Abuse Victims Welcome a Promise to End the Pain

Pioneer Press
October 13, 2014

http://www.twincities.com/crime/ci_26720568/ruben-rosario-heartfelt-embraces-end-landmark-case

The unprecedented public reconciliation was held Monday afternoon in the most appropriately named building in the Saintly City.

Indeed. The joint announcement of a financial settlement and a child-safety plan, hammered out by Catholic archdiocese officials and a noted lawyer who has waged, at least litigiously, a holy war on behalf of child clergy abuse victims for more than three decades, was held at the Landmark Center. The number on the former courtroom where the historic gathering was held was also symbolic -- 317.

Look up Luke 3:17 and this is what it says: "His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

Tom Mahowald of St. Paul, who was sexually abused as an 11-year-old at Guardian Angels Church in Hastings in 1961, pumps his fist in reaction to a new child protection plan announced jointly by Jeff Anderson & Associates and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis during a news conference in St. Paul on Monday, Oct. 13, 2014. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

"

Essentially, Jesus will hold folks accountable and ultimately keep the good and do away with the bad.

Room 317 turned into a mass confessional box Monday afternoon. All that was needed were the exterior green and red lights to determine whether the room was occupied or empty to receive another sinner's atonement.

But occupied it was, except that the roles were reversed Monday. This time, it was the church expressing the mea culpa to the aggrieved congregants.

Some 100 people -- including more than 20 mostly male abuse survivors -- came not only to hear details about a court-approved resolution to a pending lawsuit, but to witness something they had never seen before -- St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson and church higher-ups standing side by side and not across a deposition table.

Anderson called me Sunday to give me a heads-up on the proposed settlement and spent much of the day calling past and current clients about the impending announcement.

"If they see me on TV shaking hands with the bishop, they might wonder what the (expletive) I'm doing," he quipped.

But shake hands with Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens and Vicar General Charles Lachowitzer he did, after weeks of closed-door negotiations. John Nienstedt, the embattled archbishop accused of mishandling recent clergy abuse cases, was out of town, ministering to children in Kenya.

A 30-YEAR JOURNEY

It came full circle for Anderson in Room 317.

Thirty years ago, Anderson took on his first clergy-abuse case on behalf of Gregory Riedle, a former altar boy at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in St. Paul Park, who accused the Rev. Thomas Adamson of repeatedly molesting him during the 1970s.

At the time it was the first such lawsuit filed against the local archdiocese and among the first of its kind in the nation. Riedle, later diagnosed with psychological problems and prosecuted for sexually abusing a young girl himself, won an undisclosed settlement in 1988.

Two years later, an Anoka County jury awarded another child victim of Adamson $2.7 million in damages, the first time in U.S. history that punitive damages were assessed against the Catholic Church in any case and only the second time a jury had awarded compensatory damages in a sexual abuse case involving a priest.

It should have been a wake-up call to church hierarchy to protect children instead of child predators in robes. Sadly, they did not get the message, for we have seen costly scandal after scandal, from Boston to Los Angeles to Ireland to Minnesota and many other locales.

A state law passed last year allowed a three-year window for clergy-abuse victims previously barred by the statute of limitations to file lawsuits.

Charles Lachowitzer, vicar general of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, speaks during a news conference in St. Paul on Monday, Oct. 13, 2014, as attorney Jeff Anderson, left, listens. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

One of them was "John Doe 1," another alleged victim of Adamson's whose claimed molestation occurred around the same time as Riedle's. The suit, accusing the church of violating "public nuisance laws," now forced officials through pretrial discovery to release thousands of previously undisclosed documents as well as a long list of "credibly accused" priests.

This summer, Adamson, who was ultimately defrocked and now resides in Rochester, Minn., was deposed once again by Anderson. He has admitted to sexually abusing more than a dozen boys at various parishes from shortly after he was ordained in the late 1950s through the early 1980s.

In the videotaped deposition, Adamson is shown sipping a diet soda as he nonchalantly acknowledges molesting kids.

"I looked at it more as a sin than a crime," Adamson said, pretty much echoing how the church has until recently looked upon such misconduct by its priests.

AT LAST, HEARTFELT EMBRACES

But Monday was a day to look forward instead of backward.

Anderson, flanked by Cozzens, Lachowitzer, two survivors and others, spoke about a 17-point child protection plan the church has pledged to follow. It essentially ranges from notifying law enforcement when an allegation is made to continuing a church policy "prohibiting employees and volunteers from being alone with any unrelated minor while serving as an employee or volunteer of the archdiocese or a parish, subject to common sense exceptions."

Cozzens publicly apologized on behalf of the church. Lachowitzer, whom several insiders and outsiders credit with bringing a reformist streak to the issue of clergy abuse when he assumed his post in November, spoke about the church's renewed commitment to healing and to justice.

"I invite all of us to work together, to be the eyes and be the ears and the voices for the safety of all of our children wherever they may be," he said. "I pray that the darkness of the past be overcome by the light of this new day."

Anderson heaped praise on many present in the room. He thanked Jennifer Haselberger, the former chancellor for canonical affairs who a year ago bared the archdiocese's mishandling of recent priest abuse cases. He praised Charlie Rogers, a lawyer working for the archdiocese who pushed for the settlement and the plan. He praised state Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-Hopkins, who authored the child-victim bill.

But he mostly praised the group of former child abuse survivors in the room, men now in middle age and older who lined up at one point to receive heartfelt handshakes and embraces from Cozzens and Lachowitzer.

"It was your willingness to share your secret, it was your willingness to take action for the sake of other kids that caused ... hundreds of others to come forward," Anderson said.

One of them was Al Michaud, who 37 years ago was abused by another Twin Cities priest.

"This landmark case is truly for the survivors of clergy abuse," he said. "This settlement and this framework give survivors what we have wanted all along: as a way to come forward without being shamed, judged and dismissed, and I hope this is a fresh start for survivors.

"And no longer will we be ridiculed or challenged and beaten down by the church because the church is no longer our enemies," he added. "They are our allies."

He admitted he is skeptical, "but I hope that everything that I am hearing today is true."

Contact: rosario@pioneerpress.com