Catholic church- sex abusescandals

78. Elena - March 19, 2010 [Edit]

Child abuse scandal shatters Irish faith in Catholic Church
By Richard Allen Greene, CNN
March 19, 2010 — Updated 0815 GMT (1615 HKT)

John Kelly says he was abused as a teen living at a reformatory run by a Catholic order in Ireland.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Recent report: Catholic Church in Ireland covered up child abuse by priests from ‘75 to ‘04
“The church has lost working-class urban Ireland,” Irish reporter says
Man who advocates for victims: Religious brothers raped, beat me when I was a teen
Irish reporter: Church deeply damaged because its behavior has been exposed as immoral
RELATED TOPICS
The Roman Catholic Church
Ireland
Child Abuse
Dublin, Ireland (CNN) — John Kelly was 14 years old when, he says, he lost his faith in God.

“I was taken down these stairs. I only had a nightdress on. It was pulled over my head. I was left naked. This 6-foot, 4-inch [tall] religious brother stood on my hands… and another guy had a whip that we made ourselves, with coins in it. And he would run from a distance to flog me,” Kelly remembers.

Kelly, now 59, spent much of his childhood living in institutions run by Catholic orders in Ireland. The abuse he remembers most vividly took place at a reformatory in Daingean, in central Ireland.

“It was a very significant night for me,” he says. “I’d been raped and buggered previously by these religious brothers, and I’d been physically beaten and psychologically tortured for months — I spent two years in the place.”

But Kelly reached a breaking point as one Catholic brother held him down, another whipped him and two others looked on, he says.
“I begged God to take me away. I just wanted to die to get away from the pain. And God wasn’t there for me,” he says.

Kelly’s “crime” that night, he says, was to have been named by another boy at the reformatory, falsely, as an accomplice in a plot to escape.

But Kelly did manage to escape from Daingean soon after, and spent more than 30 years in London before returning to Ireland. Now he is campaigning on behalf of victims of child abuse.
Those victims number in the thousands — possibly tens of thousands — three major investigations in the past five years suggest.

The most recent, the Murphy Report, found the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up child abuse by priests from 1975 to 2004. Child sexual abuse was widespread then, the report found.

Liam McGlynn, a retired public official, thinks that it was no accident that so many child abusers found their way into the priesthood in Ireland.

The prevalence of the problem, he says, suggests that there were “people who were aware that the best place to abuse children was under the cover of the church. What better cover could you hope for?”

He emphasizes that that’s only his personal opinion, but he observes that an entire generation has been turned off by the scandal.

“Virtually no young people go to church. The main churchgoers would be my generation, still, and older,” says McGlynn, who is 57. “The church has lost an entire generation.”

“I haven’t been to church for quite some time. My faith has been seriously damaged,” he adds.

He’s part of a much broader trend, says Patsy McGarry, religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times newspaper.

More than 90 percent of Irish people attended mass at least once a week in the 1970s. Today the figure is about half that, he says.
“The church has lost working-class urban Ireland,” he says.

The faithful were shocked and disgusted to learn that Irish bishops had covered up abuse in the name of protecting the church and its priests, he says.

For loyal Catholics, the most disappointing revelation, McGarry says, was “to have it exposed that bishops behaved in contravention of canon [church] law — as was the case — in contravention of civil law — as was the case — but also, and above all, in contravention of moral law. It blew them out of the water.”

He saw proof of the change in attitude towards the Catholic Church just this week, he says, when he went to a St. Patrick’s Day parade in his hometown in rural Ireland.

“There were two bishops, a retired one and his successor, and there was none of the deference [shown to them] that would have been there when I was growing up in that same small town. Deference to bishops has practically disappeared in Ireland,” he says.
That’s a very fundamental shift, he observes.

Once, bishops “had a unique status in Ireland, far higher than any government minister,” McGarry says.

“The bishop was a supreme being. … He had an unequaled and unchallenged status in Ireland,” he says.

“It’ll be quite some time” before the church regains its moral authority in Ireland, McGarry predicts. “I mean, this is a deeply damaged institution because its behavior has been exposed as immoral.”

But the church will survive in some form, he says.
“If you’re asking me, is this the end of Roman Catholicism in Ireland, it is not. What it is, is the end of a form of the Roman Catholic Church we’ve had in Ireland for about 150 years,” he says.
From now on, the church will need to involve more women and more lay people, as opposed to clergy, in running its affairs, both as a response to the crisis and as a simple matter of demographics, given that a generation has turned its back on the church, McGarry says.

Pope Benedict XVI is due to intervene in the crisis within days.
He is expected to release his official statement on the abuse scandal Saturday, in the form of a pastoral letter to the Irish faithful.

Abuse victim John Kelly says the statement will need to be far-reaching indeed to satisfy him.
“We need him to say that he will get rid of all bishops and cardinals who were involved in the cover-up of the abuse of children and start again,” he says.

“If it means all the bishops and cardinals have to go from Ireland, so be it,” he says. “Ireland would be a better place for it, and the church would certainly be a better place for it.”

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79. Elena - March 19, 2010 [Edit]

Small U.S. town watches case of accused Irish priest
From Drew Griffin, CNN Special Investigations Unit
March 19, 2010 — Updated 0212 GMT (1012 HKT)

Pope Benedict XVI is expected to release a pastoral letter about the sexual abuse scandal on Saturday.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Francis Markey awaits extradition on charge he raped a boy 40 years ago
Ex-parishioner in Minnesota says Markey hugged and kissed him
Markey was sent from Minnesota for treatment when parents showed concern
Granite Falls, Minnesota (CNN) — As a boy in Ireland, Francis Markey dreamed of becoming a priest and serving parishioners all over the world. His dream of ordination came true, but his relationship with parishioners has become the object of international scrutiny.
Now 82 years old, Markey is sitting in an Indiana jail awaiting extradition to Ireland to face the charge that he raped a boy more than 40 years ago.
His story is part of a growing crisis in the Irish Catholic Church, which has recently admitted its leaders hid, moved and even exported suspected pedophile priests abroad to cover up horrific crimes.
Deeply Catholic Ireland has been badly shaken by a government-backed report that found the Archdiocese of Dublin and other church authorities covered up child abuse by priests from 1975 to 2004. Child sexual abuse was widespread then, the report found.
Pope Benedict XVI said Wednesday that he has finished writing an official statement, or pastoral letter, on the child abuse scandal facing the Irish church and he is expected to release the letter on Saturday.
The head of the Irish Catholic Church, Cardinal Sean Brady, said Wednesday that the church’s response to abuse had been “hopelessly inadequate.”

RELATED TOPICS
Roman Catholicism
Sexual Offenses
Child Abuse
As a priest, Markey was first suspended in 1964 and sent for psychiatric treatment in Dublin. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s he was suspended and sent for treatment three times. Eventually, he was sent to New Mexico, where the Catholic church ran a treatment facility for priests with various addictions and sexual problems.
In 1982, Markey resurfaced in the tiny Minnesota town of Granite Falls to fill in for a priest at the small parish of St. Andrew. It was there and then that a boy would come to the priest’s home, just across the street from church, and find himself in Markey’s arms.
“As I was leaving, he gave me a hug and as he did so he stuck his tongue down my throat,” that person, now grown, told CNN. “He had been drinking. … I can’t say if he was drunk but he was definitely drinking.”
The man, who requested anonymity, said the abuse never went further.
But Markey’s arrest in Indiana, based on the accusation against him in Ireland, has refocused attention not only on the Irish church, but also on the secrets of a small-town Minnesota parish.
“To this day, I wonder how many people … had encounters with him,” said the man who says Markey kissed him as a child.
Markey’s attorney did not return calls from CNN.
The Rev. James Moran, the St. Andrew priest who Markey filled in for in the early ’80s, said he knew nothing of the allegations against Markey.
But the diocese overseeing St. Andrew told CNN that Markey was sent from the church to treatment because parents were concerned he had an “unnatural attraction to minor males.” He never returned to the parish.
Now, decades later, some of Markey’s former Granite Falls parishioners may see their old priest again — in the benches of a courtroom in Ireland, where he is expected to stand trial.