Catholic Life Ministries

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A note from Robert…

Dear Readers;
This issue of The Troubadour is dedicated to challenging and inspiring you to get involved in reaching out to victims of clergy sex abuse and getting involved with helping to restore trust in the Church. To this end, I have asked Carma Salazar, mother of an abuse victim by a Catholic priest, to share her story with you. Following this I write to you about an amazing homily on the “ stench of the sex abuse crisis,” given by our parish priest, Fr. Alan Yost. As always, we encourage you to post your comments here.

Carma’s Story

Dear readers of The Troubadour and friends of Catholic Life Ministries;

I write to you as the mother of an abuse victim, Kim Alarid. My precious Kim was first abused when she was six years old by Fr. Francis Duffy, S.J., a parish priest at St. Joseph Church in Yakima. The abuse continued until she was 14.

I am not Catholic, but Kim’s father was. We were divorced when she was three. Kim’s father was an admirer of Fr. Duffy’s, and often took Kim to confession and would even allow the priest to take Kim for rides in his car. I will not horrify you in this article with the kinds of things that happened to my innocent child. It was awful, vicious, and evil. (You can read about it in Kim’s own handwriting: go to votfcentralwashington.com).

I had no idea what was happening. Yes, I noticed first some angry acting-out behavior by Kim, and then destructive behavior. She was sent home from school when she was 10 for drinking. She was wild and out-of-control so many times I thought I was going to lose my mind. She was in and out of drug and alcohol treatment centers as a teenager, was sexually involved with different men, and tried to kill herself and her younger sister on a number of occasions. I once stopped her when she had a broken glass held at the throat of her sister.

I attributed it all to the divorce, and to my being a bad mother. I had to work and juggle kids. I knew there was a beautiful child in Kim somewhere, but I felt that I failed repeatedly to give her what she needed. She left home and continued her destructive living. She had children with different men, and checked herself in and out of drug and alcohol treatment centers. By the time she became ill with systemic scleroderma at age 40 and came to live with me, Kim was a tired, worn-out woman.

God has a funny way of bringing good from evil because through Kim’s sickness I regained the daughter I had lost when she was six and first met Fr. Duffy. Kim did not fight me anymore. She got clean of drugs and booze, and allowed me to take care of her. I could be her mother again and loved every minute of making up for those lost years, not knowing how long I was going to have her.

It was at this time that Kim began following stories in the local paper of sex abuse by priests in the Catholic Church, and learned about a man named Robert Fontana who was speaking up for victims. An article appeared in the paper about the very priest who had abused her; Fr. Francis Duffy, S.J. (The Diocese of Yakima was being sued by a family over a sexual abuse claim involving Duffy.) For the first time, Kim told me that this man had molested her. She didn’t go into too much detail. I was shocked! “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She said that she had told her father when it first happened, but he fussed at her for talking bad about the priest and physically punished her. She learned quickly to keep her mouth shut. She also told me that she knew of other girls molested by Duffy, and they too were physically punished by their parents when they told about it.

Kim decided to call Robert and asked him to come see her. He came immediately and brought his wife. As I listened to Kim go into the details of her abuse, the insanity of our life with her as a child and teenager flashed before my eyes. It finally all made sense why she acted like such a demon—she had been “demonized” by a Catholic priest who was supposed to lead her to God. I cried! I said to Kim, Robert, and Lori, “I THOUGHT ALL THOSE YEARS I WAS A BAD MOTHER!!”

I did not know Robert and Lori from Adam, but by the way they listened to Kim and believed her story, I knew they could be trusted. The question that they laid before us was, “Kim, what do you need to do to find healing?” Sadly, that was never fully answered because Kim died in October, 2008, from the disease that had sent her home and restored her back to me as my daughter.

Robert led the memorial service for Kim at a nearby funeral home. He and Lori have been a steady hand of support. They arranged meetings with the local Jesuit priests and the leader of the Jesuits in the Northwest. I was able to tell Kim’s story and listen to their side of things. Yes, they apologized over and over again, but I have heard of no good explanation how a priest who was an obvious alcoholic, from what I have read and what Kim has told me, and under their supervision, could get away with abusing my child and many others for years!

I am angry at Kim’s dad for being such a blind Catholic; at the Jesuit leaders who ignored this sick man in their order; and at myself for failing to protect that six-year-old child of God who was so beautiful, so precious, so good.

Sexual abuse of a child by a minister of the Church does not just destroy that child’s life; it destroys the life of a family. Fr. Duffy robbed me of my daughter; robbed Kim’s sister of a sibling; and robbed Kim’s children of their mother. We are still suffering from the trauma of those years. I’m convinced that there is no complete healing of the hurt and awful memories, but there is an easing of the pain and a help in bearing the suffering when others, like SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), Voice of the Faithful members, and the Fontanas listen to us and reach out to us.

This June, Robert and Lori even organized a group of their friends to paint my house. They scraped, primed, painted and repaired the outside walls. There were adults, men and women, teenagers, and children. And during lunch on their work day they listened to me tell them about my Kim. I need to tell people about Kim. I want her life to have meaning. I don’t want her to be remembered as a drunk and drug addict who could not take care of her children. I want people to understand the reason for the demons that possessed her, especially people in the Catholic Church, and I want Kim’s story to help inspire them to make sure no child is ever again abused like she was.

Thank you for listening.
Carma Salazar

Fr. Alan’s Challenge – Stepping into the Stench

by Robert Fontana
The stench of sex abuse — The homilist was Jesuit Fr. Alan Yost, associate pastor at St. Joseph Church in Yakima. The gospel reading was the raising of Lazarus (see John 11). The context for this homily was the recently published stories of the bankruptcy settlement by the Oregon Province of Jesuits which had agreed to pay out $166 million dollars to over 500 victims of sex abuse by Jesuits. The sex abuse crisis was “hanging over our heads” as we gathered for worship that Sunday.

Fr. Alan highlighted this passage in the Lazarus story: Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.”

It was the word “stench” that stood out for Fr. Alan. He said that the clergy sex abuse crisis has an ugly stench to it and nobody wants to touch it. It is messy and “smells terrible,” but, if there is to be any healing and restoration of trust with the victims and their families, the laity must step forward and be willing to face the stench of the crisis.

He continued, saying that he and his brother Jesuits certainly have a unique responsibility to reach out to the victims of abuse, but because of the history of abuse perpetrated by Jesuits, they may be the last representative of the Church which victims would be willing to speak with. It is the laity of the Church, those who have not caused the crisis, that must be willing to endure the “stench” and get involved in restoring trust in the Church.

Fr. Alan is right, but just what is the “stench” of the clergy sex abuse crisis? This is what I think:

1. Hearing the stories of the victims. They are too awful and sickening to hear. Any person with any modicum of humanity will be pained to his or her core listening to an adult describe being sexually abused as a child by a minister of the Church.
2. Knowing the names and histories of the clergy abusers. We want to keep them nameless and faceless; it helps us to minimize the depth of betrayal by trusted ministers of the Church who baptized, presided at Mass, visited the sick, witnessed marriages, were welcomed into our families as trusted members — and terribly violated children, youth, and vulnerable adults.
3. Learning of cover-up and protection of sexual predators by Church leaders. We do not want to go to Mass angry with our Bishops or other officials. We want to believe that the Church, divinely ordained by God, is different than any other institution; and when we learn that our leaders are just as capable of lying, intimidating victims and witnesses, and manipulating information as any cooperate CEO or government bureaucrat is, we are devastated. Lori and I were.
   

4. Fear of retaliation and shunning. When I began to challenge the Bishop of Yakima on sex abuse issues, friends who worked in the diocese, at Catholic schools and at parishes privately supported my actions but said that they could not say anything because it would risk their jobs. Another friend, who learned that her pastor had abused her boys when they were young, was shunned by her friends at the parish when she told them what had happened. Fear of retaliation and shunning keeps good people who know about or suspect abuse from speaking up.

Our story — I first learned of sex abuse and sexual misconduct by ministers in the Church when I was in seminary. A friend told me that the priest we were living with had molested him. I also came across other sexual indiscretions, and so I went to a senior who was a good friend and asked him if he thought that I should report this. He said, “I’m sure the administration knows about it and is taking care of things.” So I let the issue slide. It was 1976.

Over the next 20 years I continued to “let the issue slide,” trusting that Church leaders were taking care of things; even as I continued to learn of the growing crisis of sex abuse in the Church —including in my home town of Abbeville, Louisiana, where serial predator Fr. Gilbert Gauthe (a priest with whom I had worked) preyed on children. The revelations in Boston and subsequent revelations from my own diocese of Yakima, Washington, changed all that. I was thunderstruck by the enormity of the crisis and personally devastated. Then it dawned on me: I was part of the problem. I let the issue slide year after year, trusting that Church leaders would take care of it. In truth, I did not want to deal with the “stench” of sex abuse. It was too painful and threatened too many of my core convictions about being a Catholic.

Lori and I thought about quitting ministry (she was teaching at a Catholic school; I was working at the Diocese of Yakima). However, we were convinced in prayer that Jesus loves this Church with all its sins, as Jesus loves us with all of our sins. We want the Church to be sinless, especially when it comes to protecting the innocent among us; but it isn’t. The challenge Jesus presented to us was: “Can you love this Church as it is, “stench of sex abuse” included, and bear the cross that must be borne to restore trust?” If we remained in the Church, let alone in ministry, we knew we must bear the cross of this scandal, but to do so we had to face its awful, repugnant “STENCH!”

Stepping into the stench — One thing Fr. Alan said is absolutely true: if trust is to be restored, the laity must get involved… and getting involved means stepping into the stench. Here’s how we did it. (Maybe it can serve as an example for you.)

1. We contacted SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and invited some of their local members to come to Yakima and tell their stories. We met Michael, abused when he was 12 by an 82-year-old priest; Mary, abused by her pastor when she was 10; Cathy, abused by the priest director of her Native American boarding school when she was 11; John, molested by the associate pastor and also by a visiting priest when he was 12 and serving as an altar boy; and Kim, the most egregious story we heard, who was abused from the time she was six years old, in the Confessional, until she was 14.

   Listening to the victims and their families is the most important step we took and continue to take. Victims and their families have repeatedly said to us, “Thank you for listening to us; thank you for believing us.”

2. These stories caused us to weep and pray for forgiveness. We repented for the crimes of ministers who preyed on the vulnerable, for Church leaders who protected them, and for turning our heads and pretending that we just didn’t see. We fasted from solid food for nine days and prayed the Stations of the Cross for Survivors of Sex Abuse in the Church, and invited the Catholic community at large to join us.
3. We got organized and reviewed diocesan policies on sex abuse, compiled a list of clergy and Catholic ministers who have abused in Central Washington (see votfcentralwashington.com), and even obtained court documents to get at the truth of a case when it was not forthcoming from the diocese, and released this information to the media (and for this we have been shunned!).

   I even met with Francis George, the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, and pleaded with him to work for a change in canon law that would give lay employees protection from retaliation by Church leaders!

4. And lastly, we have provided practical help for one victim’s family; we scraped, primed, painted, and repaired her house. And during the lunch break, we gave the mother of the victim, Carma, an opportunity to share her story with our volunteers.

The stench of sex abuse is overwhelmingly repugnant. It has kept many good people from getting involved, but there will be no healing, no restoration of trust among the victims and their families, and even among our children and neighbors who are greatly offended by the scandal, unless good people like you and me get involved!

There is a story of St. Francis of Assisi —that he could not stomach the stench emitted from the rotting skin of lepers, until he embraced them and began to serve their needs. The same is true here. Begin today. Call SNAP (1-877-762-7432) and ask for the name of local SNAP leaders, and invite them to your home, organization or parish, and begin to be part of the hard work of stepping into the stench of sex abuse so as to restore trust in this Church we love.