Seattle Catholic Archdiocese Settles 1980’s Sex Abuse Case for $635,000

Sky Valley Chronicle
November 16, 2012

http://www.skyvalleychronicle.com/BREAKING-NEWS/SEATTLE-CATHOLIC-ARCHDIOCESE-SETTLES-1980-s-SEX-ABUSE-CASE-FOR-635-000-1176769

The Seattle Archdiocese has decided to settle a 1980’s sex abuse lawsuit for $635,000 payable to the man who said he was victimized by a former lay youth minister.

Rolfe Eckmann alleged he was abused in the mid-80s by Jim Funnell, a former youth minister at Saint John Vianney Catholic Church in Kirkland.

In the lawsuit he filed Eckmann contended the Archdiocese hired Funnell without a background check while at the same time the church was also implementing its sex abuse prevention policies.

In 1989, Funnell was charged with sexually assaulting a different boy and was fired from his job. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

Funnell eventually changed his last name to Fionnghael and moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia.

SETTLEMENT COMES AS DOCUMENTARY ABOUT ABUSE IN THE CHURCH DEBUTS

News of the Seattle settlement comes just as a new documentary is about to be released, detailing the first case that sparked what became a nationwide then worldwide scandal of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” a film by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney begins a theatrical run this week in major cities, and will air on HBO in February 2013.

The film, according to HBO examines “the abuse of power in the Catholic Church through the story of four courageous deaf men, who in the first known case of public protest, set out to expose the priest who abused them.”

Through their case the film follows “a cover-up that winds its way from the row houses of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, through the bare ruined choirs of Ireland's churches, all the way to the highest office of the Vatican,” says an HBO promo piece on the film.

A piece on Salon.com Thursday said, “You can’t argue that Alex Gibney’s “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” is the definitive treatment of the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal. This problem goes so deep into church history, and its implications are so broad, that no single book or film or series of newspaper articles can encompass it all. But by beginning with one of the earliest and most infamous of documented cases in the United States — the abuse of perhaps 200 deaf boys at a Wisconsin boarding school by a priest named Lawrence Murphy — the Oscar-winning Gibney (director of “Taxi to the Dark Side,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and several other films) is able to suggest answers to certain very big questions.”

Questions such as, how much did the Vatican hierarchy know about the widespread rape and sexual abuse of children by men who were designated as the earthly representatives of Jesus Christ, and what did they do about it?

And, was the scandal really limited to the United States and other “Anglo-Saxon” countries, as many Catholics outside North America maintained?

Were there few documented cases prior to the 1960s because they did not exist, or because they had been successfully squelched?

And the answers?

“It won’t surprise anyone who’s been following this story over the past decade or so to learn that the partial answers emerging from “Mea Maxima Culpa” pretty much amount to the worst-case scenario on all those questions. While it became Vatican policy early in the scandal to blame the American bishops for their inadequate response to the crisis (and many of them indeed behaved disgracefully), the best evidence now indicates that the hierarchy in Rome heard about virtually every case, and that from 2001 onward most if not all of them went straight to the desk of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI,” says the Salon piece.

The film makes the case that, “Containing the damage and keeping things quiet was paramount; offering compassion, comfort and healing to those who had suffered was an afterthought. It’s now clear that internal systems within the church have long existed for disciplining and reassigning priests accused of sex crimes, but that they were almost never reported to the police and were generally sent back to pastoral duties after a period of supposed penitence.”

UPCOMING THEATRICAL DATES FOR THE FILM:

• NY theatrical premiere – Friday, 11/16/12 at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, New York, NY

• LA theatrical premiere - Friday, 11/16/12 at Laemmle Monica, 1332 2nd Street, Santa Monica, CA