By Abbott Koloff
Daily Record
April 20, 2007
http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070420/COLUMNISTS03/704200362/1203
Jersey City — Lou and Pat Serrano spent Thursday in a courtroom waiting for a hearing featuring the former priest who molested their son. The date was important for other reasons, for something that happened five years ago, when victims got together in Mendham for the first time to talk about the pastor who abused them when they were children.
James T. Hanley, the former Catholic priest, has admitted to molesting at least a dozen children decades ago, but he never was charged with those crimes because the statute of limitations ran out. The Serranos got to see him in a prison uniform for the first time this past year on charges that he made terroristic threats against Secaucus hotel workers.
"It has been good to see him in shackles," Pat Serrano said on Thursday.
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| Kevin Waldrick, left, Lou and Pat Serrano and Bob Hoatson leave the Hudson Administration Building Thursday where a hearing for a former priest, James T. Hanley, was postponed until this afternoon. Photo by Bob Karp |
Hanley, 70, was supposed to ask a Hudson County judge to allow him to enter a pre-trial intervention program on Thursday, and the Serranos waited hours before the hearing was postponed to today. Pat Serrano called her son, Mark, in Virginia to remind him about the date: April 19.
Mark Serrano spent the day in business meetings in Boston, then flew home to Virginia to spend time with his four children, ages 4 to 15, when they got home from school. Maybe it says something about how far he's come that he almost forgot about April 19, 2002, the day victims from Mendham came together to tell their stories for the first time.
"The good news is that life takes over," Mark Serrano said.
Five years ago, Mark Serrano became a nationally known advocate for victims. He went public with his story, and old friends started calling, some to say his story also was their story. Each had thought they were alone, that Hanley abused only them, and so they remained silent for years. They made plans to get together in Mendham at a restaurant near St. Joseph's parish where they had been abused decades before.
They told their stories that weekend, and met with Paterson Diocese Bishop Frank Rodimer, who allowed Hanley to continue working long after church officials first heard about allegations against him. Rodimer, who has since retired as head of the diocese, later admitted sending Hanley to Albany to work in a hospital. The Catholic sex abuse scandal was about abuse of power more than any individual's actions.
"All those men (who came forward) overcame the worst fears of their life," Serrano said. "It was really difficult for some of them to come back home to Mendham."
They formed a support group, meeting periodically, and some were part of a group that won a $5 million settlement from the Paterson Diocese. They encouraged other victims to come forward and tell their stories. Then, last year, they went to Paterson to hand out leaflets in Hanley's new neighborhood.
Hanley confronted them, calling them liars, saying they exaggerated his crimes. He said he hadn't abused all the men who came forward.
"I abused some," he said that day, "but not all."
He said he molested about a dozen, including Serrano, and explained himself by saying he was psychotic, "and a psychotic does strange things sometimes." He went on to acknowledge some of the victims. Then he raised his voice, yelling, later saying he simply reacted to what he saw as a threat.
"You never corner a rat," he said in a telephone interview with the Daily Record from the psychiatric unit of a hospital last year. "A cornered rat will attack."
He has been in the Hudson County jail for six months, the last two months in protective custody after other inmates found out about his past. In some ways, the men he abused as children helped put him there. Hanley never was subject to Megan's Law.
"We have to do that job,"Mark Serrano said.
Serrano said Hanley's victims will continue to follow him, and will warn neighbors as long as he chooses to live in neighborhoods with children instead of finding senior housing. Hanley said he left Paterson because neighbors were staring at him out their windows.
The former priest stayed at a Secaucus hotel where he allegedly waved a bat, which he says he was using as a cane, at workers. He failed to show up at his first hearing on charges stemming from that incident last year because he had been admitted to a hospital psychiatric unit. Then he was living in a Garfield rooming house. It has come out in court that he is not welcome back there. A nephew also has said he won't take him in, authorities have said. Paterson Diocese officials, while they pay him a stipend, have said basically that he's now on his own.
So it appears he'd be homeless if let out of jail.
Some people might say too bad, he gets what he deserves, but it would be better for Hanley to end up in a stable situation, to get some help. Then again, his victims say they are performing a service. In Paterson, families with children invited Hanley into their homes. They might want to know a little more about him.
"I would have wanted to know," Pat Serrano said.
She and her husband will be in court again today to watch Hanley face a judge. Their son and other Hanley victims will be interested in what happens. But they are no longer obsessed with it. They were doing other things, going to meetings and spending time with their children, on a date that had been so important when they first came together. They say they began to heal that day, but the anniversary passed quietly, almost without notice because life has taken over.
Abbott Koloff can be reached at (973) 989-0652 or akoloff@gannett.com.
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