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	He Fled a Child Sex-Abuse Case Involving the Catholic Church in California. Now He's Holed-Up in Aurora. What Is Msgr. Urell Hiding? By Mark Bonokoski Toronto Sun September 25, 2007 http://torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2007/09/25/4523949-sun.html Sunday morning at the Southdown Institute, a treatment centre for embattled clergy situated on 40 hectares of rolling farmland in rural Aurora. Inside the lobby, close by the reception desk, the doors to the chapel are wide open. Morning Mass is almost over. A dozen or more men, mostly middle-aged, and many in clerical robes, are still in their pews, reciting the responses to closing prayers aloud. "Monsignor John Urell?" the receptionist is asked. "He is probably attending Mass," she says, nodding towards the chapel. Then she looks down at her registry book and scans the names. "Oh, he's new here," she says, abruptly. "You must see someone first before there is any possibility of you seeing him." I am led to a small but well-kitted nurse's office where I am informed that "Monsignor Urell is not taking any visitors." The nurse in attendance says her name is Sally, and offers nothing more, although the only registered nurse on the staff list at Southdown, and the only person named Sally, is Sally Constantine. NORTH TO CANADA "I will call you," she says. And she does, with the name and phone number for Father Raymond Dlugos, Southdown's chief executive officer. "But he's not available until Monday," she adds. On the way out, photographs are taken of Southdown. The receptionist comes out and tells me to put the camera away. "No pictures," she says. "You're on private property." The Southdown Institute, according to its own literature, is a registered, non-profit charitable organization that offers clinical assessments for Catholic clergy and those committed to Christian ministry who are "experiencing significant stress in their lives, whether from personal problems or some difficulty in ministry or in relationships", as well as neuropsychological evaluations running the gamut from aging and injury to substance abuse. The residential program, the literature adds, provides intensive treatment for clergy that addresses psychological conflicts, difficulties in interpersonal functioning, emotional or sexual problems, and addiction-related issues. Msgr. Urell is in the Southdown residential program, and is all but anonymous here. Not so, however, in California. A few weeks ago, he was on the witness stand in a civil courtroom an hour south of Los Angeles, once again as the Diocese of Orange County's point man in yet another child sex-abuse complaint -- just as he was the church's key go-to man in the notorious scandal that saw the same diocese pay out a record $100 million two years ago to settle three decades worth of child sex-abuse cases involving 87 files. In other words, he is no bit player. Msgr. Urell knows all and sundry about that scandal, capsulated by the Los Angeles Times as one in which the Roman Catholic Church of Orange County "covered up for priests who molested children, and shuffled predators from parish to parish and diocese to diocese -- protecting them from prosecution and failing to warn parishioners of the dangers." And now, here he is once again, the point man in yet another child sex-abuse case. Halfway through his pretrial testimony, though, a distraught Urell broke down crying and was given a break from testifying in order to re-group. But he did not return to the stand the next day as ordered. Instead, he headed north to Canada, and to Southdown. According to his lawyer, Patrick Hennessey, Msgr. John Urell entered Southdown on Sept. 6, suffering from "an acute anxiety disorder caused by the strain of his prior responsibility for responding to complaints of sexual abuse by others." But he did not stop there. "Msgr. Urell has never sexually abused anyone, and has never been accused of sexually abusing anyone," Hennessey added in a written statement. "His treatment at Southdown is specifically related to acute anxiety. In no way is his stay related to paedophilia, and for anyone to imply such is being irresponsible and untruthful." Last week, attorneys for the woman who alleges sexual abuse by a lay teacher at a Roman Catholic high school in Orange County when she was a 15-year-old student filed a motion to hold the diocese's bishop in contempt of court for sanctioning Urell's flight to Canada. According to the document filed in the Superior Court in Santa Ana, the lawyers allege that Bishop Tod Brown deliberately sent Urell out of the country one week after a judge ordered him to complete his sworn deposition in the first publicly tried sexual-abuse case against the diocese since its mammoth settlement payout in 2005. Bishop Brown's lawyer, Peter Callahan, rebuffed the motion, calling the filing by the plaintiff's attorneys as nothing more than a "bullying tactic" aimed as diminishing Urell's illness when it is both "serious and legitimate." A hearing on that motion is slated for Oct. 18. In a recent Associated Press report, one of the plaintiff's lawyers, Venus Soltan, said she believes the diocese wants to suppress Urell's testimony because of his extensive current and historical knowledge of sexual-abuse allegations, including four pending cases that involve alleged sexual molestation at the same school where her client alleges the sexual abuses against her took place, Orange County's Mater Dei High. 'URELL KNOWS TOO MUCH' "It is just one more in a long line of things where they're trying to hide the facts," Soltan said. "Urell knows too much and they don't want him to talk." Rev. Dlugos was reached yesterday by cellphone. He was at the Denver airport, awaiting a connecting flight to Boise, Idaho, where he is today conducting a retreat for priests in that diocese. He emphasizes he has not been called to Orange County, Calif., and refuses to speak specifically about Msgr. John Urell. "Yes, I have read all the coverage (in California)," he says. "But I have not been asked to appear in any court, or speak to any court official, about anything." Dlugos, a Philadelphia-born priest with a doctorate in psychology, has been at the Southdown Institute for the last eight years of its 40-year history. "I am bound ethically to say nothing," he says. "To be honest, I cannot ethically even acknowledge whether (Msgr. Urell) is at Southdown or not.
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