Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Linn Washington, Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend Edition
January 29 / 30, 2005
From the CounterPunch Archives
The
Case of Father Jerry
By
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
In 1996, a senior official in the Catholic
church confided to a friend of CounterPunch, the Catholic church
in America had thus far paid out $500 million to settle priest
abuse cases. On July 24, 1997, a Dallas jury imposed a $119.6
million in overall damages - the largest penalty ever levied
on the Catholic Church - for what was described as "grossly
negligent handling" of the sexual abuses perpetrated by
one priest. If the Dallas verdict holds up on appeal, the National
Catholic Reporter reckons the estimated amount of pay-outs related
to clergy sex abuse will approach $1 billion. [And this was seven
years ago, when this piece was written. AC. ]
Many of such cases never reach
the court filing stage and of those that do, the vast majority
never go to trial. Often the testimony of the victims is so powerful
that Church officials move immediately to negotiations for a
settlement. We've also been told that the go-ahead for pay-outs
often amounting to millions of dollars comes from Rome.
Like other orders in the vast
world network of Catholic organizations the Society of Jesus
is headquartered in Rome and we invite the Jesuits' top men to
consider as a matter of most urgent concern the case of Father
Jerold W. Lindner, known as Father Jerry. The case against him,
if believed, discloses a record not only of appalling sexual
predation on children as young as four, but also a callous negligence
on the part of his Jesuit superiors in California that we find
entirely breath-taking.
Lives are terribly damaged
by such abuse and though the testimony against Father Jerry has
been said to be damning it appears quite possible that there
may be a far wider scale to his predations. We are running this
story in part because we hope that anyone with knowledge of Father
Jerry's activities at least since 1975 will contact the attorney,
Michael Meadows of Casper, Meadows & Schwartz, in Walnut
Creek, California, who is acting for the plaintiffs.
The allegations against Father
Jerry, which he denies, entered the legal arena last year, when
Meadows filed suit on behalf of Bart and William Lynch. Twenty-four
years ago, when the boys were four and eight years old, they
attended a camp-out near the Bay Area of families associated
with the Christian Family Movement. As Kathleen Smith, a mother
involved with the Movement describes it, "CFM is an international
group of lay people, approved by the Vatican and the Oakland
California diocese". Mrs. Smith recalls that in the mid-1970s
she approached Father Jerry to act as the spiritual advisor for
the lay organization. He accepted and acted in that capacity
until 1979.
Bart was four, he remembers,
when Father Jerry assaulted him in the course of a CFM camping
trip. "Violence is the key issue, even more important than
the sexual abuse. I literally feared for my life. Whispering
in my ear, Father Jerry said, 'You want to live, don't you. Don't
tell anyone, or I'll kill you.'" This was after Father Jerry
had sodomized the four-year old. "I remember blood in my
pants and Father Jerry burying them in the woods."
Marylou T, a CFM parent, recalls
that afternoon. "It was a mystery to me as to why Father
Jerry ended up with the Lynch boys. That afternoon when it came
time to make dinner everyone came back except Bart, Will and
Father Jerry. People went in little groups looking for them.
Finally, after some time passed, Father Jerry and the two boys
appeared from the woods. Everyone clapped."
William Lynch remembers that
"during Memorial and Labor Day camp-outs Father Jerry forced
my brother and me to have sexual contact while he was sodomizing
me." We should stress here that these are not accounts evoked
by the dubious therapeutic processes associated with so-called
"recovered memory". These are recollections that the
Lynch brothers say that they have born painfully virtually all
their lives. Until recently a burden of shame prevented them
from discussing aspects of the assaults even between themselves.
As Meadows and his investigator
began to excavate Father Jerry's career they reached numerous
families in the Christian Family Movement and eventually came
in contact with two women now in their late twenties and early
thirties, both with stories to tell about Father Jerry. Court
documents describe Debbie L remembering that when she was about
eight Father Jerry was at her family's house for dinner. They
had fondue, one of her favorite meals. Because of the fondue,
Debbie thinks this might have been a special day for her, such
as her first communion. There was a tradition in her family that
if you dropped your bread in the fondue, you had to kiss someone
of the opposite sex. Debbie recalls Father Jerry deliberately
dropping his bread, then turning to her and winking, telling
her out loud that he would kiss her later.
After dinner Debbie went down
to the "sub-basement" possibly to play a game with
one of her siblings, or possibly to hide. In any case she ended
up alone. She heard her mother's footsteps on the floor just
above her. Then came Father Jerry's footsteps on the stair and
Debbie recalls "trying to run away". Father Jerry then
began "grabbing me and pinning me down on the bed which
was there." She remembers "him laying on top of me.
He had his robe on...kissing me..". She next recalls locking
herself in the bathroom and refusing to come out. When she was
finally made to come out, to say goodbye, "I couldn't even
look at him. "As noted above, Father Jerry has denied all
charges of sexual misconduct. Specifically, in the case of Debbie
L's deposition testimony Father Jerry has testified in a deposition
that, "I don't remember doing this. I don't think I did
it".
Krista N is a member of another
family in the Christian Fellowship Movement. Krista was about
seven at the time of an episode which occurred when she went
with her family to visit friends. She was wearing a dress belonging
to the daughter of another CFM family and looked "cute"
in it. In court documents Krista recollects Father Jerry "drinking
a lot before dinner" and then, when she and her friends
were playing in a room "Father Jerry appears in a doorway
and motions to me with his finger, indicating I should go over
to him".
Finally Father Jerry sat down
and put Krista on his lap. "He held onto me tightly for
a good half an hour and because he was a priest, I obediently
let him hold me. My back was to his front." When the call
for dinner occurred all the children ran out of the room, but
Krista says Father Jerry would not let her go. Then "he
turned me around to face him. He started kissing me and making
sighs. His lips were wet and he used his face and tongue all
over my face and neck...making strange sounds that I hadn't heard
before, sort of like sighs and groans".
Like the Lynch boys, both
Debbie and Krista have undergone painful difficulties adjusting
to adult circumstances, and have endured self-destructive behavior,
acute depression and an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame.
As Michael Meadows, the Walnut
Creek attorney acting for the Lynch brothers, embarked on the
case, the discovery process revealed the fact that Father Jerry's
brother Larry Lindner had complained to the Jesuits in 1991 about
molestation that Larry says he had personally witnessed.
Back in the early 1980s, Larry
Lindner was in the Los Angeles Police Department. "In l985,
while in Lancaster, California, where we lived for thirteen years,
I caught my brother molesting my daughter, Tiffany, who was 9
at the time."
In fact this was Easter Sunday,
1985, according to documents acquired in discovery. "Jerry
was in our living room with my daughter. The kitchen, living
room and dining room were all together. I was sitting at the
service bar at the pass-through between the dining room and the
kitchen, having a cup of coffee. I had been outside feeding the
animals, and had just returned inside the house and sat down
at the bar. I don't think Jerry saw me come back in.
"I could hear some conversation
about playing the tickle game. I was sitting there, watching
them play, and I began to really watch how they were playing.
They were just tickling. Then they starting playing 'blankie,'
and he would lay on the floor, on his back, and she would then
lie on top of him, as his blanket. He would grab her and roll
her on top of him, and then rub her up and down his body. All
of a sudden I saw that he had an erection.
"I told Tiffany to go
outside, and as she left, he rolled over onto his stomach. I
then told him to leave immediately, telling him that he was aroused
and that wasn't right. He wouldn't get up from the floor till
his erection subsided. He then got up and I followed him out
to his car. I was so afraid he would see my four children again.
"The kids wanted to know
where Uncle Jerry was. I told the kids that I caught Uncle Jerry
doing things that no adult should do to a child and I told him
to leave. We were all standing in the kitchen, and the kids were
acting strange. I asked the kids what was going on. The kids
said no, he's your brother. I said I don't care, I want to know.
The two girls told me that Jerry had kissed them by holding their
face real hard, and then sticking his tongue in their mouth.
"My oldest son then told
us a story about him, that Jerry had sexually molested him every
night during a family reunion. He was eleven years old at the
time. When I found that out, it made a lot of sense, because
every morning I would find my son curled up in a ball, in the
living room with the girls. I asked him why he wanted to sleep
with the girls. He answered, just because. However, my mom insisted
that he stay in the bedroom at night.
"My son told us that
he was orally copulated and sodomized.
"When asked, while standing
there in the farmhouse kitchen, why he didn't tell me at that
time, and he said because he was your brother. The children were
raised Catholic.
"The next day, after
work, I drove down to Loyola where Jerry was, and went into the
rectory and asked to talk to Jerry. I confronted him with what
my children said, and asked him whether my children were telling
the truth. Jerry said your children are telling the truth. I
told him, 'I should arrest you, but I want you to know that you
are sick, you are a pedophile and need help.' Jerry promised
to seek help, but didn't."
Larry Lindner has lived in
Klamath Falls, Oregon since 1990. Recently he learned of yet
another episode from those Lancaster years. Under the regular
pretext of taking his niece to the local store Father Jerry would
instead drive out into the desert and force his niece into various
sexual acts. Larry's daughter states the return drives were accompanied
by threats of her never seeing her family again should she tell
what happened.
In his confrontation with
his brother, Larry Lindner said that even though he was an LAPD
cop working in the criminal division at the time, he would not
press matters officially so long as Father Jerry sought help,
a condition to which Father Jerry readily agreed. Today, Larry
Lindner expresses great regret that he did not instantly call
LAPD's Exploited Child Unit. As things played out, it was more
than five years before Larry took action, impelled by news from
within his family leading him to believe that Father Jerry had
done nothing on his own behalf. Larry was also stirred to action
by his daughter, now 15, experiencing some painfully vivid recollections
of the assaults in Lancaster by her uncle.
We come now to the conduct,
in so far as it is known, of the Jesuits on being told of the
allegations against one of their order, a man who had been teaching
at the Jesuit-run Loyola High School in Los Angeles for 23 years.
Father Jerry is now 53. From 1964 to 1966 he did two years' novitiate
at what is now Sacred Heart Jesuit Center of Los Gatos. He graduated
from Loyola University, a Jesuit institution in Los Angeles,
in l968. He took a Master's degree from St Louis University in
1971 and a Master's in Divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology,
Berkeley, in 1976, whereupon he began his teaching career, starting
at San Francisco's St Ignatius High School.
In the early 1990s Larry Lindner
spoke about his brother's sexual assaults to his local priest
in Klamath Falls, who advised him to call the Rector, Father
Richard Cobb, at Loyola High School. He did so and told the Rector
about his brother's conduct, and his concerns about his brother
needing help.
According to Larry Lindner,
the Rector reacted by saying, "Oh my God, the handwriting
has been on the wall and all of us have been oblivious to this.
Your brother has been involved in different activities or clubs
with kids, from Boy Scouts to science fiction groups to chess
clubs, and he was also involved in taking youth to Europe."
(These were lengthy excursions, involving as many as 47 boys
on a trip.)
Larry Lindner says the Rector
thereupon advised him to call the Father Provincial, Paul Belcher,
the senior Jesuit in California, at the Novitiate in Los Gatos.
He left a message and a day later got a call from the Father
Provincial, to the effect that though Father Jerry denied all
charges he was being sent for "further evaluation".
Amid his conciliatory remarks, the Father Provincial probed,
asking Larry Lindner repeatedly what he wanted "out of this",
and was Larry looking for the Jesuits to pay the bills for his
children's therapy. According to Lindner, he said he wasn't interested
in money, only help for his brother. This time around, Lindner
was determined to follow up, to see what was being done. But
his subsequent attempts to reach the Father Provincial were rebuffed,
he says, until the final attempt, which found a curt and uninformative
Father Provincial.
Father Jerry has testified
in a deposition that the Jesuit response in 1992 was to allow
him back into the classrooms of Loyola High School after one
semester's hiatus at St Luke's psychiatric hospital in Silver
Spring, Maryland, for evaluation and treatment. St Luke's is
not a Jesuit institution. After this interlude, Father Jerry
resumed his previous life, including the summer trips to Europe
with young groups and the multifarious after-school activities.
In 1997, Casper, Meadows and
Schwartz filed on behalf of Will and Bart Lynch against the California
Western Province of the Society of Jesus, charging gross acts
of sexual misconduct against children by one of the order's members.
But before the formal charges
were laid, the Jesuits were made aware of the accusations against
Father Jerry made by the two Lynch brothers. In May of 1997,
so Father Jerry has testified, he met with the Father Provincial,
John Privett and also with Father Sonny Manuel, another senior
Jesuit. According to testimony, Manuel said it was okay for Father
Jerry to continue teaching at Loyola High, but that he couldn't
lead youth groups to Europe because the agency running the trips
would have to be informed of the lawsuit.
In early June of 1997 Father
Jerry has testified he was sent by the Jesuits to a California
psychiatrist, and then again told he could resume normal teaching
activities. In August of 1997 his superiors informed him he was
being placed on leave of absence and being sent back to St Lukes,
where he enrolled on September 1, for a nine-month session.
He returned to California
in May of 1998 and has said that the Jesuits informed him that
on completion of "the evaluation" at St Luke's he was
once again free to return to the classroom. Father Jerry has
indicated he's now looking for a change in career, though not,
it seems, vocation.
Father Jerry taught at Loyola
High School from 1982 to 1997. This Jesuit-run school is in a
predominantly Puerto Rican and Korean neighborhood and many of
the youth in the activities run by Father Jerry have come from
these two ethnic groups. Father Jerry's outreach campaigns to
youth extended beyond California, not just in the travels to
Europe but also to the Midwest during his sojourn in St Louis
when he was taking his Master's.
In St Louis, so his brother
says, Father Jerry won the sobriquet "Father Flanagan"
because, instead of staying in Jesuit housing, he took over an
abandoned house and with the help of car dealerships, fixed up
the place as a refuge for homeless boys, lived there with them.
Larry Lindner says that he gathered from family members that
Father Jerry left St Louis under a cloud.
On the face of it, the Jesuits
appear to have been strangely lax in the wake of appalling allegations
against one of their members. After Larry Lindner made his accusation
to the senior Jesuit in California, he says he was never again
contacted. Nor were his children. Following two sessions in St
Lukes, the Society of Jesus was content to see Father Jerry return
to the classroom with no hindrance from his Order.
Here at CounterPunch we applaud
the courage of the Lynch brothers in embarking on their struggle
and urge any of our readers with information on the topic to
contact the Lynchs' lawyer in Walnut Creek.
Michael Meadows can be contacted
at 925-947-1147. CP
|