It's blackmail, pure and simple

It shouldn't have taken so much time to figure this out.  

I have often wondered why good priests stood by and let predator priests abuse children.  So many knew about it.  So many looked the other way.  So many heard the confessions of pedophiles and did nothing. 

So many bishops plotted and schemed to keep the sexual abuse of children quiet.  "We'll take care of this.  We'll take care of Father So-and-so."  Instead, bishops moved these priest, hid them, exposed them to a new group of innocents.  The crimes continued.  

Bishops assured victim's families that they had taken care of it.  The children were too young to protest to these powerful men.  The parents didn't know what else to do.  The Catholic bishop and the priests were higher in esteem than even the police.  And the cycle of abuse continued, fostered and covered up by church authorities all the way to the top. 

But the priests.  The so-called good priests.  They remained silent.  It was more than fidelity to the brotherhood of clergy.  It was rooted in something sinister.  It was rooted in blackmail and extortion and cowardice of the worst kind.  

Here is where the sexual abuse of children meets the sexual exploitation of adult women and men.  Not able to free themselves from their own sexually abusive behavior, the priests who were engaged in sex with adults could say nothing.  If they reported a pedophile, they would themselves be revealed by these pedophiles.  Revenge and blackmail on both sides.  An ugly horrific pact of pain for the victims of both groups of abusive, exploitative clergy.  

It shouldn't have taken so much time to figure this out.  But it did.  It's blackmail, pure and simple.  

And now we know why no one saved our children.  

Knoxville and Nashville dioceses in the crosshairs of a complaint to the National Review Board concerning violations against the Dallas Charter of 2002

Read the entire complaint including letter to officials and Thomas Doyle's memorandum of support. 

If you are a victim of clergy sexual abuse either as a child or as a sexually exploited adult and you have been required to sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement or Non-Disparaging Agreement) with a Catholic Diocese since 2002, then it is null and void.   And the Catholic Church knows it!

Article 3 of the Dallas Charter of 2002 states that no victim will be silenced unless they (the victim) wants silence.  Otherwise, the bishops want us to believe that you are free to tell your story.  But you are NOT if you are made to sign any NDA that you do not wish to sign.  

A complaint was filed about this with the National Review Board on January 14, 2020.  I received an answer from Dr. Francesco Cesaro, chairman of the NRB.  He had forwarded it to Bishop Thomas Doherty for action.  

No action.  

I wrote another letter and sent to all relevant parties in October 2020 and received no answer.  

This is the pattern of the Bishops and all the Catholic hierarchy.  They just don't answer.  They just delay and delay until you go away.  

In this case, they are not going to win this argument.  They are going to be hounded more and more until they admit their wrongdoing and rectify.  

If you have an NDA that pertains to your complaint of clergy sexual abuse whether it be a private agreement with the church that you undertook yourself or with a lawyer, you should definitely NOT have been required to sign it.  

Join us in holding them accountable and let's get rid of these illegal NDAs that silence you and re-victimize you.  

Email me at susan8324@gmail.com

 Click here to read the original complaint to the National Review Board in 2020.

 A little remembering - Abuse of Bishop Anthony J. O'Connell - first bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee

Link to the best summary of Bishop Anthony J. O'Connell.  You must read this.  

Link to proof positive of the lack of transparency in the Diocese of Knoxville.  This is the entry that I found in the notebook at the St. John Vianney shrine to honor deceased priests of the Diocese of Knoxville.  This St. John Vianney Purgatorial Society notebook was installed in the new Sacred Heart Cathedral.  

After talking yesterday to a wonderful man and friend of mine who was molested by Bishop Anthony O'Connell and Father Xavier Mankel at Sacred Heart Cathedral, I decided to do a little introspection.   Sometimes we just need to make sure we remember. Or maybe we should call it making sure that we never forget.  

When Anthony J. O'Connell left St. Thomas Aquinas Preparatory Seminary and became the first bishop of Knoxville, it was a euphoric day in East Tennessee.  But we would come to regret that day in many ways.  We got a new name, Diocese of Knoxville.  We got a new bishop, and he was a pedophile. 

This is not in dispute although if you talk to many members of the Diocese of Knoxville they will deny it.  This is how poor the leadership of the next bishops of Knoxville have been.  

I remember sitting in the office of Bishop Joseph E. Kurtz with his Chancellor, Father James "Vann" Johnson in attendance.  The subject of the meeting was for three moms and members of the diocese to ask for help from Bishop Kurtz, the successor of O'Connell as 2nd bishop of Knoxville.  We would be disappointed.  Not only did Kurtz refuse to counter all the lies that were being passed around the diocese about now-admitted pedophile, Bishop O'Connell, Bishop Kurtz sat in silence and just looked at us.  I asked him, "Bishop, are you and your priests going to rectify these lies?  Are you going to tell the truth and make sure the people know?  

Silence.  Total and complete silence.  

What has followed is years of lies perpetrated by the diocese of Knoxville about O'Connell.  He died in 2012, ten years after admitting his pedophilia and resigning as bishop.  Not once was the truth emphasized in Knoxville for the sake of our children.  Not once were the misperceptions of the people addressed and amended to keep our children are safe, making liars of anyone who says there is even a semblance of transparency in the Diocese of Knoxville.  

Kurtz is now the Archbishop of Louisville, KY and head of all of the diocese of Kentucky and Tennessee.  Father Johnston is now Bishop James "Vann" Johnston of Kansas City-St. Joseph, MO in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Missouri (the place who gave us O'Connell to begin with).  Bishop Richard F. Stika succeeded Kurtz as the 3rd bishop.  He came to us from the Archdiocese of St. Louis where he held high positions in the Archdiocese including right-hand man to Cardinal Justin Rigali, then-archbishop.  Rigali and Stika were at the heart of archdiocesan power when reports about O'Connell started surfacing and reported in the Archdiocese.  

Nothing was done.  O'Connell was bishop of Knoxville at the time of the first reports but nothing was done to remove him.  No one was told, not the least of which were his victims of abuse.  

I call the Diocese of Knoxville "Boston South."  You will hear more about that.  Someday, the truth will be out there.  No rest until it is.  

Be at peace, my friend.  Someday when we have fought long enough and hard enough, the truth will be out.  Then we can say, "FINALLY!"  Finally, the people will know  Finally, there will be a day of reckoning for those who have hidden the dirt that they knew all this time.  

Looking back at a predator 

When death does not stop the pain

I was thinking today about Father Edward McKeown and how he died in prison a year before his parole would have come up again.  We all have the tendency to say, "That's it.  He's dead and gone.  Pain over." 

Not so.  With pedophiles and predators of all kinds, the pain lives, sometimes muted by time but sometimes not gone at all.  It's a personal response to a personal crime.  The objective reality that the inflictor of pain and shame is gone is only one reality.  The other reality is that the effects of the abuse linger and sometimes fester no matter how much we wish they wouldn't.  

Father Edward McKeown abused in Middle and East Tennessee when the area was all the Diocese of Nashville.  McKeown's abuse at Blessed Sacrament Church in Harriman, Tennessee, is well grounded in fact, but the people in that parish are still left in the dark.  Even the priests assigned there over the years may or may not know about McKeown.  The current Diocese of Knoxville finds it easier not to acknowledge the years before 1988 when it was established.  That way victims of priests who molested in any year before 1988 can be turned away with the admonition to "Go to Nashville.  We didn't exist then."

Except they did exist.  

On September 8, 1988, when Knoxville became a diocese, all that changed was the name and the bishop.  And that bishop was a pedophile, Anthony J. O'Connell.  Most priests in the Diocese of Knoxville stayed the same.  Parishes stayed the same.  This diversionary tactic works legally but it is an insult to the faithful in these churches.  More later. 

The devastation that the abuse of Father Edward McKeown wrought on so many young boys is horrific.  But he never paid for his sexual abuse of boys in the Catholic Church.  It was after the Diocese of Nashville turned him lose on the unsuspecting public that McKeown abuse 4 boys in the trailor park where he lived.  A non-Catholic mother caught him and turned him in.  He went to jail for 20 years for his crimes but died after 19 years there.  

Never say that death ends abuse.  Would to God that it did.  We can only hope that it is some manner of consolation to so many men who surrendered their youth to crimes against their childhood.  Edward McKeown is dead.  It's something at least but will never be enough.  The Catholic Churcs knows that; it just does not care.  

 My last post was in 2019.  That's a long time ago since this is 2021.  I think I will begin here to tell the stories of clergy sexual abuse of children and clergy sexual exploitation of adults.  This will not be a long post.  I have a lot of homework to do to get this going again.  I think it is time.  

Things have not gotten better.  They are worse than ever but the story remains untold.  I'll use this to let you know that opening your eyes and understanding clergy sexual abuse is critical, now more than ever.