Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal

by D'Antonio, Michael

  The power of information technology was evident in the fall of 2002 when rumors that the important parts of the charter had been changed spread from the Vatican to America. A group of American bishops meeting in Rome had neutered the panels that were supposed to oversee claims in every diocese, making them merely “advisory.” Also, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had asserted its power, requiring that evidence of complaints be shipped to the Vatican, where it would conduct secret hearings and make decisions on the fate of suspect priests. Gone was the transparency promised in Dallas. Gone was the power-sharing envisioned by laypeople in the United States. Nevertheless, the bishops adopted the revised charter when they gathered in Washington for their autumn meeting. Afterward, TV commentator Bill O’Reilly, a conservative and a Catholic, asked rhetorically, “Isn’t it true that there is no moral leadership in the American Catholic Church right now?”

  If the leaders of the Church in America felt besieged, and they did, no one felt it more than Boston’s Cardinal Law. The documents ordered into public view by the courts had proven that, in Judge Sweeney’s opinion, priests who had committed crimes against young people “may well have been assigned to parishes, youth groups, and the like, even though the cardinal or other archdiocese personnel knew” they were suspect. As prosecutors prepared to compel his testimony before a grand jury, Bernard Law finally concluded that he no longer possessed the credibility to serve. He flew to Rome and on Friday, December 13, submitted his resignation to the Pope. John Paul II accepted it immediately and Law became the former cardinal archbishop of Boston.

  * * *

  At the height of the furor over Boston, Jeff Anderson and Larry Drivon took a rented Lincoln Continental on a road trip to meet a potential client named Manuel “Manny” Vega in Oxnard, California. It was Easter Day, 2002. A police officer and marine veteran, Vega had been abused when he was an altar boy by a Mexican priest serving in California. He didn’t recognize how much the abuse affected him until he received police training on handling sexual abuse complaints and began to suffer psychological symptoms. By then he was past the age of twenty-six, which was the state cutoff for filing claims related to abuse in childhood.

  Vega had told Anderson and Drivon that he knew of others who had been abused by the same priest. When the lawyers got to the conference room Vega had rented for the meeting, half a dozen of these men were present. In tearful group settings, and individual interviews with the lawyers, the men described similar patterns of grooming and then different levels of abuse, including anal and oral rape. At the end of the day, Anderson promised “something will be done.”

  As they left Vega, Anderson got behind the wheel of the Lincoln and headed down a two-lane highway. The two lawyers cussed and complained to each other and then Drivon wondered aloud, “What if we could get the law changed?”

  The idea ran through Anderson like an electric shock. He was so excited by it that he jerked the steering wheel and the tires on the right side of the car veered onto the gravel shoulder. For the next couple of hours the two men drove and talked about Anderson’s experience with the legislature in Minnesota and the intricacies of California politics. Drivon was working for a task force set up to investigate the infamous Enron bankruptcy and its effect on California. The panel had been established by Senator Joe Dunn—who had been elected in 1998—after working with Anderson on previous abuse cases.

  With a call to Dunn, Anderson and Drivon devised a strategy for getting legislation drafted to create a one-year window allowing any victim to file a claim without concern for the statute of limitations. With Vega’s help, they won support from the Hispanic caucus in the state legislature, which was led by a representative named Marta Escudia. After hearings on the bill, where Vega, David Clohessy, and other victims testified, it passed in the senate with no opposition. On the assembly side of the capitol Drivon and Anderson turned to a Los Angeles lawyer named Raymond Boucher for help. A prominent trial attorney with some experience with abuse cases, he was best known in Sacramento for helping Democratic candidates raise money, exploit issues, and win campaigns. Energetic and focused, Boucher spoke with an accent that revealed his roots in working-class Massachusetts, where he grew up a devout Catholic and Red Sox fan. He enjoyed playing insider politics and often helped Dunn, a relative newcomer to Sacramento, negotiate with more established figures on the assembly side of the capitol.

  Ultimately the bill passed unanimously in both houses and Gov. Graham “Gray” Davis signed the bill into law on July 13. It would take effect January 1, 2003. Anderson had not waited but instead filed suits ahead of the law’s approval. In Minnesota his law partners challenged his judgment, noting that in many of these cases he had already failed. They considered the expenses related to these claims, and protested more loudly than ever. This conflict reached a crisis point as they demanded that he get out of all the California cases. Anderson summoned his partners into an office where he said, “I have to do this. You don’t believe in it. I want a divorce.” The partnership would be dissolved in six months, but disputes over future revenues would continue for years.

  * * *

  In the history of the abuse crisis, no single act would have greater effect than the opening of the California window. In 2002, the twelve dioceses of California faced more than a thousand potential plaintiffs in lawsuits alleging abuse by hundreds of priests. The state was also home to more than a dozen attorneys with the expertise, experience, and resources to pursue multiple cases in every jurisdiction in California. Most of these attorneys had turned to Jeffrey Anderson for guidance and he had taught them much of what he knew. He would remain a presence, as either co-counsel or consultant, in hundreds of cases.

  If precedent had been established in prior cases like the O’Grady trial in Stockton or the DiMaria settlement in Los Angeles, the Church and its insurance companies faced liabilities that might exceed $1 billion. The money did provide a kind of incentive for victims and lawyers, but it wasn’t their sole motivation. The people who had been abused wanted the Church to recognize their injuries, take responsibility, and implement reforms. The same desires inspired the majority of the prominent lawyers and activists who took up this cause because they too were Catholics and they believed what the Church said about justice.

  21. THE OPEN WINDOW

  There were more than a few things about Emery Worldwide that appealed to Patrick Wall. For one, the air freight business required order and organization and Wall’s previous experience as a Benedictine monk and Catholic priest made him familiar with both. Emery also took advantage of Wall’s work ethic, sending him out as a salesman to knock on doors and win new business. But most of all, Wall appreciated the paychecks Emery gave him. Considering the struggle he had endured looking for a job in the midst of a recession with nothing on his résumé but his assignments as a Catholic priest, Emery’s money was a godsend. It also came with generous benefits, which a man with family needed.

  At five foot ten and two hundred thirty-five pounds, Wall had played college football and he looked like one of the Emery guys who had worked himself up from a freight-handler’s position to an office job. His bright blue eyes, fair skin, and short-cropped blond hair also made him look far younger than his thirty-seven years. Then there was the way he talked. Raised on a farm in tiny Lake City, Minnesota, Wall never sounded unpleasant or judgmental or pushy. He could listen to a client tell the same joke at every meeting, and chuckle every time he heard it.

  When Wall was dating, a few women guessed he had once been a priest. One even asked him to hear her confession. (He declined.) But after he married in 2001 and settled in at Emery he began to feel like a real civilian. The only things that called him back to his clerical past were the occasional reports he read about clergy abuse. He felt deep sadness for the victims, anger toward the institutional Church, and a twinge of guilt because more than most priests, he had been part of the system of cover-up.

  Wall had been educated at St. John’s,
the same monastery in Minnesota that produced Richard Sipe. There he had adapted to the rules and endured the silence and tried to block from memory the strange stories that made him think something was not quite right about the place. In one, a senior priest informed him that a classmate had suffered a nervous breakdown and left the grounds in the middle of a winter night. The young man was on a highway off-ramp raving about how he “must see God right away.” Students picked him up in their car and delivered him to a hospital. Wall learned later that his classmate had been stark naked when he was found. He never asked his superiors why they left this detail out of their reporting, or what had happened to the fellow.

  Brother Patrick got his first experience cleaning up after an abuse case before he finished his education, when he was suddenly asked to take charge of a dormitory where a supervisor had abused a student. Wall managed to calm down the seventy boys in the dorm and the storm over his predecessor passed. This success led to assignments in parishes where priests had been chased out by scandal. One was St. Mary’s of Stillwater, where three victims had accused a priest of abuse and Wall lived within sight of Jeff Anderson’s home. Another was in St. Paul, where he discovered that the pastor was having a sexual relationship with a nun and $100,000 in parish money had been placed in secret checking accounts that only they could access.

  Through his service as a fixer for parishes, Wall became a spokesman for a Church sex abuse response team and used denial, diversion, and his calming personality to minimize the effects of scandal. As a member of this team, Wall first heard the term “monk’s disease” to describe the idea that isolation and celibacy increased the likelihood that a monk would abuse minors. He was stunned by the number of sex abuse claims made against priests and brothers from St. John’s. On one day, nine different men accused the same monk of having abused them when they were at the seminary.

  In local communities Wall discovered more about the varied dynamics of a priest’s life than he could have ever learned as a regular pastor or in some administrative post for the Benedictines. Besides the sexual crimes and the financial shenanigans, Wall came to understand the strange power that still came with the Roman collar.

  When properly outfitted Wall could walk into a bank or an executive’s office and get immediate attention in ways that ordinary people did not. “I didn’t have to show ID or have my name on the account at the bank,” he explained. “All I had to do was say I’m Father so-and-so, the new priest at St. Whoever’s, and I got access to the money.” The collar also put him, a twenty-something fellow with little life experience, on an equal footing with the most powerful people in a community. This authority, and the obvious ways it could be abused, became a subject of conversation in his regular visits with his spiritual adviser, an elderly Dominican nun who was stunned by his stories. With her help, Wall realized he couldn’t continue to work in an institution run by men who preached a morality it couldn’t maintain. He quit the priesthood and traveled to the West Coast in hopes of beginning life anew.

  In the fall of 2001, Wall took special note of an article that attorney John Manly had published on the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times. Catholic born and educated, Manly called out the Church for its hardball legal tactics, including a countersuit the archdiocese of Portland filed against a victim. “The only way the Church can deal with this issue,” wrote Manly, “is to stop denying it, admit fault, minister to victims and expel perpetrators from the clergy.”

  Six months later, Wall happened to stop at an Emery client’s office and noticed that Manly occupied space in the same building. Without thinking much about it, he went to Manly’s suite and asked to see him. Years of practice had taught Manly to avoid cold calls and he didn’t see Wall. But he did look at the note Wall left, explaining that he was a former priest and monk from St. John’s and he wanted to talk. Manly, who had been relying on Richard Sipe for years, called him to ask if he knew anything about Wall. With a few telephone calls Sipe learned that Patrick Wall was considered by the Benedictines to be strong-willed and unmanageable. Manly called Wall to ask when he could come for a meeting.

  Manly and Wall were the same age and alike in many ways. Manly had lots of Catholic education. He had graduated from the local Mater Dei high school and attended retreats conducted by Donald Maguire, a conservative Jesuit priest famous for his close relationship with Mother Theresa of Calcutta. An outgoing, talkative storyteller who sometimes let his anger flare into view, Manly appreciated Wall’s steady presence. By October the former priest had quit Emery and was working in Manly’s small firm, interviewing prospective clients and poring over documents, including records of priest assignments. On evenings and weekends he worked long hours reviewing statements made by people who had contacted Manly to say they had been abused by priests.

  * * *

  The news reports on the “window” brought hundreds of calls to Manly’s office and to Wall’s surprise he immediately fell into a grinding routine that kept him working ten-hour days, six days per week. Much of this time was consumed with interviewing potential clients who came with a range of tragic stories about priests who harassed, molested, and raped them. Male and female, they recalled incidents that occurred when they were as young as six and as old as sixteen. Ryan DiMaria, the victim who claimed to have been abused by Father Hollywood, soon joined the team, fresh from law school.

  With Manly relieving the tension with pretend tirades and off-color jokes, the men waded through testimony to determine whether claims would hold up in court and to identify priests who seemed to be repeat offenders. Wall was especially helpful using printed Catholic directories to track priests’ assignments and match their presence in a parish with claims made by victims. He was also able to decipher Church documents and place current events in context. As Wall told Manly, the Church has been aware of the problem of sexual abuse by clergy for about a thousand years. The evidence of this concern included The Book of Gomorrah, written by St. Peter Damien in response to fears that priests were soliciting sex from parishioners. Produced in the year 1048, the book warns of the destruction that could be wrought by the abuse of children. Damien pointedly quotes the Bible’s admonition that, “Whoever scandalizes one of these little ones, it were better to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

  Manly often reflected on millstones and the deep blue sea as he pursued priest abusers and their supervisors. When initial settlement talks with Church officials in Los Angeles and Orange counties stalled, he began approaching every case with the intention of going to trial. Manly scheduled depositions with priests, vicars, bishops, and others in the Church bureaucracy and filed discovery requests for all sorts of documents. Church lawyers understood the risks that arose whenever they let a plaintiff’s attorney into a room with a bishop. In the DiMaria case a bishop named Norman McFarland actually testified in a deposition that a girl of fifteen could pose a sexual dilemma. “She may be very precocious or adult looking and everything else, and there would be a temptation there,” he explained.

  Across California dozens of attorneys also began building cases for clients who came to them seeking to make complaints while the window was open. Among them was Raymond Boucher in Los Angeles, who developed an archive of hundreds of video depositions of men and women who described how priests manipulated or coerced them into sexual acts when they were children and adolescents. The variety of sex acts described by victims was practically infinite, but certain elements in these crimes appeared again and again. In almost every case the victims were from extremely devout families and they revered the Church. Many were lonely and isolated. Offenders poured their time, money, and energy into building trust with these youngsters and with their families.

  Telling these tales typically prompted a return to the fear, anxiety, and trauma that victims experienced as children. Some found themselves contemplating suicide after their meetings with lawyers. One of Boucher’s clients acted on these feelings and killed herself.
All of the attorneys who listened and made notes on the legal aspects of what they heard struggled to maintain professional distance in client interviews. For Boucher, who knew and respected Roger Mahony, evidence showing the cardinal transferred priests and protected them from claims of abusing minors came as a personal shock and a disappointment. Jason Berry would recall that Boucher was “furious” about Mahony and said as much during an interview.

  A lifelong Catholic, Boucher was frustrated by Church officials and their lawyers, who felt they were under attack by hostile people who were determined to drain the Church of its resources. “I tried to tell them that this was not revenge, it was a reckoning,” recalled Boucher. “But they acted like they were the ones being victimized, like all anyone was after was their money.”

  The money was a factor, on all sides, because payments to victims would compensate them in real terms for their pain, suffering, and for the losses associated with depression, post-traumatic stress, and other disorders that make it difficult for people to secure an education, establish relationships, and build careers. In many jurisdictions juries had estimated these losses in excess of $1 million per person. With this figure in mind, Boucher and the other plaintiffs’ attorneys put substantial effort into tracking down every insurance policy and Church asset that might be used to pay damages to victims. Meanwhile, the Church and its insurers looked for ways to manage the litigation to preserve the institution and prevent bankruptcies.