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‘He’s a priest. I trusted him’: One of the 1,000 victims of alleged Pennsylvania clergy abuse tells his story

by Isaac Stanley-BeckerAugust 15 at 6:06 AM
Jim VanSickle in high school in northern Pennsylvania, left, and with his granddaughter, right. Now 55, he says he was abused by an English teacher and Catholic priest, David Poulson, one of more than 300 Pennsylvania priests named in a sweeping grand jury report released Tuesday. (Provided by Jim VanSickle)
Jim VanSickle entered his junior year at Bradford Central Christian High School in the fall of 1979 to learn that he had a new English teacher: a young priest named David Poulson, who had recently been ordained in the Catholic Church.

It was a turbulent moment in the 16-year-old’s life. His grandmother had died, and his father had fallen ill and couldn’t work. “I was a lost kid,” he said in an interview.

He found a mentor in the teacher, 10 years his senior. Poulson anointed him captain of the chess team, which traveled from their town in northern Pennsylvania across the border into New York for competitions. They enjoyed lively dinners after checkmate had been called.

VanSickle credits the priest with empowering him to finish high school and go to college. “He turned my life around,” VanSickle said. “He was my spiritual leader. He was my friend.”

But VanSickle, now 55, also holds Poulson responsible for ripping a hole in his life — “a hole that’s never going to be filled.” He says the priest physically and emotionally abused him, “grooming” him by exploiting the intensity of their bond. “I gave him information about me that no other person had knowledge of,” VanSickle alleged.

Poulson is one of more than 300 Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania named in a grand jury report released Tuesday that accuses church leaders of covering up rampant child sexual abuse over the course of 70 years. In the most sweeping probe by a government agency of clergy abuse in the United States, the grand jury was able to identify more than 1,000 victims while advising that there were likely to be thousands more.

The report is an index of frightful physical and psychological violence. It recounts how one priest allegedly abused five sisters in a single family; how another confessed to raping 15 boys as young as 7; how a victim was bound and whipped with leather straps; and how a victim died from an overdose of painkillers taken for a back injury suffered during a particularly violent attack. Most of the victims, the court said, will never be able to pursue cases against their alleged attackers, as state law gives victims of child sex abuse until they are 30 to undertake civil suits, 50 to file criminal charges.

VanSickle’s story, which he recounted to The Washington Post, not only exposes the nature of the abuse that, according to the grand jury, was long cloaked by church leaders. His account also testifies to the enduring efforts of victims to make their lives whole again. Although most priests are unlikely to answer new criminal charges, VanSickle’s alleged abuser is one of the two facing prosecution. Poulson was charged earlier this year with abusing two boys between 2002 and 2010. He has yet to enter a plea.

VanSickle, who works as a tutor and life coach in Pittsburgh, is now too old to join the case. But he testified before the grand jury about his alleged mistreatment at the hands of Poulson, and he is campaigning to encourage others to speak out and to change the state’s statute of limitations so they can seek justice.

He called the release of the grand jury report a “victory” in a “war that’s just beginning” against the Catholic hierarchy. He plans to use the list of priests named in the report to track down their alleged victims in a quest to force top cardinals to account for their responsibility. His aim is to ensure that the scandal that exploded in 2002 with revelations in Boston — and has since stretched from Australia to Guam, from Ireland to Honduras and back to the United States, recently with the resignation of Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington — doesn’t fade away.

But when it comes to his alleged assailant, VanSickle avowed, he remains confused. The very fact that he still feels affectionately toward Poulson, he said, is the reason he believes his mistreatment was so effective.

“He gave me somebody to be able to confide in, which makes the whole thing so confusing to me,” VanSickle said. “Seeing him in shackles and an orange jumpsuit, people asked me, ‘Why don’t you hate him? Why don’t you want to hurt him?’ Well, I do. But at the same time, I have some really strong conflicting feelings. It’s not hard to love the man that he was before he did what he did.”

[Cardinal Wuerl’s actions in Pittsburgh scrutinized by Catholic sexual abuse investigation]

Gradually, chess team dinners in high school became one-on-one meals. Poulson would take VanSickle to the movies, he recalled, and put his hand on the student’s leg in the car, he said. In the rectory, the priest would try to tickle him, always with VanSickle pulling away, he said. Still, he remained devoted to his teacher. “I looked at the guy — he’s a priest. I trusted him,” he said.

Soon, he said, the priest introduced alcohol to their relationship, and he would take VanSickle on long rides with a six pack of beer. Tickling turned into wrestling in the rectory or in front of the altar and between the pews in church, where his teacher would jump him, VanSickle recalled, and attempt to grope him.

“He constantly wanted physical contact,” he said.

The priest instructed him to dump his girlfriend, telling the teenager that she was “bad news.” If he didn’t comply, VanSickle said, Poulson would become withdrawn, “playing a pouty, jealous role with me, and I would chase that relationship, which only made my grooming that much more powerful.”

Just before VanSickle’s high school graduation, the pair went on a trip to an Our Lady of Fatima shrine in Ohio. In a rundown hotel, VanSickle alleged, “He jumps me, and I realize that he was aroused in his clothing.” When VanSickle pushed his teacher off, Poulson went into the bathroom to change into his pajamas. When he reemerged, VanSickle claimed, “I could see his erect penis out of his clothing.”

“He attacked me at that point, and for the first time, I felt terror and fear from the fact that it almost seemed like he had eight or nine arms versus the two that I’m using to get him off,” he said.

VanSickle was able to fight him off, and from that point, he said, his memory went blank until they were in the car on the way home. “We drove for seven hours and didn’t talk except for him stopping to get a six pack and handing it to me,” he remembered. “He never apologized and we never discussed it.”

VanSickle left for a Benedictine college near Pittsburgh, while Poulson moved to a Catholic university in Erie, Pa. “I thought he maybe got the message,” VanSickle said. But the priest started making unannounced visits to his former student, offering money and, at one point, buying him a car. The last time he showed up, he brought another student with him — “his new toy,” VanSickle alleged.

“Because of the relationship that I had lost with him, I was actually jealous and angry,” he said. “But I shooed him off and made him go away. That was the last time I saw him until his preliminary hearing this year.”

It took VanSickle a year to tell his father what had happened, and 10 years to tell his mother. Otherwise, he mostly fell silent, as Poulson moved from parish to parish across Pennsylvania, eventually winding up back in Erie.

In February, VanSickle’s mother read in a church bulletin that Poulson had been accused of child sexual abuse, prompting a week of turmoil for VanSickle as he pondered, “‘What do I do?’”

“I decided I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t come forward,” he said.

He ended up documenting his trauma on Facebook, which he has since used as a platform to connect with survivors of clergy abuse in all 50 states and 11 countries, he said. Speaking with other victims, he said, helped him understand why he had been living under a cloud of anxiety and anger.

“It’s the emotional trauma and the loss of that relationship that still haunts me and still controls me in some situations,” he said.

For years, he had no respite from fear that his wife of 33 years would leave him. When he entered therapy four years ago, he learned that he had “borderline personality disorder,” VanSickle said. “The only two real feelings I had were anger or fear, and both of those caused me to be violent.” Now, both he and his wife are in counseling, and bouts of rage no longer endanger his relationship with his family.

Religion, too, has helped, despite the painful associations. He hasn’t been an active Catholic since his abuse, but he considers himself a born-again Christian.

“I now have a personal relationship with the Lord,” he said. “Over time, my faith got stronger. The church was no longer an option, so I turned to being a very strong Christian on my own. I needed to, or I would have lost my family.”

Though his own path has become clearer, VanSickle has learned that encouraging others to come forward with their stories will be an arduous course. Over the weekend, a man was so afraid of being recognized that he would only agree to meet behind a mall after hours.

“He was scared to death, like I was,” VanSickle said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... f5cdf82abf

Catholic Church covered up child abuse by 300 US priests: report

Pennsylvania grand jury details decades of abuse of more than 1,000 children by hundreds of accused priests in the state

14 hours ago
More than 1,000 children - and possibly many more - were molested by hundreds of Roman Catholic priests in six dioceses in the US state of Pennsylvania, while senior church officials took steps to cover it up, according to a landmark grand jury report released on Tuesday.

The grand jury said it believes the real number of abused children might be in the thousands since some records were lost and victims were afraid to come forward. The report said more than 300 clergy committed the abuse over a period decades, beginning in the mid-1950s.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said the two-year probe found a systematic cover-up by senior church officials in Pennsylvania and at the Vatican.

"The cover-up was sophisticated. And all the while, shockingly, church leadership kept records of the abuse and the cover-up. These documents, from the dioceses' own 'Secret Archives,' formed the backbone of this investigation," he said at a news conference in the city of Harrisburg.

The report faulted Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former longtime bishop of Pittsburgh who now leads the Washington archdiocese, for what it said was his part in the concealment of clergy sexual abuse. Wuerl, one of the most prominent cardinals in the United States, released a statement Tuesday that said he had "acted with diligence, with concern for the victims and to prevent future acts of abuse".

The grand jury scrutinised abuse allegations in dioceses that minister to more than half the state's 3.2 million Catholics. Its report echoed the findings of many earlier church investigations around the country in its description of widespread sexual abuse by clergy and church officials' concealment of it.

'Shocking'

Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey, reporting from Harrisburg, said the allegations made in the report were "really shocking".

Most of the abuse survivors were boys, but girls were abused too, the report said. The abuse ranged from groping and masturbation to anal, oral and vaginal rape.

"Church officials routinely and purposefully described the abuse as horseplay and wrestling ... It was none of those things. It was child sexual abuse, including rape," Shapiro said.

He also said that one priest had molested five sisters in one family. The diocese settled with the family after requiring a confidentiality agreement, according to Shapiro.

Church officials routinely and purposefully described the abuse as horseplay and wrestling ... It was none of those things. It was child sexual abuse, including rape.
Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania Attorney General

The attorney general said that Catholic bishops covered up child sexual abuse by priests and reassigned them repeatedly to different parishes. "They allowed priests to remain active for as long as 40 years," he said.

"Children were taught that this abuse was not only normal but that it was holy."

Crimes too old to prosecute

The panel concluded that a succession of Catholic bishops and other diocesan leaders tried to shield the church from bad publicity and financial liability by covering up abuse, failing to report accused clergy to police and discouraging victims from going to law enforcement.

Yet the grand jury's work will not result in justice for the vast majority of those who say they were molested by priests as children. While the probe yielded charges against two clergymen - including a priest who has since pleaded guilty, and another who allegedly forced his accuser to say confession after each sex assault - the other priests identified as perpetrators are either dead or will avoid arrest because their alleged crimes are too old to prosecute under state law.

"The issue here is that many of these cases occurred so long ago that they cannot be charged criminally here in the state," Saloomey said.

The Pennsylvania grand jury, convened by the Office of the Attorney General in 2016, heard from dozens of witnesses and reviewed more than a half-million pages of internal documents from the Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton dioceses.

Some current and former clergy named in the report went to court to prevent its release, arguing it violated their constitutional rights to reputation and due process of law. The state Supreme Court said the public had a right to see it, but ruled the names of priests and others who objected to the findings would be blacked out pending a September hearing on their claims.

The identities of those clergy members remain under court seal.

A couple of dioceses decided to strip the accused of their anonymity in advance of the report and released the names of clergy members who were accused of sexual misconduct. On Friday, the bishop of Pittsburgh's diocese said a few priests named in the report are still in ministry because the diocese determined allegations against them were unsubstantiated.

Cases surface from Chile to Australia

The document comes at a time of renewed scrutiny and fresh scandals in the US, Chile and Australia.

Separately on Tuesday, the Chilean government asked the Vatican for documents related to sex abuse accusations against clergy in Chile, as local prosecutors raided another office of the Roman Catholic Church in Santiago. In June, Chile's 34 bishops were summoned to Rome by the pope after Vatican investigators produced a 2,300-page report alleging that senior Church officials in Chile had failed to act on abuse claims and in some cases hid them. Pope Francis has accepted resignations by five of those bishops.

In Australia, a former archbishop was recently convicted of failing to disclose abuse by a priest to police after being told about it by two of the survivors in the 1970s. On Tuesday, he was spared jail time when he was ordered to serve his one-year sentence at home due to a range of health issues.

Last month, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of 88-year-old US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, ordering him to a lifetime of prayer and penance amid allegations that McCarrick had for years sexually abused boys and had sexual misconduct with adult seminarians.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/ ... 13718.html

Erik Ravelo - Los Intocables

THE UNTOUCHABLES

Erik Ravelo / F A B R I C A 2012

Creative Direction and Concept: Erik Ravelo

Photo: Erik Ravelo / Enrrico Bossan

Post production: Erik Ravelo

The Right to Childhood

Should be Protected.

Images and concept protected by the law

2012 F A B R I C A.

The 1st image referenced in the Vatican pedophilia.
The 2nd image the child sexual abuse in tourism in Thailand.
The 3rd refers to the war in Syria.
The 4th image refers to trafficking in organs on the black market, where most of the victims are children of poor countries.
The 5th refers to free U.S. weapons.
The 6th image refers to obesity, blaming the big fast food companies

Andrew Sullivan wrote:As a secular gay journalist, not hostile to the church, [Martel] walked into the Vatican and was simply staggered by its obvious gayness. No gay neighborhood has existed like this in the West since the 1980s. (Lepore hazards a guess that 80 percent of the Vatican’s population is gay.) And as Martel probes deeper and deeper, one theme emerges very powerfully: “Homosexuality spreads the closer one gets to the holy of holies; there are more and more homosexuals as one rises through the Catholic hierarchy. The more vehemently opposed a cleric is to gays, the stronger his homophobic obsession, the more likely it is that he is insincere, and that his vehemence conceals something.” It’s a lesson I learned reporting my own recent essay on gay priests.

And so it’s not that huge a surprise to see how influenced Paul VI was by gay Catholic writers of the time. And it’s highly predictable that John Paul II’s pontificate, which launched a new war on homosexuals, turns out to be the gayest of them all — and the one most resistant to any inquiry into stories of sex abuse. His right-hand man and successor, Joseph Ratzinger, (the future Pope Benedict XVI) personally received notification of every claim of sex abuse in the church under John Paul II, ignoring most, and made the stigmatization and persecution of sane, adjusted non-abusive gay people across the globe his mission instead. There wasn’t a theological dissident he didn’t notice and punish, but barely a single pedophile he found reason to expose.

RELIGION & SPIRITUALITY
Lawyers release list of Illinois Catholic clergy accused of sexual misconduct


On Wednesday, attorneys released a 185-page report that includes background information and work histories of 395 priests and lay people accused in the state's six dioceses.

Wednesday, March 20th, 2019 9:22PM
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Attorneys for clergy sex abuse victims released a new report Wednesday detailing all the Illinois priests who they say have been publicly accused of sexual abuse.

Officials from the Archdiocese of Chicago argue that this compilation contains accusations that are unsubstantiated or that have already been reported to authorities.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ANDERSON REPORT

The lawyers released the 180-page report that includes background information and work histories of 395 priests and lay people accused and connected to the state's six dioceses.

Attorney Marc Pearlman said this is the first time such a comprehensive Illinois list has been compiled. The report primarily aggregates previously reported information about those who have been previously publicly accused of abuse.

RELATED: Vatican outlines next steps to fight sex abuse crisis at conclusion of historic summit

At the Sunday conclusion of the historic sexual abuse summit convened by Pope Francis, Vatican officials announced "concrete initiatives" generated by the meeting.


"They have destroyed my foundation for morality, and values for trust," said abuse victim Joe Iacono. He was 11 years old when he says he was abused by his parish priest whose name is listed in Thursday's report.

"The purpose of this report is to disclose the scope of the peril that the Catholic Bishops have chosen not to disclose and keep secret," said Jeff Anderson, church sex abuse victims' attorney.

Anderson said the list includes clergy and laypeople who have been publicly accused of abuse. The Archdiocese of Chicago says it already releases the names of every member of the clergy who's had a substantiated allegation against them and turns over the names of those accused to law enforcement.

However, archdiocesan officials admit that they have not published the names of 22 priests on Anderson's list because they say the claims against them are unsubstantiated allegations. Fourteen of those accused clerics are dead.
"These names were not secret," said John O'Malley, the Archdiocese of Chicago's special counsel. "There was not effort to conceal them, they were all reported to authorities."

The archdiocese has previously published a list of 77 clergy with substantiated allegations of sexual misconduct against minors. They say the additional names the Anderson report connects to Chicago are priests of other dioceses that may have served in Chicago at some point.

CLICK HERE FOR LIST OF 77 ARCHDIOCESE OF CHICAGO CLERGY WITH SUBSTANTIATED ALLEGATIONS OF ABUSE AGAINST MINORS


CLICK HERE FOR LIST OF 22 ARCHDIOCESE OF CHICAGO CLERGY NAMED IN 'ANDERSON REPORT'

"Chicago's child protection program is well beyond a list of names," said Mary Jane Doerr, the Archdiocese of Chicago's director of the Office for the Protection of Children and Youth, during a press conference. She continued, "Chicago is one of the strongest child protection efforts out there."

RELATED: Former Ill. AG, Penn. AG discuss scathing investigations into church sex abuse

When it comes to sexual abuse allegations, the Catholic Church is not capable of policing itself, Illinois' former Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Pennsylvania's Attorney General


"What's frustrating to me is the lists represent the past and it wasn't a really good past but we don't do that anymore. That's not what's going on today. Today, all allegations are taken seriously. Any victim who comes forward is given pastoral outreach and care and help in making the allegation and children are protected broadly in our schools and religious ed programs," Doerr said.

Archdiocese of Chicago says all allegations of abuse are reported to police. Despite that, victims' attorneys say in most cases by the time a victim comes forward and the abuse is reported, the statute of limitations has run out and it's too late to charge someone. Attorneys say that doesn't mean a crime was not committed.

"If they are relying on law enforcement and law enforcement chooses not to charge if that's not appropriate and using the wrong standard," said Pearlman.

FULL ARCHDIOCESE OF CHICAGO STATEMENT

Today Anderson & Associates released the names of clerics and laypeople they say have been accused of the sexual abuse of minors and have served in one or more of the six Illinois dioceses. The Archdiocese of Chicago reports all allegations we receive to the civil authorities. In addition to the priests listed on the Archdiocese's website, we have identified 22 priests of the Archdiocese of Chicago on Anderson & Associates' list.

The Archdiocese has reported 20 of these clerics to the civil authorities; in one of the remaining two cases, the Archdiocese first received notice when the cleric was arrested, and in the other it was an allegation of misconduct with an adult, not a minor. The attached chart details the circumstances surrounding these 22 allegations and disposition of those cases.

Priests with substantiated allegations are listed on the Archdiocese's website.

The Archdiocese of Chicago does not "police itself." It reports all allegations to the civil authorities, regardless of the date of the alleged abuse, whether the priest is a diocesan priest or religious order priest, and whether the priest is alive or dead.

When an allegation against an archdiocesan cleric is made and before any investigation begins, the archdiocesan Office of Assistance Ministry promptly reaches out to the person making the allegation and offers therapy at archdiocesan expense from a licensed therapist of the person's choosing. The Archdiocese withdraws the accused priest from ministry pending investigation of the allegation and publicly announces this action.

After the civil authorities have completed their investigation, the Archdiocese conducts its investigation.
The Independent Review Board, which considers the results of such investigations, was established in 1993. The majority of its members are laypeople. The Independent Review Board is the primary adviser to the archbishop on issues of risk to children and fitness for ministry.

Anderson & Associates conflates people who have been accused, but may be innocent, with those who have substantiated allegations against them, referring to all as perpetrators Their list includes:
a priest whose allegations were investigated by the public authorities and were determined to be unfounded. The Archdiocese's Independent Review Board also investigated and determined that the allegations were not substantiated. The priest was then returned to ministry.

two priests whose cases are under investigation; their cases were reported to the authorities and they have been withdrawn from ministry, pending the outcome of the investigation.

a seminarian (who was a transitional deacon) who was never ordained a priest.

a priest who was accused of misconduct with an adult, not a minor.


Many of the names listed by Anderson & Associates are religious order priests. We provide the following information to help clarify their governance:
Dioceses and religious orders are separately governed entities in the Roman Catholic Church. Bishops govern dioceses; religious superiors govern religious orders. The bishop selects, trains, and supervises diocesan priests. The religious orders select, train and supervise their priests. The diocesan and religious order priests often do similar work, but each group is responsible to its own chain of authority (Canon 586). Disagreements between a bishop and a religious superior are referred to the Holy See for resolution.

A bishop and a religious superior work cooperatively such as when a bishop grants faculties (a license) for a religious priest to work in a diocesan institution, such as a parish (Canon 678). Nevertheless, the religious order priest is still under the authority of his religious superior. Similarly, a bishop may revoke a religious order priest's faculties (a license) to work in the diocese. In that eventuality, the supervision and management of the order priests also remains the responsibility of his religious superior. In brief, a diocesan priest is the responsibility of the diocese and a religious priest is the responsibility of the religious order.

If the Archdiocese of Chicago receives an allegation that a religious priest has engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor, the archdiocese reports it to the civil authorities, publicly withdraws the priest's faculties to work in the archdiocese, and refers the matter to his religious superior.
Religious superiors have the same obligation and responsibility as bishops to adhere to the terms set forth in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

CLICK HERE FOR DIOCESE OF ROCKFORD STATEMENT

CLICK HERE FOR DIOCESE OF SPRINGFIELD STATEMENT

CLICK HERE FOR DIOCESE OF JOLIET STATEMENT

CLICK HERE FOR DIOCESE OF PEORIA STATEMENT
https://abc7chicago.com/religion/lawyer ... 4woQIvYzdo