cityofangelslady Since they say ordaining women is “on a par with clergy abuse,” the Catholic Church must think female priests are okay, as the Vatican has barely responded one way or the other about its pedophile crime epidemic. -ke
From Huffington Post story linked below:
“Last year, the Vatican made ordaining a woman one of the gravest canonical crimes, on par with sexually abusing a child.”
They call both priest pedophilia and ordaining women “grave canonical crimes” but then let pedophile priests remain in the clergy. In fact, a Catholic priest has the ability to forgive all crimes, so any criminal activity involving a priest is forgivable, so go ahead and start ordaining women…
Circular Reasoning
from Kay Ebeling
READ this story with photo at City of Angels Blog
From Lance’s Blog: “Designer Camelle Ilona Daley has a line of stylish clerical clothing. The picture (at CofA Blog) of a model wearing female priestly garments provoked some controversy among my friends on Facebook. Some were offended, I saw one comment that said, “these are the END TIMES…” Some objected to female priests; others objected not to a female priest, but to this particular picture, which seems to them to be suggestive.”
See Fashion Collection for a Female Priest at House of Filona
Read story that sparked this blog entry at Huffington Post:
Roy Bourgeois, U.S. Priest Who Backs Women’s Ordination, Detained
VATICAN CITY — A U.S. Catholic priest who supports ordination for women was detained briefly by police Monday after marching to the Vatican to press the Holy See to lift its ban on women priests. The Rev. Roy Bourgeois and about a dozen supporters had marched down the main boulevard leading to the Vatican holding a banner “Ordain Catholic Women” and chanting outside St. Peter’s Square …
cityofangelslady “I don’t want a government bureaucrat to manage my health care.”
Do they think a corporate bureaucrat will do a better job?
At least a government administrator is working for us, the taxpayers who pay his salary. Corporate insurance bureaucrats work for profits to benefit themselves and stockholders. Insurance company CEO’s have no interest in keeping Americans healthy, whereas most government “bureaucrats” are public servants.
Now that Wall Street has destroyed the housing industry with faulty mortgages, the CEOs are branching into a new area: health insurance, where they can exploit human beings directly, profiting off the need we all have to treat illnesses.
I think it is suspicious that Wall Street is growing its investment in the “health care business” at the same time President Obama neglected to include Single Payer as an option in health care reform.
This affects me personally. I am 63 years old and somewhat sick but have no way to see a doctor until I turn 65 and finally get Medicare, if I make it to 65….
I was so happy to read the following two statements recently at the singlepayer action dot org website:
“We are sick of health insurance companies jacking up premiums while insurance CEOs make out like bandits.”
AND
“We are sick of high deductibles, co-pays, and the in-network, out-of-network Rube Goldberg system we live under”
I was beginning to think no one was noticing.
****
Blogged by Kay Ebeling, living in the USA
cityofangelslady The Bush tax cuts are the main cause of our nation’s debt, not spending, even though that is the sound byte repeated over and over by corporate media.
Reporters used to be reporters, not flacks reading corporate press statements, as we see on network news.
Today even NPR sounds like it’s delivering the Republican message.
The USA used to be a humane place where everyone had a home, and if you worked, you could afford a car and to send your children to college.
If people had good jobs again, they would pay directly into the treasury and Social Security from their paychecks, and cuts to safety net programs would not even be a consideration. Our laws have to stop rewarding businesses for sending jobs overseas. We have to re-instate taxes on millionaires.
How many yachts and mansions does a person need? Especially while the rest of us can barely keep roofs over our heads?
Kay Ebeling
cityofangelslady “It is easy to have impact on the overall decision of The Hague prosecutor, as anyone can write directly with evidence of the crimes that this religious organization has committed,” according to an email from Axel Cooley axel@telegracia.com received this week by City of Angels Blog.
“It is vital to do this well before his decision date, May 15, 2011, so that he can utilize this evidence to proceed,” writes Cooley.
Send your story and evidence to:
The Prosecutor
The International Criminal Court
Dr. Luis Moreno Ocampo
Maanweg174 NL-2516 AB Den Haag
The Hague,The Netherlands
Cooley writes: “It is also important to enter your name in one of the websites of these websites demonstrating your approval:”
http://www.popeaccountability.org/do-you-approve-/index.php (English)
http://www.der-fall-des-papstes.com/finden-sie-das-gut/index.php (German)
Soon, the Pope Accountability website will be made available in Spanish, French and Italian.
This post originally appeared at City of Angels Blog by Kay Ebeling:
Write Hague Criminal Court Prosecutor by May 11 re Crimes Against Humanity of Pope
City of Angels Blog is Ba-a-a-ack with a vengeance
cityofangelslady PLUS
cityofangelslady New name for a feature at City of Angels Blog – PippiLeaks: Documents scanned for everyone in the world to click enlarge and read for free forever about sex crime coverups in the Catholic Church, here are 4 more from New Mexico, plus 2 bonus posts:
***
“Destruction of documents took place in considerable measure, and wide-ranging collections of documents were stored outside the Palace in private dwellings, and thus made susceptible to manipulation.”
“Vital documentation, affecting for example former activities of the person under investigation or the reasons for a change of diocese in the case of incardinated priests, was missing in most cases. There was no….
cityofangelslady It started as a joke, I’d say:
Yeah I can’t afford health insurance, and I might die early as a result but there’s medical marijuana at the corner store and Viagra on the internet, so at least I’ll die happy. That joke was at the end of a column I wrote three years ago about going to free clinics with “blood in the stools” and still never getting any diagnostic work done. I’m still waiting for County to call me with an appointment for a colonoscopy, I’ve been waiting more than a year. I’ve since moved out of that County…
An email today from Reading Glasses Shopper featured the “John Lennon Full-Frame Reader” as a Friday Find for $8 until midnight today only. I would buy a pair, but the Lennon Reader only goes up to 3.5 strength and I’m shopping for 4.0 or higher. Still I’m happy to see another thriving business selling medical care online that people used to get from doctors, as it’s all I’ve got…
A good six years ago when my daughter and I were homeless, I used up my last set of contact lenses and discovered that the reading glasses you buy at a Walgreens type store will suffice when you can’t afford the optometrist. My eyes seem to have adjusted to the 4.0 strength glasses I’ve been able to find online where some pairs go all the way up to 7.00 in magnifying strength. The strongest glasses you can find in drugstores is 3.25 if you’re lucky. I think there’s some concern somewhere that keeps chain retailers from selling reading glasses stronger than 3.25 but online you can prescribe yourself all the way to total blindness.
It is kind of scary.
I mean, in twenty years, will the USA be full of blind people with cataracts and glaucoma and other disease that could have been treated? Like a third world country, fourth world?
The ads on TV for prescription drugs today are truly unprecedented. I mean a 60 second commercial where 45 seconds are spent telling you all the side effects you might encounter if you take this drug, and the other drugs that you might be taking that make the drug in this commercial deadly, and what side effects you could have from the drug and if you have those deadly reactions, go at once to an emergency room.
Here is the scenario I imagine from commercials for prescription drugs:
Most Americans who do have health insurance, have opted into a low cost plan. When I have had health insurance in past ten years, the doctors I’ve gone to have barely spoken English and sometimes I’ve even wondered how legitimate their license on the wall really was. My favorite was the little Armenian man who was going to do in-office minor surgery on me, and as he picked up his instruments I heard him say, “oops.”
How many of us are going into one of the doctors to whom we’ve been assigned by our insurance company, and not feeling like we can talk to the doctor at all, so we just asked for the drug we wanted, based on the TV commercial we saw, and the doctor wrote the prescription? Then when we get home we can wait for the commercial to come on again, so we can try to write down all the side effects to watch for after starting the drug.
As I search the internet for a place where I can buy glasses stronger than 4.0, wondering if the little bit of medical marijuana I smoke will keep me from getting glaucoma like my dad and aunt on both sides of the family had, using Fixodent to glue back in old tooth fillings and hopefully with lots of mouthwash keeping my teeth from rotting, staying away from men who take Viagra, when maybe I really should be looking for a man who takes Viagra, hoping that the muscle relaxant I bought from Canada won’t have a bad interaction with the pain killer I bought from India… I keep reminding myself.
We’re not meant to stay on this planet for more than 80 years or so anyway, so if I die a few years early of no health insurance, the difference is just one tiny blip in time in the totality of the cosmos. (See, it’s easier today to get LSD than an antibiotic.)
As I posted this entry just now on AlterNet, a commercial for yet another medication came on saying,
“Interaction with other drugs such as Prilosex might result in heart attack or stroke, but don’t stop taking this medication suddenly as your risk of heart attack or stroke may increase. Do not take this drug if you are going to have surgery, especially if you have recently had a stroke, or if you think you might have a stroke in the future, as truth is, anyone can have a stroke so a stroke really wouldn’t be a result of taking this medication, and this commercial protects us from litigation should patients die after taking our product.”
Or something like that.
(Posted by Kay Ebeling who produces City of Angels Blog as one of a hundred thousand victims of pedophile priests in the USA seeking truth and justice, but that is a whole nother topic.)
cityofangelslady 
Levada, from Google Images
Asked about a priest who took minor boys skinny dipping, Levada says, “My memory is not that airtight.” Another priest was in treatment at House of Affirmation in Massachusetts for sex problems before coming to Oregon; it did not register in the bishop’s brain. Throughout the deposition the cardinal responds “I don’t recall,” and “I don’t remember.” Only when attorneys put hard evidence in front of the Cardinal does he suddenly have a memory, and then only for that one fact brought out by evidence
Today at 5 p.m. Rome time Cardinal William Levada gives a speech titled “Response of the Church to Cases of Sexual Abuse” after a day of meetings at The Vatican. “It is unclear whether the format will allow for any back-and-forth among the cardinals, or whether there would be any time for discussion given the limited window allotted,” Politics Daily and other news media have reported.
The main skill Levada can demonstrate to the cardinals is “How to answer questions under oath without revealing anything more than what opposing attorneys already have as evidence,” judging from the Cardinal’s own answers in a deposition taken January 2008, about sex crimes of priests in Portland, Oregon, where Levada was bishop before becoming Archbishop of San Francisco and then, just after the deposition, flying away to Rome never to return to American soil and be questioned again. Today Levada heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly The Inquisition).
Cardinal William Levada is an expert on evading the truth in deposition testimony, even after taking an oath on the Bible. Here are excerpts from the January 2008 deposition. (Attorneys Erin Olson and Kelly Clark appeared for plaintiffs, Paul Gaspari is attorney for the San Francisco Archdiocese, Mary McNamara represents Levada:)
Q: You indicated to Mr. Clark that during your tenure as archbishop of Portland that you met with a number of victims of clergy abuse.
A: I did say that, right.
Q: Can you tell me the names of any one of them.
A: I don’t recall that.
Q: Are you certain you actually even met with a victim?
A: To the best of my recollection, I did.
Q: But you can’t remember a single name.
A: Mm-mm.
Q: Can you remember the context of any of the meetings?
A: The context?
Q: Who the priest was, what was the person’s desires?
A: No, I don’t.
MR. MOREY: Q: During your tenure as the archbishop of Portland, were there any reports of the crime of solicitation sent to the Holy See?
A: I think I can answer no because I’m sure I would have remembered if I had done such a report.
Q: I may miss one, but during your tenure, there were reports of sexual abuse of children by priests Baccellieri, Perone, McCray, Goodrich and Also.
Ms. McNamara: Compound.
Mr. LENA: Compound. What is, I’m sorry, I’ve lost track of the question. [INAUDIBLE DISCUSSION]
***
Q: Okay, let me switch subjects and talk about Father [BLANK]
[Then 28 and a half REDACTED PAGES]
[Then we get to Erin Olson’s questioning of Cardinal Levada:]
Q: How about Father Donald Durand?
A: I received a report of child sexual abuse. I think it would be more inappropriate behavior.
Q: Can you describe the nature of the complaint?
A: I believe the report I received was one of skinny dipping in a river up towards Silverton or Salem someplace.
Q: Skinny dipping alone?
A: With minors, minor boys.
Q: Did you receive that from a known source?
A: I don’t recall. But that sticks in my memory for some reason. And my memory is not that airtight, as you know.
Q: Did you take any action in response to the complaint?
A: I’m sure I must have discussed it with Father Lienert.
Q: Would it be documented in a memorandum of sorts?
A: It could well have been. Certainly I think it would have been discussed with him.
Q: With Father Durand?
A: With Father Durand.
Q: Do you have any independent memory of that discussion?
A: No, I don’t.
***
Q: What did you do when you received the report about Father Goodrich?
A: Well, as I recall, he was not in a condition to be interviewed himself. But I’m not absolutely sure whether someone didn’t attempt to interview him. You know, I don’t know. There should be something in the record about it.
Q: Do you recall having a meeting with Father Lienert, Tom Selliken, and counsel for the archdiocese about how to proceed with that investigation?
A: I don’t recall such a meeting but that would be the normal thing.
Q: Okay, let’s talk a little bit about that. When a complaint against a priest was received by you during the course of your tenure as archbishop, what would be your first reaction in terms of what you would do?
A: If it came to me directly, I would call in the vicar for clergy and share this complaint with him, ask for any information and background and ask him to go through files. And then we would meet about what next steps to take.
Q: Was it always the case, with regard to the seven priests you’ve identified about whom you received complaints during your tenure, that you would convene a meeting to discuss how the investigation would proceed?
A: It would not necessarily- we would- the people that were mentioned, the archdiocesan attorney, oftentimes the risk management person, all of those persons would be involved in consultation. But whether we would always meet together, it’s not- I don’t recall that being the case.
*****
Ms. OLSON: Q: In Paragraph 3, exhibit 41 describes Father Grammond being upset because he’s being treated so harshly and I’m sort of summarizing it. In it he says: “Father Jim Harris was accused of child abuse fifteen years ago and nothing has happened to him.” Were you familiar with the prior allegation against Father Jim Harris?
A: No.
Q: Did you know Father Harris simply as his supervisor or more as a passing acquaintance?
A: No, I knew him as his bishop. I think Harris was already retired by this time.
Q: Did you receive information from Father Lienert, [Vicar for Clergy] after he got this rant from Father Grammond, that there had been an accusation made against Father Harris?
A: I don’t recall having that information before, before this indication, before hearing from, I’m sure I heard from Father Lienert about developments in the Grammond case.
Q: Do you recall learning from Father Lienert in 1992 that a prior accusation of child sexual abuse had been made against Father Jim Harris?
A: All I recollect is what’s in this memo.
(Read more at City of Angels Blog by City of Angels Lady reporting from the City of Angels)
cityofangelslady With CofA Blog now in Albuquerque, we begin what should be an outpouring of information about the Servants of the Paraclete treatment center for priests with “psycho-sexual problems.” Started in 1949 with the best intentions of providing spiritual renewal and prison-like oversight of problem priests, Via Coeli in Jemez Springs morphed by the 1960s into a psychology-dependent almost New Age secular rehab that was so assured of its success treating pedophilia that it sent its priests into local parishes while they were still in treatment, thus creating an inordinately high number of victims of clergy sex crimes in the region around Jemez Springs in Northern New Mexico
Scanned at City of Angels Blog for you to click enlarge and read are minutes from a February 13, 1967, meeting held: “To present to the archbishop a plan whereby guest-priests under the care of the Servants of the Paraclete could enter into ministerial work in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe as a final step in a graduated program of rehabilitation begun at Via Coeli Monastery, and continued through the Paraclete houses in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.”
The minutes were among documents found during the discovery phase of the L.A. Clergy Cases that settled in 2007, where Cardinal Roger Mahony authorized payment of $660 million to 510 plaintiffs and avoided testifying in trials where these documents would have been released by much more mainstream media than City of Angels Blog.
The Archbishop of Santa Fe and Servants of the Paraclete leaders felt it prudent not to tell local parishes about the problems the out-patient priests brought with them, the minutes reveal, as you can read on Page 2:
“In placing men in the parishes, the Archbishop would use his judgment and discretion in informing the pastors only of what he thought they must absolutely know about the priest they were receiving, so that they might more effectively work with the man.”
The minutes continue: “No details or particulars of a clinical nature need be made known regarding the man’s past history.”
“The Archbishop seemed immediately receptive to the idea (of placing out-patient priests in parishes) and added his own personal interest in and concern for the work, then proposed the following parishes as suitable fur such a plan:
In Albuquerque:
Sacred Heart
St. Anza’s
San Felipe
Our Lady of Fatima
Queen of Heaven
Holy Ghost
Our Lady of Assumption
St. Francis Xavier
St. Bernadette’s
St. Theresa
Annunciation
Immaculate Conception
St. Charles
Holy Family
St. Edwin’s
Ascension
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Nativity EVM (Alameda)
St. Clement’s (Los Lunas)
(My God, how big was the population of Albuquerque in 1967 that they even had this many Catholic Churches. City of Angels will be absorbing local culture as we remain in Albuquerque.)
“The point was made that the program as so far stated might carry with it an inconvenience in terms of constant personnel changes in the parishes. The Archbishop remarked that there were enough parishes available to obviate that problem… He repeated that the priests of the archdiocese were ready and willing to help in this operation.”
(More from page 2-3, where as CofA Blog reads it, The Catholic Church through SotP experimented with the people in local New Mexico parishes, used them as guinea pigs to see if pedophile priests who completed treatment were ready for full-time assignments or not:)
“It was further agreed that the parochial assignment was to be of an indefinite nature, lasting as long as was necessary for the man to give evident signs that he had readjusted well to the ministry and was now deserving of a full time assignment, either in his home diocese, his religious community, or in whatever opportune situation he might be placed. It was agreed that should a man fail to measure up in his parochial assignment, he should be returned to a Paraclete house, preferably in the Canyon, where efforts at his priestly renewal might begin again.”
The Paraclete New Mexico Corporation?
Page 3 goes on to discuss teaching opportunities for the Servants of the Paraclete out-patients as “not feasible at the moment, with one possible exception, at St. Vincent’s Academy.” Also on Page 3: They’re adding four more rooms because of the “influx of guests,” the $10,000 cost would be referred to the Paraclete New Mexico Corporation.
The Archbishop “spoke of his admiration for the professional services being extended to the Paracletes by Dr. Frank Rowe (Howe? It’s hard to read this 1967 typewriter with its ink splotches), and Dr. John Salazar.”
Also on Page 3, the Archbishop, concerned about overcrowding and understaffing, “cautioned that we not allow a large number of specifically ill-adjusted emotional cases to accumulate in one place.”
(Continue reading, scan these minutes plus other Paraclete Documents at City of Angels Blog where we posted here: http://cityofangels8.blogspot.com/2010/11/paraclete-doc-guest-priests-enter.html Monday, November 15, 2010
Paraclete Doc: ‘Guest-priests enter ministerial work and no details of a clinical nature need be made known’ Minutes from Feb 1967 Meeting
cityofangelslady As soon as I heard that Melissa Huckaby murdered 9-year-old Sandra Cantu in a church basement March 27, 2009, I got a chill. The Santillan vs. Bishop of Fresno trial had been in progress the previous weeks in Fresno, right in the middle of the Highway 5 ride between Tracy, California, where the murder and rape took place, and Wasco, where the molestations by Monsignor Anthony Herdegen of the Santillan brothers took place. The murder weapon Huckaby used was a rolling pin used to press out communion wafers in the Clover Baptist Church. As soon as I heard about the murder, I felt there might be a connection, with the extensive news coverage of the jury trial especially when Cardinal Roger Mahony testified. As the jury began deliberation in Santillan vs. Bishop of Fresno, Melissa Huckaby interrupted her preparation to teach a Sunday School class and took Sandra Cantu on a ride to the church.
Today we are running Day Two of the testimony of Bishop John Steinbock in that trial at City of Angels Blog. The Bishop of Fresno’s first day of testimony is here in Part One of this series posted October 28, 2010.
This story of the connection between Cantu’s murder and the Fresno trial has been simmering at City of Angels Blog for a while. I’ve thought about going North to visit Huckaby in prison and ask her, was there a connection between the trial and the mania inside your head the day you murdered Cantu? Was it a coincidence that you murdered Cantu just hours after Catholic leaders did a PR routine under oath testifying they knew nothing of pedophile priest crimes? I thought of traveling to interview Huckaby and ask her those questions, but now City of Angels is going the other direction to Albuquerque, to write about Servants of the Paraclete starting next week. We can always visit Huckaby in prison years from now. She isn’t going anywhere.
Meanwhile here is more official transcript from March 23, 2009, day two of Bishop Steinbock’s testimony. Part 3, in this series “What Melissa Huckaby Heard” will be transcript of the trial from March 26, 2009, the day before Huckaby interrupted her work scissoring magazine pictures for a Sunday School project to murder Sandra Cantu in the basement of the church where her grandfather was pastor.
IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF FRESNO
CENTRAL DIVISION
Before the Honorable Donald S. Black, Judge
Department 97B
GEORGE SANTILLAN, individually and)
HOWARD SANTILLAN, individually, )
Case No. 03CECG04480
Plaintiffs,
-vs-
DEFENDANT JOHN DOE 1, DEFENDANT
JOHN DOE 2, DEFENDANT JOHN DOE 3,
and DOES through 100, inclusive,)
JURY TRIAL VOLUME IV
MR. ANDERSON: There is in the testimony of Bishop Steinbock and the cross-examination, an additional matter that I intend to cross-examine him on.
THE COURT: Well, Bishop Steinbock is here. Do you want him in the courtroom listening to this?
MR. ANDERSON: No.
THE COURT: Would you step outside, Bishop Steinbock.
MR. ANDERSON: The matter that I expect to come up, Your Honor, pertains to the testimony given by Bishop Steinbock late in the day when we- before we recessed. And in particular to the topic of all the things that he and they are doing. And among those, Exhibit 529, in which, and I quote from it, he makes assurances, “I want to assure everyone that I know of no priest active in ministry in our Diocese that has been involved in a sexual abuse of a minor.”
THE COURT: What is the date of that?
MR. ANDERSON: That’s 2002, Your Honor. I have the exhibit here if you’d like to see that.
MS. McGUIRE: Well, we redacted that.
THE COURT: Is that portion redacted?
MR. DE MARCO: That portion wasn’t redacted.
MR. ANDERSON: No. And — and I was asking about that as well. And, Your Honor, I intend to offer the finding — cross-examine the witness first, but offer the finding that was made in this court pertaining to Father Swearingen in which the jury found that he had committed sexual abuse against a minor.
THE COURT: But that was after 2002, wasn’t it?
MR. ANDERSON: It was. But he’s making an affirmative representation that this was the case then and has done nothing to revoke that, otherwise clarify it, and continues to make that representation. And I’m further prepared to offer proof that Swearingen is in ministry involving youth at the current time.
MS. McGUIRE: Your Honor, what is that — we’ve already been around this several times in motion in limine and agreed that the Court has ruled that no other cases will come in. How is that relevant?
THE COURT: But I also indicated the other day that it’s getting closer and closer. And the problem here, the problem is- and what I’ve learned since we first addressed this issue- is that the church has been making representations 12 about this. And I just- ultimately, I don’t know what I’m going to do with this, but it concerns me that the jury is- has been given the impression that there are no other cases like this.
MS. McGUIRE: Well, Your Honor, we can redact that out of the- the jury has not seen this.
THE COURT: But it’s already there. I mean, it was there — to some extent it was there in Bishop Steinbock’s testimony last week that he commissioned Mr. Gordon to do an- to do an investigation and-
MS. McGUIRE: But he –
THE COURT: -it came up clean.
MS. McGUIRE: He clarified that by saying it wasn’t Gordon that did the investigation; it was Father Avila.
THE COURT: I don’t know how much he clarified it, but 1 that’s what I’m concerned about and that’s what I’m listening for.
MS. McGUIRE: We can redact that out if they’re concerned about that. But now to get into issues involving Father Eric Swearingen and turn this case into what’s- what’s going on with him, I just don’t understand how that would be relevant. The Bishop hasn’t made any representations that there is no other priest that’s been accused in this Diocese. He’s made no representations in his testimony that there’s no other accusations being made against other priests in this Diocese.
MR. ANDERSON: Counsel — Your Honor, that’s for counsel to argue. The fact of the matter is the exhibit is in evidence. He had it read to every parish and has made affirmative representations to this Court and to this jury throughout his testimony, both yesterday- the last day we were in court and the day before, that there are no credibly accused priests out there.
THE COURT: What is the date of that letter?
MR. ANDERSON: The date of this is April 7th, 2002.
THE COURT: And when was Swearingen first accused?
MR. ANDERSON: September of 2002.
THE COURT: After that letter?
********************
Q: I’m going to ask you to read what you had read in all the parishes in the Diocese in April of 2002, beginning with “we.”
A “We are all shocked by the sad and unfortunate scandals in the church that have appeared in the media, even though the scandals are not as widespread as the secular media may suggest. The scandal still exists and troubles us all greatly. I want to assure everyone that I know of no priest active in ministry in our Diocese that has been involved in the sexual abuse of a minor.”
********************************
MR. ANDERSON: Yeah. And the jury verdict, of course, finding that he had committed the offenses was after that. However, on Thursday late, this Bishop- and Mr. De Marco has some of the testimony- made a number of representations to the jury, Your Honor, suggesting that they’re doing all these things to protect the children, among them safe harbor programs, outreach to victims, candor with the people. And not only to this exhibit, but the adjudication of Swearingen and the report made in 2002, late, and the subsequent adjudication and a finding that he had committed abuse clearly impeaches every one of those assertions. And frankly, Your Honor, I think Bishop Steinbock is- is misleading the Court and attempting to mislead the jury by saying that he’s done all the right things even more recently when, in fact, he put Swearingen back in ministry after that finding by the jury that this Court presided and continues him in ministry to youth. And I have evidence- it can be shown very briefly by cross-examination- of that very fact and very briefly. It is proper impeachment. It is a door opened by their witness and Bishop Steinbock, and we’re allowed to bring it out.
MR. DE MARCO: The testimony relating to conduct in recent days, recent years, is at pages 433 and 434 of Thursday’s transcript. But defense counsel asked him, “What are you doing now to protect children?” And he gave a laundry list of things and — creating the impression they’re taking responsible action now. That is a concrete thing that can be shown where they’re not looking out to protect children.
THE COURT: Anything else?
MS. McGUIRE: Your Honor, I just- under 352, I think it is –
THE COURT: Haven’t you — haven’t you — or hasn’t the Bishop created an impression that is to some extent impeached by this information?
MS. McGUIRE: Your Honor, I don’t believe so. I think what he -
THE COURT: Why?
(Continue reading through the end of Steinbock’s testimony at City of Angels Blog posted Nov. 4, 2010)
