Despite Sending Suggestive Cards, School Official Defended As 'Exemplary Jesuit'
By Claudia Rowe
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
October 6, 2006
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/287783_seattleu06.html
Ten years ago, before he was hired as a vice president at Seattle University, the Rev. Tony Harris was among three priests who made repeated homosexual overtures to a young seminary student, according to allegations in a sexual harassment suit.
John Bollard, then a priest-in-training in San Francisco, said he was 25 when the persistent come-ons began. They lasted six years, until 1996, he said, and involved an invitation from one priest to cruise gay bars. Another wanted to masturbate with him. Harris sent a series of pornographic greeting cards.
"Thought this might inspire some theological thoughts," said one, depicting a fully aroused man.
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The Rev. Tony Harris retains support of Jesuit superiors. Photo by The Seattle University |
The Jesuits ultimately agreed to settle the suit out of court six years ago, after the case resulted in a groundbreaking ruling and national coverage on "60 Minutes."
Seattle University, among the nation's pre-eminent institutions of Jesuit education, has recently come under fire from victims of clergy sexual abuse for its handling of problem priests. Nothing in Bollard's lawsuit suggests that Harris ever acted improperly toward minors. But the former seminarian -- troubled that a priest who sent such "shocking" cards continues to work around young adults -- said the school's ability to position itself as a standard-bearer of Catholic values should be questioned.
"I was concerned at the time, and remained concerned, that the people involved were working in education, in counseling roles and in high-profile jobs," he said in an interview. "I was frightened about what kinds of actions they might do toward other people."
Harris, who oversees campus ministry, did not respond to requests for comment left at his Seattle University office.
But nine years ago, when Bollard's accusations first came to light, the priest, then working as a rector at Jesuit High School in Portland, said in a statement that he was embarrassed to learn that his personal correspondence had been made public.
Seattle University was well aware of his record when it hired him. Spokeswoman Barbara Nombalais called it "old news."
The Rev. John Whitney, superior of the Jesuits' Oregon Province, which includes Washington state, described Harris as "an exemplary Jesuit" and said the cards, intended to be funny, were "simply a matter of poor judgment or bad taste."
Whitney noted, too, that Harris had not been in a position of authority over the young seminarian. "There wasn't a power arrangement there," he said. "In no way was there any attempt to harass Mr. Bollard."
But Bollard, now 41 and director of an education research program at UCLA, disagrees. He said the overtures from Harris and fellow priests Andrew Sotelo and Thomas Gleeson created such a hostile work environment that he was forced to leave the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif., and abandon his boyhood dream of becoming a priest.
In 2000, without acknowledging any wrongdoing, the Jesuits settled Bollard's suit. Financial details of the agreement are confidential, though Bollard, who had sought $1 million in damages, says he is satisfied.
"I came away from the settlement process with a great respect for the Jesuits," his lawyer, James Wagstaffe, added. "I thought they took John's case very seriously at that point."
The arrangement also bars Bollard from elaborating about what Harris and the other priests did. But in an interview with "60 Minutes" taped before it was reached, he described the general tenor of their advances.
They began in 1990, when he was a 25-year-old teacher at St. Ignatius College Preparatory School in San Francisco.
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The Rev. Tony Harris retains support of Jesuit superiors. Photo by The Seattle University |
John Bollard as shown on CBS' "60 Minutes" in 1999.
Aside from Harris sending suggestive pictures of naked men, he said, Gleeson, then president of the Jesuit School of Theology, asked Bollard to masturbate with him. Sotelo, a faculty member at St. Ignatius, suggested that they cruise gay bars, Bollard told a "60 Minutes" reporter. When he reported these passes to a supervisor, he said, he was handed a coffee cup printed with the words "No whining."
"It was earth-shattering to me," Bollard recently told the Seattle P-I.
The case has since become a landmark in the still-murky area governing oversight of religious orders.
A lower court ruled that the separation of church and state prevented it from applying standard sexual harassment laws. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision.
"There are laws that apply to everybody that also have to apply to the church," said Wagstaffe, the lawyer who successfully argued that Bollard's case should go to trial.
"Be it handicap ramps, building codes or a priest murdering someone, they would charge him with a crime. So, of course anti-harassment laws would apply, too. This is a case that will be cited by any court that's finding that churches are not above the law."
After the appeals court ruling, the lawsuit was settled.
Harris' record, apart from the Bollard matter, has been spotless, said Whitney, the provincial. Despite Harris' legal problems, he continued to work as an administrator, rector and campus minister at Jesuit High School in Portland through the late 1990s.
In 2001, he came to Seattle University as an assistant to President Stephen Sundborg, overseeing the Office of Mission and Ministry.
"There has never been a situation that has called into question his integrity or dedication to the ministry," said Nombalais, the spokeswoman. "He is well-regarded among faculty, staff and students."
Sundborg, who has recently sought to distance himself from news that two of Seattle University's former faculty members molested children, was himself superior of the Oregon Province during the years Bollard said he was being besieged.
He did not respond to a request for comment.
But Whitney did. "Father Harris has made up for this mistake," he said. "And he has suffered for this mistake."
Bollard says he has suffered, too. Few of his old Jesuit friends will speak to him now, and while he still admires the order's commitment to social justice, he is so personally disillusioned he can no longer attend church.
"I don't fear so much for my own safety, but for what the Jesuits are saying to the world with the people they have in high authority," he said.
"That priests are not like everybody else because they belong to this group that's protected and is really above the law."
P-I reporter Claudia Rowe can be reached at 206-448-8320 or claudiarowe@seattlepi.com.
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