Abuse in religious orders overlooked
Complicated Catholic hierarchy can hide crimes
Bill Reidy says he remembers every detail about the office where he was repeatedly raped by the Jesuit priest who served as his academic adviser at Loyola Academy, a private Catholic school just outside Chicago.
A ficus tree in one corner, a desk chair in another. The credenza covered in photos. The door that opened inward and stayed locked.
While other students learned about literature or chemistry, Reidy says, he was called “every single day” into the private quarters of the Rev. Donald J. O’Shaughnessy, a bedroom that doubled as his office. Each meeting ended with the same nauseating ritual, Reidy says.
“He would always make sure he had a soda in his fridge, and he’d give it to
me and say, ‘I want you to drink this and get the taste out of your mouth,’ ” says Reidy, 57, who lives in a Chicago suburb. “Then he’d send me back to class.”
Reidy was hurt and confused. Did other students know? Were other priests at Loyola Academy – a school his father insisted on sending him to because he believed a Catholic education was the best education – aware? Were they laughing at him?
On the weekends, when his parents forced him to go to church, Reidy had to sit in an aisle seat, so he could make an immediate exit. When he walked into Mass, Reidy’s palms went sweaty, and his body shook. He says he flashed back to the time he was gang-raped by O’Shaughnessy and other men at Loyola’s school chapel.
He begged his parents to put him back in public school. When they asked why, Reidy always had the same tortured reply: “I can’t tell you.”
Beyond the horror and panic, Reidy was even more terrified at the consequences O’Shaughnessy allegedly threatened.
“He told me that if I ever told a living soul,” Reidy says, “that I’d go to hell.”
Jesuits release names of priests
It’s well documented that the Catholic Church has a sex abuse problem. Since an explosive Boston Globe report in 2002 first detailed repeated abuse by
87 priests in the archdiocese of Boston,
85 dioceses and archdioceses across the USA have released lists of priests who have credible or substantiated accusations against them. Many of those names have only recently been made public. After a damning Pennsylvania grand jury report in August listed more than 300 abusive priests, at least 14 other state attorneys general launched investigations into the church and its handling of sex abuse allegations.
Experts who have studied the Catholic abuse crisis say a glaring omission has come in the form of the Catholic religious orders – Jesuits, Capuchins, Benedictines, Dominicans, Augustinians, Franciscans, etc. – that operate mostly in the shadows.
Religious order priests make up roughly one-third of all priests in the USA, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. They’re often known best for achievements outside the church. The Jesuits, for example, run some of the most prestigious academic institutions at the collegiate level and some of the most dominant athletic programs in U.S. high schools.
Demand has grown across the country for church leaders to disclose which priests were accused of sexual abuse and how the church responded to each allegation, but religious orders – typically not beholden to a community in the way dioceses are – have been under no such pressure.
Monday, the Midwest and Maryland provinces of the Jesuits – the largest male religious order in the Catholic Church – are likely to release their lists of priests dating back to 1955 who were accused of sexually abusing minors. O’Shaughnessy, the priest who allegedly tormented Reidy, will be named.
These revelations follow releases from the Jesuits in the West province, based in Portland, Oregon, and the Central and Southern province, based in St. Louis, which were made public Dec. 7.
The Catholic Church – and the hierarchy that accompanies it – is a complicated, layered institution. Religious orders are run separate and independent from dioceses and archdioceses. Though order priests such as Jesuits may staff a parish, they do not answer to bishops or archbishops. That means that although bishops or archbishops can remove a religious order priest from his parish, they cannot discipline him.
Terry McKiernan, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a website that maintains a database on accused priests, says this process creates “a mixed chain of command.”
McKiernan points out that most dioceses that released lists of accused priests were in major media markets, where reporters and the public pressured Catholic leaders to account for their clergy. That’s harder when it comes to religious orders, which cover wide geographical swaths and sometimes cross international borders. The Capuchin religious order’s footprint is mostly in the upper Midwest – Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin – but extends to the Middle East.
Advocates agree that religious orders releasing lists is a crucial step in a victim’s healing process. But there’s concern that orders might not tell the public the full truth.
Shortly after the Jesuits West and Jesuits Central and Southern shared their lists, which went back to 1950 and totaled a combined 151 names – including nearly 40 names not previously known – McKiernan and BishopAccountability pushed back. In an email, McKiernan shared his own list, which included 34 Jesuits accused of abuse who weren’t accounted for in the Jesuits’ releases.
“If these known accused priests have been left off the list,” McKiernan asks, “how many as yet unknown credibly accused Jesuits have also been left off ?”
Reidy wonders how his life could have been different if not for the sexual abuse he suffered.
After graduating from Loyola Academy in 1979, Reidy attended four different colleges, struggling academically. He wanted to be a paramedic, but that dream died as he bounced from school to school. (He eventually graduated from Kendall College in Evanston, Illinois, with a degree in marketing.) He dealt with mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide attempts. He couldn’t keep a job, wilting anytime he had to stand up to an authority figure.
Helped by a therapist, Reidy was able to “connect my subconscious and conscious” and come to terms with the abuse he suffered daily for three consecutive years. He says that from 1976 to
2013, he suppressed his memories – common among abuse victims, especially children – never able to pinpoint why his life unraveled.
After accusing O’Shaughnessy of sexual abuse, Reidy settled with the Jesuits’ Chicago-Detroit province, now known as the Midwest province, for
$750,000 in August 2013. The trial came one month after O’Shaughnessy died at age 89. According to BishopAccountability, there have been two other settlements with former Loyola Academy students since O’Shaughnessy’s death.
The abuser you know
David Finkelhor, an expert on child sexual abuse who teaches at the University of New Hampshire, says that although sex crimes committed by strangers against children occur – he estimates that it happens in roughly 15 percent of cases – it’s more common that an abuser is someone who is “very much part of your social network.”
Finkelhor says sexual abuse is sometimes accompanied by “emotional abuse, various attempts to control, denigrate or blame the victim,” which can make suffering more severe.
Finkelhor says the era in which the abuse took place can be a factor in explaining why so many victims keep quiet, both when the abuse is happening and often for years after the fact.
In the late 1970s, when Reidy was abused, “there wasn’t a whole lot of information about abuse,” Finkelhor says. “So not really knowing what’s going on and not knowing what other people’s reactions would be, that can be very disorienting (for victims).”
Eugene Hollander, a Chicago attorney who represented Reidy, is preparing for more calls from survivors as the Jesuits – and other dioceses and potentially other religious orders – release names of accused priests.
Hollander has represented dozens of sex abuse survivors, from private Catholic institutions and public schools. He gets calls from survivors who want to file a civil suit, but taking the next step is sometimes too gutting.
Reidy hopes “that it all explodes,” and every single institution tied to Catholics – churches, prep schools, colleges, hospitals – gets exposed. The Church, he says, has to clean house completely.
A few years ago, Reidy’s cousin got engaged, and a wedding invite showed up in the mail. Reidy called to tell her how happy he was for her.
But he couldn’t attend, he said, because he can’t walk through the doors of a church.