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[W]hen a Pennsylvania grand jury report this August detailed startling patterns of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, dioceses around the country found themselves under new scrutiny. In Vermont, the effect was compounded by a major Buzzfeed News investigation into child abuse at the long-shuttered St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington.
Many orphanage victims, and survivors of sexual abuse by priests, had taken their cases to court throughout the 1990s and 2000s. But for modern observers, the stories of these survivors seemed fresh.
“They read it as if it’s a new story,” says Bishop Christopher Coyne about the Buzzfeed report. “I got emails from people saying, ‘You need to close that orphanage. Shame on you.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, it’s been closed since 1974.'”
But Coyne acknowledges that abuse did occur — and that the church needs to face it. He’s pledged to work with law enforcement on a new investigation sparked by the orphanage story. And he says a recently formed committee will release a full list of abusers within the Diocese, which he hopes will encourage more victims to come forward.
“Just to have one person with a collar, in a position of authority, who hears their story and says, ‘I believe you,’ is a very healing moment for them,” Coyne says.
The bishop’s approach is a break from the church’s previous pattern of secrecy. But for those who have fought on behalf of survivors, the years lost to battling the diocese in court have meant some survivors will never see justice.
“I don’t expect you’re going to see anything significant come out of virtually any of these [investigations] because so much time has passed,” says Jerry O’Neill, a Burlington attorney who’s represented dozens of church abuse victims. O’Neill notes that no perpetrators have served jail time for abuse charges — and with statutes of limitations now expired, none are likely to.
On this week’s podcast, Bishop Christopher Coyne talks about helping abuse victims feel heard. Jerry O’Neill discusses the pursuit of justice for survivors. And VTDigger’s Kevin O’Connor describes his decades of reporting on the troubles of Vermont’s Catholic Church.
[showhide type=”pressrelease” more_text=”Read full transcript” less_text=”Hide full transcript” hidden=”yes”]
Josh Shapiro: Good afternoon. Josh Shapiro.
On August 14, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General announced the results of a major grand jury investigation into the Catholic Church.
Josh Shapiro: And I’m here, finally, to announce the results of a two year grand jury investigation into widespread sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church, and the systematic cover up by senior church officials in Pennsylvania and at the Vatican.
This report echoed some of the discoveries made by the Boston Globe in the early 2000s. You might have seen some of those discoveries in the movie Spotlight. And like that first wave of reporting, it tipped off new scrutiny about clergy abuses here in Vermont.
Kevin O’Connor: That made national news because it was the first time that an Attorney General had done such a wide encompassing review of church related abuse. That, as a result, made people start looking at their own parishes and their own dioceses, and say, what’s going on here?
Kevin O’Connor has been reporting on the response from the Vermont diocese.
Kevin O’Connor: In Vermont’s case, that Pennsylvania report came out at the same time that an author from a website called BuzzFeed came out with a investigation she had spent four years on, about the St. Joseph Orphanage in Burlington—
Christine Kenneally (in Buzzfeed video): Towards the end of our first interview together, I told Sister Brazil that I’d heard a story about a man pushing a girl out of a second story window at St. Joseph’s. And she said, yes, that was me.
Kevin O’Connor: —and did a story about what she found in terms of abuse that had been reported in the past, when these instances were brought to court in the 1990s.
What’s interesting, for those of us who have reported in the past, there wasn’t much that was new. But it’s coming in a new moment, not only with the Pennsylvania grand jury report, but also with the #MeToo movement. And I think there’s much more awareness and much more sensitivity about these kind of issues.
What’s our sense of the scope of this problem here in Vermont? How much abuse does it appear took place here in the state?
Kevin O’Connor: Vermont’s issue started around the Second World War, up until probably the 1970s and the 1980s, when you actually look at diocesan records. A lot of the allegations involving the orphanage are of — when we say child abuse, it’s on children who were hit, children who were berated. There was some sexual abuse as well. But there’s more of a predominance of sort of physical and verbal abuse.
In terms of the orphanage cases, the priest misconduct cases are primarily priests who are taking advantage of underage boys sexually.
About 100 orphanage residents went to court in the 1990s, seeking some kind of justice, and most of them actually settled with the church out of court. So there were at least 100 people who came forward to say they felt that they were abused. Obviously, there could be many more. Those are the numbers that came forward.
Likewise, there were about 40 altar boys, former altar boys, who came forward with lawsuits between 2002 and 2013. So it was a case where, these are the numbers in terms of the people coming forward — I think there’s a belief that there were more that were abused.
The person who’s now tasked with responding to these reports is Bishop Christopher Coyne, the leader of the statewide Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington.
Christopher Coyne: They read it as if it’s a new story, or what’s happening now. I’ve got emails from people originally saying, ‘you need to close that orphanage. Shame on you.’ And I’d say, ‘well, it’s been closed since 1974.’
When you’re dealing with stories, which were old stories — but that doesn’t discount the fact that there were children who were mistreated in the orphanage, and some of them were abused by clergy, and by employees at the orphanage. But you know, when you look back, ‘92, ‘93, that’s 25 years ago. That’s more than a generation. And there are people who are alive now who weren’t alive then, and might have only been seven or eight years old back then. You’re talking whole generations of people who never heard those stories.
It puts you in a really strange position. Because, I mean, you are the leader of this organization. But like you said, you’re talking about things that happened generations ago. What’s it like for you, being caught in the middle of that?
Christopher Coyne: Well, I try never make it personal. I mean, I was 15 years old in 1974, or just starting high school. All this stuff predates me as an adult. But because I wear the collar, and because I’m a bishop, I do bear the mantle of responsibility in the eyes of many people, and never try and fall into the ‘woe is me, poor me’ thing.
It can be frustrating. I want to say, look, you know, I’m as upset and frustrated about these stories as you are, but I really didn’t have anything to do with the committing of these crimes, and these things against children, and these allegations. I didn’t have anything to do with any kind of cover up. I wasn’t involved in the ‘92, ‘93 settlements.
I get frust—I get like, actually get kind of panicky at times, like what do you — what can I do? What do you want me to do? I don’t know what to — how to fix this. How can you fix something that’s that old, you know?
And people say, Well, you can apologize. And I say, Okay, I’m sorry that this happened, you know, and I want to reach out to the people who were hurt. And I listen to them and comfort them as best I can. I say, what do you need me to do? What do you need from me now?
Kevin O’Connor: There was a sense in the past, for a need for justice. I think there’s still the same need. But I think there’s also just simply a need for people to say this happened.
How has the church’s response to those types of claims being brought changed?
Kevin O’Connor: I think the church’s belief in the beginning, or the church’s hope in the beginning, was by settling for monetary compensation with those who are accusing, that they could keep the allegations quiet. In the case of the orphanage residents, they were offered a small sum of money to, in effect, not pursue their claims any farther.
I think at the time in the 1990s, they felt that the abuse had taken place too far in the past to actually be able to be prosecuted under Vermont statute of limitations. And so they felt the need to settle. A lot of the former altar boys who went and brought cases in the 2000s felt strongly that part of why they wanted to go to court was to actually put this information out there, to start publicizing that. Definitely now, I think there’s a feeling, especially with the #MeToo movement, that a lot of the cases, even if they don’t meet the statute of limitations, even if they are too old to prosecute criminally, people are wanting to start to really tell the stories and say, ‘this has happened.’
One person who’s been fighting for this to happen long before this year is Burlington attorney Jerry O’Neill.
Jerry O’Neill: I was litigating cases involving the church in the 1990s. I had two specific cases of two women who’ve been molested by the same priest. Got stonewalled almost completely by the diocese. Except finally, for an order from a judge that they had to produce a file on that priest. I couldn’t get the rest of the files at that point.
And then how did that change?
Jerry O’Neill: It does go back to Cardinal Law and what he did in Boston. Because his actions in Boston, and thumbing his nose at the survivors, caused people to contact lawyers all over the country, including me. And so people here in Vermont who have been abused contacted me. I filed suit.
And in 2002, the world had changed. The same judge who gave me one file in 1995, ordered the diocese to produce files going back to 1950 of clergy who had abused children. They were still restricted in the sense that there was a protective order. I couldn’t make them public. But I could use them potentially in cases.
Kevin O’Connor: He is probably one of the few lawyers if not the few Vermonters in the state who’s actually seen most, if not all, of the Vermont Catholic Church personnel files because of court orders that he has brought forward not only on the diocese, but also on the Attorney General’s Office, seeking that information. So Jerry has represented a lot of people individually, but as a result of that, collectively has a knowledge of the entire issue and all of the abuse that most other lawyers in the state do not have.
When you first started receiving these files, what was your response? Were you surprised?
Jerry O’Neill: I grew up as a Catholic in Vermont. I grew up as an altar boy in Vermont. I went to Catholic schools and went to Catholic college, nominally Catholic law school. I wasn’t practicing as a Catholic at that point. But I thought I knew the faith pretty well. I was utterly outraged. What I saw there, it was infuriating. Nothing that you could ever dream you would ever see that a Catholic Diocese will permit to occur was found in those files.
I asked Bishop Coyne why he believed the church tried to keep these things secret.
Christopher Coyne: There was a whole kind of a complacency within society that saw abuse of a child as not only something that was wrong with — something that should be covered up, that was shameful. That you didn’t want your son to be exposed to the kind of, I don’t know, judgment that would come if people knew that he’d been abused. The judgment that would come upon you as parents because you allowed your son to be abused. There was a shame in being a victim, which is just — when you look back at it now it’s really pathological. And a lot of ways in terms of like being a great lie.
And I think the church took advantage of that, I think we obviously took advantage of that. You know, we say, you’d have bishops and others saying, ‘you really don’t want to let this — you don’t want your son to be exposed to people knowing what happened to him. We really should keep this quiet.’ So they play on the family, but they’d also play on: ‘you don’t want the scandal in the church, you know. You don’t want to hurt the church.’ So they play on the good faith of people.
I think there were efforts to try and limit the legal exposure of the church, there was efforts to try and limit the scandal, there was a kind of warped desire to protect the child, if you could even say that, from exposure. You know, ‘let’s just kind of keep this quiet, too.’ And the church took advantage of that. And it was only as time went on that we began to realize that when children are abused, they’ve done nothing wrong. That there’s nothing shameful that they’ve done. They’re the innocent victim, and so they should not be held up — they should not in any way, be blamed for this or be exposed to any kind of shame for this. Thank God, we’re there now. But that was an easy kind of an excuse, something easy to take advantage of. Which we did.
Kevin O’Connor: The current Bishop is in an interesting place. He was actually the spokesperson for the Diocese of Boston when the 2002 scandal was reported by the Boston Globe. And his predecessor as spokesperson for the diocese in Boston was getting a lot of criticism for not being open, for not being honest. And the feeling was, this is a time for transparency. And so the current Bishop saw that and recognized that the way that the church really needed to minister in that moment was to be more like a priest and less like a lawyer.
Christopher Coyne: One of the biggest mistakes that was done by the Archdiocese of Boston in terms of its response to the media stories, the Boston Globe Spotlight stories, and then the stories that just blew up was that we lawyered up. And when I first got involved in being the spokesperson, every time I’d try and get an answer, every time I’d try and respond to a legitimate question, I’d have the answer, I’d be ready to go out. And then the lawyers would come in and say you can’t say that, because you’re exposing us, by doing that, to discovery. Because they’re going to say well, Father Coyne got up and said this, and they’re going to want to… So the lawyers are driving the bus. And if you’re going to be a pastor, and you’re going to be pastoral, you have to pay attention to what your lawyers are telling you because they’re they’re good men and women, and they’re trying to, you know, trying to keep you safe from legal exposure and everything else. But that’s not the pastoral approach. Because you end up being less than transparent, you end up hiding behind things. You say, ‘No comment.’
What is the pastoral approach?
Christopher Coyne: That approach is to be honest and transparent. And just to admit, if you know, to say yes. To try and say that didn’t happen, to try and cover up, isn’t going to work. And the best approach is to say, yes, this happened, and I’m so sorry. And we deserve whatever was going to happen in terms of punishment. And is there any way that I can make this better? You know, help me help you now? Again, as someone who didn’t do it, how can I help? You know, that’s the pastoral approach is, you know, trying to heal, trying to be open, trying to be honest. And that’s what I tried to do here.
Kevin O’Connor: And so he is now coming to Vermont, and really practicing what he did in Boston now in Vermont. So he has been very forthcoming in terms of information. He’s been very forthcoming in terms of promising files, personnel files, to local and state authorities. He has released abuse survivors from many non disclosure agreements. I think his feeling is, the reality is, this did happen. The church has spent too many years trying to cover it up. And the only way to move forward is to start acknowledging it and dealing with it.
Christopher Coyne: You can’t cover this stuff up, it’s always going to see the light of day and the only way you can purify yourself of cancer is to exorcise it from you. Let us see the light of day.
It sounds like one of the ways he’s doing that is cooperating with those local and state authorities. What do we know about the investigations that they’ve said that they are undertaking right now?
Kevin O’Connor: The local and state authorities include the Burlington Police, the Vermont State Police, the Chittenden County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Vermont Attorney General’s Office. They collectively decided to come together and work jointly, because of the fact is, some of the cases do involve the orphanage in Burlington, and some of the cases involve altar boys who were throughout the state. So it was a way for — rather than have individual complaints coming to individual organizations, they would work together. They’re challenged by the fact that because there isn’t an existing structure for them to do that, they’re having to, in effect, figure this out as they go. That can be a little frustrating for, I know, some of the abuse survivors who want a little bit more of a sense of what the framework is going to be. And at the same time, I think the investigators’ feeling is until they actually see what they’re working with, it’s hard for them to give a sense in terms of a roadmap or a timeline in terms of where they’re going to go and how they’re going to get there.
Some may ask what good can come of an investigation of an institution nearly four decades after it closed. There’s no doubt that this investigation comes far too late to help all the victims of the alleged crimes.
I asked Jerry O’Neill, after years of litigation, what he thought we might see from this investigation.
Jerry O’Neill: I think here in Vermont, that ultimately will result in nothing. That’s not a criticism of those doing the investigation. I respect the work they’re doing and I’m glad they’re doing it. But the criminal statutes of limitations, as far as I can see, for virtually all of the claims that are made long since expired. They expired as to the child sex abuse ones. So I don’t expect you’re going to see anything significant come out of virtually any of these, because so much time has passed. Criminal statutes of limitations have expired, so I don’t think you’ll see much.
I’m curious, just from your perspective, what, regardless of a statute of limitations, what would you consider justice for survivors of abuse, people who have been wronged by the church?
Jerry O’Neill: Some of the bishops going to jail. And some of the perpetrators going to jail. It’s hard to distinguish which is worse, those who abused children — all of them should have gone to jail — or the bishops have covered up for them. There was one Bishop here in Vermont, going back one more Bishop, John Marshall. He’s dead. I dearly wish he was alive. And there was a criminal statute of limitations that could permit the prosecutors here to go after him for his shameful conduct. It covered up, protected priests, for molesting children. And they knew exactly what he was doing. His own documents show that. That’s what I would like to see is those people be criminally prosecuted.
For those who haven’t passed away, is there any hope of that happening?
Jerry O’Neill: I don’t think in Vermont there is. Because the statutes of limitations, criminal statutes of limitations, were relatively short at the time. They were not, as far as I know, extended before the statute of limitations had expired, this even existed. And once that’s happened, you can’t extend a criminal statute of limitations.
So what do you think happens next over the course of the next couple years, what happens now?
Jerry O’Neill: I don’t think much.
Kevin O’Connor: They’re working with those who have been abused to try to redefine what they view justice is, and to specifically sit down and say, we may not be able to bring criminal charges, this may not look like the way you want it to look on a one hour court show where at the end of it, the gavel goes down and someone goes to jail or someone is sentenced. This may be more of a truth and reconciliation process, where at least the stories are told. There’s a sense that — there’s an acknowledgement that it did happen. And in the case of the church, there’s an obvious acknowledgment that yes, they do see that it did happen, and they want to work to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Bishop Coyne said one way they hope to do this is by releasing a full list of perpetrators’ names.
Christopher Coyne: What happens is you put the names out, and then all of a sudden, like, within a couple weeks, you’ll get a phone call from someone. They’ll say, I saw Father Smith’s name was on that list, can I come in to talk to you? So okay, ‘I also, you know, I thought I was the only kid that he ever did this to…’ Because they see the list, all of a sudden, you find out that they weren’t alone, that they there were other kids, and they want to talk. A lot of times people are coming and — they say, ‘I don’t want money. I just want to talk to you. I want to tell you what happened.’ So oftentimes, when you put a list out, you find other people who need to be helped, because they were hurt.
What do you hear from those people? I’m curious, what do you see as what the survivors of this abuse want now, in the modern day?
Christopher Coyne: When they come in, and I talk to them, and I say, just tell me what you think I need to hear. And they’ll tell me their story. And oftentimes, you know, they’ll make reference to what happened to them, but they won’t be they don’t get into details. But they’ll just tell me, this is when it happened. This is what happened in general. And then they’ll talk about really kind of the fallout in their life. And these are adults, you know, years later, who were in their 60s and 70s. And they’re telling you that they’ve because of what happened to them, that they’ve never really been entered into a relationship with somebody else, to trust them. Even, you know, when they’re with other people, they seem — their spouse can say they seem distant, there’s always like a hidden compartment. Some will tell me that they’ve never shared the story with anybody else.
They’ll talk about the loss of faith, how they can never go to a church again. Now they don’t believe, they’re so angry God and leave. You know, they’ll have family and friends, and they’ll say Why? Why didn’t you go to the funeral? And they say, I just don’t go church anymore. And they don’t tell them, you know. So this is a cost is a long term cost to all this.
And I always try and say, how can we help you now? You know, how can I help you? Maybe we discover faith? How can I help you? Maybe we can get you some counseling, you know, help you deal with those issues of relationships and stuff. I think more than anything else, they just want to tell their story, because for the longest time, they didn’t think they’d be believed, or they did tell their story and they weren’t believed. And so just to have one more person with a collar, in a position of authority, who hears the stories and say, I believe you, is a very healing moment for them.
What’s it like for you, kind of absorbing their stories?
Christopher Coyne: You know, there’s a tradition within the Catholic Church of a sacrament that we call confession, and reconciliation. And when when a priest sits and listens to somebody who pours out their brokenness and their sinfulness in their lives, and ask God’s forgiveness, through the blessing of the priest, and not the priest’s forgiving, but he’s just the instrument. I think, over time, you learn that you’re just kind of an instrument. That it’s not personal to you. That you’re just there to be a means of healing. And I think that kind of approach to confession, when you’re hearing confessional stuff from people were victims, I think that that allows me — not to be distant, because my heart’s always they are when they’re telling me — but to say, How can I help this person? How can I heal this person?
I’m curious, you you hear some of these really difficult stories that survivors come in and talk to you about. And you’ve been there in Boston through this whole broad ranging investigation. You’ve been here in Vermont through this whole recent wave of news. Does it ever make you think differently about your own faith? Or about your perception of the church?
Christopher Coyne: No, because my faith, I mean — I’ve been going through this since 2002, and there were times when I said, God, I’ve been going through this for 16 years, this is never going to end. But my faith in my church and my reasons for being a priest did not depend on any priest, or any person. It’s always my faith in God and my faith in Jesus Christ, as a Catholic, and my faith in the Catholic Church. It’s sinful and human. It’s broken. Sometimes it’s more broken than other times.
You know, if you leave a little sin, it just keeps spreading and spreading and spreading. It’s just the nature of immoral and sinful behavior. It never just stays in one spot. It tends to leak out in all kinds of ways. So I’ve never had my faith in the church challenged by this, because it never depended upon my faith in any particular human person. But it has changed me in the sense that I realized the most important thing is to be an authentic and holy man. And that’s the only way in which I can live my life, is to do that. If we lived that life as priests, we wouldn’t have done those things. And that’s, to me, that’s one of the biggest scandals is that we didn’t live the life that we were called to.
The bishop asked me to include one other message to listeners.
Christopher Coyne: If you have been abused by clergy or any adult who work for the church, anybody that’s listening to this, please do not be afraid to contact us, because we’ll we’ll listen to you. When people come in and they tell us, tell me, the story, when they tell my staff the story, our starting point is, we believe you. Don’t be afraid to contact us.
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