Appointee plans big changes for King Center
First step: Remove King siblings from control
Atlanta, GA -- A court-appointed outsider plans to make Atlanta’s King Center live up to its full potential by removing the children of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and their allies from control.
Custodian Terry M. Giles believes the underused center on Auburn Avenue honoring the martyred civil rights leader should be on par with a presidential library and should continue its original mission of using nonviolence to bring social change around the world.
To accomplish that, Giles told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he plans to restructure the bylaws and governance of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change — an institution mired in conflict for more than 15 years — to ensure a national board controls it rather than the King family.
Giles said he hopes to persuade King’s heirs — Martin, Dexter and Bernice King — and their relatives to support creating a diversified board that can raise tens of millions of dollars and hire top-flight management, but he said he has court authority to act unilaterally.
“We want the best people we can get,” he said. “I know the family has been concerned that this would allow them to lose control. Maybe there are some family members who would be perfect for those parts, but maybe not.”
Andrew Young, who received a lifetime appointment to the King Center board, told the AJC that the revamping was “probably overdue. The center originally started with a 35-member board and had prominent people from around the nation and Atlanta , but many resigned and others were not reappointed after Dexter King became chairman in 1994.”
Dexter King wanted to build an interactive museum at the center — which didn’t come to pass — and under his stewardship the nonviolence and social activism training programs that had been so dominant faded, Young said.
“He was basically a businessman who didn’t know Martin Luther King and didn’t know a lot about the movement and he was exercising a lot of authority,” Young said. “If we can get a new board and a new structure, then I think it would help solve some of the institutional problems of management and give us a new opportunity to start again.”
Giles, a prominent Houston lawyer and businessman, became the new power broker at the King Center because of a family feud. In 2008, Martin and Bernice King filed a lawsuit accusing Dexter of mismanaging and looting King Inc. — the family corporation that controls Martin Luther King’s copyrighted material, image and intellectual property, and which has generated millions of dollars.
Dexter King — head of King Inc. and chairman of the King Center — fired back with a lawsuit that accused his brother of misusing the assets of the King Center , a nonprofit corporation that Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King’s widow, founded in 1974.
Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville appointed Giles as part of the settlement of the lawsuit.
Martin and Bernice King declined to discuss the custodian or whether they support his plans. Both said they wanted to wait for Giles to do his work. “The [court] order speaks for itself,” Bernice King told the AJC on Friday. “It is a consent order with all our signatures. That speaks volumes.”
Critics have long charged that the center largely served to employ King family members. Martin King was once the president with a $150,000 salary, until removed by his family at a board meeting in 2004. Dexter King is currently the board chairman and chief operating officer, with a salary and deferred income of $197,000. His cousin Isaac Farris Jr. is the chief executive officer, with a salary and deferred income totaling nearly $96,000, according to tax forms the nonprofit filed in 2009 for the 2007-08 fiscal year.
Attempts to reach Dexter King were unsuccessful. Farris declined to comment, saying the Kings had requested he not comment about the center.
In the tax document, the most recent filed, Dexter King, 49, maintains he spends 40 hours a week on center business from his home in Malibu, Calif.
The tax document also shows the center paid $696,163 to Dexter King’s company, Intellectual Properties Management, as a management consultant for 2007-08 fiscal year. The fee in the past has often been more than $1 million. The King Center has maintained the money is to repay IPM for salaries it paid center employees, currently numbering about 20.
Giles told the AJC the IPM payments appeared to be legitimate but resulted in a lack of transparency that created family friction and fueled public suspicions.
“They actually kept it pretty straight — it was the first thing I looked at to make sure it was being done right,” Giles said. “IPM was not taking a fee. IPM was being reimbursed for the actual number that IPM was spending on salaries. It was only being reimbursed for actual expenses from everything I have seen. Now maybe something will pop up and surprise me.”
Bernice and Martin King alleged in court documents that their brother also might be under investigation by the inspector general for the federal Department of Education for misusing a $600,000 federal grant. The education department would not confirm whether there was an investigation.
Dexter King tried to support the center by marketing the life story and the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. commercially — an approach that angered many members of the old civil rights guard — but the approach was largely unsuccessful, Young said.
Giles said the result was that King Inc. ended up underwriting financial shortfalls at the King Center , which receives about $2 million a year in federal grants, fund-raising and sales.
“King Inc. has been keeping the center afloat and that is something we have to turn around,” he said. “If you actually went through the numbers, King Inc. would probably be owed a couple of million dollars.”
Giles said the center first needs to hire a small group of turn-around officers to get the center properly financed and functioning.
He said the nonprofit’s 16-member board has offered little oversight. The bylaws were changed so that only the chairman could call a board meeting.
“It has literally been years since they had a real board meeting and the center has been run with absentee management — that is never a good idea,” Giles said. “The only public relations they have had so far has been bad and we need to turn that around.”
The King Center has filed a motion in Fulton County Superior Court to intervene in the lawsuit because of concerns of how Giles’ appointment might impact the center. Giles said he planned to work closely with the family. “I know right now there is a lot of angst,” he said.
Disciples of Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolence, including Dorothy Cotton and Bernard Lafayette Jr., both of whom once headed the King Center’s programs, said the center had used that philosophy for everything from helping end conflict in families and among street gangs to teaching neighborhood activists how to get their share of public dollars.
Coretta King also envisioned the center as housing her husband’s papers — which wound up at Morehouse College after the city of Atlanta helped organize their purchase from the family for $30 million — and continuing his teachings, said Lynn Cothren, a longtime aide to King’s widow. But she wanted to support her son’s ideas for the center, Cothren said.
“It doesn’t have the mission Mrs. King envisioned — it changed under Dexter,” said Cothren, now director of administration for the Girl Scouts of the USA in New York . “I think Mrs. King was brokenhearted that the King Center , which she considered her fifth child, was not what she envisioned it to be. That was her legacy and she watched it fade away during her lifetime.”
Giles said the center should serve as an archive for material related to King and the civil rights movement and as a location for national and international conferences. More importantly, it should renew its commitment to teaching nonviolent tactics and organizing.
“I want to get as close to what Mrs. King wanted,” Giles said. “This is not an attack on the family. It is simply let us join together and make the center the best thing it can be. That is what the family wants, that is what the community wants and that is what Dr. and Mrs. King deserve.”
Monday, March 22, 2010
Democratic House Approves Health Care Reform Bill Amid Republican Opposition, Protests
WASHINGTON-Delivering a hard-fought victory in President Barack Obama's year-long pursuit of a national healthcare overhaul, a divided House tonight narrowly approved legislation which both supporters and opponents call historic in its sweep.
The House's 219-212 vote tonight on a Senate-passed bill will deliver to the president's desk an initiative for which he has fought on Capitol Hill and campaigned across the country: A healthcare bill that he finally can sign.
Thirty-four members of the president's party joined all the House's Republicans in voting against the healthcare bill.
The House then approved, by a vote of 220-211, a package designed to reconcile differences between the Senate-and-House-approved bill and another which the House already had approved in November.
Together, the two measures would present the president with a long-sought triumph for the signature domestic agenda of his presidency, a bid to offer health insurance to an estimated 32 million Americans who are uninsured and improve the coverage of those with insurance.
The second measure still must go to the Senate, where leaders hope to approve it by a simple majority vote under a process of "budget reconciliation.'' Any changes made in the Senate, however, would return that to the House before the President signs it.
"I know this bill is complicated, but it's also very simple,'' said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) during the final debate. "Illness and infirmity are universal, but we are stronger against them together than we are alone. In that shared strength is our nation's strength.''
"Tonight, we will make history for our country and progress for the American people,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in the leadership's closing argument. Crediting Obama for his "unwavering commitment to healthcare for all Americans,'' the speaker said "this legislation if I had one word to describe it tonight, it would be opportunity.''
"Today, we should be standing together, reflecting on a year of bipartisanship,'' House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said near the close of debate. "We should be looking with pride on this legislation, and our work. But it is not so. Today we are looking at a healthcare bill that nobody in this body believes is satisfactory.''
As the outcome of the vote appeared certain, Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) told the House: "Perhaps it's time for Washington to stop talking and start listening. I'm listening to the thousands of citizens who traveled to our nation's capital this weekend to tell us in no uncertain terms, they want us to kill this bill.''
At an estimated cost of $940 billion over 10 years, supported in part by additional taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the legislation is projected to offer coverage to some 32 million uninsured people.
Democratic leaders hail the healthcare measure as "historic,'' legislation on a par with the enactment of Social Security after the Great Depression and Medicare in the 1960s. Underscoring that sense of history, House Rules Chair Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) brought to the floor and read from a copy of the typed 1939 letter that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent to Congress asking it to make a national healthcare program part of the Social Security Act.
"This is a historic day, and we are happy warriors,'' said Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union. said. "We will be a part of history, joining Franklin Delano Roosevelt's passage of Social Security, Lyndon Johnson's passage of Medicare and now Barack Obama's passage of healthcare.''
Republicans deride it as "a government takeover of healthcare.''
"Some say we're making history. I say we're breaking history,'' said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), near the end of the debate.
"Only in Washington, D.C., could you say you're going spend $1 trillion and save the taxpayers money,'' Pence said. "This Congress is poised to ignore the will of the majority of the American people…. This is the people's House, and the people don't want a government takeover of healthcare.''
The bills augurs the creation of "a European nanny-state,'' said Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) during an afternoon-long series of debates on the House floor. "The American people don't desire more oppressive, intrusive government in control of their health.''
"This trillion-dollar tragedy is just bad medicine,'' said Rep. Lee Terry, (R-Neb.), during final evening debate.
Although House leaders were confident of winning a close vote heading into the floor vote today, a critical logjam was broken when the White House announced that Obama will issue an executive order after expected passage of the healthcare legislation in the House asserting that it will not interfere with an existing ban on federal funding for abortions.
The move was designed to allow bill-critics concerned about abortion to vote for the healthcare bills, and several said they would.
"While the legislation as written maintains current law,'' White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in an issued statement, "the executive order provides additional safeguards to ensure that the status quo is upheld and enforced, and that the health care legislation's restrictions against the public funding of abortions cannot be circumvented.
"The President has said from the start that this health insurance reform should not be the forum to upset longstanding precedent'' on abortion, Pfeiffer said. "The health care legislation and this executive order are consistent with this principle.''
The move was a signal to conservative Democrats in the House, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, that they could lend their votes to the legislation. With House leaders fighting to corral the votes needed, support from Stupak and other holdouts would cement that final vote.
In a news conference following the White House announcement, Stupak and six of his Democratic colleagues said they would vote for the bill. Making no apologies for holding the bill up until the agreement was reached, Stupak said, ''We've all stood on principle. We've always said we were for health care reform but there was a principal that means more to us than anything the sanctity of life.''
"An executive order is not law,'' Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) argued on the House floor, asking abortion opponents not to be swayed.
The House's Democratic leaders have secured a narrow victory over monolithic Republican opposition as well as resistance from some wary Democrats in the approval of the healthcare bill which the Senate passed in December. The Senate passed it on a 60-39 vote cast strictly along party lines in a Christmas Eve session.
This bill would require most individuals to buy health insurance, offer federal subsidies to help pay premiums, impose penalties on employers that don't offer affordable polices and create a new insurance marketplace of exchanges for people with employer-supported coverage.
In addition, insurers would be prevented from denying coverage based on preexisting medical conditions or setting any lifetime cap on the benefits that they pay. Young adults also will be allowed to remain on their parents' plans longer, until they are 27 years old.
A momentous day began with protesters assembling early on the plaza of the Capitol. Opponents of the bill milled around in front of the House side calling out derisively to House Speaker Pelosi ``Naaancy, Naaancy, come outside,'' shouted one protestor. Another, with an anti-abortion slogan on her sweatshirt, knelt in prayer at the stairs leading to the Capitol dome.
In a closed-door caucus for Democrats, Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the Civil Rights movement who reportedly faced racial epithets from protesters outside the Capitol on Saturday, reminded his colleagues that they were acting on healthcare on the 45th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights marches. Lewis was beaten in an infamous confrontation with police during the first of those marches.
As the caucus meeting ended, Pelosi joined Lewis in leading a caucus march through the street to the Capitol, almost daring protesters to repeat the previous day's slurs. Surrounded by a phalanx of security officers, Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer linked arms with Lewis and led House Democrats through a gauntlet of angry protesters.
On the House floor later, Lewis emotionally implored his colleagues to "answer the call of history… Give healthcare a chance.''
A familiar counterpoint between Democrats and Republicans aligned against the bill had played out all day long.
Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) quoted his father, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a career-long champion of healthcare reform until has passing last year.
"The parallel between the struggle for Civil Rights and the fight to make healthcare affordable for all Americans is significant,'' he said. "Healthcare is not only a Civil Right. It's a moral issue".
Democrats are hailing the measure for its deficit relief with an estimated $138 billion reduction in the annual federal budget deficit over 10 years. Republicans are dismissing the projection of the Congressional Budget Office as phony math.
"The oldest trick in the book in Washington is you can manipulate a bill to manipulate the results,''' Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told the House.
"This bill is a fiscal Frankenstein,'' Ryan said.
Even as the year-long legislative journey came to a climactic House vote, the debate was shrouded in uncertainty about how and whether the legislation would work and about how the politics will play out in the fall. Republican leaders maintain that Democrats who support the bill will face "a price to pay'' in the midterm congressional elections.
That is fitting for a debate that, at every stage, has been riddled with unpredictable twists and turns.
The progress of the healthcare bill has been buffeted by unexpected events, such as the death of Sen. Kennedy, the he patriarch of the drive for universal health care; the loss of the Democrats' 60-vote majority in the Senate when Kennedy was replaced by Republican, Scott Brown; an abrupt and well-publicized boost in health insurance premiums charged by Anthem Blue Cross in California; and the proclaimed death and resurrection of the" public option,'' a government-run alternative for which liberal Democrats had fought, time and again. It is absent from the final bills.
More importantly, consumers face vast uncertainty about the impact of the bill. Democrats and Obama plan to devote the next few months to making sure consumers understand its benefits immediate (insurance regulation) and in the future (insurance purchasing exchanges); concrete (closing the gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage) and abstract (sense of security).
Democrats believe that one of the most important documents in their arsenal is a list prepared by their leadership of the provisions of the bill that kick in almost immediately, including the guarantee that children will not be denied coverage for preexisting conditions and the provision allowing young adults to remain on their parents' policies.
But some Democrats are still anxious that voters will now blame the President and the Democrats for every thing that goes wrong from long lines at the pharmacy to delays in processing insurance claims whether they are attributable to the health care bill or not.
President Obama's Remarks Following Health Care Reform Bill Passage
The House's 219-212 vote tonight on a Senate-passed bill will deliver to the president's desk an initiative for which he has fought on Capitol Hill and campaigned across the country: A healthcare bill that he finally can sign.
Thirty-four members of the president's party joined all the House's Republicans in voting against the healthcare bill.
The House then approved, by a vote of 220-211, a package designed to reconcile differences between the Senate-and-House-approved bill and another which the House already had approved in November.
Together, the two measures would present the president with a long-sought triumph for the signature domestic agenda of his presidency, a bid to offer health insurance to an estimated 32 million Americans who are uninsured and improve the coverage of those with insurance.
The second measure still must go to the Senate, where leaders hope to approve it by a simple majority vote under a process of "budget reconciliation.'' Any changes made in the Senate, however, would return that to the House before the President signs it.
"I know this bill is complicated, but it's also very simple,'' said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) during the final debate. "Illness and infirmity are universal, but we are stronger against them together than we are alone. In that shared strength is our nation's strength.''
"Tonight, we will make history for our country and progress for the American people,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in the leadership's closing argument. Crediting Obama for his "unwavering commitment to healthcare for all Americans,'' the speaker said "this legislation if I had one word to describe it tonight, it would be opportunity.''
"Today, we should be standing together, reflecting on a year of bipartisanship,'' House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said near the close of debate. "We should be looking with pride on this legislation, and our work. But it is not so. Today we are looking at a healthcare bill that nobody in this body believes is satisfactory.''
As the outcome of the vote appeared certain, Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) told the House: "Perhaps it's time for Washington to stop talking and start listening. I'm listening to the thousands of citizens who traveled to our nation's capital this weekend to tell us in no uncertain terms, they want us to kill this bill.''
At an estimated cost of $940 billion over 10 years, supported in part by additional taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the legislation is projected to offer coverage to some 32 million uninsured people.
Democratic leaders hail the healthcare measure as "historic,'' legislation on a par with the enactment of Social Security after the Great Depression and Medicare in the 1960s. Underscoring that sense of history, House Rules Chair Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) brought to the floor and read from a copy of the typed 1939 letter that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent to Congress asking it to make a national healthcare program part of the Social Security Act.
"This is a historic day, and we are happy warriors,'' said Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union. said. "We will be a part of history, joining Franklin Delano Roosevelt's passage of Social Security, Lyndon Johnson's passage of Medicare and now Barack Obama's passage of healthcare.''
Republicans deride it as "a government takeover of healthcare.''
"Some say we're making history. I say we're breaking history,'' said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), near the end of the debate.
"Only in Washington, D.C., could you say you're going spend $1 trillion and save the taxpayers money,'' Pence said. "This Congress is poised to ignore the will of the majority of the American people…. This is the people's House, and the people don't want a government takeover of healthcare.''
The bills augurs the creation of "a European nanny-state,'' said Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) during an afternoon-long series of debates on the House floor. "The American people don't desire more oppressive, intrusive government in control of their health.''
"This trillion-dollar tragedy is just bad medicine,'' said Rep. Lee Terry, (R-Neb.), during final evening debate.
Although House leaders were confident of winning a close vote heading into the floor vote today, a critical logjam was broken when the White House announced that Obama will issue an executive order after expected passage of the healthcare legislation in the House asserting that it will not interfere with an existing ban on federal funding for abortions.
The move was designed to allow bill-critics concerned about abortion to vote for the healthcare bills, and several said they would.
"While the legislation as written maintains current law,'' White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in an issued statement, "the executive order provides additional safeguards to ensure that the status quo is upheld and enforced, and that the health care legislation's restrictions against the public funding of abortions cannot be circumvented.
"The President has said from the start that this health insurance reform should not be the forum to upset longstanding precedent'' on abortion, Pfeiffer said. "The health care legislation and this executive order are consistent with this principle.''
The move was a signal to conservative Democrats in the House, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, that they could lend their votes to the legislation. With House leaders fighting to corral the votes needed, support from Stupak and other holdouts would cement that final vote.
In a news conference following the White House announcement, Stupak and six of his Democratic colleagues said they would vote for the bill. Making no apologies for holding the bill up until the agreement was reached, Stupak said, ''We've all stood on principle. We've always said we were for health care reform but there was a principal that means more to us than anything the sanctity of life.''
"An executive order is not law,'' Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) argued on the House floor, asking abortion opponents not to be swayed.
The House's Democratic leaders have secured a narrow victory over monolithic Republican opposition as well as resistance from some wary Democrats in the approval of the healthcare bill which the Senate passed in December. The Senate passed it on a 60-39 vote cast strictly along party lines in a Christmas Eve session.
This bill would require most individuals to buy health insurance, offer federal subsidies to help pay premiums, impose penalties on employers that don't offer affordable polices and create a new insurance marketplace of exchanges for people with employer-supported coverage.
In addition, insurers would be prevented from denying coverage based on preexisting medical conditions or setting any lifetime cap on the benefits that they pay. Young adults also will be allowed to remain on their parents' plans longer, until they are 27 years old.
A momentous day began with protesters assembling early on the plaza of the Capitol. Opponents of the bill milled around in front of the House side calling out derisively to House Speaker Pelosi ``Naaancy, Naaancy, come outside,'' shouted one protestor. Another, with an anti-abortion slogan on her sweatshirt, knelt in prayer at the stairs leading to the Capitol dome.
In a closed-door caucus for Democrats, Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the Civil Rights movement who reportedly faced racial epithets from protesters outside the Capitol on Saturday, reminded his colleagues that they were acting on healthcare on the 45th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights marches. Lewis was beaten in an infamous confrontation with police during the first of those marches.
As the caucus meeting ended, Pelosi joined Lewis in leading a caucus march through the street to the Capitol, almost daring protesters to repeat the previous day's slurs. Surrounded by a phalanx of security officers, Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer linked arms with Lewis and led House Democrats through a gauntlet of angry protesters.
On the House floor later, Lewis emotionally implored his colleagues to "answer the call of history… Give healthcare a chance.''
A familiar counterpoint between Democrats and Republicans aligned against the bill had played out all day long.
Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) quoted his father, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a career-long champion of healthcare reform until has passing last year.
"The parallel between the struggle for Civil Rights and the fight to make healthcare affordable for all Americans is significant,'' he said. "Healthcare is not only a Civil Right. It's a moral issue".
Democrats are hailing the measure for its deficit relief with an estimated $138 billion reduction in the annual federal budget deficit over 10 years. Republicans are dismissing the projection of the Congressional Budget Office as phony math.
"The oldest trick in the book in Washington is you can manipulate a bill to manipulate the results,''' Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told the House.
"This bill is a fiscal Frankenstein,'' Ryan said.
Even as the year-long legislative journey came to a climactic House vote, the debate was shrouded in uncertainty about how and whether the legislation would work and about how the politics will play out in the fall. Republican leaders maintain that Democrats who support the bill will face "a price to pay'' in the midterm congressional elections.
That is fitting for a debate that, at every stage, has been riddled with unpredictable twists and turns.
The progress of the healthcare bill has been buffeted by unexpected events, such as the death of Sen. Kennedy, the he patriarch of the drive for universal health care; the loss of the Democrats' 60-vote majority in the Senate when Kennedy was replaced by Republican, Scott Brown; an abrupt and well-publicized boost in health insurance premiums charged by Anthem Blue Cross in California; and the proclaimed death and resurrection of the" public option,'' a government-run alternative for which liberal Democrats had fought, time and again. It is absent from the final bills.
More importantly, consumers face vast uncertainty about the impact of the bill. Democrats and Obama plan to devote the next few months to making sure consumers understand its benefits immediate (insurance regulation) and in the future (insurance purchasing exchanges); concrete (closing the gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage) and abstract (sense of security).
Democrats believe that one of the most important documents in their arsenal is a list prepared by their leadership of the provisions of the bill that kick in almost immediately, including the guarantee that children will not be denied coverage for preexisting conditions and the provision allowing young adults to remain on their parents' policies.
But some Democrats are still anxious that voters will now blame the President and the Democrats for every thing that goes wrong from long lines at the pharmacy to delays in processing insurance claims whether they are attributable to the health care bill or not.
President Obama's Remarks Following Health Care Reform Bill Passage
Friday, March 19, 2010
NYC Elderly Couple's Home Targeted At Least 50 Times By NYPD In Botched Police Raids For Suspects
Brooklyn World War II vet Walter Martin and his wife, Rose, aren't at the top of the NYPD's most wanted list - it just feels that way.
Cops have swooped down on the law-abiding couple's modest Marine Park home at least 50 times in the last eight years hunting bad guys - only to learn they were chasing a bad address.
They've come looking for murder and robbery suspects. Once, cops came hunting for one of their own - an NYPD officer accused of raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter.
In each case, NYPD officers from commands ranging from the north Bronx to Staten Island somehow confused the Martins' two-story home with the hideout of a suspect or key witness - a different person nearly every time.
"I'm really worried," Rose Martin, 82, said. "How could so many people get my address and how could cops be coming from so many different precincts?"
The Martins' nightmare began in 2002 and has grown to ridiculous proportions.
The latest came at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, when the Martins were jolted awake by police fists pounding on the home's front and back doors.
The startling wakeup call strained 83-year-old Walter Martin's heart, and he felt dizzy as he dressed hurriedly.
"You're not the first," he told the amazed officers. "We've had police here 50 to 75 times looking for people. ... After they left, I felt funny."
He said he took his blood pressure - and it was soaring. "It finally went down to normal after about three hours," he said.
The Martins have documented the unending police pop-ins - and have amassed a sizable collection of cops' business cards.
The lifetime Brooklyn residents bought the home in 1997 to be closer to their children.
All was fine until early 2002, when junk mail, court documents and arrest warrants began arriving for a motley collection of strangers.
Then, the police began knocking on their door - again and again and again.
"Police! Open up!" became a familiar phrase to the Martins, who have had police at their door as many as three times in a week.
Most of the time, the officers quickly realized they had hit the wrong address - and left in frustration, saying little.
Other visits have been more memorable.
In June 2002, two female officers from the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau showed up looking for a woman who had accused a police officer of sexual misconduct.
The most bizarre mixup came on Oct. 10, 2006, when cops and FBI agents rolled up, hunting for then-cop Angel Negron, who was later charged with raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was fired.
"That is one I can't get over," Walter Martin said, unable to understand how the NYPD could not know how to quickly find one of its own.
Frustrated and scared, the Martins wrote to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Mayor Bloomberg and U.S. Postmaster General John Potter - but officers are still pounding on their door more than three years later.
Police brass are baffled. "Our identity theft squad is investigating the matter," said Inspector Ed Mullen, an NYPD spokesman.
"If they're getting that many visits we have to find out why," a police source said.
The NYPD's 61st Precinct once called it a computer glitch. Postal officials suggested the couple get a post-office box.
After the Daily News began making inquiries, the couple's address was run through the NYPD's Real Time Crime Center. Police sources said databases spit out 49 pages of documents, including complaints, 911 calls and stop, question and frisk forms. A News computer search of the address lists 15 other people living there. The Martins know none of them.
Rose Martin said cops have always been respectful and never crashed in.
Still, as she wrote to Kelly, she worries something tragic could happen if the problem is not corrected.
"I am fearful that if a no-knock warrant is issued with my address that my husband or I will end up having a heart attack," she wrote.
Cops have swooped down on the law-abiding couple's modest Marine Park home at least 50 times in the last eight years hunting bad guys - only to learn they were chasing a bad address.
They've come looking for murder and robbery suspects. Once, cops came hunting for one of their own - an NYPD officer accused of raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter.
In each case, NYPD officers from commands ranging from the north Bronx to Staten Island somehow confused the Martins' two-story home with the hideout of a suspect or key witness - a different person nearly every time.
"I'm really worried," Rose Martin, 82, said. "How could so many people get my address and how could cops be coming from so many different precincts?"
The Martins' nightmare began in 2002 and has grown to ridiculous proportions.
The latest came at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, when the Martins were jolted awake by police fists pounding on the home's front and back doors.
The startling wakeup call strained 83-year-old Walter Martin's heart, and he felt dizzy as he dressed hurriedly.
"You're not the first," he told the amazed officers. "We've had police here 50 to 75 times looking for people. ... After they left, I felt funny."
He said he took his blood pressure - and it was soaring. "It finally went down to normal after about three hours," he said.
The Martins have documented the unending police pop-ins - and have amassed a sizable collection of cops' business cards.
The lifetime Brooklyn residents bought the home in 1997 to be closer to their children.
All was fine until early 2002, when junk mail, court documents and arrest warrants began arriving for a motley collection of strangers.
Then, the police began knocking on their door - again and again and again.
"Police! Open up!" became a familiar phrase to the Martins, who have had police at their door as many as three times in a week.
Most of the time, the officers quickly realized they had hit the wrong address - and left in frustration, saying little.
Other visits have been more memorable.
In June 2002, two female officers from the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau showed up looking for a woman who had accused a police officer of sexual misconduct.
The most bizarre mixup came on Oct. 10, 2006, when cops and FBI agents rolled up, hunting for then-cop Angel Negron, who was later charged with raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was fired.
"That is one I can't get over," Walter Martin said, unable to understand how the NYPD could not know how to quickly find one of its own.
Frustrated and scared, the Martins wrote to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Mayor Bloomberg and U.S. Postmaster General John Potter - but officers are still pounding on their door more than three years later.
Police brass are baffled. "Our identity theft squad is investigating the matter," said Inspector Ed Mullen, an NYPD spokesman.
"If they're getting that many visits we have to find out why," a police source said.
The NYPD's 61st Precinct once called it a computer glitch. Postal officials suggested the couple get a post-office box.
After the Daily News began making inquiries, the couple's address was run through the NYPD's Real Time Crime Center. Police sources said databases spit out 49 pages of documents, including complaints, 911 calls and stop, question and frisk forms. A News computer search of the address lists 15 other people living there. The Martins know none of them.
Rose Martin said cops have always been respectful and never crashed in.
Still, as she wrote to Kelly, she worries something tragic could happen if the problem is not corrected.
"I am fearful that if a no-knock warrant is issued with my address that my husband or I will end up having a heart attack," she wrote.
Second Ex-Cop Pleads Guilty In New Orleans Police Coverup Case; More Fallout Expected
A former New Orleans police officer has been charged with concealing his knowledge of an alleged police cover-up in the Danziger Bridge shootings shortly after Hurricane Katrina.
The former officer is Jeffrey Lehrmann, an investigator who arrived at the scene of the Sept. 4, 2005 shootings shortly after they happened. Lehrmann was charged in a bill of information Feb. 22, which was unsealed by prosecutors Tuesday.
Defendants who are charged by bill of information, rather than grand jury indictment, have typically signed plea agreements with the federal government to cooperate. Lehrmann is charged with misprision of a felony -- or knowing about a crime and failing to report it -- a charge often filed against cooperating witnesses.
Lehrmann, who had been a detective in the 7th District, participated in some of the investigation in the weeks after the shooting, according to police documents. He also rode in an ambulance to West Jefferson Medical Center with the four surviving shooting victims.
A plea hearing is set for Thursday before U.S. District Judge Lance Africk.
It's unclear when Lehrmann's apparent cooperation with federal investigators began, but the bill of information says his concealment of the cover-up ended in October 2009. He is accused of concealing a conspiracy, as well as participating "in the creation of false reports and the provision of false information to investigating agents."
Lehrmann is the second former New Orleans police officer to be charged in the scheme.
Lt. Michael Lohman pleaded guilty Feb. 24 to conspiring to obstruct justice by orchestrating a cover-up of what he considered to be a "bad shoot." Lohman said officers planted a gun and altered witness statements to make it appear that the shooting of six people, two fatally, was justified. He also admitted to falsifying the police report.
Unlike Lohman, who was a 21-year NOPD veteran, Lehrmann was on the force for a short period of time. After serving more than eight years as a deputy with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's office, Lehrmann was hired by the NOPD in March 2005. He left the job in Sept. 2006, according to civil service records.
At some point after leaving the NOPD, Lehrmann joined the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He is currently employed in the Phoenix ICE office, according to an agency spokesman, who declined to comment further on his work status.
Although Lehrmann was an NOPD officer for only a year and a half, he did participate in one of the most high-profile investigations in recent years: the Central City shooting deaths of five teenagers in the summer of 2006.
Lehrmann was the detective in the investigation who interviewed the sole eyewitness, whose testimony led to the arrest of Michael Anderson, said Richard Bourke, a defense attorney representing Anderson. That case was recently overturned when a judge found that the Orleans Parish district attorney's office improperly withheld a videotaped interview with that eyewitness that contained information helpful to the defense.
The former officer is Jeffrey Lehrmann, an investigator who arrived at the scene of the Sept. 4, 2005 shootings shortly after they happened. Lehrmann was charged in a bill of information Feb. 22, which was unsealed by prosecutors Tuesday.
Defendants who are charged by bill of information, rather than grand jury indictment, have typically signed plea agreements with the federal government to cooperate. Lehrmann is charged with misprision of a felony -- or knowing about a crime and failing to report it -- a charge often filed against cooperating witnesses.
Lehrmann, who had been a detective in the 7th District, participated in some of the investigation in the weeks after the shooting, according to police documents. He also rode in an ambulance to West Jefferson Medical Center with the four surviving shooting victims.
A plea hearing is set for Thursday before U.S. District Judge Lance Africk.
It's unclear when Lehrmann's apparent cooperation with federal investigators began, but the bill of information says his concealment of the cover-up ended in October 2009. He is accused of concealing a conspiracy, as well as participating "in the creation of false reports and the provision of false information to investigating agents."
Lehrmann is the second former New Orleans police officer to be charged in the scheme.
Lt. Michael Lohman pleaded guilty Feb. 24 to conspiring to obstruct justice by orchestrating a cover-up of what he considered to be a "bad shoot." Lohman said officers planted a gun and altered witness statements to make it appear that the shooting of six people, two fatally, was justified. He also admitted to falsifying the police report.
Unlike Lohman, who was a 21-year NOPD veteran, Lehrmann was on the force for a short period of time. After serving more than eight years as a deputy with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's office, Lehrmann was hired by the NOPD in March 2005. He left the job in Sept. 2006, according to civil service records.
At some point after leaving the NOPD, Lehrmann joined the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He is currently employed in the Phoenix ICE office, according to an agency spokesman, who declined to comment further on his work status.
Although Lehrmann was an NOPD officer for only a year and a half, he did participate in one of the most high-profile investigations in recent years: the Central City shooting deaths of five teenagers in the summer of 2006.
Lehrmann was the detective in the investigation who interviewed the sole eyewitness, whose testimony led to the arrest of Michael Anderson, said Richard Bourke, a defense attorney representing Anderson. That case was recently overturned when a judge found that the Orleans Parish district attorney's office improperly withheld a videotaped interview with that eyewitness that contained information helpful to the defense.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
No Laughing Matter: Wal-Mart 'Appalled' By Racist Store Announcement; Apologizes To Customers
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. — A Walmart store announcement ordering black people to leave brought chagrin and apologies Wednesday from leaders of the company, which has built a fragile trust among minority communities.
A male voice came over the public-address system Sunday evening at a store in Washington Township, in southern New Jersey, and calmly announced: "Attention, Walmart customers: All black people, leave the store now."
Shoppers in the store at the time said a manager quickly got on the public-address system and apologized for the remark. And while it was unclear whether a rogue patron or an employee was responsible for the comment, many customers expressed their anger to store management.
"I want to know why such statements are being made, because it flies in the face of what we teach our children about tolerance for all," said Sheila Ellington, who was in the store at the time with a friend. "If this was meant to be a prank, there's only one person laughing, and it's not either one of us."
Ellington, of Monroe, and her friend Patricia Covington said they plan to boycott the retailer until they're assured the issue has been addressed so it doesn't happen again.
The pair said they were stunned when they heard the announcement and initially believed they had misheard it. But once the words sank in, they grew angry.
"I depended on Walmart for all my needs, because the store has pretty much everything you could want," Covington said. "But until this issue is addressed in a way I'm comfortable with, I can't walk through those doors again."
Officials with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., based in Bentonville, Ark., said that the announcement was "unacceptable" and that they're trying to determine who made it and how it happened.
"We are just as appalled by this incident as our customers," the company said in a statement. "Whoever did this is just wrong and acted in an inappropriate manner. Clearly, this is completely unacceptable to us and to our customers."
This is not the first time the retailer has faced such problems.
There have been several past instances of black customers claiming they were treated unfairly at Walmart stores, and the company faced lawsuits alleging that women were passed over in favor of men for pay raises and promotions.
In February 2009, the retailer paid $17.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in its hiring of truck drivers.
And the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the company in May 2009, claiming some Hispanic employees at a Sam's Club subsidiary in California were subjected to a hostile work environment. That suit alleges managers failed to stop repeated verbal harassment, including the use of derogatory words, against employees of Mexican descent.
However, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has said the company has worked hard in recent years to show it cares about diversity.
Bill Mitchell, a former Walmart employee who was shopping Wednesday at the store, said that he was saddened to hear about the announcement but that "as a black man, I've heard worse things."
As customer Sharon Osbourne, of Williamstown, left the store Wednesday, she called the announcement "appalling, stupid and sad."
A male voice came over the public-address system Sunday evening at a store in Washington Township, in southern New Jersey, and calmly announced: "Attention, Walmart customers: All black people, leave the store now."
Shoppers in the store at the time said a manager quickly got on the public-address system and apologized for the remark. And while it was unclear whether a rogue patron or an employee was responsible for the comment, many customers expressed their anger to store management.
"I want to know why such statements are being made, because it flies in the face of what we teach our children about tolerance for all," said Sheila Ellington, who was in the store at the time with a friend. "If this was meant to be a prank, there's only one person laughing, and it's not either one of us."
Ellington, of Monroe, and her friend Patricia Covington said they plan to boycott the retailer until they're assured the issue has been addressed so it doesn't happen again.
The pair said they were stunned when they heard the announcement and initially believed they had misheard it. But once the words sank in, they grew angry.
"I depended on Walmart for all my needs, because the store has pretty much everything you could want," Covington said. "But until this issue is addressed in a way I'm comfortable with, I can't walk through those doors again."
Officials with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., based in Bentonville, Ark., said that the announcement was "unacceptable" and that they're trying to determine who made it and how it happened.
"We are just as appalled by this incident as our customers," the company said in a statement. "Whoever did this is just wrong and acted in an inappropriate manner. Clearly, this is completely unacceptable to us and to our customers."
This is not the first time the retailer has faced such problems.
There have been several past instances of black customers claiming they were treated unfairly at Walmart stores, and the company faced lawsuits alleging that women were passed over in favor of men for pay raises and promotions.
In February 2009, the retailer paid $17.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in its hiring of truck drivers.
And the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the company in May 2009, claiming some Hispanic employees at a Sam's Club subsidiary in California were subjected to a hostile work environment. That suit alleges managers failed to stop repeated verbal harassment, including the use of derogatory words, against employees of Mexican descent.
However, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has said the company has worked hard in recent years to show it cares about diversity.
Bill Mitchell, a former Walmart employee who was shopping Wednesday at the store, said that he was saddened to hear about the announcement but that "as a black man, I've heard worse things."
As customer Sharon Osbourne, of Williamstown, left the store Wednesday, she called the announcement "appalling, stupid and sad."
NJ Wal-Mart Accused Of Racial Bias After Telling 'All Black People' To Leave Store
A New Jersey Wal-Mart is checking security footage to find out who used the PA system to order "all black people" to leave the Washington Township store. Over a dozen black customers were in the store when a male voice said: "Attention Wal-Mart customers, all black people must leave the store now." Police are treating the incident as a bias crime.
A Wal-Mart spokesman said the company is "appalled" by the incident. "Some of our customers are upset at us, and I understand why" he told CNN. It's unclear whether the racist prankster was one of the store's 700 full and part-time employees, as some of the branch's in-store telephones can be accessed by customers, police said
A Wal-Mart spokesman said the company is "appalled" by the incident. "Some of our customers are upset at us, and I understand why" he told CNN. It's unclear whether the racist prankster was one of the store's 700 full and part-time employees, as some of the branch's in-store telephones can be accessed by customers, police said
Seeking Justice: A Crisis In The Catholic Church-Part Three Of A Four Part Series
CHICAGO (FinalCall.com) - The Roman Catholic Church in America has been reeling for the past decade with shocking instances of sexual abuse at the hands of members of its sacred and secretive clergy.
The most recent embarrassment for the Catholic Church reached right into The Vatican. Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness—an exclusive group of servants inside the Pope's household—was caught by law enforcement officials via wiretap allegedly arranging trysts with male prostitutes.
According to The Guardian, transcripts in their possession “suggest that numerous men may have been procured for Balducci, at least one of whom was studying for the priesthood.”
Multi-million dollar settlements in response to sex scandals are reported with regularity, almost daily in the media, and stretch across the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland and Rome. However, you don't have to go that far to hear sordid tales of abuse and misconduct, nor do you have to travel far to see the twisted emotional wreckage that exists in the lives of many of the victims.
Reginald Montgomery, now 40, met Father Victor Stewart when he was just 13-years-old. Reginald enjoyed playing basketball and wanted to play on the team. Like many of the young boys in the neighborhood, they looked up to Fr. Stewart as a father figure, a mentor. A good player, Reginald made the team and would from time to time share with Fr. Stewart, a trusted guide, some of the problems he had with his mother.
Then, the abuse began.
“He would always see me hanging around the rectory with the guys that lived there. I would get hungry and he would say ‘come on in you can sleep up here tonight.' He had this one room and he would take you in there and the only way you could get out of this room is if you had a key. I would sit there and I would fall asleep and then I felt somebody come rubbing on me,” said Mr. Montgomery. “He just did what he wanted. I tried to get him off me but he was stronger than me; he actually raped me. I was too embarrassed and ashamed to show my face because some of the guys that lived there saw him come downstairs to get me,” Reginald continued. “He used us because we didn't have anything. The one's that he knew needed shoes, needed clothes, needed food, he had that hanging over your head always.”
Eloise Owens, Reginald's godmother, shed tears while being interviewed by The Final Call. She still feels angry and guilty because she saw the signs, and instinctively knew something was wrong, but failed to act.
“I started noticing the things the kids were doing that they never did before. He (Reginald) has quite a temper, but I could always walk up to him and say ‘excuse me, Reggie sit down.' But he was fighting his best friends,” said Ms. Owens who did not realize at the time that Fr. Stewart was employing the age old divide and conquer strategy to maintain control and influence over all of the young boys at the rectory.
He never forgave Fr. Stewart and never forgot what he had done to him. With vengeance on his mind, hate simmering in his heart and two loaded handguns, Reginald stalked Fr. Stewart for a year, waiting for the opportunity to kill him.
“I had made up in my mind I had wanted (to kill) him so bad I could feel it,” said Reginald describing driving around Chicago with the locked and loaded guns sitting on the back seat of his car looking for the time to strike. One evening, while driving by and looking at the door of the place where Fr. Stewart lived, he was pulled over and arrested by members of the Chicago Police Department on gun charges.
“I was so mad that they pulled me over that I actually wanted to go at them. I didn't get a chance to complete my mission. I wanted to kill him bad. I was mad at myself for getting caught. I swear to God I wanted that man so bad it was killing me,” said Reginald crying. “To this day I would still kill him.”
Fr. Stewart died of an unspecified illness in June of 1994.
As a result of what Mr. Montgomery has gone through, he can barely sleep uninterrupted. Each time the lights go out, he has flashbacks. He walks the streets with a simmering rage, ready to fight at any moment.
“I have to sit there and literally drink myself to sleep,” said Reginald, recounting one terrible incident involving his wife. “I'm sitting in the room by myself and she walked up behind me and touched me. I lost it. Because I didn't hear her come. I think I hit my wife twice and almost killed her. I blacked out. Because that's what he (Fr. Stewart) would do. Right now today, I still don't like people walking behind me. I didn't use to be like this. I was just outgoing. I never was violent until this. Now it's like I stay away from people so I don't get into altercations with them, because I'd probably end up killing them. I take my frustrations out on everybody. I don't care who it is, I'm just … I need help and I know I need help,” said Reginald, breaking down in tears.
For the first time in almost 30 years, he recently went back to church.
Diane Bell, a victim of the late predatory priest Terence Fitzmaurice said she was abused between the ages of 9 and 13 and feels like justice escaped her, because he died before having to face many of those he abused.
“He turned my life upside down,” said Ms. Bell. “I feel like I got raped all over again once I found out he died,” she added.
No help for victims
It's not hard to see why Black victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy feel at times as if they are all alone with no advocacy groups acting on their behalf.
During this series of articles, The Final Call repeatedly tried to make contact with Ms. Valerie Washington, executive director of the Baltimore-based National Black Catholic Congress, which, according to the mission statement on their web site is “comprised of member organizations (that) represent African American Roman Catholics, working in collaboration with National Roman Catholic organizations. We commit ourselves to establishing an agenda for the evangelization of African Americans; and to improve the spiritual, mental, and physical conditions of African Americans, thereby committing ourselves to the freedom and growth of African Americans as full participants in church and society.”
Also according to their web site, “The National Black Catholic Congress (NBCC) operates in close cooperation and coordination with the African American Bishops of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.”
According to the USCCB there are over three million Black Catholics in the United States.
A search of the media center on the NBCC's web site found no documentation, press releases or video dealing with the issue of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy.
In response to one e-mail in early January 2010, The Final Call did receive an automatic e-mail delivery receipt from Ms. Washington, however, no actual response to that which was requested in the e-mail was received. Repeated calls to the NBCC's administrative offices went unanswered and voicemail messages were not returned.
Atty. Phillip Aaron and the members of Black Advocates Universal Against Clergy Sexual Abuse led by its national director, Wali Muhammad, have picked up the mantle of advocacy for many Black victims of abuse. They have unceasingly demanded justice and, by conducting forums and providing counseling and support, have brought this issue to national attention.
The Catholic Church responds
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has consistently defended themselves against allegations of impropriety. On November 20, 2009 the Archdiocese of Chicago delivered a report to The Final Call compiled by the law firm Pugh, Jones, Johnson and Quant. According to the report, there was no evidence of racial discrimination during the review or settlement process.
“It has never been an Archdiocesan practice to compile statistics about abuse claims based on race or ethnicity. However, it felt compelled to do so when these allegations were made,” read the statement from the Chicago Archdiocese.
Dr. Conrad Worrill, a professor and director of the Jacob Carruthers Center for Inner-City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University crafted a response to the 27-page report from the Chicago Archdiocese.
Speaking at a recent forum on the issue, Dr. Worrill condemned the findings of the report calling the law firm and the Chicago Archdiocese “dishonest.” He added that the report prepared by the attorneys contained “contradictory statements, invalid methodology and skewed statistics”
“The report was obviously not independent and contains no true investigation of the practices of racial discrimination in the Archdiocese of Chicago on any level,” Dr. Worrill continued. “The report was designed to pre-empt a class action complaint against the Archdiocese of Chicago which was publicly announced by attorney Phillip Aaron in August 2009. The Archdiocese obviously hoped the report would serve as damage control to the publicity that the potential complaint received.”
A federal lawsuit suit has been filed by Atty. Aaron against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago in the Northern District of Illinois seeking $98 million on behalf of 46 Black victims and 3 Latino plaintiffs, he currently represents. Atty. Aaron stands by his assertion that they were intimidated, silenced and given smaller financial settlements than White victims. Named in the lawsuit are Cardinal Francis George and retired Auxiliary Bishop Raymond Goedert. They are being accused of racism, discrimination, breach of contract, causing emotional distress, fraud, conspiracy and racketeering.
The suit reads, “The defendants have acted intentionally to silence the voices of African American and minority victims while defendants distributed false and deceptive information to the public in an attempt to prevent the victims of clergy sexual abuse, their families and the African American and minority community from expressing and exposing racism and discrimination.”
The Final Call obtained a rare exclusive interview with Bishop Joseph Perry, who served as chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on African-American Catholics from 2004-2007. Bishop Perry was appointed Auxiliary Bishop to Cardinal Francis George by the late Pope John Paul II in May 1998 and was ordained to the episcopacy on June 29, 1998. He was ordained a priest in 1975 and has worked extensively within the inner cities, for a time in Milwaukee and now in Chicago.
He said the allegations of racial inequality are untrue, but acknowledges that possible perception.
“As far as African American Catholics are concerned, there could very well be a perception that approaching the Church in these kinds of matters for redress, that somehow those fields are imbalanced because the institution appears to be so large and in a sense to them so powerful.”
Strangely, in his career in Chicago, Bishop Perry has only met with one victim of clergy sexual abuse but told The Final Call he would be open to doing so if asked.
“That one instance I thought was a very good meeting. It was a good connection. I felt that for the victim involved, it offered a certain amount of consolation of release in a sense where they had a chance to tell someone their side of the story. Not that I was necessarily the first one for that individual but being the Bishop of the jurisdiction where that priest had worked, I guess he felt confident enough.”
David Nolan, a victim of abuse and now advocate for victims' rights said over the years he has been seeking redress for the abuse he suffered, Bishop Perry never offered to meet with him or any of the others.
Bishop Perry who now serves as vice president of the NBCC said the Chicago Archdiocese still encourages victims of abuse to come forward, no matter how long ago the alleged abuse occurred.
“Take advantage of our healing ministries,” said Bishop Perry. “People have to be handled sensitively and correctly. Keeping in mind that anyone who does come forward is obviously protected and counseled by their own counsel, if they have it or not or with their own Pastors and so forth.”
When asked if he had an “an open door policy” to meet with victims of abuse, Bishop Perry replied, “Sure.”
The most recent embarrassment for the Catholic Church reached right into The Vatican. Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness—an exclusive group of servants inside the Pope's household—was caught by law enforcement officials via wiretap allegedly arranging trysts with male prostitutes.
According to The Guardian, transcripts in their possession “suggest that numerous men may have been procured for Balducci, at least one of whom was studying for the priesthood.”
Multi-million dollar settlements in response to sex scandals are reported with regularity, almost daily in the media, and stretch across the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland and Rome. However, you don't have to go that far to hear sordid tales of abuse and misconduct, nor do you have to travel far to see the twisted emotional wreckage that exists in the lives of many of the victims.
Reginald Montgomery, now 40, met Father Victor Stewart when he was just 13-years-old. Reginald enjoyed playing basketball and wanted to play on the team. Like many of the young boys in the neighborhood, they looked up to Fr. Stewart as a father figure, a mentor. A good player, Reginald made the team and would from time to time share with Fr. Stewart, a trusted guide, some of the problems he had with his mother.
Then, the abuse began.
“He would always see me hanging around the rectory with the guys that lived there. I would get hungry and he would say ‘come on in you can sleep up here tonight.' He had this one room and he would take you in there and the only way you could get out of this room is if you had a key. I would sit there and I would fall asleep and then I felt somebody come rubbing on me,” said Mr. Montgomery. “He just did what he wanted. I tried to get him off me but he was stronger than me; he actually raped me. I was too embarrassed and ashamed to show my face because some of the guys that lived there saw him come downstairs to get me,” Reginald continued. “He used us because we didn't have anything. The one's that he knew needed shoes, needed clothes, needed food, he had that hanging over your head always.”
Eloise Owens, Reginald's godmother, shed tears while being interviewed by The Final Call. She still feels angry and guilty because she saw the signs, and instinctively knew something was wrong, but failed to act.
“I started noticing the things the kids were doing that they never did before. He (Reginald) has quite a temper, but I could always walk up to him and say ‘excuse me, Reggie sit down.' But he was fighting his best friends,” said Ms. Owens who did not realize at the time that Fr. Stewart was employing the age old divide and conquer strategy to maintain control and influence over all of the young boys at the rectory.
He never forgave Fr. Stewart and never forgot what he had done to him. With vengeance on his mind, hate simmering in his heart and two loaded handguns, Reginald stalked Fr. Stewart for a year, waiting for the opportunity to kill him.
“I had made up in my mind I had wanted (to kill) him so bad I could feel it,” said Reginald describing driving around Chicago with the locked and loaded guns sitting on the back seat of his car looking for the time to strike. One evening, while driving by and looking at the door of the place where Fr. Stewart lived, he was pulled over and arrested by members of the Chicago Police Department on gun charges.
“I was so mad that they pulled me over that I actually wanted to go at them. I didn't get a chance to complete my mission. I wanted to kill him bad. I was mad at myself for getting caught. I swear to God I wanted that man so bad it was killing me,” said Reginald crying. “To this day I would still kill him.”
Fr. Stewart died of an unspecified illness in June of 1994.
As a result of what Mr. Montgomery has gone through, he can barely sleep uninterrupted. Each time the lights go out, he has flashbacks. He walks the streets with a simmering rage, ready to fight at any moment.
“I have to sit there and literally drink myself to sleep,” said Reginald, recounting one terrible incident involving his wife. “I'm sitting in the room by myself and she walked up behind me and touched me. I lost it. Because I didn't hear her come. I think I hit my wife twice and almost killed her. I blacked out. Because that's what he (Fr. Stewart) would do. Right now today, I still don't like people walking behind me. I didn't use to be like this. I was just outgoing. I never was violent until this. Now it's like I stay away from people so I don't get into altercations with them, because I'd probably end up killing them. I take my frustrations out on everybody. I don't care who it is, I'm just … I need help and I know I need help,” said Reginald, breaking down in tears.
For the first time in almost 30 years, he recently went back to church.
Diane Bell, a victim of the late predatory priest Terence Fitzmaurice said she was abused between the ages of 9 and 13 and feels like justice escaped her, because he died before having to face many of those he abused.
“He turned my life upside down,” said Ms. Bell. “I feel like I got raped all over again once I found out he died,” she added.
No help for victims
It's not hard to see why Black victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy feel at times as if they are all alone with no advocacy groups acting on their behalf.
During this series of articles, The Final Call repeatedly tried to make contact with Ms. Valerie Washington, executive director of the Baltimore-based National Black Catholic Congress, which, according to the mission statement on their web site is “comprised of member organizations (that) represent African American Roman Catholics, working in collaboration with National Roman Catholic organizations. We commit ourselves to establishing an agenda for the evangelization of African Americans; and to improve the spiritual, mental, and physical conditions of African Americans, thereby committing ourselves to the freedom and growth of African Americans as full participants in church and society.”
Also according to their web site, “The National Black Catholic Congress (NBCC) operates in close cooperation and coordination with the African American Bishops of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.”
According to the USCCB there are over three million Black Catholics in the United States.
A search of the media center on the NBCC's web site found no documentation, press releases or video dealing with the issue of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy.
In response to one e-mail in early January 2010, The Final Call did receive an automatic e-mail delivery receipt from Ms. Washington, however, no actual response to that which was requested in the e-mail was received. Repeated calls to the NBCC's administrative offices went unanswered and voicemail messages were not returned.
Atty. Phillip Aaron and the members of Black Advocates Universal Against Clergy Sexual Abuse led by its national director, Wali Muhammad, have picked up the mantle of advocacy for many Black victims of abuse. They have unceasingly demanded justice and, by conducting forums and providing counseling and support, have brought this issue to national attention.
The Catholic Church responds
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has consistently defended themselves against allegations of impropriety. On November 20, 2009 the Archdiocese of Chicago delivered a report to The Final Call compiled by the law firm Pugh, Jones, Johnson and Quant. According to the report, there was no evidence of racial discrimination during the review or settlement process.
“It has never been an Archdiocesan practice to compile statistics about abuse claims based on race or ethnicity. However, it felt compelled to do so when these allegations were made,” read the statement from the Chicago Archdiocese.
Dr. Conrad Worrill, a professor and director of the Jacob Carruthers Center for Inner-City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University crafted a response to the 27-page report from the Chicago Archdiocese.
Speaking at a recent forum on the issue, Dr. Worrill condemned the findings of the report calling the law firm and the Chicago Archdiocese “dishonest.” He added that the report prepared by the attorneys contained “contradictory statements, invalid methodology and skewed statistics”
“The report was obviously not independent and contains no true investigation of the practices of racial discrimination in the Archdiocese of Chicago on any level,” Dr. Worrill continued. “The report was designed to pre-empt a class action complaint against the Archdiocese of Chicago which was publicly announced by attorney Phillip Aaron in August 2009. The Archdiocese obviously hoped the report would serve as damage control to the publicity that the potential complaint received.”
A federal lawsuit suit has been filed by Atty. Aaron against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago in the Northern District of Illinois seeking $98 million on behalf of 46 Black victims and 3 Latino plaintiffs, he currently represents. Atty. Aaron stands by his assertion that they were intimidated, silenced and given smaller financial settlements than White victims. Named in the lawsuit are Cardinal Francis George and retired Auxiliary Bishop Raymond Goedert. They are being accused of racism, discrimination, breach of contract, causing emotional distress, fraud, conspiracy and racketeering.
The suit reads, “The defendants have acted intentionally to silence the voices of African American and minority victims while defendants distributed false and deceptive information to the public in an attempt to prevent the victims of clergy sexual abuse, their families and the African American and minority community from expressing and exposing racism and discrimination.”
The Final Call obtained a rare exclusive interview with Bishop Joseph Perry, who served as chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on African-American Catholics from 2004-2007. Bishop Perry was appointed Auxiliary Bishop to Cardinal Francis George by the late Pope John Paul II in May 1998 and was ordained to the episcopacy on June 29, 1998. He was ordained a priest in 1975 and has worked extensively within the inner cities, for a time in Milwaukee and now in Chicago.
He said the allegations of racial inequality are untrue, but acknowledges that possible perception.
“As far as African American Catholics are concerned, there could very well be a perception that approaching the Church in these kinds of matters for redress, that somehow those fields are imbalanced because the institution appears to be so large and in a sense to them so powerful.”
Strangely, in his career in Chicago, Bishop Perry has only met with one victim of clergy sexual abuse but told The Final Call he would be open to doing so if asked.
“That one instance I thought was a very good meeting. It was a good connection. I felt that for the victim involved, it offered a certain amount of consolation of release in a sense where they had a chance to tell someone their side of the story. Not that I was necessarily the first one for that individual but being the Bishop of the jurisdiction where that priest had worked, I guess he felt confident enough.”
David Nolan, a victim of abuse and now advocate for victims' rights said over the years he has been seeking redress for the abuse he suffered, Bishop Perry never offered to meet with him or any of the others.
Bishop Perry who now serves as vice president of the NBCC said the Chicago Archdiocese still encourages victims of abuse to come forward, no matter how long ago the alleged abuse occurred.
“Take advantage of our healing ministries,” said Bishop Perry. “People have to be handled sensitively and correctly. Keeping in mind that anyone who does come forward is obviously protected and counseled by their own counsel, if they have it or not or with their own Pastors and so forth.”
When asked if he had an “an open door policy” to meet with victims of abuse, Bishop Perry replied, “Sure.”
Victims Of Sexual Abuse By Priests Share Shocking, Disturbing Stories-Part Two Of A Four Part Series
CHICAGO (FinalCall.com) - As a 13-year-old girl in Chicago, Alicia Sample had her entire life ahead of her. She had dreams of being a childcare provider, and with supportive parents, this goal was within her reach.
Finding the public schools in their neighborhood lacking, like many parents, Alicia's chose to send her and their five other children to a prestigious Catholic school, St. Procopius, located on the lower west side of Chicago.
“My father made it clear to us that we were there for the education,” said Alicia. “Education was very key for my mother and father. They always made it clear that even if you were just a struggling Black person, if you have an education, they can't take that away from you.”
Alicia's hardworking father was a foreman for the Zenith Electronics Corporation and ran his own cleaning service while his wife was a stay at home mother whose primary responsibility was to take care of the children.He also took care of his elderly mother who lived with the family.
One afternoon, just two weeks before her 8th grade graduation, Father Terence Fitzmaurice, who at the time was the presiding pastor overseeing the administration of St. Procopius Catholic Church and school, came and got Alicia and her other siblings out of class for an early dismissal.
When Alicia arrived home with her brothers and sisters, they found their mother crying, and were told that their reliable father—the sole provider and backbone of the family—was shot in the back and killed by members of the Chicago Police Department in what they said was a tragic case of mistaken identity.
Alicia said her family was devastated and the smaller children—the youngest being six-years-old—were distressed, sad and confused. Adding to the trauma, the next morning when they went upstairs to wake their grandmother, they found she had died in her sleep. The emotional trauma sent the family into shock.
Alicia said even though they were the only Black children at the school, and though there was some racism, she and her siblings viewed St. Procopius as a “safe place to learn, to prosper and to grow,” and wanted to stay in school.
Being the second oldest sibling in the family, Alicia always felt responsible to protect and look out for her younger brothers and sisters. She said her older brother, Terrence Sample, who was 14 at the time, had begun to act strange, abusing alcohol. She did not know at the time that he was being sexually abused.
With nowhere to turn, no income possibilities, and a mother needing to pay for two funerals, in came Fr. Fitzmaurice, offering support for the family. However, while he appeared to be a benevolent man of the cloth, allowing them to perform work-study jobs around the St. Procopius property to pay their tuition, it quickly became apparent that he had other, more sinister motives, Alicia recounted.
“I always listened as they said ‘lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil' but they were bestowing evil upon us at the same time,” said Alicia.
Alicia Sample told The Final Call about a six-year ordeal in which she was used as a sex slave, gang raped, sodomized and physically beaten regularly by Fr. Fitzmaurice and others, at his behest.
Fr. Fitzmaurice had a group of young men that acted as his henchmen, and he would sometimes get Alicia out of class during school hours and order Alicia to report to what he called “the clubhouse.”
“It would be explained like I was doing a project or helping with work that needed to be done toward our tuition,” said Alicia.
Once she arrived there, she would be ordered to perform various sexual acts on some of Fr. Fitzmaurice's henchmen, other young priests-in-training, and even other students who went to the school.
Alicia said the priest would order her to perform oral sex on them and tell them to beat her if she refused. He would threaten to have her and her siblings removed from school if she refused to comply with his deviant sexual wishes.
“They would penetrate me sometimes with objects, they would anally rape me,” said Alicia. “Sometimes, they would take all of my clothes and hang me out of the second floor window of the clubhouse and threaten to drop me and say ‘who is going to miss your n----r a-- if we drop you?' and my life was just flashing before me,” Alicia said.
Fr. Fitzmaurice also forced her to perform sexual acts on and with him and said if she complied, he would not bother her younger brothers and sisters; however, that proved to be a lie. Thirty years later, Alicia found out that her siblings were abused by Fr. Fitzmaurice. Her sister, who was impregnated when she was 13, had a baby that “came out White as paper,” Alica said.
It doesn't end there
Alicia Sample said Fr. Fitzmaurice would force her and her brother Terrence to commit incest. They would be forced to commit sexual acts on one another while he watched. He would also tell her to do things to her brother, and have her report back whether she did it.
“He (Fr. Fitzmaurice) would become sexually excited, and sometimes he would touch himself in front of me, but if he told me to do something, and I came back and told him I didn't do it, he would beat me. He would get angry and beat me, or he would tell me that I would have to go to the clubhouse and the other guys that would be there would abuse me sexually or beat me,” said Alicia.
For over three decades, she suffered in silence, filled with shame alongside the mental and emotional strain resulting from her abuse as a young teen. She heavily abused drugs and alcohol and suffered from eating disorders. She takes medicine for anxiety, schizophrenia and depression and by her own admission has “been in and out of mental hospitals.”
She also told The Final Call of a 1990 attempt to kill herself and her three sons by sealing the doors and the windows of her apartment and turning on the gas oven. Neighbors smelled fumes, quickly called the fire department and saved Alicia, and her sons from certain death, however, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services removed the children from her custody.
Now 47, Alicia is still trying to put the pieces of her life back together after having her innocent childhood interrupted by a priest she calls a predatory pedophile.
Terrence Sample, her older brother, who now works as a successful paralegal described his mental and sexual abuse by Fr. Fitzmaurice as consisting of “everything under the sun.” He no longer trusts anyone.
“My dreams were corrupted by the church,” said Terrence. “I'm never going to be the same.”
Terry Overton graduated from St. Rita Catholic high school on the southwest side of Chicago. He was a victim of sexual abuse during his teen years at the hands of Father Thomas Swade, who was defrocked by the Archdiocese of Chicago in October 2009. Mr. Overton, now a successful attorney, described years of feeling intimidated, isolated and abandoned as he struggled with drug addiction to ease the pain of his abuse, which he called part of an “institutional pandemic.”
“It is a stripping of your dignity, confidence and humanity,” said Terry, “I was traumatized for decades,” he added.
Terry said priests in the Catholic church are “god-like figures” and that no one intervened on his behalf because his tormentor was “a White man supported by his White institution,” the Catholic church.
Alicia agrees. She was gripped by the same fear.
“I had to keep a mask on my face like nothing was going on, but on the inside you're crying out like ‘somebody please help me' or ‘can I talk to somebody?' but still in your mind, who is going to believe you?” she asked. “Who is going to believe me over a priest? I'm just a young Black girl.”
James Calmese was a victim of Father John Calicott, a Black Catholic priest at Holy Angels Church who admittedly engaged in sexual misconduct with teenage boys back in 1976.
Like many young Black boys, James enjoyed playing basketball and going out to eat with the rest of the youth at the church, but it came with a price.
“Once he took you to that hotel and pinned you to that bed, you had to take your mind elsewhere and leave your body there,” said James. Fr. Calicott was defrocked by the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese in September 2009.
In a report delivered to The Final Call in late November 2009, specifically responding to allegations of racial discrimination in the abuse settlement process, the Archdiocese of Chicago acknowledged that a majority of the allegations they heard from Black victims involved Terence Fitzmaurice (17 claims) and Victor Stewart (33 claims).
The Archdiocese of Chicago has settled with the claimants in this series of articles, however, Atty. Phillip Aaron, charges that the settlement offers were not made in good faith. Atty. Aaron alleges the Archdiocese of Chicago engaged in legal hardball, offering settlements only to avoid further discovery of evidence that could expose higher-ups in the Archdiocese of Chicago to possible criminal liability if the statute of limitations has not run out.
The Archdiocese of Chicago did reach an agreement with Fr. Fitzmaurice's priestly order, the Benedictines, to contribute to the settlement of claims against him, however, according to Susan Burritt, spokesperson for the Archdiocese, the Benedictines are an entity canonically and civilly separate. Even with that being the case, the Archdiocese of Chicago has made every attempt to address the abuse claims of victims, she said.
Atty. Matthew Walsh, lawyer for the Benedictine Order on behalf of the law offices of Hinshaw and Culbertson, LLP confirmed in a recent telephone interview with The Final Call that Terence Fitzmaurice is deceased.
For these victims, despite receiving financial settlements and the defrocking of priests years later, a sense of justice and closure remain elusive.
David Nolan described how at the age of 13, he was abused by Father Victor Stewart, who he viewed as “superhuman” and placed on a high pedestal as a young parishioner at St. Charles Lwanga on Chicago's south side.Instead of finding a mentor to help with his childhood dream of entering the priesthood, he found a tormentor.
“My whole world was shaken,” said David, now 42, recounting emotionally and physically painful episodes of sexual abuse and assault.
David remembers the aftermath of the first assault: Fr. Stewart menacingly told him, “You know you wanted it!” Then the priest ordered him to put his clothes on, and took him on a shopping spree at a nearby mall seemingly as a “reward.”
David was confused and scared, but after gathering up enough courage to go to the Chicago Police seeking justice and armed with over 75 names of individuals who had been molested, he was met with scorn and derision. Police laughed and accused him of lying, David recalled.
Living with shame and constant fear of retaliation from the Chicago police and those loyal to Fr. Stewart, David eventually left the church and abused alcohol and drugs to help him cope. He even attempted suicide by drinking a cocktail of Pepsi and anti-freeze.
David feels current Mayor Richard M. Daley shares responsibility, because he was the Illinois states attorney at the time, as well as Bishop Raymond Goedert, a well-respected member of the Chicago Archdiocese, who at that time was the Vicar of Priests.David alleges Bishop Goedert was complicit in the cover-up of rampant sexual abuse and is dissatisfied with the response from Francis Cardinal George, head of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
“Cardinal George has never even offered to sit down and pray with us,” said David, whose abuser, Fr. Victor Stewart, died in June 1994 at the age of 54.
Alicia has received a financial settlement; however, there are other aspects of the settlement, dealing with her medical and counseling needs that church officials have not lived up to, she said.
“It's not about the money, it never was,” said Alicia. “My life cannot be given back to me in a dollar amount.”
She said the abuse shattered her faith in the institution of the Catholic Church, but did not take away her faith in God. She is committed to helping others who may be suffering silently. Her three sons, age 30, 26 and 19, support her.
“I want to help somebody. I want somebody to know that they're not alone. I felt like I was totally alone, just all alone,” Alicia said.
(If you are a victim of sexual abuse, contact Black Advocates Universal Against Clergy Sexual Abuse at 888-592-7881.)
Finding the public schools in their neighborhood lacking, like many parents, Alicia's chose to send her and their five other children to a prestigious Catholic school, St. Procopius, located on the lower west side of Chicago.
“My father made it clear to us that we were there for the education,” said Alicia. “Education was very key for my mother and father. They always made it clear that even if you were just a struggling Black person, if you have an education, they can't take that away from you.”
Alicia's hardworking father was a foreman for the Zenith Electronics Corporation and ran his own cleaning service while his wife was a stay at home mother whose primary responsibility was to take care of the children.He also took care of his elderly mother who lived with the family.
One afternoon, just two weeks before her 8th grade graduation, Father Terence Fitzmaurice, who at the time was the presiding pastor overseeing the administration of St. Procopius Catholic Church and school, came and got Alicia and her other siblings out of class for an early dismissal.
When Alicia arrived home with her brothers and sisters, they found their mother crying, and were told that their reliable father—the sole provider and backbone of the family—was shot in the back and killed by members of the Chicago Police Department in what they said was a tragic case of mistaken identity.
Alicia said her family was devastated and the smaller children—the youngest being six-years-old—were distressed, sad and confused. Adding to the trauma, the next morning when they went upstairs to wake their grandmother, they found she had died in her sleep. The emotional trauma sent the family into shock.
Alicia said even though they were the only Black children at the school, and though there was some racism, she and her siblings viewed St. Procopius as a “safe place to learn, to prosper and to grow,” and wanted to stay in school.
Being the second oldest sibling in the family, Alicia always felt responsible to protect and look out for her younger brothers and sisters. She said her older brother, Terrence Sample, who was 14 at the time, had begun to act strange, abusing alcohol. She did not know at the time that he was being sexually abused.
With nowhere to turn, no income possibilities, and a mother needing to pay for two funerals, in came Fr. Fitzmaurice, offering support for the family. However, while he appeared to be a benevolent man of the cloth, allowing them to perform work-study jobs around the St. Procopius property to pay their tuition, it quickly became apparent that he had other, more sinister motives, Alicia recounted.
“I always listened as they said ‘lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil' but they were bestowing evil upon us at the same time,” said Alicia.
Alicia Sample told The Final Call about a six-year ordeal in which she was used as a sex slave, gang raped, sodomized and physically beaten regularly by Fr. Fitzmaurice and others, at his behest.
Fr. Fitzmaurice had a group of young men that acted as his henchmen, and he would sometimes get Alicia out of class during school hours and order Alicia to report to what he called “the clubhouse.”
“It would be explained like I was doing a project or helping with work that needed to be done toward our tuition,” said Alicia.
Once she arrived there, she would be ordered to perform various sexual acts on some of Fr. Fitzmaurice's henchmen, other young priests-in-training, and even other students who went to the school.
Alicia said the priest would order her to perform oral sex on them and tell them to beat her if she refused. He would threaten to have her and her siblings removed from school if she refused to comply with his deviant sexual wishes.
“They would penetrate me sometimes with objects, they would anally rape me,” said Alicia. “Sometimes, they would take all of my clothes and hang me out of the second floor window of the clubhouse and threaten to drop me and say ‘who is going to miss your n----r a-- if we drop you?' and my life was just flashing before me,” Alicia said.
Fr. Fitzmaurice also forced her to perform sexual acts on and with him and said if she complied, he would not bother her younger brothers and sisters; however, that proved to be a lie. Thirty years later, Alicia found out that her siblings were abused by Fr. Fitzmaurice. Her sister, who was impregnated when she was 13, had a baby that “came out White as paper,” Alica said.
It doesn't end there
Alicia Sample said Fr. Fitzmaurice would force her and her brother Terrence to commit incest. They would be forced to commit sexual acts on one another while he watched. He would also tell her to do things to her brother, and have her report back whether she did it.
“He (Fr. Fitzmaurice) would become sexually excited, and sometimes he would touch himself in front of me, but if he told me to do something, and I came back and told him I didn't do it, he would beat me. He would get angry and beat me, or he would tell me that I would have to go to the clubhouse and the other guys that would be there would abuse me sexually or beat me,” said Alicia.
For over three decades, she suffered in silence, filled with shame alongside the mental and emotional strain resulting from her abuse as a young teen. She heavily abused drugs and alcohol and suffered from eating disorders. She takes medicine for anxiety, schizophrenia and depression and by her own admission has “been in and out of mental hospitals.”
She also told The Final Call of a 1990 attempt to kill herself and her three sons by sealing the doors and the windows of her apartment and turning on the gas oven. Neighbors smelled fumes, quickly called the fire department and saved Alicia, and her sons from certain death, however, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services removed the children from her custody.
Now 47, Alicia is still trying to put the pieces of her life back together after having her innocent childhood interrupted by a priest she calls a predatory pedophile.
Terrence Sample, her older brother, who now works as a successful paralegal described his mental and sexual abuse by Fr. Fitzmaurice as consisting of “everything under the sun.” He no longer trusts anyone.
“My dreams were corrupted by the church,” said Terrence. “I'm never going to be the same.”
Terry Overton graduated from St. Rita Catholic high school on the southwest side of Chicago. He was a victim of sexual abuse during his teen years at the hands of Father Thomas Swade, who was defrocked by the Archdiocese of Chicago in October 2009. Mr. Overton, now a successful attorney, described years of feeling intimidated, isolated and abandoned as he struggled with drug addiction to ease the pain of his abuse, which he called part of an “institutional pandemic.”
“It is a stripping of your dignity, confidence and humanity,” said Terry, “I was traumatized for decades,” he added.
Terry said priests in the Catholic church are “god-like figures” and that no one intervened on his behalf because his tormentor was “a White man supported by his White institution,” the Catholic church.
Alicia agrees. She was gripped by the same fear.
“I had to keep a mask on my face like nothing was going on, but on the inside you're crying out like ‘somebody please help me' or ‘can I talk to somebody?' but still in your mind, who is going to believe you?” she asked. “Who is going to believe me over a priest? I'm just a young Black girl.”
James Calmese was a victim of Father John Calicott, a Black Catholic priest at Holy Angels Church who admittedly engaged in sexual misconduct with teenage boys back in 1976.
Like many young Black boys, James enjoyed playing basketball and going out to eat with the rest of the youth at the church, but it came with a price.
“Once he took you to that hotel and pinned you to that bed, you had to take your mind elsewhere and leave your body there,” said James. Fr. Calicott was defrocked by the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese in September 2009.
In a report delivered to The Final Call in late November 2009, specifically responding to allegations of racial discrimination in the abuse settlement process, the Archdiocese of Chicago acknowledged that a majority of the allegations they heard from Black victims involved Terence Fitzmaurice (17 claims) and Victor Stewart (33 claims).
The Archdiocese of Chicago has settled with the claimants in this series of articles, however, Atty. Phillip Aaron, charges that the settlement offers were not made in good faith. Atty. Aaron alleges the Archdiocese of Chicago engaged in legal hardball, offering settlements only to avoid further discovery of evidence that could expose higher-ups in the Archdiocese of Chicago to possible criminal liability if the statute of limitations has not run out.
The Archdiocese of Chicago did reach an agreement with Fr. Fitzmaurice's priestly order, the Benedictines, to contribute to the settlement of claims against him, however, according to Susan Burritt, spokesperson for the Archdiocese, the Benedictines are an entity canonically and civilly separate. Even with that being the case, the Archdiocese of Chicago has made every attempt to address the abuse claims of victims, she said.
Atty. Matthew Walsh, lawyer for the Benedictine Order on behalf of the law offices of Hinshaw and Culbertson, LLP confirmed in a recent telephone interview with The Final Call that Terence Fitzmaurice is deceased.
For these victims, despite receiving financial settlements and the defrocking of priests years later, a sense of justice and closure remain elusive.
David Nolan described how at the age of 13, he was abused by Father Victor Stewart, who he viewed as “superhuman” and placed on a high pedestal as a young parishioner at St. Charles Lwanga on Chicago's south side.Instead of finding a mentor to help with his childhood dream of entering the priesthood, he found a tormentor.
“My whole world was shaken,” said David, now 42, recounting emotionally and physically painful episodes of sexual abuse and assault.
David remembers the aftermath of the first assault: Fr. Stewart menacingly told him, “You know you wanted it!” Then the priest ordered him to put his clothes on, and took him on a shopping spree at a nearby mall seemingly as a “reward.”
David was confused and scared, but after gathering up enough courage to go to the Chicago Police seeking justice and armed with over 75 names of individuals who had been molested, he was met with scorn and derision. Police laughed and accused him of lying, David recalled.
Living with shame and constant fear of retaliation from the Chicago police and those loyal to Fr. Stewart, David eventually left the church and abused alcohol and drugs to help him cope. He even attempted suicide by drinking a cocktail of Pepsi and anti-freeze.
David feels current Mayor Richard M. Daley shares responsibility, because he was the Illinois states attorney at the time, as well as Bishop Raymond Goedert, a well-respected member of the Chicago Archdiocese, who at that time was the Vicar of Priests.David alleges Bishop Goedert was complicit in the cover-up of rampant sexual abuse and is dissatisfied with the response from Francis Cardinal George, head of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
“Cardinal George has never even offered to sit down and pray with us,” said David, whose abuser, Fr. Victor Stewart, died in June 1994 at the age of 54.
Alicia has received a financial settlement; however, there are other aspects of the settlement, dealing with her medical and counseling needs that church officials have not lived up to, she said.
“It's not about the money, it never was,” said Alicia. “My life cannot be given back to me in a dollar amount.”
She said the abuse shattered her faith in the institution of the Catholic Church, but did not take away her faith in God. She is committed to helping others who may be suffering silently. Her three sons, age 30, 26 and 19, support her.
“I want to help somebody. I want somebody to know that they're not alone. I felt like I was totally alone, just all alone,” Alicia said.
(If you are a victim of sexual abuse, contact Black Advocates Universal Against Clergy Sexual Abuse at 888-592-7881.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
