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	Tom Economus Would Be 52 Years Old Today, Feb. 29, an Unusual Birthday for an Unusual Man By Kay Ebeling City of Angels February 29, 2008 http://cityofangels4.blogspot.com/2008/02/tom-economus-would-have-been-52-years.html At age 10 Tom Economus was traveling companion for a pedophile priest, doing scams at fundraisers by day and getting alcohol and raped by night. Then as a young adult Tom sought counseling and his therapist, another priest, stripped down to his underwear and tried to force his penis into Tom's mouth. Still spiritually passionate, Tom entered a seminary where he got hit on for sex right and left. He dropped out, sank into drugs and alcohol, made it to rehab, became ordained with the Independent Catholic Church and in 1992 was named director of Linkup, one of the first organizations for survivors of Catholic priest sex crimes. An email came in to City of Angels Blog yesterday: "Tom Economus' Birthday Tomorrow: An unusual birthday.. An unusual man. A fierce warrior for our cause. Must never be forgotten by us!!" JAY NELSON: "I still miss Tom's sense of humor, his fearlessness. He would wear his Roman collar to meetings with Bernardin just to drive the hierarchy crazy." RICK SPRINGER: "First time I met Tom was at the 1992 Chicago Conference. I was on panel with Tom, a Porter victim, and several others. We became fast friends immediately and I'd say until he died he was probably my best friend throughout." Tom Economus told his story to Frontline (link to the full transcript at top of left hand column). Here he describes his years as front man for Father Don Murray, director of Sky Ranch group home for boys in South Dakota: He would take me on fundraising events and conventions with him to raise money for the school. And he would put me on, next to him at the dais and say, 'This is a troubled child. This is a bad boy. This is a kid who's been in trouble with the law, with drugs, he comes from the streets of Chicago." And, in fact, none of that was true. I was having problems at home, my family sent me to the school, but I became the poster-child for Sky Ranch for Boys. It was usually after those events, after he'd had one too many drinks, that I would experience the sexual abuse. We were usually in an isolated area, in a hotel room, where I didn't have access to anyone to tell anyone--although I don't think I would have told anyone anyway. Many times when I had threatened to expose him, he would tell me, "I have legal guardianship over you. Who are the people going to believe-you or me?" And so I was manipulated into silence for seventeen years. In that same Frontline interview, Tom describes the incident where the psychotherapist priest who was supposed to be helping Tom deal with his years of rape by the pedophile priest who ran Sky Ranch assaulted him: On the ninth or tenth session, this priest, on that particular day, was telling me about his sexual appetite, in that he thought he was homosexual, that he had been with other men. And then he had shown me a picture of some young man who he said was 15 or 16 years old, that he said he was sexually involved with. And at that point I felt very uncomfortable and I got up and asked him if I could use the restroom. In order to get to the restroom, we were in his sitting room, which was connected to his bedroom, and the restroom was on the other side. I had to go through the bedroom to get to the restroom. When I came out of the restroom, he was standing there in a T-shirt, and just a pair of underwear. And lunged at me, and knocked me onto the bed. And started kissing me and, wanted to have sex with me. And which I continued to refuse that, he - you know, I'm not very big, and he was a pretty tall person, and he managed to hold me down ... and he was trying to force himself on me. He pulled his penis out and tried to put his penis into my mouth, and then he finally ejaculated, and when he did I was able to get away from him, and I ran out of the rectory and never returned. Then third strike by the Church, when Tom tried to train to be a priest himself, in his own words from the Frontline interview: In the seminary program, I remember the first day we went to classes, I felt like I was at a meat market, because everybody checked you out. But it wasn't like, "Hi, how are you?"It was like, (flirty) "Hi, how are you?" People were checking you out, scanning you over. It was the most uncomfortable feeling. But I thought it was me, at the time. Then as I got into the program, I realized were people were both heterosexually and homosexually sexually active. There were people that lived in our house that were accused of sexual abuse of children. There were people in the house that had very obvious, apparent alcohol problems. There were two people in our house that had very apparent eating disorders and were very much overweight. And all of a sudden I was in the middle of all of these people, and the expectation was that I was to hug these people in prayer every day, and I was to love them as my brothers, and continue with my studies. And not to be concerned with what they were doing. The whole thing was dysfunctional. He dropped out, drank, did drugs, got to rehab, became ordained in the Independent Catholic Church, then directed Linkup for the last ten years of his life: Rick Springer talks about his friend: "I remember when he was on the Larry King show in the early 1990s. We were in the Tribune Tower in Chicago, the lawyers were in Dallas, others in Washington DC, King moderating. "Tom just chewed them up. He tore them apart." "First time I met him was at 1992 Chicago Conference. They staged a Victims' Panel. Probably 10 of us on that panel told our stories in front of the audience, well actually it was quite daunting because there were TV crews from all over the world." Rick Springer continues: "This was the first conference ever on clergy sexual abuse and it was when the story was just starting to break out all over the place. Chicago blew up, abuse cases all over Chicago and Massachusetts and New Mexico and Louisana and Texas. It was just the beginning. "After that Tom was on the phone all the time. I can't tell you how many people had conversations with him like thousands." Rick tells an interesting sidebar story connected to Cunanan'killing spree from California, through the Midwest to Florida where he murdered Gianni Versace and finally got the news coverage he wanted. Springer and Economus were in Chicago listening to news reports. They heard that one of Cunanan's pseudonyms was Andrew DeSilva. Economus got up and went to his phone records. It seems that in the early 1990s when Linkup temporarily had offices in Long Beach, California, Tom got a phone call from an Andrew DeSilva seeking help about being raped by a pedophile priest earlier in life. Economus kept careful phone records. He remembered the name. He and Springer wondered if that Andrew DeSilva was Andrew Cunanan. Economus and Springer were putting together Linkup Newsletters the night they heard and wondered about Cunanan. Every three months Jay Nelson in New Mexico would gather articles about sex crimes in the Catholic Church and reproduce them in the newsletter in the section called "Black Collar Crimes." "It was like Bishop Accountability before Google," Springer said. Plus each newsletter opened with an editorial by Tom Economus. "Jay was the editor. He put together all the material. Then me and Tom and my AA sponsor would fold and stuff and label those envelopes every three months, it was a big ritual. "We held I think a total of 12 national conferences. The one in Toronto in 2001 was the last one he went to. Everything seemed to be okay. He had just gotten a settlement from the archdiocese. "He bought himself a condo in Evanston. He moved there, and it was about that time the cancer came back. The cancer came back. On March 23, 2003, Tom Economus died just as the pedophile priest sex crime stories were beginning to break in Boston. Today February 29 is still his birthday.
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