
Why not build on this new knowledge, find out more?
Do something positive. Do, well, heck, do what Jesus would do.
In terms of pedophile priests, the Catholic Church today is in the same position as the 1980s, where there are likely still thousands more victims who could come forward.
Will the church just keep up this legal battle?
Or will it turn its entire attitude around and do what Christians around the world expect. Tend to the sick and be generous and merciful as it uses its resources in healing.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one . . .
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Send Us Pics of Yourself in a Molested Catholic T-Shirt
We're starting a series here at City of Angels: Photos of people wearing Ken Kosiorek's t-shirts. Here is JohnB of Australia wearing his:
Gutsy guy, Ken in San Diego, below, wears his Molested Catholic t-shirts to Mass, regularly.
To get a tshirt contact kenweld kenweld@san.rr.com but be prepared to start receiving a lot of email afterwards, a lot of it with MOLESTED CATHOLIC in the subject liine, as Ken pulls no punches.
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WALK ACROSS OREGON to End Child Abuse, events next weekend in Portland.
It is almost a PTSD reaction put to good work, at least for me it is, and I think it may be the same for Virginia Jones, who started the Walk when she had just converted to Catholicism and found out the priest at her new church was Gus Krumm, transferred from L.A. to Portland after too many children in Orange County reported him as a pedophile.
Right away Virginia saw the crimes in totality and felt compelled to pick up a torch. Thanks a lot to Bishop Accountability, where anyone searching for information about pedophile priests can find a wealth of knowledge, Jones read about the national scope of the crimes, and she knew she had to do something.
So without hesitation, she started to do something. Like Peggy Warren in Wichita with her cable TV show, like Kathy Shaw in Boston with Abuse Tracker, like others around the country now starting blogs and YouTube channels.
Virginia wrote last week from the Walk Across Oregon to End Child Abuse, "The director of Safe Harbors in Wallowa County wants to join us for a few hours one of our days in Portland.
"The Walk Across Oregon in Pendleton and Hermiston was very successful. We made connections with survivors and supporters of survivors and led one of them right to the offices of Domestic Violence Services."
The weekend we are in Portland, we plan to do videos, interviews, as well as wild footage of the Walk through that cool green city, posting it all on YouTube and here at City of Angels.
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From the flyer
The Portland Itinerary:
(Hope a lot of people join us.)
Saturday, August 22
Mt. Tabor, Hawthorne District: We will meet at Ascension Catholic Church at 7507 SE Yamhill Street at 10 AM to have a Compassionate Gathering listening session with clergy abuse survivor, Kay Ebeling who writes the City of Angels Blog. At Noon we will walk to the top of Mt. Tabor and then down Stark Street to Laurelhurst Park at 2PM and then Belmont/Hawthorne Districts visiting shops and cafes as we please.
Sunday, August 23
Start at OMSI at 9 AM and walk along the Willamette Esplanade to the Steel Bridge, cross on the lower pedestrian walkway to Waterfront Park, walk to Yamhill Street and up Yamhill Street arriving at Pioneer Square at 11:30AM. We will take a break at Pioneer Square. Then we will proceed along Yamhill to SW 10th Avenue. We will turn right at SW 10th Avenue and walk right to Powell’s City of Books on Burnside Street. We will pause to browse at Powell’s, and head to Jamison Square Park arriving at 2 PM. We will pause to enjoy the fountain and then head along Lovejoy to NW 23rd
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City of Angels will make our presence known at the Compassionate Gathering listening session Saturday and in Jamison Square at the interactive fountain, a potluck pizza party (in planning stage still) on Sunday.
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After leaving LaGrande in Eastern Oregon July 27th, the Walk Across Oregon to End Child Abuse will come down the Columbia River into Portland next week, arriving in the city Saturday August 22nd. A a small contingency of City of Angels communicators will join the Walk in Portland (my daughter and her friend Michelle, plus anyone else who wants to join us).
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Don't forget to click PayPal with high fives to help make City of Angels Happen...
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This morning I put a new entry at City of Angels 2 "This Really Happened 2" also working titled "Sunset Boulevard" click and go there for another summer read.
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Crossing freeway / railroad tracks into The Dalles. Walk Across Oregon to End Child Abuse 2009
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DON'T FORGET PAYPAL
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