The U.S. Catholic bishop who has led efforts to confront clergy sex
abuse has let a priest continue working despite allegations of
inappropriate behavior with boys and adults.
Bishop Wilton Gregory -- a rising star of the U.S. Catholic Church who
recently guided his colleagues to a
one-strike-and-you’re-out-of-ministry charter in Dallas this summer --
said he would ask a review board to re-examine the conduct of the Rev.
Daniel L. Friedman after inquiries this week by The Dallas Morning
News.
Bishop Gregory suspended Father Friedman on Friday pending that
investigation, which will be the third church inquiry involving the
priest since the late 1980s.
“I regret not having asked the review board to reconsider this matter in
light of the charter immediately after our Dallas meeting,” Bishop
Gregory of the Diocese of Belleville, Ill., said in a written statement
Friday afternoon.
Bishop Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,
had returned Father Friedman to parish work in 1995, even though the
priest had been removed from a previous post and sent to counseling
after complaints.
The bishop said in an interview with The News earlier this week
that he reinstated Father Friedman at the recommendation of the review
board, which had investigated at least one allegation of sexual
misconduct between the priest and a minor at a church youth camp.
Bishop Gregory said he was unaware of several other accusations made
against Father Friedman. But several camp workers told The News
that they forwarded the complaints to the diocese before and after
Bishop Gregory arrived in 1994.
Among them: that Father Friedman grabbed the buttocks of a young man who
worked at a diocese-run camp, rubbed his groin against a clothed boy’s
backside and insisted on helping campers dress. He also was sued this
year by a woman who said he fondled her after she went to him for
counseling. The woman later dropped her suit.
Father Friedman, 56, when asked whether the series of allegations
against him were credible or false, refused to comment and would not
answer further questions. The priest is also a member of the diocese’s
Priest Senate and an adviser to the National Catholic Committee on
Scouting.
“You’ll have to talk to my lawyer,” he said. His lawyer did not return
telephone messages seeking comment.
Bishop Gregory’s vicar general, the Rev. James Margason, said the
diocese considered the woman’s accusations false. He then gave varying
accounts about another allegation and initially denied knowing about
additional complaints. He acknowledged that Father Friedman was still
undergoing therapy - not because the priest was a risk, but because “he
wants to go.”
“The man has had to deal with a considerable amount of accusations,”
said Monsignor Margason, who oversees the diocese’s abuse
investigations. “I think that, in itself, is reason enough for someone
to want to seek counseling.”
The U.S. bishops’ new policy, approved at their historic Dallas meeting
in June, defines abuse as behavior that does not necessarily involve “a
complete act of intercourse” with a minor and says that it need not
involve physical contact or explicit force. The document does not
address abuse of adults.
“There will be severe consequences for any act of sexual abuse,” Bishop
Gregory said the day the charter passed.
Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, head of the Catholic Church’s new national
review board, said the church’s new charter requires “retrospective
zero-tolerance and therefore the reopening of any past cases.” Bishop
Gregory’s decision to revisit the matter involving Father Friedman
adheres to that policy, Mr. Keating said.
“The best and honest policy is always re-examination and referrals to
the criminal justice authorities,” he said, “so it does not look like a
cover-up or that it was hometowned. Bishop Gregory will do the right
thing.”
David Clohessy, national president of the Survivors Network of Those
Abused by Priests, said he was surprised that Bishop Gregory did not
remove the priest sooner. He noted that the lawsuit filed against Father
Friedman this year was “an obvious reminder” about the priest’s past.
“If it is an honest case of ‘Gosh, I forgot’ on Bishop Gregory’s part,
heaven help us all,” he said. “If he, as leader of the bishops
conference, loses track in his own diocese, that’s very troubling.”
Past concerns
Concerns about Father Friedman’s conduct date at least to 1986, eight
years before Bishop Gregory took over the sprawling, rural diocese
across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Mo.
Father Friedman had just started working as a chaplain and co-director
at Camp Ondessonk, a diocese-run retreat for boys and girls near the
Illinois-Kentucky border. He was assigned there, in part, to replace the
Rev. Robert Vonnahmen, who was later accused in lawsuits of abusing boys
at the camp.
Former camp workers said they were hoping for a fresh start when Father
Friedman arrived. But they soon began to notice questionable behavior -
much of it revolving around his fondness for one Ondessonk tradition,
they said.
Throughout the year, campers in their early teens and younger were
initiated into a special, Native American American Indian-themed club
called the Lodge. For the ceremony, they would dress as Indians, wearing
only body paint, loin-cloths, moccasins and replica head dresses.
Several former employees said they saw Father Friedman help the boys,
many of whom were naked, put on the loin cloths. The workers said they
also saw spotted Father Friedman hugging campers and massaging their
shoulders.
“It was creepy - he gave everyone the willies,” former camper and staff
member George Wickey said. “We, as counselors, would almost police him
among ourselves. We wouldn’t let him be alone with the boys.”
When it came to the Lodge initiations, Father Friedman was “really into
it,” said former camp ranger Dave Bretscher said. “If I had to sum up
Father Dan, I’d say he’s a little too touchy. There are red flags there.”
One former camp employee, William Benton, alleged in a deposition that
Father Friedman had “put his hand on my bare butt” before one of the
Lodge events that first year.
Mr. Benton, who was about 24 years old at the time of the incident, gave
the testimony several years later as part of his lawsuit accusing Father
Vonnahmen of sexual abuse at the camp. An appeals court dismissed his
suit because it was filed after the statute of limitations had expired.
“I wouldn’t want Father Dan around children,” Mr. Benton said. “If an
uncle would come over and play a little too frisky with the kids, the
parents would keep an eye on that uncle.”
In subsequent camp years, there were other red flags. Mr. Wickey said
that while he and Father Friedman were alone in a room at the front of a
camp chapel, the priest began making suggestive remarks and inching
closer toward him.
“Then all of a sudden he got real weird,” said Mr. Wickey, who was about
16 at the time. “I very distinctly remember that he was moving his
tongue like the way a teenage boy would pretend to be French kissing a
girl. It was so crazy that I literally closed my eyes and looked down.
When I looked up, he was still doing it.”
Startled, Mr. Wickey said he moved to leave the room, and Father
Friedman slapped his buttocks.
Mr. Wickey and Mr. Benton said they reported Father Friedman to their
camp bosses. Former camp director Gene Canavan said he forwarded those
the complaints to the diocese, as well as several others. Among them: A
camp employee told Mr. Canavan that Father Friedman reached around a
young camper and, while helping move a dining table, repeatedly bumped
his groin into the boy’s backside.
Mr. Canavan said he considered the allegations credible and confronted
Father Friedman, who denied them. At one point, Mr. Canavan said, he
urged the diocese - then led by James Keleher, now an archbishop in
Kansas City, Kan. - to replace the priest.
“Every time I had a case like that come to me, I went to the diocese,”
Mr. Canavan said, adding that he took at least one accusation directly
to Archbishop Keleher and others to Monsignor Margason. “I didn’t hear
anything back. I got thanked for coming.”
During an interview Thursday, Monsignor Margason initially said that he
did not remember talking to Mr. Canavan about Father Friedman. He
subsequently said, however, that he recalled receiving reports that
“Father Dan did not always act appropriately.” The monsignor also said
that he asked Father Friedman about the reports and that the priest
denied any wrongdoing.
In 1988, the diocese did assign Monsignor Margason to investigate
allegations against Father Friedman of sexual misconduct with a minor.
Few details about that case have been released. In fact, the diocese did
not publicly acknowledge the investigation or its outcome until six
years later.
After his investigation, Monsignor Margason recommended removing Father
Friedman as camp chaplain. But Archbishop Keleher left the priest there.
A spokeswoman for Archbishop Keleher said he was unavailable for
comment. Monsignor Margason said he could not remember specifics about
the incident, whom he questioned, or why his recommendation wasn’t
followed.
Some camp workers said they didn’t even know that the diocese had
checked into their complaints and weren’t given an explanation for
Father Friedman’s continued employment.
“Any counselor would have been removed, if not fired, for the same
conduct,” Mr. Canavan said. “Now I think I maybe should have gone to
someone else other than the diocese.”
Conduct reviewed
In September 1994 - shortly after Mr. Benton’s deposition - Bishop
Gregory removed Father Friedman from ministry. The decision, which
Bishop Gregory said was recommended by the lay review board, triggered a
broader review of all diocesan priests’ personnel files.
Bishop Gregory also banned Father Friedman from private contact with
children while the review board looked further deeper into the claims
against him. The priest also was sent to counseling at the Cardinal
Stritch Retreat House in suburban Chicago. Monsignor Margason said all
priests investigated by the diocese for sexual misconduct were placed in
that facility.
During that second investigation, Mr. Wickey said, the diocese contacted
him about Father Friedman’s alleged advance. Mr. Wickey He said he told
the diocesan representative that he and some co-workers at the camp
previously had reported other suspicious behavior by the priest.
Mr. Canavan, meanwhile, said he was not contacted during the inquiry,
despite the several complaints about Father Friedman that he previously
had forwarded to the diocese.
At the conclusion of the investigation in January 1995, Bishop Gregory
reinstated Father Friedman - making him the only priest out of more than
a dozen investigated by the diocese who was allowed to return.
Bishop Gregory said he once again depended on the recommendation of the
review board, which included three priests and one diocesan employee.
Several members of the board did not return telephone calls seeking
comment.
“They simply sent me a single-page paper, saying they met and examined
whatever was in front of them,” he said in an interview earlier this
week.
Monsignor Margason initially said the board had recommended
reinstatement because the sexual misconduct claim was considered “a
false allegation.’’ He later gave a different account: that the panel
members concluded that the priest had engaged in inappropriate behavior,
rather than sexual misconduct.
“If we felt children would have been at risk, we would have removed
him,” Monsignor Margason said. “It’s been the policy of the diocese to
do that, and we’ve done it openly over the years.”
Later in 1995, Bishop Gregory assigned Father Friedman to be pastor of
St. Francis of Assisi Church in Aviston, Ill., about an hour from
outside of Belleville, and lifted the restrictions that had been put on
the priest. But Father Friedman continued to attend therapy sessions in
St. Louis, for a while at the diocese’s directive and more recently on
his own, Monsignor Margason said.
After Father Friedman’s reinstatement, Mr. Clohessy, the leader of the
victims’ advocacy group, wrote to Bishop Gregory to express his
displeasure and press the bishop to explain the decision.
“Either this really happened, and you are now convinced Friedman has
been ‘cured,’ or Friedman was falsely accused,” Mr. Clohessy wrote. “If
you feel he was wrongly accused, he would appreciate the public knowing
this. If you feel he has molested but won’t again, he deserves support
and monitoring by his new parishioners.”
Bishop Gregory never responded to his questions, Mr. Clohessy said this
week.
A new allegation
Since his return to work, Father Friedman has faced one new allegation,
Monsignor Margason said.
Parishioner Judy Hangsleben accused the priest of fondling her breasts
during three counseling sessions in early 2000. Ms. Hangsleben, who said
she had been a supporter of Father Friedman for years, said she sought
his help in coping with sex abuse during her childhood. She said that
after she resisted his advances, the priest limited her role in parish
work.
Ms. Hangsleben said she reported the incidents to the diocese a few
months later and met with Bishop Gregory to discuss the incidents.
Bishop Gregory agreed to talk to Father Friedman, she said.
After a week or so passed with no response, she said, she called the
diocese and was told by Monsignor Margason that the diocesan review
board would not investigate because it only handled clergy abuse cases
involving minors.
“That was a real slap in the face,” she said. “There’s no help if you’re
an adult and you’re abused. That’s OK. But abuse is abuse.”
This week, Bishop Gregory and Monsignor Margason said Ms. Hangsleben’s
allegation against Father Friedman was “entirely false,” but neither
would elaborate.
After Ms. Hangsleben decided to take her complaints public by filing a
lawsuit early this year, the diocese began an internal inquiry.
Lawyers for Father Friedman and the diocese sought to dismiss her
lawsuit on various technical grounds, including that the statutes of
limitation had expired by the time she filed the suit. The lawyers
called the suit a “vague collection” of allegations.
Others in the community became equally skeptical of Ms. Hangsleben -
some left angry phone messages at her home, she said. She finally
decided early this summer to drop the lawsuit.
A month later, Monsignor Margason notified Ms. Hangsleben in a letter
that she could no longer be a member of Father Friedman’s parish because
she didn’t live in Aviston, and that she should attend her hometown
parish instead.
“Even though I filed a lawsuit over all this, I don’t hate Friedman,”
she said. “But I don’t approve of the way it was handled by the diocese.”
E-mail rdunklin@dallasnews.com
