The other victims of priest pedophilia
Dreese, John J.
THE OTHER VICTIMS OF PRIEST PEDOPHILIA AN INHERITANCE SQUANDERED JOHN J. DREESE he constant reporting by the media of the sexual abuse of children and adolescents by priests has become a kind...
...it has nothing to do with me...
...Thirty years ago alcoholism was considered a moral failure, a character defect, but not a disease...
...Let me explain...
...THE OTHER VICTIMS OF PRIEST PEDOPHILIA AN INHERITANCE SQUANDERED JOHN J. DREESE he constant reporting by the media of the sexual abuse of children and adolescents by priests has become a kind of Chinese water torture for me...
...Their own lifetimes of service, fairly faithful for the great majority, are now tarnished and besmirched by the constant drone of the TV reporting: "A Roman Catholic priest of the diocese of______was charged today with sexually abusing a young boy while serving as associate pastor of Saint______Parish...
...My anger is mixed with sadness...
...I cannot stop being me...
...When the notion of sin no longer seemed adequate, pedophiles were considered to be sick, and the recommended treatment for psychologically sick people was prescribed...
...This is all happening at a time when the priesthood seems to be threatened by a lack of candidates for ordination...
...I also understand the victims' need to tell their stories, and how important it is that they are finally able to speak out...
...But should a diocese be held financially responsible for the criminal acts of individual priests, especially in cases where no negligence is involved...
...There were certain priests that always had a cluster of boys around them...
...If to some extent we "knew" that priests were engaging in sexual abuse of children, why did we stand by and do nothing...
...I remember consulting a canonist friend at The Catholic University of America about a problem priest from another diocese in the early '70s...
...I am angry at myself for this failure of judgment...
...The Pledge" was still being administered to those who drank too much...
...Ohio...
...Often, I am told, the professional counselors approved and recommended the priests' reassignment in the diocese...
...Some are ashamed to wear a Roman collar...
...If only we could get all the cases on the table once and for all, and be done with it...
...But if the goal is to recover health and wholeness, is pandering to desires for revenge and ratifying resentment real healing...
...What did we "know...
...I did not want to be judgmental...
...The anger I feel about the reporting of the priest pedophile cases needs no amplification...
...Rarely is the generic term of minister or simply, priest, used...
...If pederasty, which I believe is the principal problem, is a self-centered and egotistical act and not brought under control, then it is all the more reason for shame and anger...and for pity...
...Do we really think as a society that monetary reward will make victims and their families whole again...
...And they all did...
...I have never wanted to deny who or what I am...
...There is a deep sense of shame...
...I want them punished, too...
...I never wanted to hide the fact of my being—being a priest...
...12 Or, at least, it appeared that it was...
...then, drop, drop, drop, pause...drop, drop...
...A heavy pall hangs over the life of the priesthood...
...As a group we are slightly obsessed with this sad scandal...
...The other way of avoiding the pain and the shame is to adopt the individualism pervasive in our culture...
...In my guts I have always identified myself as a Catholic priest...
...I knew of another case where a priest classmate of mine was known to be an active homosexual who (it was said) acted out his sexual desires with young men...
...I could say, "What I do is my business and what they do is their business...
...The victims of the crime and their lawyers demand justice, and this involves large fees for attorneys...
...If they knew what they were doing but could not control a compulsion to act out, then they were clearly sick...
...Since Father Pedophile could not be fired, he was recycled...
...Yet, it was once common practice...
...I, for one, really don't know...
...With the theology of priesthood I have internalized, there is no way to avoid the sense of shame and the feelings of hurt and embarrassment brought on me by my brother (would that I did not have to use the word) priests...
...He told me that one of the great problems in the church was the fact that there was no way that a bishop could fire a priest...
...I was not ashamed of it...
...as anyone else...
...For centuries the church has understood and taught that the person ordained undergoes an ontological change...
...Shots of the inside of a Roman Catholic church, of angelic altar boys in cassocks and surplices, and first communicants dressed in pure white dramatically highlight the bold betrayal of this crime...
...In one of my early assignments the senior associate was known to be a friend of the boys in the parish...
...The answer to that question is not clear to me...
...But I cannot disassociate myself, since I do not believe in shedding the identity of being a priest...
...Cameras seem to search for ways to heighten the hurt, to magnify the mess...
...Priests who have not committed the crimes are deeply hurt...
...Why did they do what they did...
...What counts for progress in this matter...
...He always had a couple of junior high school boys with him...
...I left, but I thought it strange that he would order me out to make room for two teen-agers...
...But what constitutes genuine help...
...Such treatment for alcoholism is now considered obsolete, even barbaric...
...But there is no next generation...
...If some victims hate the church, I can understand their feelings of vindictiveness and their desire for retribution...
...I think everyone knows that in 1994 things are not what they 13 were in 1960...
...What I suspected, but did not want to believe, had happened...
...I cannot accept, therefore, that mind-set...
...When the church came to see pedophilia as a sickness, the bishops turned to experts in psychology and psychiatry who then knew little about effective treatment...
...It appears that they lectured priests about sin and suspended the guilty from sacramental ministry...
...Rash judgments were discouraged...
...Looking back to the '60s and '70s the answer seems to have been, "A bishop cannot fire a priest...
...If alcoholics were taken to the hospital they were often placed in the psychiatric ward...
...In today's climate I would confront the man...
...Today, we see pedophilia as a crime and seek punishment...
...Today, of course, the media and TV, especially CNN, seem more and more ideological...
...Years later he was convicted of sexually abusing boys and served a prison sentence...
...That attitude is completely contrary to what biblical revelation teaches...
...That the diocese was powerless in the face of such open perversion by some of its priests is almost impossible to comprehend today, yet, it was...
...More innocent youths were victimized by the priest and the same pattern of penance and therapy and reassignment seems to have followed...
...Why didn't they do something...
...if I was not the church's servant in the ministry of leadership, then perhaps I would not identify with the guilt and shame of this pedophilepriest scandal...
...In 1960, and even as late as 1980, pedophiles were treated, first, as sinners, and the treatment for sinners was administered to them...
...They knew the importance of innocence in the young and the scars of scandal to the community...
...We wanted to expect only the best of our fellow priests...
...This same priest was considered a guru to teen-age boys in other parishes...
...Will it ever stop...
...We held to the admonition, prevalent in our society, that we were to give suspicious persons the benefit of the doubt...
...No wonder there is shame when we hear and read the news...
...If I identify with the Roman Catholic priesthood, I must be ashamed, saddened, and sickened by it all...
...What should be done with this "information" or "gossip...
...This was a common interpretation of canon law...
...the headlines and newscasts tell us that it is also a criminal thing to do...
...Suspicion, however, is not proof...
...Probably not in my lifetime...
...He has acknowledged his guilt and is in prison...
...The abused children lost their innocence, much of the joy of childhood, their ability to have a positive self-image, and perhaps the possibility of healthy, loving sexual relationships as adults...
...Yet the media and those who hang on their reporting continue to judge 1960 actions by 1994 standards...
...it was me...
...Phone calls are constantly exchanged about the most recent charges...
...They have misused their positions of respect to defile, abuse, and steal the innocence of children and young people...
...Financial settlements seem like a simplistic and illusory response to a complex and emotional issue...
...He told me that they were busy and asked me to leave the living room...
...We were appalled to see him moved, allowing his sexual offenses to continue (that is, if the rumors were true...
...My sadness comes from the strong strains of selfishness, self-interest, revenge, vindictiveness, and sensationalism that linger in the air after every new report...
...Roman Catholic priest," or "Father," are consistently used in their reporting...
...Were the church and the bishops wrong to see pedophiles as sinners...
...In 1963 I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and, as far as I know, so did everyone else...
...Other suspicions and surmises that have come to me in my thirty-four years as a priest did not seem worthy of aggressive action...
...Finally he left, to our relief, five or six years after ordination...
...The affliction was not covered by health insurance...
...Priests find their duties to be difficult and joyless...
...For this, we now pay in many ways—ruined lives, shame, scandal, divisions in our parishes, and huge monetary fines imposed by the courts...
...hat about me and my brother priests...
...During this same period of time, a priest of my age openly admitted that he was active homosexually with an adult and that he had been active with high school boys...
...Newspaper clippings are mailed by priests to their confreres detailing the most recent settlements...
...I agree with them that the priest-offender should be punished...
...We know that this is a sinful thing to do...
...But when the penance or treatment was completed, the pedophile was assigned to another parish, usually at a calculated distance from his last assignment...
...Roman Catholic priests have done this...
...Others would like to wear a sign announcing, "I am not one of them...
...One evening, when I entered the rectory, this priest was in the living room with two of them...
...Ever...
...Why was Father Pedophile not fired from the priesthood for good...
...This occurred in the early '60s...
...But it appears that the priest-offenders were not thinking about anyone but themselves...
...He eventually chose to leave the priesthood, again to our relief...
...Other examples of significant differences in mores and medicine between 1960 and in 1994 could easily be cited...
...That axiom is easy to say but hard to act on...
...But at what stage does the telling and re-telling of the story cease to be therapy, healthy, and helpful...
...Was it really moral negligence, or was the church naively imposing an erroneous diagnosis passed on to it...
...We tried to honor their example and the fraternity...
...The victims acted courageously in reporting the priests...
...I question the huge sums of money the church is being asked to pay to victims for the crimes...
...After reassignment the pattern of sexual abuse often reoccurrcd...
...These are horrible losses...
...To accuse a person of pedophilia is a most serious charge...
...I am angry at the priest-pederasts and abusers...
...After his period of involvement with high school boys was discovered, he had been reassigned to another parish...
...Priesthood was my life...
...He destroys the innocence of his victim, defiles the image of the church, betrays the trust of his fellow priests, all for his own sake...
...This he deserves...
...Is this responsible reporting, is it sensationalism, or is it Catholic bashing...
...Most priests are relatively old and have long borne the burden of the day...
...They knew the meaning of celibacy, of chastity, continence...
...It is especially difficult when it seems that the sinner in this case would bring down the entire world to satisfy his lusts or his sickness...
...Today, abusers are treated as criminals and the recommended punishment for criminals is enforced...
...Getting out of the priesthood would have taken them away from the occasion of sin—principally, accessibility to youngsters among altar servers and school children...
...He was moved from assignment to assignment (it was rumored) because of his sexual activity...
...I knew homosexual priests who were living exemplary celibate lives...
...While we understood the flaws and failures, the sins and weaknesses of our brother priests, we stood with them and for them as they gave their best for the service of God and the church...
...What are we doing by treating pedophilia primarily as a crime...
...Are we contributing to the recovery of the victim or the criminal...
...To feel no shame, in light of all of this scandal, would be to feel a total lack of identification with the priesthood...
...By our ordination we were granted respect and deference, not earned and not merited, but from the overflow of respect that other priests had won for us...
...If priesthood was only a job, a profession, a thing I did...
...Priesthood was not something I did, not a job, not a nineto-five profession...
...I believe that the church should help them in every way possible...
...They are ready to slow down and pass the baton to the next generation...
...Where are we in all of the murky mess...
...Mixed with the feelings of shame and embarrassment there is great anger...
...Sometimes they sent them for medical treatment...
...Must we all be tortured for what a James Porter did to children in North Attleboro, Fall River, New Mexico, and Minnesota...
...Leaving the priesthood would have taken away the possibility of scandal to the church...
...At this point 11 they had two choices: to get professional help or to get out of the priesthood...
...No price tag can be placed on them...
...Ignorance is not an alibi if they attended any kind of theological school...
...Now we find among us a growing number of priests who have betrayed the confidence and trust that other priests have won for them...
...In retrospect, it might have been better to have acted aggressively in a couple of cases...
...I thank them for their courage...
...14...
...Yet, even today certain priests in the diocese arc under suspicion according to the clerical grapevine...
...I know it is in some sense unfair, but I harbor anger at juries for their excessive awards to victims of pedophiles...
...As priests, we did what we could to build the brotherhood of priests...
...Thinking about these questions causes me to be angry at myself and at my brother priests...
...Drop, drop, drop, drop, pause...
...Drop, drop...
...I wish they had done it long ago, closer to the time of the events...
...if when the collar was off, office hours over, I was just the same JOHN J DREESE is a priest of the diocese of Columbus...
...My anger is also directed at bishops...
...Why do I feel shame...
...We may have made it more difficult for the pedophile to harm other innocent people, for a time, but there is recidivism among sexual deviants...
...As his peers we wished that he would leave the priesthood...
...Professional help would have avoided further pain for all who eventually became involved...
...Pity and disgust, I'm afraid, are the emotions I feel...
...We knew that and comments about this situation were exchanged among priests...
...Priesthood is who I am...
...Usually, of course, there was never clear proof that Father was engaged in actual sexual abuse...
...As a result, the pattern of abuse of children continued, and continued, and continued...
...Was the church wrong to follow the advice of medical experts...
...This is a person I must love...
...The damage remains...
...Where were we when all this abuse was taking place...
...I feel shame because I identify with the Roman Catholic priesthood...
...Today, alcoholism is widely recognized as a disease...
...if my private time was my own...
...Since the time of Augustine our tradition has taught us to hate the sin and love the sinner...
Vol. 121 • April 1994 • No. 8
