Boston Clerical Abuse Scandal Grows

BOSTON —  Roman Catholic Church officials here overlooked for decades a range of abuses that included the molestation of girls preparing to become nuns, homosexual rape and drug use by priests with parish youth, according to confidential archdiocesan documents made public Tuesday.

The records show that as recently as last year, bishops and archbishops in Boston consistently ignored parishioners’ complaints while protecting priests and striving to minimize financial damage.

Many examples of clerical sexual abuse have become public since the nationwide scandal erupted in Boston in January. But the mountain of memorandums, letters and court filings released Tuesday casts light on offenses and church practices not previously reported, sparking new outrage among many victims and their advocates.

“This material is qualitatively different than anything we have seen until now,” said David Clohessy, national chair of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

“It debunks a whole range of excuses that church officials have used: that the allegations were all ancient, that the abuse only concerned boys and that it involved just a handful of priests,” said Clohessy, who flew in from St. Louis to review the documents. “What we see is that this is clearly a deep and systemic problem.”

Donna M. Morrissey, spokeswoman for the archdiocese here, did not return a call Tuesday seeking comment on the new material.

The disclosures come amid speculation that the Boston archdiocese may file for bankruptcy protection because so many abuse cases are pending against it. The revelations were mandated by court order as part of a series of civil suits brought by sexual-abuse victims and their families.

Lawyers for the archdiocese at first resisted the edict from Superior Court Judge Constance Sweeney, but in an eleventh-hour reversal, they complied by presenting plaintiffs’ lawyers with 11,000 pages of partially redacted documents -- many written in the careful Catholic school cursive of top-ranking prelates.

In making public about 2,000 pages Tuesday, plaintiffs’ lawyer Robert Sherman said reams of additional documents would be released in coming weeks. These records were filed in court here Tuesday in preparation for future litigation.

The records produced Tuesday focused on several priests whose cases until now had not come to light. Among them was Father Robert Meffan, “a name I had never heard of,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Roderick MacLeish Jr., who has represented clerical abuse victims for more than a decade.

Following complaints about Meffan, the late Cardinal Humberto Medeiros recommended as early as 1977 that the priest seek help from “some professional person.” Instead, he moved into a trailer and set up shop as a counselor. By 1985, he was back in service as a parish priest. The following year, a handwritten document from Bishop Robert Banks recorded allegations that Meffan was engaged in sexual acts with girls as young as 15 who were preparing to become nuns.

A 1993 confidential report filed in the archdiocese recounted how Meffan would allegedly “attract adolescent girls, get them to enter religious orders and then visit them in various novitiates. He would link spiritual stages with sexual acts, ‘what one has to do in order to progress,’ and would perform the acts,” the report stated.

The teenage girls -- at least three of whom went on to become nuns -- often met with Meffan in his rectory office, a subsequent report continued. An archdiocesan memo from 1993 alleged that Meffan taught the girls to be “brides of Christ.” When questioned by church officials, Meffan denied any knowledge of such practices, the “personal and confidential” memo indicated.

The documents contain no reference to legal action involving Meffan, nor do the records express concern for the girls or their families.

When he was nearly 70, Meffan left his priestly duties. In a “Dear Father Robert” letter dated July 10, 1996, Cardinal Bernard Law praised Meffan for “the depth of your faith and the courage of your heart.” There was no answer Tuesday night at a telephone number listed for Meffan in southeastern Massachusetts.

Another priest whose story was not well known until Tuesday was Father Richard Buntel. In 1981, Bishop Thomas V. Daily received a letter from the auxiliary bishop of Boston voicing concern about Buntel’s alcoholism and repeated use of drugs. The letter informed Daily, now bishop of Brooklyn, N.Y., that Buntel apparently was distributing drugs to young people.

“It is said that at his previous parish he was called ‘pothead’ by some in the parish -- probably by young people,” Father John M. D’Arcy wrote. “I am told that the drug involved was cocaine.”

D’Arcy’s letter concluded: “It is my conviction, as I believe it is yours as well, that we who are in the positions of responsibility have the obligation to try to prevent scandal in those cases where it seems almost definite that it will occur.”

A 1994 memo about Buntel said the priest showed pornography magazines to young visitors in his rectory bedroom, where -- although the door was shut -- the smell of marijuana seeped out. The memo reported that Buntel had oral sex with males ages 15 to 21, who saw bags of cocaine and piles of money in his room.

Most galling of all, said Joe Gallagher, co-founder of an advocacy group here called the Coalition of Catholics and Survivors, “This person was never reported to the authorities.”

MacLeish, the attorney, said he had “no idea” where Buntel is now.

For Father Robert Burns, the trail of abuse began in Youngstown, Ohio, where he was a priest from 1975 to 1981. Church officials there determined that he had sexually abused young boys, and, in 1981, they sent him to a counseling program for pedophiles in Massachusetts. Soon, Burns was applying for a temporary position in the Boston archdiocese.

James W. Malone, then-bishop of the Youngstown diocese, alerted Boston officials to Burns’ sexual history. He urged them not to assign him to church work where he might have contact with young boys.

In reply, Father Gilbert S. Phinn, director of personnel for the Boston archdiocese, promised that Burns’ placement would be handled with “sensitivity and concern.” Yet Burns was eventually placed in two parishes, first in Jamaica Plain, Mass., and then in Charlestown, Mass., where he regularly came into contact with minors. Boston archdiocesan authorities did not warn the local churches of his record, even though they had written “problem: little children” in a 1982 internal memo about Burns.

It took nine years for a flurry of accusations to surface that Burns had sexually molested a series of boys. In one case, attorney Laurence E. Hardoon said his 14-year-old client was “anally raped” by the priest in the rectory of a Boston church. As the allegations grew, Burns was removed from his post. Church leaders urged him to once again undergo counseling for pedophilia.

In 1991, Cardinal Bernard Law officially terminated Burns’ assignment in Boston.

“Life is never just one moment or one event and it would be unrealistic to have too narrow a focus. It would have been better were things to have ended differently, but such was not the case,” Law wrote to Burns. “Nevertheless I still feel that it is important to express my gratitude to you for the care you have given to the people of the Archdiocese of Boston “

Burns pleaded guilty in 1996 to sexually molesting two boys under the age of 13 in New Hampshire. He was sentenced to two consecutive four- to eight-year terms.

He was formally stripped of his clerical duties three years later by order of the Vatican. In a letter to Rome, Law said the archdiocese had “mistakenly accepted [Burns’] word of contrition as a pledge against further acts of sexual molestation of children. Despite treatment for this behavior, Father Burns continued to commit these egregious acts.”

Another priest whose records were made public Tuesday was accused in 1975 of pushing his 58-year-old housekeeper down the stairs of his residence and pulling out large clumps of her hair. In response, then-Bishop Daily urged that Father Thomas B. Forry be terminated.

Instead, he was reassigned to another parish south of Boston. In 1984, archdiocesan officials received a letter from a woman claiming an 11-year sexual relationship with Forry. Some years later, the woman contacted the archdiocese to allege that Forry had sexually abused her son.

Forry went on to serve as a chaplain in the Army and at a prison. “I am confident that you will render fine priestly service to those with whom you come in contact,” Law wrote to Forry in 1994.

Forry’s assignment to the Emergency Response Team of the Boston Archdiocese was ended in February of this year. There was no indication of any legal action taken against him. There was no answer at Forry’s residence Tuesday night in South Boston.

Even those who have spent nearly a year surrounded by the scandal said they were stunned by the array of offenses detailed in the new documents. Almost as appalling, said Gallagher, of the Coalition of Catholics and Survivors, was the absence of compassion for victims on the part of church leaders.

“At this point in time, we have not seen a single reference to the issue of pastoral care for the victims,” Gallagher said.

Coming out of Boston, where the clerical abuse scandal first unraveled, the disclosures carry special weight, Clohessy said.

“There is no other archdiocese in the country where the extent of the problem has been so clearly identified,” he said. “But having said that, I am not saying Boston is the worst.”

Phil de Albuquerque, a kitchen designer who has protested outside Law’s cathedral for nearly a year, said the new material filled him with sadness. “I think that after today, every Catholic is a victim,” he said. “A victim of deceit and betrayal.”

*

Actions by the Archdiocese:

The documents released Tuesday by the Boston Roman Catholic archdiocese shed light on how church officials responded to

individual cases, including these:

Reverend’s advice: In 1991, as accusations about Father Robert Burns began to surface, Father John B. McCormack, secretary for ministerial personnel with the archdiocese, met with the family of one alleged victim and recounts in a memo his advice to the family: “I also felt that what would be helpful is if their son could learn to be forgiving. But this will come later. I added that I didn’t think compensation would be helpful to their son. It is not what he needs.”

Seeking restitution: When an attorney representing another alleged victim asked the archdiocese to pay for hospitalization of the boy, who had become a drug addict as a result of the abuse, Sister Rita V. McCarthy advised Cardinal Bernard Law in a 1997 memo: “We do not pay for inpatient assistance. This would set a precedent.”

The boy’s attorney, Timothy P. O’Connell, fired back in a letter: “Should not the victim of a pedophile be entitled to the same care as the pedophile? Father Burns was treated by a clinical psychologist at St. Luke’s Institute in the fall of 1991. He was also treated at the House of Affirmation in 1981. [My client] deserves the same treatment.”

Offering support: In a 1993 letter to a priest at the Jamaica Plain, Mass., rectory where Burns was alleged to have molested several boys, McCormack counseled a colleague to offer pastoral support to a parent of one victim: “However, at the same time, never admit to her that you know anything about a legal process. This is supposed to be absolutely confidential. My reason for telling you this was to alert you to this.”

‘No good reason’: When a 22-year-old man approached Father Brian M. Flatley in 1996, saying he had been molested by Burns as a boy at St. Thomas Aquinas rectory in Charlestown, Mass., Flatley said church officials believed Burns had been previously cured: “The young man asked if we told anyone at St. Thomas about Father Burns’ past. I said no, that Father Thomas knew nothing. He asked how we could have done that. I told him there is no good reason.”

Condolences: After 1991 accusations that he had sexually abused boys, Burns left his post at St. Thomas Aquinas. McCormack wrote to express condolences over the passing of Burns’ elderly aunt and added: “In all of this, God has blessed you with a great capacity of insight and understanding.”

A mother’s response: In a 1999 letter to O’Connell, the mother of another alleged victim said her son had suppressed the story about Burns for years: “I questioned him, why didn’t he come to his father and me? If he did, you can rest assured that one of us would be in jail now. We would have killed the bastard that violated a child of ours.”

Source: Boston Archdiocese