Cardinal DiNardo denies priests named in report ‘credibly accused’

November 21, 2018 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Houston, Texas, Nov 21, 2018 / 09:16 am (CNA).- Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, has denied that he allowed two priests to remain in active ministry despite credible allegations of sexual abuse against them.

CBS News aired a report Nov. 20, citing accusations against two Houston priests, Fr. Terence Brinkman and Fr. John Keller, who are presently in active ministry within the archdiocese.

During the meeting of the U.S. bishops’ conference held in Baltimore last week, CBS asked DiNardo if he was aware that “you have two priests with credible sexual abuse allegations currently in active ministry in your diocese?”

DiNardo, who serves as president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, asked which priests were being referenced. On hearing the names of Brinkman and Keller, he immediately responded that neither was a credible allegation.

“That’s not a credible one,” DiNardo said of the accusation against Keller. Regarding the allegation against Brinkman the cardinal replied that “[the accusation against] Terry was never credible.”

Under the Dallas Charter and Essential Norms governing how U.S. dioceses are to handle sexual abuse allegations against priests, a “credible” accusation is any allegation which has the semblance of truth or not found to be manifestly false or frivolous.

Since 2002, all accusations of sexual abuse against a priest in an American diocese are examined by an independent, lay-led diocesan review board which determines if they are “credible.”

Citing court documents, the report says that Fr. Brinkman was accused of sexually abusing a minor, but that a civil case was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston said that the accuser had offered a physical description “that does not match Fr. Brinkman.”

The website Bishop-Accountability lists the accusation as having been made in a civil suit filed in July 2010, and concerns alleged events in the mid 1970s. The CBS report made no reference to these dates but did display the same image of Fr. Brinkman that appears on Bishop-Accountability.

Fr. Thomas Keller is accused by Mr. John LaBonte of giving him alcohol and fondling him in his bed during an overnight trip. LaBonte was 16 at the time of the alleged incident.

LaBonte told CBS that he presented his allegation to the then-Diocese of Galveston-Houston in 2002, at the height of the last sexual abuse crisis in the Church in the United States.

Citing a letter received he in 2003, LaBonte says the diocese confirmed that Keller behaved in a manner “inappropriate for a priest” and was receiving “therapy” but that they “could not conclude” that that the incident “constituted sexual abuse.”

Both Keller and Brinkman remain in active ministry. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston could not be reached for comment.

DiNardo has committed to release a list of all clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston by the end of January 2019. That list will include accusations dating back seven decades.

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Friend of Jean Vanier ‘heartbroken’ for abuse victims, but hopeful for the future of L’Arche

February 27, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Denver, Colo., Feb 27, 2020 / 04:35 pm (CNA).- On the news that Jean Vanier, Catholic founder of L’Arche International, has been credibly accused of serially sexually abusing women, Professor Stanley Hauerwas said he is “devastated.”

“That is the way anyone must feel on hearing the news of Jean Vanier’s sexual misconduct,” Hauerwas said in comments to CNA. “Vanier was supposed to be different and in many ways he was. But the difference makes his behavior all the more devastating. He should have known better,” he added.

Hauerwas, a world renowned theologian with joint appointments at Duke Divinity School and Duke Law School, was a personal friend of Vanier, who died at the age of 90 on May 7, 2019.

Vanier was the once-revered founder of L’Arche, an international community of people with intellectual disabilities and their supporters, and of Faith and Light, an ecumenical Christian association of prayer and friendship for those with intellectual disabilities and their families.

Last April, L’Arche commissioned GCPS, an independent U.K. consultancy specializing in the reporting of exploitation and abuse to investigate allegations related to Fr. Thomas Philippe, an abusive Dominican priest sanctioned by Church authorities in 1956, whom Vanier described as his “spiritual mentor.”

On Feb. 22, 2020, L’Arche International published the results of the investigation, detailing “credible and consistent” accounts of sexual misconduct by Vanier against six adult women without disabilities in the context of spiritual direction.

Hauerwas said he considered Vanier a friend and mentor, and is “heartbroken by this revelation of his terrible misconduct and utterly condemn it as an abuse of power.”

Hauerwas noted that Vanier seems to have convinced himself the abuse was consensual, which he said was “some desperate attempt to justify his actions. Which is but a reminder that self-deception often is the result of trying to make sense of our lives and why we all need accountability, especially those held in high esteem.” 

“One suspects his gentleness allowed him to get away with anything but his actions involving the women were anything but gentle,” he said.

Still, Hauerwas said he is “indebted” to Vanier for what he taught him about how to love and care for disabled people, and he hopes that the good of L’Arche’s work will not be lost along with the revelations of abuse.

“So much of (Vanier’s) life was morally exemplary. That is one of the problems. How can we continue to learn from his witness with his intellectually disabled friends without excusing his predatory sexual behavior? At this time when we are trying to receive this devastating news the only advice I have is not to be in a hurry to answer that question,” he said.

Rather than rush to decisions, Hauerwas urged those effected by the report to pray.

“We must pray first for the women he betrayed,” he said. “We must pray for the members of the L’Arche movement. We must pray for ourselves that God will help us to carry on the work of L’Arche because that work is, in and of itself, independent of the actions of its founder.”

He added that the international L’Arche community “are proving to be quite extraordinary in terms of how they’re responding and how they have responded.”

L’Arche International has set up an additional centralized reporting procedure for any further information that people may wish to report. Any such information will be received by a task force composed of people outside of L’Arche.

“I continue to believe that in those homes the glory of God is manifest for all to see.”

[…]

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