"Friends of Monsignor John" Not Friends to Sex-Abuse Victims

The "Friends of Monsignor John," a support group for embattled Diocese of Orange Monsignor John Urell that counts as members OC Blog founder Matt "Jubal" Cunningham and Rancho Santiago Community College District board president John Hanna, claim they care about sex-abuse victims. Indeed, a page on their website asks readers to "Please pray for these young women [who recently settled civil suits against the Orange diocese], for their healing, their serenity and that their hearts will always remain open to Christ."

As we wrote before, we didn't see much concern for those women when Urell supporters showed up in court last Monday. And now it can be told that any concern for sex-abuse victims these friends of Urell purport to keep in their hearts is just chasing after wind.

The Weekly has learned that for the past two days, the Friends of Monsignor John website made available an unredacted version of Urell's deposition, the deposition that made the monsignor go loco. In the course of the deposition, the names of six sex-abuse victims were revealed. None of them consented to having their names revealed to the public, and so the depositions made available to the press and posted online by the Orange County Register had the names redacted. Besides, it's common sense: don't publish the name of a sex-abuse victim without their permission. Try telling that to Friends of Monsignor John.

If you go to their website, there is now a redacted deposition. But the Weekly was able to download the unredacted Urell deposition before the Friends of Monsignor John site administrator took them down to verify their case of foot-in-mouth. Yep: None of the victims' names were redacted in the deposition first offered by Friends of Monsignor John, and also attached was a index which listed the names of the victims again.

Needless to say, the sex-abuse victims whose names were revealed are livid. Even more cruelly, one of them (let's call him John Doe) has a connection to Cunningham. In a letter that Doe's attorney John Manly sent to Cunningham this afternoon demanding the unredacted Urell deposition be taken down immediately, Manly wrote, "We have been contacted by one of our clients whose brother's child is in your car pool. To say [John Doe] is irate and wants to sue you for everything you own is understating his fury. He is a police officer, and to compromise his identity places him in immediate damage and has subjected him to excruciating emotional distress."

**UPDATE: The Friends now post an apology. "There was no intention to harm anyone," the mea culpa states. "It simply didn't occur to redact the names." Of course it didn't occur: all the Friends care about is spinning for their dear Monsignor. They could care less about the victims. Proof? It's in the pudding.