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Subject: Controversy Greets Bishops; Priests' Alleged Sexual Abuse Victims Picket
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 04:36:11 EST
Message-ID: <30.1992Nov17.043611@AmeriCast.com>

Controversy Greets Bishops; Priests' Alleged Sexual Abuse Victims
Picket Meeting<By Gustav Niebuhr<Washington Post Staff Writer=

On the day U.S.  Roman Catholic bishops began their semiannual
meeting here, several persons who said they were sexually abused
as children by priests picketed outside the Omni Shoreham Hotel
and demanded an audience with members of the National Conference
of Catholic Bishops gathered inside.

"All we're asking is to let us teach them something about the
problem," said Dennis A. Gaboury, 41, an administrator for a Bal-
timore law firm who said he had been abused as a child in New
England. Charging that the bishops had delayed addressing the is-
sue, he said that "this problem is growing and getting worse;
there's a backlog of victims that's coming forward and getting
organized."

In an unusual move for the bishops, they invited eight of the
protesters to a 40-minute meeting with Cardinal Roger M. Mahony
of Los Angeles, Bishop Harry J. Flynn of Lafayette, La., and
Bishop A. James Quinn, auxiliary bishop of Cleveland.

In an interview after the meeting, Quinn said the abuse victims
"feel terribly hurt.

"We asked them if they had something in mind that could heal or
cure," he said. "They said, no, they'd feel it throughout their
lifetimes."

Quinn said the bishops told the group that they would suggest
similar meetings between victims and bishops in dioceses as a way
of helping church leaders understand the problem of pedophilia
among clergy and its consequences for victims. He also said the
bishops looked favorably on a plea that prayers be said for vic-
tims of clergy sexual abuse.

But Quinn also contended that church leaders are much better in-
formed now about the problem and better equipped to deal with it
than in the past. "The church has grown up and in many ways,
maybe as a profession, we're growing up faster than anybody," he
said, adding that local dioceses now offer regular training ses-
sions to their personnel on legal and ethical obligations when
cases of sexual abuse are reported.

In the meantime, a number of victims of sexual abuse who now are
adults are organizing advocacy groups: Victims of Clergy Abuse
Linkup (VOCAL), the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests
(SNAP), both based in Chicago, and a New England-based support
group for people who say they were molested as children by a sin-
gle priest.  Members of all three groups said yesterday they are
building computerized databases of the names of victims, along
with the names of accused priests.  The databases contain
"several hundred" victims' names so far, they said.  The problem
of child sexual abuse by priests is one of the most explosive is-
sues facing the U.S. Catholic church. Church leaders have felt
deeply stung by bitter complaints of church "coverups." Many vic-
tims and their families have charged that some bishops turn a
blind eye to abusive priests, transferring them to other par-
ishes, rather than pulling them from active ministry and coming
to the aid of the victims.

After a full day of expert testimony on the problem by psycholo-
gists and legal experts at the bishops' last meeting in June, Ar-
chbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk, president of the National Confer-
ence of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement in which the bishops
apologized for instances "where lack of understanding and mis-
takes have added to the pain and hurt of victims and their fami-
lies." Pilarczyk also said the conference passed on guidelines to
all 188 U.S. dioceses on how to handle such complaints.

That statement came about the time the case of James R. Porter
focused attention even more sharply on the problem. Porter, who
left the priesthood in 1974 and now lives in Minnesota, has been
accused of molesting children while serving as a parish priest in
three states. Two months ago, he was indicted on 46 counts of
rape, sodomy and other acts of sexual misconduct in Massachusetts
and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.  Porter, who is now
married and the father of four chidlren, is also scheduled to
stand trial Nov. 30 in Minnesota for allegedly assaulting his
children's babysitter.

Among those picketing the bishops' meeting was Cheryl Bryant, 44,
who said she was abused in the early 1960s.

"For 30 years, I carried the pain on my own. And I never in my
wildest dreams knew there was someone other than myself," said
Bryant, a wholesale warehouse company employee in Sandwich, Mass.

Frank Fitzpatrick, 42, an insurance adjuster from Cranston, R.I.,
said clergy sexual abuse "has to be treated like any other crime:
If a priest tries to rob a bank or murder somebody, he should not
be sent back into ministry."<02:25 11-17C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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