Touched by a Scandal, Bishop Stays Silent

By John Rather
New York Times
March 10, 2002

The country watched in sadness and outrage as the case unfolded in Boston: a Roman Catholic priest, John J. Geoghan Jr., had sexually molested more than 130 children over 30 years as church officials transferred the troubled priest from parish to parish despite knowing him to be a pedophile.

As Mr. Geoghan, 66, who was defrocked in 1998, was sentenced in February to 9 to 10 years in prison for abusing a 10-year-old in a swimming pool in 1991, the Archdiocese of Boston revealed that over the years it had settled 100 civil suits against Mr. Geoghan for $15 million. Another 84 civil suits naming him are pending, as are two other criminal cases.

Cardinal Bernard F. Law, the longtime leader of the Boston archdiocese and the senior American Catholic leader, apologized for approving the transfers, saying, "We do not always make holy decisions." The archdiocese also gave Massachusetts authorities the names of 90 priests accused of abuse over the past five decades. Repercussions spread as dioceses in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire followed suit, and in Washington, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, expressed "profound sorrow" for sexual abuse of children by priests and the "immeasurable" harm they inflicted.

But the Diocese of Rockville Centre, the spiritual headquarters for an estimated 1.5 million Long Island Catholics, has remained an island apart, going on about its business almost as if nothing was happening.

Bishop William F. Murphy has declined interviews and has told senior officials of the diocese that the 5,000 ordained and lay employees of the diocese should refer all questions about the issue to the diocesan spokeswoman, Joanne Novarro.

Yet before he came to Rockville Centre last September, Bishop Murphy was the No. 2 official in the Boston archdiocese and the right-hand man to Cardinal Law during times of crucial decisions about Mr. Geoghan.

Archdiocesan records ordered released by a Massachusetts judge show that Bishop Murphy, the vicar general and moderator of the curia for the Archdiocese of Boston from 1993 until the Vatican named him to head the Rockville Centre diocese in June 2001, was involved in helping arrange early retirement for Father Geoghan in 1996 after molestation charges against him first became public. The records include personal correspondence between Bishop Murphy and Father Geoghan and show that Bishop Murphy was privy to confidential records on treatment and counseling Mr. Geoghan received.

Bishop Murphy is named in a civil suit filed by one of Mr. Geoghan's alleged victims, accusing the new Long Island bishop of negligent supervision of Mr. Geoghan. In court documents, Bishop Murphy and others named in the civil suit have all denied liability. Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer in Boston for the boy in that suit and for 86 plaintiffs in the 83 other pending civil suits accusing Mr. Geoghan of abuse, said he planned to call Bishop Murphy to answer questions under oath in the near future.

He said Bishop Murphy was not named in the other suits because incidents they alleged predated his time in a leadership post at the archdiocese, where Bishop Murphy worked since 1987.

"The Archdiocese of Boston kept these sexual molestations secret for decades," Mr. Garabedian said. "And the record indicates that many individuals of the archdiocese, including Bishop Murphy, played a role in that secrecy."

The archdiocese has tentatively agreed to settle the 84 suits out of court. Bishop Murphy could be spared the deposition if the archdiocese settles.

Ms. Novarro said last week that Bishop Murphy was reviewing diocesan policies regarding sexual misconduct against minors by clergy and would not comment until the review was complete.

Ms. Novarro said it would not be prudent for Bishop Murphy to speak about his role in the Geoghan case. "He is not going to speak out on a civil suit while it is in litigation," she said. But that did not stop Cardinal Law, who is named in two dozen of the pending civil suits, from making two apologies about the case.

Interviews with Long Island Catholics last week showed a widespread lack of knowledge of Bishop Murphy's role in the Geoghan case, and mixed opinions on whether the bishop should publicly address sexual misconduct by priests.

"Just because it happened up there doesn't mean it happened down here," said a woman who asked that her name not be used, saying she feared for the effect on her job and the way people would treat her in church. "But people do have a right to know what happened up there."

Msgr. Tom Hartman said he and Rabbi Marc Gellman had not addressed the issue on their cable television program "God Squad." "It's not a topic we have chosen to discuss," he said.

Monsignor Hartman said he was following Bishop Murphy's directive to refer questions to Ms. Novarro. "I want to listen to him as far as representing the diocese," he said, referring to the bishop.

Elizabeth O'Connor, editor of The Long Island Catholic, the diocesan newspaper, said she had been free to cover the Geoghan case and Bishop Murphy's role but had chosen not to.

"I haven't been told not to cover it," she said. "When we have had an unfortunate situation in our diocese we have covered it."

"I feel the story is in the past," she said, referring to the Geoghan case. "It is being covered very heavily by the local secular media. We are published by and in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, so I have to wonder whether it is in the interest of the church and of my readers to devote a lot of our limited resources to the scandalous details of something that happened in another place in anther time."

While not directly referring to sexual abuse by priests, Bishop Murphy defended priests and addressed attacks on the church in his weekly column in the diocesan newspaper, of which he is publisher.

"The church is under attack from many quarters, none more so than those who dislike the church because it seems to be the only bulwark against the moral relativism and social agnosticism of our culture," he wrote in the Feb. 27 issue. "The priesthood in turn has become the favorite 'whipping boy' of these cultural elites. They laugh at our ideals and they revel in our failings."

Bishop Murphy also wrote that he was "painfully aware of the frailty of priests and that some -- thank God very, very few -- have in fact traduced their vocation and even used their status to take advantage of others." But, he continued, "At least in my mind and in my experience, these few do not give justification for the way priests today are under constant scrutiny, are given no leeway, and are subject to unjust criticism from anyone and everyone who feels free to say whatever they wish about priests with impunity."

He called the priests in the diocese as fine as group of priests "as I have known anywhere in the world." The diocese said it had 321 active and 103 retired priests.

Laura A. Ahearn, a Stony Brook Catholic and director of Parents for Megan's Law, an advocacy group for victims of child abuse, said Bishop Murphy appeared to be taking "a very defensive posture."

"Being in such a defensive posture makes it nearly impossible for them to seriously address the problem," Ms. Ahearn said.

"Any priest who commits a sex crime against a child has to be brought to justice and treated like any other sex offender," she said. "And anybody who actively participates in covering up a sex crime against a child should be held criminally responsible." She said that would include Bishop Murphy.

A priest in the Rockville Centre diocese who agreed to speak only if his name was withheld said that he could not agree that priests were under undue scrutiny and that he believed the diocese had kept secret its knowledge about the problem of sexually abusive priests.

"The church has brought this upon itself," he said. "Across the board, it has been swept under the rug." He said he knew of at least one case where a priest in a Long Island parish who may have been involved in sexual abuse was transferred to another diocese.

"There are people that have very strong feelings about this," he said. "Injustice has not properly been dealt with."

But the priest said he sensed no pressure from parishioners for Bishop Murphy to speak. "They really don't know Bishop Murphy," he said. "They don't know he's bringing this baggage."

Ms. Novarro, the spokeswoman for the diocese, said that under diocesan policy a priest accused of sexual misconduct with a minor was "removed from his assignment as a priest" and not merely transferred to another parish. She also said she did know how many diocesan priests had been accused of sexual misconduct or whether the diocese had paid to settle suits out of court.

A priest in the Rockville Centre diocese is currently under criminal indictment. The Rev. Michael Hands, a priest at St. Andrew's in East Northport and later at St. Raphael's in East Meadow, faces sodomy charges in both Nassau and Suffolk. Authorities said the 34-year-old priest had sex with a 15-year -old boy from the Northport area over a period of months in 1999 and 2000. The Rockville Centre diocese removed Father Hands from St. Andrew's after Suffolk police arrested him last May. Criminal cases are proceeding in both counties. He has pleaded not guilty and is free on bail.

Other recent cases include that of the Rev. Andrew L. Millar, a 69-year-old retired priest who served in several Long Island parishes over more than 30 years, who pleaded guilty in 2000 to sodomizing a 15-year-old boy from Great Neck. Father Millar is serving a two- to-three-year prison sentence.

Michael D. O'Donohoe, a former altar boy at St. Anthony's in East Northport and now the Commissioner of Jurors for Suffolk County, said he and other altar boys recalled behavior by priests that "didn't sit quite right with us."

"There was one priest who would always ask a boy to go on vacation with him," Mr. O'Donohoe said. "And my brothers and myself thought that was kind of strange."

"You didn't have any awareness," Mr. O'Donohoe said. "You just didn't believe that a person you thought that God had chosen to be a priest could possibly do anything wrong. That's what you were told, that's what you were taught. And you couldn't possibly go home to your parents and tell them that something didn't sit right because you weren't supposed to even know those things."

"Many a boy may have come home and not known what happened to him," he said. "There are apologies due."

Mr. O'Donohoe said Catholics who once spoke in whispers about sexual abuse by priests now speak more openly. He said Bishop Murphy needed to address the issue.

"I can understand legally trying to protect himself and probably the church from financial losses," he said. "But I certainly feel as a Catholic and as a human being that obviously there is a problem here that has been going on for many years, and unfortunately many, many people have been damaged."

Bishop Murphy, he said, should be "right out in front, saying, 'Come on, guys, we've got a problem here, we've got to expose it."'

Perhaps more typical was the reaction of a leader of a young adults group at St. Rose of Lima in Massapequa who said he was unaware that Bishop Murphy was named in a civil suit or that he was involved in decisions about Mr. Geoghan. "Frankly I don't care; it's not mine to judge," he said. "You have no business asking me these questions."