The Secrets of St. Lawrence

By Richard N. Ostling

Anxiety crackled in the air last week as New York's John Cardinal O'Connor summoned all his 1,200 priests to afternoon-long, closed-door briefings. The urgent topic: how to handle child-molestation cases. The archdiocese faces two civil suits over misdeeds of clerics, and O'Connor warns that "a grenade could explode at any time, and another and another." He had reason to urge caution. Since 1984, most dioceses have been rocked by episodes of priestly abuse. And last week a long-awaited document administered a new shock to Midwest Roman Catholics.

In Wisconsin a lengthy investigation commissioned by the Capuchins said that nine friars stand accused of sexual misconduct at a rural boys' boarding school run by the venerable order. The report, which mentioned no names, disclosed that at least 21 students of the school -- St. Lawrence Seminary in Mount Calvary, Wisconsin -- say they were accosted by clerics between 1968 and 1992. The complaints against six ranged from enticement to intercourse with the children, offenses that would have produced criminal charges if they had been reported.

The pattern of molestation was compounded by students' reports of shocking administrative negligence by friars at the school. Some of the allegations emerged in response to inquiries that the investigators mailed to alumni. But several students had leveled accusations while they were enrolled at St. Lawrence and the staff did little. Nor were the boys' parents typically notified. The sins of St. Lawrence were not random incidents, asserts Robert L. Elliott, an attorney representing several alleged victims. "It wasn't a guy or a couple of guys. It was a generation of guys. They treated this as a hunting preserve."

The secrets of St. Lawrence began to emerge last November. After J. Peter Isely, 32, wrote a piece for the Milwaukee Journal on behalf of abuse victims, other alums contacted him. "I found out I wasn't alone," explains a man who says he was fondled by his geometry tutor. Others began revealing sinister memories of homosexual rape and coercive relationships. Weeks later, the Journal broke the first story on St. Lawrence. Like victims elsewhere, the St. Lawrence graduates have organized Project Samuel to share their psychic pain and to lobby for a cleanup. In April, Isely founded a therapy center specializing in clergy victims, at Rogers Memorial Hospital in Oconomowoc.

When last week's report was issued, St. Lawrence had already closed for the school year. Father Kenneth Reinhart, who completes his term as Midwest superior of the Capuchins this week, stated, "We cannot undo the past, no matter how much we would like to. We can only help those who were injured to overcome their trauma and lead normal lives." He also pledged future reforms. Elliott, however, complained that the report gave no sense of the suffering young victims endured. Says Isely: "When the priest stole my body, he stole my childhood."

The report is by no means the end of the matter. The investigators will give the order dossiers on accused friars and administrators. A former St. Lawrence brother, who has pleaded not guilty, will go on trial in September. A civil damage suit has been filed against the order, and others are likely. Meanwhile there is an eerie tie to another scandal. Father Gale Leifeld, identified by victims as an abuser, who was promoted to principal of St. Lawrence, later became academic dean of Sacred Heart School of Theology, near Milwaukee. The school recently removed Leifeld and another administrator accused of sexual harassment of five seminarians in the past two years. An interim report on those incidents is due this week.

As devastated as the Capuchins have been, they can regard last week's report as a noteworthy achievement. The order's leaders displayed courage in commissioning the independent investigation aimed at preventing future abuse. Although the report concludes that the Capuchins installed a good policy in 1988 urging employees to report suspected abuse, it proposes tighter procedures to make the Capuchin system a model for others.

Father Andrew Greeley estimates that the church across the U.S. spends $50 million a year on therapy for priests and damage judgments to victims -- and that 2,000 to 4,000 priests may have abused 100,000 underage victims. Some Catholics wonder whether the scandals point to underlying problems in the priesthood. Robert W. Pledl, a Catholic attorney representing St. Lawrence victims, is struck by how insensitive and defensive the clergy were. "I just don't think that would happen if priests had families of their own," says Pledl, who thinks mandatory celibacy creates a priestly world where "women and children are the enemy." Whether or not that is fair, the accumulating scandals signal the need for reform.

With reporting by Elizabeth Taylor/Oconomowoc