Working from a yellow legal pad filled with handwritten notes, Anderson posed sordid questions in the most respectful way possible. He addressed the witness as “bishop” and allowed the churchman to use a strained kind of language that made sexual assault sound about as serious as a collision of grocery carts in the supermarket.
Besides filling in the details of the case, these depositions provided Anderson with a crash course in the lines of authority within the Church and the prerogatives of power. Watters informed him that while Archbishop Roach may have some oversight responsibilities as regional “metropolitan,” a bishop ultimately answers to no one except for “the Pope, John Paul II.” Watters also confirmed that the Church maintained a file on every priest—he called it simply “a priest file”—and assured Anderson that no other pertinent documents were maintained on individual clergy. Other questions established that no matter where he goes and what he does, a priest is always a priest and subject to certain expectations for his behavior. Watters also explained the circumstance that might bring a priest from one diocese into another—for education, medical treatment, a job, or other purpose.
In Adamson’s case, Watters explained, the priest was sent to St. Paul after vague rumors and accusations began to swirl around the Diocese of Winona. The bishop recalled telephone calls from teachers at parochial schools who thought Adamson was behaving strangely and others from teachers who thought he was a terrific priest who was being unfairly harassed.
When Anderson asked about the details of the complaints Watters claimed he couldn’t supply them because the calls were made anonymously and no one said anything specific. It was “not unusual for priests to be unjustly accused,” explained Watters, so his first instinct was to protect Adamson from the kinds of people who might set out to “destroy a priest.” But since he had heard from several different sources, he thought it best to send Adamson away and, for good measure, he made sure to have him undergo a psychological evaluation.
Like many witnesses who claim poor memory when questions get tough, Watters often seemed at a loss to recall exactly what he knew and when he knew it. As Anderson reached into his files and offered the few carefully worded documents he had received to refresh his memory, Watters described a way of managing people and problems that seemed designed to help him avoid responsibility. He said he did his duty by sending the priest for evaluation, but didn’t inquire about the results because they were a matter of doctor-patient confidentiality. He told Archbishop Roach that Adamson had some sort of psychological difficulty, but refused to speculate about its nature.
The more Anderson pressed, the more convoluted were the answers. In an attempt to clear things up, Anderson brought out the letter the bishop wrote to oppose Dr. Pierre’s recommendation that Adamson be returned to Winona. In this letter Watters noted “painful sessions” with “heartbroken and bewildered parents.” Who were those parents? Anderson asked. What was the subject of those painful sessions?
They weren’t about Adamson, said the bishop. Instead he was recalling an experience “in Dubuque” long before he came to Minnesota, “when one such incident happened.” He made this reference not because he was concerned about future victims but because he wanted to make sure “this does not happen in the life of Father Adamson.”
Watters’s descriptions of his personal encounters with Adamson were filled with a similar logic as he explained how they got together on a regular basis to wring their hands and commiserate over issues they never named. He considered Adamson a friend. They played golf together at least once every summer, and he admired the priest’s abilities as an administrator. As Watters recalled it, he kept insisting to Adamson that he was in denial about his wrongdoing, like an addict who refuses to admit that his use of drugs or alcohol has gotten out of control. But how could Watters credibly accuse Adamson of denial when the bishop himself avoided knowing the details of his transgressions?
Tellingly, it was the Lyman family’s threat of a lawsuit and the possible financial consequences of such a suit that finally moved Watters to consider the actual truth of the trouble that had shadowed Thomas Adamson for more than a decade. When he learned that the family might sue, Watters wrote a letter to the St. Paul Archdiocese noting that he had made demands of Adamson “where his celibacy is concerned” but to no avail. Considering the potential liability faced by the Church he wrote, “I think it is time that Father Adamson accept that he is personally responsible and that he will have to make some kind of financial settlement.”
Before the deposition ended, Anderson had raised the fact that Kenneth Pierre, Ph.D., the priest/therapist whom two dioceses had trusted to get Adamson under control, had no experience treating sex offenders. For his part, Watters painted a self-portrait of a man who assumed the best of everyone—except for complaining about laypeople who sought to “destroy” priests—and yet refused to allow Adamson to return to his diocese until he accepted responsibility for an offense that was never even defined.
In the last minutes of the deposition, Watters seemed weary, and not fully cognizant of the seriousness of the proceedings. Anderson asked whether the bishop had been required to manage other difficulties caused by Fr. Adamson. “Any other problems that you were aware of?” he asked.
“No,” said the bishop, pausing for effect. “The only thing is, he could beat me at golf.”
* * *
After the bishop’s deposition, which took place in Winona, Jeffrey Anderson made the two-and-a-half-hour drive to his home in Stillwater, a small town east of St. Paul. Much of his route followed the Mississippi River north on Rte. 61 to the bridge at Wabasha and Highway 25. The trip along winding two-lane roads gave him a chance to consider the Catholic world Watters had revealed in his deposition.
With its schools, universities, counseling centers, hospitals, legal system, and other institutions, the Roman Catholic Church was much larger and more complicated than Anderson had ever imagined. In organization, the dioceses that spanned the United States seemed like an alternative nation—the Catholic States of America—superimposed on the landscape, but seen only by those who knew it was there. For every neighborhood or village the Church could claim a parish that might be compared with a town hall. In every big city it operated a chancery that controlled regional affairs like a state government.
As a whole, the Catholic Church in America claimed a population of sixty million, which was equal to about the twentieth-largest country in the world, and revenues greater than IBM, which was then the nation’s sixth-largest company. Of course its religious mission and tax-exempt status made the Church far more profitable than a comparable corporation. Corporations paid taxes and were obliged to pay competitive salaries to their workers. The Church had no financial obligation to the state. Instead, it received hundreds of millions of dollars from the government as it provided various social services. It also enjoyed the labor of volunteers and religious who took vows of poverty and employees who accepted meager wages because their work was a calling. The total value of the Church’s assets—mainly real estate and investments in stocks and bonds—had never been counted, but surely ran into the tens of billions of dollars.
For an outsider like Anderson, discovering the rules that governed the country-within-a-country that was Catholic America was like stumbling upon the alternate reality of a Lewis Carroll tale. In the rest of their lives, American Catholics expected democracy and equal rights and accountability. In the Church they accepted a strict caste system dominated by self-selected men whose powers were checked only by other individuals of higher rank. In exchange for this power, ordained men were required to reject all of the most important relationships that were part of ordinary life, including parent, partner, grandparent, and even lover. Priests, bishops, cardinals, and the popes lived institutional lives, with all their basic needs met by the Church, independent of their own efforts. At the same time they were excused from the kinds of family responsibilities that define other men.
All
of this governance and obedience occurred on a voluntary basis, of course. No one was forced to be a Catholic, just as no one was forced to be a Rotarian or a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. However, most Catholics were born into the Church and were taught to respect and obey its rule from before the age when they could even understand what they were being told. Through culture, ritual, formal education, and family tradition, Catholic children learned that life on this Earth is a mere moment in the soul’s eternal existence and that rebellion today would lead to suffering forever and ever. On the other hand, the Church promised never-ending bliss to anyone who professed the faith, adhered to the rules, and sought favor with God through rituals conducted by priests. It was no wonder, under these circumstances, that a sexual offense committed by a priest might be covered up by everyone, including the victim.
The Church system seemed to Anderson like a perfect environment for the abuse of power at all levels. He suspected that more families like the Lymans were suffering, somewhere, from the trauma, loss of faith, and psychological injury that accompany sexual abuse. He also knew that the leaders of the Catholic Church possessed the means to ease their pain. As pastors they could acknowledge the sins committed by priests, recognize the injuries they caused, reform their culture of secrecy, and honor their victims. As corporate officers they could take responsibility for their employees. But just as in Wonderland, where nonsense rules, the shepherds favored wolves over sheep and tended to themselves while ignoring the flock.
By the time he got to Stillwater and parked outside his half-renovated Victorian house, Anderson was overflowing with ideas about the case. Inside, he poured himself what he called a “brandy/seven” (brandy with 7-Up) while Julie made Reuben sandwiches. When they sat down together he told her about what he had heard and offered his unreserved assessment. Bishop Watters had obviously lied about what he knew of Adamson’s behavior but he honestly didn’t grasp that the priest had committed serious crimes. The same was true for every other bishop, priest, and counselor who dealt with Adamson. They showed enormous concern for his well-being and too little for the adolescent boys he had assaulted.
Anderson used the plural “boys” because of the Watters letter that referred to “five different communities.” This was evidence that like so many sexual offenders, Adamson was compelled to carry out his crimes over and over again. Also, Anderson didn’t believe for a second that the bishop’s sorrowful encounter with “heartbroken and bewildered” parents had taken place in Dubuque and involved some other errant priest. He was sure that Watters had been confronted more recently in Winona, by parents who believed that Fr. Adamson was a sexual predator and that the experience had shaken him.
As the night wore on and Anderson mixed a second brandy/seven, he and Julie considered the task immediately ahead—tomorrow’s deposition with Adamson—and the longer-term implications of what had come to light. Julie enjoyed these late-night sessions when they worked together, bouncing ideas around and making notes on a legal pad. Having moved from her job at the trial lawyers association to one at a local law firm, Julie was becoming familiar with the language of the law and the strategies and tactics attorneys used. She was delighted to watch Jeff’s mind race as he dissected the testimony he had heard during the day and framed the issues raised by it.
Where Adamson was concerned, they decided that the interrogation would begin with soft questions that would cover his training and employment, and establish that he had been under the supervision of superiors who understood why he had been transferred from parish to parish and sent for counseling. Anderson would then press for as much detail as possible, hoping that Adamson might discuss other incidents of abuse. At the very least Anderson hoped that something in what the priest said would open new avenues for discovery, including a path to documents that might be harvested from chancery files and the names of witnesses he might pursue.
Beyond this one case, Jeff and Julie began to imagine that other families would come looking for a lawyer if this lawsuit ever made it into the press. Anderson couldn’t judge the extent of the problem of the Church covering for abusive priests; however, he knew that Watters and Roach both followed the same speak-no-evil approach. Between the Diocese of Winona and the Archdiocese of St. Paul, the Church could count almost a million members. If you considered the broader area that Roach oversaw as “metropolitan” his management style could affect roughly 1.5 million Catholics tended by more than 1,500 priests. How many of those clerics were offenders? wondered Anderson. How many of those laypeople had been victimized?
The notion that parishes across two states might harbor sex offenders in white collars was hard for Anderson to accept. What were the odds that that many people would close their eyes so the Church could protect bad priests? The answer would have to wait until others found out that it might be possible to sue the Church. For the time being, the proceedings against Adamson and the two dioceses were still hidden from public view and Anderson’s clients would be better served if he held on to the threat of making the family’s claim public. The leverage might force the Church to offer a settlement that would satisfy the Lymans’ desire for accountability and compensation.
The Lyman case had the potential to be the biggest of Anderson’s career. As a matter of justice, he wanted to hold powerful churchmen accountable and, if possible, expose a cover-up that obscured serious crimes. When it came to the money, he could imagine a settlement or jury verdict that would bring him a substantial fee. Some of that cash could be put into new windows to keep out the cold wind that blew through his house in Stillwater. Some might also be spent on a kitchen door tight enough so that their dog Barney wouldn’t find a sheet of ice floating in his water when he went to his bowl on winter mornings.
Tantalizing as it might have been to dwell on fees, Clarence Darrow–style glory, and a flood of new clients, Jeff Anderson set aside these exciting thoughts. He made another brandy/seven and took it upstairs to the drafty bedroom. The empty glass rested on the nightstand as he drifted off to sleep.
6. A WEEPING PRIEST
Dressed in black with a white clerical collar, Thomas Adamson was six feet tall with thick, wavy black hair that was turning gray. Physically fit and with an unlined face, he looked young for his fifty-two years. If he was nervous when he showed up at the conference room in the First Bank Building in downtown St. Paul he didn’t show it. Surrounded by attorneys sent to represent him and the Church, he calmly swore to tell the truth and then sat at a table to face Jeff Anderson and a court reporter named Linda Jacobsen. Outside, a late winter storm pelted the streets with icy rain.
As Adamson answered questions with carefully worded sentences, the priest struck Jeffrey Anderson as bright, engaged, and even charming. When Adamson mentioned the influence his Catholic parents and grandparents had on his decision to become a priest it was easy for anyone in the room to imagine a young man trying his best to please his elders. Adamson was self-deprecating as he explained that his terrible singing voice held him back as a preacher, and a bit wistful as he talked about a brief relationship with a young woman that might have been something more if he had taken another path through life.
The man’s openness was disarming. As Anderson watched and listened he could imagine how a lonely adolescent boy, especially one who might be struggling in school and desperate for friendship, might see in him a friend and a role model.
Eager to understand how Catholic clergy thought about sex, Anderson didn’t confront Adamson when he deployed euphemisms like “touching” and “contact” to refer to incidents of sexual groping and oral sex with various adult partners and child victims. Instead he let the priest get comfortable, so that in the course of a six-hour interview he would reveal details of his own life, and secrets of the Church, that would shock the average Catholic believer.
But as serious as the subject was, Anderson’s struggle to grasp Catholic terms and thinking inevitably produced lighter moments. One arose as Adamson descri
bed the instruction he had received on living a chaste and celibate life and mentioned something called “de sexto.” The words caught Anderson by surprise.
“There was an actual class called sex day?” asked Anderson, sounding a bit startled.
“De,” replied Adamson. “It’s Latin.” (The document Adamson referred to was presented to seminarians in Latin, and formed the core of their instruction of sexual morality.)
To get around Latin words and the sideways terms churchmen used to discuss sex, Anderson had to push Adamson to be specific. Once the priest understood what was expected of him, he willingly shared his sexual history. Adamson said that in seminary he had a series of sexual relationships with young men and boys. He continued this behavior at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., in the mid-1950s, and after he became a diocesan priest in Southern Minnesota. In the years since he was ordained in 1958 many of his assignments and transfers had been required because of complaints or rumors of sexual indiscretions and offenses.
When Adamson was working in the town of Caledonia and parents seemed suspicious of his devotion to a boys’ basketball team, the bishop had him swap jobs with a colleague in Rochester. Since the priest in Rochester was reportedly having an affair with a woman in his parish, the switch solved two problems. In other instances Adamson was sent to replace priests who resigned to get married, or fled assignments because of “indiscretion with youth.” In these cases the bishop wouldn’t actually say, out loud, that a predecessor had molested boys, but the priest knew this was the issue.
“Did you know what he was talking about?” asked Anderson.
Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal Page 9
