Let’s not overlook the forgotten victims- the child raping clergy:
For nearly two decades, a small nonprofit group called Opus Bono Sacerdotii has operated out of unmarked buildings in rural Michigan, providing money, shelter, transport, legal help and other support to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse.
And while powerful clerics have publicly pledged to hold the church accountable for the crimes of its clergy and help survivors heal, some of them arranged meetings, offered blessings or quietly sent checks to this organization that backed the abusers, The Associated Press has found.
Catholic leaders say the church has no official relationship with the group. But Opus Bono successfully forged networks within the church hierarchy.
The Associated Press unraveled the continuing story of Opus Bono in dozens of interviews with experts, lawyers, clergy members and former employees, along with hundreds of pages of documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests.
In recent months, two of the group’s founders, Joe Maher and Peter Ferrara, were forced out after Michigan’s attorney general found Opus Bono had misused donated funds and misled contributors. A third co-founder, Father Eduard Perrone, was abruptly removed from ministry earlier this month after the AP began asking about an allegation that he had sexually abused a child decades ago. Perrone denies the allegation.
Can we publish the list of people donating to this group and then target them and raise their taxes, because if you have enough money to support a nonprofit that protects rapist priests, you have too much fucking money.
Booger
Any money on Tom Monaghan?
Kathleen
AP is doing God’s work here. WaPo has also continued its rigorous reporting on abuse of nuns and children all over the world including several articles about the archbishop in W Va who spent church money on luxuries and bribes for himself and still was not defrocked. If I weren’t on phone I’d provide links.
On another note, blessings to Jackals and their families in pain and suffering anxiety for loved ones (Imm & Immp, Eric and Emily, Scotian and anyone else).
Nicole
On a related note, I read through Dershowitz’s op ed from some years back arguing that the age of consent should be 15, and maybe younger because, after all, girls are going through puberty sooner these days. Basically, the piece was, “Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed,” except presented as a legal argument instead of a poor joke.
The sheer number of men in this world who feel they have a right to children’s bodies… I just can’t today. I heard “California Dreamin'” yesterday on my workout mix and for the first time really heard the excellent bass line and googled the song, and the bass player (Joe Osborn, of The Wrecking Crew fame), and the Mamas and the Papas and before I knew it, was reminded that, after John Phillips’ death, Mackenzie Phillips said he had sexually assaulted her and THERE’S NO ESCAPING CREEPY MEN IN THIS WORLD.
And they all protect each other.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Booger: just what I was thinking, Opus Dominos, isn’t he originally from Michigan?
Bostonian
Misled donors? Who the f donates money to support pedophile priests? I’d be fine with it if Opus Boner just embezzled all the money.
A Ghost To Most
Expose Opus Dei as well. Barr is rumored to be a member of that christian fascist org.
low-tech cyclist
This is one of those times when it’s a shame I don’t believe in a hell, because anyone associated with this organization ought to burn there.
Booger
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, and his Ave Maria Foundation is behind a number of rather extreme catholic initiatives.
Bostonian
@Nicole: Did Dershowitz start making more sense to you once you found out he’s a serial rapist of children? For me, it was like oh that explains it all.
BC in Illinois
Opus Bono Sacerdotii = A Work for the Good of the Priesthood
Also on their materials:
Tu Es Sacerdos In Aeternum = “you are a priest forever”
At the heart of this “work” is the unshakable conviction that the priests can do nothing wrong and can have done nothing wrong. The problem is . . . something else.
They have raised $8,000,000 dollars that could have better gone to work “for the good of” . . . someone else.
Kathleen
@Bostonian: A few Supremes as well.
Eric U.
@BC in Illinois: someone calculated that it costs the victim of rape $300000. $8 million isn’t even a start on that
Nicole
@Bostonian:
Oh, holy cow, yes. His whole career suddenly made sense.
I wondered why anyone would come out and write an op-ed like that. I mean, if I was doing something illegal and morally wrong, the last thing I’d want to do is draw attention to myself by publicly defending it. But, I think these men don’t believe they’re doing anything wrong; they believe society is wrong to judge them for it. Which is probably why Dershowitz also is just ducky with prostitutes being arrested and charged, but thinks it’s entirely unfair for johns to be.
Quinerly
@Bostonian: of interest:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/alan-dershowitz-was-obsessed-with-men-wrongfully-accused-of-rape
Betty Cracker
@Bostonian & @Nicole: Did y’all see the piece on Dershowitz in The New Yorker?
SFAW
@Nicole:
Not to pick nits, but I think “creepy” with respect to John Phillips, is, um, … inappropriate. He was a sick, evil motherfucker. Maybe not in all things, but I don’t think additional evidence is required to help us reach that conclusion.
BC in Illinois
@Eric U.:
Yes. “$8 million isn’t even a start” on the costs to the victims and survivors. And then add in, as a continuation of the crime, what it means to see people run to the help and support — and honor! — of those who committed the crime.
BC in Illinois
@Nicole:
You have stated a great truth:
SFAW
@Nicole:
Well, that’s because you’re rational, and presumably not evil.
Cite? I am truly not doubting you; I just don’t recall that, and I could use some more Dersh hate this AM. [I’m so old, I can remember when Dersh was an apparent “liberal,” and I used to (more-or-less) like him during those years. Of course, that ship sailed 25 years ago.]
TS (the original)
@SFAW:
Its in the link above from Quinerly
https://www.thedailybeast.com/alan-dershowitz-was-obsessed-with-men-wrongfully-accused-of-rape
rikyrah
ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Cole.
Ladyraxterinok
Thank you so much for calling attention to this. I just read about the group recently. It is simply inconscionable!!
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
He is a piece of shyt, and I want him ruined and disgraced.
rikyrah
@Bostonian:
cleared up a lot.
Ladyraxterinok
@A Ghost To Most: Aren’t some members of SCOTUS as well?
SFAW
@TS (the original):
What? Now I’m supposed to read stuff? Damn.
To be serious: thanks. I read the first 15 or 20 paragraphs of that article. Jesus H. Christ, WTF is wrong with that asshole?
SFAW
@Ladyraxterinok:
I think Scalia was, not sure about the others.
Pretty sure RBG isn’t, however.
BC in Illinois
@BC in Illinois:
This keeps on going. While the daughter of one of the founders was instrumental in turning the group in for fraud, and has now founded her own non-profit for the support of vicims . . .
“Men of Melchizedek?” Going back to where he started:
Letter to the Hebrews 6:20, 7:17 (from Psalm 110:4)
“You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.”
For these people, the only people needing support, the most “vulnerable” among us, are the “priests in need.”
Nicole
@Betty Cracker:
I did, thanks to Jezebel running a piece about it with link; thank you for posting the link here, as I think it’s an excellent read and well worth a jackal’s time.
I saw the original op-ed re: age of consent on Twitter because there’s been a lot of chatter there about the Dershowitz article and someone posted it.
Yarrow
@Bostonian: Not for me. I remember seeing him on the Today Show quite a few years ago. Probably when Epstein’s address book was published and flight logs made public. Dershowitz was on Epstein’s plane to his island and people were asking questions.
Dersh went absolutely apeshit on the Today Show about it. How dare people suggest he did something wrong! Followed by gobbledygook legalese about why whatever he did wasn’t wrong and he couldn’t wait to prove it. Etc. His words said one thing and his crazy eyes, demeanor and tone of voice said another. It was disturbing to watch. I didn’t know much about all of it at that point but he sure didn’t come across as someone who was innocent of whatever he was being asked about. Haven’t trusted him since.So none of this surprises me.
Gemina13
Here’s a thought for Michigan prosecutors: see if Opus Malo actually knew of individual priests’ guilt when helping them, and whether that help meets the standard for obstructing justice.
Nicole
@SFAW:
You’re not alone; my opinion of him was initially shaped by Reversal of Fortune (the film, which my judge grandfather made sure we all went out to see together) and it took me awhile to catch on to how awful he is.
Nicole
@SFAW:
¿Por qué no los dos?
PaulWartenberg
I’ve said this before: The Catholic Church is no longer a church, it is a criminal conspiracy. And one that is STILL ONGOING.
The minute they put the institution of the Church itself – its organization, its fundraising, its internal politics – ahead of the children being molested/raped, the Catholics lost all moral authority.
Tax the everloving shit out of them. They no longer deserve a religious exemption.
Bostonian
@TS (the original): What can one even say about that? I guess Dershowitz was rehearsing his arguments for the inevitable day when he got arrested for sex crimes. He’s the oldest of old boys, and disrespecting women while supporting their abusers is his lifestyle choice, from way back. I’d be more surprised to find out he hadn’t murdered a woman than to find out he had.
One of the parts of the whole Epstein rape factory story that interests me is this: “his Upper East Side mansion allegedly had a video-recording system. Giuffre was convinced Epstein used the devices to gather information on the men to use later as leverage”
I’m hoping there’s another shoe to drop. Or more?
Bostonian
@Nicole: And now it makes sense. Of course he defended a guy who killed his wife. It’s not about everybody’s right to a fair trial. It’s that he thinks guys should be able to kill their wives and get away with it.
Ian G.
The “best” part of this is that contributions to this group were tax deductible!
Somewhere, there are elderly Nazis reading this who are grumbling that the money they gave the Church to smuggle Adolf Eichmann and Ante Pavelic to Argentina and Spain didn’t get them a tax break.
Nicole
@Bostonian: Yeah, I agree. When I read the article Betty linked to, above, the impression I was left with was, this is a man who really, really hates women.
TS (the original)
@Bostonian:
I seriously doubt that it ever will – there are so many of them covering for each other – that house of cards would collapse if anyone released tapes. After Kavanaugh was approved by those upstanding men of good governance in the Senate, I virtually gave up that any of them – including trump would ever pay for what they have done. For all the toadies in congress who fell into line behind trump – they must have seen that as having better odds than calling him out. They cover for each other & always will.
I would like to be proven wrong – but I doubt it in my lifetime.
Barbara
@SFAW: What? I do remember seeing a short piece on McKenzie Phillips’ long road back from addiction, and in an interview with her ex-husband, he said something like, “It was hard to have a normal life with her because she grew up with no rules of any kind.” And then, very slowly, “And I mean, no rules at all.” And I wondered what kind of awfulness lay unspoken in that statement.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
SFAW
@Nicole:
I’ve lived in the Boston area since the 1970s. When he first came to prominence — well, “first” as far as I knew — he was the go-to guy for pro-civil-liberties comments. Because of that, I wasn’t really aware of his other “issues.”
Re: Reversal of Fortune never saw it, probably never will. But considering I never doubted Claus did it — I had heard of a husband who actually DID kill his wife using the insulin method, long before Bulow tried — the movie probably would not increase my “respect” for Dersh.
SFAW
@Barbara:
I don’t remember if it was Michelle or Mackenzie Phillips who I first heard talking about it, but it was pretty bad.
elm
@Betty Cracker: From that piece, it appears he practices what he preaches in regards to lying to the media.
OGLiberal
@Booger: He was mentioned in the full AP story.
Nicole
@Barbara: https://people.com/books/mackenzie-phillips-forgiving-father-relationship-son/
She first came out with it a couple of years after John Phillips died. Sounds like she’s made peace with it, which is fine; she’s the one who needs and deserves peace. I will continue to think of him as a creep.
Boris, Rasputin's Evil Twin
In a way, it’s a decent idea to keep the pederast priests in one place, away from the public. Sealed doors and windows sound good too. Arson sounds better yet. Letting the bastards die in a fire will give them some prep for Hell.
Starfish
@Nicole: In this story from 2018, someone is claiming that she was definitely with Dershowitz when she was a minor.
hitchhiker
I wonder if they took in the Traverse City priest our family thinks abused my brother. He’d be very old by now.
He was one of those super-beloved types who showed up in the 70s with longish hair and a warm demeanor. I’d left home by then & wasn’t interested in anything to do with church, but my younger siblings were still forced to go each and every Sunday, and the boys did the altar boy thing.
My brother was an altar boy during this priest’s tenure. He became a pathological liar, a cocaine dealer, a federal witness and cooperator against other cocaine dealers, a repeated insurance fraudster, and finally a suicide.
My family is full of dysfunction and whack, but this brother was on a whole nother level, and he did completely invert by the time he was a junior in high school. As a little kid, he was ordinary & sweet.
The priest — much later — admitted to having a single “relationship” with one of the teenagers (not my brother) in that parish, and was sent off in disgrace. I’d find him if I could and ask.
Msb
Sigh.
Every time – every time the Church has a chance to show it’s changed, and thinks more of parishioners’ welfare than its own, and of the welfare of women and children as well as men, it shows that it hasn’t changed at all.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: He was a very good defense attorney in his prime. I know I probably differ from most people here, but I generally do not judge lawyers based on their clients – especially criminal defense lawyers. As fucked up as our judicial system is, it would be worse without people who are willing to defend everyone.
Matt
They can’t even stop themselves from diddling the BANK ACCOUNTS
TenguPhule
@PaulWartenberg:
So roughly 600 years ago then.
The Church never got better, they got better publicists.
Feathers
@Omnes Omnibus: The problem is that it is too easy to go from “good defense lawyer” to “Well actually, when you think about it, the age of consent IS way too high!”
This is a huge part of the problem Harvard is having with campus rape. Students want not to be raped. The attitude of a significant portion of the law school faculty seems to believe that a defendant’s presumption of innocence means that a victim’s testimony must necessarily be ignored if it conflicts with that of the accused. If you think I’m exaggerating, there was a documentary on rape which included one at Harvard Law School. There were then local articles complaining it got the facts and timeline of the incident entirely wrong. Of course, what that meant was that it gave the victim’s story. But the article defending the Law School didn’t even bother allowing for the story of two sides, because… the sacred presumption of innocence.
Apologies for typos, incoherence, angry and on phone.
Roger Moore
@Boris, Rasputin’s Evil Twin:
This is one of my hangups with laws restricting the rights of convicted sex offenders. I think there can and should be reasonable restrictions on people convicted of preying on children, but a lot of the rules are so restrictive that they effectively make it impossible for them to live anywhere. If you’re going to place so many restrictions on somebody after they get out of prison that it’s nearly impossible for them to live and have a job without violating them, you might as well just keep them in prison permanently rather than letting them out and then picking them up again as soon as they fail to live up to your impossible restrictions. It would make even more sense to create a place where they are allowed to live that’s at least somewhat less restrictive (and expensive for the public) than prison and let them live there.
Tehanu
And nobody has made the obvious pun so far? Well, I won’t either.
J R in WV
I’m not particularly a fan of organized religion, any of them. The more I learn about specific religions, the lower my regard for them, with the exception of a few of the more liberal traditional groups. But fomenting hate, opposing freedom of groups, like women or LGBTQ folks, that’s not religious to me.
And the Roman Catholic church — which forced people into cathedrals, barred the doors, and set fire to church, prisoners and, all back in the good old days — hasn’t improved much over the centuries. Naked power, cruelty, forced compliance with the wishes of perverts and pederasts, that’s the style of many of the power brokers and controllers of that cult. Despicable. All over the world.
No surprise that wealthy members of the church, not inner circle priests and bishops, just wealthy powerful men, always men, pervert the teachings of the Christ. I don’t believe JC was the son of god, nor a god himself, but his teachings have value. Not Paul’s, not the early church leaders and “saints” but those red letter verses. Tom Jefferson’s bible…
Teaching positive morality is one thing, preaching adherence to power is completely different.
sgrAstar
@J R in WV:
Thanks for this elegant statement, JRinWV. The idea is fundamental, but I’m not sure that people get your crucial distinction. I heard George Lakoff give a terrific talk about the neurological foundations of authoritarianism- your comment sums it up. That deference to order and power is the foundatio of “conservatism”, and may be a hardwired feature of some human brains. Let’s make sure they are relegated to minority status…forever.
✊