The Catholic Church disclosed Monday that it has paid $5.2 million and made significant changes in the way it handles allegations of sexual abuse to settle a lawsuit alleging that a prominent Orange County priest and onetime high school principal molested one of his students. [...] Under the new guidelines, the dioceses have agreed to create an independent victim assistance program for youths who say they have been molested. Orange County Superior Court Judge James Gray also ordered the dioceses to issue public apologies to DiMaria and four other teenage boys who claimed Msgr. Michael A. Harris molested them. [...] Church officials continued to deny a central charge contained in the DiMaria lawsuit: That the dioceses were aware of sex allegations while Harris was principal of Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, an Orange County social and athletic powerhouse, but still picked the priest in 1987 to head their new showcase Santa Margarita High School in southern Orange County. [...] The 11 changes to church procedures provided for in the settlement--which Ryan DiMaria's attorney dubbed "Ryan's Law"--include monitoring of schools and parishes, establishing a toll-free phone number and Web site for anonymous abuse complaints and forbidding priests to be alone in social settings with minors. Some of the rules are new, others reinforce existing regulations. The church also agreed to allow an independent group to regularly interview departing students about possible sexual misconduct at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, from which Harris graduated in 1972.
You know, when I first heard about the settlement in a report with few preliminary details, I wondered what on earth could have gone on. There had to have been some unusually egregious misbehavior alleged -- other than one man molesting one student, I mean -- for the Church to have capitulated so.
I dare say that transferring an accused child molester to another high school would constitute such unusually egregious misbehaviour, yes.
Thing is, this is the sort of case that would have been won on emotion and hearsay. There's certainly no evidence at this late date that the boy was molested; he didn't report it at the time. That's why there were no criminal charges; there wasn't enough evidence to sustain them. As a matter of the evidence, even with the lesser standard of proof in civil cases, it should have been a slam-dunk win for the Church. But that, of course, isn't the way that civil cases work, quite. It certainly isn't the way it works when the organization has a vivid and quite recent history of such charges being laid against it; people are predisposed to believe the accusers before evidence is even heard.
The other part of it is that personnel procedures, especially when part of a lawsuit, aren't protected by privilege. The Church would have been forced to disclose under oath whether or not it knew of allegations against that priest before they transferred him, and if they had known, a true Pandora's box of allegations would have come forth. The Church would almost certainly have been asked how many people they had done such things with, how many priests had been transferred away from posts where they had gotten into such difficulties and been sent directly to a similar one in another area. The Church could, of course, legitimately refuse to answer such questions as both a matter of confidential personnel issues and because the accusations had not (or had not yet) been formally made or proven ... and wouldn't that have set the cat among the media pigeons? If they flatly stated that they had not done so, they would likely have been forced to reveal details of administrative punishments at least to the judge and attorneys to prove the truth of their words. It was truly a no-win situation from their point of view.
I would imagine that this settlement will, indeed, erode morale among priests; how could it not? Surely most of them aren't guilty of any such conduct, but people in the area will be more reluctant to trust them. And the anonymous complaint line and site, as structured, are utterly absurd; to be able to bring such a charge against someone in complete anonymity is, if nothing else, surely unconstitutional. (The Church may be exempt from many employment laws, as a religious organization, but the priests as citizens and residents of the US, are still entitled to be treated as such.) The rigors of the priesthood have already led to unprecedented attrition and recruitment difficulties -- poverty, chastity and obedience not being anyone's strong suits these days. Add to that the concept that someone might choose to accuse you of crimes just because they didn't like you or what you had said, and that they could do it anonymously ... well, what sane person WOULD want to be a priest under those conditions?
@ 02:45 AM CST [Link]
So what would you do if you could do your 20s again?
@ 01:22 AM CST [Link]
Hum. Supposedly, my spot is one of the following: (1) DC; (2) Albuquerque NM; (3) Portland OR; (4) Little Rock, AR; (5) Baltimore; (6) Oakland CA; (7) Chicago. Let's parse this, shall we? (1) You couldnt pay me enough to live in DC; (2) I left Albuquerque -- one of my criteria was a strong mass transit system, so I have no idea how it snuck in to the 2 spot; (3) Eh. Maybe. Never been there. Wet, but I didn't express a preference; (4) ... are they mad? (5) See DC, redux; (6) Actually, I like Oakland; (7) I live there. (Despite a stated preference for a lack of molten lava -- yes, it is one of the questions! -- Honolulu was in my top 24 results, as were Gaithersburg, MD and Fayetteville, AR [what IS it with this place and Arkansas?], despite a request for a major metropolitan area. Something doesn't quite work in their calculator, I think ...)
@ 05:56 PM CST [Link]
U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina plans to announce Wednesday that he will retire from the U.S. Senate when his term expires in 2003.
Pardon me, but I am doing the Interpretive Czardas Dance of Great and Wondrous Joy.
(Yes, I know he could be replaced by someone younger and worse. Just hush up now and let me celebrate.)
@ 02:39 PM CST [Link]
How unusual. A modern, real-life version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. For different reasons, to be sure, but nonetheless ...
@ 02:19 PM CST [Link]
Why, why, oh, why would we want an empire? First, we're not likely to remain the world's sole "superpower" for all that much longer -- China has both the people and the resources to overtake us both militarily and economically in the long run, and Europe has the people and resources to overtake us economically in the medium term, if not the will to do so militarily. Second, we have neither the ability nor the political will to project our military power in an imperial way until the end of time. I don't deny that we are playing an imperial role on the world stage ... but I would suggest that, looking at how things have gone and what we've been doing the past few years, we've been floundering about for nearly a decade to find some way to be both secure and to remove ourselves from the imperial role. (Note to The Shrub: tearing up every single international agreement negotiated over the past 30 years is, perhaps, not the best way to do so.) Unfortunately, the US history has been as a rising Great Power, and then, just as the Great Power world collapsed under the back-to-back assaults of the World Wars, one of two Superpowers. We've spent so much time looking for ways in that we haven't got a clue how to get out.
Incidentally, if this is the Pax Americana, it's not much of a peace. Brushfire wars in the Balkans flaring up every few years, a putative ally and its dependent population at war in the Middle East, former adversaries Russia and China aligning themselves, Africa sailing along in gory ignorance ... this is peace? This is imperial power?
@ 02:01 PM CST [Link]
My. What a bastion of tolerance is South Dakota. Remind me never to go there.
@ 01:08 PM CST [Link]
At the Cafe, a bar on Market Street that draws a younger gay crowd, a 21-year-old man says he has never known anyone who has died of AIDS. He worries about becoming infected, but he sometimes forgoes a condom anyway. "It feels good," he said, "because there's no rubber." For him, and for others like him, exhortations about H.I.V. are like cautions about cigarettes, illicit drugs or driving too fast, warnings from "old people" about distant dangers.
Older men have seen AIDS do its worst work, but some are weary — weary enough to take bigger chances. "The prospect of going through the rest of your life having to cover yourself up every time you want to get intimate with someone is an awful one," said John, 44, who found out in March that he was H.I.V. positive. John spoke on condition that his last name be withheld for fear it would cause difficulty on his job. "Now I've got H.I.V. and I don't have to worry about getting it," he said. "There is a part of me that's relieved. I was tired of always having to be careful, of this constant diligence that has to be paid to intimacy when intimacy should be spontaneous."
You know, I understand the part about not having seen anyone die, and not understanding for that reason. I understand the weariness. I understand making mistakes.
The part about being somewhat relieved that now he's positive and doesn't have to worry about being careful anymore, that part I don't get. After all, clearly he's not monogamous with his partner. He doesn't care about maybe infecting someone else? How does it not continue to be his problem? Yes, it's the responsibility of any individual to protect themselves. How does this relieve someone who's positive of any responsibility whatsoever? With any other STD, the social onus is also on the person with the disease to protect others from it, or at least inform them so that they can make choices; why on earth should it be at all different with AIDS?
I understand the viewpoint that asking someone to use condoms the rest of their lives is not a reasonable thing to ask. Somewhere I read that if we had asked straight people to do the same thing, AIDS would be cured by now. (Which, among other things, struck me as an intensely narrow-minded view, and extraordinarily US-centric. After all, it's only in the West that it can be considered "a gay disease". In the rest of the world, it's emphatically heterosexual. And they don't use condoms. And they die at truly appalling rates; half of the adults in southern Africa are estimated to be positive. HALF.) In fact, heterosexual adults in this country have shown themselves to be remarkably uncaring about such things; after all, there's still hepatitis, chlamydia, gonnorhea, syphilis, herpes and all sorts of STDs out there, known to be quite prevalent, and yet most heterosexuals take no precautions at all. That said, it's no excuse.
The problem is, using heterosexual behavior as, if not a model (definitely not a model), then a window on the future, what's likely to happen eventually is that most people will just shrug and take their chances. Yes, it's still, for the most part, a fatal disease. Yes, the risk is at least somewhat controllable. But humans don't like controlling their behaviour any more than they absolutely must. And doing it without deviation or hesitation over a lifetime, as any diabetic could tell you, is more than most can manage without incredibly strong motivation. It seems that, "If you don't do this, chances are that you will get very sick, and it will be long and drawn-out and ugly, and you may well die," is not motivation enough.
Thing is, nobody notices the missing generation of gay men. Partly, that's because it's not entirely missing. There are a certain number of people in their 40s-60s about, of course. But because the culture is so youth oriented, and the subculture even more so, they're marginalized. And, of course, the key element is that they're missing. Absent AIDS, there should be nearly twice as many gay men in that age group around. When there aren't many, aren't enough to be a constantly visible presence, it's easy to forget why they're not there.
I would imagine that maybe in five or ten years, if some researcher decides to take a look at the average life expectancy of the American gay man, it will again have dropped precipitously down into the 50s or 40s or maybe even the late 30s.
@ 01:05 PM CST [Link]
Oooooo ... Pong ..... (Shockwave needed.) Not quite your classic Pong; more like a strange version of handball with a very odd perspective. Yet weirdly addictive.
@ 12:11 PM CST [Link]
Gay.com: Kevin Barker's triumph over Fred Phelps: ... oh, my goodness, YES! What a perfect idea! If you can't make them go away, make money off 'em! Imagine what you could accomplish with the funds! Imagine his apoplexy when he finds out that he's helping a cause he loathes!
via QueerBlog
@ 05:51 PM CST [Link]
I mean ...crullers? Oh, them crazy Canadians! (I've heard that Tim Horton's is one of the best around. I suppose this proves ... something, anyway.)
I assume it's not the donuts that have the parents of the bride and groom in shock, although it's hard to tell. I'm surprised that this is a weird ceremony for a minister of the Universal Life Church, though. I thought ULC specialized in weird.
@ 05:38 PM CST [Link]
Yes, it's time for the weekly death penalty rant. Run away while you can.
You have to wonder about people. I mean, really, what else can you do but wonder about how people think. Despite the fact that we know -- we know -- that more than half the people previously scheduled for execution in this state were innocent of the crimes they were convicted of, the governor is forced to veto a law making it easier to execute people. No, I'm not in favor of "going easy on gangs", but this is sheer idiocy. (Of which the representative who proposed the law is quite proud.) Elsewhere, someone is upset with the governor because his moratorium "allowed murderers to escape justice". Apparently, not actually committing the murder is not a reasonable defense. (He's also quite wrong on one political issue; the reason Ryan's re-election bid would have failed is that as more and more evidence about the license scandal came out, the only way you could believe that Ryan didn't know at least something about it was if you thought he was completely incompetent. Either incompetent or a crook, but either way, not a reasonable candidate for governor. But I digress.)
New Jersey has just discovered racial disparities in the way the death penalty is administered in their state. No, really, they did. The one state under federal supervision for racial profiling is surprised to discover racially biased death sentences. (Yes, I do realize that the police and the courts are different parts of the system. Nonetheless, it still doesn't seem like it should be a terribly shocking discovery under the circumstances.) Race purportedly makes no difference in how you're charged -- whether you're white or black, if you kill a white person in New Jersey or if you kill in the predominantly white suburbs, you're equally likely to be charged with a capital crime -- although not if you kill in the urban (read "black") areas of the state. The difference comes purely in the penalty phase.
Ohio -- which apparently now has so many people on death row that they're double-bunking -- is thrashing about whether or not to allow the electric chair for execution. "It can be very traumatic on personnel to witness an electrocution," said Reginald A. Wilkinson, the state's director of rehabilitation and correction who is among those who want to stop using the chair. Well, DUH. Watching the state kill someone probably should be traumatic, don't you think? Isn't the pain of the proces meant as part of "the deterrent facility" of the death penalty? (Not that it's ever been shown to deter, but that's entirely beside the point.) As it now stands, Ohio is quite likely to grant a reprieve to the inmate not to save his life, but to allow the legislature to remove electrocution as a method of execution. That way, his death will be pretty pretty pretty for all the witnesses, serene and quiet and peaceful. Isn't that nice of them?
Texans are expressing concern about their state's administration of the death penalty. Not about whether to execute, mind, but about when it's appropriate. A start, I suppose.
OK, that's it. I'll try to stay away from the topic the rest of this week, though I make no promises.
@ 01:49 PM CST [Link]
Then what would the administration achieve by staying away? Perhaps the United States would prefer to forgo an opportunity to clarify its performance on racism, addressed rather negatively last week by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in a review of the U.S. government's six-year-overdue report to the UN on racism in this country.
Well, DUH. (Apparently, this is the DUH update today.)
My, this World Conference on Racism does seem to have people all fired up, doesn't it?
Mind, I do believe there is some justification for the (unstated) position that the US would have little "opportunity to clarify its performance on racism". Given the ideological slant of a conference that put Zionism as racism and Reparations on its preliminary agenda in a relatively inflammatory way, there is reason to believe that it would be an opportunity for continuous public verbal assault instead.
Of course, staying away, and citing those grounds as reason, pretty much guarantees the continuous public verbal assault in any event. I suppose the issue is, as long as you have to take the medicine, where would you rather take it? And not attending is a magnificent dodge in and of itself; it deflects the attack from the policies, where it belongs, onto the attendance, which is really a non-issue in any meaningful way.
@ 12:32 PM CST [Link]
The web can be such a weirdly wonderful place sometimes. For example, I wanted to find out if the Black Leadership Forum had a web site. So I typed those words into the location bar in Mozilla. (Lazy man's search; don't ever do that. Use a search engine. OK, I've done my librarianly duty. To continue ...) Now, the Black Leadership Forum is NOT, repeat, NOT a gay organization. But for some reason, all but one of the first 10 had to do with gay minority youth. And I was looking at this page on African American: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender resources and thinking that I wish something like this had been around when I was young enough to need it. (Not that it would have done me a lot of good, deepinahearta New Mexico, but still, the concept that there was someone else out there my age that I could talk to would have been good to know.)
@ 11:37 AM CST [Link]
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!