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| Yeshiva Torah Temima |
They Quietly Left the Church, but the Sexual Abuse Continued
After
leaving active ministry in 2002 as a priest in Brooklyn, Stephen Placa
got his pilot’s license and founded a flight school in Ronkonkoma, Long
Island, the Heritage Flight Academy. Seven years later, he was convicted in Suffolk County of the sexual abuse of two boys, ages 8 and 10.
In
1987, the Rev. Thomas O. Morrow went on an indefinite leave of absence
from the Diocese of Brooklyn and began working as a psychologist in
Forest Hills. He was still officially a priest when he was indicted
in 1996 on charges that he sodomized a 15-year-old boy he was hired to
counsel, took nude photographs of him and gave him crack to smoke. The
diocese said at the time it had never gotten any complaints of abuse.
Eventually, it defrocked him.
The two men are among the eight priests who the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn revealed on Thursday
had been laicized, or defrocked, by the Vatican for the sexual abuse of
children since 2002. Of those eight, four went on to be arrested and
convicted on child sex abuse charges after they left active ministry in
Brooklyn. The other four do not appear to have been arrested, though
whether they reoffended is unknown.
The
public disclosure of eight of the likely dozens of priests who have
sexually abused children in the Brooklyn diocese over the decades was
met with a mixture of praise and frustration from victims and their
advocates on Friday. While they were gratified that the disclosures
would probably protect additional children, they noted that this was
nowhere near a full accounting of clergy sex abuse in the diocese.
“I’m
encouraged by the release of eight names — I do think it’s good,” said
Michael Reck, a lawyer who is representing two of the victims of Romano
J. Ferraro, among the eight former priests named on Thursday. “But this
is a trickle compared to the flood that they are holding back.”
Carolyn
Erstad, a spokeswoman for the diocese, said Friday that it had chosen
to release the names of living priests who had been formally defrocked
by the Vatican because they could still be a danger to children. She
said it was not releasing the names of dead priests who had been
defrocked because they were no longer a threat.
She
did not address why the diocese was withholding the names of abusers
who had been named by victims in successful abuse settlements, but who
had not been formally laicized. Not all abusive priests are laicized;
that process at the Vatican is long and does not always result in the
loss of a clerical state.
“This
is about releasing the names of people who may have access to
children,” she said, adding that the diocese anticipated more names
would added to the list next week.
She
noted that the diocese now routinely shares all allegations of abuse
with law enforcement, and that it had done so since 2002, when reforms
were passed nationally in the Roman Catholic Church to protect children.
Before that, it was common to withhold allegations of abuse from law
enforcement. She also noted that the diocese had previously publicly
acknowledged substantiated allegations against priests.
Of
the eight men named Thursday, the most notorious was Mr. Ferraro, who
is believed to have been one of the most prolific priest pedophiles on
the Eastern Seaboard, and one of whom the most is known.
His
past in the church was divulged by the Diocese of Brooklyn, which,
after a four-year battle, was required to disclose some 1,200 pages of
information from his personnel file
for a civil suit in Miami relating to his abuse of a boy in Key West in
1969. The papers show that church officials in Brooklyn knew as early
as 1973 that he had abused boys, and that they helped him to get jobs in
other dioceses around the country when they no longer wanted him in
Brooklyn. He was said to have revealed his attraction to young boys in
the seminary.
In
1981, Anthony Bevilacqua, then a high-ranking Brooklyn chancery
official, who later became the cardinal archbishop of Philadelphia,
facilitated Mr. Ferraro’s move to a Missouri parish, where he was later
accused of molesting children. He also allegedly abused boys in the
dioceses of Rockville Centre and Metuchen, N.J.
He
was formally removed from ministry in 1988, and in 2004, was convicted
of child sexual assault for raping a Massachusetts boy in the 1970s. He
is now serving a life sentence in a medium-security prison in
Bridgewater, Mass. Throughout his career, from 1960 to 1988, he was
officially a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn.
Although
the diocese identified the eight former priests, it is impossible to
know in most of the cases when the diocese knew about the abuse and what
it did about it. The church’s brief statement only says what years they
served as active priests, and not when the laicizations took place, or
when the first allegations came in.
Of the priests, several had never been publicly named as sex abusers, including James Lara, who lost his job as a professor at Arizona State University on Thursday after his name was posted.
Charles
M. Mangini went on to live in Old Bridge, N.J. after his removal from
ministry in 1993.
Reached at home on Thursday, the 79-year-old affirmed
in a cheery voice that he had been a priest in Brooklyn. He quickly
changed his tone when told why the diocese had just posted his name.
Christopher
Lee Coleman, now 61, who was removed from ministry in 2011, still
maintains a Facebook page, and a LinkedIn page that makes it seem as if
he is a priest. “I live a vowed life. Ordained 21 May 1994, Roman
Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn,” it says.
The LinkedIn page
says he got a doctorate in sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center, and
since 2013 he has been a hermit and counselor, at the Hermitage of
Peace. His address is given as the Queen of All Saints Church in Fort
Greene, Brooklyn.
Anthony
Hughes, 42, a clergy sex abuse victim from the diocese who regularly
participates in activities it holds for abuse survivors, said Friday
that it was a “fabulous idea” that the names were being released, and
that he hoped there would be more. When told that the diocese was not
planning on releasing the names of deceased priests, he then volunteered
the name of the deceased priest who abused him.
“Father Robert Titone,” he said, “at St. Anthony - St. Alphonsus
in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.” Mr. Hughes, who recently received a
settlement for the abuse, said he was 11 when the abuse started and from
a poor family. He recalled the priest as generous. “He was the greatest
thing since sliced bread,” Mr. Hughes said, “and then the sickness came
out in him.”