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	Blatant Lies in Victim Assistance Coordinator's LA Times Opinion Piece. I Know, Because They Involve My Case. By Kay Ebeling City of Angels January 8, 2008 http://cityofangels4.blogspot.com/2008/01/la-archdiocese-victim-assistance.html I HAVE TO SAY THIS. Sister Sheila McNiff was directly involved in my case for a few hours in 2003, the same Sister Sheila McNiff who wrote an opinion piece published in the LA Times December 18th praising the church for having obviously solved its pedophile priest problems way back in the 1980s and here's a chart to prove it. There is an active comment area at the Times for persons to respond online to McNiff's piece linked at left. The "Blowback" was supposed to be open for 2 weeks, but mysteriously the Times is running only a small selection of comments since the first three days. I have to say this. There's blatant lies and coercive truth bending in Sister Sheila McNiff's op-ed piece (surprise, surprise). I know because of the way Sister Sheila McNiff handled my own case back in December 2003. She writes for the Times: "As coordinator of the Victims Assistance Ministry of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, I have been privileged to walk with many of these victims, to listen to their stories... to offer support and counseling and to be available to them when needed." Whoa, wait a minute stop right there in paragraph one: When my daughter and I were homeless Sister Sheila showed up at the motel where we were staying, paying weekly rent. We were rapidly running out of money. Sure she walked around the block with me and listened to my story. Then every time I called her the next few weeks, she became less and less available. In our first conversation she had intimated she could help us connect with one of the archdiocese's numerous homeless programs — then over the weeks she stopped returning phone calls. Once I called desperately asking help as my daughter had, in order to to avoid being raped, had to give up her laptop to a guy — I called Sister Sheila McNiff, Coordinator of Victims Assistance Ministry in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles begging BEGGING!!! for help. She stopped returning our calls. This woman is a NUN!! January 1, 2004, we drove off from that motel and lived in our car until April when we finally got into a shelter — a shelter run by evangelical Christians. Sister Sheila may have listened to my story, but she sure never offered "support" she never mentioned "counseling" and she was never "available." There's three lies right there, not to mention what those acts say about her character, and about the Office of Victims Assistance Ministry in LA. McNiff in her LA Times piece offers up a nifty chart with blue green and orange spikes and accompanies it with MORE BLATANT OBFUSCATION OF TRUTH. She writes: "The graph below, put together by the archdiocese, charts the years during which 254 perpetrators were alleged to have victimized the 553 people involved in the civil cases in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Most of these incidents were reported for the first time as a result of lawsuits filed in 2003. "The graph shows that most of the abuse was clustered from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. By the mid-1980s, however, the graph shows that incidents drop off dramatically. For instance, while there were 49 offenders who abused victims in 1981, that number dropped to 11 in 1991, and there were none in 2001". (SIC) 553 victims are only a fraction. More After this Sister Sheila bases her PowerPoint graphic on the 553 civil lawsuits that were settled in the last two years in LA. Those cases represent only a fraction of the total number of crime victims of pedophile priests in Los Angeles. Hardly anyone even heard that a window opened to file civil cases for one year in 2003 regardless of the Statute of Limitations. I'm a journalist and a news junkie and I never saw a story about it. Civil attorneys say they had to turn down cases in 2003 because there was not enough evidence or because witnesses were no longer alive. Those same attorneys have told me that today they still take calls from people who wonder if there is any way they can still file a lawsuit. They can't. Plus, I wonder if there are other people like me who were re-victimized more or less by Sister Sheila McNiff, Coordinator of the Victims Assistance Ministry. Sure, Sister Sheila took notes and reported my case to the Chicago Archdiocese. But guess what Since she offered NO HELP AT ALL to me and my daughter, we ended up in the chaos of homelessness for almost two more years. It was November 2005 when I finally got into an apartment with my own computer, an internet connection, and the ability to follow up on my case. One of the first things I did as soon as I got online was contact people in Chicago. And guess what? When I had the conversation with Sister Sheila McNiff the timer started according to Illinois law and their statute of limitations. The Archdiocese had a the report filed by Sister Sheila McNiff on their computers. So in November 2005 when I was finally able to follow up, to file a civil lawsuit, my time had run out. It was now too late, two years later was too late, and legally I didn't have a case. Sister Sheila McNiff, "Coordinator of the Victims Assistance Ministry," did her job for the LA Archdiocese which was to obstruct progress and action in my case. Plus her total lack of concern for me with a then 15 year old daughter in our situation still astounds me today. The only way Sister Sheila's actions make sense is if her job was to beat us down and prevent me from coming forward with my case. Sister Sheila McNiff blatantly avoided doing ANYTHING for me other than file her little statistical report with Chicago, thus in her own little covert way, assuring that I didn't follow up on my case, for a long time, maybe she figured I'd never make it back. What about the "Blowback" in the LA Times? After this: The LA Times has this little section called Blowback, where people can post comments about opinion pieces. They only open it up now and then, as the LA Times doesn't allow comments on just any article. They opened up a Blowback on Pedophile Priests on January 1st. There were 18 comments on January 1 13 on January 2 10 on January 3 7 on January 4th Hmm I wrote one on January 4th and it never ran. I posted another one on the 5th. Late in the morning on January 7th the Times published 4 comments that were sent in on on the 5th 1 sent in on the 6th, mine. 4 from January 7th and 1 from January 8th January 4 on I got emails from people saying they submitted comments to the Blowback and they never ran. Someone from the archdiocese posted this: 5. Go to la-clergycases.com to read what's really going on. Submitted by: Kay 11:11 AM PST, January 7, 2008 (That "Kay" is not me) Hennigan Bennett & Dorman, the Archdiocese lead law firm, for defense in the clergy cases runs the website: la-clergycases. I KNOW THIS BECAUSE: The first or second time I went to court to cover pre-trial hearings, about February 2006, one of the lawyers from Hennigan asked me who I was. I said I wrote a blog called Clergy Cases Los Angeles and he said, "Oh we have a website with that same name," And he wrote down that website. La-clergycases.com When you go there you can read articles such as: "Times Story Was Wrong From The Beginning" Where they put forward the old argument that since Mahony didn't become archbishop until 1985 he would know nothing about pedophile priests in Southern California, as if Mahony worked his way up to Archbishop without ever talking about pedophiles in the priesthood with other hierarchy — ? None of the articles on this la-clergycases.com website has a by-line — There is no identification of a name or organization that runs the website. "Contact Us" takes you to a blank form, no identifying name of a person or organization. But I know it's run by the Hennigan Bennett & Dorman law firm, as one of their main attorneys told me they run that website at a February clergy case hearing, Before he realized the potential power of City of Angels Blog. More about Blowback after this: A friend up north who keeps track of these things emailed me yesterday about the Blowback:" "Up to 53 comments posted, yet we KNOW at least 126 have been submitted." For some reason the Times felt it had to hold back about 150 comments in the Blowback section that was supposed to be open for two weeks. I'd call and track down the opinion editors to get their own comments about their decision to edit comments, but they'd just feed me corporate blather anyway. The only true journalism in America today is on BLOGS!!! The "Blowback," where people can comment online on articles the Times deems worthy of comment, was started Jan. 1, after Tony DeMarco of KBLA clergy case plaintiffs' law firm wrote an op-ed piece pointing out another hole in Sister Sheila's piece: The reason people who were raped in the 1990s and early 2000s haven't come forward is most pedophile priest victims don't come forward until 20 to 40 years after the incidents. Some never come forward at all. As DeMarco put it: Last graph of DeMarco's editorial: "Victims of childhood sexual abuse typically do not come forward until they are adults, and have children, nieces and nephews who are the age they were when they were abused. It is only then that victims of childhood sexual abuse finally realize on a visceral level that the adult truly was in control, and the abuse was not the child's fault. Because of this, many of the children abused in the late 1980s, 1990s and in this decade have yet to come forward." Why Am I ragging on Sister Sheila? Readers of this blog know I'm a flower child I don't often go off on individuals, I don't like name calling, and I actually ended up liking almost everyone in the clergy cases, even the church attorneys. Although I can't resist pointing out that J. Michael Hennigan looks like The Cat In The Hat — But Sister Sheila McNiff, Victim Assistance Coordinator for the LA Archdiocese, deserves singling out. I remember her voice on the phone as she evaded helping us. She was smiling. This sneering nun told me, one of the victims she's supposed to be assisting, that there was no room in any of their shelters, any of their condos, apartment buildings, or even flop houses in Skid Row. You could tell she wasn't going to give it a moment's effort She runs the LA Archdiocese Victims Assistance Ministry. And she wanted me to fall and never return. I'm ba-a-a-ack.
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