Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God Page #3

obviously had ulterior motives.

You know, they would give you

authorization

up to $250,000 to settle a case

if you could get

a confidentiality order.

And, in 1995, we had a budget

of $7 million

to handle the various problems

of childhood sexual abuse.

And most people don't want

to have anything go public.

I mean, in the Catholic mindset,

you don't sue the Church.

They want to know

that it's going to stop.

When Wall found out

that it didn't stop,

that offending priests were allowed

to stay in ministry,

he left the priesthood.

That was part of your brief,

to report these things

to the local authorities?

Never.

That's the worldwide policy -

to snuff out scandal.

Bob Bolger was another student

who was abused at St John's

by Father Murphy.

After graduating from college,

he began hanging out

with Arthur and Gary

and found an unexpected way back

to memories of St John's.

HE PANTS:

I started getting these

revelations, these memories.

Finally, I woke up

and I was furious

and the more we worked on it,

the angrier I got.

I had kept this

quiet for so long

and not said

anything to anyone.

It suddenly hit me

just how wrong this was.

And Bob was like,

"Go to the police station, now, go!"

And Gary was thrown off guard.

And Bob said,

"If you're angry, Gary, then go."

"Go to the police station. Now, go!"

I've got to tell you-

I'm shaking

We went out to the police

station and went in.

Bob was writing back and forth

with the officer

because he had

good English skills.

And then, two police officers

told us to stay in a room.

And we waited and waited and waited.

And I went to open the door

and the door was locked.

And then, two detectives came into

the room and said, "You can go."

And we were all excited

about being able to leave.

And guessing that the detectives

had already talked to Murphy.

We waited for a week to go by,

then another week went by

and then another.

We didn't hear a thing.

It was just sickening.

Murphy had told them that it wasn't

true and the kids were making it up.

That we were just

little troublemakers.

It started to bother

me more and more

because I was hearing

that he was molesting other kids.

I was mad and I wanted

to protect these deaf kids.

And it was time to do something

about it. And we did.

It was Bob's idea.

We didn't put the reason why

on the flyer,

we just wanted it to be

a warning to people.

When the school would hold

a fundraiser,

they'd go to the cars

that were parked at the school

and they would put this flyer,

you know, don't give money to this

man because he abuses these kids.

I was shocked

and I tried to advise Bob

that, you know, this was not really

the way to fix this.

He was caught up in the era

of activism

and he was really trying

to get deaf people

to kind of stand up for themselves.

At John Conway's suggestion,

they hired a lawyer

and began collecting sworn

affidavits from Murphy's victims.

The idea was to submit

these affidavits,

which were very graphic

and very clear,

to Archbishop Cousins and then, we

thought the matter would be finished,

we thought that the priest would be

removed from the school.

The Church's response was silence.

Determined to make

their voices heard,

Bob, Arthur and Gary

went to the Milwaukee Cathedral

and handed out their flyers

to passers-by.

Suddenly, they were granted

a meeting with Archbishop Cousins.

The Archbishop was there,

Father Murphy was there.

In fact, Father Murphy

sat right next to me.

He would look down, look around,

he was not going to make

eye contact with us.

There were some

teachers from the school,

several leaders that I knew in the deaf

community that were there

to speak in support of

Father Murphy

In the group were two priests.

They were described by the Archbishop

as members of the Vatican.

And the Archbishop thanked us

for bringing this matter

to the attention

of the Archdiocese.

He allowed that this problem

had existed before,

and he mentioned that

back as far as 1960,

this matter had been addressed.

Cousins would deny having said this,

but an investigation revealed

that, even before 1960,

Father Walsh had tried to do

something about Murphy.

Having heard complaints from Arthur

and from other students,

Walsh reported the accusations

to Cousins' predecessor,

Archbishop Meyer.

Meyer went to Murphy

and he confessed to the abuse,

but Murphy was not dismissed.

He went away in a short retreat

before being invited back

to supervise children at St John's.

Other deaf people had told

Father Walsh

and then, Father Walsh

told Meyer in 1957.

And then, I said something in 1963.

It turned out that Walsh

had made the same report

to the office of the Papal Nuncio,

the Vatican Ambassador

in Washington DC.

So by this meeting, in 1974,

the Vatican had known about Murphy

for almost 20 years.

This was known and it had been

dealt with in the past.

So there was just no question

about the validity of the complaints

We immediately said Father Murphy

has to be removed from the school.

Murphy said, "No, I take care of the

budget and the money and everything."

And Archbishop Cousins

got very angry.

He started scolding

and arguing with us.

I'm thinking, "Wow, I can't believe

this. Where was his compassion?"

"Where was his wanting

to listen to this?"

So we eventually kind of walked out,

the Archbishop's saying to me

that he was very upset because

he thought he was dealing

with a person of good faith.

I told him I thought I was dealing

with a person of good faith as well.

When deposed years later Archbishop

Cousins recalled the meeting,

he said that, at the time, he did

not find the allegations credible.

He had conducted an investigation

and found no proof.

When asked what steps he had taken

to determine the veracity

of the allegations,

Cousins said that he had interviewed

Murphy and the school staff.

When the lawyer asked

if he had interviewed students,

Cousins admitted that he hadn't

bothered to talk to them.

"After all," he said,

"The students are deaf."

After getting nowhere with Archdiocese

and being told by the Police

that the Statute of

Limitations had past

the men approached the Milwaukee

DA's office with their concerns

about ongoing abuse.

Bob Bolger, Gary and I went to the

Milwaukee Courthouse downtown.

And we started handing out

these flyers.

And all the hearing people

were shocked.

And Bob put the flyer

on DA Michael McCann's desk.

Nobody talked to us,

we said nothing,

we just kept handing them out.

The DA's office took notice

of the flyers

and granted the men a meeting

with then Assistant DA Bill Gardner.

Gardner went out to St John's

to question students in the senior

boys' dormitory.

They met in our dorm,

about six of the boys.

The meeting only lasted

about 15, 20 minutes,

cos they all said,

"No, no, nothing is going on."

And it didn't take long, it was over.

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