Paying Attention To The Sky

Defrocked Catholic Priest and serial homosexual rapist Francis DeLuca is involved in at least 20 cases against Catholic children.

I recently read an AP article on a sex abuse case that is playing out in Wilmington, Delaware. It notes that Delaware’s Catholic Diocese of Wilmington is the seventh U.S. diocese to file for bankruptcy since accusations erupting seven years ago against Catholic clergy in Boston.

Thomas Neuberger, a lawyer representing 88 purported victims in the case, described the bankruptcy filing as a “desperate effort to hide the truth from the public and conceal the thousands of pages of scandalous documents” from being made public in court.

“This filing is the latest, sad chapter in the diocese’s decades long ‘cover-up’ of these despicable crimes, to maintain the secrecy surrounding its responsibility and complicity in the sexual abuse of hundreds of Catholic children,” Mr. Neuberger said in a statement.

Civil liability is the only recourse for victims of abuse that happened long ago because the U.S. Supreme Court has said states cannot change the statute of limitations for criminal cases.

Mr. Neuberger said the diocese’s action may mean some sick and aging victims — some who claim they were abused when they were as young as eight — could die before getting their day in court. Mr. Neuberger also said he would make court filings in Delaware to “meet this fraudulent tactic with the full and immediate force of the law.” He also vowed to seek out all assets of the diocese and its parishes.

More than 20 Delaware plaintiffs have filed lawsuits against a Francis DeLuca, who served as a priest for 35 years but was defrocked last summer after having been jailed in 2007 in New York for repeatedly molesting his grandnephew.

What the AP article leaves out is that by filing bankruptcy, the diocese can make sure that the total pot of money doesn’t get exhausted by the first handful of victims whose cases come to trial, leaving nothing for the remaining (by some counts) 100+ alleged victims. The bankruptcy court will oversee a process (in which the victims will have a say) that will estimate the total number of present and future damages and try to provide equal payouts for ALL victims.

The Archdiocese has this statement on its website from Rev. W. Francis Malooly, Bishop of the Diocese of Wilmington:

“Our concern throughout the negotiations was that too large a settlement with these eight victims would leave us with inadequate resources to fairly compensate the other 133 claimants, and continue our ministry. It is our obligation to ensure that all victims of abuse by our priests are fairly compensated, not just those fortunate enough to secure earlier trial dates.

The Chapter 11 filing is in no way intended to dodge responsibility for past criminal misconduct by clergy – or for mistakes made by Diocesan authorities. Nor does the bankruptcy process enable the Diocese to avoid or minimize its responsibility to victims of abuse. Instead, the Chapter 11 filing will enable the Diocese to meet its obligations head-on and fulfill its responsibility to all victims.

The Diocese of Wilmington is committed to pursuing the truth because truth heals. Three years ago Bishop Saltarelli, whom we buried here last week, released the names of 18 Diocesan priests who had admitted, corroborated or otherwise substantiated allegations of abuse of minors. It was one of the most detailed voluntary disclosures of its kind in the United States. In all of those cases, the Diocese shared information about abuse allegations with law-enforcement authorities. All eight of the priests who were living at the time of Bishop Saltarelli’s announcement previously had been removed from any ministerial duties, and for all eight priests, the Diocese has initiated or completed the process of laicization, or removal from the priesthood – the harshest punishment that the Church can impose on a priest, short of excommunication.

Moreover, the Diocese has never sought to seal depositions of priests accused of sexual abuse, and it consistently has supported the unsealing of such records. The Diocese also has never sought to seal the priest files it has produced in discovery in the lawsuits. The Diocese itself has publicly corroborated many of the incidents of abuse, and has provided more details about what actions were taken – or, sometimes tragically, not taken – by our officials. All such information is in the court records of the cases scheduled for trial on October 19, and we believe that no significant new facts would have emerged at trial.

My decision to file for Chapter 11 reorganization also was agonizing because it meant that, apart from the psychological and spiritual toll on the abuse victims, there will be significant financial losses for creditors who have faithfully supported us for years. The possibility of such losses has been present from the time that the scope of the claims against us first became clear, but the filing unfortunately makes it a certainty.”

I don’t know whether Thomas Neuberger’s statements are intended to inflame the public outrage over the priest sexual abuse and lay the groundwork for larger settlements which helps to raise his fees. But they do further discredit the Church, if that is at all possible.

Released prisoners with the highest re-arrest rates were robbers (70.2%), burglars (74.0%), larcenists (74.6%), motor vehicle thieves (78.8%), those in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4%), and those in prison for possessing, using, or selling illegal weapons (70.2%). Compared to those rates, rapists, murderers and child molesters do a lot better: Within 3 years, 2.5% of released rapists were arrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for homicide. These are the lowest rates of re-arrest for the same category of crime.

Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense — 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders. The social costs of a stolen car and an abused child do not compare, however. And one could argue that recidivism rates are only computed for those who get re-arrested. Child molesters are notoriously difficult to catch, relying as they do on the shame and fear of their victims to facilitate their crimes.

And therein lies the conundrum for not only the Church but society as well: how to treat child molesters who are in the grips of their obsessions. The church at one point in its history considered priestly offenders to require therapy and reinstatement – a disastrous policy that has destroyed many dioceses in the U.S. and ravaged parish life. If anything speaks to the helplessness of those who are in the thralldom of their obsessions, is it not the recidivism of Catholic priests? If anyone were capable of recognizing the sinfulness of their behavior and breaking free of it, would it not be a priest? And yet their failure to overcome their sickness lies at the root of the priest scandal.

There are, of course, any number of organizations devoted to validating the sin of child molestation – one thinks of NAMBLA – which amazingly in the last half-dozen years has achieved a main stream recognition of sorts – one of the recent White House “czars” (Kevin Jennings, the safe schools czar) is on record expressing admiration for Harry Hay, a long time radical and NAMBLA icon. Ostensibly, NAMBLA claims that they are dedicated to abolishing age of consent laws. An FBI underground agent was in the organization for three years. He attended two of their national conferences and spoke with many of their members as well as corresponding with about 175 of their members. His testimony:

“At no time during my three-year infiltration was there ever any discussion about modifying age of consent laws, abolishing age of consent laws. Every conversation that I had was about where to go to have sex with little boys, how they could attract little boys, how they could groom little boys. That was their agenda…”

Like many gay organizations who undermine the seriousness and suffering of same sex attractions and campaign against those who seek to free themselves from behaviors that are inimical to their maintaining a Christian identity, pedophiles have organized in ways that seek to mainstream their actions and proclaim their “freedom” to pursue activities that are utterly anti-social and deeply immoral. NAMBLA is one such expression of this movement. Ten years ago it was as outre and shocking as it gets. Now they have admirers in the White House.

Closer to the norm of our treatment of sex offenders who have served their prison sentences is what Florida does or perhaps doesn’t do: for two years, a colony of convicted sex offenders under the Julia Tuttle Causeway has lived in a public health travesty, without water or toilets or electrical service. They sleep in tents, shacks, the back seats of cars in the last realistic address in metropolitan Miami unaffected by city and county sex-offender residency laws. The numbers have been growing steadily as more convicted sex offenders emerge from prison and are consigned to finish out their wretched lives, living like apocalyptic trolls under a bridge. You could have found 52 men there as of March 27, 2009.

We live in a society of extremes and the treatment of sex offenders in our midst seems to display this dichotomy. Establishing regional halfway houses where sex offenders could be monitored and receive continuing therapy of some sort would appear to be a workable solution but the groups who clamor about this issue are infested with the kind of NAMBLA disease that marks so much of our political debate on these issues. Thomas Neuberger, the lawyer demonizing the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington is another who adds nothing to the dialogue or a solution.