Statute of Limitations Prevents Any Charges
By Joelle Farrell
Concord Monitor
December 16, 2007
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071216/FRONTPAGE/712160331/1043/NEWS01
When former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik was indicted last month on 16 federal charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials, Kerik's friendship with Rudy Giuliani, a Republican presidential candidate, drew scrutiny. Rival campaigns questioned Giuliani's judgment, and political analysts wondered if his friendship with Kerik would scare off voters.
But when a handful of protesters gathered outside a Giuliani campaign event in Manchester last month, it was not Giuliani's relationship with Kerik that bothered them. They sought to illuminate Giuliani's allegiance to another friend, holding signs that read, "Rudy, too many children have been hurt. Alan Placa must go."
Monsignor Alan Placa, a priest and lifelong friend of Giuliani, was accused in a 2003 grand jury report of molesting boys and helping to suppress abuse complaints about other priests. Placa was stripped of his priestly duties in 2002 while a special grand jury investigated allegations of sexual abuse at the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island. That year, Giuliani hired Placa, who is also a lawyer, for his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, LLC.
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Placa works as a consultant for the company, which helps clients with legal, security and business improvement issues. Sunny Mindel, a spokeswoman for the firm, would not elaborate on Placa's duties or his salary. Placa is not involved with Giuliani's campaign.
No charges were filed against Placa or the 22 other priests accused of crimes in the grand jury report because the statute of limitations had expired. But the Suffolk County district attorney believed it was valuable to investigate the diocese and produce a report detailing the diocese's handling of sexual abuse complaints.
Placa could not be reached for comment last week, but he fervently denied the allegations in a 2003 interview with The New York Times.
"My hand up to God, I didn't do any of those things!" Placa told the Times.
Placa has not been reinstated at the diocese, where he served as vice chancellor, but he has not been permanently barred from the priesthood.
The Giuliani campaign did not return calls for comment about Placa. Mindel has said Giuliani believes Placa was wrongly accused, and Giuliani has defended his friend in past interviews.
"I know the man; I know who he is, so I support him," Giuliani said at a campaign appearance in Wisconsin this fall, according to ABC News. "We give some of the worst people in our society the presumption of innocence and benefit of the doubt. . . . And, of course, I'm going to give that to one of my closest friends."
But advocates for victims of clergy abuse, and one of Placa's alleged victims, aren't satisfied with Giuliani's comments.
"I'm not letting go, I'm not," said Richard Tollner, 48, of Rensselaerville, N.Y., who said Placa molested him when he was 15. "I think Alan Placa deserves justice. . . . You're as good as the company you keep, and Rudy Giuliani's friend is a credibly accused child molester. These guys just think they can get away with this."
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountablity.org, said, "We think it's crucial that Giuliani explain why he is keeping a credibly accused priest close to him as a friend."
High school ties
Giuliani and Placa attended the same Brooklyn high school, Bishop Laughlin Memorial, and they both went to Manhattan College. Placa was Giuliani's best man at his first wedding; he officiated at Giuliani's wedding to his second wife, Donna Hanover; and he baptized both of Giuliani's children.
Placa, 62, was ordained in 1970 and assigned to St. Patrick's in Glen Cove, N.Y. When prosecutors investigated Placa in 2002, a former altar server at St. Patrick's accused Placa of trying to grope him, according to Suffolk County grand jury report. The report says Placa's conduct "was, at first, so equivocal, his victims weren't really sure it was happening to them - that is, until it happened again and again and again."
The report also says the altar server came forward decades later, only after Placa "denied sexually abusing anyone in a local newspaper story about sexually abusive priests."
In 1973, Placa transferred to St. Pius X Preparatory seminary high school in Uniondale, N.Y., where he served as dean of students.
Tollner, who attended St. Pius from 1973 to 1977, said Placa first molested him when he was 15. Tollner said he was working with Placa on anti-abortion posters in a classroom on a day when school was out of session when Placa reached over and put his hand in Tollner's lap.
"He was feeling my genital area for 10 minutes or thereabouts, maybe longer," Tollner said in an interview with the Monitor last month. "I'm all of 15, and I'm not sure what is going on, and I'm not sure why it's going on. I was pretty naïve. Then it happened again in his office, and then I figured something was up. And later on I basically learned to stay away from him."
Tollner said he didn't report the matter until his senior year, after he noticed a classmate seemed nervous around Placa. When Tollner asked the boy if Placa had touched him, the boy broke down crying, he said. They decided to tell a teacher they both trusted and also to report the matter to the rector.
"I thought they would take care of it or tell the guy to stop," he said. Tollner didn't follow up on the matter, and he didn't hear about Placa again until the diocese was investigated.
Placa left St. Pius in 1978 and started his ascent in the Long Island diocese hierarchy. He directed research and development for Catholic Charities from 1978 until 1986, according to news accounts. It was during this time he earned a law degree from Hofstra University. He then went to the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which includes 134 parishes in Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long island. He served as a legal consultant and directed health care services, becoming vice chancellor in 1998.
When the diocese examined claims of sexual abuse by priests, Placa served as the bishop's representative. He was part of a three-person team that visited alleged victims. Placa helped craft the diocese's legal policies in dealing with abuse allegations.
Legal limits
When clergy abuse scandals in the Boston Archdiocese broke in 2002, other states began investigating. The newly instated Long Island bishop, William Murphy, had served as the No. 2 official in Boston until 2001. In response to a public outcry, the Nassau County district attorney subpoenaed records from the Diocese of Rockville Centre.
But since the statue of limitations had expired in all but the most recent cases, the Nassau County district attorney decided not to convene a grand jury. In New York, a victim of childhood sexual abuse can bring charges or sue in civil court up to five years after his or her 18th birthday. In this case, most of the charges were decades old.
But Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota convened a special grand jury in May 2002 to investigate the diocesan leadership's handling of child molestation cases involving Long Island priests, according to Robert Clifford, a spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. The jury called 97 witnesses over eight months, combed through internal diocese documents and produced a 180-page report.
Spota has said the report was valuable, despite his office's inability to bring criminal charges.
"This document tells all of us what was really happening in the Diocese of Rockville Centre for years and years and years," he told The New York Times in 2003.
The report accuses 23 priests of crimes including, rape, sexual abuse, endangering the welfare of a child and use of a child in a sexual performance. It also alleges that the diocese conspired to protect pedophile priests, moving them from parish to parish and pressuring alleged victims not to file complaints.
Since the priests were not formally charged, they are not named in the report and are instead identified only by a letter. But the report offered sufficient details about the priests that Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, determined some of the priests' identities, including Placa, who was "Priest F." The grand jury report had described "Priest F" as "a parish priest who became a teacher at a boy's high school and later a civil attorney who went on to write the diocese's policy on sexual abuse."
Placa denies the allegations, which include groping at least three boys and purposely neglecting to tell sexual abuse victims that he was a lawyer for the diocese as well as a priest. "Priest F" is painted as the central figure of a conspiracy that kept secret decades of sexual abuse.
Placa told priests and other diocese officials not to disclose his role as a lawyer when referring abuse cases to him, according to a June 1993 memo written by Placa. He helped stem the fallout from abuse claims, even bragging about his ability to minimize settlements and suits, according to the report.
Doyle of BishopAccountablity.org said, "Victims would come to him not knowing that he was not only a canon lawyer, but also a civil lawyer. They would tell him things as if he was acting as their priest."
"If somebody had a problem, they would send Alan out there because he became the fixer," said Phil Megna, co-chairman of the board of directors of the Long Island chapter of Voice of the Faithful, a nonprofit group that aids victims of clergy abuse.
When Placa spoke with The New York Times in 2003, he said he never abused Tollner, the only one of Placa's alleged victims to reveal his name. Placa said Tollner was a "troubled" boy.
Placa said he was one of the first diocese officials to investigate each allegation of sexual abuse, offering counseling to the victims and removing an accused priest from his assignment until he could be evaluated, according to the Times. Placa said that many priests despised him because of his role at the church.
Some former students of St. Pius X have come forward to dispute allegations contained in the grand jury report. The report says "everyone in the school knew to stay away from" Placa. But Kevin McCormack, who graduated from St. Pius X in 1978, said Placa was never the subject of such rumors.
"I can't tell you whether it happened or not, only Richard Tollner and Alan Placa know that," said McCormack, principal at Xaverian High School in Brooklyn. "But the idea that everybody knew . . . that Alan was a predator, I can tell you that was not my experience."
During the grand jury's investigation, the district attorney's office informed the Diocese of Rockville Centre that Placa had been accused of sexual abuse. Placa stepped down from his position as vice chancellor in 2002, and the bishop asked him to refrain from dressing or acting as a priest in public. He can perform priestly duties when granted a special exception.
Placa still receives a stipend from the diocese, and he lives at the rectory at St. Aloysius Church in Great Neck, N.Y., where he is listed as a priest in residence, said Sean Dolan, director of communications at the diocese. While the allegations lodged against the other 22 priests have been resolved, Placa's case awaits an official ruling by the Vatican, Dolan said.
"It has gone on longer than other cases like this," he said. "This is the only case outstanding."
As recently as last month, Placa's name was listed on the church bulletin at St. Aloysius Church, said Peggy O'Neil, a chairwoman of the Long Island branch of Voice of the Faithful.
"Seeing that, you would think he was a priest in good standing," said O'Neil, who has passed out fliers about Placa to St. Aloysius parishioners. "We never understood why he seems to be untouchable."
Placa has been granted exceptions to work as a priest, including in September 2002, when he officiated at the funeral of Giuliani's mother, Helen Giuliani.
'Not the right way to do it'
Giuliani was asked about Placa in an Oct. 23 interview with WBZ, a Boston television station.
"He's a friend of mine for over 35 years," he said, according to a transcript provided by Mindel. "And the fact is, he hasn't even been formally accused of anything. So, to hold this against him is really kind of, not the right way to do it. I know, I understand that people feel very hurt about this issue in general, they have every right to. But then you just can't, just can't assume that people are responsible for things that they're accused of. You've got to give the whole process a chance, right?"
But victims' advocates say Giuliani's point is moot since New York's statute of limitations on criminal charges prevented prosecutors from filing charges.
Carolyn Disco, chairwoman of abuse survivor support for New Hampshire's chapter of the Voice of the Faithful, noted that his diocese had suspended Placa.
"The bishop finds cause for his removal, but that doesn't impress Giuliani?" she said. "The problem is the late discovery of all of this so that the normal civil and criminal processes couldn't go forward. That's the scandal - they got away with it."
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