Category: Independent Reporting

TOR reassigned and defended priest after sexual assault

By Damien Fisher

 

Dakota Bateman was a new Catholic, in love with the Eucharist, when she decided to go to the Franciscan University at Steubenville.

“It was the Catholic university, and my faith had been extremely important to me,” Bateman said. 

Bateman, now 27, found her faith on her own after years of trauma, according to documents she shared. She had suffered through years of childhood abuse, including sexual abuse, making her especially vulnerable to predators.

It was at FUS where she met Fr. Benedict Jurchak, 45, a man who would become in short order her confessor, her spiritual advisor, and then her abuser. But even after Bateman came forward with her abuse in 2018, the Franciscan Friars of the Third Order Regular, also known as TOR, continued to put Jurchak into active ministry, reassigning him twice after she complained. Jurchak may or may not have been given what amounts to a written warning about his abuse.

Officials with the TOR declined requests for comment about Jurchak, his status, and his continued active ministry. We were unable to reach Jurchak about this story.

According to a police report, a letter from a canon lawyer who investigated the matters, and other documents provided by Bateman, Jurchak used his position and knowledge to groom her. Jurchak would eventually admit to a vague “boundary violation,” and the order continues to stand by him. Although Batemen reported his sexual assault to the police, to his superior, and to the diocese, the TOR issued a statement that there was a “single allegation” against him that “could not be substantiated.” 

Bateman struggled with suicidal ideation as a teen, as well as anxiety, depression and eating disorders, as a result of her childhood abuse. She also had difficulty forming trusting relationships. Jurchak knew all of this.

The two became close while she attended FUS. He was her spiritual director while she was a student there, and they remained close after she graduated in 2015. Throughout their relationship as friends before and after graduation, Bateman said Jurchak kept using his knowledge of her past to break down protective aspects of the relationship. Looking back, there were many red flags, she said. 

“He kept moving the boundaries,” she said.

In February of 2018, Jurchak visited Bateman at her home in upstate New York. During this visit, Jurchak got physical with Bateman. Based on the journals Batemen kept at the time, Jurchak engaged in unwanted sexual touching, behavior that is considered assault by law enforcement. These assaults continued over several days. Bateman froze during one of the initial assaults, a holdover from her past trauma, something Jurchak knew about. 

“He used my previous assault as a roadmap. He did exactly what the guy before previously did,” she said in a video. 

In June of 2018, four months later, Bateman contacted Jurchak’s provincial superior, who confronted Jurchak, according to the canon lawyer’s letter. Jurchak denied that anything took place. The matter was dropped until February of 2019, when Bateman contacted her local diocese. 

At this post, Jurchak’s superior again spoke to him, and the priest denied wrongdoing. Instead, Jurchak told his superior that Bateman “came on to him” during the Feb. 2018 incident. He claimed her behavior forced him to stop offering her spiritual direction. Jurchak’s superior decided at this point to let the matter drop again.

Bateman next went to police in June 2019 to report the sexual assaults, but that investigation ended up being flawed. Bateman was initially unable to get a copy of the report she made to a detective for more than a month, and when she finally got it, she saw that it was full of errors and missing key details about the assaults.

Bateman engaged the help of JoAnna Brezee, an advocate with Vera House, a sexual and domestic assault crisis center in Syracuse, New York, and together they went to police to straighten out the report. The detective they spoke with was aggressive and confrontational, according to Brezee.

“I believe a report was never written and when she called asking for it, he found his old notepad and made one based off the few things he wrote down,” Brezee would later write in an email to a supervisor.

Though police declined to prosecute, the TOR finally responded to Bateman’s allegation by hiring a civil lawyer to investigate the case in August of 2019, more than a year since the allegations were first made and after the order twice decided that Jurchak was not at fault.

But Bateman said the order’s civil lawyer made a hash of the investigation and got major details wrong.

“I don’t think there is a single thing from him that is correct,” she said.

The result of the civil lawyer’s investigation was a finding that Bateman’s allegations were “unsubstantiated.” However, under pressure from the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, a canon lawyer was brought in to investigate. This canon lawyer found her story credible, said Batemen, and would recommend punishment for Jurchak.

“For my part, I would note that “unsubstantiated” and “not credible” are two markedly different things,” the canon lawyer wrote.

Bateman provided us with a copy of the letter the canon lawyer wrote to Fr. Joseph Lehman, the head of the TOR. The canon lawyer’s name is redacted from the letter. According to the letter, Jurchak lied during the initial conversations with his superiors about Bateman’s allegations. He would later admit to “boundary violations,” but not the sexual assaults.

“Father Jurchak does not seem to dispute that he spent time alone with Ms. Bateman in her home over the course of several days, in fact, he acknowledged that a boundary violation of some sort occurred and texted Ms. Bateman to apologize for being ‘gross,’” the canon lawyer wrote. “This all happened despite the fact — and one could reasonably argue, perhaps because of the fact — that he was well aware of Ms. Bateman’s vulnerabilities around healthy boundaries and her fears of being rejected/abandoned.”

The canon lawyer stated that Jurchak was oblivious to the fact he had created the situation, and recommended he had a penal precept placed on file. The penal precept would be a written warning that if another such incident took place, he could be suspended, according to the letter. (A penal precept is intended as a canonical procedural step used to establish a situation in which superiors can punish a situation if it repeats. It’s intended to be used when a priest commits problematic behavior that can be corrected.) The canon lawyer also recommended that the TOR pay for Bateman’s therapy.

Whether or not Jurchak received the penal precept is unknown. Jurchak had been a vocations director while at FUS, recruiting men for the order. Soon after the investigation, he was assigned to a parish in the Altoona Johnstown Diocese in Pennsylvania. When Bateman found out he had been reassigned, she contacted the diocese, and Jurchak was again moved, this time to be the chaplain at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C. 

Bateman did not plan to speak publicly about the abuse, but after less than a year of treatment, the TOR stopped paying for her therapy in February of this year. Bateman said this was done by Lehman after she told him to stop contacting her directly.

“They cut me off after I asked Fr. Lehman to stop emailing me and talk to my therapist,” she said.

Lehman had been contacting her to keep tabs on her during the therapy that the TOR was paying for. 

The contact from Lehman was triggering for her, especially as she got closer to the anniversary of her assault in February. When Lehman decided to cut off the funds for her therapy, it triggered a relapse of her anorexia, requiring hospital stays in February of 2019 and June of 2021. 

Bateman said the TOR was using money as way of controlling her, a form of economic abuse. She said that she once had to wait to seek treatment for her anorexia while Lehman discussed the matter with someone else.

“He had to think about it and talk to somebody and then get back to me,” she said.

Bateman decided to stop requesting that the TOR pay for her treatment, in order to avoid being controlled by them. When she got out of treatment for anorexia this year, Bateman went public with her story of being abused by Jurchak. Lehman’s only response so far has been to issue a statement on April 29 about Jurchak’s current assignment.

According to the TOR statement, Jurchak is no longer at the Armed Forces Retirement Home because of Bateman. 

“In 2019, Father Benedict had been temporarily removed from ministry when a single allegation of sexual misconduct involving an adult woman was reported to the Franciscans,” Lehman’s statement reads. “In the following years, both the police and an independent lay investigator reviewed the claim and found that it could not be substantiated.”

Lehman went on to say that because of the public outcry over Jurchak, the priest had to be removed from his assignment. Bateman called that statement that statement a slap in the face.

“They’re pretty much calling me a liar. He said that it ‘can’t be substantiated.’ He keeps hanging on to ‘unsubstantiated.’ But there’s a huge difference between ‘unsubstantiated’ and ‘not credible,’” she said.

Frustrated by the lack of response to her plight, Batemen took to social media and made a string of posts making her story public. She also recorded a seven-and-a-half minute video describing her ordeal, and posted it to YouTube. 

“They don’t care about keeping people safe. The TOR only seem to care about their image, and whether their priests can continue the work,” Batemen said in her video. 

It was the archdiocese of Washington DC, and not the TOR, that made the decision to remove Jurchak from the nursing home. 

The TOR has a history of trying to cover for its own. Fr. Samuel Tiesi, a revered campus minister who died in 2001, was reportedly a serial sexual abuser who targeted female students. According to a report in the National Catholic reporter, everyone who could have stopped Tiesi knew about the abuse.

“The school administration and Tiesi’s religious superiors knew of the friar’s grooming and assault of female university students for years but took no action. Students who reported the abuse to university officials tell of being chastised, demeaned and made to feel they were betraying the friars and God,” according to the report.

Dave Morrier, a former priest, has been sentenced to probation for sexual battery for sexually assaulting an FUS student. 

“Morrier was a Franciscan friar assigned to the university back in 2010. He is accused of committing sex crimes against the young woman between 2010 and 2013,” according to a local news report.

Bateman said the TOR needs to fix its culture that sustains abusers and punishes victims who come forward.

“At this point, the TOR needs to completely reform how they handle these things. He was removed by Washington; he wasn’t removed by the TORs. There’s no guarantee anyone is going to be safe from him.”

Bateman is still practicing her faith. She is still in love with the Eucharist. And she is still struggling.

“My faith has been important to me since I converted,” she said. “My faith has been the thing keeping me alive all these years. I couldn’t walk away from that. But it’s hard.”

***

The video Batemen posted to YouTube is below:

Texas Right to Life in disarray following Graham-Beckman scandal

By Damien and Simcha Fisher

The fallout continues after the affair between Texas Right to Life’s Jim Graham and Veritatis Splendor’s Kari Beckman, now threatening the existence of the Lone Star State’s most influential pro-life organization.

“The viability of Texas Right to Life is at risk,” claims a lawsuit filed this week by Elizabeth Graham, Jim Graham’s wife.

The lawsuit claims that Texas Right to Life, which was the major force behind the controversial “Texas Heartbeat Act” (SB8), has been in tatters and is rife with infighting after Graham’s husband was forced to resign in October. Elizabeth Graham claims board member Rich DeOtte is using her husband’s disgrace to seize control of the organization, humiliate her, and force her out.

“The purpose of these efforts is to, quite obviously, elevate himself as ‘saviour’ of the organization, take over its helm, and lead its operations,” Elizabeth Graham’s attorney, Brock Akers, wrote in the lawsuit filed on Tuesday.

DeOtte did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Walter Pate, a Texas Right to Life board member and another named defendant, declined to comment when reached.

“There is a suit that’s been filed and I cannot speak about it. I don’t trust the press. I don’t trust the press,” Pate said.

The lawsuit includes 50 named plaintiffs: Elizabeth Graham and various stakeholders of the group. That list includes Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller in his personal capacity. Miller did not respond to a request for comment.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry was also listed as a plaintiff in the original complaint, but was removed in the amended complaint filed this week. 

When Jim Graham was forced to resign as president of Texas Right to Life in October after his affair with Beckman was revealed, Graham’s wife Elizabeth, who was then serving as vice president, took his place. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against the organization from ousting her as president. 

The lawsuit claims that DeOtte started maneuvering to get Elizabeth Graham removed as soon as she became president. He declared himself chairman of the board, a position that previously did not exist, and he put Teresa Doyle into an interim executive director’s position, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit states that Elizabeth Graham, as president, pushed for severance payments for her husband after his affair threatened both her marriage and the organization. The narrative in the lawsuit is somewhat unclear, but seems to imply that DeOtte used those severance negotiations as leverage to cement his new position as chairman. 

Throughout these weeks of strife with the board, Elizabeth Graham was also dealing with the emotional devastation wrought by her husband’s affair, according to the lawsuit. Those close to her urged her to take time off.

“Plaintiff Elizabeth Graham was feeling the need and interest in taking such time off, but was nervous about the continued machinations of the Board members, much of which was going on behind her back,” the lawsuit states.

She was finally assured by Doyle and by another named defendant, human resources consultant and board member Jeff Lowery, that she could safely take time off and return to her job with Texas Right to Life, according to the lawsuit. She was directed by the board’s outside attorney, David Gibbs, not to spend any Texas Right to Life money while she was away.

Elizabeth Graham went on sabbatical from Dec. 14 through March 14. Within weeks of her departure, Lowery raised Doyle’s salary by $35,000, and also raised the salary of nearly all Texas Right to Life employees. Texas Right to Life is a non profit and is, according to the lawsuit, dependent entirely on donations. 

“Without an official Board meeting, the raise for new Executive Director Teresa Doyle was put in place along with raises for all other members of the TxRTL staff. Everyone, that is, except Plaintiff Elizabeth Graham,” the lawsuit states. Graham, in fact, was demoted while she was gone. 

Elizabeth Graham returned from her sabbatical and found that not only had she alone not gotten a raise, and must now report to Doyle. 

“Plaintiff was dumbfounded, hurt, and left wondering how the events which came to light in October, of which she was frankly a victim not a participant, could have resulted in this turn of events,” the lawsuit states.

Before she returned to work in March, Gibbs told Elizabeth Graham that she could not go to the office until she met with Doyle and Lowery to discuss her newly demoted role. Graham was also told the annual board meeting, set for this week, would now take place offsite from the Texas Right to Life offices in Houston, which she took as an affront. 

Elizabeth Graham responded by getting her own lawyer, and on March 22, Gibbs sent Graham a letter terminating her employment. The lawsuit accuses DeOtte and others of violating Texas Right to Life’s bylaws by firing her without following the correct procedures. She is seeking an injunction against Texas Right to Life over her termination. A hearing on the injunction is set for April 12 in the 165th District Court in Houston.

The struggle for control of Texas Right to Life echoes a similar upheaval at the organization headed by Kari Beckman, Jim Graham’s partner in the illicit affair that led to his own ouster. 

Graham inherited control of Texas Right to Life from his father, Joseph Graham, who co-founded the organization in 1973; and Jim Graham continued as president and executive director until the revelation of a scandalous affair with Beckman in October. Beckman was at that time spearheading  Veritatis Splendor, a utopian megadevelopment for Catholic families in rural Winona, TX. After the affair between Graham and Beckman was revealed, Graham resigned from Texas Right to Life, and Beckman, after pressure from her own board, eventually resigned from Veritatis Splendor and also from another organization she founded, a Catholic homeschool hybrid called Regina Caeli.

Beckman was also accused of various forms of financial misconduct, using funds from Regina Caeli to pad Veritatis Splendor’s accounts, and for her own personal use. After Beckman was pushed out, Regina Caeli eventually restructured and reconstituted its board of directors to divest itself of any potential influence by Beckman.

Texas Right to Life has not responded to any request for comment.

***

Texas RTL logo 

 

Sweeping changes at Regina Caeli after scandal

After bombshell revelations about an illicit relationship between board members and possible financial misconduct, there’s massive restructuring afoot at Regina Caeli Academy, and the organization will undergo a forensic audit, the board announced early this morning.

Rich Beckman, the husband of disgraced founder and former Executive Director of Regina Caeli and Veritatis Splendor Kari Beckman, has resigned, and Nicole Juba is now the Executive Director.

The Board said in a letter to RCA families and staff:

“The Board will initiate an independent forensic audit to determine if there were any financial irregularities and take appropriate actions based on those findings.”

The changes they’ve announced are making some parents consider coming back to Regina Caeli. 

“If they do what they say they’ll do, I’ll be a happy camper,” said Debbie Sercely, a Texas mother of three and former RCA tutor.

Sercely quit Regina Caeli when the homeschool hybrid academy abruptly announced their affiliation with the utopian megadevelopment Veritatis Splendor. 

“The biggest problem I had was with their financial opacity. There wasn’t a lot of clarity about where the money [for Veritatis Splendor] was going to come from or how it was going to be spent. There was a lot of, ‘It’s all part of RCA, so it’ll be fine,’ Well, no,” Sercely said.

RCA had been accused, in an anonymous letter to the board and in a formal complaint sent to the IRS, of financial misconduct. It charged that, while she headed Regina Caeli, Executive Director Kari Beckman used Regina Caeli as her personal bank account, used RCA funds for Veritatis Splendor expenses without the knowledge or consent of donors, required RCA employees to work for Veritatis Splendor, and made personal use of a luxury home and vehicle paid for by Regina Caeli funds while promoting Veritatis Splendor. Regina Caeli was listed as a parent company of Veritatis Splendor, and the finances of the two organizations were apparently merged, although the Veritatis Splendor project is a planned community that did not and would not benefit the homeschool hybrid academy in any way.

The purchase for the land on which Veritatis Splendor was to be built was made with a loan from James Faber, a Regina Caeli board member. According to the letter from the board, Faber has been named the new interim board president.

The letter states that “a generous benefactor, with full knowledge of Mrs. Beckman’s situation, has emerged to make the separation of Regina Caeli and Veritatis Splendor (VS) a reality. ”

“This donor will be purchasing the remaining land at VS, which will provide the funds that will repay all RCA expenditures for VS. VS will become its own non-profit organization completely separate from RCA. This will relieve RCA from all financial burdens with regard to VS. This separation will allow each organization to successfully pursue its own mission. The Board is committed to providing periodic updates as to the progress of these efforts to ensure accountability and transparency,” the letter said.

More than one family expressed concerns that, even if Kari Beckman were to be removed, the current board was hand-selected by Beckman to do her bidding; but the letter says the board is soliciting nominations from families “to reconstitute the Board of Directors.” 

The letter ends:

“Regina Caeli was not built upon one person, but has continued to grow and develop by virtue of the talents and sacrifice of all our staff, families, tutors, assistants, volunteers, and, of course, our children. Regina Caeli is bigger than one person. Let this now carry us forward to sustain the mission of training the mind to form the soul.”

The IRS complaint against Regina Caeli Academy was mailed late last week. Federal law prohibits the IRS office from commenting on private taxpayer matters, but if a criminal case results from an investigation, that information will become public record.  

Sercely said she had had some hesitations about Regina Caeli when she first joined. She wasn’t happy that their history curriculum included glowing praise of Robert E. Lee, and she describes their dress code as misogynistic, focusing heavily on females covering their bodies, and ignoring the need for males to learn to control their eyes. 

“Because of that, there have definitely been some families that have hesitated about joining Regina Caeli. That was kind of a red flag,” Sercely said. 

“But I’m really hopeful that, with a significant change in leadership, we might see some real changes in some of the policies that are trying to out-Catholic the pope,” she said.

She said that the format of RCA works very well with her young family, with classroom days providing the structure and stability they need, while still allowing for flexibility and down-time. 

 
No change for Veritatis Splendor

Yesterday, Veritatis Splendor sent a letter to its mailing list reassuring “Viculus familes” that there will be no interruption in its mission. 

“We want to assure our Viculus families that the mission of Veritatis Spendor will continue without interruption, and that if anything, this shows just how important the work of this community really is. Bishop Strickland, our clergy and the seminarians are unwavering in their support for VS and have assured us that they will be united with us to keep up our fight for the good.”

The letter also informs participants of the donor referenced in the RCA board letter.  

“You should be aware that a generous benefactor, with full knowledge of Kari’s situation, has emerged in the midst of this great challenge to ensure that the plans for VS are not hindered, stalled or delayed in any way,” the Veritatis Splendor letter said. 

It is not clear how many people have actually invested in Veritatis Splendor. One purchase has been confirmed. Plots of land are available for sale for between $90,000 and $250,000. Their fundraiser, whose stated goal was $3.2 million, raised $100,128. It was last updated on April 30 with a conceptual rendering of the oratory. 

We called Bishop Strickland’s office for comment, but were told he was “not available this week” and that “nobody in the building has anything to do with Veritatis Splendor.” 

Sercely had another reason besides her financial concerns for leaving Regina Caeli, once they announced their affiliation with Veritatis Splendor. 

“The reason I will never support that cult is the permanence of the priests. There is no option to remove a priest who is abusive. It’s a breeding ground for grooming and abuse, and I will not contribute one breath of my efforts to allow other people to be abused. Not one red cent, not one nanosecond of my time,” she said. 

Sercely is referring to the fact that, in the proposed “village,” there will live a community of priests who are not subject to transfers or re-assignments,” according to the Veritatis Splendor case statement.

These priests will be Oratorians in the tradition of St. Philip Neri. Oratorians are not a religious order; they are secular priests (i.e., they have not made religious vows). Oratorians must have permission from the local bishop to found an Oratory (which is not a parish church), such as the one proposed for Veritatis Splendor; but the community of priests is relatively autonomous. They answer not to the bishop of the diocese in which they live, but to Rome. The bishop has, according to canon law, a duty to be “vigilant” about their spiritual well-being and about the effects of the community in his diocese, but the relationship between the diocese and such communities is not clearly defined. 

“With the board of directors saying Regina Caeli and Veritatis Splendaor are completely separate, I’m sobbing, I’m so grateful. We’re seriously considering coming back to Regina Caeli,” Sercely said.

Who funded Kari Beckman’s fall from grace?

By Simcha and Damien Fisher

Kari Beckman was going to build Veritatis Splendor, a village of Catholic “true believers” in the heart of Texas. Now, after acknowledging an illicit relationship, reportedly with Texas Right to Life head and Regina Caeli board member Jim Graham, she’s moved out of the property’s luxury ranch and back to Atlanta, and has stepped down as executive director of Regina Caeli Academy and Veritatis Splendor. 

As for the village, one $3 million loan later, not a single structure has yet been built on the land, and the members of Regina Caeli across the nation are left wondering if their homeschool tuition fees and bake sale fundraising dollars paid for the grandiose Tyler, Texas project, or for any of  Beckman’s other, more clandestine activities of the past year.

Beckman, who founded the homeschool hybrid Regina Caeli Academy in 2003, sent a letter to the members of Regina Caeli at the end of last week acknowledging “a terrible lapse in judgment with a personal relationship.” Multiple sources confirmed the relationship was with Jim Graham. Beckman and Graham are both married. Beckman said she immediately sought forgiveness through the sacrament of confession, and then, months later, confessed to her husband. She said that she and her husband then both went to the board of Regina Caeli and told them “what had occurred,” and then stepped down as Executive Director. 

Shortly before she stepped down, the Board of Directors received an anonymous letter alleging Beckman had carried on an illicit sexual relationship with Graham.  Graham was also, until recently, on the Board of Regina Caeli, but his name has recently been removed from that site, along with Kari Beckman’s name. Beckman’s husband remains listed as a board member. Three other board members are no longer listed on the site, and Nicole Juba has been named acting Executive Director.  

Texas Right to Life is the organization that launched prolifewhistleblower.com, the tipline website that lets people report abortions in hopes of collecting a $10,000 bounty under the controversial new “Texas Heartbeat Act” (SB8), and Jim Graham has been instrumental in the Texas pro-life movement’s hard shift toward the right. The website has gone offline twice, and now redirects to the Texas Right to Life site, but does not currently function as a tipline. The law, which has undergone several legal challenges, has been unpopular even within some factions of the conservative pro-life community, some of whom view it as anything from distasteful to politically reckless to counter-productive.

Graham, who appears in a fundraising video for Veritatis Splendor along with Beckman, has been Executive Director of Texas Right to Life, which was founded by his father, since 1994. Neither Graham nor the media representative for the Texas Right to Life returned phone calls seeking comment.

“This is two heads of very Catholic organizations. We literally do hold ourselves to a higher standard. And to be lectured about virtue while this was going on . . . unbelievable,” said one Regina Caeli Academy parent and former tutor. She asked not to be identified, for fear of reprisal. 

The parent is referring to the fact that Regina Caeli and Veritatis Splendor, including in the very video in which Beckman and Graham both appear, both explicitly framed their organizations as a refuge from the immorality of the secular world. Parents flocked to Regina Caeli in part because it emphasizes the development of personal virtues and traditional values like chastity and self-control. 

“The fact that my kids’ tuition was funding their affair,” the parent said, and then attached a “vomit” emoji to their message. 

 

“We essentially bought them a ranch.”

But it’s not merely a matter of spiritual hypocrisy that distresses this and other Regina Caeli families. The anonymous letter-writer told us they also filed two complaints with the IRS on November 12 asking for an investigation of Beckman’s possible financial misuse of Regina Caeli funds. The complaints accused Regina Caeli of “using assets for personal gain” and “questionable fundraising practices.”

As one RCA parent put it, “We essentially bought them a ranch.”

But the alleged financial malfeasance goes deeper than that. The letter-writer alleged, “Mrs. Beckman uses Regina Caeli as her personal bank account” and that Beckman hand-selected the board to do her bidding, and deliberately hid her financial activities from the families who supplied the money she allegedly spent. Regina Caeli’s most recent tax forms list their total assets in 2018 at $4.2 million, with $3.4 million in liabilities.

The letter to the IRS enumerates four major complaints involving Regina Caeli Academy and Veritatis Splendor:

-That Regina Caeli Academy employees were pulled from their RCA jobs to launch and raise funds for Veritatis Splendor;

-that RCA borrowed over $3 million from an RCA board member to finance the property for Veritatis Splendor;

-that the RCA board approved the purchase of a $45,000 Chevy Tahoe for Veritatis Splendor, and has been paying for its insurance, even though the vehicle does not serve Regina Caeli in any way;

-and that the property, purchased by RCA, contains a luxury lodge in which the Beckman family has been living for many months.

The complaint says:

 “Fundraising at Regina Caeli was of the utmost importance. Families were required to fundraise in a variety of ways, and were always told that this fundraising was to support the education and mission of Regina Caeli. Of the $423,509.79 that was fundraised between Oct. 20, 2020 and May 21, 2021, how much of that was used for Regina Caeli? How much was used to purchase a piece of land in Winona, Texas so Mrs. Beckman could form a cult?”

The person filing the complaint also had further questions:

“When Regina Caeli Academy used travel and hotel rewards programs for training, campus visits, etc, who reaped the benefits of those massive rewards points? Were those put on Regina Caeli rewards cards, or Mrs. Beckman’s personal rewards cards? Did the Beckman family travel and vacation using those points? 

“Is Regina Caeli going to provide Board meeting minutes for the Board meetings where Jim Graham was present as a member of the Board, while the affair was taking place? 

“Is Regina Caeli planning to undergo a financial audit? If Mrs. Beckman had such a major lapse in judgement with regards to her personal life, what would prevent her from having a lapse in judgement in the financial affairs of the organization?”

 

No board member has responded to our repeated calls for comment. Kari Beckman, Rich Beckman, Jim Graham, Nicole Juba, and Regina Caeli and Vertitatis Splendor’s communications offices have not responded to our repeated calls for comment. Bishop Joseph Strickland, an outspoken booster of Veritatis Splendor, was not available for comment.

 

When Regina Caeli members were first abruptly informed that their school was now an umbrella organization for a quasi-religious megadevelopment in Texas, some complained. 

One member said that she and her husband were assured that, at some point, the finances of Regina Caeli Academy and Veritatis Splendor would be separated, but that “these things take time.”

“When I and many other families expressed our surprise and displeasure at this being sprung on us out of nowhere, we were basically told, ‘It’s our organization and we can do whatever the heck we want, and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,'” one former tutor said. 

 

Regina Caeli families were, however, offered the opportunity to buy land at Veritatis Splendor. On August 4, RCA families received a letter from Kari Beckman claiming there has been a “HUGE and overwhelming response to those interested in purchasing lots” which range in price from $90,000 to $140,000 and are between 2 and 5 acres. Beckman reminded prospective buyers that, while the lots are selling quickly, there is no need to build right away after purchasing one, and that lots may be purchased “for primary or vacation/retreat homes.” 

The former tutor confirms that she knows just one family who invested $90,000 in Veritatis Splendor land, but said jokingly that the rest of her RCA friends had no interest in accepting Kari Beckman as the head of their homeowner’s association.

“No way, Jose,” she said. 

Talking sideways

 

This isn’t the first time Regina Caeli has been accused of a lack of financial transparency. In 2016, a former RCA member filed a lawsuit alleging that, when he asked to review financial information so he could determine how the school was spending the money their group raised and solicited, the director responded that “it was not RCA’s ‘style’ to provide any financial information, other than the IRS form 990’s.” The suit alleges RCA then retaliated against the entire family for their inquiry. The suit also alleged that RCA ran afoul of Michigan charitable fundraising laws. The lawsuit was settled out of court.

While it’s rare for a member to muster a lawsuit against RCA, it’s common for members and former members to complain that their concerns go unheard, and that they’re routinely bullied into silence under the guise of christian charity. 

The school explicitly forbids what it called “murmuring,” allegedly to discourage a spirit of gossip among the families involved. 

 

“Conflict is viewed through a religious lens,” said one former employee. “Instead of taking [complaints] seriously on their merits, this spiritual lens means if you disagree, you’re not just wrong; you’re bad.

 

“It starts with totally appropriate conflict resolution based on [the book of] Matthew: Go to your brother, etc. Keep things in the proper channels of communication. As a first principle, this is good. However, that morphs into culture. There is this total obsession with not ‘talking sideways’ or gossiping. Don’t talk to anybody about any issues you have, from small to big.

 

“But most of the families are also employees. So if I have an issue, I only have one person I’m supposed to talk to, and their next person up is Kari, or one person down from up. There is a near obsession with, ‘Who have you talked to about this?’ If you’re mad, talk to that person. That’s good. But it morphs into a hierarchical obsession with being quiet,” the former employee said. 

 

At the same time, the school exerted a tight micromanagement of its members — sometimes insisting on puritanical standards that contrast starkly with what members now know about Beckman’s private behavior.

 

The school cracked down on staffers who shared photos of themselves in tank tops on social media. There are bizarre stories of moral panic over innocent outings with even the whiff of immorality. A group of Regina Caeli families travelled together to see a production of The Nutcracker, and although it was not an official school outing, they had used the school email to communicate about it, and Regina Caeli heads considered the trip problematic because the tutus worn by the dancers were too short, and deemed the show “soft porn.”

 

The former employee said that she remembers how Beckman once saw a staff member post on social media about decorating her house for Christmas, and Beckman contacted her to chide her, saying that visible Christmas decorations during the Advent season could cause scandal.
 

This pervasive straight-laced environment has made the revelations of extramarital misconduct especially hard for RCA members to stomach. Several members recalled that, when they applied to teach for Regina Caeli, they were required to sign a statement of fidelity to the magisterium, and that, during their interview, Regina Caeli recruiters asked them if their marriage was canonically valid, and whether they use contraception. 

“Apparently, the sexual ethics of one family was so critical to the culture of the organization, but the fact that the executive director is sleeping with a board member is something that can just be chalked up to spiritual attack,” said one former RCA family who had a position in national leadership. 

Multiple sources told us they were willing to speak on the record, but only anonymously, because they feared social or even legal retaliation for what would be perceived as disloyalty. Some RCA families have become adept in creating secret groups to communicate with each under the radar. More than one source has expressed concern that their emails to us may be monitored. 

 

Still worth saving?

 

While members are reeling from the recent revelations, many hope the good fruits of the school can be rescued from Beckman’s influence. Many parents have described the school as something of a godsend, allowing them both the freedom of homeschooling and the structure of the traditional classroom. Mothers of small children often teach with their babies and toddlers in tow, allowing them to be fully involved with their children’s education while leaning on a supportive and nurturing community. 

 

But others believe the very structure of the program routinely becomes exploitative, and is, in practice, uncomfortably close to a multi-level marketing scheme. 

In Regina Caeli’s program, paying members homeschool their own children for three days a week, using a standardized curriculum, and the school provides support and access to tutors and extracurricular activities. Parents who are also tutors receive a discount on the entire program, and all members are expected to fundraise and to recruit new members, in addition to paying tuition. Tuition, which covers two classroom days (for which uniforms are required), ranges from $2,800 per PreK student for a half day to $4,500 per high school student. 

There are twenty-three RCA satellite schools throughout the country, and they are all run on precisely the same plan, down to minutiae of how to dress and how to have parties. In practice, a family of four children will tote up a bill of over $10,000 as a base, not counting curriculum or uniforms. Parents can knock that total down by several thousand dollars by working for minimum wage for what can end up being as much as sixty hours a week, not counting the volunteer and fundraising work the family is expected to provide. 

 

As exhausting, frustrating, and dissatisfied as parents were, and despite how frustrated they became with the school’s lack of transparency over how tuition and fundraising money was spent, several parents reported feeling like they had no choice but to continue with the school. A family’s entire educational, social, and spiritual community would be at the school; and they have been told repeatedly that their children’s souls will be in danger if they attempt some other form of schooling. And even if they suspected that wasn’t true, they knew there would be reprisals if they questioned it. 

 

“If you have your seven kids and this is their school, and their friends, the only way you can make it work is by working as a tutor,” said a former employee. “You get paid minimum wage plus a fat tuition discount, and the only way you can make it work is to work there, so you’re really afraid to rock the boat, because it will affect your children.”

 

The former tutor quoted above said that several moms have told her, “I feel like a battered woman, going back every year.”
 

A spiritual bouquet and a meal train for Beckman

 

But Beckman and her supporters have done their best to portray her as the victim in the current scandal. 

 

She said in her letter to RCA members that keeping the secret of her relationship “left me feeling despondent and it began to take a physical toll on my mind and my body.”

She said, “I have been in therapy and have been receiving daily spiritual direction in order to get strong enough to face my shame.  My therapist has diagnosed me with Complex PTSD due to the circumstances which led to my fall.”

 

She said, “I do not expect your forgiveness nor do I expect your understanding.  I am struggling to forgive myself and to make sense of what I did.  I am sorry this did not come sooner, but honestly, I was not in an emotional place to make good decisions.”
 

On October 25, RCA families and staff received an email from Nicole Juba, who had at that point asked for increased prayers for Beckman. 

 

“As Mrs. Beckman has started her journey towards recovery, the RCA Board of Directors has become aware of a serious spiritual matter that is the underlying basis for her current physical and emotional suffering. Accordingly, the Board has asked her to take additional time away for both physical and spiritual healing and counseling,” the letter said. 

 

They also requested a meal train for the Beckman family. 

Many RCA members are less concerned with Beckman’s personal suffering, though, and more concerned with the fate of Regina Caeli Academy going forward. The anonymous letter writer has written a second letter to the board on November 14, urging them to divest themselves completely of Beckman’s influence. 

“Although I am relieved to hear of her separation from the organization, there must be follow up from you specifying that her retirement is permanent and irrevocable. She should no longer have access to her email account. There is no need for her to supervise or have any role in the transition,” the letter said. 

The letter calls for Kari Beckman’s husband Rich Beckman to step down as Chairman of the Board, because “many Regina Caeli families have for years believed that the Board of Directors is in place simply to do Mrs. Beckman’s bidding.” The letter writer believes that Kari Beckman is likely to attempt to continue to run Regina Caeli by proxy. 

“Board members must be stewards of community trust. The Board has a fiduciary duty to the members of the organization – not to Mrs. Beckman personally. Can all the members of the Board claim they have always acted in the best interest of the mission of Regina Caeli?” the letter asks.

 

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Canadian college, church, and community ignored predatory choirmaster’s red flags

By Damien Fisher with additional reporting by Simcha Fisher

Uwe Lieflander used his position as a youth choir leader, music teacher, and college professor to spend years grooming the child he is accused of sexually assaulting when she became a young adult.

Lieflander’s alleged predation didn’t happen in a vacuum. The members of his small Canadian community, parents of his students, colleagues, and even a priest ignored red flags and explained away the behavior that Lieflander himself likened to grooming, and he was welcomed back to work with children even after the victim said he raped her.

Lieflander, 59, is now a fugitive from justice, having left Canada in 2017 for his native Germany before warrants were issued for his arrest. He now records YouTube travel videos under the name “The Vespa Idiot,” and some of the people and institutions that harbored him have yet to reckon with his abuse.

Lieflander in a 2021 Vespa Idiot video

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Sam, now in her late 20s, grew up in a large, strict, Catholic family in the Barry’s Bay, Ontario area. 

“My whole family are ultra-conservative Catholic,” Sam said. 

She said the family practiced a sort of manichaean, patriarchal faith, believing that the body is bad and shameful, and women and children are meant to be silent. 

Barry’s Bay in Madawaska Valley is home to a community of Polish immigrants who practiced an old-style form of Catholicism, but in the 1990s that started to change. New groups of traditional-minded Catholics began moving into the rural and isolated region, including apocalyptic novelist Michael O’Brien, and an early iteration of the right-wing Lifesite News. 

Some moved to the Madawaska Valley region to escape what they were sure was going to be the end-of-civilization event of Y2K; others came to build a traditional community. It was there, in Barry’s Bay, that Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy was founded in 1999. The young college with a handful of students made its place sometimes in the very homes of the local Catholic families, like Sam’s, who allowed the school to hold classes on their property. Sam’s family became enmeshed with the school, and it was Our Lady Seat of Wisdom that employed Lieflander. 

Sam agreed to share her story, and supply supporting documentation and contemporaneous witnesses. Her real name will not be used, and some information that could identify her will be obscured in this article. 

Our Lady Seat of Wisdom was originally founded to offer one-year degrees for mostly homeschooled students. The school’s unaccredited degrees were generally not recognized by other colleges, and for a long time the school served as a feeder program for larger Catholic colleges such as Christendom, Franciscan University of Steubenville, and Thomas Aquinas College.

The college’s motto is Veritas Vos Liberabit: “The Truth will set you free.”

The school’s program continue to grow. In 2017, the Canadian Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development granted the school the right to offer Bachelor’s degrees. And this year, demonstrating the school’s continued growing acceptance by the mainstream community, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pembroke agreed to allow Our Lady Seat of Wisdom theology professors Scott Nicholson and John Paul Meenan to teach remote catechism classes for the diocese.

Our Lady Seat of Wisdom in 2016

Sam was 15 when she first saw a performance by one of Lieflander’s youth choirs, known as a “Sparrows” choir, at a nearby Catholic parish in the fall of 2008. Lieflander was then a part-time music teacher at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, and he operated several Sparrows Choirs throughout Ontario. He also founded the Sacred Music Society in Ottawa.

Lieflander started working at the private college in 2007 and became renowned as a musician and voice teacher. He had come up through the Regensburger Domspatzen (“cathedral sparrows”) boys choir in Germany, where, according to a report, over 500 boys had been sexually abused. 

Around 2008, Sam longed to be part of the charismatic Lieflander’s Sparrows choir operating in Barry’s Bay. She wanted to learn about music, but also sought some kind of escape from her deeply dysfunctional home life.

Although she was too young to attend college, she was allowed to join Lieflander’s Sparrows choir, and she also took private lessons for him at the college, which he used as a base for his private work. He also taught at several Catholic schools. He presented himself as a caring person, an “uncle” figure who looked after his students. Sam said there was a pattern of Lieflander forging especially deep connections with vulnerable children like her.

“Once you were one of his favorites, you really felt important,” she said.

Lieflander’s lessons included probing into her home life, and also his trademark method of touching children during rehearsal as part of his teaching method.

“There was a lot of touch,” Sam said about her lessons. Lieflander taught over 14,000 students. 

Lieflander is described as a musical genius who could draw out remarkable performances from children. He would place his hands on them as they sang, in order to get them to understand where the sound was coming from. 

A few Sparrows parents were uncomfortable with the practice, but most accepted the explanation that touching was necessary to his method, according to our source. He would also have children sit on his lap, and routinely played “chasing” and “grabbing” games with them. Around 2015 and 2016, a small number of parents involved with Lieflander’s choirs pushed for him to stop touching children as part of his singing education. 

When a small number of parents confronted Lieflander about his unorthodox teaching style and demanded that he change, Lieflander reportedly pushed back. Lieflander, who liked to consider himself something of a friendly uncle to his students, told the parents he had studied the grooming process of child abusers and determined there were 12 steps abusers used, the source said.

“I do all 11 of them, but not the 12th,” Lieflander reportedly said, according to our source.

Lieflander in a 2021 Vespa Idiot video

The source said so many parents and others let their guards down around Lieflander, in part because he was so open and brazen about his behavior. In retrospect, he may have been bullet proofing himself against any accusations that might come out, our source said.

Eventually, in 2011, the Ottawa Catholic School Board expressed concerns about his habit of touching children during Sparrow choir rehearsals. Rather than stop touching the children, he resigned. His resignation caused a media stir, and parents at one school protested the school board’s actions, saying they did not object to the touching. Lieflander continued leading private Sparrows choirs, and Our Lady Seat of Wisdom continued to employ him.

As Sam and Lieflander’s student-teacher relationship intensified, he began discussing her home and family life in more detail. When she was 16 and 17, Lieflander decided that her family was not up to the task of caring for Sam, and he told her he was going to take greater control of her life, for her own good. Sam’s home life did not improve during the next couple of years, and her mental health spiraled. She started cutting, and Lieflander began encouraging her to run away from home.

At 18 she fled to a relative, but her emotional crisis did not abate, and after several months she went to what was billed as a Catholic rehabilitation facility in Florida. Sam spent two years there before she returned home to Barry’s Bay. 

It was 2014, Sam was 21, and numb from her years in Florida at a center that she described as a cult. Severe dysfunction still plagued her family. Soon after she got back, she went to another Sparrows concert and Lieflander picked up with her where he left off, making her feel both special and dependent on him.

“I was still in awe of him,”she said. 

She restarted music lessons with Lieflander and told him about her troubles. Lieflander directed her to call him “Dad.” He told her he would make all decisions for her, and that he expected her total obedience.

“He completely took control,” she said.

Over the summer of 2014, his control grew to include threats of emotional isolation if she ever disobeyed him, she said. He also persuaded her she was part of his family. She had to give his home address as her home address, for example, and he would randomly demand she recite it for him. 

Lieflander got her to attend Our Lady Seat of Wisdom in the fall for a year, earning one of the one-year degrees the school granted in Christian Humanities. They held hands, and he told her she was his child, and that she was emotionally 11 years old, she said, and he continued to insist she call him “Dad.”

“I am going to let you be the child you were never allowed to be,” Sam recalls him telling her. 

He also used the nearness of the school to exert more control over her, Sam said. As a student at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, she had to check in with him on a daily basis, and he required that she have a bedtime that he set for her, she said. If she displeased him he would put her under a “house arrest,” she said. 

As their relationship intensified, he started giving her 20-minute hugs in his office at the school, and had her sit in his lap so he could look down her shirt, she said. The encounters at school behind closed doors felt like a kind of molestation, Sam said. Lieflander told her to keep their relationship private, but at least one other Our Lady Seat of Wisdom staff member noticed an oddness to their relationship. When the subject was broached, the staffer said that the administrative response was: “That’s just Uwe.” 

Lieflander in 2021

During her time at the school, Sam sometimes had emotional meltdowns, and Lieflander was allowed at least once to enter her dorm room and “put her to bed.” At the time, the school did not allow men and women to be in each other’s dorms. Only a family member, like a parent, would be allowed. The school denies knowing these bedtime visits happened, but one instance has been confirmed by a witness. 

In 2015, Sam graduated with her one-year Christian Humanities diploma and started work in Ottawa as a nanny, but she kept seeing Lieflander, and would go back to the school with him. Lieflander continued to foster a controlling paternal relationship with Sam, telling her she needed him.

“He would say if withdrew his support for even 15 seconds, I would die,” she said. 

He ramped up the sexual relationship as well. He started getting her to take her clothes off in front of him, so that he  could “help her heal from her wounds,” she said.

“He told me he owns 51 percent of me, and I own 49 percent of me,” Sam said.

The sexual conduct finally escalated to rape, she said. It did not take place on campus. Sam did not want the details of the assault included in the story, but disclosed them in interviews with us, and her story is supported by the criminal charges brought by law enforcement.

During this time she started to self-harm again and she developed an eating disorder. Lieflander kept exerting control over her as a possessive father-figure, she said. 

“He would say “I always know what’s best for you and what you want, because I own you and you can’t live without me,” Sam said. “He said I was a nymphomaniac because he was too, I had his DNA because I was his daughter, so I was, too.”

It was cancer that finally disrupted their relationship. Sam was diagnosed with lymphoma in early 2017 and scheduled an appointment for pre-chemotherapy. The woman she had nannied for went to that first appointment to offer support, and it was there Sam told the nurse she was sexually active. Then Sam disclosed to her friend whom she was sexually active with.

“I told her it’s Dad (meaning Lieflander).  She freaked,” Sam said.

Sam had been sheltered from the world and naive about sex when she started her relationship with Lieflander. Her friend and her friend’s husband had to sit Sam down and explain to her how wrong Lieflander’s actions were.

“Deep down I knew she was right. It broke me,” Sam said. “People would ask how’s the cancer going. I lost all my hair, but nothing could compare to what I was feeling inside. How’s cancer? Oh right, cancer.”

Once she got her bearings, Sam started telling people about the abuse and rape. This was in May and June of 2017. She wanted to make sure the college knew and could protect any other possible victims. She also started contacting the many parishes where Lieflander still operated Sparrows choirs, to make sure they knew. Sam was aided by a friend, who was able to corroborate that the disclosures were made.

One of Lieflanfder’s attorney’s, Tamara Bubis, an associate with criminal defense law firm Engel & Associates, declined to comment on the case when contacted.

Our Lady Seat of Wisdom responded to Sam’s disclosure by not renewing Lieflander’s contract, she said. The school, in a statement made just days ago, four years after the events, now claims it fired him. The school never followed up with its own investigation or review of Lieflander’s conduct on campus. It did not inform parents or students about the alleged abuse, and it did not contact law enforcement. Lieflander’s Sparrows choirs began shutting down because of Sam’s disclosures, and he left the country in the summer of 2017, and returned to Germany.

One of the people Sam told about the abuse was Fr. Marco Testa, then the pastor at Immaculate Conception Parish in Port Perry. Testa was reportedly supportive and sympathetic when Sam disclosed the alleged abuse, but she later found out that Testa brought Lieflander back for concerts at Immaculate Conception in January of 2018, after he heard allegations that he had groomed and raped her. 

Lieflander rehearsing for the Sparrows concert at Immaculate Conception in 2018

Testa is no longer serving at Immaculate Conception. Neil MacCarthy, public relations and communications director for the Archdiocese of Toronto, refused to divulge where Testa is currently residing. MacCarthy claims Testa retired at the end of 2020. MacCarthy declined to comment on the 2018 concert with Lieflander. Testa is reportedly aware we have requested to speak to him, but he has so far not responded. 

Fr. Marco and Lieflander at Immaculate Conception in 2018

Sam went to police a few weeks after the January of 2018 concert.  Charges were not brought forward until January 2019 when Ottawa police obtained warrants for Lieflander’s arrest.

Lieflander, who has yet to face charges in court, currently posts videos to Youtube about his scooter riding adventures under the handle The Vespa Idiot.

Lieflander in a recent “Vespa Idiot” video

He started a trip from Germany to Africa on his scooter last week, documenting his international journey to Casablanca online. This week he was in the South of France, according to his Youtube videos.

Christine Schintgen, interim president for Our Lady Seat of Wisdom and one of the school’s founders, declined to be interviewed for this story. Schintgen did agree to answer questions submitted via email. Her answers sought to distance the school from Lieflander.

“This was allegedly perpetrated on an alumna, but only after her time as a student at SWC was over. None of the alleged abuse is alleged to have happened while she was a student here. The alleged abuse was brought to our attention after the victim had ceased to be a student at OLSW. The victim did not bring forward any complaints or concerns to us during her time as a student, nor did anyone else,” Schintgen wrote.

Schintgen stated that the school never made any kind of statement about the allegations until the criminal charges were brought, two years after the school was made aware of the alleged abuse. 

“We are deeply saddened by this case and the damage it has done to the victim. However, there has been no claim that the abuse happened on campus, and no reason to believe that the College was negligent,” Schintgen wrote. 

Schintgen refused to address the alleged grooming that took place on campus when Sam was a student, and she deflected when asked why the school continued to employ Lieflander after the 2011 controversy over his touching students.

“In 2011 Uwe Lieflander resigned from his position with the Ottawa Catholic School Board rather than agree to abide by its policy prohibiting any physical contact between teachers and students. He argued that for certain subjects some contact was necessary, for example to correct posture while singing,” Schintgen wrote. “There was no suggestion that there had been a sexual element in the touch he employed or that he was guilty of sexual misconduct. After this controversy he continued to be employed by a number of schools and churches in the Toronto and Ottawa regions.”

Amanda Grady-Sexton, a domestic and sexual abuse survivors advocate in the United States, said an institution like a college should take clear steps when it learns about abuse.

“Best practice would be to report the abuse, notify and warn the college community, put the professor on leave pending an investigation conducted by an independent and external investigator, and to connect the survivor with on and off campus support and resources,” Grady-Sexton said. “It is also important to remind the community of the support in place for staff, students, and alumni. Notice to the community should be as detailed as possible, within HR guidelines, with updates as things change with the status of the case.”

Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, according to Schintgen’s answers, did none of that. However, in a statement released on June 29, the college now claims, four years later, that it acted swiftly when it learned of Lieflander’s alleged abuse.

“When we learned of this case involving a former student, we acted swiftly, leading to the end of his employment with us,” the new statement reads.

In the statement, the college for the first time publicly encourages any student who may have experienced abuse perpetrated by Lieflander to come forward to the authorities. 

“We have strong policies and procedures in place to handle allegations of harassment or abuse, and we communicate them clearly to all incoming members of the College community. We welcome complaints of sexual abuse and harassment, and want to promote a spirit of openness and comfort around disclosure of such incidents so that they can be dealt with in a thorough, just, and proactive manner. We also welcome scrutiny that holds us to a high standard in this regard,” the statement reads.

A former college staffer who pushed for years for the college to deal with the Lieflander accusations said the statement coming years later was “heartbreaking and scandalous.”

“When I became aware of the situation with Lieflander, I asked three different presidents at SWC to make an internal statement for the sake of providing an environment where victims could come forward. The response varied from silence, to threats and hostility,” the former staffer said. 

The statement comes weeks after Schintgen became aware of our forthcoming story, and four years after the alleged abuse was first disclosed. Sam was never contacted by the school ahead of the statement’s release, which came as a shock to her.

“I am furious and appalled with their statement that lacks truth and does not reflect the reality of the situation and undermines the credibility of SWC. Their motto, which is Veritas Vos Liberabit, ‘the truth will set you free’ rings hollow and empty across from the statement they produced and without external accountability their internal credibility is corrupt,” Sam said in a statement she provided to us Wednesday night. “Even one person and their story has more value than the whole institution and they have forgotten the human value. Even one victim is too many. Shame on them.”

Women are not safe at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, Sam said. 

The college did eventually give Sam $1,000 to help pay for therapy, though Schintgen denied to confirm that, saying the matter is confidential. Sam is currently cancer-free and back studying at a different college.

“I’m just kind of worn out. Life didn’t get easier,” she said.

 

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EDIT July 1, 2:40 PM: A previous version of this article erroneously labelled the featured photo as the main academic building of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom college. It is actually St. Hedwig Church. We regret the error. The photo has been removed. 
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Comments are closed for this article. Anyone wishing to contact Damien or Simcha Fisher regarding this story may use the contact form on this page. 

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Image sources:
Concert rehearsal video
Lieflander and Fr. Marco
Vespa Idiot and Vespa Idiot

Christendom College prof jailed on charges of sexually assaulting a child

A Christendom College professor emeritus is being held without bail after he was arrested on Friday on charges of sexually assaulting a child.

William R. Luckey, 72, is jailed at Rappahannock Shenandoah Warren Regional Jail on one count of solicitation of prostitution of a child under the age of 16, and two counts of indecent liberties against a child under the age of 15.

Luckey is listed as a professor emeritus on the school’s website. Luckey is a frequent writer for publications Faith and Reason, as well as the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty’s publication, The Journal of Markets and Morality. He has written on Catholic social teaching and the economy for Crisis Magazine, as well.

Luckey is listed as an adjunct scholar for the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, as well as a member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and the advisory board for the Center for Economic Personalism. 

The small Catholic liberal arts college in Front Royal, VA began awarding a William R. Luckey award for Political Science and Economics in 2015, when Luckey retired as a teacher. Two days after the arrest, Luckey was still listed on Christendom’s website as a Professor Emeritus. 

College representatives did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday. It is not known if or how the news of Luckey’s arrest has been conveyed to students and their families. It is also not clear if Luckey had been active on campus. 

Records indicate Luckey was arrested Friday evening by members of the Warren County Sheriff’ Department in Front Royal, Virginia. There is no case information currently available online through the Virginia Court system’s website, and law enforcement representatives were unavailable on Sunday.

Christendom President Timothy O’Donnell apologized in 2018 after we reported on the school failing women who had been sexually assaulted on campus. At the time, the school pledged to bring in experts to review the school’s policies and protocols dealing with sexual assault and harassment.  

The story will be updated as information becomes available. 

UPDATE June 28 Christendom College issued the following statement on their website:

Christendom College has learned that a former professor, Dr. William Luckey, was charged with sexual offenses late last week. The charges have no connection to the personnel or students of Christendom College. Luckey served as a professor from 1984 until his last class and retirement back in 2015. 

The college asks for the prayers of the community for the Luckey family and those involved during this extremely trying moment, as the legal process moves forward and more information comes to light.

 

Image: Booking photo of William Luckey from Rappahannock Shenandoah Warren Regional Jail

 

 

NH Reporter: Legion school sheltered several more abusers than originally reported

The Legionaries of Christ acknowledged in a 2019 report that it had two sexual abusers in its ranks in NH, for a total of four in all of North America. But according to police records, at least four other abusers were reported in Center Harbor, NH, which was home to an all-boys Legion school. The chief of police in Center Harbor also believes the Legion habitually moved the accused out of the country to avoid investigation.

The founder of the school only notified state investigators about one abuse allegation after he became aware journalists were talking to the victim. 

Read the entire story with extensive original reporting by my husband, Damien Fisher, at NHReporter.com.

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Related: A year ago, we reported on how the Legion lied to police when a victim reported abuse to them, and how they classify criminal abuse as “boundary violations” to make it seem like they have fewer abusers in their ranks than they really do.

 

Photo: Immaculate Conception Apostolic School in Center Harbor, NH. Photo copyright Damien Fisher

 

Victim says Legion lied to police about her abuse

Legion falsely told police the victim didn’t want a criminal investigation;
classified criminal sexual abuse as “boundary violations”

By Damien Fisher
The Legionaries of Christ have published a list of credibly accused priests, and they claim they are open to hearing testimony from more survivors of abuse. But what happens when a victim does contact them with a complaint?  Are the allegations taken seriously? How accurate is their list? Do they tell the truth to law enforcement about allegations of criminal abuse?

Ashley (not her real name) thought she could help the Church when she made the agonizing decision to come forward in 2015 and tell authorities about the sexual abuse she suffered from a Legionaries of Christ priest as a middle schooler in the 1990s.

“I wanted to protect anyone he might still be hurting,” she said.

In September of 2015, Ashley and her attorney, Tom Brandt, met with Legion priest Fr. Peter Hopkins and another Legion priest to formally report that the Legion priest assigned to the Highlands, a private Legion school she attended in the Dallas area, repeatedly groomed and molested her in the confessional. The abuse she suffered, as she described it, rises to the level of a criminal offense. But when the diocese released its list of credibly accused abusers last year, Ashley’s abuser wasn’t on it, and he wasn’t on the list the Legion published in December.

Both the Legion officials we spoke to and the Dallas officials we contacted called the criminal abuse “boundary violations.”

Dallas Diocesan Chancellor Mary Edlund, who used that phrase in a letter to Child Protective Services, was not at the meeting. “The diocese refused to send a representative to our meeting,” Ashley said.  

Ashley thought coming forward would protect other young girls. She thought that reporting her abuse would alarm the Church, pushing them to investigate further, root out corruption, and reform the Legion. She expected someone to pursue her abuser.

“I was an optimist,” she said. 

When Ashley saw the records, she realized the Legion apparently lied to police about her case, and about her alleged abuser. 

“They really are not reformed,” she said.

Ashley agreed to tell us her story on the condition of anonymity. The alleged abuser has yet to be criminally charged, and so we are withholding his identity at this time. He has not responded to our requests for an interview. According to the information we have obtained, he is no longer a priest. He is the subject of an active police investigation, as recently as last month. 

Ashley went through years of self-doubt, guilt, and shame before she finally came forward. For years after her abuse, she didn’t understand that what she had endured was abuse.

“I didn’t realize there was a crime committed,” she said.

“If your mom asks what you are doing in here, tell her ‘spiritual direction,” the priest said.

The priest spent months grooming her when she was a middle school student at the Highlands, mostly in the confessional. The assaults took place in 1993 or 1994, around the time Ashley was 12 to 13 years old, according to the statement she gave to the Legion, to the Dallas Diocese, and eventually to police. The priest was a family relation of school officials, and he celebrated mass and heard the confessions of the students, according to her statement. The Highlands School in Irving is a private pre-K through grade 12 school that is part of the Regnum Christi network of schools. Regnum Christi is the lay apostolate of the Legion. 

Ashley was going to confession every two to four weeks during this time, usually after school. After one confession, she went around the confessional to thank the priest, and that is when he first forced her to sit on his lap, she said in her statement.

“He somehow pulled me down into his lap. He did not verbally ask me if I wanted to sit in his lap, but somehow I ended up there,” she said in her statement. 

Ashley was made to feel she had a “special friendship,” with the priest who obligated her to sit in his lap after each confession. Sometimes he would stand and embrace her, and whisper things into her ear, she said. 

“At one point while embracing me, whispering and nuzzling my hair he said ‘If your mom asks what you are doing in here, tell her ‘spiritual direction,’” Ashley said in her statement. “I assumed that he was telling me the truth, that this was in fact spiritual direction.”

That spiritual direction seemed to be taking a different course during her last confession, she said in her statement.

“The last time I remember confessing to him, afterward while embracing me he pressed his body up against me. I could feel his erection touching me through his cassock,” she said in her statement. “I was very uncomfortable with this and had no frame of reference for what was happening or how to respond. So I did nothing and after several minutes he was done embracing me and I left the confessional.”

Ashley started going to a different priest for confession after that, and her alleged abuser cooled toward her in their interactions outside the confessional, she said. In one instance she tried to give him a hug when there were other people around, and he brushed her off. 

“I was hurt and couldn’t understand why his behavior was so different in public,” she said in her statement. “After that I decided that he must have decided that I wasn’t his friend anymore, and to avoid awkwardness I did not return to confession with him.”

It wasn’t until years later, when she had children of her own, that she realized what had happened, and that her alleged abuser had been grooming her and encouraging her to lie to her mother about what they were doing alone.

Legion and Archdiocese both soft pedal criminal abuse allegation 

When she was ready to tell her story in 2015, Ashley got an attorney and  informed the Dallas diocese and then the Legion that she had been abused. With her attorney she pressed these Church officials to contact police, and to contact the Child Protective Services about the priest. She wanted to see some justice done. 

“I did tell the diocese and then the Legion that a police report needed to be filed, and if they did not file one, then I would,” she said.

A report was made to the Texas Child Protective Services department by Dallas Diocesan Chancellor Mary Edlund. The letter Edlund sent provides only scant details from Ashley’s story, and Edlund downplays Ashley’s encounters with the alleged abuser.

“Although this does not appear to be something which must technically be reported to your office, I am doing so out of an abundance of caution,” Edlund wrote.

A Legion priest spoke to police October of 2015. The name of the priest making the report is redacted throughout the police report we obtained, but he is described as the “head priest” at The Highlands at the time. His account to the police is full of inaccurate statements. 

The head priest also downplayed Ashley’s story when he spoke to police. He said it was some “inappropriate” behavior by a former priest at the Highlands. He also told police that Ashley “recalled within her statement feeling what she thought was an erection.”

Legion falsely claimed victim did not want criminal investigation

Strikingly, the Legion priest making the report told police that Ashley did not want to pursue criminal charges.

“According to [the head priest] during his meeting with [Ashley] she didn’t detail that she wanted to pursue any charges,” the police report states. 

Ashley said after reading the report that she realized the priest didn’t tell the truth to police about her meeting with the Legion. When she reported the abuse to Legion priests, she told them she did want a legal investigation pursued, but indicated to them she was not interested in pursuing a lawsuit against the Church.

“I stated in the meeting with Tom Brandt and the Legionaries that my intent in bringing this forward was justice, accountability, and protection of future victims, and that to that end I wanted to see that things were properly reported on the civil and ecclesiastical side, as well as to know that I had done what I could to prevent future victims at his hands,” she said during follow up questions we asked her.

At no time did she state to Legion officials that she did not want to pursue criminal charges, she said. She told them she wanted an investigation. We have made several attempts to speak to her then-attorney, but he has so far declined our requests for comment.

Legion falsely claims there were no other allegations against priest

Further, during the October 2015 police report the unnamed Legion priest made to police, he told the investigators that there were no other allegations against the alleged abuser. 

“I asked if there were any other allegations against [the alleged abuser], and [the head priest] stated that no other complaints or reports had been made against [the alleged abuser]” the police report states.

Ashley said that’s not true. She said that the Legion priests she met with, along with her attorney, also claimed that she was the only person to claim abuse at the hands of her alleged abuser. She said she knows now of at least one former Highlands student who had been abused.

“That’s what I thought was so crazy,” she said. “I don’t remember their exact words, but they definitely said something to the effect that this is the first that we’ve heard of him having issues. I knew that wasn’t true.”

We contacted Legion spokeswoman Gail Gore last year, and she said that Ashley’s case is one of a “boundary violation” and not sexual abuse. Gore has not responded to our recent request to discuss the specifics of this case, including questions about what the Legion told police. 

Not on any list

Ashley’s alleged abuser is nowhere to be found either on the Dallas list of credibly accused priests, or on the Legion list, because he is considered to have committed a “boundary violation.” According to the Legion’s own code of conduct, put out in 2019, a boundary violation is “an infraction of the Code of Conduct that is significant, but does not rise to the level of sexual abuse of a minor or sexual misconduct with an adult.” 

After she made her report, Ashley never heard from investigators with the police or the CPS as she expected. Instead, a representative with Praesidium contacted her. Praesidium is the outside firm that the Legion hired to conduct a child safety audit and to help develop its code of conduct. 

The Legion, which was founded by notorious sexual predator Fr. Marciel Maciel, claims that there are only four credibly accused priests or brothers in all of North America, following their own in-house investigation. However, the order claimed in December when it released the investigative report that there may be more information about “boundary violations” made public at some point in the future.

“In November 2018 we also asked Praesidium to conduct a full review of all our territorial files, this should be finalized soon. Should new information arise we will update the list accordingly. The list does not reflect unsubstantiated claims, open investigations or boundary violations. We are in the process of reviewing our policy on when and how we communicate about boundary violations,” it said in a statement.

After Ashley came forward, her report apparently hit a dead end. She did eventually get a letter from Fr. John Connor, then the Legion’s territorial director for North America, in May of 2016, six months after the police report. He apologized to her for the “boundary violation.” Connor’s letter indicates the Legion took it upon itself to see an “investigation” was done into her allegation. The Legion apparently concluded that the appropriate response to their investigation was an apology, and no more, because what had happened to Ashley wasn’t technically abuse.

“As you know, the Legion asked the safe environment firm Praesidium to investigate. They found what you said very compelling. They concluded that it was clearly a very sad violation of boundaries, totally unbecoming of a priest,” Connor wrote. 

That would have been the end of it, until May of last year.

Raid on Dallas diocese brings Ashley’s case back to life

Ashley’s case came alive again shortly after Dallas police raided the Dallas diocesan offices as part of an effort to uncover information police say was hidden from investigators. 

According to the Dallas Morning News: “The Dallas Police Department’s Child Exploitation Unit last year (in 2018) assigned Detective David Clark, a 20-year veteran, to the full-time job of looking into cases of sex abuse involving minors within the local diocese.

After Clark felt stonewalled by the diocese and its lawyers for months — issues he detailed in a search-warrant affidavit — police officers and FBI agents seized files from the Dallas diocese Wednesday as part of the ongoing investigation into sex abuse allegations.”

In the weeks after the Dallas raid, Ashley contacted Dallas police with her story. Soon, investigators sought her out for an interview about what had happened to her at The Highlands. The police wanted to know if she knew of other victims. She did.

“They told me they are building a case against [the alleged abuser], and they have met in person with another woman who was one grade ahead of me, but was there at the same time,” she said.

We have confirmed that police were investigating Ashley’s alleged abuser as recently as January and are looking to build a case for prosecution against him. 

Connor is no longer the North American territorial director, but is now the superior for the worldwide order. He was announced as the next superior for the Legion last month, and soon stories came to light in which Connor, as territorial director, allegedly mishandled a case of “boundary violations” involving a Legion priest, according to the Catholic News Agency.

“The Legion paid them off. I’m free to speak.”

Ashley said she throughout the course of the ordeal in reporting her abuse, she has actually met many good Legion priests. She’s also met many victims of Legion abuse, victims who are not willing or able to come forward.

“I know far too many people who have stories to tell, but they can’t tell them because they signed a non disclosure agreement because they desperately needed the money and the Legion paid them off,” she said. “I’m free to speak.”

An Italian court case alleges that victims have been paid off and told to not tell their stories, or in some cases to lie about what happened. The family of a Legion victim was reportedly offered 15,000 euros in exchange for the recanting his testimony against his abuser, according to Crux.

Though there are Legion priests she respects, Ashley knows what a Legion priest did to her, even if the Legion continues to minimize the criminal abuse she survived by calling it a “boundary violation.” Now that she has seen how the Legion seemingly covered up her abuse, she is ready to see the order die. 

“I would like to see the order suppressed,” she said. “I don’t think this is a legitimate order, but some of the vocations might be legitimate. Highlands should not be in my diocese, and I would like to see the Legion not be in my diocese and not be anywhere.”

Legion acknowledges four abusers, including two in Center Harbor, NH

By Damien Fisher and Simcha Fisher

The scandal-plagued Roman Catholic order the Legionaries of Christ has released a report acknowledging four sexual predators among its priests and brothers in all of North America. Two were from the now-closed Immaculate Conception Apostolic School in Center Harbor, NH, according to the letter sent out on Saturday.

The Legionaries of Christ released the letter just days before Christmas, along with a report that acknowledges the decades of horrific abuse by their founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel, a conman, incestuous sexual predator, and drug addict.

In the letter sent out to members of the Legionaries and its lay apostolates, Fr. John Connor, North American director for the order stated that a commission tasked with reviewing Legionaries’ abuse files found 175 minors were abused by 33 Legion priests worldwide. That figure includes 60 victims of Maciel alone, according to the report.

In New Hampshire, Francisco Cardona, now deceased, and Fernando Cutanda, now laicized, both abused students at the Immaculate Conception Apostolic School in Center Harbor, according to the Legionary commission’s report.

“We abhor the actions of those priests who have misused their priestly authority for their own purposes,” Connor wrote in his letter.

According to the commission’s report, the vast majority of the victims were boys between the ages of 11 and 16, and of the 33 priests who committed abuse, 14 were themselves victims of abuse by Legionaries.

In the Legionaries’ minor seminaries, or high schools, 15 priests worldwide abused 65 victims, according to the report. Another 90 students were abused by 54 seminarians in formation. 46 of these seminarians did not reach the priesthood, the report states.

“It is worth noting that 111 of the victims were either victims of Father Maciel, or were victims of his victims or of a victim of one of his victims. This represents 63.43 percent of the 175 victims of priests in the Congregation. Today, none of these 11 priests involved in this chain of abuses publicly exercises priestly ministry in the Congregation. Three of them have passed away,” the report states.

The Legion report strives to distance its current character from the crimes of its founder; yet even after Maciel’s crimes were revealed, the Legion continued to celebrate Maciel’s birthday, hang photos of him in their centers, and refer to him as “Nuestro Padre” until they formally forbade these practices in December of 2010.  Steve Skojec, who lived in and worked with Legion communities for several years, describes the spiritual manipulation inherent in the Legion’s very structure, and notes that they continued to extol Maciel and his legacy as late as January of 2019.

“A total of 33 priests of the Congregation committed abuse as priests or deacons. This number represents 2.44 percent of the 1,353 ordained throughout the history of the Congregation,” the report states. “The last known case of sexual abuse in a minor seminary of the Congregation occurred seven years ago, in 2012.”

But the vast majority of sexual assaults go unreported, according to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. RAINN cites FBI statistics noting that out of every 1,000 sexual assault, only 230 victims will come forward to report their abuse to police. These statistics suggest that the true number of victims of abuse by Legionaires is closer to 700 than 175.

The Legion has launched an accountability site called Zero Abuse through which victims can report their allegations of abuse to the Legion. On its homepage, the site says “the Legionaries of Christ seek to be transparent regarding the abuses committed by some of its members throughout its history.”

Abusive Legion clerics from NH not included in Diocesan list

Earlier this year, the Diocese of Manchester published its own list of known abusers, naming 73 priests accused of sexual abuse of a minor since 1950. The list includes names, ordination date, status, and assignments of accused priests, but it does not include details of the accusations.

The Manchester list also did not include any Legionary clerics, nor did it include monks or religious brothers who are not priests, even if they lived and worked in New Hampshire.

Thomas Bebbington, spokesman for the Manchester Diocese, said when the Manchester list was released that the bishop has no control over the Legionaries.

“The Legionaries of Christ is a religious order and its members are not incardinated in the Diocese of Manchester. The list only includes members of religious orders assigned to ministry by the bishop of the Diocese of Manchester,” Bebbington said. “A bishop does not have control over priests and religious who are not incardinated in his diocese. They report to the superiors in their own orders, rather than to the diocesan bishop.”

Bebbington also said that a bishop does not have control over who is assigned to institutions such as private high schools or colleges.

Lawsuit alleged Fr. Carroll knew of abuse at his school

Immaculate Conception Apostolic School in Center Harbor and the Legion of Christ, Inc., were named in a lawsuit in Connecticut in 2017. The plaintiff said that, when he was a student at ICAS in Center Harbor, Fernando Cutanda, or “Brother Fernando,” a “supervisor, mentor, and spiritual leader” employed by the Legion-run school, repeatedly raped him in several locations on the school property.

The lawsuit states that the alleged victim told a Legionaries of Christ priest, identified in the lawsuit as Fr. O’Carroll, what had been happening after feeling guilt and shame. O’Carroll, whom the legal documents describe as “in charge of ICAS at the time,” allegedly told the boy to say five rosaries “for his sins” and told him “God will take care of things.”

According to the lawsuit, “Brother Fernando” allegedly raped the boy again after Fr. O’Carroll allegedly heard of the abuse. The school was dismissed as a defendant in 2017, and the Legion settled with the victim in October of 2018. Although the school is in New Hampshire, the lawsuit was filed in Connecticut since the Legion of Christ, Inc., is headquartered there.

Envelopes of cash and cured Spanish hams

Marcial Maciel’s now notorious behavior reportedly included drug addiction, fathering several children with at least three different women, the sexual abuse of his own children and others. As outlined in Jason Berry’s reporting on the Legion, Maciel got away with his crimes thanks to the wide-spread corruption inside the Vatican.

“For years Maciel had Legion priests dole out envelopes with cash and donate gifts to officials in the curia. In the days leading up to Christmas, Legion seminarians spent hours packaging the baskets with expensive bottles of wine, rare brandy, and cured Spanish hams that alone cost upward of $1,000 each. Priests involved in the gifts and larger cash exchanges say that in hindsight they view Maciel’s strategy as akin to an insurance policy, to protect himself should he be exposed and to position the Legion as an elite presence in the workings of the Vatican,” Berry wrote.

The Vatican’s own assessment of Maciel, leveled in 2010, is devastating in its frankness describing Maciel’s true nature.

“The very grave and objectively immoral actions of Father Maciel, confirmed by incontrovertible testimonies, in some cases constitute real crimes and manifest a life devoid of scruples and authentic religious meaning. This life was unknown to the great majority of the Legionaries, above all because of the system of relationships constructed by Father Maciel, who was able skillfully to create alibis for himself, to obtain trust, confidence and silence from those around him, and to reinforce his personal role as a charismatic founder,” the Vatican statement reads. “Not infrequently a deplorable discrediting and distancing of those who entertained doubts as to the probity of his conduct, as well as a misguided concern to avoid damaging the good that the Legion was accomplishing, created around him a defense mechanism that for a long time rendered him unassailable, making it very difficult, as a result, to know the truth about his life.”

Legionaries will review the report on the Legionaries

According to Connor’s letter, the report will be reviewed by members of the Legionaries in Rome.

“This report will be reviewed by the Legionaries of Christ General Chapter delegates when they meet in mid-January, in Rome,” Connor wrote. “The delegates will also review several proposals for next steps in continuing our worldwide efforts for safer environments in all areas of our ministries.”

According to the commission’s report, Marcial Maciel had complete control over the order, from its 1949 founding until 2005, including control over how allegations of abuse were investigated and handled. He was considered “the superior general and the highest authority” within the organization.

“According to the Constitutions of the Congregation at that time, Father Maciel, as superior general, had direct responsibility for all important government decisions, including appointments, admissions to priesthood, investigations and sanctions, and the pastoral assignments of all members,” the report states.

Pope Benedict XVI barred Maciel from active ministry in 2006 after his history of pedophilia became incontrovertible.

BREAKING: Fulton Sheen beatification postponed

The beatification of Fulton Sheen has been postponed. Originally scheduled for Dec. 21 of this year after a protracted legal battle over his remains, the beatification has been put on hold “at the request of a few members of the Bishop’s Conference who have asked for further consideration,” according to a Dec. 3 statement from the diocese of Peoria.

“In our current climate, it is important for the faithful to know that there has never been, nor is there now, any allegation against Sheen involving the abuse of a minor,” the statement said.

Peter Jesserer Smith, a reporter for the National Catholic Register, said on Twitter:

“The Vatican will have potentially a year’s worth of lawsuits, with depositions and court findings of fact, to sift through. This is the ultimate test of Sheen’s beatification: either he’ll be stained by the abuse crisis, or the vindication of his holiness will shine like the sun.”

In July of 2019, a blog and some chatter on Twitter referenced an unsourced allegation that Sheen walked in on a priest abusing a female child, but that he merely told the priest to put his pants back on, called the victim a “slut,” and proceeded to help cover up the crime.  My husband and I made a thorough assessment of the credibility the accusation and its sources. We concluded that the allegation and sources, according to all available information, were not credible. In fact, there was considerable reason to doubt that any victim had even actually made an allegation. Essentially, there was a rumor, spread by un-credible sources, that there had been an allegation; there is no evidence of a victim, and there is nothing to investigate. 

The rumor also claimed that the Cause for Sheen’s canonization knew about the allegations and did not respond to them. But Monsignor Soseman, who was delegated by Bishop Jenky to oversee the Cause, told us “no such letter [as the one described in the allegations] ever arrived at the office in Peoria,  nor have I ever heard of any such allegation, in any of the extensive testimonies we took.”

Read our investigation of the rumored allegations. 

In its statement today, the Diocese of Peoria said:

“the life of Fulton Sheen has been thoroughly and meticulously investigated. At every state, it has been demonstrated definitively that he was an exemplary model of Christian conduct and a model of leadership in the Church. At no time has his life of virtue ever been called into question.”

In the statement, it says that the Bishop of Peoria, Bishop Daniel Jenky, was “informed by the Holy See” that the beatification would be postponed. 

 

The Peoria statement says:

“Since a few members of the Bishop’s Conference have requested a delay, the Diocese of Peoria remains confident that Archbishop Sheen’s virtuous conduct will only be further demonstrated. Bishop Jenky has ever confidence that any additional examination will only further prove Fulton Sheen’s worthiness of Beatification and Canonization. The Diocese of Peoria has no doubt that Fulton Sheen, who brought so many souls to Jesus Christ in his lifetime, will be recognized as a model of holiness and virtue.”

The statement says: “Bishop Jenky is deeply saddened by this decision. In particular, Bishop Jenky is even more concerned for the many faithful who are devoted to Sheen and will be affected by this news.”

Read my interview with Bonnie Engstrom, the mother of the boy who returned to health after his heart stopped beating for sixty-one minutes, and his parents prayed to Fulton Sheen. 

The statement continues: 
[Bishop Jenky] is firmly convinced of the great holiness of the Venerable Servant of God and remains confident that Sheen will be beatified. Bishop Jenky has every intention of continuing the Cause, but no further date for Beatification has been discussed.”

The Diocese of Peoria is not offering any more information at this time.