Gerald Fitzgerald

He was about to get drafted into the Vietnam War when friends said you could find refuge at a retreat in the New Mexico mountains. “Oso Pious” and a buddy drove 290 miles through winding wilderness roads and arrived in the middle of the night at the cluster of structures that was Via Coeli, a rehab center for problem priests in Jemez Springs. There, Servants of the Paraclete religious order brothers bustled the young men onto the grounds for what was to be safe haven from the draft while they worked on deferment.

But soon Father Gerald Fitzgerald (pictured at this post on ), with his Kennedy family eyes, stood over young Oso saying, “God sent you here” and without preparation or going to seminary or even particularly having a calling, the 20-year-old found himself with a new identity: Father Pious. Oso contacted me through Facebook after we published Murmur She Wrote 1 October 16th, announcing that City of Angels Blog is going on the road, first stop Albuquerque to write about Servants of the Paraclete. Now a New Mexico resident, the former Servant is known in online comments and blogs as “Oso Pious.” He only remained with the Order from April to December 1965, then became a special education teacher in New Mexico.

Over the phone this week, Oso told me of watching local kids swim in the pool with the pedophiles in New Mexico, helping draft dodgers slip over the border into Canada at a Vermont Servants of the Paraclete center, and living out a false identity as Father Gerald’s secretary, “Father Pious.” Oso left Servants of the Paraclete when a fellow brother set himself on fire as part of an antiwar protest, and church hierarchy told Oso Pious to keep it secret.

I’d actually read some of Oso Pious’s story earlier in Sons of Perdition the 2009 book by former Missing Link editor Jay Nelson, on page ix: “‘Father Pious,’ as he prefers to be called contacted me. This gentleman claims that he’d been a novice with the Servants of the Paraclete for some time in the mid to late 1960s. Though he has not provided any documentary evidence, his local knowledge plus assertion of certain obscure facts about Servants of the Paraclete, which later research verified, have convinced me that he was indeed present there.”

When Oso and his college friend arrived at Via Coeli, the priests put them up in the Nuncio Villa, where they were to cram for exams and get their grades up. “I was going to Regis College, a Jesuit university in Colorado,” Oso said. “The draft board wasn’t allowing student deferments. We had to make a certain grade or we were going to Vietnam.”

Hours after their arrival, the priest from Boston who founded the religious order and said he was a Kennedy family member penetrated Oso’s young visage and said, as Oso relayed to me, “You think it’s an accident that you came here, but it’s not an accident, you’re the one we’ve been praying for, you’re going to be the first priest ordained in the Canyon.”

Oso said, “I was a twenty year old kid, imagine how that affected me.”

Oso told me the story, and I’m so happy I’ve worked as a Transcriber since 1998, so now can type so fast, I can take down pretty much everything a person says to me over the phone:

“Gerald made me Father Pious so I could be his secretary. They invented this person named Father Pious and I was good at writing what they called Pious Pap.

“We’d get people to sponsor priests. We wouldn’t say they were pedophiles, but say this priest needed a sponsor. That was my job as Father Pious, as his secretary to bring in all the money.”

Kids Swimming With Pedophile Priests

Oso also was lifeguard at a Servants of the Paraclete pool in Jemez Springs that was open to the locals.

“I was a lifeguard at Camp Ped, the special pool they had for the kids in the neighborhood,” he continued in our recent phone call. “That’s where pedophiles would molest some of the little kids. I was the lifeguard.

He tried to explain the environment to me: “The Jemez Springs Via Coeli was a prison. Priests could get sent there for all kinds of reasons, then they divided them up. We put all the alcoholics in one house, the guys trying to have sex with kids in another place.

“I was at the one where they had the pedophiles, where they also had the pool for the kids to swim, and they let them swim together.

“We knew we had crazy nuts there, but we didn’t know how bad it was. One guy was painting crucifixes red, one guy was a compulsive bingo player, but the Catholic Church was in denial.

“I was trained by Servants of the Paraclete as a guard. I’d get a call to go to the La Madrid Bar and pick a guy up. The police didn’t know how to deal with them. Any kind of crime these priest did, the New Mexico police would turn them over to us. Even to this day, the Governor of New Mexico will not put priests on the sex offender list, because the Governor is Catholic and the Church has control of everything.”

Oso’s ruse as Father Pious, helping donors sponsor problem priests while he was staying at Via Coeli, was cut short:

“One day this nun showed up and said, I want to meet this holy man,” Oso laughs into the phone, “I said, tell her Father Pious is in the woods in deep meditation.”

Father Gerald helped Oso get out of Dodge fast.

“He showed me a map of the world with all these push pins. He said, we’ve got about thirty or forty houses, all over the world, and we have the papal privilege, because we work directly for the Pope. He said, we don’t have to go through channels. He says, where would you like to go.

“I said, Father Gerald, I’ve been all those places because my dad was in the military, except this one on the Canadian border in Vermont. So he sent me up there.”

‘My friend Roger set himself on fire’

Oso says that at the Servants of the Paraclete center in northern Vermont they helped young men cross the border into Canada and evade the draft in the Vietnam War. Around that time in New York City a group of Buddhists set themselves on fire.

Roger LaPorte a Servant of Paraclete member in Vermont, joined them.

“My friend Roger set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building. It was 1965 and he was a Servants of Paraclete member.”

Oso said by order of Cardinal Spellman, nobody found out the connection of the antiwar protest suicides in New York to Servants of the Paraclete in Vermont.

“Roger went nuts,” Oso said, “seeing people burning themselves to death. He went to New York to get our supplies, and we found out later he had set himself on fire too.

“All the higher ups, Cardinal Spellman etcetera, said we couldn’t tell anyone he was a Paraclete.

“We were doing all kinds of illegal stuff, smuggling people across the border, the Father Pious stuff. They said if anyone investigates you, say Brother Roger was a homeless man we fed but don’t admit he was one of the members of the Order.

“We were told to bare faced lie.”

Story continues at City of Angels Blog in longer form.

“It is clear” that Ron Johnson was part of a coalition of Wisconsin Catholic Dioceses led by Archbishop Jerome Listecki when the current Republican challenger to Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin testified this year in opposition to the Child Victims Act. ”If the name Listecki sounds familiar, it’s the same ultra-right wing bishop that made national news for saying Obama shouldn’t go to Notre Dame,” Uppity Wisconsin reports on its blog pages.  Following is quoted from that site: Video linked below is from the Wisconsin State Senate on January 12, 2010.

Previously, a short three minute video was was posted on youtube of Ron Johnson testimony before the Wisconsin State Senate on January 12, 2010, in opposition to the Child Victims Act.

I have recently discovered where that video came from:  WisconsinEye, which is somewhat like a Wisconsin version of CSPAN.

So, I went back and viewed the whole committee hearing which lasted approximately four hours.  And I discovered many shocking revelations

The entire Catholic coalition stayed around for nearly the whole hearing, until about a half hour from the end, when victims of childhood sexual abuse were really starting to lay into them. When I say lay into them, I mean it– I included some on the video.”

Watch VIdeo at City of Angels Blog:  Video: Feingold Challenger Testified for Catholic Church re Pedophile Priest issue, Wisconsin 

Listecki has the dubious distinction of running the LaCrosse Diocese for many years. During Listecki’s time in LaCrosse the Diocese had the highest “clearance rate” of priests accused of childhood sexual assaults in the nation. The national average of accused priests being “cleared” by the diocese and being allowed to return to their parishes is 12%. At the LaCrosse Diocese, the rate is a whopping 64%. Reports Uppity Wisconsin dot org

Posted by CityofAngelsBlogger

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When headlines proclaimed a “Crimes Against Humanity” statement by victims of pedophile priests in Italy last month, a Press TV story* also reported, “A second meeting will be held in Rome in October,” which immediately aroused my inner revolutionary.** “They must mean Reformation Day in St. Peter’s Square,” I thought, and called the phone number on the most recent press release from Survivors Voice.

“The group in Italy is actually part of the event we’re having,” said Gary Bergeron, project organizer. “There was a kind of break in translation in that announcement. We had somebody from Belgium at the meeting in Verona, who told the reporter, yeah, they’re coming to Reformation Day at the Vatican too.”

Will the Survivors Voice group fill St. Peter’s Square Oct. 31st proclaiming pedophilia in the Church was a crime against humanity?

“It’s easy to get up there and make a statement,” Bergeron answered. “The challenge is, How do we issue the statement where it will end up in action.”

He added, “We’re looking to get something presented to the United Nations. We’ve been talking about this for a long time.”

Since the first announcement of Reformation Day 2010 in April, preparation has meant dozens of public appearances, plus starting a nonprofit in Boston, producing a website with videos, collaborating on a documentary with CBS, and fundraising.

“We’re planning this event a year from now October 31, 2011, in Rome, as well.”

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“We’re planning this event a year from now October 31, 2011, in Rome, as well.”
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What else do Bergeron and McDaid have to do before the gathering October 31 in St. Peter’s Square?

“We’re right now working on a simulcast of the event,” Bergeron said. “We’ve got to have a web host large enough to host the transmission as well as host all the hits, and our Survivors Voice website is not large enough.” (See also the European version of their website in five languages.)

“We’ve got American and Belgian camera crews lined up, but shooting of the event isn’t the issue, it’s how do we upload it live to a computer.”

CofA asked, How many people do you anticipate coming to join you in Rome October 31st?

“We have confirmed groups of tens and twenties, three separate from Ireland of 8, 12, and 9. From Italy two groups, one 40 people, one says 65 are coming. From U.S. people from Minnesota, New York, Florida, Indianapolis. It’s mostly individuals going from the U.S., not groups.”

He added, “We’re planning this event a year from now October 31, 2011, in Rome, as well.”

McDaid and Bergeron have already gotten high up the chain of command in efforts to communicate with the Vatican about the plight of pedophile priest victims. McDaid was one of four victims who met with the Pope in New York in 2008 and Bergeron was with McDaid in a meeting in the Vatican with Cardinal Bernard Law in 2003. City of Angels interviewed McDaid about the Vatican trip experience here where we were also among the first to report in April 2010 in depth about the Reformation Day project.

In videos featured at the website McDaid says, “It took six years to get the apology, we thought they were going to do more and it never materialized.” He adds, “Now I’m going to fill St. Peter’s Square with victims, survivors, their loved ones.”

McDaid: “When we first came forward and mentioned it came from the Vatican they looked at us like we had two heads.”

In another video at the Survivors Voice site Bergeron says, “I’m going to Rome October 31, Bernie’s going and hopefully about 50 thousand of our friends.”

Bergeron also says, “Here we are nine years later,” news of the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church is “breaking out in other countries.

“This is a global issue, it affects everyone.”

“This isn’t about the Pope or religion. This is about child abuse. The message is, this nightmare continues.
“Nothing has changed” and ““It’s time to do this from the top down. So we’re inviting everyone who can to stand with us on October 31st and say, Enough.”

A reporter in one video at the Survivors Voice site asks McDaid if he wants Pope Benedict to resign and he answers, “Whether it’s Pope Benedict or Pope Charlie, it doesn’t matter.”

Watch the best of survivors voice videos here at City of Angels Blog posted earlier this week

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“We’re planning this event a year from now October 31, 2011, in Rome, as well.”
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 *Victims of priest pedophilia in Italy have gathered in a public meeting in Verona, calling for such activities to be declared a crime against humanity,” Press TV reported in September.

** Cut Paragraph:

Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Pope’s door in 1517, then translated the Bible into the common language (German for him) and started the Protestant Revolution. When I heard about the Crimes Against Humanity statement in Italy, it immediately aroused my inner hippie, “Wow, far out,” I gushed, “far reaching.”

This story first appeared yesterday at City of Angels Blog covering the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church since January 2007.

On her deathbed, his mother said that 20 years ago, when at age eight he told her Father Becker molested him, she went to Rembert Weakland, the Archbishop of Milwaukee, who told her to forgive the priest and leave the church, then cut off her financial aid. At the time the Catholic Church had been paying for the boy’s childcare while his single mother tried to go to college.

After his mother’s death in 2009, the man contacted Jeff Anderson of Anderson Advocates in St. Paul, Minnesota, and another lawsuit concerning Father Franklyn Becker was filed September 16, 2010, this time in the Circuit Court Civil Division of the County of Milwaukee, concerning a priest who preyed upon children in California and Wisconsin.

And people ask why it often takes victims decades to come forward about pedophile priest crimes…. In this case, “John Doe 17 was age 7-8 when Becker performed oral sex on him and tried to get John Doe 17 to do the same” to the priest, reads the Complaint.

Like so many in the Catholic Church’s MO for handling its criminal priests, Franklyn Becker got moved around a lot. For example, Becker is one of 41 clergy accused of molesting 51 children in Santa Barbara,. See Pages 1-2 of Sept. 16, 2010, Complaint from Wisconsin scanned here, page two lists his 19 assignments:

(SCANNED DOCS are at City of Angels Blog where this post first appeared earlier today to Click Enlarge and Read)

Six Degrees of Separation Dance

As a predator who was transferred often by several bishops, Franklyn Becker ventured through at least 19 different assignments in his priestly career. Becker was part of the paedophilia e predilecto flagrante that took place in Santa Barbara under G. Patrick Ziemann, who later as a bishop admitted to forcing a priest to have sex himself. A Franklyn Becker case was part of a Privacy Rights decision made by Judge Peter Lichtman of Los Angeles in 2007, a decision still muddling in the California state court of appeals process. Previous cases re Franklyn Becker influenced a Wisconsin State Supreme Court decision in 2007 to allow decades old lawsuits.

This case filed September 16, 2010, got little media attention, as it was filed within days of a federal judge serving papers on the Vatican Secretary of State in a Jeff Anderson case from Oregon while CNN was promoting its September 25-26 special “What the Pope Knew” based on several Anderson cases.

The Six Degrees of Separation Dance that is woven into the story of the epidemic of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church plays out clearly in Franklyn Becker’s career.

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Why do these victims wait so long to come forward? is a comment you read often online, attached to news stories about pedophile priest claims by plaintiffs.

The new case against Franklyn Becker of Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and venues in Wisconsin such as Lyons, Fox Point, West Allis, Woodland, Cascade, and Milwaukee, tells part of the story of why it often takes plaintiffs decades to come forward about a pedophile priest:

The Complaint says that in 2009, “Just before his mother died, John Doe 17’s mother told him that after Plaintiff told her Becker was sexually abusing him, she then immediately met with Archbishop Weakland and reported that Becker had sexually abused her son. She told Plaintiff that Archbishop Weakland told her that she should forgive Fr. Becker and that she should leave the Catholic church.”

The Complaint continues: “At the time Plaintiff’s mother met with Weakland, she was a single mother, struggling financially, and receiving financial assistance from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee for her son’s education and child care while she attended college. After she told Weakland that Becker had sexually abused her son, the financial assistance ended and she moved her family out of the state of Wisconsin.”

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The Complaint asserts:

“26. Defendant Archdiocese affirmatively represented to Plaintiff John Doe 17 and his family that Franklyn Becker did not have a history of molesting children, that Defendant Archdiocese did not know or suspect that Becker had a history of molesting children, or that Becker was a danger to children.”

Franklyn Becker did have a history and “Defendant Archdiocese knew or suspected that Franklyn Becker had a history of sexually molesting children and that he was a danger to children.”

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Read the entire complaint here at Anderson Advocates website
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I know it’s redundant but

Franklyn Becker is also one of 41 clergy accused of molesting 51 children in Santa Barbara, as part of lawsuits that settled in that city in 2006.

I feel it’s a point that needs to be driven home, because civilians still do not seem to see that there was a pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church; and considering the expanse of the crime spree, hardly anything has been done by law enforcement or the courts about it, other than sound bites and promises and apologies followed quickly by more awards and glory and catered events for the cardinals.

“In sworn testimony, Becker testified about his attraction to boys, his interest in the Man-Boy Love Association, his leanings toward being attracted to post-pubescent boys,” wrote John Manly in the L.A. Daily Journal in July 2007.

The Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles in charge of the Santa Barbara region when Franklyn Becker beach partied there was Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann, who later himself admitted to intimidating a priest into sex while a bishop.

The Becker case was part of a Privacy Rights decision that Judge Peter Lichtman made in 2007, says Manly’s Daily Journal article.

Previous cases against Becker were part of the decision in 2007 by the State Supreme Court of Wisconsin to allow decades old lawsuits from Milwaukee, because the Becker and a second California offender, Siegfried Widera, had been cited as child sex predators in California before coming to Wisconsin to rape kids in that state.

“The victims claim that they did not fully realize the extent of the church’s involvement in the coverup of abusive priests until 2004, when cases against the same priests in the Milwaukee lawsuit, Siegfried Widera and Franklyn Becker went to court in California.” reports the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in July 2007. “Both Widera and Becker had served in parishes in the Milwaukee Archdiocese after they had been accused of abusing children and before they were moved to California.” Continue Reading at bishop accountability or look him up in the database of accused priests under B.

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First transfer for Becker was from Wisconsin to the rural town of San Diego in the 1960s, after he perpetrated on several Midwestern boys, but Becker was back in Wisconsin by the 1980s.

He never stopped perpetrating.

More from the Complaint:

“14. Defendant Archdiocese was in a specialized position where it had knowledge that Plaintiff did not.”

“11. On February 5, 1979, the Bishop of San Diego sent Archbishop Weakland a letter stating, ‘No doubt there are psychological problems in Father Franklyn Becker’s life that he must solve.’”

In 1979, “Defendant Archdiocese represented that Franklyn Becker did not have a history of molesting children.”

And finally:

“Had plaintiff’s family known” in 1979 what the Catholic Church chose to keep secret about the priest’s predilections, “Plaintiff would not have been molested” by Father Franklyn Becker.

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Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer, City of Angels Blog since January 2007.

Catholic Church handling of pedophile priests resulted in “at least 28 Franciscan perpetrators assigned in Santa Barbara without any warning to the community or report to law enforcement, and at least 64 children have been abused by such men since 1960,” wrote Tim Hale Saturday.

City of Angels Blog had asked the plaintiff attorney about the four-year battle Nye Peabody Stirling & Hale is continuing to fight to get documents released about offending priests who served in the Franciscans of Santa Barbara. The state 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the plaintiffs Sept. 30th as City of Angels reported here and here and with video here last week.

The Church argues that memos between psychiatrists and Franciscans about friars who were perpetrators have the same privacy protection as communications between a patient and a psychiatrist.

Hale writes the Franciscan claims are, “all about secrecy to allow them to continue to make confidential decisions regarding the assignments and duties of these men.”

In an email Hale continued: “This is the approach the Franciscans have followed for decades: Handle reports of abuse internally, tell no one, and repeat the process when the perpetrator reoffends.”

We asked Tim Hale what the legal battle has been like so far, and he wrote back:

“Ok, here we go:

“On a per capita basis based on population, thanks to the Franciscans, the clergy abuse scandals in places like Los Angeles and Boston pale in comparison to the horrors that took place in Santa Barbara. Nevertheless, despite the complete and utter failure of this approach, the Franciscans not only seek to stay the course, but to expand the therapist-patient privilege far beyond its intended purpose in order to strengthen their ability to handle reports of abuse internally.”

The Church argues that they and they only need access to records so the Church can find criminal conduct among their priests, which “is belied by the facts of these cases,” writes Hale.

Continued where a longer version of this post appeared this morning at City of Angels, ongoing coverage of the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church since January 2007, blogged by a victim of this crime who is also a journalist.

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Posted by Kay Ebeling

Coverage of three issues re Catholic Church sex crimes last week resulted in news stories that are only half true, if they are true at all, another revelation of today’s rushed reporters in mainstream media rarely digging an inch deeper than a corporate press release for their reports.

First, Cardinal Roger Mahony used to advocate for gay rights, but you have to read a blog about a blog to see it in the news today, linked below. When reporters in Boston covered a priest accused of pedophilia being reinstated last week, they left out critical facts, such as the Catholic Church review board who found the priest innocent never interviewed the victim.

But the upcoming sainthood of Sister Mary MacKillop, Australian nun, was the worst aberration of truth by the “news” last week. The nun’s reporting of one pedophile priest in 1870 got her excommunicated and is today driving her canonization. Sister MacKillop was soon reinstated and founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart religious order.

What the news left out is that a century later MacKillop’s Josephite nuns were running orphanages in Australia where thousands of adults today say they were abused as children.

John Brown, Toowoomba Australia victim of Josephite nun clergy abuse

“The Worst headline in the world,” a victim of clergy abuse at the hands of Josephite nuns in Australia wrote to City of Angels, reacting to this story: Mary MacKillop: Patron Saint of Sexual Abuse Victims? and other articles that appeared in a flurry last week about her canonization. “She ran the religious order where I along with thousands were sexually and physically abused at the hands of the Sisters of St Joseph / Sacred Heart,” writes John Brown of Toowoomba (pictured). “This must come as the most offensive headline yet.” (John has written much on his experiences at Molested Catholic one of his websites.)

The Catholic PR machine is running full speed to make MacKillop’s canonization a sign of the Vatican’s new attitude towards its pedophile priest victims, like this from Oregon Faith Report Oct. 4th:

“With Sister MacKillop’s recent canonization, victims of sex abuse, their friends and families now can pray to her for reconciliation and healing. Sister MacKillop has clearly shown an understanding of the pain and suffering they endured.”

John Brown writes: “Only the Catholic church could attempt to make this person a patron saint of survivors of sexual abuse – how utterly repugnant.”

On Roger Mahony’s Previous Life:

West Hollywood city councilman Steve Schulte writes a guest blog at lgbt pov reminiscing about the momentous event when the L.A. Archbishop founded outreach ministries for gays and lesbians, before the Cardinal adopted America’s new right wing aberrations of Christianity.

On still Rev. Charles Murphy of Weymouth, Massachusetts:

Few reporters last week mentioned that Fr. Charles Murphy had been charged, removed and reinstated in 2004 under nearly the same circumstances, after a church run review board found him innocent. All the reporters left out the six-figure settlement paid by the Church to the first victim, and that the parish in Weymouth who welcomed back Murphy has had four accused pedophiles on its staff.

“Mitchell Garabedian, the lawyer for Murphy’s accuser, slammed the decision, saying the board did not question his client on the allegations,” reported the Boston Herald in a three-paragraph story, posted as an after thought, following the onslaught of articles proclaiming the priest’s innocence.

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Sainthood for the “foundress” of Sisters of Saint Joseph religious order, aka the Josephites, takes place October 17th, after the release October 10 of a documentary glorifying her life (Wonder what Public Relations firm is orchestrating this one, read how “the Sisters of St Joseph are ‘frantically’ preparing celebrations for the canonisation of Australia’s first saint, including a live broadcast from Rome to six screens at North Sydney’s Mary MacKillop Place” here in the Mosman Daily.)

***I mean, if the pope wants a woman with ties to pedophile priest justice to make into a saint, why not beatify Barbara Blaine? Sainthood for the founder of SNAP would spin a lot better for the Catholic Church in the media.***

Truly, what you read and hear repeated in mainstream media is rarely the whole story. When the same sound byte shows up over and over, you can be sure there are more facts being kept secret. The sound bytes are a PR director’s way to placate overworked reporters with quotes and to give readers and viewers the impression a topic is being covered, when it’s not. In reality, the mainstream press is often used to further obfuscate the truth.

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John Brown sent links to more information about the abuse of children by Josephite nuns, where I found out:

“Leesa, an Australian citizen. wrote about how she was forced to kiss a dead priest, about how nuns force-fed her meals until she vomited, and chained to her cot, when she was orphaned in The Nazareth House. Leesa wrote how the nuns routinely checked the derrieres of the orphans, to make sure they had wiped their behinds properly. These nuns also beat Leesa with a switch until she bled and locked her in rooms for hours at a time (which reminded me of what the nuns at St. Joseph had done to me.) (Continue reading here at Ex Christian dot org.

“Dr Vaux said he could only assume that consent to use the babies came from the Roman Catholic order that ran the orphanage, the Sisters of St Joseph. Sister Colleen O’Dwyer, the order’s province leader, claimed she was unaware of any form of medical experimentation having taken place” (Read more at Broadmeadows

OR

From a report to the Australian Parliament :

In their submission, the Sisters of St Joseph suggested that the policy of not having mothers who intended to keep their babies with mothers who did not was based on “the belief that one group would influence the other in their decision making.

The submission noted that “in hindsight” it is possible that the assumption that the baby would be adopted was that of the family, and not necessarily what the young pregnant woman wanted.

A representative from the Sisters of St Joseph commented that their adoption practices, “evolved over time and no doubt at times mistakes were made.” The Committee was told that those women who may have been hurt while in their care ‘were entitled to an apology.’
P.202

Continue Reading a longer version of this post at City of Angels Blog posted earlier this morning

by Kay Ebeling.

Tim Hale (pictured) continued in an email about the state court decision, which rejected the Catholic Church argument that patient-psychiatrist privilege applies to documents Franciscans have been trying to prevent releasing in pedophile priest personnel files, since the cases settled in May 2006.

“They sought to expand the scope of the psychotherapist privilege in a way that no court has previously recognized, and that would have allowed them, if the court had agreed, to exploit that privilege time and again in the future to keep the public in the dark re their perpetrators.”

Final outcome of the Santa Barbara Franciscan document dispute will set precedent for priest personnel files in more than a thousand lawsuits regarding pedophile Catholic clergy in California that settled in the past decade. The Franciscan cases that led to this decision settled in May 2006.

Hale said the Franciscans “tried to turn a process that was supposed to be for the public benefit and public safety into a vehicle to expand their policy of secrecy regarding Franciscans who abuse children.”

City of Angels asked where the documents will be for the public to read once they are released, if they would be on the Nye, Peabody, Stirling & Hale lawfirm website and Hale answered:

“Don’t know yet re where the docs will be. Need to figure that out while the Franciscans are deciding whether to seek review.”

Hale wrote: “It’s a victory for the brave survivors who fought this battle, and especially for today’s children, because it’s a victory for transparency.

“Transparency, as you know, is one of the most important weapons in the battle against child abuse, it’s what we fought for in the settlement agreement in 2006, and its what this proceeding has been about from day one. Every one of these survivors will tell you that what they wanted more than anything was to do everything in their power to make sure what happened to them would not be done by Franciscans perpetrators to other children.”

Read the 2nd District Court of CA opinion at Leagle filed by California Court of Appeals 2nd District, Division Eight, Sept. 30, 2010.

So Franciscans of Santa Barbara will have to give up their personnel files of their pedophile priests soon.

See links to mainstream media coverage from Thursday with this post at City of Angels Blog by Kay Ebeling

“It’s a victory for transparency,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney. “The opinion is a rejection of the Franciscans’ attempts to make a mockery of the entire proceeding.”