Canadian centre helped U.S. priests accused of sex abuse.
CHURCH SENT SEX ABUSERS TO ONTARIO CLINIC FOR REHAB — AND THEN BACK TO MINISTRY
At least seven of the Roman Catholic priests alleged to be part of rampant child sex abuse in Pennsylvania spent time at an Ontario rehabilitation centre for clergy, often in secret, and at least one was later returned to “unrestricted ministry” with no warning to parishioners.
A shocking report unsealed this week documents a grand jury’s conclusions that Pennsylvania church leaders covered up the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 children by more than 300 priests since the 1940s.
The document shows 11 priests accused of sexual abuse spent time in Canada, and in some cases are alleged to have abused children they brought on “retreats” to Toronto.
At least seven are reported to have been sent to Southdown Institute, a residential rehabilitation centre near Toronto that has treated several of North America’s most notorious clergy abusers.
Rev. John P. Connor, for example, is identified in the report as having been arrested in 1984 in New Jersey for sexually molesting a 14-year-old child, but was allowed to have his record cleared if he admitted the charge and was not re-arrested within a year.
After this episode, he was sent to Southdown. Records subpoenaed by the grand jury describe an alcohol abuse disorder in which he “acts out sexually with some preference to late adolescent males.” The records show Southdown recommend he not be given responsibility for adolescents, and yet he was soon after given an unrestricted ministry at a church in Wexford, Pa., encouraged by his bishop to “educate youth.” A child later sued for abuse he alleged happened as many as four years after Connor’s stay at Southdown.
The grand jury report also describes decades of child sex abuse by Fr. Michael Barletta, including on trips he took with high school-age boys to Toronto. It describes how Barletta was sent to Southdown in 1994, at great cost to his diocese, but his parishioners were never told.
It is a familiar pattern of events. A recent Buffalo News investigation, for example, showed that at least three of 11 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors and were returned to ministry after being officially listed as “on leave” were in fact sent to Southdown.
Southdown Institute is a 20-bed rehabilitation institute catering to male and female ministers, members of religious orders, and priests. It is primarily Roman Catholic, but independent of the church.
“We continue to hold the victims and the families in our prayers,” said Southdown CEO Dorothy Heiderscheit, a social worker and member of the Franciscan Sisters.
The list of Canadian pedophilic clergy abusers known to have been treated at Southdown is long, and includes people like James Kneale, convicted in 1999 of sexual assaulting a 16-yearold boy in Thorold, Ont.; Edward MacNeil, convicted in 1996 of seven counts of indecent assault involving seven altar boys, aged nine to 11, in Thunder Bay, Ont.; Richard Racine, convicted in 1994 of sexual assault, gross indecency and attempted buggery involving an 11-yearold boy, in Belleville, Ont.; and Kevin Bennett, convicted in 1990 of 36 counts of gross indecency involving altar boys, aged between 11 and 14, in Newfoundland.
First created by Monsignor Clement Schwalm, an alcoholic priest who wanted to share his experience of recovery, Southdown has been in operation for more than 50 years. It was originally in Aurora, Ont., but as of 2014 it has been in a smaller facility in Holland Landing, Ont., in the farm belt north of Toronto.
A registered charity, it declares its purpose on government records is “to provide treatment to religious individuals suffering from chemical dependency or emotional distress.” It identifies the goal of returning people to ministry “for a significant number of our residents,” but acknowledges there are some for whom this goal is not appropriate.
As part of the Boston Globe’s famous Spotlight series on clergy abuse, a former priest named Christopher Schiavone wrote about his time in Southdown in the 1990s as he was coming to the realization that he was gay and had to leave the ministry.
He described telling one of his superiors in the church that he would not be returning as a priest, only to be told that he has “brought disgrace to your family and to the church and ruined a very promising career for yourself. It’s a terrible waste. There will never be any ministry for you in the Archdiocese of Boston or anywhere else.”
Schiavone wrote that this superior was dealing at the same time with notorious figures such as the rapists and former priests Paul Shanley and John Geoghan, who were repeatedly shuffled around dioceses, concealing their past crimes and enabling future ones.
In a statement Thursday, the director of the Vatican’s press office, Greg Burke, said “there are two words that can express the feelings faced with these horrible crimes: shame and sorrow.”
“Those acts were betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith. The Church must learn hard lessons from its past, and there should be accountability for both abusers and those who permitted abuse to occur,” he said.
“Victims should know that the Pope is on their side. Those who have suffered are his priority, and the Church wants to listen to them to root out this tragic horror that destroys the lives of the innocent.”