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	Priest Tells Molestation Victims: "I'm Extremely Sorry" By Vanessa Ho Seattle Post-Intelligencer May 12, 2009 http://www2.seattlepi.com/articles/406123.html In the first sexual abuse case against the Seattle Catholic Archdiocese to go to trial, lawyers for two men assaulted by their priest accused top church leaders of conspiring to allow the priest, a known serial child molester, to serve in a busy Seattle parish without protecting or warning families. In opening statements Monday, attorneys for both sides laid out arguments in a case beset with memory lapses, scant paperwork, deaths of key witnesses, and 30-year-old allegations. Just as trial was starting last week in King County Superior Court, two of the original four plaintiffs settled. At issue is whether Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, a legendary figure who served the Seattle Archdiocese from 1975 to 1991, knew that the priest was a molester. Now 87 and living in Montana, Hunthausen is scheduled to testify Thursday. The priest in question, Patrick O'Donnell, took the stand Monday afternoon, where he admitted molesting at least 30 boys -- including the two plaintiffs -- during his 15-year priesthood. A small, neat man dressed in a charcoal business suit, O'Donnell, now 66, spoke in a reedy voice that often trailed off. "I'm extremely sorry," he said at one point, addressing the plaintiffs. "And I'm terribly apologetic that I did anything to hurt you or (the other plaintiff). I just feel awful that I violated your trust." Seattlepi.com is not naming the plaintiffs, because it does not normally name victims of sexual abuse. In his two-hour testimony, O'Donnell alternated between contrition and denial, in which he couldn't remember details, he grasped for answers and minced words with plaintiff's attorney Michael Pfau. "You touched him, you made him touch you?" Pfau asked him about one of O'Donnell's teenage victims. "I don't know I was 'making' him touch me, but we we're touching each other," O'Donnell replied. Ordained in 1971, O'Donnell had been a troubled priest in Spokane who bounced among parishes and attended some treatment sessions about his attraction to boys, said Timothy Kosnoff, another plaintiff's lawyer. Kosnoff said parents had complained about the priest skinny-dipping with boys, showering with them, and making them wash their genitals in front of him. The multitude of sex-abuse lawsuits against him in recent years were a major factor in the Spokane Diocese filing for bankruptcy several years ago. In August of 1978, the Spokane Bishop at the time -- Bernard Topel -- learned that O'Donnell had molested a 14-year-old boy. The boy's father was a city police officer who threatened to expose the crime if the bishop did nothing, Kosnoff said. So Topel arranged for O'Donnell to live at St. Paul's parish while undergoing sexual-deviancy treatment in Seattle. While here, O'Donnell earned a doctorate's degree at the University of Washington. Kosnoff said the Spokane bishop likely told Seattle Archbishop Hunthausen of the priest's proclivities, because the two men had been close, lifelong friends. Topel has since passed away. Hunthausen has denied knowing he about O'Donnell's past. Kosnoff said the hastiness of the transfer -- and lack of official documents on O'Donnell -- are indicators that Hunthausen and the Seattle Archdiocese knew something was wrong with the priest. He said supervising bishops usually sent a letter supporting a priest's fitness to serve in another diocese. But no such letter was found in O'Donnell's file. Kosnoff said minutes from a priest personnel board -- normally involved in many aspects of priests -- were unusually terse on O'Donnell, saying that Hunthausen and the Spokane bishop should deal with the priest. "The documents raise numerous red flags on the transfer," Kosnoff said. "The files are most revealing by what they do not contain." Kosnoff also cast doubt on Hunthausen, who granted O'Donnell the right to say Mass and do other priestly duties in Seattle. "You will hear that a priest did not enter Archbishop Hunthausen's archdiocese without him knowing about it," he said. Archdiocesan lawyer Mike Patterson counter-punched with an immediate disavowal of abuse. "I want to say that abuse is categorically and abhorrently and absolutely wrong. Mr. O'Donnell has admitted he has abused these two gentlemen," he said. He turned to the plaintiffs and added: "We feel your pain." Patterson said no complaints were ever made to Seattle church leaders about O'Donnell. "Archbishop Hunthausen is adamant in denying that Bishop Topel ever told him about O'Donnell's past and misconduct," Patterson said. "He will tell you that this dismays him to no degree. He is absolutely perplexed, astounded and ashamed for the church that his fellow bishop never shared this information about O'Donnell." While serving in Seattle, O'Donnell described how he had abused adolescent boys on his boat in Lake Washington, while undergoing "aversion" therapy. He admitted showering with boys at the Connolly Center gym at Seattle University and swimming naked with them. He testified that after he left St. Paul's in 1978, he invited some of the boys -- including one of the plaintiffs -- to visit him in Spokane, where he molested them on his boat and in a cabin. He admitted that the abuse often took place in the company of a friend, a Boy Scout leader who killed himself during a police investigation of suspected child sex abuse. "I think I remember all (whom) I abused, but putting it all together is…" he said, before becoming inaudible. Kosnoff said O'Donnell -- and the church's failure to check his background -- had damaged his clients, who were 12 when the abuse began. "He's overwhelmed with anger," he said of one of them. "He lost his religion, his family, and other human connections."
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