A Church's Regrets

By Bob Keefer
The Register-Guard
August 27, 2012

http://www.registerguard.com/web/updates/28652393-55/horning-church-apology-altstock-john.html.csp

[with pdf]

[with copy of a letter from Bishop John G. Vlasny]

REEDSPORT — What Carolee Horning wanted most was for her former church to say it was sorry. On Sunday, when she came to Mass, she got not only an extraordinary apology but also found, amid her taut nerves and copious tears, a sense of homecoming and liberation.

Horning, 41, has lived in Eugene for a decade. She was even born here. But a quarter-century ago, when she was a girl growing up in Reedsport, she was molested by a Catholic priest at St. John the Apostle Parish, where her family was and still is part of the congregation.

Father Edward Altstock became a trusted family friend when he headed the parish from 1984 to 1986. Horning, then a young teenager who had been an altar girl, came under his sway, flattered by gifts and attention from such a figure of authority. He pursued her sexually for years, even visiting her in Corvallis when she was a student at Oregon State University.

Decades after the abuse started, she says, her romantic life remains wrecked by what happened with Altstock, who is retired and living near Portland. Because of the statute of limitations, he never was charged with a crime.

Now in his 80s, Altstock previously had declined to comment to The Register-Guard on the case.

For her part, Horning has never been married. She's not had a boyfriend. She doesn't, she says, even know how to flirt.

Last year, after telling her parents for the first time what had happened so deep in her past, Horning filed a $14 million lawsuit for Altstock's actions against the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon. This summer the archdiocese, which does not dispute her claims of a sexual relationship, settled with her for a payment of $480,000 — and the promise that a church official would deliver a personal apology to her, by name, from the pulpit at St. John's.

As the 8:45 a.m. Mass began, Horning sat between her father and mother, amid more than 100 people in the pews of the little church. Among them was a visiting contingent from Eugene's United Lutheran Church, which Horning joined last year.

Monsignor Dennis O'Donovan, the second-ranking official at the archdiocese, stood up in the pulpit. O'Donovan, dressed in green vestments, read to the hushed congregation a formal apology to Horning from the Most Rev. John Vlazny, the Portland archbishop.

As Horning would observe later, the archbishop's letter was, for her, not quite perfect. It devoted more words talking about the archdiocese's response to her charges, she noted, than it did expressing regret or offering apologies.

"I wasn't very comfortable with them trying to defend themselves," she said.

But the archbishop's letter also included the kind of unambiguous statement that Horning had asked for.

"Father Altstock was a friend of the Horning family and took unfair advantage of the high regard in which the family held him," the letter said. "He was a trusted pastor and betrayed that trust.

"Once again, I express my deep regret and sorrow to Ms. Horning, and now apologize also to her family and anyone in this faith community who was injured by Father Altstock."

Perpetuating the shame

The hourlong Mass then opened with a simple hymn, "Morning Has Broken," and proceeded with a sermon, offertory, Communion and blessing with no further reference to Horning or the sins of the priest.

After the service, as parishioners stood up to leave, Horning used a tissue to wipe tears from her face.

"It's going to be that kind of day," she said to no one in particular, before she was practically mobbed by well-wishers from the congregation.

Later, she sat outside the church, in a small garden next to a statue of the Virgin Mary, and explained to a reporter why a personal apology to her, by name, was so important.

"My parents still go here," she said. "I wanted them not to be ashamed. And I wanted the church to accept responsibility and accountability. And I know there are still people out there who are living in silence and shame and guilt like I did.

"Silence just perpetuates the shame."

Horning, who graduated from Oregon State and works as the manager at a Eugene animal hospital, said the abuse from Father Altstock "stunted my growth."

"My plan when I was in high school was to go to the University of Texas," she said. "I thought I would marry a cowboy and have kids."

Her real life turned out differently.

"I have hardly dated," she said. "I have never had a boyfriend. I have just hidden away. When girls my age were learning how to date and flirt and stuff — I just didn't do that."

She kept the secret of the priest's abuse for years. In the beginning it was because he told her to keep the relationship quiet; later, it was because of shame and because she didn't want to embarrass her parents.

Finally, three years ago, when the restaurant chain where she worked offered her a job in Portland, Horning realized she didn't want to move there and be anywhere near Altstock. She started opening her life up again by talking to her parents about what had happened.

The New Testament reading for Sunday morning's Mass came from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians: "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body," the passage goes, in the 23rd verse of Chapter 5.

After the service, Horning declined to embrace that reading from a feminist point of view. Instead, she heard the passage as urging the church to live its life more openly, as befits a bride of Christ.

"I think maybe it was a sign from God, talking about how the church has been reflecting themselves out in the world," she said. "I forgive the church. I want to fix the church.

"This isn't about hurting the church or destroying the church. This is about them actually having a change of heart, instead of pretending (abuse) doesn't exist."

More than the money

The archdiocese, which includes churches across Western Oregon, has had to deal with hundreds of claims from people who say they were sexually abused as children by its priests. In 2004, as it faced about 300 sex abuse lawsuits, it became the first diocese in the nation to file for bankruptcy.

The archdiocese remains under the jurisdiction of the federal bankruptcy court, said Horning's lawyer, Gilion Dumas, which is why the amount of her settlement is a matter of public record.

With the money she received, Horning said, she paid off her car and she's planning to take her family to Disneyland. The rest is going into investments for her retirement.

"It wasn't about the money," she said. "That was one of the reasons I settled.

"If you go to trial, all you can get is money."

"This isn't about hurting the church or destroying the church. This is about them actually having a change of heart, instead of pretending (abuse) doesn't exist."