Ireland Online
March 26, 2010
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/world/victims-give-details-of-priests-alleged-abuse-451417.html
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Former students of a US priest suspected of molesting up to 200 deaf boys have given details of his alleged offences against them.
Arthur Budzinski, now 61, was one of about 200 deaf boys at the St John’s School for the Deaf just outside Milwaukee.
The Vatican yesterday strongly defended its decision not to defrock Fr Lawrence Murphy and denounced what it called a campaign to smear Pope Benedict XVI and his aides.
There is renewed interest in the case after it emerged the Pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had been made aware of the case.
In recent weeks, Benedict also came under fire over his handling of an abuse case against a priest in Germany three decades ago when he was a cardinal in charge of the Munich Archdiocese.
In the Milwaukee-area case, Fr Murphy was accused of molesting boys in the confessional, in dormitories, in closets and during field trips while working at the school for the deaf from the 1950s until 1974. Fr Murphy died in 1998 aged 72.
Mr Budzinski, now a bicycle and furniture assembler at a department store, said Fr Murphy preyed on him during the 1960s.
The priest was fluent in sign language and often told the boys they were handsome, Mr Budzinski said during an interview in which his daughter interpreted his sign language.
He said he avoided Fr Murphy as much as he could afterwards, but when he went to Fr Murphy’s office the following year to make another confession the priest led him to an adjoining room and sexually assaulted him again.
“It seemed like my father would be walking into a trap every time,” said Mr Budzinski’s 26-year-old daughter, Gigi Budzinski.
He said Fr Murphy assaulted him a third time the next year in Mr Budzinski’s bed in his dormitory room. Other boys were similarly assaulted, he said.
“They would sleep in a large open room in bunk beds,” Mr Budzinski’s daughter said. “My father saw other boys being molested, too. They’d never talk about it.”
Church and Vatican documents showed that in the mid-1990s, two Wisconsin bishops urged the Vatican office led by then Cardinal Ratzinger to let them hold a church trial against Fr Murphy.
However, Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy at the time decided the alleged molestation occurred too long ago and said Fr Murphy – then ailing and elderly - should instead repent and be restricted from celebrating Mass outside of his diocese, according to the documents.
Fr Murphy’s alleged victims also included at least one teenager in a juvenile detention centre in the 1970s.
Donald Marshall, now 45, said Fr Murphy visited him several times a week at the detention centre where he was sent at age 13 for burglary.
Fr Murphy seemed nice when others were around, Mr Marshall said. But Mr Marshall said he was later isolated in a cell after a fight – and the priest paid him a visit there.
Fr Murphy seemed nice when others were around, Mr Marshall said. But Mr Marshall said he was later isolated in a cell after a fight – and the priest paid him a visit there.
“He was sitting on my bed, reading the Bible to me, and he put his hand on my knee,” Mr Marshall said. “He leaned over and started kissing me. That’s when he tried to put his hand down my pants.”
Mr Budzinski and Mr Marshall authorised the use of their names in media reports.
One of the documents, written by Father Thomas Brundage and dated October 1997, said some of Fr Murphy’s assaults began in the confessional, where he began by asking the boys about their being circumcised. Fr Brundage said at least 100 boys were involved.
“Odds are that this situation may very well be the most horrendous, number-wise, and especially because these are physically challenged, vulnerable people,” Fr Brundage wrote.
Another deaf student, Steven Geier of Madison, said Fr Murphy molested him four times in a St John’s closet in the mid-1960s starting when Mr Geier was 14.
During the first assault Fr Murphy demanded Mr Geier remove his trousers, and when he refused Fr Murphy pulled them off, Mr Geier said through a sign language interpreter.
“Father Murphy put everything into the context of God. I felt like I was really brainwashed,” Mr Geier said. He spoke in harsh terms about the Pope, calling him “stupid”.
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee entered mediation in 2004 with a number of people who claimed to have been victimised by priests.
The archdiocese paid compensation to Fr Murphy’s victims, but spokeswoman Julie Wolf would not say how much. Mr Budzinski said he received $80,000 (ˆ60,000).
Through mid-2009, the archdiocese said, it paid out $28m (ˆ21m) to settle allegations of clerical sexual abuse.
“Murphy’s actions were criminal and we sincerely apologise to those who have been harmed,” the archdiocese said in a statement.
Mr Budzinski said that when he was 26, he and two others victimised by Fr Murphy went to police. He said the police investigated Fr Murphy but didn’t arrest him.
E. Michael McCann, then the Milwaukee County district attorney, said his office reviewed the case but couldn’t file charges because the six-year statute of limitations had run out.
The Vatican issued a strong defence of its handling of the Murphy case. The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said there was no cover-up and denounced what it said was a “clear and despicable intention” to strike at Benedict “at any cost”.
The Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, issued a statement noting that the Murphy case did not reach the Vatican until 1996 – some 20 years after Milwaukee church authorities first learned of the allegations.
Fr Lombardi said the absence of more recent allegations was a factor in the decision not to defrock Fr Murphy.
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