Catholic Priest Sex Abuse

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Registered: 02-16-2004
Catholic Priest Sex Abuse
29
Fri, 06-25-2004 - 11:31am
Low and behold, it was discovered that the Priests that were doing all this abuse with the kids were, get this, homosexual. Da! Is it any wonder some one who is sexually disoriented won’t have any moral boundaries what so ever? So to call yourself a priest and be an active homosexual is absurd. It just goes to show that sick people can slip into any profession.
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Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 06-25-2004 - 11:35pm
<>

While that may be a convenient and comfortable scenario for you, I can list several reasons for the "problems” surrounding the catholic abuse scandals.

Here are a few that come to mind without any research:

The fact that the church is just starting to acknowledge "the problem" when it has know of its existence for years.

The fact that the church requires celibacy and doesn't allow priest to marry.

The fact that even though the church knew of the problem they hid it, without any consideration toward the victims.

The fact that priests were moved without any notice to the parish or the bishop as to why they were moved. This put additional children in harms way.

The fact that the church paid the victims with the stipulation they could not discuss the circumstance of the settlement or why the settlement was made.

IMHO saying <> is like not seeing the forest for the trees





Edited 6/25/2004 11:36 pm ET ET by jferbach

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 06-25-2004 - 11:57pm
<>


Yes “We could be anyone, from anywhere.” As for being "feared", in my experience, one only fears the unfamiliar or unknown. Understanding alleviates fears that come from lack of knowledge.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 06-26-2004 - 7:27am
You can't read the link unless you are a member. Would you please post the story with the acknowledgement that it came from the Dallas New to avoid copyright problems. Thanks
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Registered: 03-18-2000
Sat, 06-26-2004 - 11:51am

Wrhens #1 link:


Runaway priests hiding in plain sight.


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/longterm/stories/062004dnpropriestoverview.275bc8e59.html


Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children are hiding abroad and working in church ministries, The Dallas Morning News has found.


From Africa to Latin America to Europe to Asia, these priests have started new lives in unsuspecting communities, often with the help of church officials. They are leading parishes, teaching and continuing to work in settings that bring them into contact with children, despite church claims to the contrary.


The global movement has gone largely unnoticed -- even after an abuse scandal swept the U.S. Catholic Church in 2002, forcing bishops to adopt a "zero tolerance" policy and drawing international attention.


Starting this week and continuing in coming months, we report the results of a yearlong investigation that reaches all six occupied continents. Key findings include: Nearly half of the more than 200 cases we identified involve clergy who tried to elude law enforcement. About 30 remain free in one country while facing ongoing criminal inquiries, arrest warrants or convictions in another.


Most runaway priests remain in the church, the world's largest organization, so they should be easier to locate than other fugitives.


Instead, Catholic leaders have used international transfers to thwart justice, a practice that poses far greater challenges to law enforcement than the domestic moves exposed in the 2002 scandal.


Police and prosecutors, however, often fail to take basic steps to catch fugitive priests.


Church discipline, such as the U.S. bishops' new policy, doesn't keep all offenders out of ministry. Dozens of priests who are no longer eligible to work in this country have found sanctuary abroad.


Tried to copy link #2 but too many graphics unable to copy. The membership is free to this paper, as are most online papers.


cl-Libraone~



Edited 6/26/2004 12:02 pm ET ET by cl-libraone

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2003
Sat, 06-26-2004 - 12:13pm

Thanks for posting the first article in the series. Here are the others.


Convicted sexual abuser and fugitive works with kids under his religious order's wing


06:12 PM CDT on Monday, June 21, 2004

By REESE DUNKLIN / The Dallas Morning News


APIA, Samoa - Frank! Frank!


About a dozen children circle around the Rev. Frank Klep after Mass on one sun-kissed Sunday. They chirp his name, trying to catch his eye as he begins handing out foil-wrapped candy. He calls them by name, too, beams and hugs some of them.


Few, if any, locals are aware that the friendly priest is a convicted child molester who has admitted abusing one boy and is wanted on more charges back in Australia. In 1998, his religious order placed him here in the South Pacific. Australian police can't touch him now because their country has no extradition treaty with Samoa.


Neither he nor the church feels an obligation to tell anyone about all that.


"I'd prefer to just leave it," Father Klep said recently. "If I felt I was still at risk to their children, then I'd think differently. But I don't think I am at risk anymore."


His order, the Salesians of Don Bosco, has long moved priests accused of sexual abuse from country to country away from law enforcement and victims. Indeed, it is how many others in the Catholic Church have dealt with the problem, an 18-month, worldwide Dallas Morning News investigation has found.


The Salesians, one of the largest Catholic religious orders, concentrate on educating and housing some of the world's most needy and vulnerable children. Yet influential Salesian officials have spoken out forcefully against cooperating with law enforcement agencies investigating sex abuse allegations.


"For me it would be a tragedy to reduce the role of a pastor to that of a cop," said Salesian Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez of Honduras, a prominent candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II. "I'd be prepared to go to jail rather than harm one of my priests."


Salesian officials in Costa Rica and Chile are facing criminal complaints, accused of protecting priests who were shuffled across international borders. A judge in Chile is reviewing whether there is enough evidence to try a Salesian bishop on obstruction of justice charges, which would be the first such prosecution of a Catholic leader anywhere.


In the case of one priest from Peru, his superiors have ignored a church panel's 1995 demand that he have no contact with children, as well as Chicago police's subsequent request to question him. Salesians officials in Peru say they don't know where he is, but The News found him working in Mexico — his fourth country he's been in since he was first accused of misconduct more than a decade ago.


Even the Rev. Pascual Chavez, before he became the Salesians' worldwide leader in Rome, kept an admitted molester in ministry in Mexico. After a judge dismissed criminal charges against the priest, he was reassigned to Africa. He's returned to duty in Mexico but could not be reached for comment. Father Chavez declined to be interviewed.


One of Father Klep's alleged victims, himself a former Salesian seminarian, draws a painful conclusion about his old order:


"This is a corporate sin that they're feasting in," he said. "It must be the attitude of the Salesians worldwide."


'Best of our ability'

Father Klep is living in exile in Samoa, "not a paradise or a tropical resort," according to his boss, the Rev. Ian Murdoch, the order's leader in Australia and the South Pacific. The priest has no active ministry or unsupervised contact with children, Father Murdoch said, and is monitored to "the best of our ability."


"The Salesians as a community have done their best to respond to the allegations," he said before refusing to answer further questions.


But Father Klep enjoys his ministry on this tiny island nation. People here still respect their elders and honor the Sabbath. He's surrounded by a colorful, exotic landscape of orchids, poinsettias, and mango, banana and coconut trees. He has picturesque views of the blue Pacific waters and Mount Vaea.


"I have found a good measure of contentment," he said. "I'd be quite happy to stay here."


Father Klep's victims in Australia have tried unsuccessfully for years to have him removed from the priesthood. A church panel that recently investigated one abuse complaint asked the Salesians to consider suspending his ministry, but not even his admission in that case led to significant discipline.


"I made a mistake," Father Klep said in an interview, acknowledging that he touched one of his Australian students in the late 1970s. Two years ago, he wrote a letter to the former student, who is now an adult, and expressed his regret.


The priest's penance was loss of his ceremonial title: "priest in charge" of the order's offices near Apia, the Samoan capital. The former student said it wasn't enough. " Prison is the only punishment deserving of this man," he said. "All along the way he's been protected, and no one seems to think it's serious enough."


Druggings denied

The complaints against Father Klep date to the 1970s, when he worked at a boarding school north of Melbourne. At the time, Salesian College at Rupertswood was exclusively for boys, many who were from the farming communities in rural Victoria state.


The first boys came forward in about 1986, telling their parents that Father Klep had molested them. By then, they were young adults, and Father Klep was the school's principal.


Three former students told The News that the abuse occurred when they went to Father Klep in the infirmary for pain medication or prescriptions. He sexually assaulted them, the students said, while they lay sick or after he had given them incapacitating drugs.


"I remember being wasted out the next day," said the former seminarian. He and the other former students spoke on condition they not be named.


About a dozen parents confronted the Salesians and the Archdiocese of Melbourne in a series of meetings. One of the parents, the former seminarian's mother, said church leaders were dismissive. She recalled a Salesian leader telling her: "This all happened very long ago. It has no foundation."


But when her husband threatened to sue, she said, within days Father Klep was pulled from the job.


Father Klep denied knowing about any of the complaints or druggin anyone. He said his supervisor described the departure as a routine sabbatical. "Maybe he was being charitable to me," the priest said.


The Salesians sent him overseas, first to an order facility in Rome for a few months, then to the United States. He enrolled in late 1987 at Fordham University, a private Catholic school near the Salesians' offices in New York City, and pursued a master's degree. While studying, he also helped at Masses in the area, he said.


Shortly after he graduated in early 1989, Father Klep returned to Australia. Within a few years, he was the top official at a youth center and hostel in a blue-collar suburb of Melbourne.


The mother of the former seminarian said she and the other parents were horrified. She complained in writing to the Salesians in 1992 and drew a scolding from the order's regional leader at the time, the Rev. Julian Fox. She dropped her protests.


"I just tried to do the right thing, but we never got anywhere," she said. "They absolutely had it covered like the Mafia."


Father Fox said in an interview this month that he investigated but couldn't remember what he found because the details were "history under a bridge." Father Fox also has been accused of sexual abuse while working at the boarding school in the 1970s and 1980s. He, too, was transferred abroad — to Fiji for several years and recently to the order's Rome headquarters. He said a church review had exonerated him; advocates for his accuser said the Salesians paid a settlement.


Father Fox said a church review had exonerated him. "That's in the past. I'm not keen to be trolling through all of that again," he said, cutting off the interview.


Going to police

Starting in 1993, more young men alleged that Father Klep had abused them at the school. But these former students went to authorities.


First, two brothers complained to Victoria state police, whose area includes Melbourne. Officers filed four charges of indecent assault against Father Klep, dating to 1976 and 1979.


"He forced himself on them," said Senior Sgt. Steve Iddles, the prosecutor in the case. "Lie down and do as I tell you."


Father Klep denied touching the brothers. He accused them of fabricating much of their story to get money from the Salesians. He pleaded not guilty, and the Salesians left him on duty throughout his proceedings in 1994.


"At one stage , my defense asked them pertinent questions, and one of them shed a few tears," he said recently. "I thought they were crocodile tears."


The judge declared Father Klep guilty and sentenced him to nine months of community service. The priest worked off his sentence gardening at nursing homes.


One of the brothers said he was let down by the criminal justice system. " When a man is charged on four counts and convicted on four counts and doesn't go to jail," he said, "you have to wonder what's behind it."


Not long after Father Klep finished his sentence in early 1996, another former student reported to Victoria police that in 1976 the priest had fondled him and performed oral sex on him. Detectives questioned and fingerprinted Father Klep, but did not arrest him.


Once again, Father Klep denied the allegations and accused the former student of trying to get money. The possibility of being prosecuted a second time worried him, though, he said.


So in 1998, with the investigation unresolved, he readily accepted a reassignment to Samoa. He said the move was the suggestion of his boss at the time, the Rev. John Murphy.


"I think he realized that I'd probably feel a bit more comfortable being removed from the situation there," Father Klep said. " I was happy enough to go."


Father Murphy, who's now assigned to Samoa as well, said the priest's account was "not altogether true" but wouldn't elaborate. He referred questions to Father Murdoch, who declined to comment.


Later in 1998, police sought to question Father Klep again and discovered that he had left for Samoa. They charged him with five counts of indecent assault and issued a nationwide arrest warrant.


"In hindsight, it'd been better if we charged him on the day ," said Investigator John Raglus, one of the Victoria officers now assigned to the case. He said he couldn't explain why it took authorities more than two years to file charges.


Case files show that Australian Federal Police were supposed to contact Samoan authorities on behalf of Victoria, according to the detective. But two officials in the Samoan government said the Australians told them nothing about Father Klep.


"I had no idea,"said Samoa Assistant Attorney General Raymond Schuster. Australian Federal Police would not answer written questions about the matter.


For some, life goes on

Beyond the reach of police and church discipline, Father Klep has worked freely.


He is the top financial official at the Moamoa Theological College, a two-story colonial-style house where seminarians and lay religious teachers train and reside. He helps during Mass at St. Anthony Church, one of the area's oldest and more prestigious, and at the nearby Salesian schools.


For a time, he supervised the Rev. John "Jack" Ayers, who was accused of raping a student at the Rupertswood boarding school in the 1960s. The Salesians paid the accuser a settlement in 2000, according to documents The News obtained. Father Ayers, who refused to comment, lives a few doors from Father Klep at the college.


Samoa's top Catholic, Archbishop Alapati Mataeliga, said he was startled to learn about both priests' pasts. He said the Salesians should not have kept the details from him.


"I think we have to do something about it; justice has to be served," said Archbishop Mataeliga, who became leader of the archdiocese last year. "Samoa should not be a place where they send priests like that."


But the archbishop changed his mind after speaking with the Salesians. He said Father Klep told him what happened was an accident. And he discussed Father Ayers with Father Murphy.


"Although these incidents happened with these two priests, they have dealt with it themselves and with their congregation," the archbishop's secretary wrote in a letter. "They are valid and allowed to work in our archdiocese, and we are grateful for their services and hard work up to this point."


The Company of teens

Upstairs, in the theological college's kitchen, Father Klep sat at a table and explained that when he gave candy to children after Mass the previous day, it was a spontaneous gesture.He still enjoys "young people's company," he said, but limits his contact mostly to adults.


Downstairs, a group of teenage boys lounged on concrete steps, waiting for Father Klep. One young man said he met Father Klep this spring when the priest pulled up at a bus stop where he was standing and offered him a ride. At the end of the short drive, Father Klep gave him some cash and invited him to church.


Since then, the 19-year-old said, Father Klep has "come to where I hang out in the evenings" and offered him small jobs around the college.


Also waiting on the steps was a 14-year-old who said he has known Father Klep for about a year and a 13-year-old buddy he said the priest wanted to meet.


The 14-year-old said Father Klep has given him spending money and regularly helped him with schoolwork alone in the priest's bedroom.


"He says to me, 'Any day I want help, I come to Father Frank's home,'" said the boy, who had a thin adolescent mustache and a shy demeanor.


Father Klep has even paid his tuition to Chanel College, a Catholic school near the priest's home, he said.


"He said to me, 'You are my best friend.'"


Staff writers Brendan M. Case in Mexico City and special contributor Andrew Fa'asau in Apia contributed to this report.

Renee

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2003
Sat, 06-26-2004 - 12:19pm
Cardinal offered sanctuary to admitted molester

Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez could be the next pope. He also recently sheltered an admitted child molester.

07:12 PM CDT on Monday, June 21, 2004

By BRENDAN M. CASE and BROOKS EGERTON / The Dallas Morning News

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – A prominent candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II recently sheltered a priest who is an admitted child molester and now an international fugitive, The Dallas Morning News has learned.

Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez, who heads the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, put the Rev. Enrique Vásquez to work in two remote parishes from last year until March. The priest had fled criminal accusations in his native Costa Rica in 1998, then served in at least two U.S. dioceses before running again and spending time at a clergy treatment center in Mexico.


Father Vásquez helped found a training center for Catholic lay people in the Honduran town of El Paraíso and served as the resident priest in the village of Guinope. He vanished from Guinope days ahead of police after child-protection activists in Costa Rica pressured their government to revive a languishing criminal case.


Tegucigalpa church officials "realized they had a problem, and they got rid of him," said Interpol Lt. Julián Rivera. The international police organization said it is continuing to search for the 44-year-old priest at the request of the Costa Rican government, but it has not questioned Cardinal Rodríguez.


The cardinal did not respond to written questions from The News and was too busy to be interviewed, said the Rev. Juan López, a top adviser. The cardinal handles all clergy personnel decisions in the archdiocese, including priests' assignments, Father López said.


Father López initially told The News that the priest had never worked in the Tegucigalpa area. But he later softened that stance, saying "I might have seen him" at a meeting of the archdiocese's priests.


Father Vásquez's home bishop in Costa Rica, Angel San Casimiro, said Cardinal Rodríguez did not check with him before putting the wanted man to work. He said he didn't know how the priest had landed a job in Honduras, although he added that he thought Father Vásquez had gone there several years ago to stay at another clergy treatment center.



'I have this problem'


Bishop San Casimiro acknowledged that in the mid-1990s, he freed Father Vásquez to work abroad after the priest admitted to him that he had abused a 10-year-old altar boy. "When I found out he had this problem," the bishop said, "I confronted him, and he said, 'Yes, monsignor, I have this problem.' "


The bishop said he had not recommended Father Vásquez for work elsewhere after the priest was accused in a criminal complaint of abusing the boy.


Bruce Harris, a child-protection advocate with Casa Alianza, a Catholic-affiliated charity with an office in Costa Rica, has been pressing the bishop and Cardinal Rodríguez to reveal what they know about Father Vásquez. Neither has been forthcoming, he said.


Mr. Harris recently bumped into Cardinal Rodríguez on an airplane and asked again for information. The cardinal said only that Father Vásquez "left Honduras some time ago" and that he didn't know where he'd gone, according to Mr. Harris.


"The Catholic Church in Latin America has not yet learned from what has been happening to the church in the United States," he said. "The church here is still trying to cover up."


Meanwhile, in a Costa Rican village a 45-minute drive from Bishop San Casimiro's cathedral, the mother of the accuser said Father Vásquez must be stopped from hurting others.


"I sometimes feel like I failed him as a mother," said Flory Salazar, putting an arm around her son Ariel, who is now 20. "Maybe I could have protected him more, and I didn't. But what we can still do is seek justice. We can seek justice and try to prevent this from happening to someone else."


In Honduras, several parishioners verified that Father Vásquez had led their congregation in Guinope for about seven months – until the day he rode to the Tegucigalpa airport with a group of nuns and never returned.


In recent interviews with The News, the parishioners recognized him by photograph, name and nationality – and said they were eager for the popular priest to come back.


"The kids were crying for him when he left," said Ilsa Celinda Rodríguez, a middle-aged woman who looks after the church grounds. "He had a special group of young altar boys."


Ms. Rodríguez said Father Vásquez had reinvigorated their religious community, whose Spanish colonial church sits on the tree-lined square of a village that is about an hour's drive from the nearest paved road. The priest planted flowers, got people to attend services and formed youth Bible study groups, she said.


"He came to raise the church here," said fellow parishioner Delvis de Lagos. "He organized the parish."


She said that when Father Vásquez left town, he told parishioners he had to care for his seriously ill mother in Miami. While relatives of the priest said his mother has had heart problems, they said she has not left Costa Rica in recent months.


Father López, the archdiocesan chancellor, said Guinope residents were mistaken in perceiving Father Vásquez as their pastor.


"Our people in the countryside don't understand titles," he said. "Maybe they thought he was a parish priest, but that doesn't make him one.


"The only thing I can say for sure is that he has never worked here on a permanent basis. He's not our priest; he doesn't belong to the archdiocese."


Parishioners in Guinope weren't the only ones who saw Father Vásquez as a church leader. In nearby El Paraíso, where he helped found the center for lay leaders, he appeared on radio shows as a church spokesman and won praise from local nuns.


"People love him here," said Sister Emilia Oliveros.



Don't tell


Cardinal Rodríguez, who is 61 and a fast-rising star in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, has spoken as forcefully as any of his colleagues against telling police about abuse allegations.


"For me it would be a tragedy to reduce the role of a pastor to that of a cop. We are totally different, and I'd be prepared to go to jail rather than harm one of my priests," he said at a 2002 news conference in Rome. "We must not forget that we are pastors, not agents of the FBI or CIA."


The cardinal's remarks came as the U.S. Catholic Church's abuse scandal was exploding, with hundreds of priests exposed as abusers and bishops accused of covering up. He has strenuously defended Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Boston archbishop who became the lone American diocesan leader driven from office over his handling of abuse cases. (Cardinal Law was recently named by the Vatican as archpriest of a basilica in Rome.)


Cardinal Rodríguez has also condemned journalists covering the scandal, likening them to Hitler and describing them as obsessed. His chancellor echoed that sentiment when asked recently about Father Vásquez.


"I don't see your interest in this, except for morbid fascination," Father López said.


Cardinal Rodríguez belongs to one of the world's largest religious orders, the Salesians of Don Bosco, which focuses on serving poor children around the globe. Several of its top leaders have taken part in moving accused priests to new countries, as The News reported Sunday.


The cardinal, who studied philosophy, theology and clinical psychology, has served on several pontifical councils and represented the Vatican in discussions with the International Monetary Fund on Third World debt. The pope made him a cardinal in 2001 as part of a large and unprecedented expansion of the upper hierarchy, which has broadened the pool of papal successor candidates and diminished Italian prelates' power.


Many scholars and Vatican watchers believe the next pope could come from the Third World, where the Catholic Church has huge numbers but often faces challenges from evangelical Protestantism or Islam. Cardinal Rodríguez is widely considered to be among the top Latin American contenders.


While building a high profile abroad, though, he has been struggling at home with the same shortage of priests that bedevils bishops around the world. He has about 150 priests to serve a Catholic population of more than 1.6 million – and, like many of his U.S. brethren, sometimes relies on foreigners about whom little is publicly known.



Flight from justice


Father Vásquez left the cardinal's Honduran archdiocese just as he had left Costa Rica in late 1998 and the United States in late 2002: running from the law, as part of a 5 ½-year flight from justice.


It isn't clear how Father Vásquez managed to elude arrest repeatedly and stay in ministry, but both church and state apparently played a role.


The priest had fled his home country one day after its child-welfare agency formally accused him of molesting the 10-year-old altar boy. Prosecutor Alba Campos said she suspected that "the church helped him escape" Costa Rica. His boss there, Ciudad Quesada Bishop San Casimiro, would not help her locate Father Vásquez, she said. Bishop San Casimiro disputed that.


The priest then worked in the Archdiocese of New York for about a year, sometimes traveling as far as South Carolina with a Caribbean cleric to lead retreats for Hispanics.


Church officials disagree about whether Father Vásquez had permission to work in New York. The archdiocese's spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, said the priest had been rejected despite having a letter from his bishop saying he was in good standing. But the pastor who supervised him said that "we were given the OK" for Father Vásquez to work.


Father Vásquez left New York abruptly, telling the pastor that his bishop was recalling him to Costa Rica. Instead, he went to the Archdiocese of Hartford, Conn., where he found sanctuary for about three years.


Hartford church officials said that they accepted him in 1999 after also getting a good-standing letter from Costa Rica and that they knew of no problems until an estranged relative of the priest told them, in summer 2002, about the criminal case.


They confirmed the information with Costa Rican church officials, said the Rev. John Gatzak, Hartford's spokesman. He said church leaders then alerted the FBI and were advised to do nothing, to avoid tipping off the suspect.


Meanwhile, for seven weeks, Father Vásquez stayed in ministry and vacationed in Mexico, Father Gatzak said.


By Oct. 10, 2002, the Costa Rican prosecutor had obtained an address for the suspect's parish in Connecticut and asked Interpol to verify it. That same day, Father Gatzak said, the FBI questioned Father Vásquez in the presence of Auxiliary Bishop Peter Rosazza but did not detain him.


There was no international arrest warrant in place, enabling the priest to get away again, hours later. Connecticut FBI spokeswoman Lisa Bull would say only that "we don't comment on investigative activity we are conducting or have conducted."


Once the Costa Rican prosecutor learned that Father Vásquez was gone, she didn't ask Interpol to follow his trail – which led to Casa Alberione, a clergy treatment center near Guadalajara, Mexico. Bishop San Casimiro acknowledges that the priest, in a phone call made while driving across America, revealed his destination.


"I told him, 'Enrique, come back,' " the bishop said. "I said, 'Don't go through life as a wandering Jew.' "


The bishop San Casimiro didn't tell the prosecutor that Father Vásquez had gone to Mexico until she asked, nearly a year later. That was in August 2003, when the priest's principal accuser in Costa Rica began pushing authorities to locate and capture him.


Around this time, Father Vásquez began working in Guinope, the Honduran village.


The prosecutor, Ms. Campos, was removed from the case earlier this year, after the accuser and his advocates complained that she was not trying to find the priest or charge potential accomplices. Reached by telephone recently, she declined to respond to the accusations.


In March, more than five years after the criminal case began, Costa Rica finally issued an arrest warrant. Ms. Campos has said she didn't seek one because she thought she had to know the suspect's exact location first.


Mr. Harris, of the advocacy group Casa Alianza, said that she knew better and that he ultimately got Costa Rica's attorney general to overrule her.



Grief and rage


In the Costa Rican village of Buenos Aires de Pocosol, the twists and turns of the Vásquez case have left one family with feelings of grief and rage. Ms. Salazar, a 45-year-old single mom, recounts her quest for justice.


In the early 1990s, Ms. Salazar cooked and cleaned for the Santa Rosa de Lima Parish when Father Vásquez was its leader.


One of Ms. Salazar's six children, Ariel, became an altar boy – a significant achievement, she felt, given that he'd suffered from lack of oxygen at birth and didn't learn to walk until he was 2 years old. He spent a lot of time with Father Vásquez until another priest, the Rev. Alvaro Blanco, told Ms. Salazar that he had found his colleague, shirtless, lying down with her son.


Ms. Salazar talked to her son, who began describing abuse that had been going on for months. Father Vásquez had warned him not to tell anyone, the boy said, because "people would wonder what's wrong with the priest."


Then she confronted the priest.


"He told me it was true," she said. "He told me I was very good, and that if he were in my shoes, he would kill the person who had abused his son."


Next, she went to Bishop San Casimiro. He urged her not to go to police, imploring her to be a "good Christian," she said. She complied.


By 1998, however, her son was suffering from sleeplessness, low self-esteem, depression and recurrent thoughts of death, according to a psychological report. After Costa Rica's child-welfare agency learned of the allegations, it filed a criminal complaint in late 1998.


The case brought unrelenting pressure from the church and Father Vásquez's relatives, according to Ms. Salazar.


One of Father Vásquez's brothers allegedly tried to bribe her son to withdraw the charges last year, leading to a separate legal case. Ms. Salazar said she has received two death threats in the last two months from a man who told her that she was making the church look bad.


Her son recently got his high school diploma. He hopes to attend college to become a social studies teacher.


"The main thing we want is to keep this from happening to anyone else," he said. "At times, I've asked myself whether this is worth it. But it's like my mom says. If we don't do anything about it, we'd become accomplices to this, too."


Staff writer Brendan M. Case reported from Honduras, Costa Rica and Mexico; staff writer Brooks Egerton reported from Dallas.


THE HUMAN TOLL

Flory Salazar used to be a good Catholic. Then she learned that the Rev. Enrique Vásquez might be sexually abusing her 10-year-old son, Ariel, an altar boy.


She confronted the priest. Father Vásquez admitted the abuse and said it had happened because the boy had no father and craved affection, Ms. Salazar recalled.


She felt as if he were blaming her.


"My son went from being a kid who was sweet, gentle and sensitive to one who was angry, distant, defeated," said Ms. Salazar, 45. "One who was closed in on himself and didn't want any friends."


The priest's bishop, Angel San Casimiro, recently said the charges are probably true.


Back then, though, church officials told her that a good Christian would not file a criminal complaint. "I fell for the manipulation," she said. "I have to acknowledge that."


But Costa Rica's child-welfare agency found out about the abuse and filed a complaint.


Father Vásquez left the country; her son's case stalled. She worried that the boy would commit suicide. Then she landed in intensive care with severe heart arrhythmia. She became depressed and tried to kill herself a few years ago by eating poison.


Neighbors and even some relatives criticized her for denouncing a priest.


"Nobody wanted to listen to my story," she said.


The priest and his family offered her son money several times to withdraw the accusation. But she and her son couldn't withdraw it because they hadn't filed the original complaint. Once, they took the money. "I'm sorry, but it's true," she said. "We've had desperate times."


She no longer considers herself a Catholic.


"You see the pope asking forgiveness for the Holy Inquisition," she said. "But the same thing is happening in the 21st century. The church is destroying the lives of so many children, and the pope won't say anything. And he won't do anything."


She believes only in Christ now, she said. But she yearns to believe in justice, too.


"I don't want another mother to suffer what I've suffered," she said. "And I don't want any other kid to suffer what my son has suffered."


–Brendan M. Case

Renee

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2003
Sat, 06-26-2004 - 12:24pm
Samoa moves to deport fugitive priest

03:05 PM CDT on Wednesday, June 23, 2004

By REESE DUNKLIN / The Dallas Morning News


The Samoan government, prompted by a Dallas Morning News investigation, is moving to deport a fugitive Catholic priest because he failed to disclose his conviction in a previous child molestation case when entering the country.


The priest’s superiors in the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order also face an immigration inquiry because they, too, failed to make the same disclosures, said Auseuga Poloma Komiti, the senior adviser to Samoa’s prime minister and Cabinet.


Samoan authorities will serve the Rev. Frank Klep a deportation order Wednesday afternoon Dallas time that gives him three days to leave voluntarily or seek an appeal, said Mr. Komiti.


If he goes without a fight or loses an appeal, he’ll be forced back to Australia, where he is the subject of a nationwide arrest warrant on five indecent assault charges. Samoan officials said they would coordinate Father Klep’s return with Australian authorities.


"We can't help but think what was foremost was to have Father Klep evade the law by assigning him overseas," said Mr. Komiti. “They were not thinking or giving two hoots about the children of this country.”


Father Klep moved to the South Pacific island nation in early 1998 while he was a target of a criminal abuse investigation in the Australian state of Victoria. He told The News his Salesians superior at the time suggested the reassignment because “I think he realized that I’d probably feel a bit more comfortable being removed from the situation there” in Australia.


The superior, the Rev. John Murphy, has said the priest’s version of events was “not altogether true,” but declined to elaborate.


The Salesians’ present leader for Australia and the South Pacific, the Rev. Ian Murdoch, also has refused to discuss Father Klep’s move.


But in a written statement earlier this week, Father Murdoch said the Salesians have not moved priests accused of sexual abuse from country to country “for the purpose of shielding them” from police. He said that the Salesians “have co-operated, and will certainly continue to cooperate, with any law enforcement agency.”


Father Murdoch also continued to insist that Father Klep has no contact or ministry with children. But The News observed and photographed him handing candy to children after a Sunday Mass and interviewed teenage boys who said Father Klep had regular interaction with them - from giving them money to tutoring one of them alone in his bedroom.


When Father Klep first arrived in Samoa, he was required to fill out immigration papers stating whether he had any criminal convictions, Mr. Komiti said. But, he added, Father Klep “did not state anything.”


In 1994, Father Klep was convicted on four charges in the assaults of two former students at a Salesians boarding school outside Melbourne during the 1970s.


After he finished his sentence of community service, he came under investigation again. He was questioned and fingerprinted in 1996 but not arrested. While the case lingered, he moved to Samoa.


Later in 1998, Victoria police filed five additional charges against him and issued an arrest warrant but did not seek extradition. Victoria officials previously told The News that Australia had no formal treaty with Samoa agreeing to the exchange of fugitives.


However, Australian federal authorities this week told The News that Victoria police have never asked them for help. They said they could have sought Father Klep’s return even if the two countries did not have an extradition treaty.


Victoria police said the case is under review and declined further comment.


Beyond Father Klep, the Samoan government is investigating whether the Salesians had a legal obligation under immigration laws to report Father Klep’s criminal record when they sponsored his move to Samoa. If they did, Salesian officials could face penalties including fines or expulsion as well, said Mr. Komiti.


But aside from a legal mandate, Mr. Komiti said, “There was a moral imperative to do so. We were disappointed. We have this feeling of being betrayed.”


Victoria police have not answered questions from The News about whether they would investigate the Salesians’ role in Father Klep’s departure to Samoa.


The Salesians apparently did not tell Samoa’s top Catholic leader about Father Klep’s 1998 criminal warrant, either.


Archbishop Alapati Mataeliga’s secretary told The News that Father Murdoch had informed local church leaders about the 1994 conviction, but did not fully divulge details of the 1998 charges.


“My recollection of our conversation is that he mentioned something like, that they were not in possession of any warrant of arrest, or some wording like that,” said the archbishop’s secretary, Puletini M. Tuala.


Mr. Tuala said the archbishop was reconsidering his previous decision to let Father Klep remain in Samoa. The archbishop had told Samoan and Australian reporters that he might force Father Klep out of his archdiocese within a day or two.


Two weeks ago, however, the archbishop had a much different tone.


His secretary wrote in a letter to The News that the archbishop was satisfied after speaking to the Salesians and Father Klep, who admitted abusing one boy but called the incident an accident.


The archbishop also decided that a second Salesian priest who was moved to the island despite an abuse case in Australia could remain. The Salesians paid the Rev. Jack Ayers’ accuser a settlement, according to documents The News obtained.


“Although these incidents happened with these two priests, they have dealt with it themselves and with their congregation,” Mr. Tuala wrote in a letter. “They are valid and allowed to work in our archdiocese, and we are grateful for their services and hard work up to this point.”


The Samoan government is also investigating Father Ayers’ entry into Samoa, Mr. Komiti said.

Renee

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2003
Sat, 06-26-2004 - 12:27pm
Church aid, legal lapses leave cleric free to roam

'That's when your hair stands on end and your blood boils'

12:45 PM CDT on Wednesday, June 23, 2004

By BROOKS EGERTON and REESE DUNKLIN / The Dallas Morning News

ALBISSOLA MARINA, Italy – Inside a 16th-century Catholic church by the Mediterranean Sea, the priest dresses as a man of God and preaches about the Holy Spirit.

Outside, he tells lies.


"I'm not a functioning priest," he says, until he realizes a reporter has just seen him celebrate Sunday evening Mass. Then he says he only "occasionally" leads a service and isn't in active ministry. "Ministry means one has to be in a parish," he says.


In fact, the Pakistani has been serving here since last fall as associate pastor of Nostra Signora della Concordia. He has also been leading a smaller congregation in the nearby village of Ellera.


Italy, it turns out, is at least the third country in which he has worked in parishes since denying child molestation charges in England seven years ago and fleeing, before he could be tried. The Dallas Morning News tracked him down after Scotland Yard failed.


Church aid and law enforcement lapses have made the sojourn possible, as they have in many other cases that The News reviewed in its yearlong investigation of accused priests' international movements.


British church leaders bailed the priest out of jail, and bishops in Pakistan knew he was a fugitive and let him work anyway. And he has recently served in the United States, apparently without undergoing a background check.


Such is the tangle of this priest's life that even his name and age are unclear. He is the 54-year-old Rev. Yusaf Dominic in the Archdiocese of Lahore, Pakistan, where he was ordained and technically remains based. But here in the Italian Diocese of Savona-Noli – whose leader said he knew nothing of the abuse case – he is known as the 48-year-old Rev. Dominic Yousuf.


On Concordia's steps, Father Dominic offered no explanation for the confusion. "I don't have anything in my mind" about it, he said during a rambling interview in which he frequently contradicted himself.


In the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., where Father Dominic worked at St. Francis of Assisi Church in 2002, queries about the priest's name brought a chuckle from the associate pastor.


"That was a question that was always under debate," said the Rev. Eugene Field.


One of Father Dominic's accusers in London expressed outrage at the priest's continuing parish assignments, which keep him in the presence of children.


"That's when your hair stands on end and your blood boils," said the young man, who spoke on the condition he not be identified. "This guy's got to be stopped."



Fitness always in doubt


Father Dominic's globetrotting began in the 1970s, long before he was arrested in London – but well after he was first identified as a poor prospect for ministry.


"He was not a very good student," said Lahore Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha, who taught him at a junior seminary and has been a diocesan boss since 2001. "He's not coordinated in his thinking, not logical. His mind is not very clear."


Asked how such a young man could be deemed fit for the priesthood, the archbishop replied: "That's a good question. It was not in my hands."


A few years after he was ordained in 1974, Father Dominic began visiting London periodically and working temporarily in parishes of its Westminster Archdiocese. He studied in Rome in the mid-1980s, sometimes spending summers as a substitute priest in the New York City area.


Father Dominic was arrested in late 1996 while at St. Bernard Parish in London, accused of molesting two boys in the 1980s. After leaving jail, he was sent to a clergy treatment center in rural England run by the Servants of the Paraclete religious order, which became notorious in the United States for its past practice of helping return abusers to parish work.


In early 1997, Father Dominic disappeared and flew home to Pakistan. He told The News that he fled after treatment center officials forced him to sign an admission of abuse.


Father Dominic said that he did not abuse the boys and that they made allegations in retaliation for his efforts to collect a debt from an accuser's father. "That's B.S.," said the one accuser The News reached, who is unrelated to the other alleged victim.


A current treatment center leader, the Rev. Liam Hoare, declined to comment and would not provide contact information for the predecessor who oversaw Father Dominic's treatment. The News could not locate that priest, whom Father Hoare said had been transferred to the Philippines.


Father Dominic said British authorities returned his passport when he left jail; authorities would not confirm that.


Westminster Archdiocese records show no information about how Father Dominic got out of England, spokesman Timothy Livesey said. But he acknowledged that church representatives erred in arranging Father Dominic's bail.


The Rev. Tony Brunning agreed to be liable for the bail, which was a "mistake," said Mr. Livesey. Father Brunning, a longtime friend of the suspect, declined to comment.


After Father Dominic absconded, Mr. Livesey said, "the diocese wrongly paid" the approximately $3,600 that Father Brunning owed. He identified the person who authorized this indemnification as the Rev. Ralph Brown, who was the diocese's vicar general at the time. Monsignor Brown did not respond to an interview request.


It is a crime in Britain even to agree to indemnify someone who is liable for a bail payment, and Mr. Livesey acknowledged that the archdiocese came under criminal investigation because of Monsignor Brown's action. The archdiocese was not prosecuted.


Monsignor Brown "did not realize there was anything wrong" in what he was doing and has apologized, Mr. Livesey said


The original investigator on the case, Detective Constable Keith Olivant, said that what happened was "an absolute offense where ignorance is no excuse." He said he did not know why the archdiocese was not prosecuted.


"It's something they ought to be prosecuted for," the detective said.


A spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service declined to comment on anything related to the case because it remains open.



Legal standstill


Britain and Pakistan have no extradition treaty, and London police apparently quit working the case.


The accuser interviewed by The News said he has never heard from the current investigator on the case, Detective Sgt. Caer Taylor. The detective told The News she didn't know whether the case was still pending and, when told that a reporter had located the priest, she didn't ask for his address.


Instead of staying beyond the reach of the law, Father Dominic moved to countries where extradition would have been routine – first the United States and later Italy.


He left Pakistan after Lahore Archdiocese leaders barred him from ministry, Archbishop Saldanha said. By 1999, he was living in the New York City area and trying to get American dioceses to hire him. Los Angeles and Brooklyn were among those that refused, citing vaguely negative reports from Lahore.


The Rev. John J. Brown, Brooklyn's clergy personnel director, said the Lahore Archdiocese did not reveal that there was a criminal case in London. Lahore church leaders knew of its existence, according to a British church official's letter to one of Father Dominic's accusers.


Monsignor Brown said Father Dominic did mention the case but said it had been dismissed and he had been exonerated. He said he did not check the priest's claims with authorities.


Hearing details this week about Father Dominic's case was "disturbing," Monsignor Brown said. He said the U.S. church must rely on foreign bishops to be open and honest about their priests who come to this country to work.


After striking out in the United States, Father Dominic returned to his native Pakistan. Archbishop Saldanha said he worked at a Muslim school in Lahore and then found a Catholic leader who would take him in another part of Pakistan: Bishop Andrew Francis, leader of the Multan Diocese.


The priest became pastor of the Multan cathedral, "not with our permission," Archbishop Saldanha said. But after a while, Bishop Francis sent the priest back to Lahore.


"There was some personal animosity," said the archbishop, who added that he knew no details. Bishop Francis could not be reached for comment.


Next Father Dominic tried his luck in America again. And this time, he succeeded: The Newark Archdiocese put him to work in summer 2002, shortly after U.S. bishops passed a "zero tolerance" sexual abuse policy during their annual meeting in Dallas.


He was stationed at St. Francis of Assisi in Ridgefield Park on instructions from archdiocese headquarters, said Father Field, the priest who worked with him. He said he did not know who gave the instructions.


But the Newark archdiocesan office that oversees visiting priests said it had no record of Father Dominic. The Rev. William Fadrowski, who was executive director of clergy personnel in 2002, said he had never heard of the priest and didn't understand how he could have been allowed to work at St. Francis.


"It's very, very abnormal," Monsignor Fadrowski said.


Newark Archbishop John Myers said he, too, did not recognize Father Dominic's name and called his presence in a parish "odd."


"It certainly is not according to our policies and expectations," he said.


Archbishop Saldanha, head of the priest's home diocese in Pakistan, initially said he thought Father Dominic was living at the New Jersey church "on a private visit" and was not exercising his ministry.


Archbishop Myers did not ask whether the priest should be allowed to function, Archbishop Saldanha said. In a later interview, however, he said he had received a background check form from Newark but did not complete and return it.


Archbishop Saldanha also said that Father Dominic had occasionally said Mass while at St. Francis but that he was "not doing any pastoral work ... not dealing with people."


Father Dominic left St. Francis after about two months, according to Father Field, who said he thought the priest had returned to his home country because of problems with his religious worker's visa.




A friend of the bishop


It isn't clear where Father Dominic went after Newark. But by last October, he was living along northern Italy's Riviera, working in the quaint beach town of Albissola Marina and up in the hills at Ellera.


In announcing the priest's appointment, the Savona-Noli Diocese newsletter described him as a friend of the bishop, the Rev. Domenico Calcagno.


The bishop told The News he had met Father Dominic when he traveled to Pakistan in the early 1990s, before assuming his current post. At the time, Bishop Calcagno said, he was a priest working at the Vatican's foreign missions office and Father Dominic was teaching in a Lahore seminary.


The bishop said Father Dominic came to his diocese last fall after the head of the Lahore Archdiocese requested a temporary placement for the priest while he worked on a book.


Bishop Calcagno turned pale when told by a reporter about the London criminal case and that church leaders in Pakistan were familiar with it.


"I am absolutely not aware of this," the bishop said. "This is very strange. I received a written fax from the bishop. He was asking me to help Father Dominic with his studies. To me there was no reason to suspect anything about it."


Archbishop Saldanha initially told The News that he didn't know where Father Dominic was and hadn't communicated with any Italian dioceses. But when he learned that the newspaper had located the priest and interviewed Bishop Calcagno, the archbishop acknowledged that he had given Father Dominic permission to "study theology and do some work in an old-age home, not work in a parish" in Italy.


Bishop Calcagno said he planned to keep Father Dominic on duty, "putting a close eye on him from now on." Archbishop Saldanha said he would ask Father Dominic "what he's really doing."


The priest continues to profess his innocence. Father Dominic said he sometimes cries out to God, asking why he has suffered so.


"They have really devastated all my priesthood," he said. "I'm just a helpless person."



Staff writer Brooks Egerton reported from Dallas, and staff writer Reese Dunklin reported from Albissola Marina. Freelance journalist Mark Williams-Thomas contributed from London.



The human toll

What the priest did to him was bad enough, the young man says. What came later, when he reported it to church officials, was worse.


The story starts late one night in December 1984, he says, when the Rev. Yusaf Dominic abused him. He was 9 years old and had a part in the Nativity play at his family's London church. His parents had asked the visiting Pakistani cleric to spend the night.


Twelve years later, in 1996, the traumatized child had become a college kid who could contain the memory no longer ��� especially when he found out that Father Dominic had returned from Pakistan to work in another parish in the Westminster Archdiocese.


He went there and told his story to the head priest, who said, "These things happen," the young man recalls.


"He offered to arrange a meeting" at which Father Dominic would apologize "and we could all have a cup of tea together."


Father Dominic – who has since denied wrongdoing – stayed on duty. The young man and his family appealed to a bishop, who suggested that the priest might merely have been engaged in "horseplay," or that a counselor might have implanted a false memory.


"But I hadn't been to a counselor," the man says.


The bishop also dispensed some advice: "You don't want to go to the police."


He ignored that advice and found someone who took him seriously.


"All the church personnel I spoke to minimized what happened," the young man says. "It's the secondary victimization that hurts people most."


Brooks Egerton


COMING IN SUNDAY READER: Commentators from across the spectrum of American Catholicism react to The Dallas Morning News' four-part series, "Runaway Priests." Also, The News' editorial board calls for reform.

Renee

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2003
Sat, 06-26-2004 - 12:53pm
"and is monitored to "the best of our ability"



Methinks the government can handle that chore.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2003
Sat, 06-26-2004 - 12:56pm
This is unreal... we smoked them out here, yet this stuff continues in other areas of the world. I'm totally sickened and outraged.