There are some eloquent survivors with great insights who only lack a means of getting their message out.
One of these is Vinnie Nauheimer. I am pleased to host one of his recent writings, Who Changed the Church?
I hope to publish more materials by other writers. If interested, please email me.
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This weekend, SNAP’s National Conference will be held in Chicago. Since the demise of the Linkup, this is the biggest and most important event around for victims and survivors. Unfortunately, a recent illness has kept me from attending, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it.
Lately, I’ve been watching more news clips from when the crisis started back in 1992. There was a fascinating Oprah program very early on, in September or thereabouts of 1992. It featured several victims including David Clohessy, as well as Richard Sipe, and a bunch of people I recognized in the audience – Jeanne Miller, Tom Economus, Nancy Briggs, etc. Most are long gone but there are a few who might be there at the Conference right now.
Once again, though, I was struck by how much was exposed in plain view right at the very beginning of the crisis. Sipe was already proclaiming that the reason the Church was so scared of exposure because abuse “went to the highest echelons of the Church”. We still haven’t seen just how high it really goes…
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This summer, sixteen years ago, the clergy abuse crisis began for me, as well as for a lot of people. On June 2, 1992, ABC News PrimeTime broadcast the very first piece about serial child molester James Porter. I remember watching it, hugging myself and crying. I couldn’t believe that they were talking about the same kind of horror I had been dealing with for several months previous.
But it was indeed. Three weeks later, they broadcast an update. A young Diane Sawyer told the story about how it came about. The exposure of Porter was due to a brave survivor, Frank Fitzpatrick, who had been abused by Porter as a 12-year-old altar boy. Now grown, and a professional investigator, he tracked Porter down and actually confronted him on the phone.
The show even ran bits of the tape. Porter admitted he had abused Frank with an embarrassed chuckle, but that was the most remorse he would show. He claimed he had stopped molesting children in 1967, which of course, was a total lie.
For Diane Sawyer said that just during those three weeks some 60 victims came out. They even showed footage of her camera crew confronting the ex-priest, who reacted like a caged animal. It was electric, overwhelming, like nothing that had been on television before. (more…)
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“Venit, vidit, vicit,” is how I think it would be in my lousy Latin.
“He came, he saw, he conquered.” That would be Pope Benedict all right. I have to say his performance during his US trip was masterful. Though lacking the charisma of his predecessor, he made up for it with a certain folksy charm by so openly enjoying the adulation he received anyway. And he didn’t slip up even once.
He actually talked about the clergy sex abuse crisis, even met with a few victims. And so the word will go out that yes, the nightmare is over at last. “Roma locuta est, causa finita est.”
Yes, Rome has indeed spoken, but is the case really closed? One strong indication it just might not be came from one Richard Sipe, who stood up and fingered Cardinal McCarrick.
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