The McCarrick of Wyoming

This is the second of the two posts I promised, proving that the current ecclesiastical hierarchy continues to operate according to this long-debunked, wrong-headed principle:

Sexual abuse is a shameful private matter that should be kept from the public eye. If people know that clergymen have committed this crime, they will lose the faith. Therefore, it should be hushed up, at any cost.

[click HERE for the first post proving the point]

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Bishop Hart at center (Getty image)

Bishop Joseph Hart sexually abused a number of innocent young people, teenagers and pre-teens. The survivors of Hart’s crimes have tried, over the course of half a century now, to get the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to acknowledge the truth. It has led them only to disappointment and more pain.

Hart began his priestly ministry in the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, in northwestern Missouri. (Not to be confused with the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, a separate ecclesiastical province.) During his first assignment as a priest, Hart established a relationship with a large Catholic family, the Hunters. Father Hart became like a second father to the Hunter children.

Hart proceeded to molest three Hunter boys. He started with the eldest, Darrel, at age 12. Darrel manage to escape before anything serious happened.

Darrel’s younger brother Kevin was not so fortunate. In 1971, Hart took Kevin on a road trip through the southwest USA. Hart got Kevin drunk, forced the 14-year-old to sleep with him, and sexually abused him.

Kevin would never be the same after the trip. He became a drug addict and died at age 32, in 1989.

Michael Hunter was born between Darrel and Kevin. Hart groped Michael, beginning in 1963. Michael went on to lead the Kansas City chapter of the Survivors Network. He spent himself, trying to keep other survivors alive and healthy. Mike died of a heart attack in 2015, at age 66.

Here’s Darrel, Mike, and Kevin’s sister, Susie McClernon, in a 2019 Kansas City Star interview:

Another Hunter sister, Kathy Donegan, put it like this, in a 2019 interview:

Hart took my brother and best friend away from me. This body count is his legacy.

In 1969, Hart became the pastor of a new parish, St. John Francis Regis. He abused multiple boys there. One survivor, known as “John,” had lost his father at age six. John remembered Hart abusing him:

It occurred on the couch in the TV room of the rectory. Nobody else was there. He tickled me and rubbed against me, then he started moving his hand down. Then he unbuttoned my jeans and tried to unzip them. He was laughing the whole time.

I said, “Father, stop.” He said, “It’s OK.” After about ten minutes of fighting him off and nervous laughing, I took off. I ran through the living room and went home.

I was very confused. I didn’t tell anybody. About a week later, during class, I was walking down a hallway at school. We met, and he grabbed me. He held on to me. He said, “You’re a troublemaker. Nobody’s going to believe you. If you tell, you won’t see your dad again, because you’ll go to hell.”

Another survivor, who goes by the name John Doe E.K., volunteered at the St. John Francis Regis rectory, answering the phone. He remembers Hart groping and fondling him while they played basketball, “passing it off as mere sport.”

Mr. Gilbert Padilla also remembers Hart abusing him at St. John Francis Regis. Hart and his priest-friend Thomas O’Brien would take Padilla out of class, show him pornography, offer him drugs and alcohol, and molest him.

Thirteen-year-old Padilla tried to report the abuse to the principal in 1976. She told the boy, “That’s impossible. Priests are men of God.”

“John,” John Doe E.K., and Padilla were not the only boys at St. John Francis Regis that Hart abused. Like McCarrick and his partners in crime, Hart and Co. had a vacation house to use. This one was on Lake Viking, northeast of Kansas City.

Mr. Pat Lamb recalls O’Brien, Hart, and another priest, Thomas Reardon, taking him and other boys, including Kevin Hunter, to the lake house. The priests offered the boys whiskey-and-cokes, then fondled them.

Lamb remembers:

We were too afraid to tell anyone else, because it was just embarrassing for us. I mean, these men were well-known priests. Who was going to believe us? But we did try to warn other boys not to go to Lake Viking.

Hart became a bishop in Wyoming in 1976. He flew “John” from Kansas City to Wyoming, gave him alcohol, and abused him in a hotel room. John thought: “How do you say no to a bishop?”

Meanwhile, “Martin” was volunteering around the parish where Bishop Hart lived, in Cheyenne. Martin, too, had lost his father. The family relied on the Church for assistance. Martin’s mother worked at the school.

One day, Hart insisted on hearing Martin’s confession. Martin recalls:

Somehow when I was with the bishop, I always had to get naked. I had to show him what I did when I had my impure thoughts. I had to sleep in bed with Hart and change into a bathing suit in front of him.

Looking back, Martin reflects:

Why didn’t I say no? Because I didn’t want my mother to lose her job and everything that the church was giving us.

Hart had threatened Martin with these consequences, if the boy did not comply.

Martin was not the only Wyoming boy that Hart abused. There were at least five others.

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Gilbert Padilla (with David Biersmith) Reuters image

As I mentioned, Gilbert Padilla first reported Hart’s crimes in 1976. Another of Hart’s Missouri victims (who remains anonymous) reported Hart to the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in 1989.

In 1992, the Hunter family tried to tell diocesan officials how Hart had destroyed their family. They were shocked when the Vicar General arrived at the meeting with a lawyer, whose first question was, “How much do you want?”

The diocese offered the surviving Hunters free counseling. The Kansas City Star discovered that the counselors were instructed to report back to the diocese about what the Hunter sisters said in therapy.

In 1993 the diocese told the Hunters that Hart had submitted voluntarily to an “evaluation” in Arizona, which had determined that he “posed no threat to himself or others.” When the Hunters reported this information publicly, the Vicar General accused them of lying. The VG insisted that he would not pass judgment on the credibility of anything the Hunters had told him.

According to later disclosures, the diocese of KC-StJ notified the Vatican in 1993 about what the Hunters had told the Vicar General. In Wyoming, Hart apparently managed to cover the whole business up completely.

Also in 1993, “John” reported the abuse he had suffered from Hart to the diocese in Missouri. The Vicar General bought John a truck, using $12,100 of the diocese’s cash. The VG demanded that John sign a document forswearing any further financial claims against the diocese.

In September 2001, Hart retired from his position as diocesan bishop at age 70, five years early. By the following January, when the Boston Globe began publishing its Spotlight series (which had been delayed in publication several months, owing to the 9/11 attacks), Hart was conveniently on a sabbatical outside of Wyoming.

In 2002, John Doe E.K. reported his abuse to church officials in Missouri, and “Martin” reported his to the police in Wyoming. Martin says he came forward primarily to support the Hunters, who had become pariahs in the Catholic community for telling the truth about a “beloved Kansas-City priest” who became a bishop.

Marc Card. Ouellet, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation of Bishops

Hart’s successor as bishop of Wyoming, David Ricken (who now serves as bishop of Green Bay, Wisconsin) claimed in April of 2002 that he never heard anything about Hart’s crimes until that month.

Ricken promptly issued a pastoral letter, assuring the faithful that he believed in Hart completely. Ricken insisted that everything had been investigated previously by the diocese in Missouri, and Hart had been exonerated. Bishop Ricken went on:

Sometimes those who have been hurt project their memories onto someone they have known who may not actually have been the perpetrator.

Meanwhile, back in Missouri, the Vicar General of KC-StJ diocese claimed that “John” had never actually made a credible report of abuse by Hart. And in Wyoming, a state prosecutor conducted an “investigation” into Martin’s charges–by trying to blame Martin.

In August of 2008, the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph paid $10 million to 47 survivors of abuse committed by twelve priests, including Hart. The then-bishop, Robert Finn, made a blanket public apology for the priests’ “behavior.” (Finn later had to resign from office, after having been convicted in civil court of child-abuse cover-up.)

In 2011, Padilla filed a lawsuit against the diocese, for covering-up for Hart.

Meanwhile, in Wyoming, in 2009 Bishop Paul Etienne (currently bishop of Seattle) succeeded Ricken in the bishop’s chair that Hart had occupied for the last quarter of the 20th century.

Hart continued to live the adulated life of a bishop emeritus, in spite of having been named in a $10 million sex-abuse settlement in Missouri. Martin’s family met with Etienne and insisted that something be done.

Etienne apparently did not share Ricken’s certainty that Hart was innocent. Etienne privately asked the Vatican to open an investigation. The Vatican did nothing. Etienne nonetheless quietly “restricted” Hart’s ministry, prohibiting the retired bishop from celebrating the sacraments publicly.

In 2017, Bishop Steven Biegler succeeded Etienne in Wyoming. Before he left, Etienne told Biegler about Hart. Biegler continued to “restrict” Hart’s ministry.

Biegler then hired an investigator to put together a full report. Hart declined to be interviewed. The investigator’s report went to the police and to the Vatican. The report remains secret, and there is no public record of who the investigator was.

Biegler announced his actions in 2018. He  did numerous press interviews, including this one with Wyoming public radio:

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Biegler stated unequivocally that he believes Hart’s accusers. The bishop urged the police to re-open the investigation. (Wyoming has no statute of limitations on prosecuting criminal sex abuse of minors.)

Biegler released a public letter which revealed that Etienne had “previously” restricted Hart’s ministry, and that the Congregation of Bishops in Rome had now extended that restriction to include all the dioceses of the Church. Biegler also decided to remove Hart’s name from a building at the St. Joseph’s Children’s Home, northeast of Cheyenne.

Biegler declared:

I hope that our investigation will lead to a final determination by the Vatican that the sexual abuse allegations against Bishop Hart are credible and require disciplinary action.

Apparently, a few months later, in October 2018, the Vatican secretly ordered Hart to stay out of sight, just as they had done with McCarrick a decade earlier.

The Holy Office, seen through the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square. Bishop Hart’s Vatican trial occurred there.

Last summer, the Wyoming prosecutor decided not to move forward with any charges against Hart. Then, last month, the Vatican returned its verdict. Not guilty.

Not guilty.

According to Bishop Biegler, however, the Vatican did issue a “canonical rebuke” of Bishop Hart. According to Biegler, the Vatican declared:

Hart showed flagrant lack of prudence for being alone with minors, which could have been potential occasions endangering the obligation to observe continence [ie, refrain from sex], and that would give rise to scandal among the faithful. Hart disregarded [our] urgent requests that he refrain from public engagements that would cause scandal among the faithful due to the numerous accusations against him.

Bishop Biegler has now revealed that, in October 2018, the Vatican secretly prohibited Hart from having any contact with “youth, seminarians, and vulnerable adults.”

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Now, let’s acknowledge: Convicting someone of a crime requires a convincing amount of evidence. It is up to the judge or jury to determine whether or not the prosecution has proved its case.

The Vatican judge in Hart’s case–whoever he may be; his identity is secret–he had all the evidence I have presented here, and more. That judge decided it was not enough. That judge will have to answer to God for his decision.

Perhaps we have a serious discrepancy in our Church over what constitutes abuse? As we remember, in the McCarrick case, the Vatican refused to condemn him for forcing subordinates to sleep in the same bed with him. Even though, outside the Church, pretty much everyone would see such a thing as an egregious offense worthy of swift and decisive discipline.

Maybe the same problem operates here in the Hart verdict? [WARNING Rated R] Maybe Hart has managed to escape conviction because no one presented evidence of actual anal penetration? Even though the abuses that he did commit have let a trail of broken lives a mile wide?

We do not know the answer to such questions because:

Secrecy still rules in holy mother Church. Leaving the rest of us with no idea whatsoever about how “justice” gets done. Indeed, we are left with the impression that there is no justice at all.

Hart will soon have to answer to the Lord, and the survivors of his crimes lost faith in the Church bureaucracy a long time ago.

The endless secrecy is the deeper problem. The hierarchy–with the possible exception of Bishop Steven Biegler, who has got to be pretty daggone disillusioned at this point–clearly still prefers secrecy over public accountability. Two decades of promises of “transparency” have proven to be nothing but empty words, public-relations damage control.

Shame on them when we believed them the first time. Shame on us for believing them every time since then.

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The Church will declare Bishop Joseph Hart neither innocent nor guilty. The important thing is that he vanish from sight. That is the modus operandi. Still.

It is a cruel way to do things, scandalous in and of itself. That a bishop is a criminal? Not a scandal; every corner of the world has its criminals, after all. But when the hierarchy fights to the bitter end to bury the crimes of clergymen in secret files forever–that does scandalize people. It causes loss of faith.

It communicates this attitude: The suffering of the survivors does not concern us. Let them endure it, in silent, isolated agony. Let them remain estranged from the sacraments of Christ. None of that is the Vatican’s concern.

The Prefects of the Roman dicasteries involved in the Hart case, Cardinals Ladaria and Ouellet, have themselves certainly orchestrated a good number of cruel cover-ups like this one. In their benighted world, such “discretion” accrues to their credit as churchmen.

What they obtusely fail to recognize is: Their efforts to protect the precious reputation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy have succeeded only in ruining it.