cityofangelslady Why is Name of Predator from Queen of Angels Seminary in 1986 Remaining Secret? (While reading Roger Mahony’s words under oath in the deposition transcript released 2 weeks ago, Pages Scanned Here, I found that several priests who have been accused and even convicted of child molestation have their names redacted from the transcript, which to me is curious. For example, the transcript reads:)
Q: Okay, 1985 or ‘86 he [redacted name] was arrested and charged with child molestation, does that sound right?
A: Somewhere in that time frame?
Q: Does it help refresh your recollection if I represent to you he was accused of putting his hands and touching the genitals of high school seminarians while they were in bed at Our Lady Queen of Angels Seminary?
A: Yes.
Q: So he was accused of touching and did go to jail?
A: I don’t recall. (Click page here to enlarge and read.)
Go to City of Angels at Blogspot to read these pages, where they are scanned in so you can click and enlarge.
[If this priest was arrested in 1986 on charges related to molesting teenage boys at Our Lady Queen of Angels Seminary, why can't I find his name by cross referencing in Bishop Accountability? Who was this priest? If someone knows, please email me at cityofangelslady@yahoo.com ]
WHO ARE THESE REDACTED PRIESTS whose crimes the Catholic Church is allowed to continue keeping secret?
Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, The City of Angels Is Everywhere
(Go to City of Angels to see scanned in pages with Redacted names)
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cityofangelslady I watched the film “Taken” and was sick for a week, then dug up and rewrote this true story:
Teen Sex Slave Photo Cropped from Daily Mail UK Image on Google
It was 1966 and in California if someone had long hair and jeans you automatically identified them as a fellow traveler in the counter culture, a stranger who was not a stranger. I was 17 and thought things would be the same in Paris, France, so I may even have been the one who struck up a conversation with the two guys in the Left Bank bookstore. I did ask them if they knew where to get some LSD, as I had promised my sister I’d bring some acid back to her apartment in Geneva so she could try it.
The guys at the bookstore said they knew where to get lalalalala, today I don’t remember the name of a drug they said was not LSD but like LSD, so I said, great let’s go. Went off with them willingly and enthusiastically, like the two girls in the movie “Taken” which is airing on movie channels now and bringing up this memory for me.
I am an adult victim of a pedophile priest, my sister and I remember that Father Thomas Barry Horne of the Archdiocese of Chicago molested us as children, and then as we grew up and became adults, we lived sexually… unusual lives. Today I know that many victims of pedophile priests died young, because so many of us ended up in dangerous situations, like this one, when I was a teenager and went off willingly with two strange young men in Paris France and almost got sold into what was then called “white slavery.”
The two guys explained to me as best my high school French understood that their house was out in the suburbs of Paris. I thought it was funny that Paris even had suburbs. We went to my hotel to get my stuff, then rode the train out to their house, this big empty house in a town a long way out on the train line.
1966 exurban Paris, a small quiet town, all the houses had huge fences, private.
We walked about a block from the train to this two-story brick and stone house surrounded by a 10 foot fence, and a yard with trees. You entered through a gate.
I was a 17 year old girl hooked up and ready to party.
I was on my own, natural in a sundress probably braless, sitting in a house way outside the Paris France drinking wine and eating a home cooked dinner with these two guys.
Then we took the drug.
. . .
“Hey, this isn’t at all like LSD,” is one of the last things I said before I passed out. I woke up locked in a bedroom upstairs, groggy, and then for days they would come in and have sex with me, usually while I just laid there. Whether I wanted to or not, and they kept feeding me the drug.
Somewhere in the middle of the first night it segued from consensual sex to forced sex, which probably explains the psycho dymanic of why whores think they cannot report rapes as crimes.
How this story ties in with the pedophile priest stories I’ve been writing past four years at City of Angels is the lack of boundaries I had, at seventeen, going off with two strange guys in Paris France in the first place, my body already this thing that just gave in to sex, wherever or whatever with whoever. Somehow Father Horne placed that idea in my head. I just wonder how many other adult victims of pedophile priests never lived to tell their stories.
Also, the way I escaped from these two guys is a direct tie to the pedophile priest experience and how I’ve been “protected” all my life.
My escape was a miracle. A genuine miracle.
I was locked up in that upstairs bedroom for days, when strangely, my door wasn’t locked one afternoon. I heard men talking downstairs, so tiptoed down a few steps to listen. In the living room the two French guys were in animated conversation with two men I’d never seen before. The two new men looked and sounded Arabic. I crept down lower and peaked at them.
“Avec le peau comme teint??” Huh?
It was hard to understand the Parisian accents with my L.A. California high school French, but I knew they were saying numbers and describing me, my skin, how it felt to touch my skin, My Skin! They repeated more numbers.
They were selling me.
I shivered there on the stairs. And freaked. Gotta get outta here.
I understood a little more, enough to know the deal was done and I was going to end up someplace like a harem in Saudi Arabia in a few days.
Then all the guys left, without even checking on me, which was weird. Looking back now, maybe they had been up in the bedroom earlier while I was drugged and knocked out, and didn’t realize they hadn’t locked the door when they left, and then they didn’t want to make the Arab guys wait … whatever.
They left without checking on me and I knew I had no more than a few minutes to get out of that house.
I had this big white suitcase with all the clothes a 17-year-old girl carries on a trip. I grabbed it and lugged that Samsonite down the stairs. In every room on the ground floor the windows were nailed shut. I ran to the kitchen and checked and all the doors of course the doors were all all locked, they had me locked in.
The windows nailed shut, all the doors locked
Except one, the door that led to the basement.
So I dragged the huge white suitcase (this was pre-plastic, it was HEAVY) behind me down the narrow basement staircase in that old French country exurban home. In the basement there were two laundry tubs, huge vat-like sinks, and above one tub was one small window, just above ground level. These laundry basins were huge, like they could hold sheets or curtains to wash by hand a century ago. I saw I could climb up the ceramic and then crawl through that one window. That tiny window. I climbed up and barely pulled myself through, then went to pull out the suitcase and get us to freedom.
But the suitcase was too big to pull through the window.
Remember I was a 17 year old girl from L.A. and I wasn’t going to leave behind all my clothes. So I pulled and pulled and pulled and the suitcase was just plain larger than the window. This was a stone mortar brick building, nothing was going to give but I kept pulling and pulling trying to get the suitcase through.
Then there was a BLLLLLLNNNNNNGGGG.
The sound came with the wind through the trees and I swear it sounded like angelic voices.
Whatever, there was a BLLLLNNNNGGG and the suitcase came through the window. The solid 1960s pre-plastic quality Samsonite bulging suitcase came through the too small tiny window in that century old house.
I was able to pull the suitcase through and get out of there. The too big suitcase came through the too small window and I got away.
It was a miracle. Looking back on it, that’s the only way to explain it.
Then all I I had to was climb a tree and throw the suitcase over the fence then jump down myself. I scrambled in the direction I could hear the train, and got to the station, got off the street, off the block, before the two French guys came back with the Arabs to take me to a harem where I’m sure I would have died young.
I got away. I think a lot of other victims of pedophile priests did not survive to adulthood.
If I hadn’t gotten away I probably would have ended up like the teenage girls in the movie “Taken,” sold as merchandise to some oil magnate shiek.
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The Miracle
Later in life I came to believe that while I was being “sexualized” by a Catholic priest at age five in 1953, God must have looked down and said, this girl is going to have a lot of trouble in life. So God or Whoever is in charge dispatched a couple of extra angels, or whatever they are, down to watch over me. And that’s how I got out of that house outside Paris where the two French guys were getting ready to sell me to the Arabs.
It’s the main reason I say today it’s a miracle I made it to age 19, but not without repercussions.
Watching “Taken” a few weeks back made me sick. Good movie, but it made me sick.
Or maybe it was the Carl’s Junior burger from the day before.
************
There was a man at the suburban train station when I was going back to Paris, after I escaped the human traffickers.
I must have looked pretty disheveled, drugged, scared, shaking, but trying to act cool. This French man in his forties sat next to me and he asked if I needed help. He asked something like well how much can you pay for a hotel and started reaching in his pocket. I reached in my suitcase and pulled out this wad of American Express travelers checks I had with me and he was amazed, stopped reaching for his wallet and said, “Well then in that case you should go to the new Hilton Hotel, the new Hilton they just built downtown. Americans feel like they are in Americans in Paris when they stay there,” and he scoffed and walked away. A week earlier I’d checked into a Left Bank walkup so I could find other hippies in Paris. Now, I thought yeah, the Paris Hilton sounds great.
I still wonder why the two French guys didn’t steal the American Express checks. Maybe they were going to have me sign them later… I don’t know, but all my checks were still in that big white suitcase.
I took the train to downtown Paris, checked into the brand new Paris Hilton, where everyone was going overboard to do everything American, just like they portrayed on Mad Men Season Two awhile back …
It felt so good to feel the American-ness of the Paris Hilton Hotel that day. On my way to my room I wanted to get a magazine. All I could find in English, or all I saw, was an issue of Playboy.
I went to my room and luxuriated. With room service a couple of nights, I recovered from the “trauma” as we’d call it today. I was alone at age 17, achy in a hotel room from several days of involuntary sex, shaking but not really even thinking about the Arab guys or the kidnapping anymore. I already had developed practiced PTSD techniques and was using them now to rush away from the experience and not look at it closely.
Going faster than the speed of life to avoid looking at what is happening.
That is life with PTSD.
Don’t think I ever even thought about the experience again for decades, just buried the memory of the day I almost got sold to the Arabs, until soon after my daughter was born, when I was in my forties, in 1989 or 1990. Then I started writing it and writing it over and over trying to form it into a literary work.
Like this time here on AlterNet, yet again.
It was twenty plus years later, after I had a baby at age 40, that I slowed down enough to realize what had happened to me in Paris in 1966. After escaping, I found nurturing and comfort there in the Paris Hilton Hotel, diving into the pages of Playboy Magazine. Hefner’s words were so comforting.
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Considering I’m just one of hundreds of thousands of adult victims of pedophile priests, I wonder how many others ended up in dangerous situations like this and didn’t make it to adulthood, due to compulsions and behaviors we would never have had, if the monster hadn’t been aroused in us as children.
By Kay Ebeling, The City of Angels Is Everywhere
Where this story first appeared here Monday, January 18, 2010:
Watching the film ‘Taken’ brings up the time I got kidnapped in Paris and they almost sold me to the Arabs. But I escaped thanks to a genuine miracle
cityofangelslady An American flag caked in oil amid trash in the shoreline “sort of tells you where we are,” 
says voice on video. ”The sea lab measured very low oxygen levels, much too low for animals to survive, just a few miles off the coast.” So the sharks are swimming in massive schools close in to shore, looking for food, so many sharks swimming by this boat one mile out, the reporter just sticks his camera in the water and points anywhere, to catch video of streams of sharks swimming by. Video also shows pieces of shell from all the dead fish and crabs mixed in with little flecks of oil, pellets of liquid oil that when touched, spread everywhere, and amid it all an old American flag and the usual ocean water trash, plastic and other refuse from the USA.
“A two-inch layer of submerged oil hugged portions of the Gulf seafloor off the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge on Friday, a week after a smothering layer of floating crude washed ashore there,” the Alabama news crew reports. See video here:Lots of sharks, lots of oil seen off Bon Secour
(Credits for video and photo: Press-Register/Ben Raines, reporting from Fort Morgan, Ala.) Photo lifted from BP Slick at Blogspot
cityofangelslady Pilot Blogger from the Gulf Coast named Hurricane Creekkeeper takes his plane and flies over the Gulf of Mexico, then posts what he sees at BP Slick on Blogspot. Here is sperm whale trying to escape the slick, first of an incredible series of photos taken yesterday and posted at BP Slick site.
Go to BP Slick on Blogspot to see his amazing series of photos plus video of flyovers of the BP Oil Slick by a blogging civilian hero.
If you are not convinced we are in trouble, watch this video
Posted by Kay Ebeling producer of The City of Angels Is Everywhere
cityofangelslady It’s not that the crime victims cannot forgive the pope, it’s that we don’t like watching the Vatican Cardinals and Bishops get away with the crimes. Criminals never say more than they have to, like the Pope in his June 11 apology and Cardinal Roger Mahony explaining his treatment of child victims of Pedophile Priest Michael Baker in the deposition just released in Los Angeles. The truth for criminals and cardinals just keeps changing. An investigation finds new evidence? Then we’ll admit to what was just discovered, but not any more than that. Then they hand out a new press statement.
Mahony w/Attorey July 2007
Those of us watching Catholic priest sex crimes over a number of years have watched the truth change, the truth for Catholic hierarchy explaining the pedophile priest epidemic just moves around as different evidence comes out.
Then the Cardinal stands up and makes a press statement admitting that one more bit of evidence is true after all, that their slimeball treatment of children was really worse than they admitted earlier, but it’s no big deal because those sex crimes don’t happen anymore.
And everyone just believes them.
After all they’re wearing holy collars.
Which brings the logic full circle so it bites itself right in the ass.
If Cardinal Roger Mahony had to be deposed on every single perpetrator priest in Los Angeles, the line that defines the truth would just go to new places, would keep moving all over. Soon the cardinal would be shrugging off rapes of hundreds of children, with the same ease as he shrugs off the two boys who were just disposable “illegal immigrants” from his testimony released this week.
I CRY OUT FOR REPORTERS who ask questions, and don’t just rely on press statements and releases for stories. Meanwhile, we all get what we get. Mushy leadership.
Criminals run everything in the USA now, why wouldn’t they also run the Church?
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What Originally Riled Me Up after ‘Taking to my Bed’ Yet Again to Do this Post:
Will Pope Benedict’s apologies for abuse crisis ever be enough … Jun 11, 2010 … USA Today, Faith & Reason: A conversation about religion, spirituality & ethics.
…
They Just Don’t Get It.
Kay Ebeling, City of Angels
cityofangelslady Vatican Sweeps: Pillage for Justice for Priest Sex Crime Victims
cityofangelslady Speak Truth To Power Rabble Rouses in Boston
Boston Protest Re Clergy Sex Crimes, June 13, 2010, inow n eighth year
More pictures and story from Boston below:
Papal Apology Evokes Bloggers
From Agnostics-Library blog:
Pope Benedict XVI has come one tiny step closer to contrition over the Catholic clerical abuse scandal, and asked for forgiveness, as the New York Times reports. Even so, the Pope could not help but try to evade responsibility for everything that happened. The pope said the Devil was behind the scandal, saying it had emerged now, in the middle of the Vatican’s Year of the Priest, because “the enemy,” or the Devil, wants to see “God driven out of the world.” The Vatican’s thinking implicit behind everything that’s happened … this is not really a failing of the Church and by the Church. It is, instead, an external affliction, imposed on the Church from outside it, by the Devil; in other words, it’s part of an ongoing spiritual struggle between the godly Church and the Forces of Darkness, and it’s the clergy who are its real victims ( Read Entire Blog Post Here )
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From WORLD OPINION BLOG
As the celebratory “Year of the Priest” draws to a close, the pope had this to say last Friday, June 11: “It was to be expected that this new radiance of the priesthood would not be pleasing to the ‘enemy,’” Benedict XVI said. “He would have rather preferred to see it disappear, so that God would ultimately be driven out of the world.” The term “the enemy” is a traditional Catholic way of referring to the Devil. [From AP newswire.]
Translated from the traditional gobbledygook, the pope is saying the devil made the pedophile priests do it so people would turn their backs on God, who is represented on earth by the one, holy and apostolic Catholic Church.
If anyone knows about pedophiles in the church, it is Joseph Ratzinger (his real name, or just-plain-Bennie), himself. ( Continue Reading Here )
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From Jay Nelson
Summertime is movie time.
Check the nearly 300 shows currently listed starting with Part I: Clerical Comedies. I’ve left out all the pro-Church syrupy schmaltz that I can. No Sister Act or Going My Way here, folks. Most of this stuff would get you into trouble with the Legion of Decency, which is kinda the point So if you’re bored with reruns and the same old stuff on can– (Continue reading here)
ALSO FROM JAY NELSON:
Where are the perps now?
BINGO! Found ‘em!
This page from the Society of the Divine Word’s Office of Education, Recruitment and Formation, (whoever they are) has a little list. Enough of these institutions are clergy-mills run by the Servants of the Paraclete and other known enablers like the Guest House, that I think this list might just be for clergy only, even though some places, like The Meadows and Hazelden, handle other types of patients.But there are places I’ve never heard of in Massachusetts, Michigan, California, Connecticut, and a bunch in Missouri…Check it out here
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Put the Pope in Jail, T-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers
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FROM BOSTON, Sunday’s Press Event to
Remove Cardinal Bernard Law
Ruth Moore Took Pictures Shown Here and Delivered This Speech:
We stand here today in solidarity calling out in one loud voice:
REMOVE
LAW
NOW!!!
On November 4th of 2002 nearly 8 yrs ago, as we stood here on this very sidewalk calling out “Law Must Go.” Cardinal Bernard Francis Law apologized and asked for forgiveness to those attending Sunday Mass. The media interviewed several of us after mass that day asking if we could forgive Cardinal Law.
My answer then is the same today, “I will forgive him when he is in jail serving time for the crimes he has committed.”
Our elation that justice would be served by Law’s resignation and departure from Boston was short lived.
It was impossible to foresee that Bernard Law would be summoned to Rome by the Pope and elevated a prestigious position within the Vatican.
What a slap in the face his promotion was not only for those of us here in Boston but for all of humanity, past, present and those yet to be born.
A fire continues to burn from within over this insult. It is an outrage of historic proportions that at this very moment, Cardinal Law who stood by while thousands of children were raped and sodomized continues to live a life of prestige and luxury in the heart of Rome. (Continue Reading where this post originally went up this afternoon in a longer form at: City of Angels
ROUNDUP: News on Pedophile Priests in Catholic Church You Will Not Read in Mainstream Media
Posted by Kay Ebeling Watch my first attempts at video here Pope Pap Apology on YouTube Now
cityofangelslady (Benedict XVI begged forgiveness from “persons involved” and that’s as far as he went mentioning the hundreds of thousands of victims of sex predator priests and their families who are living damaged lives around the world today, preaching in his sermon marking the end of the ‘Year of the Priest’ in Rome Friday June 10, 2010.)
Worst yet news media everywhere say “Pope Apologizes” in headlines when he didn’t. (see links below)
John B Graphic july 2009
(Image at left was produced by activist John Brown in Australia July 2009, after the Pope proclaimed June 2009 to June 2010 the Year of the Priest and made adult victims of pedophile Catholic clergy around the world more sick than we already were.)
No, he did not apologize. The Pope asked the victims to forgive him so he and his staff could keep running their “religion” unhindered after allowing tens of thousands of children, teens, and vulnerable adults to be brutally raped all over the world by his employees, mentally sick Catholic priests.
Pope Benedict did not show mercy in his fifth or sixth such public apology for these crimes Friday. He revealed that, clearly, he just wants his life back.
The Pope is as sincere as the BP CEO Tony Hayward June 4th saying he wants his life back, instead of the inconvenience of answering news media questions about the Gulf of Mexico BP Oil Gush ongoing catastrophe.
How is Tony Hayward’s arrogance any different from the Pope’s apology number 5 or so to victims of his predator priests in Rome Friday?
To the Vatican, which is an enclave in the city of Rome, it’s like we victims aren’t even here.
These apologies from the Pope are predictable, always internal, and never go any farther than the Church itself.
“We must pray more, we must cleanse, we cannot be good priests unless we look inside ourselves.” Me, me, me, Us, Us, Us. I doubt half the crime victims even attend that church anymore. Some of us get nauseous just driving by church buildings.
The Catholic Church from the Vatican down needs to look at what they did to hundreds of thousands of victims and our families. Instead it’s clear they don’t care about boys and girls sodomized and otherwise penetrated and how that destroyed our lives. They want to go on as if nothing happened, it’s easier to call these crimes “sin” in hushed tones.
And news media go along with this rewriting of history gratefully as they don’t want to face what was done to us either.
… Thanks …
With one exception, on MSNBC Savannah Guthrie saw through the smoke:
“In the end [the Pope] did comment on the crisis. It was about two lines on a five-page single-spaced homily. But still, he did beg forgiveness for God, and of the victims, and he said that he pledged that he would do everything to prevent this from happening again. But this was very similar to previous apologies. You’ll recall in the United States in 2008, in Malta, in Portugal; no new ground broken.
It was Satan’s fault!!
Finally, Friday’s “apology from Benedict XVI” tried to blame the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church on “Satan” which invalidates all of us who think the whole religion is a crock, and how else can we feel when they let their pervert priests rape us as children?
In his sermon the Pope said, “In this very year of joy for the sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests came to light — particularly the abuse of the little ones, in which the priesthood, whose task is to manifest God’s concern for our good, turns into its very opposite.”
Their year of joy turned into the opposite?
SOUNDS TO ME like he’s mad we spoiled his party.
The Pope said the sex crime spree he calls a “scandal” should make priests grow “in gratitude for God’s gift, a gift concealed in ‘earthen vessels’ which, ever anew, even amid human weakness, makes his love concretely present in this world.”
See how they embed these crimes into the religion and thus avoid prosecution?
HERE: Try not to get sick reading these headlines. You can hear corporate media owners sighing relief as they manage production of these news stories:
Pope issues fresh apology for paedophile priest scandals
Telegraph.co.uk – Nick Squires – 4 hours ago
The strongly-worded apology was more specific and forceful than expressions of remorse that the Pope has previously issued since clerical sex abuse …
Will Pope Benedict’s apologies for abuse crisis ever be enough? USA Today – 7 hours ago
Pope Benedict XVI has apologized — again — for clergy sexual abuse of minors as the global scandal continues to scorch his papacy. This time, the apology …
Pope Apologizes; Asks For Forgiveness
KEYC – 1 hour ago
The Pope apologized for the sexual abuse scandal – saying we beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved. …
Pope vows end to priest abuse
ABC Online – Leigh Sales – 3 hours ago
The Pope has given his clearest apology to date over the paedophile priest scandals, begging for forgiveness and pledging to stop the abuse from happening …
Pope offers apology for sexual abuse
Press TV – 5 hours ago
This is the Pope’s most direct apology over the widespread sex scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic Church across the world. …
Pope concludes ‘Year for Priests’ with sexual abuse apology
Ecumenical News International – 2 hours ago
Pope Benedict XVI has marked the end of the Roman Catholic Church’s Year for Priests by apologising for the scandal of sexual abuse of children by clergy. …
Pope begs forgiveness for church sex scandal
AFP – Gina Doggett – 7 hours ago
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI on Friday begged for forgiveness for the paedophile priest scandals rocking the Roman Catholic in his clearest apology yet …
Pope Begs Forgiveness From Child Abuse Victims
CityNews – 4 hours ago
Pope Benedict XVI offered an apology for the crimes committed against children by priests at a mass in St. Peter’s Square Friday and promised he’ll do …
.
(THink I’ll takE a SWiM in tHe Gulf of Mexico)
John B First Put The Letters on His Car Rear Bumper July 2009
Posted by Kay Ebeling, Hollywood, California
cityofangelslady MY PEDOPHILE HOUSEMATE: Franciscan Seminary in Santa Barbara Was Private Neverland for Father Robert
It’s impossible to read Iggy’s emails and then say the Catholic Church did not enable pedophiles:
“One time he brought in this young boy. They walked through the living room and straight into his study, then closed the door.” Iggy hesitates. “I heard the kid through the door say ‘Father Robert.’ And the way his voice sounded. It was this exclamation…. But I thought, nothing could be wrong, he’s with a priest. I just let it go. But my memory kept it. ‘Father Robert! Father Robert!’ Sometimes things are right in front of us and we don’t even see them.”
When I began researching the hundreds of child molestations that took place at St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara, I wrote to Ignacio Aceves, one of dozens of adult victims of priests at the Santa Barbara school run by Franciscans. Aceves’ first emails were tentative, then he opened up and poured out memories of years he lived and worked at the seminary, sharing living space with Fr. Robert Van Handel.
The clever Van Handel persuaded the Franciscans to let him run a boys’ choir making him able to for 20 years take his pick of boys from the community in just the age range Van Handel craved. “Now I understand that it was also a constant supply of attractive little boys,” the priest wrote soon after his 1994 arrest, in a “sexual autobiography.”
“He could easily have abused 150 boys,” wrote a psychologist in Van Handel’s Probation Report, but after reading about St. Anthony’s Seminary and the Santa Barbara Boys Choir leader, I’d put the estimate of his victims at more like 250.
(Ignacio Aceves’ emails became this first person story):
When Van Handel was arrested, and he was at the County Jail, he was sharing a room with a cop who was arrested for sexual abuse of a child. I saw him (during a tour of the facility). He was sitting, reading, he had a book about the size of a photo album and he looked so calm and relaxed, as if he was behind his desk at the seminary, looking over some material. It was surreal. I tried to see what he was reading via the camera on the ceiling of his cell that was monitoring him, but I couldn’t tell.
I ASKED IGGY WHAT HE MEANT, WHEN HE SAID THAT THE FRIARS LIVED WELL?
Where do I start?
Yeah, well one friar once said about the material things Van Handel owned while at the seminary, “If this is poverty, bring out the chastity!” and would break out in laughter. These guys live the life, traveling, partying, etc. etc.
What did they have? Well, access to a photo lab; lots of children’s toys; a dog that he used to get the attention of the boys; a late model VW van which he painted twice within a month because he didn’t like the color the first time; use of a 15 passenger van for his choir [Santa Barbara Boys’ Choir] to take them places like Magic Mountain; a lot of the seminary property was at his disposal for boys choir-related stuff; he had several offices at his disposal i.e. (S.B. Boys Choir office; his own office across from that office ); a lot of boy choir stuff for the performances; use of half the Casa for Boys Choir events (Xmas-related event in the former school library {downstairs} etc. etc.).
He would use dormitory space for SB Boys Choir camp (he let the boys stay there for some kind of boys camp); Use of former seminary facilities for boys choir use (a long list here); at one time he owned a large station wagon dubbed the “boys choir car.”; he used this to take boys to Lake Cachuma.
An audio visual room for boys choir whatever (the windows were obscure so I couldn’t see inside.), two music rooms for boys choir practice; the Rector’s Lounge back room was a costume room for boys choir; tons of stuffed animals were stashed in a tiny space under the stairs in the restroom in the main building. (I never understood that.).
He had a secretary for that boys choir office who helped him.; lots of parking spaces where Van Handel would play tag with the boys after their practice in the tower ; a chapel at his disposal; soccer field space where boys choir might hang out sometimes.
R.V.H. used the Casa to have the boys over; the Casa lawns were places where the choir boys might play with R.V.H.’s dog named Elgar. the attic of the sacristy was also used for a lot of boy choir props/costumes.
The barn (a huge dorm on the top floor of the main building) was at his disposal.
Plus credit cards; a mountain bike; stereo equipment; lots of tobacco for his pipes.
Trips to England with the boys choir every four years.
Tons of booze located in a pantry next to the kitchen at the Casa; ice cream and cookies for the choir boys in the kitchen fridge; VCR- television; camera equipment.
Casa use to tutor a single boy; etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on and on…
In a nutshell, much of the 16 acres of the Santa Barbara Franciscan property was R.V.H.’s Neverland.
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“Not a month went by that Defendant did not molest members of the Santa Barbara Boys Choir,” reads the Probation Report.
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Sometimes, when R.V.H. and I would watch television, there might be a scene where a very young child (actor) would say something in the dialogue. R.V.H. would comment on the child character’s response saying something like, “A child at that age wouldn’t respond in that manner.” I noticed how R.V.H. appeared to have a knowledge of age appropriate behavior among children.
Over the phone, Iggy remembered Van Handel as a clever man, who in the TV room always commented favorably on con artists and crooks getting away with crimes in TV shows.
“He would put his hands on his chin and look straight ahead and say, How clever,” Iggy said. “He really got floored by people getting away with crimes. I think he got behind the wheel of that cleverness, all those years.
“The way he had the lab to develop his pictures, the choir boys, he’d raise money for the kids to go with him on trips to England.
“Things can be right in front of you and you don’t see them.”
One More Email from Ignacio: (Iggy and I talked about where Van Handel lives today in Santa Cruz, how it looks from Google Earth … (To Read Longer Version of this Post, Click title here at City of Angels Wednesday, June 9, 2010):
POST NOTES:
Background: 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)
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
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Blogged by Kay Ebeling, The City of Angels Is Everywhere
cityofangelslady VOICES of the Canadian Holocaust Taking Action
Image by Ayesha
Our exposure of the Canadian genocide has simultaneously indicted the social order that gave rise to it. Euro-Canadian Christian society as a whole stands condemned in the dock alongside those persons who ran the Indian residential schools, sterilized and murdered children, spread smallpox, and dug mass graves.
Despite their best efforts to ignore this fact and contain the whole matter with pseudo “apologies”, the Canadian government and its partner Catholic, Anglican and United churches now face the same kind of historical reckoning that Nazi Germany did after its defeat in 1945: an awakening to their own criminal nature.
PLEASE
Support our efforts to launch a full, non-governmental inquiry into genocide in Canadian Indian residential schools.
To arrange to work with us, contact:
The Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada
c/o 260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, B.C. Canada V9R 2H8
ph: 250-753-3345 or 1-888-265-1007
email: hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca
OR
kevin_annett@hotmail.com
website: http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/
Originally posted at City of Angels 8 here Monday, June 7, 2010:
