Faith and trust warped to hide hideous truth
On July 17, 1990, Father Thomas Smith wrote to his bishop, Donald Trautman, thanking him for meeting with him and expressing appreciation for the bishop’s faith in him and his quest to return to the active ministry.
At the time, Smith, who had served at a number of churches in the Erie Diocese in northwestern Pennsylvania, was on a leave of absence, his third such leave since being ordained as a Catholic priest in 1967.
His absences were termed, in diocese records, as “health leaves.”
Each of the leaves occurred after the
church received reports that Smith had raped children.
The diocese responded by sending Smith to a church-run treatment facility, according to this week’s Pennsylvania grand jury report on the Catholic child sex scandal.
In treatment, Smith told counselors he had raped 15 young boys, some as young as 7, threatening them with violence if they told and invoking the name of God to justify his actions.
He had first been treated in 1984, then again in 1986 and 1987. Counselors at the treatment facility reported to the diocese that Smith had a “‘driven, compulsive and long-standing’ obsession with sexually assaulting children,” according to the grand jury report.
The counselors noted that Smith continued to rape children even after his first stint in treatment.
Smith was in treatment again when he met with Trautman and expressed his desire to return to a parish. In a letter, he had described his “gifts and accomplishments” in “working with young people,” the report noted.
Trautman wrote in a memo that he was impressed by Smith’s “candor and sincerity” and suggested he would wait another year and a half before considering a new assignment for the priest.
In his note to Trautman, Smith expressed relief.
“So why did I worry?” he wrote. Why indeed.
Smith returned to the ministry and became active in a program called “Isaiah 43.”
“Isaiah 43” is a ministry for Catholic children.
It is a common tale. The grand jury report contains numerous stories about priests accused of committing terrible crimes against children, repeatedly protected from the consequences of their actions by the church.
Some priests, when an allegation was raised at one church, were simply transferred to other parishes. In other cases, instead of reporting abuse to law enforcement, the church sent priests for psychiatric treatment at church-run facilities. In yet other cases, the church attempted to discredit victims or blame them for the crimes committed against them.
According to the grand jury, 301 priests committed such crimes against more than 1,000 victims, and it noted that there were certainly more, numbers that raise the question: How did the church keep such widespread criminal activity quiet for so many decades?
‘Protect the institution’
Considering the culture of the church – a culture of secrecy and deception embedded in its history – it’s not surprising it was able to keep a lid on widespread child abuse, said Kristen Houser, chief public affairs officer with the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape.
It’s similar to the way Penn State responded to charges that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky molested and raped numerous children.
“The initial impulse is to protect the institution, whether that institution is a church or a university or a football program,” Houser said.
There is an element of authority in both cases: Parishioners have absolute faith and trust in the leadership of the church, just as Penn State football fans had absolute loyalty and trust in Joe Paterno and the university’s leadership.
In the case of the church, priests are God’s representatives on Earth, Houser said. To question them is to question God.
State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said at a news conference, “We saw Catholic priests weaponizing their faith, using their faith as a tool of the abuse, and all the while, the bishops, the monsignors, the cardinals covered it up.”
The grand jury report described the church’s coverup of these crimes, and though each case differed slightly in the details, they all contained similar elements, “as if there was a script.”
“While each church district had its idiosyncrasies,” the grand jury reported, “the pattern was pretty much the same. The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid ‘scandal.’ That is not our word, but theirs.”
The FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime – the division within the bureau that provides profiles of violent criminals, among other things – reviewed much of the evidence received by the grand jury and concluded that its analysis of the material revealed something akin to “a playbook for concealing the truth.”
First, they reported, the church employed euphemisms for sexual assault, referring to the crime not as rape but as “inappropriate contact” or “boundary issues.”
In one case, the grand jury reported, a priest’s repeated and violent sexual assaults of children were referred to as “his difficulties.”
Then, the church did not conduct genuine investigations, often limited to just asking suspected abusers a few questions and accepting what they said.
If a priest had to be removed from his church, he was directed to announce it as “sick leave” or to not say anything at all. For appearance’s sake, church leaders were to send the priest for “evaluation” at a church-run psychiatric facility that, more often than not, concluded that the offender was not a pedophile and could return to ministering the faithful.
If it became known in the community that a priest was a “problem,” church leaders were to transfer him to another parish where nobody knew he was a child molester.
That happened frequently, the grand jury reported. One priest was transferred from Allentown to New Mexico and West Texas after accusations of abuse came to light.
He was arrested in Briscoe County, Texas, for allegedly molesting a boy.
Finally, church officials were told, don’t call the cops. “Handle it like a personnel matter, ‘in house,’ ” the grand jury reported.
Reports but no action
There were several instances reported by the grand jury in which sexual abuse was reported to police or prosecutors by victims or their parents. Few of those cases were prosecuted.
In one case, a police officer wrote a letter to the church, suggesting that it do something about a certain priest before there was violence.
In another, former Beaver County District Attorney Robert Masters wrote a letter to the bishop for Pittsburgh’s diocese to report that he would not be investigating accusations against a priest “in order to prevent unfavorable publicity.”
In Smith’s case, he actually did have something to worry about.
After The Boston Globe’s groundbreaking reports on the abuse scandal were published in 2002, the families of some of Smith’s victims sued him and the church, accusing him of raping children and the church of helping to cover it up.
On March 15, 2002, in response to a query from the media, the bishop said, “We have no priest or deacon or layperson that I know of that has, in any way, a pedophile background.”
In November 2004, responding to public pressure, Trautman wrote to the Vatican to ask that Smith be removed from the priesthood, which the Vatican did in 2006.
The announcement of Smith’s removal from the priesthood was simple.
“Dismissed from the clerical state on June 10, 2006, by Pope Benedict XVI,” it said. “Nothing else need be noted.”
“While each church district had its idiosyncrasies, the pattern was pretty much the same. The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid ‘scandal.’ That is not our word, but theirs.”
Pennsylvania grand jury