Do you believe this?

“It was London-based BP, with quarterly profits that rose to $6.1 billion from $2.6 billion a year earlier, that was the lightning rod for ire over huge earnings in the midst of a deadly and growing disaster.”

Above quote is from L.A. Times today.   As we begin to realize damage from the Gulf of Mexico BP Oil Spill, the company responsible reports record profits.  How does that connect to the pedophile priest epidemic which is the usual topic at City of Angels? 

Oversight. When corporations run without oversight they can put profit above human needs. The Catholic Church went corporate, the result was the Catholic Pedophile Priest Disaster with hundreds of thousands of children damaged rather than risk damage to the Corporate Church from losing business.

BP Oil cuts overhead thanks to removal of Oversight, i.e., regulations removed for oil companies under the Bush Administration, and BP Oil profits soar, more than ever before. Then they blow out an oil well and destroy the Gulf of Mexico.

Oversight is not a Commie plot.

Oversight is the Ultimate Goal in calls to investigate the Catholic Church internationally and as a U.S. Federal Case.

We have to make a federal case out of the Catholic Church and other institutions abusing the Freedom of Religion clauses of the First Amendment and create a way to have oversight of religions, because no institution that gets so close to families and children should operate without someone over them who knows what they are doing. 

Just as no corporation that is drilling holes in the Earth should operate without Oversight. 

With the Catholic Church operating without oversight, the crimes of priests end up reported in treatises in Latin sent to the Vatican even in the 21st Century.  

Oversight.

I go to nondenominational Churches where members vote on everything, in endless monthly meetings, endless dull meetings, yes, but they don’t just give their problems to a priest, who passes it on to the monsignor, and then criminal activity ends up being written up in Latin to be hidden in the Vatican.

Catholic church members should just take over their churches, maybe buy them at real estate auctions, and continue Church, without the Vatican.

In a New America with Oversight of Religious Institutions.

Roman Catholicism is so ingrained in the Dark and Middle Ages its practices, such as reporting crimes to the Vatican in Latin, just don’t jibe well in a world where people watch out for each other. 

Thank God.  Or we might all end up like this:

Biblical Proportions, AP Photo of BP Oil Spill Apr 30 2010

Posted by Kay Ebeling, The City of Angels is Everywhere

.

(“These Crimes Require International Court Jurisdiction,” reads Complaint and Demand for Jury Trial filed April 20, 2010, in U.S. Federal Court for the CA Central District in Los Angeles. Jeff Anderson in Minnesota and his team at Kiesel Boucher Larson lawfirm in Los Angeles filed suit regarding a pedophile priest who traveled back and forth between Mexico and Southern California, leaving behind victims in both countries.  Quotes from lawsuit document below elaborate on this creative application of international law to pursue guilty parties in Catholic Church hierarchy eventually all the way to the Vatican:)

Mahony 2010

 “Because the sexual abuse, fraud, and cover-up present extraordinary circumstances and violate the law of nations and enforceable international norms rendering it appropriate for special treatment by this Court.” (Under Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, 28 U.S.C. Paragraph 1350 )

 “To protect the child from all forms of physical of mental violence, injury or abuse… including sexual abuse.”

RE WHY A FEDERAL CASE:

ARGUMENTS from Complaint filed April 20, 2010

Sexual Abuse and Cover-Up Violates the Law of Nations and Enforceable International Norms

Paragraph 66:  Sexually abusing a child and conspiring to conceal and coverup sexual abuse violates the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Articles 19 and 34.  Specifically these articles state:

Article 19 

1. Calls for protections of children:

“From all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including:

“INCLUDING”

“Including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent, legal guardian, or any other person who has the care of the child.

2.  Protective measures should include programs to provide necessary support for the child as well as

AS WELL AS

As well as for other forms of prevention and for identification reporting referral investigation treatment and follow-up of instances of child maltreatment.”

ARTICLE 34:  States Parties undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse.  For these purposes, States Parties shall in particular take all appropriate national, bilateral, and multilateral measures to prevent:

a- The inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual activity

b- The exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful sexual practices

 c- The exploitative use of children in pornographic performance and materials

 PARAGRAPH 67:  The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified by all but two of the member nations.

The United States is not a signatory. 

I don’t know why.

If any readers know why, please email me

at cityofangelslady@yahoo.com

Instead of signing, the United States just made a comment on the rights of the child:

“The scourge of child abuse, whether physical or sexual abuse- is all too prevalent throughout the world.  Governments must be committed to providing legal and administrative protection to children, as well as separating social and educational programs that help prevent this gross scourge which has infected many of our communities.”

The Holy See IS a signatory on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,

“But the Holy See has not filed any compliance documents for fifteen years,” continues the Complaint.

 PARAGRAPH 70: 

“Sexually abusing a child and conspiring to conceal and coverup child sexual abuse violates the International Criminal Code:

A Widespread or Systematic Attack

ARTICLE 7(1)(g)-1 Crime Against Humanity of Rape Elements:

“When the conduct was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population. 

ALSO

“The perpetrator knew that the conduct was part of or intended the conduct to be part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.”

 ARTICLE 7(1)(g)-6

Crime Against Humanity of Sexual Violence  Elements:

“Taking advantage of a coercive environment or such person or persons’ incapacity to give genuine consent.”

AND

“The Conduct was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.

 ARTICLE 7(1)(k)

Crime Against Humanity of Other Inhumane Acts Elements;

The perpetrator inflicted great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health by means of an inhumane act.

3. The perpetrator was aware of the factual circumstances that established the character of the act.

 4.  The conduct was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.

 And 5:  “The perpetrator knew that the conduct was part of or intended the conduct be part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.

(More from Complaint and Demand for Trial Filed in L.A. Federal Court April 20, 2010)

 75. Pueblo, Mexico, the place of the sexual abuse of the Plaintiff, provides no effective remedy for the Plaintiff.  Because Mexico has no adequate tort system for resolving disputes relating to child sexual abuse, fraud, and coverup.

76.  The United Nations does not have a process whereby an individual can bring a complaint for child sexual abuse, fraud, and coverup against an individual or a business or corporate entity for violation of the Convention on the rights of the Child.”

77. The International Court of Justice located in The Hague, Netherlands, provides legal dispute resolution only for sovereign states and not for individuals for claims relating to child sexual abuse, fraud, and coverup. 

***

(City of Angels: So What’s A Victim To Do?

Follow the lead of Jeff Anderson and other attorneys in these lawsuits.  Keep Pointing out these Injustices in the International Forum of Justice Until the UN or The International Court at the Hague find a way

FIND A WAY to bring these criminals off the streets, out of our boardrooms and out of positions of influence and power, so adult victims of pedophile priests can finally see the world gets it.  FIND A WAY

***

VIDEO: Federal Charges on Two Cardinals Filed in L.A. Federal Court, Using 1789 Alien Torts Act: Crimes by American (Mahony) in Mexico (with Rivera)

“I didn’t know about it,” said Cardinal William Levada on PBS last night and then the interviewer let him rehash talking points Church leaders have repeated in interviews for years about the handling of pedophiles:  There’s predators in public schools too, they say, besides, it was the 1960s and free love invaded the Church.   And my favorite excuse:  American news media is biased against Catholics.  When in reality corporate news outlets shiver in fear of offending Catholics and in many cities news media took part in the cover-up by agreeing not to report the crimes, as the scandal first began to break.  

Truth is Servants of the Paracletes in New Mexico started dealing with pedophile priests in the 1950s.  Bishops and monsignors all the way to the Pope corresponded about the problem, as documents linked below show. 

Truth is the pattern of crime was the same in every archdiocese in the country and, now we are finding out, all over the world.  Pedophile Catholic priests preyed on parish children while monsignors and bishops looked the other way.  Yet every news outlet reports it as truth when every bishop gives the same answer, “I had no idea pedophilia  was going on.” 

Information we link below shows that as far back as the 1950s, the Church knew, all the way to the Pope, that it had a pedophile problem.  

The documents about Servants of the Paracletes have been available at City of Angels since June 2008.

Read about Servants of the Paracletes and the destruction of files here from Monday, June 9, 2008 at City of Angels 3:

PROOF: Letters re problem priests at Paracletes in NM prove bishops knew about pedophilia in priesthood and destroyed files, regularly and secretly

On page 2, the director of Via Coeli writes, “Once these documents have been read, please destroy them.” The 1989 letter is a progress report on George V. Bredermann, an Arizona pedophile priest with a long entry in the bishopaccountability database of sexual predators in the church.

Uploads coming soon here at City of Angels Network include a 1963 letter from Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald to Pope Paul VI outlining their recent meeting where they discussed the problem of pedophile priests. As I scan and upload these documents, I feel I’m beginning the process of proving what so many of us knew was true.

The bishops not only knew about pedophiles in their ranks of priests, they were more knowledgeable about pedophilia than the general public, because Father Gerald kept sending out letters, more and more letters, in the end almost pleading with the the bishops, saying these men are “vipers” and “rattlesnakes” and should be put out of civilization, not be put back into parishes.

The letters and other documents will be posted in a matter of days, as there are so many items it is taking a while to build the post.

Cardinal William Levada said last night he knew nothing of these crimes until when, 2005? 

NO. 

That’s impossible. 

No one can rise to the top of an organization the way Levada did and be ignorant of what is going on inside.

The truth is coming out slowly, thanks particularly to the early lawsuits in the United States.  In the 1990s in New Mexico, documents emerged about Servants of the Paracletes, one of hundreds of obscure religious orders most non-Catholics don’t even know exist.  The Servants mission was to rescue errant priests, those with incurable, insurmountable problems.  Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald started the Order in 1949 thinking more of hopeless alcoholics, but by the mid-fifties it became clear one of the worst unsolvable problems among the priests was this affection some of them had for young boys and girls, children. 

Gerald Fitzgerald, founder, Servants of the Paracletes

Fitzgerald wanted the pedophile priests isolated away from the world, the Servants even purchased an island at one point to harbor them. Documents below include correspondence with the Pope at the time.  (Fitzgerald is seen at right in a much photocopied and scanned magazine article.)  Gerald Fitzgerald, after dealing with the first waves of pedophile priests at his recovery center, wanted to put them all on an island with no contact with human beings.

When Catholic spokesmen say they “did not know” they always claim to know only the  stories breaking in the news. 

These are the bishops who let children get raped in American parishes for decades.

Why do people expect bishops now to be honest in television interviews? 

Still Levada can get away with a quote like this from last night and still get rave reviews in the morning:

“There is, I think, is if I will say, a certain media bias. I shouldn’t, I don’t want to scapegoat anybody or have a conspiracy theory, but I do think that the American media in particular has the question has been driven by information given by the plaintiffs’ attorneys who are looking for ways to involve the pope somehow in a court process or something like that, which are I think bound to be futile but nevertheless I think that has driven a fair amount of the media coverage if I may say so.” 

He then says U.S. news has not reported enough on all the changes the Church has made, which was too little too late and has been written up in local media in every city in this country, ad nauseum PR Puff piece raves about their wonderful training programs for lay teachers, for example, when the pedophile problem is in the seminaries and backrooms of the Church, where the bishops still keep the secrets.  Levada gave the usual non-answers and the media, which is to be honest, SCARED SH–LESS OF THE CHURCH, reported what he said as if it had meaning:

He points out Public Schools don’t get investigated the way we want to dig into the Catholic Church.  Well public schools aren’t run by sneaky old men who write about their crimes in dead languages so only their inner circle can find out the truth, for one thing.

Comparing the Church to public school systems is an analogy that only works in the dumbed down audience of American TV viewers.

One more quote from Levada last night:

“None have expected this, but I think the causes we will see go back to changes in society that the church and priests were not prepared for, particularly changes involving how to be a celibate person in a time of the sexual revolution, that’s one of the causes I’d say.”

We will run more information about Servants of the Paracletes here soon.  There is proof all over the place, more coming out as lawsuits bring up documents in discovery.  The biggest problem here is people still think because bishops and monsignors wear collars they are saints, and because they look you in the eye saying they are men of god, that means they are men of god.  When people do not dig for the truth on their own, but believe what is said to them, they end up believing a lot of things that are only words being said to them, nothing more.

PS: It is really hard to believe Levada and the others “did not know,” especially if someone takes time to see that the pattern of cover-up was the same in every city.  The priests who work their way up to bishop and cardinal do not operate in a vacuum, they don’t have family lives to distract them, all they do is confer and ruminate among each other.  No way a man like William Levada went through his entire career, from priest to Cardinal sitting next to the Pope, through Portland Oregon and San Francisco, where pedophile priests were flagrant offenders without knowing there was a serious problem behind the altars.  Just like there is no way Cardinal Roger Mahony went from Bishop of Fresno to Archbishop of Los Angeles without knowing about the antics of 300 or so perpetrator priests under his supervision in those two archdioceses combined. 

Yet there was Levada on TV last night and as a result in the news today, The Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican, an office that used to be called The Inquisition, but is now able to euphamize its real work with 21st Century newspeak language.  

Docs are also posted to click enlarge and read here:

PROOF: Letters re Problem Priests at Paracletes, NM, reveal bishops dealt with pedophilia in priesthood, and destroyed files, regularly and secretly,

Don’t believe them when they claim they did not know.  They only admit what the news media and plaintiff attorneys uncover on their own, Church spokesmodels never volunteer any more information than is already leaked, and then they always say, “This is shocking, totally unknown to us.”  Just because they verbalize it, does not make it so, even if they are under oath (See Yesterday’s post)

Posted by Kay Ebeling, The City of Angels Is Everywhere

(He’s Number Two at the Vatican, in Ratzinger’s old job, in fact he says he’s the Pope’s long time friend.  Yet Cardinal William Levada can barely answer a question when asked what the Catholic Church knew and when in the pedophile epidemic among its priests.  The archbishop also won’t answer whether, when under oath, Catholic hierarchy are obliged to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth or not if it would harm the Church, a policy known in the Vatican  as “Mental Reservation.”  This story begins with quotes from deposition Jan. 2006 of Levada in San Francisco by plaintiff attorneys from Portland, OR:)

William Levada

MR. CLARK:  I want to ask you about the concept of mental reservation.

Mr. LENA:  I’m going to direct the witness not to answer. SOME DISCUSSION THEN;

Q: Is it a concept with which you’re familiar?

ARCHBISHOP WILLIAM LEVADA (A):  Vaguely.  It’s not current in my, in my lexicon.

Q:  The reason for my question, Bishop, is before we began, you took an oath to tell the truth today.  And without meaning to be offensive, i need to ask you, is there anything about that oath and the concept of mental reservation that would allow you, in your own mind, to answer any question today with anything other than the complete truth.

A:  I have not read this disposition of mental reservation.  Would you like to read me to read  t?

Q;  No.  I’m asking you, based on your understanding of the concept of mental reservation, is there anything about your concept- your understanding of that concept or doctrine that would in any way affect any of the answers that you give me today or the oath that you took?

Mr. LENA:  The question is compound.

Mr. CLARK:  Q:  Is there anything about your understanding of mental reservation that would in any way interfere with the oath that you just gave? 

A:  No. 

(Mr. Lena, is Jeffrey Lena, of Berkeley, California, who drew the lucky straw and represents the Vatican all over the country.  Mr. Clark is Kelly Clark, who is first to depose the Archbishop in the deposition transccript, which I recently acquired and am reading in between posting here and at City of Angels, doing my part time TV job that pays the bills, and … having fun.)

WHAT IS MENTAL RESERVATION?

From Ireland November 2009:  According to the Commission of Investigation report, “mental reservation is a concept developed and much discussed over the centuries, which permits a church man knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying.”  FROM:  Church ‘lied without lying’ – The Irish Times – Thu, Nov 26, 2009

Not That It Makes Much Difference When They Do Answer: (more from Levada Jan 2006 Deposition:)

Q:  Archbishop Levada, i would like to know the policy with regard to allegations of child abuse by priests?

A:  As best i recall, in answer to the [REDACTED] situation, which occurred before i arrived, i was told that there were policies extant or in development.  That’s the extent of my recollection at that time.

 Q:  Do you recall whether these policies either extant or in development, were written?

A: I do not.

Q:  Were you told what these policies were at the time of your arrival?

A: I don’t recall.

(CofA: Reminds you of a Bush appointee under oath before the Senate, doesn’t it?  More from Jan. 2006 deposition:)

Q:  Do you recall any conversation with your immediate predecessor about the archdiocese policy with regard to allegations of child abuse by priests?

A:  No.

Q:  Any conversation with the previous archbishop?

A:  No.

Q: Other than perhaps in the priests’ files, including secret archives, other than that place, when you became bishop of Portland, was there to your knowledge a central file or registry of any sort in which was kept a list of priests against whom allegations had been made in any capacity who were still in ministry?

MS. McNAMARA:  Objection.  Assumes facts not in evidence.

(CofA: If the facts weren’t real, wouldn’t she let him answer?)

***** 

We First Wrote About Mental Reservation May 2007 at City of Angels 3, covering a pre-trial hearing in Clergy Cases Los Angeles, that settled in July that year, hours before jury selection was to begin for the first of hundreds of trials:  Would a priest or bishop lie under oath? Mental Reservation debated in court Wednesday re church witnesses refusing to answer in depositions quoted here:

Church attorney Donald Woods even said, “The doctrine is that there is some higher value, not just the church.”

At one point Woods had his arms up like an evangelical stupefied in prayer as he contradicted himself right there in public for everyone to see:   (From City of Angels Winging It Transcription Service):

JUDGE HALEY FROMHOLZ: Why can’t they answer what their understanding is? Some of them may think it’s a
doctrine that permits them to state other than the truth in order to protect the church.

WOODS: That’s not what the doctrine is.

FROMHOLZ: What the witness believes may be significant.

WOODS: But it’s clearly not implying that. And we submitted the catechism. Doctrine is that there is some higher value, not just the church. This is just a plaintiffs’ prejudicial argument that sidetracks us into giant red herrings, it’s just — it’s just prejudicial.

FROMHOLZ: Almost all evidence is prejudicial.

WOODS: I don’t know what evidence it would lead to. It’s speculative. How does it lead to admissible evidence?

SO WHAT IS MENTAL RESERVATION?  

JUDGE HALEY FROMHOLZ: Plaintiffs argue that there is contrary testimony

***

William Cardinal Levada, former Archbishop of San Francisco, gave this deposition in 2006, the transcript of which City of Angels pursued by taking Amtrak all the way to Portland Oregon August 2009, where Levada had been bishop, before moving to SF as Archbishop, and then onto the Vatican in May 2005.

In Portland summer 2009, attorneys had some kind of agreement to keep the deposition under wraps.  I kept asking them for it.

Until October, they said first, and I called in November, December, the following months, the doc never saw daylight. 

Then Easter Week 2010 Levada joiined the chorus of clueless voices out of the Vatican and attorney Erin Olson, probably fed up with waiting for the Church to act decent, released the deposition transcript to the news media.

Well, as can be expected, the AP took the deposition transcript, scanned through it, found one outstanding quote about one priest, and reported it.  Then all the rest ofthe media followed suit, reported the exact same story, which was then repeated about a thousand times all over the globe.

Meanwhile, City of Angels, ever vigilant, called Erin Olson and said, You mean I finally can get a copy of the deposition I asked for two years ago?  Her office said, great, and sent it. 

The quotes above are just the beginning, we are only up to page 22 of 167.

***

William Levada went to Rome in May 2005 to take the post his old friend Cardinal Ratzinger used to hold before becoming Pope.  Levada now runs the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 

This organized crime institution sells itself as a religion, calls itself “The First Christian Church” causing real Christians’ hairs to stand on end.  The felonious capos dons and padres are able to run away to the Vatican when it gets too hot for them in any other country.  The Vatican, SUPPOSEDLY, can give these thugs international sovereign immunity per Newsweek this week:

THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL RESERVATION Thomas P. Doyle, O.P., J.C.D. 1 …

Oliver O'Grady back in Ireland April 2010 Photo by Noel Donnellon, UK

“Notorious pedophile priest Father Oliver O’Grady is back in his old haunts in Ireland a free man after fleeing Rotterdam in Holland, where it was discovered that he was working with children and in a local Catholic church, calling himself ‘Brother Francis.’” (Read about it at: Irish Central )

In this photo, O’Grady seems to be adopting the persona of Hannibal Lecter, strolling his tropical paradise after escaping the FBI…  Setting himself up as a criminal celebrity is what I see. Watch, the world is so warped right now, this guy probably has fan sites.

.

Posted by Kay Ebeling, The City of Angels Is Everywhere

Mark Twain said: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”  A recent protest in Ireland over the epidemic of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church gave adult victim/ survivor Skip Shea an idea, that ends up an upcoming art exhibit “Putting On The Shoes.”  Project will begin touring Massachusetts June 2010.

Skip is lining up another venue in New York City where Joey Capozzi, is producing another staged reading of his one-act play based on a serial offending pedophile priest and the confusion their relationship brought to Capozzi’s life.  “For Pete’s Sake,” next reading in Manhattan is May 5th, more info below.

Dublin Shoe Protest 2010

“Putting On The  Shoes grew from images that went out Easter Sunday from Ireland on Indymedia, showing a protest in Dublin.  One thousand pairs of children’s shoes of all sizes showed up tied to railings outside the cathedral representing the victims of Roman Catholic abuse.

“I am a survivor of Roman Catholic Sexual abuse,” Skip said.  

“This exhibit will be peaceful, placing one thousand shoes in rows with a path leading to the middle and a simple statement. Each shoe represents another 1200 victims worldwide of Roman Catholic sexual abuse.

“I need to collect 1000 shoes to complete the installation.”

TO SEND SKIP SHOES:
Email: skipshea@charter.net

Shea says the title, “can also refer to the notion that the viewer can walk a mile in my shoes.”

IN NEW YORK:

For Pete’ s Sake

A reading of a play by Joe Capozzi

Directed by Robert Charles Gompers

Wed, May 5th @ 7pm
Union Theological Seminary – James Chapel
3041 Broadway at 121st Street, NYC

with: Chris Bachand, Kristin Busalachi, Joe Capozzi, Mike Conelias, Rosina FernhoffKate Hodge, Michael Horowitz, Susan Hunt, Kamran Khan, Bob Marlowe, Tony Perry, Joe Sicari, Bilgin Turker, Drew Wininger

Reservations: email: forpetessaketheplay@gmail.com

*$5 suggested donation to benefit: Road to Recovery, road-to-recovery.org 

Capozzi Flyer May 5 2010 New York

RE FLYER ABOVE:  I just wanted an excuse to run it, such a passionate graphic.  To see it real big go to The City of Angels Is Everywhere by Kay Ebeling

Under an assumed name, Oliver O’Grady was found Saturday working in a Rotterdam Catholic parish, as a deacon, and volunteering with a shelter for abused women and children.  Same weekend Gilbert Gauthe was released from prison and moved into a Texas home next door to a woman whose grandchildren are regular visitors.  O’Grady was the subject of Deliver Us From Evil, 2006 documentary by Amy Berg, and Gilbert Gauthe subject of Lead Us Not Into Temptation, early book of investigative journalism on the pedophile priest epidemic in the Catholic Church by Jason Berry.   FROM CITY OF ANGELS:

Oliver O’Grady Busted Working w/Children at Abuse Shelter for Women and as Church Deacon Under False Name in Rotterdam

Irish pedophile priest Oliver O’Grady who abused children for many years in America has been discovered helping out as a church deacon in Rotterdam under an assumed name and working a shelter for abused women and their children. Notorious Irish pedophile priest discovered working with kids in Holland  The defrocked priest referred to himself as ‘Brother Francis’ in Rotterdam. He was thought to be living in Ireland but had recently disappeared. He was found by the Sunday Tribune newspaper.

“The parishioners attending the Church of the Holy Heart, Christ Our Redeemer, had no knowledge about the man once described as one of the most dangerous pedophiles ever.”

“25/04/2010 – 10:01:02 The convicted paedophile priest spent time living in the Netherlands where he helped out at a shelter for vulnerable women and their children, according to newspaper reports.A Sunday Tribune article says that Oliver O’Grady acted as a church deacon assisting mass.” Read more at: Breaking News Ireland
.
MORE:

Priest convicted of child sex abuse volunteered in Dutch church
Radio Netherlands – April 26, 2010
An Irish priest who was convicted for sex offences against children has been working as a volunteer at a church in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. …

And Gilbert Gauthe, whose cases in New Orleans in the 1980s began the rumblings of problems in the Catholic Church with pedophile priests.

Gauthe Released from Prison to Live Free in Texas

SANTA FE, Texas – He is a pedophile priest accused of molesting an estimated 100 children in Louisiana. The trial of Gilbert Gauthe in 1985 was the first in U.S. history where details of a priest’s sexual abuse were made widely public.
On Friday, Gauthe walked out of a Galveston County jail and took up residence in Santa Fe, Texas. The crimes committed by the former priest have been the subject of countless stories and even a movie. Anyone can imagine the reaction of residents in the quiet neighborhood in which he will now live…

Former Convicted Priest Relased from Jail
Updated: Friday, 23 Apr 2010, 6:20 PM CDTPublished : Friday, 23 Apr 2010, 5:26 PM CDT

MORE

“And now he is back, living in Santa Fe, Texas, according to his sex offender registry. Right next door to a woman who babysits her six young grandchildren every week.” (Reports: Chattahbox )

MORE

“In his initial case, Gauthe was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but released after nine for good behavior. Ten months later, he was arrested in Texas for molesting a 3-year-old boy.

“In 2008, he was living in an RV in Galveston Island State Park when La Marque police took him in for failure to register.
The DPS said parents should protect their children by always keeping tabs on who has access to them and make sure they know about good touching and bad touching. And, never rely on a list or database to protect children. Reported by Click2Houston.com.

Deliver Us From Evil

A personal note:

First, here is the other photo found in January of Fr. Mario Pezzotti, surrounded by near naked children in Brazil.  He had many reports of molesting boys and girls in a Massachusetts boarding school before he moved from the USA to South America.

Mario Pezzotti, Pedophile Priest, with native children in Brazil, after molestating children in USA

In his Windsor, Vermont, home, Joe Callander knew, within days the Associated Press was breaking a story he’d kept secret from almost everyone in his life.  Since a 1993 legal settlement, he thought the Xaverian Missionary Fathers agreed to keep his serial rapist Mario Pezzotti away from children, so Joe agreed to maintain confidentiality about the crimes he endured, as we described in Part One.  Then weeks ago, he saw pictures of the pedophile priest in Brazil surrounded by near-naked native children, and Joe Callander went public with his story.

“I just told my siblings in the last two weeks,” he told City of Angels.  “My brother took it pretty well, I know my sister was alright with it, she was glad I did.”

The AP story broke April 14:  AP IMPACT: Predator priests shuffled around globe

And within days a CBS News Crew was in Joe Callander’s small town home recording his story.  Then Joe came to Boston to take part in a press conference and ceremonially mail the letter to the Vatican you can read here:  To Cardinal Levada, Vatican, From Joe Callander, Survivor, Re Mario Pezzotti, Pedophile Priest, and Church Complicity  Mailed from Boston USA April 16, 2010.

Bill Nash, Massachusetts Activist for Justice in Pedophile Priest Epidemic

Real hero here is Bill Nash, who found the photos online, while going through 25-page newsletters in Italian he purviews now and then online, to track movements of his own perpetrator, Xaverian Fr. James Tully.  Nash got the original information to the AP,  after showing the photos to Joe, and Bill then ran press events when Joe Callander came to Massachusetts  from Vermont.

“I’d never done anything like that in my life,” Joe said, “I purposely avoid having anything to do with a lot of people.  We just live pretty private, put it that way.  And then this came out and it’s surprising.”

Here is a sampling of coverage that resulted:

Ordem religiosa defende atuação no Brasil de padre acusado de …‎ – O Globo

Igreja transfere padres acusados de abusos para o Brasil‎ – Diário de Notícias – Lisb

Pedofilia: accuse a prete di Marone‎ – Qui Brescia

Pedofilia. Prometeo: A Parma prete che abusò di americano‎ – Diregiovani

天主教會30次外調性侵案神父‎香港新浪網 -
美聯社取得50年前曾在麻省強姦男童卡蘭德（Joe Callander）的神父佩佐蒂（Mario Pezzotti）攝於巴西的近照，他笑容滿臉抱着一名幾乎赤裸的亞馬遜小童

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How Joe Callander’s neighbors reacted says a lot about rural Vermont life: 

After keeping the secret for fifty years, the confidentiality agreement for seventeen years, Joe said, “The story came out and it’s surprising.  Not one person in the town of Windsor has said a thing about it.” 

Joe said of his life before boarding school: ”I thought priests were the greatest thing on earth, I wanted to be a priest when I came to that school. Then I saw two priests abusing confessional.  I still don’t sleep well at night.”

Joe Callander is glad he broke his Confidentiality Agreement with the Xaverian Missionary Fathers and the Catholic Church.

“I really wish they would try to sue me now,” he laughed, ”if they did, I’d make a big stink out of that, I’d have them by their short hairs.”

By Kay Ebeling, Producer, The City of Angels Is Everywhere

See Coverage of Callander’s Press Statement YouTube Video Here

Read the letters sent to Joe by the Xaverian religious order convincing him Mario Pezotti would never perpetrate again: Perp Priest Handwritten Apology to Victim, Other Documents of Betrayal (Click to Enlarge) 

“He knew when I went down the hall, if I had to go to the bathroom at night, and he would come in the bathroom after me,” Joe Callander describes months of rapes by the priest who lived in the dormitory at his school in Massachusetts in the 1960s. Later in the night, as Joe lay sleepless, Fr. Mario would get up, “leave about four thirty quarter to five and sure enough, he went to Father Odo to Confession. He would go two three times a week to Confession the same nights,” after raping 14-year-old Joe.

Thirty years later, Joe and an attorney negotiated a settlement with the Catholic Church and agreed to confidentiality, along with the assurance children would be safe from Fr. Mario.  Then early this year, Joe saw photos of the perpetrator priest surrounded by children, and last week, he told his story of rape by a Catholic priest at a Massachusetts boarding school to the world, as the truth about the pedophile priest epidemic in the Catholic Church grows into an international scandal leading directly to the Vatican.

Mario Pezzotti, pedophile priest, surrounded by Brazilian children

Last year in Eastern Massachusetts another victim of a Xaverian pedophile priest in the region, Bill Nash, was surfing around on the internet and “I found the picture,” he said, of the now infamous photo of Father Mario Pezzotti in Brazil surrounded by near-naked children, sneering into the camera.

“I was going through these Adobe versions of their newsletters in Italian, they’re 25 pages apiece, and there was a picture. Pezzotti was the perpetrator of a guy I’d known for eight years, Joe Callander, up in Vermont.”

Bill drove to Vermont to share the pictures with his friend.

“Joe was horrified because he had been promised by the Church during his settlement that Father Mario would not ever be around children.”

Victim Breaks 50-Year Silence

Church Agreement of 17 Years to Protect Children From Pezzotti Never Carried Out

“I found the pictures and and shared them with Joe,” Bill said, “He was betrayed again.”

Bill also sent the photos to City of Angels, and we posted them on February 1, 2010, here.  We had just started to publish City of Angels here on AlterNet after three years on Blogspot so included a link here to the photos.  Being on AlterNet extended the reach of City of Angels from hundreds to thousands of readers.

A reporter with the AP in Brazil emailed City of Angels wanting to know more about Pezzotti.

City of Angels put him in touch with Bill Nash.

And the photos of Mario Pezzotti and their publication became the memorable lead in the AP story that was repeated in hundreds of media around the globe April 14, 2010:

“There he was, five decades later, the priest who had raped Joe Callander in Massachusetts. The photo in the Roman Catholic newsletter showed him with a smile across his wrinkled face, near-naked Amazon Indian children in his arms and at his feet.”

AP IMPACT: Predator Priests Shuffled Around Globe – ABC News
Apr 14, 2010 … (AP).  The Rev. Mario Pezzotti was working with children and supervising …

“They Broke the agreement of being around children,” Callander told City of Angels in a recent interview. Provincial “Bob Maloney in particular, the Xaverians, they told me he was going to be kept away from children. I wanted to make it a written part of the settlement.

“I signed the settlement agreement but with the inference that the Xaverians were going to keep Mario Pezzotti away from children, and it wasn’t them saying that to me on one occasion, they had told me they would keep him away from children. They had written it in letters.”

Callander around age Fr. Mario was raping him several nights a week

Joe described life in the boarding school, where Pezzotti spotted him as a target, a reverent freshman whose father died when the boy was an infant. Now at age fourteen, he was full of passion, come to the Catholic boarding school with hopes of becoming a priest.

“If you had to get up and go to the bathroom at night, he knew when I went down the hall, and he would go in the bathroom after me.

“It was many times he did that.

“Follow me in the bathroom or drag me into a barbershop room right off to the side.”

Joe said that in the dormitory, “Everybody would get up at five thirty and I wouldn’t sleep well after this started happening. So I always knew where Pezzotti was at.”

Life in the dormitory:

Pezotti would “leave about four thirty quarter to five in the morning and I noticed he’d do that,” Joe Callander said. “I’d watch and sure enough, he went to Father Odo, his spiritual advisor or whatever you call him. He would go two three times a week to Confession.

“The same night early in the morning [after raping Joe], it would be after those same nights, he’d go to Confession first thing in the morning.

“It went on over two or three months and Father Odo was always giving Father Pezzotti absolution.”

Pezzotti’s Regular Confessions Conflicted with Everything Joe Believed About Confession.

“If he was telling him the truth in Confession, that priest shouldn’t have been giving absolution after Pezotti was doing it over and over again showing he wasn’t going to repent.”

Still, mornings after raping 14 year old Joe, Father Mario would always go to Confession.

“Two to three nights, five nights out of seven, there were three occasions I can remember he went straight to the Confession room.

“I knew what was going on, I knew he was going to Confession. At first I thought, at least I was going to be safe. Then every time it wasn’t safe, it just continued.

“It continued until the day I threw the fire extinguisher at him down the stairs.

“He left me alone after that.”

The Beginning of Behavioral Problems

For the boy who once wanted to be a priest

After Joe threw the fire extinguisher at Father Mario on the landing at the Catholic boarding school, “he gave me a constant hard time,” Joe said. “Dishes every morning noon and night until I left the school.

“I know there were two guys he got to after me,” Joe said, “Maloney told me there were two other ones.

“These people knew this in 1993, that in 1961, 62, 63, there were victims, a little girl somewhere around that time, all victimized by Pezzotti.

“He was supposed to be kept away from children.”

Joe lived with triggers and complications so many victims of pedophile priests share.

“I was raising all kinds of hell,” he says, “asking to be kicked out of the school. I was so unruly. I think Pezzotti always stepped in and told them to wait, not to expell me, because he was afraid I was going to go home and tell.”

At age 15, after months of being raped during the night in the dorm, Joe finally got to leave the school.

“When I went home, in my family, priests are considered saints. I told them what happened and they said I was lying a priest wouldn’t do those things.”

The 1993 settlement money helped send his one daughter and one foster daughter to school, then the stock market crashed, now the money is gone.

But Joe Callander, a noble Vermont rural American, kept his word, and did not break his confidentiality agreement with the Xaverian Missionaries.

“The only ones I was allowed to tell was my immediate family, my wife and brothers and sisters,” he said. “I never told anyone besides my wife. My kids knew there was something going on that had to do with the Catholic Church, just from overhearing things.”

Then Joe saw the pictures of Mario Pezzotti surrounded by nearly naked children in Brazil.

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Continues in Part 2 coming tomorrow.

Video here: Promo Video for Catholic Youth Missions

Shows footage of the Xaverian school where the abuse of Joe Callander and several other children happened at the hands of Father Mario Pezzotti.

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, The City of Angels Is Everywhere where you can see the letters written to Joe Callander by the Xaverians, promising to keep Mario Pezzotti away from children, sort of.

Perp Priest Handwritten Apology to Victim, Other Documents of Betrayal (Click to Enlarge)

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Pope Cries Crocodile Tears

Been reeling past few days and just realized:  News around the world is still reporting about the Pope getting tears in his eyes while meeting with pedophile priest victims in Malta Sunday.

Think of how much the survivors cry.  Not making it to adulthood is one of many damages of pedophile priest rape.   Think of the how much crying goes on with parents whose sons and daughters committed suicide because they couldn’t live with the side effects of being among  the Pope’s crime victims, or died young from living wrecless lives. 

I think of the strange conversations I’ve had that could only take place between survivors.

“No, I can’t go to the trial. You know I can’t go into New Orleans anymore, because, you know that’s where my shit happened.”

We live with days and weeks long crying jags, triggered by memories of being raped as children by Roman Catholic priests committing crimes that no justice system locally or internationally is equipped to prosecute. We live with days and weeks of crying because of what our behavioral problems, direct results of this sexually skewering experience, did to our personal, career, and family lives.

“I haven’t gone out of the house for three months now.”

“I need to see a dentist, but I can’t sit in a dentist chair, can’t be that close to someone, so I just use a lot of mouthwash and brush and floss a lot.”

“Oh yeah, me too, that’s why I also have to cut my own hair.”

Since a child is growing, they are creating cells, a trauma like priest rape gets embedded in your very cellular structure. When you attack a child’s sexuality, you are interfering with the very core of that person’s being.

You are messing with a person’s very soul.

Your sexuality drives you, it leads you in and out of almost every human experience.

You mess with a child sexually, you’ve skewered their sexuality for the rest of thier lives.

Skewered them at the level of their very being.

The Pope got tears in his eyes in Malta last Sunday, probably because he doesn’t like having to confront the truth about these crimes.  I saw narcissism in those Pope tears last Sunday, not the tears of someone who genuinely cares about the victims of his own crimes.

“I’ve been crying so much there are broken blood vessels all around my eyes.”

“I haven’t gone out of the house for more than three months, I hope I’m okay for that thing I want to do in August.”

“What other group would still have mayors and presidents visiting them after committing crimes like these?”

We crime victims get to see these felons, our perpetrators, serial felons, still being treated as dignitaries whose public appearances are news events.

The Only news story the Pope deserves is coverage of his criminal trails. Then, let him cry as we make our victim impact statements.

Instead we get this, even today, 15 hours ago, more coverage of his f—ing tears.

Pope Gets Emotional On Meeting Sex Abuse Victims‎Oneindia – 15 hours ago
Pope Benedict XVI struggled to hold back tears, when he met sex abuse victims at the hands of paedophile priests in Malta

Pope meets abuse victims, expresses shame, sorrow for their suffering‎The Pilot – Carol Glatz – 1 day ago
One of the victims, Lawrence Grech, told the Maltese paper that the two bishops with them shed tears during their meeting. Another said the pope had tears …

It’s disgusting.

By Kay Ebeling, Producer, The City of Angels Is Everywhere

My Neighborhood MedMJ Dispensary, East Hollywood, 2008 (Kay Ebeling)

So in 1994 when I got sick, a friend of mine came by with a joint.  I was clean and sober then, hadn’t smoked weed in years, but he knew I’d been crippled on my couch for months.  So I said, okay, why not, and shared the joint with him.  Fifteen minutes later there in my Humboldt County home, I was up stretching, doing a kind of made-up Yoga, because the central nervous system pain that had cemented me unable to move for days, after a few tokes of the marijuana, was gone, well not gone, but the pain changed to a need to move and stretch, and I discovered new ways to deal with the pain, moves I still use to this day.

After my friend’s visit, I was out in an Arcata coffee shop, and picked up a days old SF Chronicle lying on a table.  On the front page was a feature story with pictures about The Buyer’s Club in San Francisco Castro District, where thanks to some kind of arrangement with The City, patients with all kinds of diseases were able to “legally” buy marijuana and as a result were experiencing incredible relief for a variety of symptoms.  They were going to try to get medical marijuana legal in the State.

Next week my daughter and I had a yard sale, sold all our stuff, and moved to San Francisco.  I found the Buyers’ Club before we found an apartment (it was easier), and made friends with Dennis Peron and a gang of very future thinking people.  Remember, Dennis ran for Governor later, as a sort of Libertarian Republican.  A letter I wrote got published in the SF Examiner saying Peron was the only real Republican running, as he believed in the market responding to a demand, and there are a lot of people who want to be able to legally buy marijuana. 

We Have to Thank AIDS Patients

I honestly don’t think the Compassionate Use Initiative, which we campaigned for and got passed 1994-96, would be able to make it into law today when AIDS patients have pharmaceuticals to arrest the disease.  But in the mid-1990s, there were thousands of people dying of AIDS, from wasting.  Remember wasting?  They couldn’t eat, could not hold down food, and would literally starve to death, it was so horrendous to see.  And there before everyone’s eyes, AIDS patients were suddenly able to eat again, thanks to marijuana they bought at the Buyers Club in San Francisco.  No one could deny it, it was right in front of people’s eyes.  Lives being saved because the patients were able to chew on a marijuana brownie, and kick start themselves back to health.

So when the Compassionate Use Intiative was on the balot in California, it passed overwhelmingly. 

There are other things about San Francisco I truly love. 

Before the law had even passed statewide,

There were public, unhidden, buyers clubs in The City (as SF was called when I was a kid, as everything else around it was non-city).  For a good two yaers before the state passed the law making it legal, you could go into Buyers Clubs and buy it openly, with police protection, not harassment.

In 1995, there was a four-story building on Market Street, down close to the Castro.  It opened from 11 Am to 1 PM only, as those were the hours different shifts of police were on their lunch breaks.  So for those two hours, since marijuana sales was a lowest priority crime but still illegal, from 11 AM to 1PM, there was just this … agreement.  The Buyers Club would be open for those two hours a day and the police would have to take care of other crimes, rather than bother the patients buying this new medicine. 

But the police were outside all the time, guarding the place.  So you felt incredibly safe.

After you entered and they confirmed your disease with your doctor, you were ushered into the elevator and on up to your choice of second floor, lower grade Mexican breeds, and third floor, the high grade Humboldt County California hybrids, special blends, created by our state’s very unique breed of stoned botanists, the gooey corpulent red-purple pungent strains that today have even been more highly refined.

Hundreds of people poured through the Buyers Club on Market Street lunchtime every day.

The Police Were Always Outside

I felt so safe going there.  There were police all around the building, but they were there to protect me.  Not to arrest me, to protect me from street people who might jump me to steal my medicine on my way out.

I love San Francisco.  God knows how much cash went through that early pre-legal buyers club and how much cash went into the hands of the police waiting outside to guard us.  I don’t care.  It worked.  We proved there is a medical reason to use weed, and now it’s law.  

And I’m still dancing, I’m doing Yoga, I get out and move around every day.  Back in the 1990s, a lot of people with diseases like mine ended up going to Dr. Kevorkian as it is hard to be in total body pain all the time, every day, nonstop, it can really get to you.  I wanted so much to tell those people going to Kevorkian, just score some weed from a neighborhood kid. 

I’m so glad I grew up in California and was able to take advantage of medical marijuana from the very beginning.  I’m thriving today, I work, I exercise, I am getting muscle tone back that I lost in all those years of crippling pain.  The MedMJ makes me feel good enough to work on getting better.  It is not a be all end all, but it does kick start a person with a CNS disease back to better health.  I don’t use enough medMJ to be “stoned.”  My job requires intense concentration for hours at a time, and I do it on Medical Marijuana every day. 

Nothing is the way it used to be, things change constantly. When you live on earthquake driven land, you understand that.

By Kay Ebeling, Producer, The City of Angels Is Everywhere

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