Before becoming pope, Joseph Ratzinger accidentally helped set the stage for the pedophile Catholic priest sex scandals, and later worked hard to restore secrecy, according to research Catholic Historian Jay Nelson released today. 

This is text from release Nelson sent out today:

Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 16, 2010 – There is much more to Pope Benedict XVI’s role in the clergy sex scandals than is universally believed, declares one researcher. Jay Nelson, a historian and survivor who has written extensively about clergy abuse, says that his studies show that Joseph Ratzinger bears a great responsibility for the scandals, well before becoming pope.

“I was as surprised as anyone,” Nelson claims. “But in some ways, both the scandals and their eventual fading away is largely his doing. And it all has to do with the Inquisition.”

During the Boston scandals in 2003, he says, instructions for bishops on conducting secret trials of priests for sexual offenses were found among church papers. It was the first clue that the Inquisition – now called the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” or CDF – was ever concerned with priestly abuse.

A Speech Written By Young Theologian Joseph Ratzinger

Nelson says he began investigating Ratzinger’s involvement for his recently published book, Sons of Perdition. “I soon discovered that the Inquisition had been secretly suppressing clergy sex crimes for 400 years,” he states. “Their interest itself became secret, but the system endured until unintentionally broken during the Second Vatican Council by a speech written by a young theologian  named Joseph Ratzinger.”

Nelson claims that the resulting inability of the CDF to deal with sexually active priests led to bishops transferring and treating offenders. “By the time Ratzinger himself became head of the CDF, he apparently wished to undo all his ‘mistakes,’” he says.

“With Pope John Paul II, they secretly reestablished the Vatican’s control over clergy sex cases in 2001. That’s why the number of cases is decreasing.”

“It’s incredible,” he admits. “But the documents are out there, the proof is in my book and the paper I’m circulating.” When asked why come out with this information now, Nelson asserts, “The people should know that Joseph Ratzinger helped fix the cover-up, stronger than ever, before he even became pope. What, then, will he do next?”

Joseph Ratzinger helped fix the cover-up, stronger than ever

Link: “Ratzinger’s Responsibility for the Sex Scandals” http://www.sarabite.info/ratzi-responsible.pdf

# # #

Jay Nelson
PO Box 40676
Albuquerque, NM 87196

Email: author@sarabite.info

RECENT BOOK

SONS OF PERDITION: New Mexico in the Secret History of the Catholic Sex Scandals Website: http://www.sarabite.info/sp-index.html
.

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, City of Angels
The City of Angels is Everywhere
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The Vatican office that handled clergy sex crimes was run by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict, the same office that once carried out the Inquisition.  “The public has not recognized that connection,” writes scholar Jay Nelson, because “It had become a closely guarded secret.”  At the end of Vatican 2 “Paul changed the Office name to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).  It was to be a kinder, gentler Inquisition,” Jay writes.

Pope John Paul II made Bishop Ratzinger Prefect of the CDF.

“Most ominous but overlooked, the CDF would have a say over all issues that touch on faith and morals, even those traditionally reserved to other Vatican departments,” Nelson writes.  The CDF now had “the crucial power of judicial review over the entire Roman Catholic Church.”  I.E., Judicial Review over all Pedophile Priest Crimes.

Ratzinger drafted a new set of secret instructions for handling priest sex crimes:

“Signed by John Paul II in 2001, the decree clandestinely replaced the old Crimes of Solicitation document, as if the latter had remained in force all along. This new policy seems even more repressive than the old one. Whereas the earlier document detailed instructions for a D-I-Y inquisition, this simply mandates the CDF to do its thing.

“It still covers sexual solicitation in the confessional and associated offenses such as priests granting absolution to their lovers or having sex with minors of either gender.  But the ‘worst crime’ of clerical homosexuality is no longer even mentioned at all – perhaps because now, according to some experts, almost half the clergy is gay and probably sexually active?”

So Pope Benedict can’t really be “shocked and dismayed” by the Pedophile priest epidemic in the Catholic Church, as he said on his trip to America in April 2008 and again last week.  It’s more like he has been at the helm of the Church’s handling of the crimes for decades, no matter how many times his Office declares him “cleared” of any crimes, in the handling of one pedohpile priest in his Munich diocese when he was a Bishop.  Pope Benedict and Bishop Ratzinger’s connection to the whole cover-up is much more blatant. 

“During the Boston scandals, which brought the crisis to national awareness, (2002) a curious document was found among diocesan legal papers. Known in English generally as Crimes of Solicitation, it was a typed translation of instructions from the Holy Office. Sent secretly to all the world’s bishops with the blessing of Pope John XXIII mere months before the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the document revealed an entirely unsuspected aspect to the ongoing crisis.

“It was nothing less than a guide for bishops on handling clerical sex crimes, laying out a set of do-it-yourself directions to hold secret trials. Though reassuring them that troubling cases could always be sent to Rome.” 

“Only the pope himself now had more power. In Ratzinger’s hand, this whip to enforce the Council’s decrees (CDF) would serve to sharply rein them in. Vatican II thus planted not only the seeds of the clergy sex scandals but provided a means for their conclusion. Yet the signs that the council had inadvertently mishandled perpetrator priests did not become apparent until a generation later, when the bitter tree bore its first fruits.”

Pedophile priest crimes are not new to the Catholic Church, writes Nelson:  ”In the mid-seventeenth century, the Roman Inquisition even took down an entire religious order for child sexual abuse. The Piarists, an honored, successful teaching congregation of priests with schools for poor boys across Italy, had been taken over by a pedophile ring.  This was largely due to the founder, St. José Calasanz, the ascetic patron saint of Catholic education, covering up molestation like so many later prelates would by quietly promoting and transferring the offenders.

Vatican 2 documents were argued over until the end of the very last session. “When it was done, a single easily-overlooked paragraph buried in the Decree on the Life and Ministry of Priests proclaimed an enormous change:

Finally, … priests … are obliged in a special manner toward those priests who labor under certain difficulties. They should give them timely help, and also, if necessary, admonish them discreetly. Moreover, they should always treat with fraternal charity and magnanimity those who have failed in some matters, … and continually show themselves as true brothers and friends.

“Simply put,” writes Jay Nelson, “priests caught acting out sexually would henceforth be given therapy, not punishment.   Hard to believe, but this coded bit of pious banality is therefore the smoking gun of the Catholic sex scandals.”

***

Jay Nelson is one of the tens of thousands of adult victims of pedophile priests in the USA.  He lives in New Mexico and publishes his research on the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church at his Renegade Catholic Website 

Cut paragraph moved to end:

Young Ratzinger was initially a liberal, but “the upset of student rebellions in 1968 decisively spurred his defection to the conservative camp,” writes Nelson. “By the time the Polish Pope was elected a decade later, now-Cardinal Ratzinger’s reactionary transformation was complete.

IN ADDITION,

We got a letter yesterday from one of the crime victims who reported both to Cardinal Levada and the Pope and they ignored his reports.   read

It’s No Suprise That Pope Knew about Pedophiles Before Last Week where this story continues at City of Angels:

Pope at Helm of Pedophile Priest Scandal. As Cardinal, Was Head of CDF with Judicial Review of Clergy Sex Crimes

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer of City of Angels Network

It was bad enough to bail out Wall Street when families ive in tents off highways in California and have for years.  Where are out priorities?  Blue Cross was a nonprofit when it was new in the 1960s. 

I don’t WANT to give an insurance company any of my money after what they’ve done to this country.  Didn’t our government learn anything with the AIG bailout?  Health Care should be nonprofit primarily as the first health insurance companies were, and if someone wants more, they can buy profit-oriented health care. 

After insurance companies have left me out here sick with no medical care for THREE YEARS and have done worse to so many other Americans, why are we rewarding them with guaranteed profits for decades.  Even if I had money right now I would not want to buy insurance, making it mandatory is WORSE than what we have been living with now. 

Are all politicians, including Obama, so totally bought and paid for now that none of them  can look outside their gated communities at the rest of the world?

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, City of Angels

He shaved his pubic hair as a seminary student to prevent sexuality from starting, his development was so arrested. “I prayed that my penis would remain small like a boy’s.  I thought men’s genitals were ugly.  I did whatever I could to resist the inevitable arrival of puberty,” writes ex-Franciscan Robert Van Handel, trying to plead for compassion at his sentencing in 1994.   He poured out a single spaced tight 27-page “Sexual Autobiography” that indirectly reveals a lot about the environment where young priests lived that germinated the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church.

An old Friar at St. Anthony’s saw young Van Handel’s confusion, he writes, and, as an act of apparent alcoholic kindness, the priest came to Robert’s bed in the night and performed a sexual assault, masturbating the high school student, “to make the boy perspire and thereby rid  him of his ‘fever.’”  So writes the MSW in Van Handel’s probation report for his August 1994 sentencing hearing.

Physical exams “by men with no medical training” were approved and used to abuse students at St. Anthony’s seminary over decades, reads First Amended Complaint for Damages and Relief, for Case #1338070 filed in Santa Barbara Superior Court November 3, 2009, where a victim came forward with charges that Van Handel and other Franciscan brothers performed a similar bogus medical exams on him, twenty years later when he was a seminary student at the Santa Barbara site.

“Plaintiff believed Van Handel, so when the second Franciscan told Plaintiff where to stand and to drop his pants, Plaintiff complied without question. The man then approached Plaintiff, grabbed Plaintiff’s testicles, and instructed Plaintiff to turn his head to cough as if he was conducting some sort of hernia exam. This ploy was utilized repeatedly during sexual assaults by Father Mario Cimmarrusti, the abuser of at least twenty-three (23) St. Anthony’s students in the 1960s.”

 When Robert Van Handel got arrested, he went through a period of soul searching, and poured out his entire “sexual autobiography” for the police, the DA, his court appointed doctors and social workers, everyone.

***************

He wanted to tell his story to the world

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As a result the sexual autobiography of Father Robert Van Handel is a public record, which we are quoting in depth below.

 He reveals an insular and oppressive environment that,  at least in part, caused the epidemic of pedophilia in the Catholic Church to flare up among the Franciscans of Santa Barbara.

“All but 2 of 27 Franciscan perpetrators have escaped criminal prosecution in Santa Barbara despite assaulting at least 63 Santa Barbara children since 1936,” writes attorney Tim Hale in a lawsuit filed last Fall.

As a teenager, Van Handel even tried to prevent his own wet dreams, he was so repressed as a young seminarian.  In the “sexual autobiography” written in the period between arrest and sentencing, he remembers himself as a young boy, “fighting against any enjoyment and compulsively trying to mutter some holy words” to prevent nocturnal ejaculation. 

 One of his counselors wrote about Van Handel for his sentencing hearing:

 “At age 15 Robert’s anxiety and confusion escalated when he was molested by an alcoholic priest at the seminary.

 “The priest entered his room, pulled down his pajamas, rubbed his chest until he got an erection, then played with Robert’s genitals for about ten minutes.  Robert states he was embarrassed and ashamed.  The priest reportedly told Robert ‘the rubbing exercise’ was designed to make the boy perspire and thereby rid  him of his ‘fever.

(From p. 47 of Probation Report part of the statement of a Goleta MSW who worked on the Van Handel case.)

 Van Handel “recalled falling ill and reporting to the infirmary where he was allowed to rest.  At that time, a priest (Father Martin McKeon) came into the room, put a towel on the defendant’s chest, and then started to rub his stomach and chest area.  The defendant stated he subsequently obtained an erection when Father McKeon rubbed the defendant’s penis.

 “The defendant remembered being alarmed as to what was happening, and also recalled being very concerned-

 “That he would ejaculate in that he felt it was a wrong thing to do.

 “The defendant was very confused and embarrassed about the situation

 “The defendant (as an adult) added, ‘I have trouble dealing with the idea that I, myself, was molested.  But I don’t want to switch the blame for what I did to Father McKeon.’”

Story Continues in Full at City of Angels Blog here:

Priests Play Doctor: Pedophile MO Passed Down for Generations at St. Anthony Seminary in Santa Barbara 

He grew up to molest hundreds of little boys who were members of the Santa Barbara Boys Choir, yes, Fr. Bob is the perpetrator in this story:

Friday, February 5, 2010

Priest Abused a Boy a Month in Santa Barbara Boys Choir. With 150 victims, he serves time for one. Now living in Santa Cruz

“Not a month went by that Defendant did not molest members of the Santa Barbara Boys Choir,” reads the Probation Report. The MO of Fr. Robert Van Handel in Law enforcement language: “Defendant first started giving Victim what he viewed as a ‘regular’ back rub so he could fall asleep easier. However, the defendant then started touching his stomach, thighs, legs, and eventually worked up to the point of” [SEX ASSAULT].

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Posted By Kay Ebeling, Producer, City of Angels Network

The City of Angels is Everywhere

In recent weeks Europe has found the pattern we’ve seen in the U.S. for years: Pedophile priests allowed to thrive and when caught, not stopped, but transferred to new parishes, not just in every US diocese, but now likely in every diocese in the world.  Last week brought new charges in Germany and Austria inlcuding the Vienna Boys Choir, which was run by the Pope’s brother.  The Murphy Report continues to cause hell to break loose in Ireland, last year were horror stories of Catholic orphanes in Canada, Australia, and Alaska.  Plus Africa, Haiti: All over the world, this strange pattern exists in the Catholic Church of tolerance for child sex crimes and indifference to the harm done to children. 

Last week the epidemic erupted in the Regensburg Diocese in Munich, where today’s Pope Benedict was once Cardinal Ratzinger, and transferred a suspected pedophile priest to a job and new housing where he later abused children (see links below).

Amid all these wretched  revelations, it’s like comic relief to find a story, Like this:  Irish bookmaker Paddy Power said Friday it had cut the odds on Pope Benedict resigning after allegations of child abuse by priests in Germany gripped the Roman Catholic Church… Ireland’s biggest bookmaker said it had cut the odds from 12 to 1 to 3 to 1 following a “cascade of bets.”  Continued here:  Irish bookmaker slashes odds on pope’s resignation

Turns out when he was Cardinal Ratzinger in Munich, the current Pope Benedict transferred and tolerated pedophile priests just like every other Cardinal and Bishop in every other Catholic diocese in the world, as is being reported all over the world:

Vatican decries effort to draw pope into clergy abuse scandal VATICAN CITY  Boston Globe – By Rachel Donadio and Nicholas Kulish New York Times / March 14, 2010 – ROME — As new details emerged on allegations of child sexual abuse by priests in the Munich archdiocese then led by the future Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican spoke out yesterday to protect the pope against what it called an aggressive campaign against him in his native Germany.

AS USUAL A BLOGGER does it best, here is best analysis written of this I’ve seen so far:

Questions Arise About Pedophile Priest From Pope’s Old Diocese -  Dana Kennedy, The Hive Blog at Modesto Bee, March 12) –

The fallout from the growing Catholic sex abuse scandals finally reached as far as the pope Friday when it was revealed that Benedict XVI knew a priest was a pedophile in 1980 but approved a stint in therapy that allowed him to continue in the ministry, where he remains today…

Germany abuse scandal edges closer to Pope Benedict; Vatican insists no connection VATICAN CITY, New York Daily News, BY Larry Mcshane DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER, Saturday, March 13th 2010…

Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal ‘Has Now Reached’ The Pope  EUROPE  – Gather -Germany’s sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church has finally reached the Pope. As Archbishop of Munich, 1977-1982, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger allegedly allowed a priest suspected of having abused a child to return to pastoral work in the 1980s. The

The Pope: The Sex Abuse Crisis Gets Closer and Closer 

VATICAN CITY – The Daily Dish [with video] First his brother, now this from the Süddeutsche Zeitung:  “With the knowledge of the current pope, in the 80s a previously incriminated (charged with child molestation) priest was moved to Munich.  Vatican officials, taking the offensive Saturday, proclaimed Pope Benedict’s innocence against charges the pontiff helped protect a pedophile…

Pope under fire  VATICAN CITY  – The Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe)  – Germany’s sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected paedophile priest was transferred to a job where he later abused children …

Missbrauchsfälle auch in Norddeutschland  GERMANY  Der Spiegel – Der Skandal um Missbrauch an katholischen Einrichtungen nimmt kein Ende. Auch in einem Internat in Cloppenburg sollen drei Priester und ein Laie sich an Kindern vergangen haben. Der Papst schweigt und gerät unter Druck. Der Vatikan sieht ihn als Kampagnenopfer.  [summary] New cases of suspected child abuse by Catholic priests have beem made at a now-closed boarding school in Cloppenburg. Named were three priests, who are now dead, and a layman who worked at the school. The abuse is said to have happened in the 1950s and 1960s…

Paedophilia cases shake Catholic church worldwide  France 24 – The paedophilia scandal that has gripped the Catholic Church in Germany, and crept into the halls of the Vatican, follows a series of similar revelations around the world in recent years. A review of some of the most striking cases…

One did it to another to another and sexual corruption metastisized among the Franciscans in Santa Barbara over at least a 30-year period, pedophile priests infested seminarians who went on to become clergy and commit the same sex crimes on the next generation.  Monday we revisit the Probation Report and  ”Sexual Autobiography” of Robert Van Handel, where the convicted pedophile priest describes his own confusion as a teenage seminary student at St. Anthony’s Seminary, trying to understand his budding sexuality.

In Monday’s edition a Friar shows the young Van Handel a cool way a priest can have sex and still be celibate, by pretending to give young boys medical exams.

For Background: Here is where we have written on the medical exams earlier:

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Preview: Molestation MO passed from generation to generation in seminary
Father Robert Van Handel perpetrated “medical exams” of teenage boys at St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara in the 1970s. Young seminary student Robert Van Handel was on the receiving end of a very similar exam in about 1962. Molestatio MO’s passed from one generation of priests to another at the Santa Barbara boys high school, that blessedly closed June 1987… Here is story of Van Handel’s crime:

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..

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We have also written a bit before about Fr. Robert Van Handel and his Sexual Autobiography, so for more background:

Friday, January 29, 2010

The Pedophile Mind: In panic as his conviction for child molestation approached, the priest poured out his sexual history to give the Court
(Part 2: More from Sexual Autobiography of Franciscan Pedophile Priest, Robert Van Handel, actual Santa Barbara Story Part 8, Part 2)Has anyone anywhere ever paid this much attention to the crime victims?

AND

Friday, January 29, 2010

A Pedophile Mind: As sentencing approaches, priest pours out sexual history hoping for probation, gets notoriety instead
.By Kay Ebeling
City of Angels in 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…

****
And at headline below we scanned in some pages from his tight single spaced sexual autobiography:

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

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

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From Megan’s Law Website:  
Robert Van Handel

Last Known Address:
15705 HWY 9,
GARAGE
BOULDER CREEK,
CALIFORNIA
County: SANTA CRUZ
Zip Code: 95006
Date of Birth: 04-02-1947
Sex: MALE
Height: 5′9″
Weight: 173
Eye Color: GREEN
Hair Color: GRAY
Ethnicity: WHITE
Offense: Code 288(a)
LEWD OR LASCIVIOUS ACTS WITH CHILD UNDER 14 YEARS

We Googled to see a satellite view.

Looks like Van Handel is living about 30 miles northeast of Santa Cruz, deep in the lush green rolling hills between San Jose and the Pacific Ocean.

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, City of Angels

This story also posted here:

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Coming Monday, More From Santa Barbara: Van Handel and Medical Exams at St. Anthony Seminary

If women broke the “code of silence” and were part of Catholic Church hierarchy, we probably would not have had the pedophile priest epidemic, reads an editorial this week in the Vatican daily  L’Osservatore Romano,  where Italian historian Lucetta Scaraffia says women “would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past often covered with silence the denunciation of these misdeeds.”

Historian Lucetta Scaraffia writes:

“With regard to the painful and shameful events that have come to light concerning the sexual abuse and molestation of young people entrusted to the care of priests, we would suggest that a greater female presence, not at a subordinate level, would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past so often covered the reporting of these misdeeds with silence. Women, be they religious or lay, are more likely to move in defence of young people when it comes to questions of sexual abuse. That way, the church would have been spared the serious damage that this guilty behaviour (silence) procured for it.”

“We can hypothesize that an increased female presence, and not only at lower levels, would have been able to rip the veil of male secrecy that in the past often covered the denunciation of  misdeeds. In fact, women — both religious and secular — are naturally more inclined to defend the young in cases of sexual abuse, avoiding the serious damage these guilty attitudes have done to the Church.”

Lucetta Scaraffia is a journalist and professor of history at Rome’s La Sapienza university

Read More, Entire editorial translated here:

A Mafia-like “omertà” on sexual abuse in the Catholic hierarchy?

Being middle class, I approached becoming homeless like a problem to be solved, a project, like finding a job.  If I just work every waking moment, I thought, I’ll find a new place to live.  But we became homeless November 2003 and it was November 2005 before we moved into our own place again.  Recently I came across the notes from those first weeks after we lost our apartment in a chi-chi part of West Hollywood. 

With my fifteen year old daughter, we were paying weekly rent at motels off Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards, as we raced against time, trying to find a new apartment before the move-in money we had ran out. 

Finding these notes was revealing.  I knew I’d made a lot of phone calls those days and these notes show it.  I was up at the crack of dawn and on the phone every day, and knocking on doors. 

Since 2005 I’ve been trying to find a way to write about the chaos of those years my teenage daughter and I were homeless in L.A., and the notes I found recently show just how erratic and frenzied those days really were, I’ve even scanned the notes in and uploaded them here at City of Angels 2  and you can see the growing madness in the handwriting.  Most revealing is what my daughter and I discovered within days of losing our home and moving into motels, that:

There are hundreds and hundreds of agencies, nonprofits, government and private run groups, but so much of what they do is refer clients from one agency to another.  The real help going on is minimal, while the hundreds of nonprofits continue to thrive, many of them to this day.  In one of the notes I call these endless phone calls “the phone referral go round” where always eventually you are told to call the first agency you called, then you start calling again.

Remember these notes are from November 2003 to early Jan 2004:

************

L.A. Housing Authority 1800 731 4663

Menu item Shelter Plus Care under homeless. Left voicemail messages

About going on STS or about Section 8 and explaining we need Homeless Plus

Called five times as couldn’t hold the 30-plus minutes each time on this phone.

Finally Left 3 messages

Housing Authority for County – Santa Fe Springs

Have 2 Shelter Plus Care of homeless programs.  Get there by 1:15 (followed by a map from Hollywood to Santa Fe Springs)

FRIDAY

9 AM Call all the dailies (the nonprofits I was calling every day.

Early, before 8:30, go to PATH in person Ask for (NAME REDACTED)

Check out hotel with weekly rates on Ventura near Lankershim.

Make unmade phone calls

(FINISH EARLY, IT’S FRIDAY)

Call Info Line 1 800 731 4663 menu item 2, One for message, calling for Housing Plus Care Program, mother and child, both need both. 

[earlier accidentally left message about Section 8, which is another issue

Leave two phone numbers this time.

Call Tuesday

House of Yahweh- they do interviews, first call on Tuesday at 10 AM

Tues 12-16-03

No space available, call again later in the month.  (they have small trailers, the reason they were encouraging earlier is they thought I was a lady with three kids.)

TRACK DOWN THIS GUY, (Business card of police officer I found and made this note, “these two police officers were helpful.”

- Go in person to Wilcox Station to try to contact?

12.03.03 Contacted Officer (NAME REDACTED) he said for me to “Call with good results” when we get them. 

December 1, 2003:

House of Yahweh, Martha said there are two sites, one in Lawndale, one in L.A.  One is a shelter and one is the administrative offices where they do intakes.  She said call back on Saturday, and hold lots of minutes.  “Hold lots of minutes, it takes lots of time.”

Calls next couple days:

M-F 9 to 5.  Nope.  Nope.  (Rude)

No, have to call office Monday through Friday not here on Saturday.

MONDAY

Check out motel at Vineland & Ventura, weekly rates

(SINCE I am one of the thousands of adult victims of pedophile priests, I also tried different Catholic agencies. )

Catholic Worker

Voice of the Faithful

SNAP

Priests Of Integrity

(DIFFERENT REDACTED NAMES)

Catholic Charities

LA City Housing Department Section 8

Office of Rent Stabilization (address on w. 15th street, go in person)

Valley shelter, 6640 Van Nuys Blvd

City of L.A. office of tenants rights,

THOUGHT I’D MADE A REAL FIND HERE:

Women’s Care Cottage:  6040 Shelter, can stay ninety days.  Case Managers work with you.  Okay to transfer from one shelter after 90 days there to another shelter 90 days there, and then back for 90 days.  “Lots of women do that,” she said on the phone.  Also in their office is a free laundry machine, counseling. 

Waiting List is two to three months long, but can come in for a meal and a shower during office hours.

Hope Again 323 661-4004 Go in person on Sunset near Normandie (This is the agency that eventually did help us.)

Agape Mission (left message 12.8.03)

Burbank Family Services, no homeless services.  Used to have it.  Do have services for counseling.  Fee is $26.00. 

4PM tried again to reach Shelter Plus Care.  On hold at 4:20, finally left a second voice message.

Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd on Sunset gives out bag-lunches three days a week.

SNAP phone call (To regional officer for SNAP Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, one of many organizations I contacted during this period time we were on the streets.)

Sunday 11.2?:03 Notes from conversation with SNAP:

Churches?  She’ll send email out so people will know we are still in trouble.  Suggests I get on AFDC so can get on their homeless program and apply for Section 8.  Also try Voice of the Faithful as they have set up a special project for victims.

Chicago Linkup? She doesn’t know anything.

There is a Catholic Worker Shelter in Santa Ana the SNAP rep can help us get into but my daughter and I have an agreement that we will never go to Orange County again, (a whole nother story).

Women’s Care Cottage, PATH, and Beyond Shelter are now phone numbers on piece of paper I carry around so I could call at least once a day and check in showing we still need help.

ANOTHER WEEK OF NOTES:

“Still To Do” These places were listed with phone numbers:

L.A. Homeless Services Authority

Valley Shelter

Women’s Care Cottage – You can come in and do laundry twice a week, no later than two hours before closing.  There is a 2 month waiting list for the shelter.  Showers available 2:30 to 5:00 PM. 5:30 on Tues and Friday.  Hot meals every day at lunch time.  You’re welcome to come in and do laundry and eat.

Jewish Family Services (12.01.03 conversation) Made appointment and met with (NAME REDACTED)

Two possible shelters.  They are the ones who told me about Women’s Care Cottage.  And Valley Shelter (they take you on a bus to a church, you sleep in the pews, leave first thing next morning). If you can’t find shelter and still need mental health help, go to (she gave me a list of County Mental Health Clinics). 

FOLLOWING WEEK:

Wednesday Musts:

Go in person:  Post Office, p/u mail and fill out another yellow form per Victor from our old mail route, it’s okay.  Go to (NAME OF COMPANY REDACTED), check and see about work (?) (NAME) never returned last few phone calls)

9AM Info Line Emergency check in number (REDACTED)

Call Catholic Charities again re move-in money assistance? (They say wait for HM to call back)

Per (NAME REDACTED) at Info Line (from phone call yesterday) “Call Hope Again Again, but they will only take you though, not your daughter.” (Also have to bring proof of income)

Call STS:  Check on status of $240.00 check I’m due for the Disney job. 

You’re in the “Social Service Phone Referral Go-Round” where each agency refers you to another until eventually, someone will refer you back to the first agency you called.  Then you start all over again.”

By Kay Ebeling, To Be Continued

 (NOTE: In May of 2004 Hope Again bent their rules and let my daughter and me move in together, even though she was fifteen, three years younger than their minimum age.  They could bend the rules because they do not take government money, so are not tied in to grant requirements.)

Kay Ebeling writes about the pedophile priest epidemic in the Catholic Church here and at City of Angels

The original notes from this story are scanned in here:

Scans to Illustrate: I Lived in a Car with my Teenage Daughter on the Streets of L.A. for 2 Years and Survived to Write About It, Part 1, at AlterNet

What other organization in the U.S. could have six thousand (6000) pedophiles whose job is interacting with children and as a result produce tens of thousands of crime victims, yet the organization is still operating, has not ever really even been investigated?

Because they are a religion?

As one of the pedophile Catholic priest crime victims, I am shocked by the world’s fear of the Catholic Church, in America, from U.S. senators down to court clerks in every city, people bow to the bishops, rather than treat them like the criminals many of them are.

What shocks me is that Law Enforcement and News Media have chosen to sweep the pedophile priest issue away somewhere instead of really looking at it.

As a result, the Catholic Church just got away with it, 50 years of embedded pedophilia, aided and abetted by dozens of bishops.  Who knows what else they get away with.  City of Angels, a blog on this topic is at http://cityofangels8.blogspot.com

Even though I’m one of the victims, and as a journalist the pedophile priest epidemic has become the main topic on which I write, I STILL don’t have any motive about the Catholic Church one way or the other. My dad let me quit going to church when I was 13, way back in 1963 or so.  Today, I am not as brain-tied to the Church as other pedophile priest crime victims that I’ve met. I don’t care if the Catholic Church grows or shrinks as a result of the crimes.

I just want criminals in my community, especially serial sex offenders concerning children, to be prosecuted.

Kay Ebeling, Hollywood California

Imagine what a world would be like if we would not have a new revelation every week about one or another priest, says an opinion piece in Digital Journal today. As one of the adult victims, I do think about how different the world could have been without pedophile priests, often.

I believe we would not have so many young children being kidnapped raped and brutalized today if the world had not seen pedophiles in the Catholic Church getting away with it for decades.

Other pedophiles became empowered after seeing the modus operandi of priests, indeed, some of these new predators who dominate crime news today may even have been among the tens of thousands of young parishioners who were raped by these priests, or non-Catholic children from the community who attended Catholic church events.

Now we see the acts of these demented predators on children and wonder how they could be such sociopaths.

With its silent response to the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church, law enforcement and news media have indirectly shown other pedophiles that these crimes can be committed and almost accepted, if they carry the crime out right.

So without even thinking about what the pedophile epidemic did to the Catholic Church, let’s stop a moment and think what Six Thousand pedophiles in one institution, the Catholic Church in the United States did to the entire society.

***

(Source of number 6000 is BishopAccountability.org where they also predict, when all the research is done, the number could end up being 10,000 pedophile priests that operated in the Catholic Church in the U.S.A. last 50 years or so.)

Kay Ebeling, Los Angeles

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Posted this morning at:

Opinion: Thou shalt not sin, we’re better at it – motto of Catholic Church

Digital Journal
By R. C. Camphausen

After the catholic church has been damaged by sexual abuse scandals in the US, Germany, and Ireland, now there’s a focus on the Netherlands as well. It seems time for a worldwide inquiry. Should the catholic church be classified as a terrorist agency?

Just imagine what a world would feel like, look like, be like … if we would not have a new revelation every week that one or another priest, in one or another country, abused either a young girl or a young boy (apparently much preferred among the clergy… (continued)

For ongoing coverage of the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church read City of Angels

The City of Angels is Everywhere…