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| Alarms Should Have Been Sounded in 1989 By Stephen Maher The Chronicle-Herald October 3, 2009 http://thechronicleherald.ca/Columnists/9013462.html IT WASN’T VERY nice to be among the flock of carrion birds outside the Ottawa police station Thursday as we waited for Bishop Raymond Lahey to show up for his perp walk. It was unpleasant to see the man walk stone-faced through the crowd of reporters and cameramen, accepting his public humiliation impassively. He has fallen far and he must be suffering terribly. Overnight, he has gone from respected bishop of the Diocese of Antigonish, swanning around in flowing robes and a fancy hat, to accused criminal. His nightmare began at the Ottawa International Airport on Sept. 15, when border officers searched his laptop. They found images they didn’t like, seized the computer and allege they eventually found files that violate child pornography laws. They issued a warrant for his arrest and he resigned as bishop. If you can believe it, this is not the first time this man has been linked to child pornography. A child victim of sexual abuse at the hands of other Roman Catholic priests says he told police in 1989 that he had discovered child pornography in 1983 in the closet of Father Lahey, who was appointed bishop in 1986. “During the investigation in 1989, I did reveal to police that during a visit to Father Raymond Lahey’s house in Mount Pearl, I found catalogues of child pornography addressed to Ray Lahey. The pictures were of teen boys sexually aroused," Shane Earle wrote this week in an email to his brother. (The Supreme Court of Canada found some of Mr. Earle’s testimony in a criminal trial was unreliable.) Mr. Earle was one of about 500 boys who were sexually assaulted by Newfoundland priests and Christian brothers at the Mount Cashel orphanage, assaults that were covered up by the church and secular authorities. As Michael Harris wrote in Unholy Orders, it was “a stunning collective failure of the judicial, police, religious, media and social service establishments to protect the interests of hopelessly vulnerable and cruelly abused children." At the Hughes inquiry into the abuse, Mr. Earle tried to testify about what he saw in Father Lahey’s closet but an inquiry lawyer prevented him from saying what it was. At the time, the discovery deeply upset Mr. Earle and he attempted suicide by swallowing vitamin pills, ending up being hospitalized for severe de pression. A year before Mr. Earle said he found something in Father Lahey’s closet, Father Lahey testified as a character witness in the sex abuse trial of Brother David Burton, who had more than 50 sex acts with a 15-year-old boy at the orphanage. Brother Burton’s lawyer sought unsuccessfully to keep the hearing secret to protect the orphanage and asked for a discharge, promising that Brother Burton would get treatment. (He was convicted, served 12 days in jail and ended up teaching at a British Columbia school, working for another brother who had been accused of abusing children at Mount Cashel.) Father Lahey testified that the victim in the case was desperate for attention and that he appeared to mature greatly during the period of his sexual relationship with Brother Burton. There was an echo of that attitude years later in a newspaper column written by Father Lahey’s predecessor as bishop of the Antigonish diocese. “If the victims were adolescents, why did they go back to the same situation once there had been one pass or suggestion? Were they co-operating in the matter or were they true victims?" wrote Bishop Colin Campbell in 1989. When he was confronted with public anger at comments that appeared to seek to share the blame between the boys and their abusers, Bishop Campbell explained: “What I’m suggesting is that maybe some — a few, a few of them, many of them, most of them, who knows? — had some kind of an inkling that this was wrong and could have said, ‘No, thank you very much.’ I do not want to suggest that homosexual activity between a priest and an adolescent is therefore moral. Rather, it does not have the horrific character of pedophilia." By the time Bishop Lahey took his job in Antigonish, bishops had learned not to say things like that. “I would have to say that I feel saddened, and even angry, by any cases of the abuse of children, the more so perhaps when such abuse was committed by those with a responsibility to them," Bishop Lahey told The Chronicle Herald when he was appointed. “It is wrong and it does harm, especially to the victim, but also to the whole community. It is wrong, too, when it is concealed (because) other children could be harmed in the future." For a long time, the Roman Catholic Church routinely covered up child sex abuse committed by its priests and monks, turning a blind eye, transferring child abusers from one parish to another when their crimes were discovered. Bishops lied about the coverups. The former bishops in St. John’s and Boston were forced to resign for this reason. Bishop Lahey was forced to explain in court in 1999 why he didn’t record allegations about a sexually abusive priest in western Newfoundland. He said he forgot. The John Jay report by the National Review Board found 11,000 allegations of sex abuse had been made against 4,392 priests in the United States over 50 years. God knows how many similar cases have taken place around the world, or how many victims have kept silent. I called the diocese of St. John’s on Friday to ask them, given Mr. Earle’s story about child porn in Father Lahey’s closet, whether the church investigated then. They are still trying to figure that out. “I don’t know whether it was pursued by the church, the police or the media at the time," said a spokesman. “It seems like no one followed up on it." You can believe him if you like. Contact: smaher@herald.ca |
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