Open your eyes - understanding clergy sexual abuse
Saturday, March 27, 2021
Thursday, March 25, 2021
Knoxville and Nashville dioceses in the crosshairs of a complaint to the National Review Board concerning violations against the Dallas Charter of 2002
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.
Saturday, March 20, 2021
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.
Friday, March 19, 2021
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.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Monday, August 11, 2014
Victor Phelan - missionary and rapist of boys
Phelan abused at will as a missionary priest who made visits to various parishes in the US to raise money for the African missions. He took the opportunity while in these parishes to rape young boys in the parish and the parish school. He was the lowest of the low. I only found out about 8 years ago that some of his victims were in a school where I taught in the late 1970s. My students.
I am angry not only at the vicious abuser and the bishop and priests who enabled his crimes, but at myself. I wish I could go back in time and stop this molester who stole so much joy from these wonderful boys. I wish I had had the vision to know. . . . but I didn't.
There is no prison sentence or punishment that is suitable for this low-life scum. Nothing is bad enough for Victor Phelan. I only hope that a dear friend of mine is right when she tells me, "God knows and he will take care of these perps."
I hope she is right. There is no place deep enough in the pit of hell for Victor Phelan and his ilk.
Here are some of the assignments of Victor Phalen that we know.
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 st...
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At the request of the Nashville media, I am going to briefly summarize the issues that surround the accused pedophile priest, Paul St. Charl...
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I am so sick to death of these arrogant, self-righteous adults! Here is the picture of a molester of young boys. Dan DuPree. AKA Father Da...