The story is familiar by now, but no less infuriating. Newark Archbishop John J. Myers hears a credible complaint of sexual abuse against a priest. He hides that fact. He protects the priest. He doesn’t tell police.
And instead of stopping the abuse, he allows the abuser to search for a fresh victim among the children of the faithful, the little souls he should be protecting.
“I don’t want his resignation,” said the mother of one victim. “I want Bishop Myers to go to jail.”
Her name is Joanne Ward, she lives outside Toledo, Ohio, and she knows that’s not going to happen, despite the convincing evidence in freshly released court documents that Myers flat-out lied this time to protect the accused abuser.
But Ward wants to the world to know about Myers, at least. So she came to Newark yesterday with her husband and stood outside his office holding a poster-sized picture of her boy when he was 8 years old, the year she says he became a sexual play thing to a priest in the Peoria, Ill., diocese where Myers was in charge.
The accused priest, now deceased, used to vacation with Myers, and shower him with gifts of silver, gold coins and even cash. Myers arranged for his promotion to monsignor well after the first abuse complaints began to roll in.
Ward’s son, Andrew, is 25 now, with many of the familiar problems of victims. He has an explosive anger. He wrestles with the twin demons of alcohol and drug abuse. He is improving, his dad says, but every day remains a struggle.
At age 8, Andrew looked like a sweet and trusting little boy, with a blond buzz cut and blue eyes, a big smile and a set of ears that he hadn’t quite grown into yet. His mom was a devout Catholic back then, and she put him within reach of the abuser day after day. She encouraged him to love the church and to trust its leaders.
Today, she feels a searing guilt over that fact, a soul-crushing regret that is the special province of parents who feel they failed to protect their children. And she has that misery in common with her husband, David, an insurance adjuster.
“The poor kid,” he says of his son. “You wonder why you didn’t see the signs you should have.”
Andrew took a knife to school once, just as the abuse began. His anger was explosive, with his mother as the main target but not the only one. The parents worry about their daughter, too, and regret letting her grow up amid all this emotional heat. This abuse has been like a living beast, still biting into the family’s flesh nearly two decades later.
“It makes me sick now when I pass my church,” the mom says.
Myers responded to all this with his customary arrogance, refusing to speak and issuing a bland statement denying any guilt. By now, though, only the most die-hard defenders of the institution can believe him.
To the Ward family, exposing Myers is a mission. They regard the abusive priest as a sick and weak man, a “kid in a candy store” as the mom put it. But Myers is a monster to them, a calculating person who weighed the damage to vulnerable children against the damage to the church, and sided with the church.
They agreed to settle their lawsuit for $1.35 million, but on the firm condition that the Peoria diocese released relevant documents, including a lengthy 2010 deposition of Myers. The files show that the diocese received complaints about the priest who abused Andrew years before the abuse started. When one woman complained that this same priest had abused her as a child, Myers wrote a letter telling her that no one else had ever accused him, a claim that is patently false.
This all fits a pattern. Myers has allowed tainted priests like the Rev. Michael Fugee to remain in contact with children over and over, and he has sometimes kept these dark secrets even from other church officials.
No, he won’t go to jail, because the law is full of protections for people like him who are one-step removed from criminal acts. He will probably keep fending off calls for his resignation.
But he will be remembered mostly as a man who failed this most important test. And for the Ward family, that will offer at least some consolation.
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 392-5728.
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Settlement reached in case of alleged abuse by late priest
pantagraph.com (Bloomington)
13 August 2013
By Edith Brady-Lunny eblunny@pantagraph.com
NORMAL — A haphazard filing system and the Irish inclinations of a former bishop of the Peoria Catholic Diocese are among the reasons allegations of sexual misconduct by some priests were delayed or never turned over to police, according to 200-page deposition released Tuesday by the lawyer for a former Normal student who has been awarded $1.35 million by the diocese in an abuse case.
John Myers, currently the archbishop of Newark, N.J., answered questions in 2010 as part of a lawsuit filed by Andrew Ward, now 25, of Michigan. Ward accused the late Monsignor Thomas Maloney, formerly of Epiphany Church in Normal, of abusing him when he was in the second grade.
Ward and his parents announced the settlement Tuesday at a news conference in Newark.
“I couldn’t tell and didn’t for a long time, but when I did my parents and family believed me, but nobody in the diocese or at church did,” Ward said of his claim against the priest he described as “like a God to me when I was young.”
The diocese declined to comment on the settlement, citing “the confidentiality of those involved in a legal case.”
In his deposition, Myers said Maloney denied the allegations in media reports about the lawsuit, and in conversations the two had days before his death. Maloney also maintained his innocence throughout a Normal police investigation into Ward’s claims and after Ward filed his lawsuit. No criminal charges were filed against the priest.
In his four-hour deposition, Myers was presented with documents showing the diocese received complaints about sexual abuse and inappropriate conduct by Maloney from at least five other alleged victims besides Ward.
In a September 2000 letter to an Epiphany parent who expressed concerns that Maloney was seen late at night with a young girl in his car, Myers responded, “I do know that Father loves people, especially young people, and that he cares for them generously. We have never had any allegations of impropriety.”
But documents produced in the case show diocesan officials received several complaints about Maloney before Myers wrote the letter.
Other abuse reports
Myers said former Peoria Bishop Edward O’Rourke, who also is deceased, did not pass along any allegations of abuse by any priests when Myers took over as bishop in 1990.
“He was an Irishman who did not like to talk about such things,” Myers told Ward’s lawyer, Jeff Anderson.
Myers also denied finding any incriminating evidence involving abuse by Peoria Diocesan priests when he reviewed documents shortly after he became bishop.
At least five reports followed during Myers’ 11 years as bishop, he admitted. One priest, Frank Engels, admitted his abuse, but that information was not immediately given to authorities, Myers acknowledged.
“Eventually, it was. He’s in prison in Wisconsin now,” Myers stated. Engels is serving a 10-year term.
A second priest who admitted he abused several minors was allowed to retire without legal consequences, said Myers, adding he didn’t report that abuse “because he was out of circulation.”
Two other priests were removed from their posts after allegations surfaced.
If Myers didn’t know about reports of abuse received by the diocese it was “because the slipshod filing system that we had between two different buildings … there may have been some things that got by me,” he said in his deposition.
He said he first learned some details of alleged abuse involving Maloney during the deposition. For example, Myers said he had not previously seen an incident report written by the vicar general of an allegation received by Twin City priest, the Rev. Gerald Ward, in 1995. That complaint was made by a Springfield woman who alleged Maloney had abused her sister about 20 years earlier.
The vicar general wrote a report about the allegation and put it in Maloney’s personnel file, according to the Rev. Ward’s deposition given in the lawsuit. Ward (no relation to Andrew Ward) also testified he did not report the allegation to police.
When asked what he thought of the woman’s letter, Myers said, “I would have preferred to have had an investigation.”
The concerns about Maloney’s conduct forwarded in letters from other parents included a mother who believed the priest solicited sex from her son at the church and another woman who was upset when she saw Maloney hugging and kissing a girl during church services.
The archbishop also denied any knowledge of a 1994 claim by a former Twin City woman who said Maloney sexually abused her as a child in the 1970s.