Anxiety crackled in the air last week as New York's John Cardinal O'Connor summoned all his 1,200 priests to afternoon-long, closed-door briefings. The urgent topic: how to handle child-molestation cases. The archdiocese faces two civil suits over misdeeds of clerics, and O'Connor warns that "a grenade could explode at any time, and another and another." He had reason to urge caution. Since 1984, most dioceses have been rocked by episodes of priestly abuse. And last week a long-awaited document administered a new shock to Midwest Roman Catholics.
In Wisconsin a lengthy investigation commissioned by the Capuchins said that nine friars stand accused of sexual misconduct at a rural boys' boarding school run by the venerable order. The report, which mentioned no names, disclosed that at least 21 students of the school -- St. Lawrence Seminary in Mount Calvary, Wisconsin -- say they were accosted by clerics between 1968 and 1992. The complaints against six ranged from enticement to intercourse with the children, offenses that would have produced criminal charges if they had been reported.
The pattern of molestation was compounded by students' reports of shocking administrative negligence by friars at the school. Some of the allegations emerged in response to inquiries that the investigators mailed to alumni. But several students had leveled accusations while they were enrolled at St. Lawrence and the staff did little. Nor were the boys' parents typically notified. The sins of St. Lawrence were not random incidents, asserts Robert L. Elliott, an attorney representing several alleged victims. "It wasn't a guy or a couple of guys. It was a generation of guys. They treated this as a hunting preserve."
The secrets of St. Lawrence began to emerge last November. After J. Peter Isely, 32, wrote a piece for the Milwaukee Journal on behalf of abuse victims, other alums contacted him. "I found out I wasn't alone," explains a man who says he was fondled by his geometry tutor. Others began revealing sinister memories of homosexual rape and coercive relationships. Weeks later, the Journal broke the first story on St. Lawrence. Like victims elsewhere, the St. Lawrence graduates have organized Project Samuel to share their psychic pain and to lobby for a cleanup. In April, Isely founded a therapy center specializing in clergy victims, at Rogers Memorial Hospital in Oconomowoc.
When last week's report was issued, St. Lawrence had already closed for the school year. Father Kenneth Reinhart, who completes his term as Midwest superior of the Capuchins this week, stated, "We cannot undo the past, no matter how much we would like to. We can only help those who were injured to overcome their trauma and lead normal lives." He also pledged future reforms. Elliott, however, complained that the report gave no sense of the suffering young victims endured. Says Isely: "When the priest stole my body, he stole my childhood."