Santa Barbara. Fr. Van Handel felt he was “a failure with nothing to live for” soon after news broke that he molested choir boys, his therapist said. Facing justice, the pedophile priest wrote out a history of his sex life and gave it to the Court while requesting probation, answering questions about what is wrong inside the Church, inadvertently, and the role of priests that led to this nationwide epidemic of pedophilia. His sexual outpouring did not earn the felon priest probation, he was sentenced to 8 years, served four in prison, four on parole, and since his release, has lived close to his therapists outside Santa Cruz.

Today at City of Angels we look at the state of Van Handel’s mind between arrest and sentencing and how his cooperation got his sexual autobiography into the public record.

He wanted to tell it to the world

The arresting officer wrote, “Van Handel made it clear he wanted full disclosure of his acting-out history.” His therapist wrote: “Full disclosures to the best of his ability to recall has a therapeutic effect which outweighs the risk factor associated with the actual sentencing.” As we read through his “sexual autobiography” and the Probation Report, an image appears of a nervous priest who knows in 1994 that any day he will be named as one of the pedophiles at St. Anthony’s. Once accused, Van Handel jets off to St. Luke’s in Maryland where he spends thirteen months doing a seven-month program with 32 other sexually charged priests Van Handel watches as more news is released about St. Anthony’s seminary in Santa Barbara.

Before his sentencing, I sense almost Stockholm Syndrome in the way Van Handel agrees to cooperate with the police, telling them everything, almost like this sick priest saw in the detectives the father confessors he’d always been looking for in the Church. Whatever his motivation for writing out the 27-page single space typed document, so much is revealed in it about life behind the cloistered doors of the seminary, the secretiveness, the totally inexperienced adult men teaching boys about sexuality.

We will write more about Van Handel’s strange mutation from a freshman who wouldn’t dare touch his genitals to the choir director who rubbed and tickled the genitals of hundreds, picking freely from a steady stream of 8 to 14-year olds at his disposal. By the way, we are not on a bounty hunt for the head of Van Handel on a stick. He is just one of six thousand, one of the perhaps ten thousand Catholic priests who turned out to be pedophiles ravaging children of parish families in the last sixty or so years in the USA, six thousand that we know of.

Believe it or not, Van Handel’s crimes and just one more installment as the stories slowly come out about the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church. Here, today, we’re exploring what was going on in the mind of this perpetrator priest the weeks before his arrest as he waited for the “crisis to hit,” and the way his life changed after the arrest and conviction, including what I feel is pampering at treatment centers, especially when you compare the treatment this convicted pedophile priest gets to what was done to the lives of pedophile priests’ victims, and where many of us are today.

The Rest of This Story

From  City of Angels in Hollywood, California

Fr. Robert Van Handel gave “medical exams” to teenage boys at St. Anthony’s in the seventies. Seminary student Van Handel was on the receiving end of a similar exam in 1962.  Molestation MO’s passed from one generation of priests to another at the Santa Barbara boys high school seminary, that blessedly closed June 1987.  Another development as we read through Van Handel’s probation report, more story to come soon on molestation of teenage boys fraudulently presented as medical exams, an MO spans two decades  at St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara, just one seminary, crimes of one out of the six thousand pedophile priests we;ve counted so far. Here is story we ran last month of Van Handel’s crime for background:

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

The Franciscan grabbed the freshman by the testicles and instructed the boy to cough as if it were a hernia exam. Just another day of Seminary Life.
Franciscan friars with no medical training tested boys for “undescended testacles” at St. Anthony’s high school seminary in the 1960s and ’70s, as revealed in a new lawsuit filed in Santa Barbara last month and reported here in Part 4 of the Santa Barbara Story November 2009 here at City of Angels. Soon after the testicle exam, an assault by a group of unruly Franciscan friars fills out the plaintiff’s first year of high school, apparently just another part of life at the seminary. The legal documents in pedophile priest rape episodes again speak for themselves. Here are more direct quotes from: First Amended Complaint for Damages and Relief, Case Number 1338070 filed in Santa Barbara Superior Court November 3, 2009. Assault During a Physical Exam in the School Infirmary, from First Amended Complaint Case #1338070: “Although initially thrilled to be so far away from his abusive home, the situation for Plaintiff at St. Anthony’s degenerated quickly. Specifically, within a month or two of school starting Plaintiff was called to the infirmary. Upon arriving Plaintiff observed notorious perpetrator Father Robert Van Handel sitting near an infirmary bed, along with another Franciscan he did not recognize. Van Handel then informed Plaintiff he was there ‘for a check-up.’”Unbeknownst to Plaintiff, this was a fraudulent misrepresentation as the Franciscans have never had any agents qualified to conduct medical exams, much less any such agents assigned to St. Anthony’s [seminary in Santa Barbara]. To the contrary, when a serious medical problem arose with a student, the Franciscans either called Paul Munch MD, or took the ill student to the hospital….

Kay Ebeling, Producer, City of Angels

The City of Angels is Everywhere

Yesterday Boston bishops responded to news that predator priests went back and forth between Ireland and the U.S. saying the Archdiocese is “not aware of accusations,” plus “religious order priests are not the responsibility of the Archdiocese.” Those words sound familiar. They are the same phrases every archdiocese, diocese, and religious order has used since 1992 in response to pedophile priest accusations: “We didn’t know it was going on and besides, it’s those guys over there that did it, not us.” You’d think the Church would learn.As the truth about the Pedophile Epidemic in the Catholic Church continues to emerge, it’s amazing to watch the Church continue to think the public only reads its press releases, not the truth.From reports today: The archdiocese said… Click here for the whole story:

Church using same sound byte for 20 years, responding to allegations of pedophile priests

The real issue here is secrecy, that an institution in America could have systematic sexual assault of children take place on its sites, and be so secretive that they contained the crimes from law enforcement for decades. Systematic sexual assault of children under the guise of religion should never have happened in the United States – either in Utah or Arizona with weird sect spinoffs of Mormonism, or with maybe the largest religion in the country, the Roman Catholic Church.

It’s not like they are giving money to charity.

The only entity large enough to investigate the Catholic Church is the US Justice Department

Ongoing coverage of the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church at City of Angels

By Kay Ebeling. The City of Angels is Everywhere.

[In the 1980s Ernesto becomes an altar boy seeking refuge from a broken home, and dreams of becoming a priest. He ends up living in a nightmare when he goes away to high school at St. Anthony's Seminary in Santa Barbara.A Franciscan would mishandle him in the hallways "on a sometimes weekly basis." Then two Franciscan perpetrators take Ernesto and another boy for a camping trip to Yosemite, the experience in the tent haunts Ernesto to this day.Ernesto's experience is documented here in the words from another lawsuit. Here is Part 6 of the Santa Barbara story (2009), direct quotes from First Amended Complaint in Case 1337577 filed October 5, 2009 in Santa Barbara Superior Court, Page 1 scanned into this story at City of Angels, for readers to click to elnarge (Link below):]

10. Plaintiff Ernesto C. grew up in Richmond, CA, and was raised in a devout Roman Catholic family. They attended Mass every Sunday and Ernesto served as an altar boy. He began attending Catholic School in sixth grade, and soon thereafter decided he wanted to become a priest. During 8th grade he applied to several seminaries, ultimately deciding on St. Anthony’s.

Like so many victims of clergy abuse he also …Click headline for the entire story:

Priests Take Boys on Drunken Camping Trip to Yosemite. Santa Barbara Story Part 6, wait until you see Parts 9 and 10

10. Plaintiff Ernesto C. grew up in Richmond, CA, and was raised in a devout Roman Catholic family. They attended Mass every Sunday and Ernesto served as an altar boy. He began attending Catholic School in sixth grade, and soon thereafter decided he wanted to become a priest. During 8th grade he applied to several seminaries, ultimately deciding on St. Anthony’s.

Like so many victims of clergy abuse he also was the product of a broken home. The absence of a father figure in his life made Ernesto all the more dependent on paternal figures such as priests, and made him all the more vulnerable to predators willing to exploit this void in Ernesto’s life. St. Anthony’s was home to a horrific number of such predators.

***************
Dave Johnson, Franciscan, perpetrator, was everywhere at the school, he’d wrestle with them …
**************************

When Ernesto enrolled at St. Anthony’s for his freshman year in 1979, it was immediately clear Franciscan perpetrator Dave Johnson was everywhere at the school, and was permitted to have extensive and inappropriate physical contact with students. Johnson openly touched and massaged students, wrestled with them, and engaged in regular physical contact with students in public places.

Such conduct between students and faculty was part of the accepted culture created and fostered by the Franciscans at St. Anthony’s. During Ernesto’s sophomore year in 1980-81 he was a frequent recipient of Johnson’s abusive conduct…

Philadelphia.

The day Pennsylvania passed a law that worked against most victims of pedophile priests in the state including Arthur Baselice III, he left the house for an NA meeting. Next morning police found him dead in a drug house in nearby Camden, New Jersey. Months earlier Arthur II had brought his son to the Philadelphia Archdiocese begging them for help. “This kid couldn’t even walk,” said the dad. “We went in there and poured our hearts out. They told me they can’t help me. The perpetrator is not Roman Catholic he’s Franciscan.”

More slaps in the face: The only time Fr. Charles Newman ever stood in front of a judge was for Embezzlement from the Catholic Church. He stole cash to buy drugs and other extravagances for the boys he was grooming, and the pedophile priest went to prison for embezzlement, not pedophilia. He pled guilty March 2009 and is serving a 3-6 year sentence.

(Go to City of Angels Network to read the rest of this story…)

“When my son was an altar boy, Newman gave him opiods so he’d go into a haze while the priest raped him, sodomized him,” Arthur II said. “Then for about a decade, the priest gave the boy wads of cash, thousands of dollars, which unfortunately but predictably, the boy used to buy drugs. By the time he was in his early twenties, he was a hopeless drug addict, then he… Arthur III is dead now, of an opiod overdose.”

In 2006, the Baselice’s lobbied the state Legislature, but so did the Catholic Church and “Pennsylvania changed the reporting age from 18 to 35 but didn’t do anything for those who were in the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report,” Arthur II said. “They provided an escape for the perpetrators. Removed liability for the Church.

“My son died the day they passed that law.” 

Arthur Baselice III (1978-2006)

November 2009 Arthur II emailed City of Angels a copy of a letter he sent to all the Legislators in Pennsylvania:

Go to City of Angels Network to read the rest of this story…

By Kay Ebeling, Hollywood, California

The City of Angels is Everywhere

Click headline to go to City of Angels and view documents:

Predator Franciscan describes years he ran Santa Barbara Boys Choir, ‘A constant supply of attractive little boys’ (5 pages scanned here)

By Kay Ebeling

While reading through his Probation Report, we scanned five pages from Sexual Autobiography of Robert Van Handel Pedophile Franciscan and posted them here, for our readers to click enlarge and read, as a preview of upcoming stories. These tight single-space typed memories cover the time Van Handel was Director of Santa Barbara Boys Choir, which, he writes “was clearly my choir, and the fulfillment of one of my fondest dreams.

“Now I understand that it was also a constant supply of attractive little boys.” On these pages Van Handel talks his way through years of serial felonies. It’s likely Van Handel molested 150 eight- to twelve-year-olds as director of the Santa Barbara Boys Choir, according to a letter from his own therapist to the Court in 1994. More in Santa Barbara Story Parts 9 and 10 coming soon.

A lot of his words are offensive, people email me about R ratings, etc. We do not pull punches on purpose at City of Angels. If anyone is “offended,” stop a moment and think. How offended are the people on the receiving end? By preventing yourself from looking at these crimes, you aid and abet their perpetuation, inadvertently. How can you know how to respond, how enraged and alarmed to be, if you don’t know everything that happened? Looking at these shocking details is like a penance we all have to serve, to get rid of the sin, so to speak.

So please don’t just turn it over to God and go forward as if it’s over, as this Sexual Autobiography is just one example of how bad it got in just one high school in one religious order in one city, the crimes of just one perpetrator. Multiply that by six thousand perpetrators counted so far, and you see how far reaching and extensive the crimes were.

Cash settlements to a fraction of the victims across the country has not resulted in justice. We need more investigation, law enforcement, and prosecution of the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church.

Also below we copy and pasted current information on the flagrant friar from the Megan’s Law website for monitoring sex offenders in California.

From Probation Report submitted to Santa Barbara Superior Court Case #202042, five of the twenty-seven pages of Van Handel’s Sexual Autobiography (Click to Enlarge and Read)

Part 2 is here New Sex Crime Ploy of Franciscans

Part 3 is here Funds Available for Therapy for Victims

Part 4 is here Franciscan Grabbed Freshman By the Genitals

Part 5 is here Pedophilia is a Privacy Right and Other Ploys

Part 6 is here Priests Take Boys on Drunken Camping Trip

Welcome to your new AlterNet blog. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Also, be sure to check out blogs by other readers at blogs.alternet.org

Thanks for reading,
The AlterNet Staff