HOUSTON (TX)
Dallas Morning News [Dallas TX]
October 25, 2019
By Dallas Morning News Editorial Board
This relationship’s legality is murky; its morality is not.
In the era of #MeToo and #ChurchToo, when new revelations of clergy abuse seem to arise daily, we can’t afford to make excuses for faith leaders. In fact, those who care for our souls should be held to the highest moral standard.
But that’s not what happened in Houston last week. A grand jury declined to indict Monsignor Frank Rossi, who admitted to having an inappropriate sexual relationship with parishioner Laura Pontikes.
Rossi was formerly the vicar general to Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the Catholic archbishop of Galveston-Houston and president of the U.S. bishops conference who has been leading the U.S. hierarchy’s response to the ongoing sexual abuse scandal. Pontikes claims that DiNardo hasn’t adequately responded to her complaint against Rossi.
Pontikes alleges that Rossi manipulated her into a sexual relationship while also serving as her confessor and spiritual adviser, even as he provided marriage counseling for her husband, and while he was soliciting large donations from the couple.
This is a different kind of clerical sexual misconduct: one with an adult. Rossi claims the relationship was consensual, which gives him plausible but frustrating cover, in our view. Under Texas law, sexual assault can happen without physical force in a relationship between adults where one party holds all the power. Think of college professors and coeds, doctors and patients, therapists and clients, employers and employees, or priests and parishioners.
The law does not say there can be no such thing as consent in these relationships, which is part of the reason such cases are difficult to prosecute. But the law does protect those who are vulnerable to predatory trickery or coercion. After all, the predator may ask himself, why use physical restraint to hold down your victim when lies can have the same effect?
Frank Rossi is a bad priest. That much is undisputed. According to the teachings of his church, Rossi’s relationship was immoral. His confession of adultery confirms it. He betrayed Pontikes’s trust while cashing her checks. He cuckolded her husband while giving him marriage counseling. What’s left to decide now is whether he’s also a criminal and whether the church will excommunicate him for the sin.
Based on the facts we have, we understand the confusion and disappointment over the grand jury’s decision. David Pooler, a Baylor University professor who has studied such cases extensively, told us, “I have talked to multiple survivors now and they’re just devastated. It’s like, well, what’s the use of even reporting? It has deflated and discouraged many survivors.”
Their discouragement over the sense that justice was lost in this case is borne of the certainty that morality was abandoned first.
editorialboard@dallasnews.com @dmnopinion