by Rigorous Intuition » Thu Feb 16, 2006 12:02 pm
<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Abuse, murder in troubled Toledo</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Like Catholics everywhere, the faithful in Toledo, Ohio, have become somewhat inured to persistent media reports about priests sexually abusing children. But a Nov. 9 story in Toledo's daily newspaper, The Blade, raised a few eyebrows. The headline read "Nun called to support reforms of abuse laws: Sister said she was assaulted by priest."<br><br>Ann-Marie Borgess, 42, a longtime Sister of Notre Dame, voluntarily entered the spotlight with the claim that she was repeatedly abused as a girl by Chet Warren, a former priest of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales. Borgess said she's now coming forward to support a bill pending in the Ohio legislature that would dramatically expand the statute of limitations for civil suits related to sexual abuse. The legislation, Senate Bill 17, would lengthen filing limitations from two to 20 years after the alleged victim turns 18 and it would establish a controversial "look back" period of one year that would allow suits to be filed on abuse claims as old as 35 years. The bill received recent support from Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit (NCR, Jan. 20).<br><br>...<br><br>If the sisters' defiance seems unusual even in the context of the larger abuse scandal, it's hardly the most sensational turn in the events that have traumatized this midsize diocese over the last few years. Toledo has been a hornet's nest shaken by a vigorous daily newspaper and an active chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP. The city is, in fact, the birthplace of Barbara Blaine, SNAP's founder, who was abused as a girl in a local parish. A 2004 Oscar-nominated documentary was made about a Toledo abuse survivor. Reports of cooperation between the diocese and police to hush information about clerical abuse have surfaced. Most disturbing, perhaps, is the possibility of a ring of ritualistic abusers within the diocese. In one case, at least, it's clear the diocese initially withheld evidence in the investigation of a priest who will soon go to trial for the alleged murder of a nun.<br><br>The man accused of murder is Fr. Gerald Robinson, a diocesan priest who is scheduled to stand trial in April for the 1980 murder of the 71-year-old Catholic nun. Mercy Sr. Margaret Ann Pahl was strangled to death, stabbed up to 32 times and covered with an altar cloth in what many believe to be a Satanic/ritualistic killing. The murder took place in a Catholic hospital chapel on Holy Saturday 1980.<br><br>At the time, Robinson, the chaplain, was a prime suspect who took two lie detector tests and performed poorly on one. The cold case was reopened in December 2003 after events of byzantine complexity that eventually resulted in Robinson's arrest and indictment in spring 2004.<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006a/021706/021706h.php" target="top">National Catholic Register</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>I mentioned the Robinson case in these posts:<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/05/that-which-survives.html" target="top">That Which Survives</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/02/great-satan.html" target="top">The Great Satan</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rigorousintuition>Rigorous Intuition</A> at: 2/16/06 10:07 am<br></i>
