Here's John Manly, the Newport Beach lawyer who represented four sex-abuse victims of employees with the Orange diocese, on the $6.885 million settlement announced this afternoon:
Today, Bishop Tod Brown and the Diocese of Orange agreed, at the point of a legal gun and on the eve of trial, to settle four civil cases brought by women who were sexually abused as young girls between 1991 and 1999 by employees of the Diocese of Orange.
Most of the abuse took place in the mid to late 1990s by staff at Mater Dei High School, Santa Margarita High School, and St. Timothy’s and St. Edward’s parishes.
The behavior of the Diocese of Orange and their agents with respect to the efforts of these victims to seek justice has been abhorrent and despicable.
In two instances, the Diocese of Orange directed their lawyers to take the depositions of the victims for more than 7 days each. The intent of the Diocese of Orange was to break the victims. The Diocese failed.
The press release of the Diocese of Orange, which speaks of “the moral obligation for the Church” and “the process of healing and reconciliation” is nothing more, nor less, than a litany of misstatements, misrepresentations, and outright falsehoods.
At no point throughout this entire process, did anyone from the Diocese of Orange, or their lawyers, say a kind word, offer healing, or do anything other than try to defeat the spirit of these four brave women.
The victims have asked me to specifically thank Judge Gail Andler, her courtroom staff, Judge Tim McCoy, and all the other judicial officers of the Superior Court of the Counties of Orange and Los Angeles who worked so diligently for justice in this case.
Further advisories will be forthcoming.
**UPDATE: In the interest of the other side, read the statement by Monsignor John Urell's lawyer, Patrick Hennessey, after the jump. My thoughts in a coming post...
I am extremely disappointed at the news of the settlement. Msgr. Urell’s good name has been dragged through the mud by the irresponsible and untruthful comments made by plaintiff’s attorneys.
Rather than try the case under the scrutiny of the court and the rules of evidence, plaintiff’s attorneys tried this case in the news media using half-truths and innuendo.
A trial would have proven without a doubt that Msgr. Urell had absolutely nothing to do with the case before the Court. The public also would have learned that Msgr. Urell is truly ill, a fact supported by the sworn declarations of the two independent psychiatrists who are treating Msgr. Urell.
Msgr. Urell, who was a minor witness with no knowledge of this case, did not enter a residential treatment facility to avoid completing his deposition.
Plaintiff’s attorneys' treatment of Msgr. Urell in the news media was cruel and unfair and reflected callousness towards an innocent man and for all people who suffer from a debilitating emotional illness. I think plaintiff’s attorneys' behavior toward Msgr. Urell was shameful.
Msgr. Urell’s family, friends and loved ones will now focus on supporting him.
One quick note: wonder why I had to visit OC Blog for this? If Hennessey is so concerned about media coverage, why doesn't he include the Weekly in his mailing list?
October 6, 2007 04:24
One certainly doesn't have to be a canon lawyer to figure out why Bishop Tod Brown settled. There were too many variables that were not under his control, including his own "Contempt of Court" hearing:
"Attorneys for the bishop said they had not reached the settlement to avoid Brown's contempt of court hearing, which is scheduled for Tuesday. Brown will insist on going forward with the hearing to clear his name, said Peter Callahan, the bishop's attorney."
Please!
I find that simply too difficult to digest. Brown should be held in contempt. His actions and behavior are unacceptable.
If all the documents ARE released as part of the deal, and that presumes that some have not be destroyed or sent by to the Holy See in Rome by way of the Apostolic Delegate's diplomatic pouch, we may begin to see the extent of the particular cover-up in the Diocese of Orange, California.
What I find particularly reprehensible is Tod Brown's following statement:
"The settlement of these civil cases represents the moral obligation for the church for such behavior by adults in positions of responsibility," Bishop Tod D. Brown said in a statement.
Please!
THE MORAL OBLIGATION OF THE CHURCH IN THE PERSON OF THE DIOCESAN BISHOP CAME INTO EXISTENCE THE MOMENT THE CHURCH, THE BISHOP, THE HEAD OF THE DIOCESAN CURIA, THE MONSIGNOR IN CHARGE OF PRIEST OR SCHOOL PERSONNEL, FOUND OUT THAT AN INDIVIDUAL OR INDIVIDUALS FOR WHOM THEY WERE RESPONSIBLE, BEGAN RAPING, SODOMIZING, MOLESTING OR ABUSING CHILDREN, YOUNG PEOPLE OR VUNERABLE ADULTS.
Please!
AND THE POLICE SHOULD HAVE BEEN CALL IMMEDIATELY.
PLEASE DO NOT INSULT VICTIMS BY SAYING, "IF WE KNEW THEN WHAT WE KNOW NOW."
I can think of more than a few bishops and archbishops, including Brown and Mahony, who need to be sent to jail.
Catherine Mary Henry
Havertown, Pennsylvania
Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
catherinemaryhenry@yahoo.com
October 6, 2007 05:10
One of the articles re the settlement of these cases states that the total payments made by the criminal bish club to their victims is up to $2,300,000,000. That, I assume, is the official amount. Just think of all the additional millions (tens of millions? hundreds of millions?) that have been paid out over the years (centuries?) as under-the-table, hush money payments to assure the silence of rape/molestation/abuse victims.
Makes one want to drop even more into the Sunday collection plate, doesn't it?
October 6, 2007 06:12
John,
Will Brown be charged with obstruction? He should you know.
October 6, 2007 08:38
Once again the church settles once they realize that
the truth must be told.
Patrick Hennessey, Urell's lawyer is disgusted at how the victims lawyer's treated his client who has a debilitating emotional illness. Hey Hennessey, what do you think you and every other lawyer who represents the church have done to victims who truly have a debilitating emotional illness. Urell's illness is a direct result of covering up the crimes of fellow priests and protecting Bishop Brown's ass.
I'm sure Urell had a miraculous recovery once Brown decided to write a check.
I'm sure all lay catholics will continue to turn a blind eye and drop their hard earned money into the collection basket. What fools!!
October 6, 2007 15:34
In this most recent victory for the Sexually Victimized Children of the Roman Catholic Church, I applaud the courage of the Victims, along with the skill and tenacity of their Legal Representatives. They took on the most power religious entity in the world and won. But there are others who also need to be thanked. I speak of the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press. And in these Southern California Cases, I refer, most especially, to the Orange County Weekly; and again, most specifically, to Gustavo Arellano. Some might call the OCW a, RAG MAG. But, when the Roman Catholic Church had abandoned the Lost Children of the Faith who had been sexually butchered by RC Priests, Brothers, Deacons, Nun, and Lay Workers, it took this Magnificent RAG MAG, and Gustavo Arellano, to stand up and fight for the sacred dignity and rights of children everywhere. Pope Ratzinger criticizes our right, as a free people, to support a Free Press. Well, To Him, And To All Of You, I Say, LONG LIVE THE FOURTH ESTATE!!!!
October 6, 2007 15:59
This Roman Catholic is neither blind, nor anyone's fool, about the overtly corrupt Holy See.
Brown, Mahony, Brom, Barnes, Steinbock, Curry, Weigland, Walsh, Rivera, Egan, George, Law, O'Malley, and most of the less than 3,500 global red hats and miters' CABAL, must be removed from office, to account for their over criminal multi decades of ENABLING!
Brom's stunt today, in San Diego, asking all San Diego Diocese priests to donate a month's salary to the settlement costs, is but one more ploy that is so outrageous, as to prompt a response as: "AFTER YOU Robert Brom forfeit your pension, salary, job, and all earthy hidden, real, known, or embezzled assets, as well as returning all the felons you are hiding overseas from justice,to prevent them from testifying against you!".
Additionally, each of the above, MUST be canoncially censored, like pedophile founder Marciel of the Legionnaires of Christ (or Francis MacIntyre was in LA, or Timothy Manning skating only by death avoided - with his late Vicar General, Benjamin Hawkes, a major pedophile ring leader, and like the still yet to be disbanded Chicago Archdiocese Boy's Club (another major priest pedophile ring).
Additionally, all the above, must be sentenced for LIFE to remote, hard labor, bad food, cold, dark, monasteries, or if they refuse, swiftly, and irrevocably, EXCOMMUNICATED!
The $2.3 billion dollar number mention by a fellow commenter, is for the USA only, and the 'official or admitted to $$$ number'.
I have tracked and documented at least $11.2 Billion USD globally, from published and vetted reports ($3.2 Billion USD alone in tiny Ireland since 1970), in the past 45 years, paid out by the Church, trying to keep this ongoing sexual assault of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN under wraps.
The ONLY WAY to stop the continued enabling and pimping by the miters and red hats, and force their removal, is to stop ALL DONATIONS OF ANY KIND OR IN ANY CATEGORY by all the 1.1 Billion laity, paying 100% of the bills, until they are each removed.
Any representations that the US NCCB Charter of Protection (a total PR stunt) is in any way protecting children in the USA, is a total FRAUD.
Your children are STILL in real danger!
Any representations 'this is wrapping up' or 'behind the Church now', even makes The Devil Himself blush in envy; it's not even begun!
We might each ask ourselves, how STUPID can these individual miters or red hats be, to have allowed this to go on so long? Was it arrogance that they were, or are,or will remain, 'untouchable'?
The answer, I believe, resides in Brother Occumm's Razor, "Invariably the simplest answer tends to be the correct one." This is a wonderful indicator toward real TRUTH, in religion and/or science. I make my living in hard formulation science.
I strongly suspect, in all my reading of the primary court documents of thousands of cases, the JJ Report, verbal conversation with hundreds of clergy, up to, and including, Cardinals, the 'answer' really is more rooted in BLACKMAIL; as in the bishops, archbishops, and cardinals themselves have each been compromised,(sexually, financially, and/or criminally), and therefore, 'looked the other way', and continue to 'look the other way'. A path of least resistance.
Such paths invariably lead to HELL.
Edmund Burke reminds each of us, "The only condition for EVIL to exist, is for good men (or women) to do nothing." That quote, my fellow laity, is on a metal plaque, near the remains of a mass grave of Jewish bones, Gypsy bones, and brave Roman Catholic clergy bones, on the German-Polish border. The grave was put there by NAZI's "just following orders".
There are STILL many hundreds, to several thousands, of ordained pedophiles, and child sexual rapists, sodomizers, oral copulators, mental torturers, physical maimers, and yes, even murderers and kidnappers, as well as extortioners, in active ministry in the USA, and globally, in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as actively being hidden (as in the case of Urell in Canada, or O'Grady, on the run again, from DELIVER US FROM EVIL, the 2006 US Academy Award Best Documentary nominated film you can watch for free at www.youtube.com on Mahony's overt criminal guilt), in foreign countries (Ireland and Mexico are but only 2, of over 120, that are documented).
These harbored fugutives from justice are still being paid, hush monied, pensioned, salaried, annutied, or "angeled", from laity paid for revenues (primarily to prevent their testimony against the miters and red hats who have actively enabled them through COUNTLESS transfers, to prey again).
The latest updated joke (taken originally from Jay Leno's Late Night Show)is:
"Yes, things are getting so heated-up, as to the direct complicity and cooperation of Joseph Ratzinger, former CDF Prelate, in the global ongoing sexual scandal cover up, the Anglicans, in negotiations with the Curia, are considering a 'trade' for Benedict XVI th, for a couple of their gay bishops, and some first round draft choices..."
There is something else, you, my fellow laity, need to know; the false and deflecting attempt to blame this all on the "Lavender Mafia", or gay celebate ordained, is another RED Herring.
Are their many good and gracious gay celebate ordained in the Roman Catholic Church in the USA and elswhere today? YES. Numbers vary, on whom you listen to, or believe, but it's probably about 20%, give or take 5%, or about double that of the general population average.
Are these priests, monsignors, bishops, arch bishops, and cardinals, that are celebate gays, all criminals or pedophiles? No, but they are more likely to be blackmailed as a result, even when celebate, and true to their vows and service to us laity, if not our Creator.
And fellow laity, there are some among the gay ordained that are sexually active, as are many straight ordained, and both also in the criminal element of the priesthood, and Curia, also.
As a matter of fact, the nephew of the current Pope is GAY, and runs a bar in Munich, openly proud of his Uncle, with many pictures on the walls of his business of his Uncle.
In point of fact, this is not about sexuality that GOD created, it's about premediated criminality.
Christ's prophetic warning to each of us remains: "They who are without sin, cast the first stone!"
As Jesus sqatted down at eye level to the prositute, taking her hand, having probably been scribbing the names of those ready to throw stones at her, each male name in the sand, for each other to SEE, and each, sheepishly dropping their stone and shirking away, he remarked, with no tone of judgement:
"Go, and sin no more", which to this day echos in each of our souls.
We are ALL sinners.
Sin requires forgiveness (not poltically or legally calculated 'apologies' like that out of the Teflon Mahony playbook), but not without admission of guilt, and JUST penance for harm committed, PRIOR to absolution.
The Curia are overtly criminal sinners in this regard, and have been for a very long time, and must each individually pay in these evil deeds, in this life, if they have even the slightess chance of reaching the next, they each once professed and claimed to defend.
There will be no peace in any Kingdom without justice.
Amen.
Respectfully submitted,
Russ Bianchi
Lay Member of the Diocese of Monterey, CA
October 6, 2007 20:25
Why is it that Enron's responsible leaders are in jail, Martha Stewart went to jail, Conrad Black was brought to trial, was found guilty and is awaiting his sentencing...but Cardinal Bernard Law is an Archpriest in Rome, Cardinal Mahony lives in his palace in Los Angeles, and Bishop Brom and all the other Bishops guilty of cover-up of the worst crime in church history are not in jail but rather living as Princes of the Church in their Bishops' Palaces? Why are the priests guilty of clergy sexual abuse not in jail (except for a few handful)? Why are none of these pedophile priests excommunicated or "notified" like Jon Sobrino.
( http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html) Does this mean that those pedophile priests got their doctrines on the divinity of Jesus Christ correctly exactly the way John Paul II said it and wanted it, and therefore they could sodomize and sexually abuse thousands of children as they said Mass daily? Therefore doctrine is more important than charity and justice?
(http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html ) All these can be answered with two words - Opus Dei! The Opus Dei controls the Vatican and the Church and state governments.
If we have any sense of justice left in the separation between Church and State in America -- Cardinals Law, Mahony, Bishop Brom et al should all be arrested, brought to trial immediately and jailed like any other citizen. Why are none of them in jail? Are they not citizens of the land like everybody else, like those leaders of Enron, Martha Stewart and Conrad Black? The Opus Dei's Midas touch seems to be working (for now) because so far people adulate the Pope as "THE Holy Father", Cardinals and Bishops as "Good Shepherds" or "reincarnations" of Christ the Shepherd (like Dalai Lamais a reincarnation of the Buddha !)
The Opus Dei Midas Touch is very cunning as a laywer crime investigator said:
"On behalf of the church, Opus Dei subverts all secular government, Bar and Bench, Civil Service, Police, Hospitals, and most importantly, schools."
"The portrait of Opus Dei as a gang of guitar-strumming flower-people hanging around a university campus, is for the birds. Why do they want to recruit professional students in such numbers? What happens to the weak-minded and the inadequate who join to fulfill some social need that they cannot otherwise fulfill? And when they are promoted as Party Leaders, Judges , Bankers, Lawyers, Engineers, what is it that Opus Dei expects of them?"
(http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2007/10/john-paul-ii-da-vinci-code-opus-dei.html)
"From its origins, Opus Dei has worked in academic circles, nurturing a highly educated elite. Spurred on by the organisation’s message of sanctification through work, members aspire to the highest positions in society. The professions in which Opus Dei is strongest, particularly in Europe and South America,(and North America) are the media, medicine, the judiciary, education (especially at the university level), and, above all, high finance and politics." (http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/pubs/publications/1997opusdeithepopesrightarm.asp)
Today the Opus Dei celebrate worldwide the canonization of their founder Josemaria Escriba. The speed of his canonization and the fast growing number of 85,000 members Josemaria has attracted in Opus Dei's short lifespan until now may be bewildering, but not really. If Josemaria attracted 300,000 people at St. Peter's Square for his canonization, and John Paul II had 4 million people for his funeral, well, Ayatollah Khoumeni attracted 6 million people for his funeral. So the Muslims still "beat" them in numbers. And the Apostleship of Prayer that the Jesuits started and were mandated by Jesus himself when he appeared to a nun in Paray has 4 millions members worldwide.
But is there really a competition of numbers going on? Or is there a competition at all. Looks like it. And it is the Opus Dei who wants to outnumber everyone. WORLD DOMINATION is the Opus Dei's mantra. Every member's "apostolate" is to recruit another rich professional member; no,it isn't to help the poor like the JRS Jesuit Refugee Service does. Helping the poor is not a priority with the Opus Dei - that is why they placed Mother Teresa's website in their main OD webpage -- to give the illusion they care for her and the poor. But if we look at Mother Teresa's history, it is the Jesuits who have (and still does) helped her at the onset when she was discerning to leave the convent, it was a Jesuit Archbishop who approved her departure and new order, and it was a Jesuit who helped find her first house (convent). But these are not mentioned in Mother Teresa's website - because to the Opus Dei, the Jesuits must not be in the same place where they are. In their quest for WORLD DOMINATION, they seek to suppress the Jesuits and repeat the Jesuit Suppression in their cunning Octopus Dei style.
As the Opus Dei celebrate the speediest canonization of Josemaria Escriba, some poor nuns in Los Angeles are being evicted from their house to pay for Mahony's sins. Go figure "the sins of the Holy Fathers John Paul II and Josemaria Escriba have been visited upon the Sisters"! It is easy for Opus Dei to preach about Mother Teresa because she is famous and Opus Dei wants to piggyback ride on her fame but they really don't do anything for her and her nuns on a firsthand basis - it is the Jesuits who have been saying Mass daily and serving as spiritual directors for her nuns for so many years. By the way, the letters in her new book (that was at the cover of Time magazine) were written to her Jesuit spiritual director. The Jesuit are so humble they don't even post this in any of their websites. Fr. James Martin mentioned it for a split second in his appearance at the Colbert Report.
So it's a big deal that the Opus Dei handpick Moher Teresa for their website but it's no big deal that some 3 poor nuns (not famous as Mother Teresa) in Los Angeles will soon lose their humble property to be sold to pay for Mahony's $660 million sin. And Opus Dei doesn't give a hoot about them because they are not Mother Teresa's nuns.
"Yet Opus Dei admits at most only to providing spiritual support, for example, by posting chaplains to work at educational institutions or nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) run by Opus Dei members." (Catholics for Choice, op. cit.)
The Saint? Josemaria cunning and deception rules again the day and is being paid for by these poor nuns. Opus Dei pride themselves to have "women members" that the Jesuit do not have. But the Jesuits serve all women nun congregations and millions of lay women in their retreat houses, universities and schools. The JRS Jesuit Refugee Sesrvice alone serves countless of refugee women. So what if the Opus Dei have wealthy women members but they don't care about these poor nuns? What a timing on the 5th anniversary of the canonization of Escriba, while the wealthy Opus Dei members feast and party in their million dollar mansions with the Pope, Cardinals Law, Mahony, Brom et al, these nuns and the poor people they serve are being evicted. Go figure!
http://jp2m.blogspot.com/