I’m not making fun but this guy was molested 4 times… he’s already got $41 million for that abuse. That’s $10.25m per abuse… for that kind of money I could probably get Tara Reid.
Who am I kidding? I could get her for half that then I’d send pictures to the priest along with a thank you letter.
Seriously: lets assume this guy wasn’t a priest and just another loser pedophile living in a trailer somewhere. Let’s assume there’s repressed memories this guy “discovered”. He’d never see the $41m and would be happy that the guy who caused him so much pain was in prison. Instead this guy empties one Brink’s truck and backs up the second to the loading dock. I doubt it’s even the plantiff bringing suit… it’s another attorney who realized he could get rich (and Tara Reid) too.
Raped on 4 separate ski trips to Vermont? Abused more than 230 times over a 3 year period? Everything that happened is disgusting and the priest / catholic church need to pay, but damn, that kid must have been a wimp!!!
I was trying to research the validity of “repressed memories” and came across this from Wikipedia… While it’s not the most reliable source, it seems like decent general information, enough to satisfy my curiosity anyway… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory
I’m still skeptical of ‘repressed memories’, but if this guy was the victim of child abuse, I hope he uses his settlement (if he ever actually gets any of it) to educate parents and children on how to protect themselves from predators. Mostly, I hope the message is finally getting across to people that just because someone is associated with church doesn’t mean they’re holy or harmless.
I wonder how many people join or have joined the priesthood for the express purpose of having unsupervised access to children? I hope they’re caught and beaten mercilessly in prison for the rest of their lives…
Shame on you two. How can you write those comments? Don’t you remember when you were a young teen? He was a child so of course an adult priest would influence him and only the Lord knows what he said to the boy to keep his mouth shut. Adults live with abusers for years and say nothing. Some die because they kept their mouths shut. What do you expect of a child?
For openers, I don’t condone or excuse legitimate cases of abuse, particularly from priests. However, I find it ironic that after 25 years or more people come crawling out of the woodwork only AFTER the first case got publicity and money started being awarded. Whitewell was “normal” enough to make it through the Naval Academy, medical school, and become a practicing physician.
Awarding ridiculous amounts of money to ALLEGED victims is absurd. No amount of money will erase what has been done. Unconscionable verdicts aren’t sending any message to the church, only it’s insurance carriers. The church got the message after the first incident was reported.
The courts should direct churches to set-up educational programs to prevent future incidents. This is becoming the abestos of the 21st century. I also find it equally ironic that no other religions have had similar situations. Maybe they don’t carry as much insurance.
No one has said whether the accused priest is now alive or if he has gone on to his eternal reward. In a series of acts that involve only two individuals with presumably no witnesses to the actual act, how can the Court determine the veracity of the claims? “Recovered memories” that crop up only while a person is arguing with his Wife? Is that a reliable source? The fact that others have come forward with the same allegations about the same individual? Does that infer that these “recovered memories” somehow are credible? Surely it could not be the large quantities of cash that are being spent in these quests for “justice” that motivate these people. I would never rise to defend a pedophile because the damages they cause are lifelong for their victims who carry guilt, fright, mental anguish and other injuries for the rest of their lives, but let’s get serious about the evidentiary trail that must be established to clearly prove up a claim. This guy was 14 years old when he was being abused; hardly the age when one is so innocent that the mere connivance by a priest would induce one to fail to report this sort of abuse. Not only that, but it appears that not once did he refuse to attend the annual ski trip even though the pattern and practice of abuse on these trips had been established in years past. I’m going to be roundly criticized, but I think that at that age, and with so many incidents, this character was a participant, not a victim.
They don’t cary as much liability insurance but even more signifigant is that most of them operate as individual entities. The Catholic Church represents one of the largest global entities and has been in “business” for over a 1000 years.
It would be like being raped by Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet at a party that got a little out of hand. You’d need a fleet of Brink’s trucks to make that deposit.
Come to think of it… any attorneys out there want to help me out, I think I’m having some repressed memories about a party I went to that got a little out of hand.
All I know is if someone sodomized me when I was 14 I wouldn’t have forgotten about it. How can you repress that? I might of repressed the moment I grabbed daddy’s rifle and went priest hunting…
Its because people like you that instead of seeing him as the victim you make fun of whatever happened to him.If this was your son and that had happened to him you would you still be saying the same?.I’m just glad that finaly he came open and find the courage to tell.
I think I was at that party Anon, we should get a class action thing going on.
I do not under any circumstances endorse, condone or defend any form of child abuse; but we need to get realistic here. It has been proven that so-called “repressed memories” are highly influenced by the person “extracting” the memory, by media, society and any number of factors. I can’t remember accurately what I had for lunch last Thursday, how are we supposed to believe that I forgot such a traumatic event for decades, then remembered it seemingly conveniently when the accused is dead and the money is flowing? There are court cases out there that have overturned murder convictions based on the falsity of “repressed memories”.
I also realize that no amount of money can actually make up for the pain of true abuse – but let’s get real here. People do not need to be rocketed up to the top 5% because of these awards.
There’s more on brainwashing in church, the truth of the deep Catholic pocket driving these awards, doctrine that encourages pedophiles to join the clergy and all sorts of other issues but I think I’ll stop here before I get lynched.
Did any of you actually read the article?? He was awarded a “default judgment” by the court after Smith failed to respond to the lawsuit. He got a judgment against a former priest with no assets!!
The victim asked a federal appeals court to overturn a judge’s earlier ruling dismissing Archmere, the diocese and Saltarelli as defendants. That means his judgment had not validity against anyone with any assets.
The victim has only spent his own money and received nothing in return.
The suit against the diocese in state court will be his only opportunity to obtain any money damage.
The perception of many people does not track with reality. Forget about the money and lawsuits. The reality is that some children were victimized. That the abusers were in a position of trust and authority. That those in authority over them often did not handle it correctly when they found out about it. That is a terrible sin and scandal.
The reality also is that the vast majority of priests are good men who have given their lives to the service of God and others. That statistically the number of sexual predators is no higher in the Catholic clergy than it is among protestant clergy, youth sports coaches, schoolteachers, or other groups. It is terrible whenever and wherever it happens. It must be prevented. But forget about any links to priestly celibacy or other “Catholic” variables. It has been researched and disproven.
The Catholic Church has instituted, among other things, a program to train everybody, lay or ordained, who have any contact with youth to know, recognize and report suspicious activity that is consistent with predatory behavior. Other groups such as the Boy Scouts of America have programs in place to protect youth as well. The problem is pervasive in every corner of our society and education of volunteers, parents and children is vital.
One last thing, the Catholic Church gets more press because of another reality. The press loves to attack Catholics. Catholic bashing is accepted and/or encouraged by the media elite. If a schoolteacher commits the same crime he will get a fraction of the coverage. Yet he is also in a position of trust and authority over children. I don’t think there should be less coverage of the Catholic scandal. I think there should be more coverage of this scandal wherever it becomes clear that a child was victimized. Maybe then, we will start to look at real causes of the problem and make progress towards real solutions.
repressed memories is whack and has no valid or scientific use. It’s all junk science and laughed upon in the psych community. This guy seems to be a bit of money grubbing, gold digger. Dude, you were molested as a kid 30 some years ago, GET OVER IT, especially since you have $41M to get over it. You look and sound greedy.
And Lorena it is people like you that contribute to the enabling, me first, entitlement, jackpot justice mentality that people have in america. You are as pathetic as the molesting priest. BTW – I consider this guy a survivor and not a victim, it makes a big difference but it appears that you love and wallow in the victimhood mentality as well. Sad for you.
Steve…you need to get at least a 2nd grade education and buy some class from someone because you don’t seem to have any hope of getting any on your own.
I was raped by 2 men at the age of 12. My memory is though I am looking down watching what they are doing but I don’t feel anything. My mother took me to the doctor to have my hymen re-attached surgically so I could feel like a virgin. There was no police involvement but my mother told the 2 older teenagers that if they ever saw me they better leave the building immediately. They are now both deceased, not by any action or involvement of myself but by accidents. I’m now 50. I didn’t tell anyone about the rapes (other than my mother and doctor) until I was 40 years old. It wasn’t repressed…it wasn’t that I didn’t know it happened…it was simply that it happened and there was nothing I could do about it. As best it could be fixed (to satisfy me), it was. I have trouble believing someone could go through that experience and not remember it. I could relive each and every moment of fear that I felt if I chose to do so. I don’t…even for this commentary. Nothing will change when it’s over so it’s best to leave it in that past and move forward.
Actually Creed, protestant denominations have this problem also, as reported recently on (I believe) http://www.christianpost.com. Insurers have responded with draconian requirements that in some cases are obvious attempts to write-in claim deniability.
For instance, we dropped our carrier because of requirements like forbidding an adult and a child to be in the same room together ever. We needed to have all kinds of training for all staff from Sunday school to the pastor about how to prevent child molestation. It might sound like I am complaining about having to do anything to mitigate risk, but the more we poured over these requirements the more we felt like the door was being opened for the carrier to say, “A ha! You didn’t have a report from the abuse prevention committee in your vestry records last month, so we are denying this claim.”
As for the RCC, dioceses are being bakrupted, or at least threatened with insolvency, because they are in some instance not fully covered by their insurers, so they are selling buildings etc to pay claims.
Back in the 1980’s Fr. Enrique Rueda wrote a book called The Homosexual Network that exposed the conspiracy to promote sodomists into the ranks of the RC priesthood. He was either ignored or derided. Had the bishops paid as much attention to his book as they did to covering up the problem and shifting offenders from parish to parish, all of this unpleasantness might have been avoided.
Actually (Seriously?)I have my several degrees including my PhD so piss off. I just am so over victimhood and victimhood mentality and this me first, entitlement and enabling society we have and all the children that are now a product of that society. Maybe you should take off your blinders, life, learn and travel the world. You sound like a lonely loser.
I challenge you to provide some legitimate peer reviewed study which backs up your claim that there is a concerted effort to promote pedophilia within the priesthood.
Fr. Rueda’s book has 522 footnoted pages of text, with another 160 pages of appendices and index. He details what began as a network (or what one might call a conspiracy, since it was illicit) of “support groups,” counseling referrals, newsletters, and organizations of homosexuals and pro-homosexuals in US churches.
This network was particularly effective within the Catholic Church. In the late 70’s a key staffer at the Office of Public Affairs and Information of the U. S. Catholic Conference/National Conference of Catholic Bishops was a leader of the Washington, D.C., homosexual movement as well as president of Dignity, the pressure group which seeks to force the Catholic Church to accept sodomists without repentance.
You didn’t offer any “peer-reviewed” proof of your bald assertion regarding my original post, neither could you. So get the book and read it or bugger off.
I’m not making fun but this guy was molested 4 times… he’s already got $41 million for that abuse. That’s $10.25m per abuse… for that kind of money I could probably get Tara Reid.
Who am I kidding? I could get her for half that then I’d send pictures to the priest along with a thank you letter.
Seriously: lets assume this guy wasn’t a priest and just another loser pedophile living in a trailer somewhere. Let’s assume there’s repressed memories this guy “discovered”. He’d never see the $41m and would be happy that the guy who caused him so much pain was in prison. Instead this guy empties one Brink’s truck and backs up the second to the loading dock. I doubt it’s even the plantiff bringing suit… it’s another attorney who realized he could get rich (and Tara Reid) too.
Raped on 4 separate ski trips to Vermont? Abused more than 230 times over a 3 year period? Everything that happened is disgusting and the priest / catholic church need to pay, but damn, that kid must have been a wimp!!!
not one time did he tell his parents? he must like to ski
I was trying to research the validity of “repressed memories” and came across this from Wikipedia… While it’s not the most reliable source, it seems like decent general information, enough to satisfy my curiosity anyway… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory
I’m still skeptical of ‘repressed memories’, but if this guy was the victim of child abuse, I hope he uses his settlement (if he ever actually gets any of it) to educate parents and children on how to protect themselves from predators. Mostly, I hope the message is finally getting across to people that just because someone is associated with church doesn’t mean they’re holy or harmless.
I wonder how many people join or have joined the priesthood for the express purpose of having unsupervised access to children? I hope they’re caught and beaten mercilessly in prison for the rest of their lives…
Shame on you two. How can you write those comments? Don’t you remember when you were a young teen? He was a child so of course an adult priest would influence him and only the Lord knows what he said to the boy to keep his mouth shut. Adults live with abusers for years and say nothing. Some die because they kept their mouths shut. What do you expect of a child?
What happened to him is tragic, but $41 Million in the 1st go around isn’t enough? Damn!
For openers, I don’t condone or excuse legitimate cases of abuse, particularly from priests. However, I find it ironic that after 25 years or more people come crawling out of the woodwork only AFTER the first case got publicity and money started being awarded. Whitewell was “normal” enough to make it through the Naval Academy, medical school, and become a practicing physician.
Awarding ridiculous amounts of money to ALLEGED victims is absurd. No amount of money will erase what has been done. Unconscionable verdicts aren’t sending any message to the church, only it’s insurance carriers. The church got the message after the first incident was reported.
The courts should direct churches to set-up educational programs to prevent future incidents. This is becoming the abestos of the 21st century. I also find it equally ironic that no other religions have had similar situations. Maybe they don’t carry as much insurance.
No one has said whether the accused priest is now alive or if he has gone on to his eternal reward. In a series of acts that involve only two individuals with presumably no witnesses to the actual act, how can the Court determine the veracity of the claims? “Recovered memories” that crop up only while a person is arguing with his Wife? Is that a reliable source? The fact that others have come forward with the same allegations about the same individual? Does that infer that these “recovered memories” somehow are credible? Surely it could not be the large quantities of cash that are being spent in these quests for “justice” that motivate these people. I would never rise to defend a pedophile because the damages they cause are lifelong for their victims who carry guilt, fright, mental anguish and other injuries for the rest of their lives, but let’s get serious about the evidentiary trail that must be established to clearly prove up a claim. This guy was 14 years old when he was being abused; hardly the age when one is so innocent that the mere connivance by a priest would induce one to fail to report this sort of abuse. Not only that, but it appears that not once did he refuse to attend the annual ski trip even though the pattern and practice of abuse on these trips had been established in years past. I’m going to be roundly criticized, but I think that at that age, and with so many incidents, this character was a participant, not a victim.
They don’t cary as much liability insurance but even more signifigant is that most of them operate as individual entities. The Catholic Church represents one of the largest global entities and has been in “business” for over a 1000 years.
It would be like being raped by Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet at a party that got a little out of hand. You’d need a fleet of Brink’s trucks to make that deposit.
Come to think of it… any attorneys out there want to help me out, I think I’m having some repressed memories about a party I went to that got a little out of hand.
All I know is if someone sodomized me when I was 14 I wouldn’t have forgotten about it. How can you repress that? I might of repressed the moment I grabbed daddy’s rifle and went priest hunting…
Its because people like you that instead of seeing him as the victim you make fun of whatever happened to him.If this was your son and that had happened to him you would you still be saying the same?.I’m just glad that finaly he came open and find the courage to tell.
I think I was at that party Anon, we should get a class action thing going on.
I do not under any circumstances endorse, condone or defend any form of child abuse; but we need to get realistic here. It has been proven that so-called “repressed memories” are highly influenced by the person “extracting” the memory, by media, society and any number of factors. I can’t remember accurately what I had for lunch last Thursday, how are we supposed to believe that I forgot such a traumatic event for decades, then remembered it seemingly conveniently when the accused is dead and the money is flowing? There are court cases out there that have overturned murder convictions based on the falsity of “repressed memories”.
I also realize that no amount of money can actually make up for the pain of true abuse – but let’s get real here. People do not need to be rocketed up to the top 5% because of these awards.
There’s more on brainwashing in church, the truth of the deep Catholic pocket driving these awards, doctrine that encourages pedophiles to join the clergy and all sorts of other issues but I think I’ll stop here before I get lynched.
Did any of you actually read the article?? He was awarded a “default judgment” by the court after Smith failed to respond to the lawsuit. He got a judgment against a former priest with no assets!!
The victim asked a federal appeals court to overturn a judge’s earlier ruling dismissing Archmere, the diocese and Saltarelli as defendants. That means his judgment had not validity against anyone with any assets.
The victim has only spent his own money and received nothing in return.
The suit against the diocese in state court will be his only opportunity to obtain any money damage.
The perception of many people does not track with reality. Forget about the money and lawsuits. The reality is that some children were victimized. That the abusers were in a position of trust and authority. That those in authority over them often did not handle it correctly when they found out about it. That is a terrible sin and scandal.
The reality also is that the vast majority of priests are good men who have given their lives to the service of God and others. That statistically the number of sexual predators is no higher in the Catholic clergy than it is among protestant clergy, youth sports coaches, schoolteachers, or other groups. It is terrible whenever and wherever it happens. It must be prevented. But forget about any links to priestly celibacy or other “Catholic” variables. It has been researched and disproven.
The Catholic Church has instituted, among other things, a program to train everybody, lay or ordained, who have any contact with youth to know, recognize and report suspicious activity that is consistent with predatory behavior. Other groups such as the Boy Scouts of America have programs in place to protect youth as well. The problem is pervasive in every corner of our society and education of volunteers, parents and children is vital.
One last thing, the Catholic Church gets more press because of another reality. The press loves to attack Catholics. Catholic bashing is accepted and/or encouraged by the media elite. If a schoolteacher commits the same crime he will get a fraction of the coverage. Yet he is also in a position of trust and authority over children. I don’t think there should be less coverage of the Catholic scandal. I think there should be more coverage of this scandal wherever it becomes clear that a child was victimized. Maybe then, we will start to look at real causes of the problem and make progress towards real solutions.
Just curious, Matt…what religion are you?
repressed memories is whack and has no valid or scientific use. It’s all junk science and laughed upon in the psych community. This guy seems to be a bit of money grubbing, gold digger. Dude, you were molested as a kid 30 some years ago, GET OVER IT, especially since you have $41M to get over it. You look and sound greedy.
And Lorena it is people like you that contribute to the enabling, me first, entitlement, jackpot justice mentality that people have in america. You are as pathetic as the molesting priest. BTW – I consider this guy a survivor and not a victim, it makes a big difference but it appears that you love and wallow in the victimhood mentality as well. Sad for you.
Steve…you need to get at least a 2nd grade education and buy some class from someone because you don’t seem to have any hope of getting any on your own.
I was raped by 2 men at the age of 12. My memory is though I am looking down watching what they are doing but I don’t feel anything. My mother took me to the doctor to have my hymen re-attached surgically so I could feel like a virgin. There was no police involvement but my mother told the 2 older teenagers that if they ever saw me they better leave the building immediately. They are now both deceased, not by any action or involvement of myself but by accidents. I’m now 50. I didn’t tell anyone about the rapes (other than my mother and doctor) until I was 40 years old. It wasn’t repressed…it wasn’t that I didn’t know it happened…it was simply that it happened and there was nothing I could do about it. As best it could be fixed (to satisfy me), it was. I have trouble believing someone could go through that experience and not remember it. I could relive each and every moment of fear that I felt if I chose to do so. I don’t…even for this commentary. Nothing will change when it’s over so it’s best to leave it in that past and move forward.
Actually Creed, protestant denominations have this problem also, as reported recently on (I believe) http://www.christianpost.com. Insurers have responded with draconian requirements that in some cases are obvious attempts to write-in claim deniability.
For instance, we dropped our carrier because of requirements like forbidding an adult and a child to be in the same room together ever. We needed to have all kinds of training for all staff from Sunday school to the pastor about how to prevent child molestation. It might sound like I am complaining about having to do anything to mitigate risk, but the more we poured over these requirements the more we felt like the door was being opened for the carrier to say, “A ha! You didn’t have a report from the abuse prevention committee in your vestry records last month, so we are denying this claim.”
As for the RCC, dioceses are being bakrupted, or at least threatened with insolvency, because they are in some instance not fully covered by their insurers, so they are selling buildings etc to pay claims.
Back in the 1980’s Fr. Enrique Rueda wrote a book called The Homosexual Network that exposed the conspiracy to promote sodomists into the ranks of the RC priesthood. He was either ignored or derided. Had the bishops paid as much attention to his book as they did to covering up the problem and shifting offenders from parish to parish, all of this unpleasantness might have been avoided.
Willy, you can’t be serious with that last paragraph….
psycho!
Actually (Seriously?)I have my several degrees including my PhD so piss off. I just am so over victimhood and victimhood mentality and this me first, entitlement and enabling society we have and all the children that are now a product of that society. Maybe you should take off your blinders, life, learn and travel the world. You sound like a lonely loser.
Yes twinkie – Willy is as psychotic as Seriously. Sad, pathetic people but the world is full of them. Best to cast these type of people aside.
Uh, “Twinkie,” can you disprove or otherwise call into question anything in that paragraph?
I challenge you to provide some legitimate peer reviewed study which backs up your claim that there is a concerted effort to promote pedophilia within the priesthood.
A press release, memos, etc would be helpful.
Fr. Rueda’s book has 522 footnoted pages of text, with another 160 pages of appendices and index. He details what began as a network (or what one might call a conspiracy, since it was illicit) of “support groups,” counseling referrals, newsletters, and organizations of homosexuals and pro-homosexuals in US churches.
This network was particularly effective within the Catholic Church. In the late 70’s a key staffer at the Office of Public Affairs and Information of the U. S. Catholic Conference/National Conference of Catholic Bishops was a leader of the Washington, D.C., homosexual movement as well as president of Dignity, the pressure group which seeks to force the Catholic Church to accept sodomists without repentance.
You didn’t offer any “peer-reviewed” proof of your bald assertion regarding my original post, neither could you. So get the book and read it or bugger off.