Doing Well and Good

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Newhouse News Service

May 2, 2002 Thursday

SECTION: LIFESTYLE

LENGTH: 2041 words

HEADLINE: Victims' Determination, Lawyers' Tactics Finally Got Church's Attention

BYLINE: By TOM BRECKENRIDGE; Tom Breckenridge is a staff writer for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. He can be contacted at tbreckenridge(at)plaind.com.

BODY:

Their voices, tinged with both hurt and defiance, told stories that were painful to hear.

But people like Barbara Blaine would not stop talking about abuse at the hands of priests.

And lawyers like Jeffrey Anderson would not stop suing the Roman Catholic Church.

For nearly 20 years, a dogged band of victims and lawyers has pursued justice and money from the church with varying success, little notoriety and, at times, a hurtful blast of scorn.

Now the news media crave their crusading stories. They have propelled prosecutors' demands for files of abuse by priests. And they watched as Pope John Paul II huddled with the American church's anxious cardinals, who hope to put the sexual scandal on a righteous, healing track. The pope stated unequivocally: "There is no place in the priesthood ... for those who would harm the young." Blaine of Chicago and David Clohessy of St. Louis thought they would never see such a time. They've been fielding dozens of phone calls a week as leaders of SNAP Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. The national support and advocacy group formed 11 years ago.

"Not in my wildest dreams," says Clohessy, 45, SNAP's national director. "I knew that with good lawyers and assertive survivors, there would continue to be case after case. But did I expect this? Absolutely not."

Anderson, a hard-charging lawyer in St. Paul, Minn., probably has sued wayward priests and their dioceses more than any attorney in America.

The most recent of his 500 lawsuits accuses three Catholic dioceses of violating racketeering laws that are typically used against organized crime. Anderson has sued the Vatican, too.

"I've been screaming about this from the rooftops for 20 years," says Anderson, 54.

His phone will not stop ringing. His law firm is cranking out six to 12 letters a day informing dioceses across the country of "credible" evidence that a former or current priest has sexually abused a minor and that the dioceses need to call authorities.

"I've gone a month without rest or relaxation, but I am not complaining," Anderson says. "I'd love to get out of this work and go to something else, but ... this is not of my making."

For victims of sexual abuse, the national expression of outrage and sympathy is worlds removed from the isolation and psyche-scarring memories they have borne for years. Typically, they keep their stories secret for a decade or more, Anderson says.

"Sexual abuse by a care-giving figure is a crime of secrecy," he says. "Victims suffer without being able to disclose it."

Blaine says she was a 13-year-old eighth-grader when she began an intimate, four-year relationship with a priest at St. Pius X Church in Toledo, Ohio. She says the experience left her unable to trust men.

Blaine was 29 in 1985 and reading an article on priests abusing altar boys when her heart started to pound. She says she began to sweat and to breathe heavily as the impact of such abuse registered.

Rather than continue suffering in silence, Blaine and others say, they sought justice. What they found were more victims and a church that did not embrace their claims, they say.

Blaine says she was bounced between the diocese of Toledo and the religious order that had ordained the cleric she accused. When the church would not remove the priest from the ministry, Blaine went public with her charges. A few other women stepped forward, and the priest was forced to resign.

During her fight with the church, a disillusioned Blaine sought other survivors. She found their names by culling newspaper articles. What began as a core of 12 to 15 men and women has grown into a 2,400-member group. SNAP's Web site is www.survivorsnetwork.org.

Clohessy joined in 1991, haunted and depressed by memories of a parish priest that Clohessy says molested him from age 11 to 16 in his hometown of Moberly, Mo.

Clohessy, Blaine and a handful of others took their stories to newspapers, national talk shows and even to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, where they picketed annual meetings in the early 1990s. Due in part to SNAP, the news media began paying more attention to abuse by priests. But then came 1993, when Steven Cook charged that he had been molested by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who was then head of the Chicago church.

Cook later recanted the claim, admitting he could not rely on the accuracy of his repressed memories.

"The public sentiment (about these cases) clearly changed," Blaine says. "It had a negative impact on our movement. After that, people were more suspicious" of victims' stories.

The scandal of wayward priests slipped from the national consciousness, but not from the focus of lawyers like Anderson and Anthony Fontana, 52, of Abbeville, La. They were pioneers in a lucrative legal niche suing the Catholic Church because of sex-abusing clergy.

Fontana took on victims of the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, a popular, motorcycling priest in Lafayette, La., who was arrested in 1983. Gauthe eventually received a 20-year prison sentence for molesting 11 boys, the first nationally publicized scandal of sex abuse by a priest. "We all thought Gauthe was a blip on the screen," Fontana says. "But it went on and on."

Fontana has gained millions of dollars in settlements representing victims abused by clergy in 10 states. Anderson, the Minnesota lawyer, has been the Catholic Church's nemesis for nearly 20 years. He says he took his first case in 1983 when a couple walked in with a $1,500 check. They had received it shortly after complaining to the St. Paul diocese about a priest molesting their son. Anderson says he later settled the case for more than $1 million.

He has grown rich suing the Catholic Church. A Florida newspaper reported recently that Anderson has gained $60 million in judgments and settlements, a figure Anderson does not dispute.

Anderson's critics say he overheats his clients' claims to leverage the largest settlements possible. "I think he tends to be far more inflammatory than is appropriate," says lawyer Andre J. Eisenzimmer, who has defended the Minneapolis-St. Paul diocese against Anderson's clients. "He might allege a cover-up, when in fact it is far less than that."

But, Eisenzimmer says, Anderson has never demonized the church or crossed an ethical line in representing his clients.

Others are less kind. Anderson displays hate mail on his office wall in which he is variously described as a "piece of garbage," a "scum maggot" and a "WASP, Swede, bigoted, shyster lawyer."

Accusers of molesting priests have faced their share of public scorn and skepticism as well. Fontana says some of his clients were harassed and harangued in what is a largely Catholic region of Louisiana. One family woke up to a vulgarity painted on the street in front of their home, he says.

Blaine says she has received death threats. Two weeks ago, she got an anonymous letter telling her she was condemned to hell.

Lawyers Anderson and Fontana say they're not averse to playing legal hardball with dioceses that deny or minimize blame.

Likewise, the church has every right to defend itself, says Michael Hurley, spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"People are well aware that part of the legal system is using everything you can at your disposal to achieve your goal," Hurley says. "That's what has happened with some of the suits over the years."

But the church is taking a contrite stance these days, in the face of coast-to-coast criticism. Blaine, Clohessy and others did the right thing in trumpeting the plight of victims, Hurley says.

"They basically have brought to the attention of the church this tragedy; it is right they did so," Hurley says. "The church doesn't have any hard feelings or any misgivings about them. They are doing what they need to do."

Blaine's story of sexual abuse gained her a settlement from the church, which she says is confidential. She now works in the Cook County (Ill.) Office of the Public Guardian, a government agency that provides legal representation for minors who are victims of abuse. Clohessy hired Anderson to sue the church but never gained a settlement. Courts ruled that the statute of limitations had expired on Clohessy's assault and battery claims. The priest he accused left the Missouri diocese shortly after Clohessy filed the lawsuit.

Clohessy says he feels sadness, not vindication, at the number of victims who have emerged as the scandal grew. "At some point, years from now, I'll feel vindication," Clohessy says. "I just feel overwhelming sadness because so much of this could have been prevented."

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