Priest Sex Abuse Scandal Rears Up Anew

Lent began last week and, sadly, it's time to recall Yogi Berra's "It's déjà vu all over again." Pope Benedict XVI is addressing the clergy scandal and its cover-up in Ireland. Back in 2002, it was Pope John Paul II dealing with the scandal in the United States. I was writing for The New York Sun at the time and tried to put the scandal in perspective amidst the blatant bias of a hostile press here that loathes the Catholic Church.

I'm not qualified to comment on the church scandal in Ireland because I've never lived there, but according to an article by Politics Daily columnist David Gibson: "In May 2009 an investigative body known as the Ryan Commission released a report, nearly 10 years in the making, that detailed decades of systematic, horrific abuses of children in 60 residential 'Reformatory and Industrial Schools' operated by religious orders of nuns and brothers and funded and supervised by the Irish Department of Education. The abuses were called 'endemic' and included awful sexual and physical abuse."

Mr. Gibson also quotes Dublin's Archbishop Diarmuid Martin as saying, "The church in the past was extraordinarily authoritarian, in some cases one might even say abusively authoritarian, it was actually disrespectful of people's autonomy in many ways."

This is not the Church that I'm familiar with here in New York City. I was born and raised in Spanish Harlem and went to parochial elementary and high schools run by Sisters of Mercy, Irish Christian Brothers, Sisters of Charity, and Ursuline and Dominican nuns. My brother was an altar boy as were my three sons and none had any improper experiences with priests. We received food and clothing from the nuns and my pastor would come to our house to watch the Yankees in the World Series. Our relationship with the religious was warm and comforting and still is.

I was certainly not denying the validity of the many cases of sex abuse here, but the scandal was treated viciously by a liberal media that rejoiced in the tribulations of the Roman Catholic Church, which it still regarded as an enemy of social progress.

The New York Post ran a front page headline urging those who had suffered sexual abuse by a priest to call a number that would help them. The paper only targeted Catholic clergy victims instead of trying to assist all molested children.

Statistically, pedophilia in the Catholic priesthood is extremely rare and significantly lower than in other faiths or the teaching profession. The Post headline, however, made it easy for many to exploit the scandal by making accusations against priests who had died and were unable to protect their reputations. Allegations from events that took place 50 years ago were being leveled in lawsuits against many dioceses and many parishioners, horrified at the number of priests supposedly involved, withdrew their support.

In addition, the media continued to address the problem as one of pedophilia when the majority of victims were actually over the prepubescent age and were molested by homosexual clergy.

The Church had been dealing with the problem of homosexuality in the seminary, which rose significantly after Vatican II, when many priests left the clergy and seminaries lowered the standards that barred homosexuals. The Church condemns homosexual acts, not homosexuals, and many of the hierarchy ignored the possibility that these priests would not be able to resist temptation. Nevertheless, the mainstream media persisted in ignoring the underlying issue of the homosexual clergy.

The renowned Franciscan psychiatrist Father Benedict Groeschel wrote in his 2002 book, "From Scandal to Hope": "Seldom in the history of journalism have I seen such virulent attacks on any institution that is supposed to receive fair treatment in the press."

The newspapers, television programs, and cable comedians such as Bill Maher routinely mocked the Church, and I wondered how this was affecting the local clergy.

At a dinner for the Human Life Foundation, I approached several priests to ask if they thought the recent suicide of a Staten Island priest had anything to do with a demoralized priesthood. I learned that the young man had serious family problems and the scandal had nothing to do with his depression. One priest told me that the priests were not demoralized: They were angry and furious at a hierarchy that had transferred suspect priests to other parishes rather than removing them completely.

But the question remains: What about the falsely accused? It's very easy to accuse someone who can't defend himself and the possibility of a lawsuit against the "very wealthy" Church proved to be very attractive. Even the powerful and influential Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago in 1993 was accused of sexual abuse by Steven Cook, who said that he sexually molested him during the 1970s but withdrew those charges in 1997 after concluding that his memories of the alleged incident, which were evoked during hypnosis, were "unreliable."

In May 2002, a priest accused of molesting two teenage boys more than 30 years ago committed suicide at a Catholic psychiatric institution in Maryland. We can speculate whether he was guilty or innocent, but we'll never really know the truth about Father Alfred Bietighofer. Was he a homosexual priest who broke his vows and then hanged himself when his sins were revealed or was he an innocent man unable to deal with the false allegations and the resulting scandal?

When I read about that priest, I understood why the Vatican disapproved of the precipitate response to the abuse scandal by American bishops who were turning over all allegations to the authorities, whether confirmed or not. What's more, lie detector tests were not required of the accusers.

To the unenlightened, the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Church are filled with old men in long black dresses who don't understand what life is like in the real world. They cover their misdeeds with a cloak of secrecy such as the NYPD's alleged Blue Wall of Silence to protect the brotherhood, so when scandal erupts, the worst suspicions are confirmed. The Church is an easy target for the media, but when charges are justified the guilty should receive their just punishment. I just wish that the media would campaign as hard for the victims of other pedophiles, particularly in the world of academia.

From the beginning of his 32-year career as a Queens math teacher, Francisco Olivares was a molester, allegedly impregnating a 16-year-old student; sexually abusing two 12-year-old pupils a decade later and another pupil 4 years after that, but he's still collecting a $94,154 salary every year. Meanwhile, 757 New York City public school teachers spend their days (i.e., up to 7 years) in the "rubber rooms" doing nothing but collecting fat paychecks while awaiting disciplinary action for various crimes including sexual abuse.

Unfortunately, the powerful teachers union makes it nearly impossible to get rid of perverts in the Department of Education, but this scandal is unlikely to cause a ripple in the elite press. After all they're not priests.

Alicia Colon lives in New York City and can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com and at www.aliciacolon.com