We’ve all seen pleas from our local police department, sheriff’s department, or sometimes a prosecutor or another law enforcement agency. The medium sometimes differs. It could be an officer being interviewed by a TV reporter for the evening news, a quote in the newspaper from an agency spokesperson, or as simple as an 8.5 x 11 paper or cardboard notice on a bulletin board or telephone pole. The message, though, is usually very similar:
“The Johnson County sheriff’s office is asking for help from local residents in identifying. . .” or “The Smithville police are seeking info from citizens. . .“
Why do many in law enforcement use this tactic, this appeal to the public? We at Horowitz Law suspect there are three simple reasons we’ve all seen this type of message.
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- The first is that those who investigate crimes, obviously, at times, become stymied in their efforts. They exhaust all of their usual methods or tools and still can’t solve a crime and catch the wrongdoer(s).
- The second is that they realize if criminals remain undetected, unpunished, and unrestrained, they will often strike again and hurt more people.
- The third is that they obviously really care about stopping or preventing more crimes – whether current or future.
Many detectives keep unsolved cases or files ‘open‘ for a very long time, sometimes indefinitely. They periodically reexamine old or so-called ‘cold‘ cases, hoping to stumble across something they initially overlooked, use a new technological tool to extract more information from old pieces of evidence, or just find a new insight that can come when a ‘fresh set of eyes’ examines a thorny unsolved problem. In fact, as a society, we have come to appreciate and even expect this dedication and diligence from law enforcement officials. There’s a lesson here for church officials for every employer or supervisor whose employees or volunteers interact with children.
The lesson: When you know or suspect a serious crime has happened, you don’t make a half-hearted effort to find the truth. You try hard. You dig deep. You persist. You try a new approach. And another. And another.
That should especially hold true when the crime is one as devastating and one as apt to be repeated as child sexual abuse. After trying hard and digging deep and persisting, if you’re STILL unable to determine if a crime took place or to ‘solve‘ the crime, you absolutely, repeatedly, and publicly seek help from virtually everyone. The easiest way to do that is, of course, to issue a broad public appeal for information. “But churches aren’t police agencies. In fact, they’re very different,“ one might argue. No one disputes this. However, in one fundamental way, church and police officials share a duty to protect those in their care. Call it moral. Call it civic. Call it common sense. Whatever words are used, we all understand what it is: a duty, an obligation, an ethical line.
Sadly, when it comes to possible crimes, most church officials act very differently from most police officials. If a crime happened or may have occurred in a church, typically, church officials claim to investigate but fairly quickly declare they’re stymied. “We don’t really know if anything happened,“ they announce. This is especially true in the case of a report of child sexual abuse. “We can’t substantiate the allegation,“ they say, implying that they’ve done their best but have reached an unavoidable dead end.
In our experience, that claim is rarely true. We at Horowitz Law collectively have decades of experience with Catholic child sex abuse cases. But none of us recalls even one instance in which a church figure ever said or wrote anything convincing about their purported effort to ‘investigate‘ an abuse report. We doubt that you have either.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing and reassuring if a Catholic supervisor said, “Here are the steps we’ve taken to try to arrive at the truth here?” Those steps should, of course, involve using church websites, parish bulletins, pulpit announcements, membership mailings, and news releases to the media with a simple message: “An abuse report has been made against Fr. Bob Smith. We hired investigators. They’ve tried hard for months to figure out if anything happened. But they’re stuck. So we’re begging you: If you have any information or even suspicions, please pick up the phone. Call the police, the prosecutor, or us. Please help us resolve this uncertainty!”
How hard is that? Just how big is this problem? How many accused priests now fit or have fitted into this “unable to be substantiated“ category? Plenty. In one typical ‘unsubstantiated‘ case, the Lansing Diocese paid $225,000 to a man who said he was molested as a boy by Fr. John Slowey. But a diocesan spokesman said, “The diocese puts it in the category of an unsubstantiated allegation.“
Seriously? There are more:
- At least seven ‘unsubstantiated‘ allegations in the Cincinnati Archdiocese
- At least three in the Twin Cities
- At least three in the St. Louis Archdiocese
We could go on and on. We haven’t analyzed it carefully, but our initial research suggests that some bishops list a disproportionately high number of accused abusers who they claim face ‘unsubstantiated‘ allegations. In the Philadelphia Archdiocese, for example, look at how many clerics are or were in that category: Fr. Philip Barr, Fr. George B. Cadwallader, Fr. Paul A. Castellani, Fr. Michael A. Chapman, John A. Close, Fr. J. Michael Flood, Fr. Joseph J. Gallagher, Fr. Steven Harris, Fr. Joseph L. Logrip, Fr. Stephen B. Perzan, Fr. Fr. Leonard Peterson and Fr. Raymond W. Smart.
The same troubling pattern can be found in the Boston Archdiocese. Again, archdiocesan staff claim that about 40 of their priests face or face ‘unsubstantiated‘ allegations of child sex abuse. That’s no mistake – about 40. There are or were more than three dozen ‘unsubstantiated‘ abuse reports against Boston area clerics. Among them:
- Barr, Frederick
- Bourgault, Ronald L.
- Buntel, Richard A.
- Braley, James E.
- Byrne, Joseph F.
- Carroll, John P.
- Chaisson, John C.
- Curran, Tomas
- Donahue, Richard
- Donnelly, Thomas D.
- Fichtner, Robert C.
- Flynn, John H.
- Foster, Michael Smith
- Fractic, Joseph P.
- Gillespie, Thomas M.
- Hickey, Gerald J.
- Jacques, Roger N.
- Johnson, Richard G.
- Kelley, Arnold E.
- Keohan, Edward M.
- Kirchmeyer, Robert W.
- Lavoie, Victor C.
- Martin, Jon C.
- McDonagh, Edward C.
- McLaughlin, John E.
- McPartland, Paul G.
- Mendicoa, John M.
- Mullin, Jay M.
- Murphy, Charles J.
- Murphy, David C.
- Picardi, John M., Jr.
- Poitras, Steven W.
- Power, James F.
- Raux, Redmond M.
- Scanlan, William J.
- Sherry, Edward F.
- Sullivan, Eugene P.
- Vasaturo, Anthony J.
- Walsh, Martin J., Jr.
Sadly, the Boston Archdiocese isn’t alone.
The worst are the Christian Brothers. Thanks to an agreement hammered out in bankruptcy proceedings by victims of these clerics, the Brothers were forced to disclose a list of accused abusers. But more than a decade later, these religious order officials refuse to disclose which of the men on their list are proven, admitted, or credibly accused child molesters and which are the subject of ‘unsubstantiated‘ allegations. In fact, inexplicably, by their own admission, the Christian Brothers admit they are revealing “the names of current, former and deceased brothers who were identified in at least two sexual abuse claims“ and that “the merits of most of the claims were not tested.”
The obvious questions are: Why does it take TWO reports? And why are you apparently NOT testing the merits of the claims? That’s not fair to the accused. Worse, it’s not fair to the victims. So put simply, the problem is that an alarming number of Catholic officials are unwilling to do what it takes to determine whether an abuse report is ‘substantiated‘ or ‘unsubstantiated.‘ The solution, then, is for the rest of us to do all we can to determine and disclose the truth.
This happens in two ways.
- First, we should share these clerics’ names far and wide and ask any current or former Catholic—especially in the places and dioceses mentioned above—”Hey, have you ever heard of any misconduct or abuse committed by any of these clerics?“
- Second, we should redouble our efforts to reform the statute of limitations. Know who does a better job of sorting fact from fiction in abuse cases? The courts.
But more victims can use the courts to expose the wrongdoers ONLY if we’re able to convince more lawmakers to let more abuse cases be heard in the courtrooms by eliminating or extending the archaic, arbitrary, and predator-friendly deadlines known as statutes of limitations.
Horowitz Law is a law firm representing victims and survivors of sexual abuse by religious authority figures and other clergy. If you need a lawyer because you were sexually abused by a member of a religious organization, contact us today at 888-283-9922 or [email protected] to discuss your options today. Our lawyers have decades of experience representing survivors of clergy sexual abuse nationwide. We can help.