Clohessy: protect the children not the predators.

News media across the country picked up on an incredible bombshell story uncovered by the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) this spring. It ran large in papers from The New York Times to the Duluth News Tribune in Minnesota, but not in the St. Louis media.

The weekly NCR revealed that the founder of the religious order known as Servants of the Paraclete warned U.S. Bishops in 1952 that pedophiles should be let go from the priesthood, because they could not be cured.

The story has grave implications for scores of clergy pedophile cases, because it blows much-used defenses by the Catholic Church. Those legal defenses include that bishops were unaware of how extensive abuse problems were in the church; that they were unaware that pedophilia was a condition beyond cure in the majority of cases.

St. Louisan David Clohessy, who heads the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said he is not surprised by an inattentive local news media, nor is he surprised by the shocking details in the NCR weekly, an independent paper based in Kansas City that has primarily served Catholics since 1964.

"I am not really surprised that the local news media didn't pick up on the Paracletes' revelation," said Clohessy. "The local media seem overworked, understaffed and really somewhat jaded about this crisis in the church.

"The attitude seems to be: 'More proof that church officials have been deceptive. So what else is new?' After so much horrific news about the Catholic hierarchy has surfaced in recent years, it's really hard for some to be shocked by any new disclosure, however significant or troubling."

Clohessy has appeared in the local media this year after protesting the employment or housing of clergy sex offenders at St. Louis University. He protested along with a pedophile victim who settled an abuse lawsuit with the Jesuits and the St. Louis Catholic Archdiocese for $140,000.

Victim lawsuits over priest abuse and negligence by church officials may be easier to win in the light of the new revelations uncovered by the investigation of the National Catholic Reporter.

"I think their findings will prove helpful, because it blows major holes in the bishops' main defense," said Clohessy. "They claim they believed predators could be rehabbed. That's a bogus dodge. It's a dodge because it evades the central issue: bishops knew child sex abuse was criminal, yet refused to call police and often stonewalled law enforcement--what they believed about possible rehab is irrelevant.

"And it's bogus because these (NCR) records prove bishops knew, in fact, that pedophiles couldn't be 'fixed.' They were clearly told that by the source who would have been most predisposed to believe otherwise: an order of Catholic priests dedicated to troubled clerics," Clohessy stressed.

Paracletes' founder

Paracletes' founder Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald ran retreat centers for troubled priests and in 1952 advised bishops that pedophiles should be removed from priestly duties, because they were incorrigible. He gave that same advice to the Vatican in Rome in the early 1960s.

Fitzgerald wrote to the Bishop of Reno, Nev., that, "I myself would be inclined to favor laicization for any priest.... Leaving them on duty or wandering from diocese to diocese is contributing to scandal or at least to the approximate danger of scandal."

Fitzgerald lived with, spoke with, and contemplated with the troubled priests in the care of his Order. He tried to convince church officials in lengthy letters that abusers should be removed from the priesthood and denied any access to "innocents." He referred to them as unrepentant and dangerous.

His warnings were disregarded and none of the sexual predators was defrocked. Instead, they were passed around--transferred from one diocese to the next, often in the same state--where the complaints of predatory behavior resurfaced again and again.

"We are amazed," wrote Father Fitzgerald to a bishop in 1957, "to find how often a man would be behind bars if he were not a priest entrusted with the cura animarum (meaning the care of souls)."

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Instead of being fearful of going to jail for tampering with the innocence of youth, Fitzgerald said pedophile priests "expect to bound back like tennis balls to the court of priestly activity ..."

At one point in his frustration with the growing abuse, Fitzgerald made a down payment of $5,000 on an island in the Caribbean. Fitzgerald hoped to construct an isolated retreat where predator priests could be sequestered and prevented from any further victimizing.

Fitzgerald died in 1969 without seeing the realization of his dream of an island to quarantine clergy sexual abusers. He died without seeing the church hierarchy do anything to address his concerns about priests who had broken their vows of celibacy with sex acts involving minors.

More than a decade before his death, he expressed a desire to no longer accept predators into the care of the Servants of the Paraclete. He wrote to the Archbishop of Mexico: "These men, Your Excellency, are devils, and the wrath of God is upon them, and if I were a bishop I would tremble when I failed to report them for involuntary laicization (removal of a priest from the priesthood)."

The church knew

"This (NCR) reporting shows that the church absolutely knew--and not just one part of the church--but the one group to which nearly every bishop turned for help with predators: the Paracletes," noted Clohessy. "Their unequivocal warning mirrors what all common sense, psychology and history already told the bishops: that secretly transferring pedophiles to unsuspecting parishes was morally wrong and dangerous."

Clohessy said the idea to secure an island to isolate predator priests shows vision and courage. He said he disagrees with the idea, but said it is reassuring that at least one priest was struggling to find a way to safeguard the innocent, instead of trying to shield the guilty.

"The best place to put abusers is jail, of course," Clohessy said. "Kids are safest when predators are locked up. That's not being punitive; that's just common sense. Jailing pedophile priests rarely happens because self-serving bishops successfully use their political clout, expensive lawyers, extensive connections and vast resources.

"They use all of their many resources to threaten victims, to intimidate witnesses, to destroy evidence, to deceive police, and to exploit the statute of limitations so that few child molesting clerics are ever prosecuted," Clohessy said.

SNAP's Clohessy and leaders of other groups, such as Voice of the Faithful, argue that when predator priests are proven, admitted or credibly accused child sex offenders, bishops have a civic and moral duty to use their power and resources to ask that victims, witnesses and whistleblowers come forward and call police, so the culpable might finally be prosecuted.

If the church had listened to the pleas of a Catholic priest, Father Fitzgerald, more than 50 years ago, Clohessy said he believes a lot of criminal behavior would have been prevented and much anguish avoided.

"Things surely would have been dramatically different," he said. "The secrecy, the recklessness, the deceit and the callousness of the hierarchy would still be wide-spread--because the hierarchy enjoys nearly unchecked power--but the sheer amount of devastation caused by predator priests and corrupt bishops would have been substantially diminished."

Clohessy gives specific examples locally and nationally on how things might have been quite different:

* Father James Porter might have molested five or I0 children, not 120.

* Father John Geoghan might have molested two kids, or two dozen kids, not 200.

* Father Michael S. McGrath might have been stopped after hurting eight kids, not 28.

"Add to this that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of once-trusting and loyal Catholics would not have felt betrayed--and left the church," Clohessy lamented.

"This may seem unrelated, but because of the four or five centers in the St. Louis Archdiocese where predator priests are housed and treated, we believe there are more pedophile priests here than perhaps anywhere else in the country," Clohessy said. "This makes St. Louis the 'epicenter' of this on-going crisis in another way, because it seems clear that bishops continue to trust the Paracletes with their sexually troubled priests, no matter how controversial and discredited the Paracletes' track record with these criminals has been."

Clohessy said that track record would have been quite different, if the church had listened to Father Fitzgerald, and if the Servants of the Paraclete had followed the advice of the founder. The Paraclete have had several retreats for rehabilitation in Missouri over the past 50 years. One of those retreats sits on a bluff overlooking the Meramec River in Sunset Hills. The grounds of the retreat sports tennis courts as well as a number of religious sculptures.

There is far more activity on nearby Tapawingo National Golf Club, then there is on the Paracletes' grounds. The center in Sunset Hills has been less than candid about who is treated at the facility, although officially it is no longer supposed to be a refuge for abusers.

"The last 'official' public admission that predators were there was in the early to mid 1990s, when the Post disclosed that Father James Porter of Fall River, Mass., was there," said Clohessy. "He was then the nation's most notorious predator priest.

"In 2002, dozens of predator priests across the country began to finally be suspended, and bishops desperately sought housing for many of them" Clohessy added.

"We suspect that every Paraclete facility in the U.S., including the one in Sunset Hills, have welcomed some of these pedophiles. We suspect there are still some there now, despite the official denials of the Paraclete officials," he said.

Continuing to march

These days, Clohessy continues to march and protest with other SNAP members, most often in front of the St. Louis Archdiocese headquarters on Lindell near Taylor in the city's Central West End.

Occasionally SNAP's activities get a blurb in the local news media. Usually this occurs when a lawsuit is filed or when an abuse case has been settled. Often, there are no details provided in the settled cases.

When SNAP is not demonstrating outside the headquarters of the Archdiocese, it is most likely carrying signs outside a church residence where known abusers are living, sometimes without much supervision.

"The church has a moral and civic duty to turn over to police credibly accused child-molesting clerics and a full personnel file," Clohessy said. "But if all this is done, there will still sometimes be no victim who falls within the statute of limitation.

"In those cases, church officials must house the predator in a secure, remote, independently-run center so he can be treated and so kids can be safer," Clohessy added. "Whether that's on an island or in a desert or a sparely populated rural area matters less. What matters most is that effective steps are taken to isolate dangerous men from vulnerable kids," said Clohessy. "And, of course, neighbors must be warned about who these men are and what they've done, so they can protect their own children. Church officials have shown they'll go to extraordinary lengths to protect predators. Now, they must go to similar lengths to protect kids," he said.

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Don Corrigan is a professor in the School of Communications at Webster University and also edits three weekly newspapers.