Release of LA Clergy Case documents to begin, with 30 to 40 bankers boxes to be made public within days, interview w/Tony DeMarco

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By Kay Ebeling

After hearings in LA Superior Court the day of Obama's inauguration, the release of LA Clergy Case documents was set in motion, with some stacks of files to be sent to the referee, boxes to be released to the public, and attorneys continuing to battle over the remainder.

“Probably the most important information in these cases will be made public now,” Tony DeMarco said Tuesday. “There’s probably 30 to 40 bankers boxes worth of filings” ready to be sent to public archives. When? "It sounds like as soon as the court musters the manpower to bring the documents over to the downtown archives,” DeMarco (pictured) said, adding, "They are the heart of the cases."

We interviewed Tony DeMarco (pictured) after the hearings in Superior Court Tuesday. You can watch the interview video at http://cityofangels6.blogspot.com plus here is a transcript.

City: It appeared to me (in court just now) a lot of documents are going to remain sealed, can you explain that?

Tony DeMarco: The court has essentially ruled for a lot of the documents that there’s appellate case law to tell her (Judge Emilie Elias) that it was produced in discovery only, it was not made part of a motion that decided the case. An adjuditory motion, that that document can remain under seal.

City: Wouldn't that be every document in every case?

Tony DeMarco: No. There are a lot of motions to amend complaints, there were motions for summary judgment. And there were a whole lot of other motions that -

We met over the summer, we went through every document the courts filed, that was ever requested to be sealed, and we got the defense to agree that a lot of the files don’t need to be under seal.

Motions in limine for instance don’t need to be under seal and that's where a lot of the important information is. Certainly though I’ve been fighting it and I thought there was a lot of worthwhile information in the discovery motions themselves. But, you know, the court has decided the way the court has decided.

City: What is the nature of most of the ones that are being left under seal?

Tony DeMarco: They were sometimes portions of personnel files that were attached as part of a motion to compel more documents or more testimony. Sometimes portions of a deposition transcript of a witness, the same. Things of that nature. [INAUDIBLE]

City: Is anything revealing going to ever be released?

Tony DeMarco: By the order of the court that's going to come out there is probably thirty, forty bankers boxes worth of documents now of interest, that are no longer sealed.

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Tony DeMarco: By the order of the court that's going to come out there is probably thirty, forty bankers boxes worth of documents now of interest, that are no longer sealed.
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City: 30 to 40 bankers boxes are no longer under seal?

Tony DeMarco: After the court issues this order.

City: And where do the documents go from there?

Tony DeMarco: The archives. The court archives.

City: Which means they're accessible to the public?

Tony DeMarco: Yes.

City: What's the anticipated date of that?

Tony DeMarco: It sounds like as soon as the court musters the manpower to bring the documents over there, to the downtown archives.

City: That's the Superior Court building downtown on Hill Street?

Tony DeMarco: Yes.

City: And does that mean that they're going to be scanned into the JCCP Documents down there so people can read them in the basement.

(ME: I'm thinking, WOW lots of document diving to do in the next months, come on down, gang, people in LA who are part of this, let’s go document diving together in the Superior Court Basement!)

Tony DeMarco: The court archive is a publicly accessible record.

City: Can you repeat that?

Tony DeMarco: There’s probably 30 to 40 bankers boxes worth of filings, which have probably the most important information in these cases that will be made public now.

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Tony DeMarco: There’s probably 30 to 40 bankers boxes worth of filings, which have probably the most important information in these cases that will be made public now.
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City: Within weeks?

Tony DeMarco: That's my expectation. The court order will come out within days.

City: What information will be in those documents?

Tony DeMarco: You'll find in many instances complaints that were made about priests who were then just transferred over and over again. The heart of these cases, the heart of these cases.

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The heart of these cases
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City: So we all have something to look forward to?

Tony DeMarco: Yes.

City: And you feel like you've finally accomplished it, you're finished?

Tony DeMarco: No not remotely. The single biggest fight that we have on our hands still and it’s part of today’s hearings as well is the personnel files, which were agreed to by the defendants that they would turn them over to a referee, and that whatever objections there might be to those documents being made public can be made heard, and then decided, and documents being made public. That process is ongoing, we have a hearing set for March 5th now.

Anyone who was following this earlier in the year, the judge that all parties agreed to would be the one reviewing the documents, Justice (Edward) Panelli had recused himself, said he didn't think he could serve.

It took us a little bit of time but we were able to get Judge Dickran Tevrizian will be the judge. He has agreed to it. The parties submitted the issue to Judge McCoy who is the settlement judge, and he’s decided that Judge Tevrizian will be the judge to do so.

City: What's holding that up now?

Tony DeMarco: The judge, Judge Elias wants to give every opportunity to all parties to raise objections to have their objections heard. Mr. (Donald) Steier, the lawyer for many of the perpetrators wants a hearing date.

I had asked that since this was already previously briefed, it’s already gone to the California Supreme Court, the Court just issued the order for us to review the briefs that have already been submitted on point and make a decision.

Mr. Steier wanted to submit another briefing and the Court has allowed him to do so, and so that briefing will come in the coming weeks and we'll oppose it as we always do and we'll have a hearing on March 5th.

City: March 5th, so that's what happened today in court, Mr. Steier submitted orally that he still had more objections to a stack of five, right? Five stacks?

Tony DeMarco: That's separate. That has to do with part of the settlement agreement was any documents that were subpoenaed from police agencies, like let’s say Father Wempe, the police (and DA) prosecuted him. It was part of the civil cases that the attorneys subpoenaed police records, and those records did not get reviewed before the settlement was reached.

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Release of documents subpoenaed from police agencies is still being fought by the church.
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Tony DeMarco: So part of parcel to the settlement agreement was that those files, in addition to the personnel files, would be sent to the referee and the referee would hear any objections to those documents being made public.

City: So again what is Steier objecting to?

(Shoot I obviously wasn’t listening, I should have asked now this question:

Why the heck aren’t police documents, of all documents in these cases, public, I mean to me it’s a moot point, they belong to the police, and the police belong to the people.)

Tony DeMarco: He’s objecting to the personnel files going through this process as well as the documents that came from the police agencies for in camera review, he’s objecting to that as well.

City: That hearing will be March 5th as well.

Tony DeMarco: Correct.

City: Alright, we'll see you March 5th, thank you, Tony DeMarco.

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We were in court for the hearing and will file a report here at City of Angels in a matter of days,

I was in court with a notepad, as have not gotten PayPal check yet to buy the Acer $350 laptop. I am panting at the mailbox every day.

HOWEVER

The camera used to make this video was purchased with money put on the PayPal Donate button in the top left corner. I am SOOOOO grateful for people who keep up the High Five Campaign.

What is the High Five Campaign?

Just every now and then pull out your credit card, click the PayPal button and put $5 or higher on my PayPal account. You are paying for Readership - telling Tinkerbell you do believe, you do believe - and helping to pay for investigations and journalism here at City of Angels Network.

We are now trying to raise a travel budget, for next summer, first off to get to SNAP 2009 in Washington DC the first weekend in August.

And the story goes onward. . .

Why did Maine bishop need a police escort, and why was he meeting parishioners in a bar in the first place?

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By Kay Ebeling

We also had a lot of response after the January 5th post: “What made me laugh out loud in the Fact Sheet about Paul Kendrick and Bishop Malone.” People sent cartoons with inebriated Irish priests, and what I think is a legitimate question. On that night when the cleric called for a police escort, citing the threat of priest sex crime survivors and their advocates in the
crowd, why was Bishop Malone meeting with people in a bar in the first place?

“Oh you California people are such prudes,” Paul Kellen of Boston joked, answering me. “The bishop proclaimed a program Theology on Tap.” So I looked it up and it’s true, for the last 20 years or so, priests all over the country have been going out to spread the word of the church in local bars and taverns.

“This was at the same time Malone was refusing to meet with (survivor) Marie Tupper,” Kellen said, “So Paul Kendrick, Mike Sweatt, and Marie stood outside. Paul Kendrick had a video camera with him, because they hadn’t called any reporters. He wanted to document the event, not just rely on the bishop’s word.”

Apparently alarmed, Bishop Richard Malone of Portland, Maine, got a staffer to get on a cell phone and call for a police escort, a judgment call which methinks shows he probably tippled a few beforehand to get prepared for Theology on Tap that night. In fact, when I found out about Theology on Tap, I saw a religion on its last legs, desperately trying to find a way to keep itself from going under.

Tell the truth. Then parishioners will come back. You don't have to go out to bars to find them.

At Malone's meeting “His spokeswoman got up and said they were harassing the bishop and peppering him with questions,” Kellen related. “It turns out, according to the video Paul Kendrick made, Marie Tupper asked one question to which she got a short response and then Malone walked into the bar.”

The Catholic News Agency reported on a Bishop Richard Malone inevitably inebriated Bible study session in a July 2005 article http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=4460

“Malone cited the literature of Flannery O’Connor and James Joyce and the theories of Sigmund Freud in addressing the modern problems of the Catholic Church”--

I’ll bet he did.

The more drunk he got the more drivel came out, brutalized recitations of esoteric poetry, and then in the the famous words of Sigmund Freud-

You're darn right, I'm a prude.

This is an excuse to go out and get drunk while you are being a priest.

Along much the same pattern

As priests going out in collar to visit mothers, coming over each night to aid her in her selfless efforts

- by tucking in her little boys and finger banging them.

The beer mugs, the shots, the more he sips the looser the lips and Did I tell ever you, in the verrry words of what Signmund Freud him shelf said, him sself shed, him, oh what the heck have another one on the archdiocese, ha-ha-ha. . .

“It is a casual forum where young adults can gather together and have ‘straight talk, hard facts, and real answers’ about our faith and how it applies to daily life,” reads a flyer from Maine’s “Greater Portland Young Adult Ministry” advertising Theology on Tap 2005.

Priests going out acting like priests so they can satisfy their compulsions and still look holy. . .

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Who can believe anything these priests say ?
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“When they arrived the owner of the bar came out and said he didn't want us there,” Kellen told me. “They said it’s not going to be a problem it’s a public sidewalk, but apparently then the bishop called and got himself a police escort.

“They had a woman police officer walk with him down the sidewalk.”

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The Chicago Archdiocese is a big promoter of Theology on Tap, in fact, I found this tidbit of information:

“Kate DeVries works for the Archdiocese of Chicago as associate director of the Young Adult Ministry Office. Cities seeking to start an official Theology on Tap program must contact DeVries and adhere to the model provided by her office.

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(Hmm, sounds a little bit like a SNAP support group meeting.)
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I finished work last week, took out the disk and the TV returned to cable, Comedy Central, where comic:

Alonzo Bodden

Was doing standup, saying:

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"About the Catholic Church coming out against gay marriage?

I'm thinking don’t you guys have some problems of your own to work out. Because I don't know how it’s going to work when judgment day comes, but if it’s anything at all like the DMV with those lines, depending on what you did, I’d rather be in the gay people getting married line than in the I touch little boys line."
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The Story Goes Onward. . .

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Don't forget to put a high five or higher on the PayPal Donate Button top left column, using any credit card, you can remain anonymous, I do not get your credit card number or anything like that.
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Video, Betrayed, released Jan. 17, 2009, by survivor of Fr. Jim McCarthy, active in the 1960s in South Carolina

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New Video at City of Angels 6 Click this link to view:

http://cityofangels6.blogspot.com/

McCarthy survivor says the priest gave him Kool-Aid spiked with alcohol, and described "Hell," where the the parents would go if the boy told. McCarthy died in 2008, now this man 40 years later seeks others who were sexually assaulted by this pedophile priest, active in South Carolina in the 1960s. He posted this video on YouTube today and we have embedded it here at City of Angels for you to watch:

A lot of people got angry after reading last post here, writing, My perp was a Scout leader too, and There is no justice in PA

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(The Jan. 14 post about Peter Dunne provoked a peppering of emails. Here are three letters from City of Angels readers, including an encounter with Dunne in the seminary, by author Tom Barnes.)

What the hell, Kay, you think this makes you angry! What about my story where Fr. Cotter was the Boy Scout Leader as well and he went swimming nude with the Scouts and was in charge of the altar boys and the CYO.

The Assistant Scoutmaster was also a pedophile. When my lawyers went to talk to them about Cotter the Scouts said they never even heard of him. But I have pictures of Cotter in his Scout uniform on the altar of my church. I have papers settling with the Scouts out of court. The Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church are so fucking embedded with each other it is enough to make you puke.

The church scandal has given the Scouts enough time to burn their records. It is a huge story that needs to be told!!!!!!!!!!!!! It makes me so mad I cannot even begin to tell you how upset this has made me. I have been saying this for years but to no avail. All those people who know the truth about what Cotter did are getting old but I do not think they could ever forget.

Do you know they even transferred him to another church and let him be involved with Scouting again, Fuckers fuckers fuckers.

Robert Costello
Boston
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No wonder survivors of clergy abuse in PA need to file claims in other states -

You Can't Find Justice in Philadelphia

Dear Editor,

Children never were and may never be safe in the Commonwealth of PA. With no window for the statute of limitations for sexually abused children and with PA senators and legislators more concerned about protecting dogs and cats, little wonder that survivors of clergy abuse at the hands of PA Pedophile priests need to file claims in other states and in federal courts. In PA you can’t find justice.

This message will be sent to a majority of PA State Senators (and I expect no response) as well as every media outlet in PA.

Mike Ference
Philadelphia

(COOL: He also sent the entire Jan. 14 post to all those people. Readership!)

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He had the presence of a freaking vampire

As For Peter Dunne, he gave me the willies

Dear Kay,

As for Peter Dunne, believe it or not, when I was a seminarian at St. Charles a friend of mine in that class, a guy who was two or three years older than the rest of us, spoke incessantly about how wonderful Dunne was. This guy adored Dunne. He was a real big fan and had spent time up at that summer camp with him. I only met Dunne once. I was a seminarian. He gave me the willies. He had the presence of a freaking vampire. I have to agree with you. I cannot imagine that nobody knew what was happening. The guy was weird beyond belief.

Tom Barnes,
Author, "The McGurk"

(I emailed back to Barnes, tell me more about Dunne and Barnes wrote more:)

Well I only met the guy once for a few minutes. A seminary classmate who was a follower of his introduced me to him. He gave me the willies. He looked, walked and had the appearance of a freaking vampire.

You have to understand how things were in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 1970. Vatican II was only over about five or six years and any clerics or nuns in power had taken vows in the 1940s or earlier. Philadelphia Catholicism is very traditional even today. One never questioned a priest or nun about anything. They were gods and goddesses. They were not to be questioned by mere mortals like you and me. They were above that. And they knew it and they played to that strong hand 24/7. That still goes on in Philadelphia to this very day.

Dunne had a following. He was seen as some sort of savior for boys who came from broken homes. The Archdiocese was quite proud of him and gave him free reign. To see these pedophiles as the monsters they are and were is a little misleading. That is using year 2009 eyes to view things in 1970 or 1960 or 1950. It is not intellectually appropriate to do that. That is not really how it was. The situation was much foggier than this. It was not clear cut. Everybody had a Boystown view of this guy. If anyone knew or suspected he was a pedophile, it was not apparent in the leeway that he was given by the Archdiocese.

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'Dunne had a following. He was seen as some sort of savior for boys'
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(Tom Barnes response continued:)

Dunne literally scared me to death when I met him. I was in his presence once for less than five minutes and I got the impression the guy was, frankly speaking, nuts. He had the cold and empty stare of a manic depressive. He actually looked like a vampire. He seemed to have a hunch, he walked with a slightly stopped gait, he was more than a tad homely and frankly he had absolutely zero personality. But the boys loved him, and I mean literally adored this guy. And my guess would be because they were all working class boys from odd families with estranged parents and Dunne actually talked to them, his grooming of these boys worked. It is really as simple as that. It was no deeper than that I would think.

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Pedophile Priests Are Monsters
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These people are monsters and evil not because they are incredibly different and outlandish. They are monsters and evil because they learned somehow to take something as mundane as slight interest in a pre-teenage boy or teenage boy and turn it ever so slowly to their sick advantage. Dunne stayed away (as far as I can tell) from the wealthy, the informed, the powerful Catholics in Philadelphia. If I remember this correctly, his whole appeal to the Archdiocese was that he worked with "troubled boys". Now, who better to take advantage of than an already half-nuts "troubled boy"?

That is pretty much how I remember Peter Dunne and the archdiocese's treatment of him. This was not secret. It did not have to be. It was typical, subservience on the part of the typical working class Philadelphia Catholic. They have no one to blame but themselves. They made a god out of a man.

Tom Barnes
Author, "The McGurk"

http://www.themcgurk.vpweb.com

(We have a reviewers' copy of The McGurk and will be writing about it soon, it looks good.)

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MEANWHILE
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Meanwhile I'm still on the space station but starting to venture out into the atmosphere more. The body they gave me for my visit here on Earth is working again, I can walk. So even though I still have problems with gaseous emissions, I am able to use the legs and arms to go out, so I can once again study the planet and its inhabitants while I am still here.

Unfortunately on a recent night I had a run in with a group of earthlings, a situation that found me under attack, by six Armenian men, some of them weilding chain saws.

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Honest, six Armenian men weilding chainsaws came after me outside my front door the other night.
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They are tenants in a unit near mine. So I’ve had to bunker down. Three couches now block the front door entrance.

I am particularly proud of one defense tactic I concocted out of packing materials that came with a recent delivery. The plastic packing stuff that cracks real loud when you pop it? I have it under each window, so if anyone tries to climb in, they will cause a cacophony.

I have also hidden scissors and knives around the rooms, so I am ready to defend myself, any time any place, even in the bath, I have a kind of pipe that can be used as a weapon if needed.

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Life in my neighborhood in LA.
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With furniture piled in front of the door and the deep red curtains closed, even if they know I'm in here, they don’t know where I am or in which room.

I remain safe for now, here in the space module. Someone from the Administration stiill brings a Meals on Wheels delivery each day, so I have fuel for this human vessel.

But this run-in with the local earthlings has brought the hostility from the street into my building. The guys who came after me with electric saws consume mass quantities of alcohol in the form of a thick malt beverage in dark bottles.

They seem to be living in the home of a relative who pays rent here. They are all from someplace that was once called Armenia, and they are part of an influx of population to the USA in the 1980s, people running away from cleaver and sword weilding Muslims.

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This Really Happened, Honest, Just Last Week
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My neighbor became hostile with me and started to follow me around the building with his chainsaw buzzing in his hands, because I asked them to stop running the chainsaws inside the patio the other night, the noise was too loud.

Five other Armenian guys weilding tools and several of their women came out.

They ran after me then stood under my window screaming, "White Trash," "I have connections, I'll get you evicted," "You and your daughter have had black men in there with you," just crazy stuff.

I do not like this group of earthlings.

This is what untreated PTSD will do. Apparently these earthlings watched Muslims slaughter their families in Central Europe. Then Ronald Reagan arrived with airplanes, and they landed here in East Hollywood, a slummy part of town that even I would not come into back in the 1980s.

The Armenians still live here in the same places the airplanes dropped them, along with people from Thailand and other US colonial conquests gone bad. Most of them did not learn English, maybe they thought they would be going back.

Now they shout all the time

they are living with untreated PTSD.

And now I live here too. The other night they yelled at me, "Get out of this neighborhood," and of course I had to yell back, "Get out of this country. Oh you don't have a country anymore. Well stop fucking up mine."

I don't think they know enough English to understand what I said. But the police came and it has been quiet here since.

I called the LAPD as it is called here, Hollywood Division. A half hour later they came and the man downstairs was indeed inebriated, but he’d hidden away the chainsaw.

So the police could only ask us to be cool.

But since I called the police, I am now even more an enemy to the armenian earthlings downstairs.

Every time I look out the window, the chainsaw weilding neighbor sits there. He is blocking my way to the trash bins. So I cannot get rid of waste products that I am producing here in this space cubicle, and the bags of refuse have joined the furniture defending the entryway.

I do have a plan for the trash. Wait until 4 AM to take it down, when the enebriated armenian is snoring inside. But I keep sleeping through the window of opportunity.

So the trash is just another part of the fortress I have put up to keep them all out.

I wish the mother ship would come to get me soon.

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In anyone has any suggestions of a place I can move to and get outta here, please email. I pay more than a thousand dollars a month for this.

Meanwhile, keep clicking the PayPal Donate button, so we can pay to have supplies delivered to the space station by guys in UPS and Postal Service uniforms. . .

The Story Goes Onward