Turning a blind eye to first-person acknowledgements of sexual abuse, or simply zipping your lips about it, is highly questionable at the least, if not a pretty heinous moral transgression. That's true whether the accomplices work for the U.N., or northwest Jesuits. More on that latter case from today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Before the Rev. Stephen Sundborg became president of Seattle University, he held annual, private meetings with another Jesuit priest who has since confessed to repeatedly molesting a 12-year-old, a 10-year-old and two adult women. Sundborg, however, never reported these crimes. As Provincial of the Northwest Jesuits from 1990 to 1996, the distinguished, nationally known academic had at least 10 conversations with Alaska priest James Poole about improper sexual acts, but he has maintained that these discussions were privileged and, therefore, secret......During his six-year service as provincial, Sundborg supervised priests serving in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska and held annual "accounts of conscience" with each -- about 350 such meetings, all told....But to local representatives of the national Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, the blurry legal issues are crystal clear as a matter of morality. "It just goes to show that they're more worried about covering their own illegal activity than protecting children," said Jim Biteman, a manager at The Boeing Co. who heads the Seattle survivors chapter. "It goes against everything that they've been saying publicly."
More here and here on Poole, and here on the organizational mess surrounding the Jesuits' five-state Oregon Province.
UPDATE, 12/15/05: Here's today's Seattle Times story on Sundberg and Poole.
UPDATE, 12/17/05: The P-I has this clarification today, with Sundborg saying he can't reveal whether Poole admitted to him in the confidential conversations between the two whether he had improper sexual contact with minors. In other talks, Sundborg says, Poole admitted to improper sexual relationships with adult women. Poole later confessed to sexually abusing a 10-year-old, a 12-year old, and two adult women.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at December 14, 2005 05:41 PM | Email ThisYou will never convince me that the church isn't corrupt, criminal, and outright evil in nature. Feel sorry for all the people that are members that have no clue as to how their "infallible" chuch is actually run. Catholic Corporation - screwing you over for 2000 years.
Posted by: HMoul on December 15, 2005 09:55 AMJDH: I agree with you that the abuse scandal was basically a liberal scandal, the result of a dramatic drop in traditional standards as part of the 1960's sexual revolution. Most people do not know that 81% of the cases where charges were made between 1950 and 2002 (the period studied)were homosexual in nature involving teenage boys. Another 10% involved teenage girls. The rest were actual pedophilia cases. I wonder why the media and the critics here are so quick to condemn the Church but are so silent when it comes to the enormously greater numbers and rates of abuse among other professions, such as teachers. The recent cases involving adult women teachers and boys get more of a wink than condemnation. If it's a priest however, then the Church is "evil."
Posted by: Arnold on December 15, 2005 10:07 AMThese big generalizations do not seem well thought through, other than to try and tear down an institution with which you disagree. Try lifting people up - it is far more fulfilling - instead of tearing them down. The Catholic church has done a lot of good, concentrate on that. If, with these vast generalizations, you manage to destroy the Catholic church all the good that they do also goes by the way side. Is that really what you want?
Posted by: fred on December 15, 2005 10:21 AMWhen he was caught, many of his colleagues in the profession -- though they did not quarrel with the evidence against him -- came to his defense. His scholarly work, they seemed to believe, outweighed his crimes against children.
Posted by: Jim Miller on December 15, 2005 10:49 AMAs was earlier pointed out, it is OK for doctors to keep quite when abortion is involved.
Posted by: fred on December 15, 2005 11:02 AMExcept, apparently, for when it comes to molesting little boys.
This seems to be a problem with many Catholic schools. A good friend just went back to school to get her Masters of Education at Gonzaga, and even though she isn't a Christian, was shocked out how left wing and kooky many of the staff there are, and how for from Church teachings many of her professors teach and behave.
Posted by: Mike H on December 15, 2005 11:48 AMI am amazed at the people up in arms about sex abuse in the Catholic church but are oblivious to the rampant sex abuse occurring in the public schools.
Douglas Montero wrote a piece in the New York Post
At least one child is sexually abused by a school employee every day in New York City schools, a Post investigation has found.I will come back to the following paragraph in a moment.
Equally as disturbing is that one-third of the employees accused of sexual abuse are repeat offenders who've already been cited for inappropriate behavior by school officials.
The Post investigation has found that more than 60 percent of employees accused of sexual abuse - mostly tenured teachers - were transferred to desk jobs at district offices located inside schools. Forty percent of those transferred suspects were repeat offenders.Closer to home is this article from the Seattle P-I.
# 60 sex-related incidents at the Washington State School for the Deaf between September 1998 and February 2001.And again, from a local report, The Seattle Times comes this article about coaches who prey.
# At least 100 other incidents, including 14 alleged rapes, several attempted rapes and dozens of molestations over the preceding decade.
# It took a string of five reported student-on-student rapes in 1999 to spur safety improvements.
# Lack of oversight continued for decades at the 120-student school.
In a dark side of the growing world of girls sports, 159 coaches have been reprimanded or fired for sexual misconduct in the past decade. And 98 continued to coach or teach — as schools, the state and even some parents looked the other way.
Over the past 21/2 years, 45 suspected child molesters were transferred to district offices inside schools. Forty percent allegedly were repeat offenders, who had been warned or reprimanded, according to statistics compiled by The Post.
Case in point: In November, Howard Banco, a 55-year-old resource-room teacher at IS 234 in Brooklyn, was accused of touching a 12-year-old girl's arm and saying, "You have a nice body. You could be a model." He then allegedly told her he had a camera and tried to coax her into posing.
To make matters worse, the same teacher had two prior cases in 1994 and 1998, in which he was warned and reprimanded for touching and trying to get 12- and 13-year-old girls to pose for photos, according to documents from Schools Special Investigator Edward Stancik
Banco, meanwhile, was suspended with pay (my emphasis. Probably a union rule.) in January. Charges are pending.
When The Seattle Times asked the Bellevue School District for information about teachers and coaches accused of sexual misconduct, school officials and the state’s most powerful union teamed up behind the scenes to try to hide the files.To rant, as did HMoul and PBJ in their bigoted way about the Catholic church and to ignore how the public school system and it's powerful unions work to protect child molesters and not in the interest of your children is pathetic.
The Bellevue teachers union organized a districtwide personnel-file review so teachers could go through their files and remove materials. The district says no sexual-misconduct records were removed, but the past president of the union said records The Times asked for were removed in one case.
“There is no reason we would ever want to drag current or former employees through public attention to such matters — even those who were found to have committed misconduct,” Sharon Howard, an attorney and an assistant Bellevue schools superintendent, wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Times.
Rather than fight the newspaper directly, Howard invited the Washington Education Association (WEA) to sue the Bellevue district under the names of teachers with sexual-misconduct complaints.
“The best course of action was to work with the WEA to arrange for them to bring (lawsuits) to stop this,” Bellevue attorney Howard wrote to a teacher. “I’d be delighted if we could share as little as possible” with The Times, she wrote in another e-mail to the WEA general counsel.
So count your blessings!
Posted by: fred on December 15, 2005 12:07 PMWhen I said he spent 15 years, I meant 15 years. Maybe it supposed to be 12, but he spent 15. Idiot.
There really is no other explanation on why someone would give up something they had worked so hard for, except that something pulled the wool from his eyes. Idiot.
Posted by: HMoul on December 15, 2005 03:28 PMFrom: From The President
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 12:53 PM
To: Faculty-Staff; All Undergrads; All-Graduates
Subject: Personal Message from Father Sundborg
Dear Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, and Friends of Seattle University:
I am away from the campus this week doing alumni and fundraising work for the university. In light of the inflammatory article about me in the Seattle P-I yesterday, I wanted you to hear from me personally at this time.
The article in the P-I contains many inaccurate statements about testimony I gave during a deposition in a sex abuse case brought against James Poole, S.J. and the Oregon Province of Jesuits alleging misconduct in 1975-1977 in Nome, Alaska. In particular, the implication of the article is false in regard to how I, as provincial from 1990 to 1996, dealt with sexual misconduct of Jesuits. I dealt primarily with reports of sexual misconduct of some Jesuits with adults. I received no report of abuse of minors by James Poole, and the P-I article wrongly implies that I did. Had I received accusations of abuse of minors, I would have alerted the authorities in order to protect the young.
In my work as provincial on these cases, I met personally with adult victims of sexual misconduct. I listened to their experiences and I assured them of all the assistance they needed and of my personal support. My primary concern was always helping the person who came to me for help while doing all that I could as provincial to assure that Jesuits lived up to the vows they professed.
The P-I article discusses “accounts of conscience,” which are also known as “manifestation of conscience.” As provincial I had a sacred duty to know and guide the Jesuits under my care. Every Jesuit needed to know that he could open himself up totally to me during this required, special accounting so that he could live his vows of obedience and could trust that he was completely known by me as his provincial. This is entirely, completely different from an “employee review,” as the manifestation was characterized in the P-I article. For these reasons, what is said in this unique manifestation of conscience has the same special confidentiality accorded to the content of the sacrament of reconciliation or confession in Catholicism.
While I could never reveal anything said to me by a Jesuit in a manifestation of conscience, I could have and would have acted to guarantee that young persons were protected, if ever sexual abuse of children were mentioned.
I am at peace with myself because I can be and am trusted for how I acted as Jesuit Provincial and how I act as President of Seattle University. Our focus needs to be on how we use this situation to renew our commitment to address and overcome the abuse of others, particularly the sexual abuse of children and minors.
My thanks for letting me make this personal comment to you as the faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends of Seattle University.
Sincerely yours,
Stephen V. Sundborg, S.J.
President
It is due to the way that manipulators, such as he, use the language that I maintain that 'we' is the most offensive word in the English language to me. Whenever I hear we spoken and that we includes me I pay strict attention, generally it is someone who desires some thing and they are not willing to work for and they expect ME to toil for it or pay for it.
I also dislike 'they' when the person speaking should say I. Like in I have an obligation therefore I should or I must...not the proverbial 'they should.'
Actually if THEY think THEY have an obligation to do something THEY should just STFU and do it and not bore me with their 'enlightened' observations.
Bull++++. There is no provision in Church law or in US law that offers confidentiality protection for such "unique" consultations, nor should there be. These consultations offer no priviledge in terms of confidentiality. None. For Sundborg to HIDE in back of a perceived sacrament of confession during these meetings is wrong morally and is illegal. No other employer in the private sector can claim such "priviledge" and none exists here between Sundborg and his priests. The real issue is whether he protected and enabled Jesuit priests who abused innocents. Maybe he should answer that question with a "yes or no" rather than offering justifications for his actions and lack of appropriate decisionmaking.
The very painful truth is difficult enough in these situations, yet Sundborg proclaims he is "at peace with myself." I suppose the Archdiocese of Seattle is at peace with itself in the Jeff Alfieri tragedy, too. Google that sad story, and weep.
Thankfully Almighty God has the ultimate role in deciding who will be at peace, and who will be judged guilty for eternity in the abuse of innocent children. We don't need Sundborg's self appraisal in regard to his treatment of priests such as the despicable James Poole or in his suspect role as a shepherd of innocent lambs either.