The court didn’t consider whether Blackowiak had been abused as a boy, nor did it decide whether he had been harmed. It only deliberated on the statute of limitations bill that Jeffrey Anderson had helped to push through the state legislature and on the concept of delayed discovery of harm. While Blackowiak said he didn’t understand the extent of the harm done to him until 1991, the court found that a “reasonable person” would have recognized he had been the victim of a crime—and therefore injured—long before. This finding led the justices to rule that the suit fell outside the six-year time limit.
In her written decision, Justice Mary Jeanne Coyne focused directly on the passage in the law that gave a victim a six-year window for filing suit after he or she “was aware or should have been aware that the sexual abuse caused his damages.” As the authors of the bill later explained, they meant that the clock started ticking after a victim understood that his depression, addiction, or other problems were the product of the abuse. Legislators chose this standard after hearing testimony that persuaded them that victims of sex crimes often deny the connection between their experience and later troubles and needed special consideration. The court of appeals had interpreted the statute to provide for this dynamic.
Judge Coyne, who had come to the court with a background in corporate law, declared that a victim’s understanding of psychological cause and effect “is simply not relevant.” Citing an insurance case called Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co. v. Hill, Coyne wrote that the key question is “the time at which the complainant knew or should have known that he/she was sexually abused.” Blackowiak may not have known that a sexual assault had caused him trouble later in life, but he did know he was assaulted, and that was good enough for Coyne.
The ruling, which included a dismissive reference to “repressed memories,” provoked a sharp dissent from Sandra Gardebring, a recently appointed justice who was more than twenty years younger than Coyne. Gardebring argued that Minnesota lawmakers had clearly intended the law to allow for people to sue once they grasped the ways that shame, sexual confusion, guilt, and other products of sexual abuse affected them much later in life. “The statute at issue here does not turn on the legal determination of ‘injury by sexual abuse,’” she wrote in her opinion, “it turns on the victim’s knowledge of the link between the two.” According to this view, sexual abuse can have a long-term, corrosive effect that may not be evident until it has eaten a hole in a victim’s life.
Gardebring’s argument was couched in the politesse of the court. But attorneys who understood the vernacular saw real passion in her phrasing, especially the observation that her colleagues could only reach their conclusion “by consistently misreading the statute.” Remarkably, it was the defense lawyer who represented the man accused of raping Blackowiak who put the decision in terms the public could grasp. Philip Villaume said, “It’s a major victory not only for my client, but for the insurance industry, for professional people. It’s obviously a major blow to victims who have been abused.”
Victims of abusive priests understood the effect of Blackowiak v. Kemp immediately. They had been using the civil court system to hold the Church accountable and to discover the whole truth of what had happened to them as children, including cover-ups and transfers of perpetrators. Most individuals could mount this kind of effort only with the help of lawyers who were willing to gamble that the outcome would include a judgment that would pay them for the effort. The ruling would bar many of them from the courtrooms of Minnesota and those in other states where judges looked to this precedent.
Blackowiak’s lawyer considered the decision part of the “backlash” against abuse claimants inspired by the Bernardin case and false memory activists. James Wall, editor of The Christian Century magazine, called this “the Bernardin factor.” More backlash came from other states where judges denied delayed discovery arguments and legislatures stopped passing laws that accommodated the nature of childhood abuse.
In practical terms, the backlash stalled the movement represented by SNAP, and froze many of the claims brought by attorneys like Jeffrey Anderson. Anderson found himself in constant conflict with his partners, who began to chafe at the expense of cases that might not go anywhere. He poured thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars into these claims, most of which were dismissed on statute of limitations issues. With losses piling up, he pledged his home and every other asset he possessed to maintain his firm’s line of credit but still bumped up against the bank’s $3 million limit. The mood in the firm became tense and divided, similar to a home where a couple is on the verge of divorce.
“My partners said it was over and I had to stop,” recalled Anderson. “I thought I was doing the right thing for the right reason and that somehow it was going to work out.” However, the Bernardin case had halted the momentum of Anderson’s cause. And while he refused to quit and insisted he was a happy warrior, much of what he said and did betrayed this claim. He continued to drink heavily, on the road and at home, and the conflicts with his wife grew more intense.
As Julie Anderson pressed harder to get her husband to stop drinking, he talked about the demands of his work, which he equated with a sacred calling, and insisted he was managing well. In his most sober moments Jeff Anderson did not actually believe his own claims and sometime he feared that his wife would leave him. But he never voiced either his doubts or his worries. Instead he would try to focus conversations on what Julie was doing wrong. He often criticized her for making too much of an effort to look pretty when they went out together and attracting attention. This complaint, from a man whose party antics sometimes ended with his pants around his ankles, struck his wife as particularly ridiculous.
Ridiculous as he might seem to his wife, Jeff Anderson talked rings around her. Only once in their early years together did she actually prevail in a showdown over booze. In this case the family was vacationing and at a distance Julie heard her husband tell three-year-old Darrow to “go get me a beer.” With teeth clenched she asked to have a word with him. When they were alone, she told him that he would never again ask one of their sons to fetch him a drink. He agreed.
With her husband refusing to stop drinking, or see a counselor, Julie started attending group therapy on her own. The other women in the group would listen to her describe her life caring for three small boys with little help from a husband who was absent much of the time and often drunk when he was at home.
“Are you kidding?” they would ask. “Why are you putting up with this?”
Struggling to answer, she would say that for all his flaws, her husband was the most impressive man she had ever met and she just wasn’t ready to give up on him. She held to this view, but she also began to develop the belief that keeping her marriage and family together would require her to be braver, more assertive, and more confident. Becoming a mother had motivated her to stand more firmly for what she believed was right and build up her own strengths. In the process she could become a fuller partner in her marriage, a better example for her children, and gain a level of self-respect she would value more each day.
16. “WOULD A BISHOP LIE?”
More than 125,000 people turned out to shiver and cheer and cry and laugh when John Paul II said Mass in Central Park on a cold October Saturday in 1995. Dressed in gold vestments and beaming a crinkly smile, the seventy-five-year-old pontiff sent ripples of emotion through the crowd with every word and gesture. Even the trembling of his hand was greeted as something warm and familiar. He was loved as a grandfatherly figure, although the great majority of American Catholics said that his views had little bearing on their personal morality.
The disconnect between acceptance of the man and his ideas had much to do with the content of those ideas. Throughout his papacy John Paul II had pushed an aggressively traditional Catholic morality and a dim view of the modern society, especially American society. More recently he had talked about “a culture of death” represented by the United States and a “culture of life” off
ered by the Church. In 1995, during a five-day tour of America, he linked abortion rights to violence of all kinds and implored crowds to “Stand up for marriage and family life.”
In a diverse, pluralistic nation moving toward gay rights and gay marriage, the Pope’s pronouncements sounded like a call from a distant and less tolerant time. However, his personal popularity was unrivaled. In New York, as elsewhere, he electrified crowds and outshone every luminary who stood near him. His appeal was subjected to regular analyses, which invariably concluded that as a former stage actor, John Paul II wore his office better than any man in modern times. His charisma invited people to project their fondest sentiments upon him, and his personal triumphs over assassination attempts and many illnesses made him a symbol of fortitude and courage. No matter what they thought about his message, people liked the man.
The ultimate weapon in the Vatican’s public relations arsenal, a papal visit could highlight his views, announce the opening of a new dialogue, or punctuate the end of one. After John Paul II’s tour of America, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made sure that everyone understood the Pope was determined to close debate with liberal-leaning Catholics. In a public letter he invoked the power assumed by Pius IX when his troops were in retreat and announced that John Paul II’s opposition to ordination for women was “infallible” doctrine that must be accepted by the faithful. Those who were disturbed by this news were encouraged to ask the Holy Spirit for help in accepting that while women would never gain the special status accorded men, they were nevertheless equal.
In early 1995 an historian of religion at Pennsylvania State University surveyed the Catholic landscape and declared that the abuse crisis had “reached its height in 1992–93” and was receding. Philip Jenkins wrote that well-meaning but misguided Catholic “culprits” like Richard Sipe, Jason Berry, and Andrew Greeley had contributed to “the often outrageous exaggeration” of the problem because they truly believed their Church needed reforming. However, thanks to the resolution of the charges against Cardinal Bernardin, the notion that an historic problem afflicted the Church was passing into “oblivion.”
The Bernardin case, publicity about false memories, and legal decisions that barred many claims from victims had pushed the clergy abuse issue to the bottom of the public agenda. The number of articles about the issue published in major media would plummet from a high of 535 in 1991 to a low of 101 in 1996.
In this same time period, many of the people who had worked hardest in the cause of victims shifted focus. Jeanne Miller, founder of VOCALink-up ended her activism to take up a career in the law. Barbara Blaine began working with the Church as a member of a committee appointed by Cardinal Bernardin to deal with clergy abuse issues in a quiet and deliberate way. Jason Berry turned his attention to writing about politics and producing a book about jazz funerals in New Orleans. Richard Sipe accepted chairmanship of the Interfaith Sexual Trauma Institute, which was founded by Abbot Timothy Kelly at his alma mater, St. John’s of Minnesota.
Sipe still hoped that the Church could reform its own culture in ways that would reduce, if not eliminate the problem of clergy abuse. Believing that even the critics could be brought into the process he approached attorney Jeffrey Anderson. At dinner in a Minneapolis restaurant he laid out the goals of the institute and explained how together, all the parties in the crisis might resolve it. Sipe suggested that Anderson participate and perhaps donate money to the ISTI budget. Anderson listened without interrupting and recognized Sipe’s sincerity. He also believed him to be naive. When the pitch ended he said, “But Richard, the Church is the enemy.”
By “Church” Anderson didn’t mean all Catholic people but rather the institution represented by orders, dioceses, priests, bishops, cardinals, and the pope. These organizations and men were, to his mind, irredeemably corrupt and incapable of contributing to reform or reconciliation with abuse victims. While others considered the Bernardin case and concluded that the scandals were ending and Catholicism would return to its pre-1984 status, Anderson was certain the quiet would be momentary. He believed that the abuse of power that had been exposed had inspired a movement that was nowhere near its end. And while he couldn’t predict when or where the next point of conflict would be reached, he had no doubt about its inevitability.
* * *
As the public furor related to Bernardin receded and the sense of crisis in the Church seemed to abate, Pope John Paul II’s stature rose. He began 1995 as Time magazine’s “man of the year.” The honor acknowledged, as the editors wrote, both his popularity and his “rectitude or recklessness as his detractors would have it” in pursuit of sexual moral absolutes. Having made a single public mention of sexual abuse by clergy, he would not utter a word about it again for a year. Instead he would continue to travel the world, lecturing industrialized nations on their social evils and calling people to the comfort of the Church. Only the best-informed American observers would have a basis for challenging the idea, expressed by Philip Jenkins and others, that clergy abuse had been an American problem and that it was under control. Few knew that a second crisis was brewing in Ireland where, as early as 1986, bishops had suddenly decided they needed to buy insurance policies to protect themselves from liability in civil cases brought by victims. Indeed, in this most conservative Catholic country, the Church had also formed a special committee to deal with claims of abuse that hadn’t yet been made.
The first major reports of a sex abuse scandal in the Church in Ireland came in 1994 when a priest named Brendan Smyth surrendered to authorities in Northern Ireland. Smyth had assaulted dozens of children in Belfast and in the Republic of Ireland, where he had been resisting extradition. His case was the first of many that were subsequently revealed by the national press, most notably the Irish Times and the Irish network TV program Prime Time. In 1995, a month before the Pope departed Rome for America, the program revealed that a young man named Andrew Madden had received the equivalent of $50,000 to settle his complaint against Fr. Ivan Payne, who had sexually assaulted him over the course of four years. The abuse had begun in 1977, when Madden was an eleven-year-old altar boy.
Madden, who was not quite thirty, had been a suicidal alcoholic for much of his adult life. The rapes he had suffered as a boy had left him so depressed and dispirited that he was unable to establish stable relationships, complete schooling, or even maintain a steady job. He had been in and out of hospitals and outpatient psychotherapy and seen little of his family since his teens. He had nevertheless developed the determination to hold Payne accountable and won the settlement, which Payne paid with a loan from the Church.
Although church lawyers in America typically pressed victims to keep cases secret in exchange for payments, Madden was not asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. Certain that Payne had victimized other boys, he made his claim public in the summer of 1995. As so often happens, the publicity prompted others to report that they too had been abused by priests. By the end of the year further complaints been lodged against Payne and against two other Irish clerics.
Ireland was not the only country outside North America suffering from a clergy abuse scandal. Weeks before his trip to the United States, John Paul II accepted the resignation of Austria’s highest Church official, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, who had been accused of sexual abuse by several different men who had been his students. Groer’s case, which involved the abuse of underage boys, had been widely publicized and thousands of Austrians left the Church in the wake of the scandal. In the same period two bishops in Germany were under investigation for covering up abuses committed there.
Compared with the hundreds of cases in the United States, the handful made public in Europe seemed unremarkable, and they did little to undermine the notion that a mainly American problem had been placed in proper perspective and resolved. As far as most people knew, the Church was moving past the sex crime scandal. What no one outside the Church bureaucracy knew was that the Vatican was under pressure to resolve many cases that remai
ned secret. Often these problems were reported directly to the Pope during the one-on-one, “ad limina” visits that all bishops were required to attend at least once every five years.
The routine of the ad limina meetings made it possible for the Pope to be more fully informed of conditions in the worldwide Church than anyone else. He required these contacts because he held direct authority over all of the bishops of the Church. The Pope also represented the court of last resort for anyone appealing for action against a priest who had committed crimes or for priests seeking to retain their faculties after an accusation had been made. Rome was generally sympathetic to the rights of priests. Bishops who requested a canonical investigation of one accused of sexual abuse could expect that years would pass before anything substantive occurred.
Of course requests for canonical trials and reports on criminal priests were not publicized by the Church. Thus, no one outside the Church bureaucracy knew that in July of 1996 Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland wrote to Ratzinger asking for help with two priests who were the subjects of sworn statements accusing them of sexually abusing minors. One, Lawrence Murphy, had long worked at a residential school for the deaf where he had sexually assaulted many boys. Weakland said that he had become aware of these cases within the past year and was turning to Ratzinger because the offenses were “under your jurisdiction.”
* * *
Transferred from Hulbert Field in Florida to an isolated airstrip in the Portuguese Azores, Thomas Doyle no longer had easy access to old friends in the Church and other sources who kept him informed on what might be happening behind chancery doors. He found his new assignment pleasant enough. His home was a little two-bedroom house atop a hill that overlooked the flightline. Fellowship was available at local Alcoholic Anonymous meetings and the other officers on the island welcomed him warmly. With some help he began a food program for the poor that operated out of an unused wing of the base hospital and he organized volunteers to repair homes in poor neighborhoods. Engaged as he was, he missed being, as he termed it, “in the know” and he remained concerned about how the Church responded, or rather failed to respond, to abuse victims.
Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal Page 25