For Jurors, Process Wrought Frustration, Anger, Exhaustion

By Stephanie McCrummen
Long Island (NY) Newsday
February 11, 2003

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lijuro0211,0,3681678.story?coll=ny%2Dtop%2Dheadlines

Through spring, summer, fall and most of winter, the grand jurors sat in a plain basement room of the Suffolk County district attorney's office in Hauppauge and listened to grown men and a few women recount in detail, sometimes through tears, precisely how they were raped, fondled and sexually molested years ago by the Catholic priests they were taught to trust.

This was their routine. Two, three and even four days a week, eight and nine hours a day for nearly nine months, the 23 jurors absorbed those stories, went home, shored themselves up emotionally, and returned for more.

"We were numb at first,” said one of two jurors reached yesterday who agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity. "We couldn't believe what we were hearing. We were sickened at times. We would cry at times.”

It was "draining,” said the second juror. "There was one point where I said, ‘Ok, who's going to give us counseling to listen to this for nine months.'”

But in the end, when they were done listening to the 97 witnesses, combing the secret personnel files of 43 priests and reviewing the 257 exhibits, the first juror said she and her colleagues were left largely with anger toward church officials, outrage that was funneled into the scathing public report released yesterday.

"We felt nothing but anger at them while they were sitting there because they did not answer the questions like we wanted them to answer,” she said. "They were like, they knew nothing. ‘I don't know, I don't know, I don't remember' -- that was really what we were angry at. We wanted to see some justice ... We wanted them to admit it, to admit that they had made a mistake and that they were sorry, but no ... It seemed like they were being instructed not to talk.”

At a news conference yesterday, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota praised the panel members' "personal sacrifice.”

But the two jurors interviewed said that they and others on the panel were deeply frustrated that their work did not result in indictments. At the end of their service, the district attorney told them that the statute of limitations prevented that.

"I feel that justice was not done ... ” said the first juror. "We were very disappointed ... We felt after nine months we were there, we wanted to see some justice ... They [certain priests and church officials] should have gone to trial. They thought they were above the law.”

Now, three weeks after their release from duty, the jurors have gone back to their regular lives with the uneasy feeling that the devastating stories they heard -- stories the second juror said would stay with her "forever” -- might never be honored with justice.

"I think it's good it all came out ... but it's a shame that it went on for so many years,” she said. "That people put a priest above a human being -- that they were treated like God ...

"I think ... [the victims] themselves did what we were trying to do” in the grand jury report, she has concluded, "which is bring it out in the open.”

The first juror, who is Catholic, now has the burden of dealing with doubts she did not have when she began. During the nine months of hearing testimony, she said, she went to church some Sundays for relief. But for a few weeks, disgust overwhelmed her faith, and she stopped.

"I was very upset,” she said, her voice shaking over the phone. "And then I decided that they weren't going to let me lose my faith ... It was very difficult for me, just hearing what went on and not wanting to believe that they let this go on so many years, that they felt they were above the law. I lost the trust that I had in the priests. And in the church. But as I said, I am still praying very hard to regain that and praying that they see that they can no longer run the church the way they had in the past.”