Dioceses Strengthen Abuse Review Panels; Two N.J. Priests Arrested

Catholic News Service
(From the issue of 8/1/02)

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- As U.S. dioceses were taking steps to beef up their sex abuse review panels following the bishops' adoption of a new charter to protect children, two New Jersey priests were arrested for soliciting young male prostitutes in Montreal.
In other fallout from the ongoing clergy sexual abuse crisis, priests in Florida and New Hampshire sued their bishops and a California priest rejected a plea bargain on multiple charges of raping a minor. A Massachusetts priest already facing five rape charges was arraigned on a sixth count and a third allegation was made against a recently suspended Chicago priest.
Lawyers involved in about 175 sex abuse lawsuits against Boston archdiocesan officials said a six-week effort to negotiate a broad out-of-court settlement agreement has broken down.
Membership in the National Review Board -- established by the bishops June 14 as part of their "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People" -- was brought to 12 July 24 with the naming of eight new members.
The board, headed by Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, was slated to hold its first meeting at the end of July to begin the task of monitoring the bishops' compliance with the charter.
The Diocese of Rockford, Ill., was among those expanding its local review panel to meet the standards set by the charter.
It announced in mid-July that it was increasing its nine-member Intervention Committee to 16 by adding seven lay women to it. Of the original members, four are lay, three are priests and two are nuns. The charter called for lay people not employed by the church to comprise the majority of such panels.
The Rockford Diocese also announced that Bradner Riggs, a retired judge and former FBI agent, has agreed to serve as diocesan investigator for any allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor by any church worker.
The Diocese of Portland, Maine, in late July hired Deacon John Brennan, a retired deputy police chief, to investigate any allegations against church workers. Earlier in the month it hired Susanne Sturm, a specialist in therapy for victims of trauma, grief and addictions, as a professional outreach specialist to those who bring allegations of sexual abuse. The charter mandates that every diocese have such a first-response staff member.
Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore announced a mandatory convocation on child sexual abuse Aug. 29 for some 1,100 parish and school leaders of the archdiocese. Participants are to take home a video presentation and hundreds of pages of resources on preventing, detecting and reporting sex abuse.
Also in Baltimore, police issued a criminal summons in mid-July for Father David G. Smith, 55, who has been on leave from ministry since 2000, on charges of perverted practice in connection with alleged molestation of a teen-age boy at a rectory in the mid-1970s.
While bishops were trying to shut the door on any further clergy abuse of minors, two priests of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., were arrested July 18 in Montreal and charged with soliciting sex from minors. They were caught in a police sting set up to close down a male prostitution network that police said employed prostitutes as young as 14 and catered to a U.S. clientele.
Arrested were Father William M. Giblin, 70, of Edgewater, a former headmaster of Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange and retired pastor of St. Joseph's Parish in East Orange, and Father Eugene P. Heyndricks, 60, pastor of St. John Nepomucene Parish in Guttenberg.
News of their arrests broke in Canadian newspapers July 28, as Pope John Paul II was wrapping up his World Youth Day visit to Toronto. Preparatory World Youth Day activities were going on in Montreal at the time of the priests' arrest, but Newark archdiocesan spokesman James Goodness said neither man was there on church business.
Both immediately removed themselves from ministry. Goodness said the archdiocese would have required them to do so if they had not done it on their own.
Elsewhere around the country:
-- Father Miguel Flores, 34, of Hanford, Calif., rejected a plea bargain July 22, electing to go to trial Aug. 19 on three counts each of statutory rape and forcible rape and charges of dissuading a witness and criminal threat. He is accused of raping a 16-year-old girl three times earlier this year and threatening to harm her if she told anyone. Prosecutors had proposed bargaining the charges down to three years in prison on one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and an admission of intimidating a witness.
-- In Miami, Father Jan Malicki, 53, sued the archdiocese and his archbishop and chancellor for invasion of privacy, breach of contract and conspiracy, saying that when two women accused him of sexual misconduct in 1998 and he was removed from his post, archdiocesan officials violated his rights, deprived him of benefits owed him and publicly gave the false impression that his arrest was imminent, when in fact it was not.
-- In the Diocese of Manchester, N.H., Father James A. MacCormack sued Bishop John B. McCormack and other diocesan officials July 23, saying they ruined his career by forcing him out his parish earlier this year in an attempt to prevent him from revealing the secret cleanup of sex aids and male pornography from the rectory of a priest who died suddenly in 1999. Father MacCormack, who identified the body of the dead priest and assisted in the cleanup, said the destroyed video collection included child pornography, which is illegal; diocesan officials denied that claim.
-- In Chicago, a third complaint was lodged in mid-July against Father Raymond F. Skriba, 70, a few days after he was granted a leave of absence from his parish to devote his energies to contesting recent allegations by two women that he had molested them as teen-agers about 40 years ago.
-- The Louisville Archdiocese, which faces more than 150 sex abuse lawsuits, allowed retired Father Robert Gray to return to ministry in late July after police closed a two-month investigation, bringing no charges in relation to an allegation that he had molested a minor in the early 1980s.
-- The Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y., removed Father Joseph P. Byrns as pastor of St. Rose of Lima Parish in Brooklyn July 28 after the local district attorney's office said it regarded as credible, although no longer prosecutable, the allegations of child sexual abuse against him by a man who is now a priest in New Jersey, Father Timothy J. Lambert. Last spring, when Father Lambert brought the allegations, the diocese did its own investigation and left Father Byrns in ministry.
-- Claims of a younger priest against an older one for childhood abuse were also involved in a potential in-church lawsuit. Father Anthony J. Eremito of Brooklyn, who was removed as a pastor in the New York Archdiocese in the early 1990s because of sexual abuse charges, has taken the first steps toward filing an ecclesiastical claim charging one of his accusers, Father John P. Bambrick of St. Thomas More Catholic Parish in Manalapan, N.J., of damaging his reputation.
-- In Worcester, Mass., Father Robert E. Kelley, who has been out of active ministry since 1986 and was sentenced to prison in 1990 for raping a girl, pleaded not guilty July 24 to a charge of raping a 9-year-old girl in the early 1980s. The new charge comes on top of five other counts of rape brought against him in May and June. He was released on $10,000 bail.
Pope John Paul II publicly addressed the issue of child sexual abuse by priests during his final Mass in Toronto July 28.
"The harm done by some priests and religious to the young and vulnerable fills us all with a deep sense of sadness and shame," he said. But he asked the 800,000 Mass participants not to be discouraged and to "think of the vast majority of dedicated and generous priests and religious whose only wish is to serve and do good."

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