Ch.7 Franciscan Neverland: Santa Barbara was dumping ground for pedophile priests in 1960s and...

USA Sided with pedophile priests, and soon after, the nation fell Ch 7 Santa Barbara [based on court documents and interviews]

Kay Ebeling Not final draft editing in progress)

In an L.A. courthouse hallway in 2009, Tim Hale is talking into my recorder on the fly as I run alongside him, still the only reporter covering 660 lawsuits against the Archdiocese for pedophile priests. 

Hale: "Basically, they sent these... per- 'troubled' Franciscans to parishes in the outskirts of San Diego County. And after 13 years of that, the Bishop down there finally noticed what was happening, and, amazingly, he expressed his concerns in a letter to the Vatican. We have a copy of that letter. Apparently, he got the Franciscans expelled from San Diego, and next thing you know we have a perp explosion in Santa Barbara in the 1960s. Lucky us." 

Outside, Hale, attorney for several Plaintiffs in Santa Barbara, says, "Sorry to run I gotta catch a train" and, in a smartly tailored suit, gets on a bicycle and rides towards the downtown Metro to catch an Amtrak north.

(work in progress)

For this chapter I am making a narrative out of blog posts I wrote a while back and others about Santa Barbara Franciscans and the Boys Choir: 

Thursday, August 19, 2010

PROOF: Santa Barbara was Dumping Ground for problem priests. PROOF: Franciscan sex crime ploys continue in 2009

Part One: The bishop of San Diego used the words "dumping ground" in 1950 when he wrote to the Vatican that too many problem priests were ending up in Banning, Beaumont and other towns in the developing (Series Continues with Part Two "A New Sex Crime Ploy by Franciscans" Part Three no longer timely Part Four "Franciscan Grabbed Freshman by the Genitals" Part Five: "Pedophilia is a Privacy Right for Franciscans" and Part 6 is here "Priests Take Boys on Drunken Camping Trip." Part 7 is here "First Year in Seminary, Assaulted by two Franciscans")

Now in late Sept 2024, I am reading over all these blog posts and legal docs that were sent to me and I hope to fashion them into a narrative, a story that reads like a novel, about the Santa Barbara... attack on families and children by Franciscan negligence. I'm diving in now, check back in a week or so to see progress... -ke

***

Van Handel

[The Santa Barbara Boys Choir, "was clearly my choir, and the fulfillment of one of my fondest dreams," writes ex-priest Robert Van Handel in an attachment to his probation report called "Sexual Autobiography." In this 9-point type single-spaced memoir, Van Handel admits, “Now I understand that the choir was also a constant supply of attractive little boys.”]

Van Handel mugshot

CATALINA: One time van Handel brought in this young boy. They walked right past me like I wasn’t even there- hmph- through the living room and straight into his study, his private study. I knew what went on in there. But since I'm just a servant, they don’t even try to hide it from me. He’s pushing the little boy into his den and looks at me with that look that makes me shiver, then closes the door and I keep cleaning then [hesitates, breath] I heard the kid through the door say "Father Robert" And his voice sounded- it had an exclamation point after it, Father Robert! I stopped, thought about calling the friar, again, nobody's believed me so far when I try to tell them their Doctor of Music Franciscan choir director is a pervert. So I just let it go and keep cleaning. But my memory kept it. "Father Robert! Father Robert!" 

Van Handel's psychologist: "He could easily have abused 150 boys.”  

***

Me: Now living in South Lake Tahoe, I'm not writing about pedophile priests anymore, when once again I experience, "angelic intervention" by my "eternal journalist" handlers who've driven this project since 2007. By happenstance, the one and only time I went to Taste of the Sierras here in town, I met Catalina, who had once been a housekeeper at St. Anthony Seminary in Santa Barbara. [Catalina is a fictionalized character based on 2009 interviews for CofA blog] 

Cat had first hand experience with boys choir leader Robert van Handel, so I asked her, now in her eighties, to talk to me into a tape recorder. 

CofA Blog: So, Cat, what was it like working around Father van Handel at the Franciscan seminary? 

Catalina: I'm taking my break, been working hard all day, and Father Robert rushes in and changes the channel of the TV I'm watching, to “The Wonder Years” 

Me: that weird show where Fred Savage relives his childhood.

Cat: Yeah, he could never miss the Wonder Years. Or he'd just put in a VHS of the boys choir and just watch it over and over. 

Me: Gaze at it?

Cat: You know, priests are supposed to take a vow of poverty, well when Father Robert ran the boys choir for the Fransciscans he had a photo lab, lots of children's toys hmph-  a dog that he used to get the attention of the boys; a late model VW van; plus he could use a brand new 15 passenger van for his choir to take them places like Magic Mountain;  the seminary property was at his disposal for boys choir stuff; he had several offices, the S.B. Boys Choir office; his own office across from that office.

He would use dormitory rooms for Boys Choir camp, he let the boys stay there for some kind of boys camp; at one time he owned a large station wagon he used to take boys to Lake Cachuma. 

Oh and also an audio visual room for boys choir, or whatever, the windows were blackened so I couldn't see inside, two music rooms for boys choir practice; the Rector's Lounge back room was a costume room for boys choir. 

Tons of stuffed animals were stashed in a tiny space under the stairs in the restroom in the main building. No one ever explained that to me. 

Oh and also- Van Handel had a secretary for that boys choir office; lots of parking spaces where Van Handel would play tag with the boys after their practice in the tower. 

Plus credit cards; a mountain bike; stereo equipment; lots of tobacco for his pipes. Trips to England with the boys choir every four years. Tons of booze located in a pantry next to the kitchen at the Casa; ice cream and cookies for the choir boys in the kitchen fridge; VCR- television; camera equipment.

To sum it all up, all 16 acres of Santa Barbara Franciscan property was Robert van Handel's Neverland. 

[work in progress]

NEXT: more about the SB Boys Choir

***

Van Handel Probation Officer: Not a month went by that van Handel did not molest members of the Santa Barbara Boys Choir,

Arresting officer to press: “It should be noted that the Catholic Church has done nothing to assist this department in this investigation.” 

***

I don't know if I can continue this segment. This creep would Want to be made into a famous perpetrator freak and I don't want to fill my head with his sick thoughts. Anyone can read the posts at my 2010 era blogs about him linked above, including one with his sexual autobiography pages scanned in…. I'm going to find another way to approach the entire Santa Barbara story. After I take a break, as just reading a few pages of van helsing here- he's detestable. 

***

Sept 30

I have to stick to the original theme, that the reaction people had to my blog about pedophile priests ran right alongside the rise of the right, especially the hate and misinformation of MAGA qanon et al. there were so many similarities it made me write this entire project. Because whatever USA catholics and supporters did wrong by siding with the pedophile priests and rejecting the victims as after-money liars, it set off a kind of energy on the world, or it just set an example for the world, and here we are now with Trump coming close to taking over America along with whoever is behind him.

October 3, 2024

I had to stop writing this. I've mentioned a kind of spiritual presence that pushes me to write. Well, last Sunday I must have misidentified whatever was driving me. I wanted to immerse myself in the stuff I’d written a decade ago but I got So Confused, it was as if things were swirling around me, I’d click on one story and then I’d go no not thi9s one and click on another.  At one point I had more than ten windows open on the laptop and I’d go from one to the next going, where is the sexual diary? Or where is the initial complaint? Or where- if it was a scene in a movie, there’d be wind noises, wing-flap sounds, and a sense of an evil presence-

I can't keep writing, there is nothing more to write, except to fll in the holes where I was bullied in Chicago then bullied in South Lake Tahoe, both times after letting one  person know about my blog and realizing later I shouldn't have trusted that person.

And in almost every case where I got bullied because of my blog for victims of pedophile priests, those same bullying individuals segued into Donald Trump supporters years later. I'll finish that part of the story in "Thousands of Victims" chapter.

Meanwhile anyone can read all the docs I linked here, but I need to leave the story of St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara behind me. 

Ch. 6 Today 1

USA sided with pedophile priests, and soon after, the nation fell Chapter six

Here it was, the fusion of anger at pedophile priest victims and anger at anyone targeted by right wing hate media, the synergy of hatreds, right in front of my eyes. 

Kay Ebeling (Not final draft editing in progress)

October 20, 2024

5 AM I popped awake Oct 17, with an urge to google Catholic Church and right wing politics, did so and found a news story at NY Mag Sept 2024 issue. Got so excited I wrote and posted the blog post while I finished reading the article, so the most important info at the bottom became the talking points at the top, the part that shows connection between JD Vance and Opus Dei in D.C. then later in Palo Alto. 

I had no idea why I was writing the blog post until I got to the bottom of it and all the talking points at top just appeared at my fingertips. I was shaking my head with shaking fingers, typing sentences that someone else inside me seemed to be composing. i

The logic of what I'm saying isn't even clear to me until it comes out of my fingers onto the keyboard onto the screen.  

Caused me to post this at CofA25 - my Internal Eternal Journalist will not let me sleep as time on Earth becomes more critical: 

Thursday, October 17, 2024

Right Wingers Side with Pedophile Priests

Opus Dei spent 70 years converting right wing leaders in D.C. to extreme Catholicism, a lie so faithless that Republicans now have to support Donald Trump and Catholics have to support pedophile priests.

While Opus Dei in D.C. told its target Republican parishioners that priests molesting children was not that big a deal, Donald Trump rose to power.

By Kay Ebeling

New Research for book in progress: There IS a connection between people who defend pedophile priests and right wing politics. it's not my imagination. It's Opus Dei, which for 70 years has actively groomed politicians in D.C. with its own OD church and massive amounts of Vatican, and now billionaire, cash. It's the theme of the book I'm writing online which is linked below. Linked also here is article in New York Magazine from September 2024 that got me going this AM, hopefully I won’t run out of steam before I finish writing about this…

Whenever I get harassed about my blog exposing pedopriest crimes*, the person harassing me is also a Trump supporter. And if I make the mistake of showing a new friend my blog about pedophile priests, I get bullied so badly I've had to move three times. change cities. I hope to write about this more, but my conclusion can only be: 

Thanks to Opus Dei, American rightwingers side with pedophile priests. 

First Opus Dei converted: Robert Bork, columnist Robert Novak, Kansas senator Sam Brownback, Larry Kudlow, Newt Gingrich, Laura Ingraham, Pat Cipollone

Now even "J.D. Vance, is a convert to conservative Catholicism by way of Opus Dei–" after Father McCloskey moved to Palo Alto in 2005 to continue the Opus Dei mission to recruit rightwinger influencers in the tech part of USA (see last part of this post).

Yes, J.D. Vance too

quotes are from NY Mag article

"The now-infamous Project 2025 ... Continue reading here: https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2024/10/right-wingers-side-with-pedophile.html

Tahoe 2013 to present 

We repeated the time of the interview at least four times in the phone call, which was strange. Then I ended up sitting for more than a half hour waiting for her, then she insisted I had the time wrong not her. I ordered and paid for another five dollar carrot juice.

Unpleasant. When I asked for carrot juice, she glared at me as if to say don’t expect her to pay for it. From the start, this interview was not going well. Her hair was white and less than half inch long around her skull. Her nose pointed down over pinched lips. Displeasure had been on her face for so long, it had etched permanent wrinkles into her over-sunned skin.

I tried to conduct civil conversation. She too was from L.A., but now here with her husband. “How do you like it here?” she asked. I said, “It's beautiful wonderful but I didn't think it would be so hard to get people to visit me here.” At this she got animated, even a flash of friendliness on her face. “I know I didn't expect that either.”

Me 2020 age 72

I'm thinking, this won’t go so bad after all. So I opened up to her. Listened attentively as she told me they sold the home near LAX her family had lived in for more than forty years for twenty-first century prices and moved to Tahoe. 

So today she could casually throw into a conversation: 

“Now we live in the Keys, Tahoe Keys, belong to the yacht club.”

I snorted, “The yacht club?” A few minutes ago she'd told me she was a retired school teacher. She heard the scorn in my voice. She's a kind of nouveau riche that isn’t really riche… people come to this small rural town after selling houses in expensive places, and then they use that one shot real estate cash to pretend they have been upper class their whole lives; but it shows in their very DNA, their bent-back bone structure, motley hands, that they are just working class trying to pass- but I digress. 

I continued to be friendly because I wanted to be a volunteer server at the weekly dinners for homeless and low income people that are real popular in South Lake Tahoe. The local paper said contact her if you want to volunteer, so I said, “Look, I haven’t met anyone since moving here. Because I work overnight in my home office, and when I go out after work early in the morning, I don't meet people. Not so far. because almost no one is out and about the hours I am here. So I want to be one of the servers at the weekly dinners, not the one at the Catholic church, the other one. I want to bring the plates to people…”

She was scowling at me and interrupted: “What I need right now is someone to write fundraising appeals.”

Huh? I hadn’t told her I'm a journalist. I had just told her I crave being in a crowd of humans once a week.

The conversation deteriorated as I was nervous and babbled about the food bank where I used to volunteer in Eureka, how they’d give us bags of food to take home afterwards. She was glaring harder so I added- “but that's not the only reason I want to volunteer, it's not to get free food” but then I babbled that the cinnamon rolls we gave away in Eureka were still fresh from local bakeries, my voice becoming timid. 

I’d lost contact with the person across from me. 

I felt like I’d just gained twenty pounds. Bloated in the booth behind two empty carrot juice containers, I continued to explain, it's not that I want free food, I want to, really need to volunteer because I need to get out and meet people.

But she did not listen and instead she told me they have to raise money to pay the Churches who host the weekly dinners.

My mouth fell open, “You have to pay the churches?”

“For utilities. yes, Different groups provide the food, we thank them in the paper, but there's gas and electricity to cook and serve all those meals, keep the lights on. The churches aren’t rich, you know.”

“I think the churches should donate it all, I mean they should-”

That did it, napkin slapped on the table, handbag snapped shut under her bony fingers. She got up and before walking off, turned back to me and spit out these words:

“I think journalists are the most despicable human beings on earth,” and in her size two city girl dress, she huffed off.

Coincidentally, hate radio stations and Fox News spinoffs were repeating that same phrase around that time, 2014: “Journalists are the most despicable human beings on earth” or words to that effect. 

Later I did what I should have done before the interview, googled her name. That school she worked for in L.A. was part of the Archdiocese corporate structure, a tony coastal Catholic high. Probably she had googled me before calling to interview me and seen I'm one of the more vocal pedophile priest survivors. She probably set up the whole interview just so she could say something despicable like that to me.

There it was, the first obvious sign of Catholic extremism and right wing extremism, the two colliding, right before my eyes.

Phew.

Because when she stalked off, I thought her rejection had been because I'm overweight and wanted free cinnamon rolls. And I wasn't really overweight...

***

2019- weird bullying incident in senior building where I live, after I trust one woman one time and show her my blog about pedophile priests; soon dozens of old ladies are snarling outside my window, one even threw a bat through my door. Then same ones who bullied me for writing about priests who molest children went on to be MAGA Trump supporters. So I keep to myself these days.... 

THIS CHapter I hope to post some of the hateful things people post at me on social media except I haven't been saving them and have to instead make up a lot of hateful dialogue and I don't want to do that. 

So "Today" is not yet ready to be written. 

Oh wait I forgot about the South Tahoe Community Patriots group on Facebook run by a city councilwoman, who without ever meeting or interacting with me, conducted a cyber stalk on me in that group. It may still be going on, I don't want to know. Only thing she could have known about me at that time was that I'm a pedophile priest victim; her husband is the son of a Baptist who ran that Church all through this region up to 1970s. They took a trip to Russia together in 2000 at V Putin's invitation that I only figured out AFTER she led her little Patriots' Group anti-Kay campaign. Read about them here: 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 2024

I think we have a Putin mole in South Lake Tahoe politics: Tami Wallace, council member / ex mayor / ubiquitous appointee to everything

in one five minute google search, talk about Instant Karma.) 

Part 2 of this story is here: https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2024/06/more-about-trip-to-russia-tami-and.html

Someone told a South Lake Tahoe city councilwoman to turn on me without her ever meeting me; in fact the MAGA madness is so awful in this community that the main reason I am writing this online book / series is to make enough money to move out of here. In the year 2000 Russia was in the first years of Putin running everything that it is in today still.

***

October 1: Caller to Thom Hartmann brings up how it seems all the insurgent Republicans are extreme right wing Catholics, Hartmann lists JD Vance plus all the Supremes who are converted Catholics – which to me means they joined After the pedophile priest crisis hit and no priests or bishops suffered for it. My theme about the connection between how USA reacted to pedophile priest victims and the rise of the insane right wing in our politics continues to play out before me as I watch computer screens on top of a mountain. Eerie

***

Today I live a life so isolated, it should make me depressed, except I think I'm exactly where I need to be at this moment. When I worked at NASA in the 1970s-80s, I learned about the planet heating too fast. way back then. I've also seen the political chaos developing in recent decades. Since I have no reason to stay in dangerous places, no family and few friends, those mostly persons I've only known through social media, going back to 1990s but still only online, no in-person, intimate friends or relationships… 

I can live anywhere. So in 2015 I moved to South Lake Tahoe and got into senior, protected housing, just in time, as this is a good place to hide.

October 15, 2024 

What does it say when someone decides to become Catholic now, after thousands of priests got away with pedophilia there?

Today Opus Dei is in the news, a group I had not thought about since City of Angels Blog was fully active around 2008. Opus Dei helped apologize for the pedophile priests for the bishops, now Opus Dei is the reason so many right wing politicians are extreme Catholic today. They even have an Opus Dei catholic church in Washington D.C. to accommodate them. 

Wow.

Saturday, October 12, 2024

I was among first to learn of global warming, in 1979 as a writer at NASA Houston

My Timing: decades of Forrest Gump moments MEMOIR 

One thing bringing up this memory is watching The Trial of Christine Keeler on Max recently, then buying her autobiography which I am stalled in reading.

Men in uniform, especially officers, guys who work in intelligence, they sniff out a woman like me, just like Stephen Ward and John Profumo sniffed out Christine Keeler. They sense when a woman has something inside her that makes her fall for men in power, even ugly totally unattractive guys.  I was one of those women, likely many of women like us had histories of sexual assault as children that made us so confused. I don't think Keeler lived long enough to make that connection.

I know now that most of that weird behavior of being a sexual aggressor at the same time as I was a straight arrow public affairs person for NASA was the result of being molested by a Catholic priest when I was age five-six. But in the seventies and eighties I was deep into my Faster Than the Speed of Life period, which doctors in the nineties told me was “PTSD since age five” and I didn't believe it first time I heard it. But it explained everything. All the scandalous, out of control behavior that had ruined every job I got, it was because of compulsion placed in me at the fingertips of a pervert priest in 1953.

But I digress. 

*****

At NASA in 1980, once the newly arrived uniformed Air Force officers sniffed me out, they started hanging out in my private office with windows in Building Two, gangs of them. And I did have sex with more than one of them, that's what I did. They even set me up one time with a general. Honest, the guy at the top floor of a tower on the Air Force Space Command site that you’d see as an exit south of L.A. off the Four Oh Five.

Nothing happened in that "job interview" in fact it freaked me out and I think I ran out of the general’s office and out of the building into my rental car, never to contact them again.

Hmm. Earlier in Houston, the first time I met with the AF general, next day I showed up for work dressed really slutty, more than I ever had before or since, a tight pencil skirt and a white sweater that was… not loose. People in the office noticed the change in my dress as I walked past. My usual look was Dress for Success, Just now thought of that. But then meeting in LA with the general up in that tower was weird, I mean, weird. 

Later on Oct 15

It was angelic intervention. I posted a Kamala story at my pedophile priest blog by accident then sent the link to Lake Tahoe Democrats by email as they were forwarding some of my posts out to their list. A few hours later I realized I’d made that mistake and fixed the error, I thought. A few days later I got a threatening sounding email from Blogger. Whoever was offended by the mistaken link went all the way to Google to complain and get the post taken down, which made no sense unless someone with lots of power at the top of Church hierarchy complained, like a monsignor told a bishop yada yada yada. They could have just emailed me with their concern, instead they went to effort to 

I'm glad it happened because it showed me not to trust Lake Tahoe Democrats as they are linked at top to Catholic church hierarchy, which, to me, means they can't be trusted.

I wouldn't have found that out about the local political group if I hadn’t accidentally sent out that email and then the local monsignor or whoever is the Catholic Church local monitor hadn’t been such an asshole. 

Ch. 5 West Hollywood

USA sided with pedophile priests, and soon after, the nation fell Chapter 5

No politics, no pedophile priest stories, just one woman's slide into compulsive sexual bedlam, until, "He told me he'd had a vasectomy." she cries bent back holding up her very pregnant stomach. Then my daughter turns five and I start remembering what Father Horne had done to me at that age. I call my sister, with whom I have a rancorous relationship, and ask her if she remembers anything about Father Horne, and she responds, "Oh no, did he get to you too?" Then as I am freaking, she adds, "No wonder I've been so hostile to you your whole life. You took away my first lover." I find a support group in Chicago and ... never have a sex drive again. 

By Kay Ebeling (Not final draft editing in progress)

Watching "Dahmer" on Netflix in one scene he is acting like I used to act. Ravenous for sex, I'd lie under a window- about half block away was a high rise and- I put on a show. I doubt anyone saw but it's something I had to do. In E3 "Doin' a Dahmer" there's a scene where he is drinking alone at home, gyrating, and it reminded me of that period of my life, in Holloway House Apartments facing east. 

Imagine being so sexually damaged that the story of Jeffrey Dahmer brings up memories... not as him, but I'd be a victim to a guy like him, in fact came close to it often ...

Ch4 Thousands of victims found each other in 1990s when the internet arrived, throwing off Vatican plans to get away with decades of harboring pedophiles

USA sided with pedophile priests, and soon after, the nation fell Chapter 4 

(This chapter will start with "listservs" in 1990s where the first victims on the Internet found each other and realized, "I was not the only one as my local bishop / pastor told me" and started comparing notes. However, I have to dive through some storage boxes to get those early conversations, which I saved on floppy disks.... The end of this chapter is phone conversations and weird experiences I had as I interviewed victims and advocates for stories such as these on CofA12)  https://cityofangels12.blogspot.com/2013/07/pedophile-priest-true-crime-series.html

By Kay Ebeling (Not final draft editing in progress)

A deeper injustice reveals itself as patterns emerge in pedophile priest victims' stories. 

***

Matt Drudge started his Drudge Report just blocks from where I lived in Central Hollywood in 2007, when I started City of Angels Blog, and I thought that was kind of cool. My phone was ringing all day long in 2008 and I got into conversations so intimate, so passionate, with pedophile priest survivors who found the blog, revealing so much illicit if not felonious activity by Catholic church hierarchy.

Here is some Dialogue

!!!

The damn church lawyer was supposed to review certificates of merit and he didn't so the judge stayed the case two years, two more years.

!!!

Caller: (As he speaks his voice gets faster and more high pitched and I imagine him sweating close to a heart attack) The church claims clerical errors, TYPOS! that happened when they split the L.A. cases in three and someone in Orange County typed the wrong words or numbers and now the orange diocese is claiming “non compliance” and they're filing a motion to dismiss.  !

!!!

Another caller: I'm reading to you from this document I got from my lawyer Katherine Freberg here it is, this: For interrogatories 1 through 8 which seek information regarding other perpetrators within the archdiocese, the archbishop refused to answer, and cited only objections.” Why the fuck do they bother, these fucks will never answer a question.

Me: Well at least we can document that they respond to questions like Mafia guys trained by million dollar lawyers.

Him: They Are!!!

!!!

Another plaintiff on phone: They're arguing against my case based on the religion clause in the First Amendment, do you believe that?

!!!

Another plaintiff on  phone:

Listen to this: INT No. 5:  Describe with particularity ALL efforts taken by YOU to identify EMPLOYEES who were sexually attracted to minors. 

ANSWER:  Responding party objects:

For each accused individual identified describe each report made to any law enforcement agency by YOU RELATING TO alleged or suspected SEXU

survivor art

AL MISCONDUCT with any minor(s).

ANSWER:  Responding party objects:  religion clause, clergy privilege, psychotherapist-patient privilege -blah-blah-blah, describe each report made to any law enforcement agency by any person other than YOU, 

Caller and Me at same time: Responding part objects 

Caller raging: -re clergy privilege work product. It's like they're taking our First Amendment and using it for their twisted defense of priests raping children

!!!

Another phone conversation: 

Caller: Listen to this, G. Patrick Gordon, Director of Human Resources & Defendant’s counsel Fresno?  What a strange combination.  The personnel director is a defense attorney?

Me: Oh I see now, you get the attorney client and work product claims for protection all at once.  Sounds like something in a Martin Scorsese movie

Caller: They're already planning in advance the refuse to turn over personnel files game. 

Me: In Fresno the office is The Sensitive Claims Board, hmm.

Mahony in Court
2007 NYT photo

Caller: [Reads] Interrogatory 7 and Interrogatory 8 G Patrick Gordon answers No and Not Applicable about any document ever seen relating to sexual contact with plaintiff and Herdegen. 

Me: Yeah I see that, Casey H. Johnson attorney for defendant Roman Catholic Bishop of Fresno

Caller: [shouting] This is what caused a lot of evidence from even being entered in the March 2009 trial.  

!!!

A lawyer who I catch unexpected on his cell, walking from a hearing, shouts at me in my hovel apt: Talk about repressed memory. These “witnesses” have forgotten times they walked in on sodomy, or screams coming heard from a rectory, during periods of time when they lived in close quarters with these perpetrator priest fucks, don't quote me on that.

!!!

Lizzie: Mom, why are you swearing at your computer screen.

Me: It's this sentence, I can't get the phrase in the right place, oh oops- [My hand twitches making me hit keyboard keys that cut and paste as if the hand is out of my control.]

Me: Shoot, I, oh wow, that works. [on screen I hit publish and the repaired paragraph appears on City of Angels Blog] hmm. Wow. I'm not imagining this.

Lizzie: What happened?

Me: My angels, they edited it to make it work. I swear, there's some kind of spiritual entity driving this blog, I mean look at the subject matter, it stands to reason... 

Lizzie rolls her eyes.

***

Whenever possible, I’d ride the Metro downtown and attend hearings, then back home I’d be trying to make sense out of quotes such as this spoken by Donald Steier defense attorney for pedophile priests:

Steier: [in as arrogant a tone of voice as the line implies] While plaintiffs have made facile arguments in their moving papers regarding their claimed intent to have had the court retain jurisdiction to appoint a referee to disclose the priests’ private files, they utterly failed to take the legally requisite steps to accomplish that goal. Now, with legal sleight of hand that would make a shell-game con-man proud, they seek to finagle this court into making orders that would be entirely ultra vires. 

Steier defending George Neville Rucker 2002

As I hit keyboard keys on my home desktop in that East Hollywood apartment, the news was often playing on another screen nearby, and one afternoon I heard this clip on CSpan I think, about a RICO settlement concerning catholic bishops letting priests molest children. So I stopped, opened another Microsoft Window, and started tapping in what the attorney and plaintiff were saying, then according to my notes I tried to track them down before publishing and never heard back here is what I transcribed as the news played their press conference read the one news article I was able to find in 2024 about this 2025 RICO settlement against U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. I think as a blogger in a slum in East Hollywood, I tried to contact attorneys to find out more and then when I didn't hear from them, I dropped the research. Found yesterday in my emails from 2005:

Newscaster: Hower's attorney, Ivan Abrams, made this statement as he left the courtroom:

IA: "After years of litigation, opposition, and frustration, plaintiffs Philip A. Hower and his mother, Meta Hower, settled their racketeering, RICO, lawsuit against the Dioceses of Tucson, Harrisburg, Columbus, and others, as well as against a number of prominent bishops, including Keeler and Kicanas.”

People in the small crowd on screen react audibly, I stop typing a second as my mouth drops open, and say out loud, RICO is what they use to go after organized crime.  Abrams continues:

"The Roman Catholic Church in North America conducted itself for years in a pattern of racketeering activity, based upon fraud and obstruction of justice. The bishops as a group designed their activities to, according to the lawsuit, to protect the Church from the ramifications of the sexual perversions and assaults committed by some of its priests.”

[I'm typing as well as I can mouth open amazed at what he’s saying: ]

AI: [rousing up a crowd] Bishops transferred these pervert priests from diocese to diocese, provided them with stipends, and never turned the known criminal sex offenders over to the police or civil authorities.

"When these criminals were discovered, according to the lawsuit, the Church further hid them and all records of their activities. Whistleblowers, of whom Mr. Hower was allegedly one, were condemned and exiled.’

A reporter calls out, “Does this mean the bishops are guilty?”

Abrams: "The defendants did not admit wrongdoing. That is typical in settlement of a civil lawsuit. Also Mr. Hower was denied ordination because he informed at least two bishops of his observations of illegal activities within the Church.

"He asked me to read this statement to anyone outside court:

Abrams reads= the words of plaintiff Philip Hower:

"We reached a settlement. On what, you may ask? Well, you watched me grow up from a young boy, to a teenager in love with God and His Church. You watched me lovingly serve at God's table and minister to his people, both young and old.

"You watched me fail, and you helped pick me up and learn to try and see God’s presence in even the meanest of people. You taught me to hope; that people can change, if they open up their hearts to Jesus.

"You, dear friend, watched as I entered the mysterious world of the seminary. You wrote to me faithfully and waited for me to visit you on my breaks and holidays from seminary.

"The world of the Church exploded for me. I learned that bishops and priests lie, sin, and are in fact all too human. You know that I wanted them to be on a pedestal, like Padre Pio, Mother Teresa, Gerald Majella, Elizabeth Ann Seton or John Neumann.  

"I settled, dear friends, a legal case calling the bishops, priests and dioceses of America the Mafia; not only encouraging immoral behavior, but practicing it themselves.

I dragged my 82-year-old mother through this war; she is heartbroken with her Church, our Church. You see, dear friend, I stood up against these wolves in shepherd's clothing both personally and in the press. Mother and I spent our own money, as no one would contribute to the cause for purification financially -- only verbally.

"Time after time, she and I went to the lawyer's office, educating this good Jewish man on the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the tradition of the Church, and telling him that money was not my objective; rather, my goal was to obtain the gift of ordination.

"The weeks grew on to months, and then to years. Bishops lied, twisted and hid behind their lawyers. Finally, it became very clear that the shepherds were not new to devious and malicious attacks.

"There was no spiritual direction in this endeavor; it was to protect the patrimony and deviant clergy, bishops and priests, at all cost. Use all the monies, power and influence --- and call in all of the favors owed them, at their disposal. Never for a moment did they consider that David was challenging Goliath. Perhaps they read this story somewhere while beginning their own journey toward their priestly vocations?

“We agreed to end our lawsuit against them, and to put away our beliefs in a good shepherd. They offered not my ordination, but money. I was made to understand that David never had a chance against Goliath in this story. It was to accept what was offered, regardless of how small the amount, have it as aid for mother in her twilight and infirm years, and allow God and his saints to carry out the campaign against the wolves in shepherd's clothing.”

News story about the RICO settlement: https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2005_07_12/2005_09_05_Abbott_SettlementReached.htm

!!!

As I typed one day my next door neighbor knocked at my door, which she had never done in 1.5 years we’d lived there. She needed help with her computer and needed it now don’t stop to lock the door. I followed her into her apartment and she sat me in front of her computer turned it on and there was nothing wrong I could see. “No,” she actually pushed me back in the chair as I tried to leave, and clicked around on her monitor, then said see? And I didn't see anything. 

Instead from my apartment next door my cat was howling Loud in a way I never heard her before. I took Helga’s hands off my shoulder and as I left her apartment, I saw the feet of a guy running down the stairs; he could have come from my apartment. My cat stood tense outside our door snarling. 

Next time I interviewed a pedophile priest survivor on my phone, there was an audible LOUD click click click which made me laugh and say, wow no wonder they call it tapping a phone. Then I'd purposely repeat some shocking detail of one of the crimes, hoping whoever was being paid to listen might reconsider whether he was working for the right side. 

-ke

(Work in progress to be continued)