43 Alaskan Native Americans File Suit Against Jesuits for Rape, Sexual Assault; Alaska Was Catholic Church’s Dumping Grounds for Rapist Priests
Jan 26th, 2009 by admin
WARNING, COULD TRIGGER
Forty-three Alaskan Native Americans have filed suit against the “Society of Jesus” (the Jesuits) for turning areas where Native Americans lived in Alaska into a virtual dumping ground for child-raping priests over decades and decades, beginning in the 1950s. The suit alleges that officials in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church knew the priests it was sending to Alaska were child rapists and child molesters and didn’t care. According to the complaint, as many as 15 rapist priests at a time were working amongst the Athabascan and Yu’pik Natives; so far 300 of their victims have stepped forward to tell their stories.
Little girls were fondled, assaulted and raped in churches, in rectories, in priests’ homes; little boys were raped and assaulted as well. The areas in which the victims lived were isolated and often accessible only by sled or on foot. There were rarely police within calling distance, and even if there had been, which of them might have believed the reports of children and poor indigenous persons against this horrific number of priests? There were few or no health care providers or facilities in these areas and so the signs of sexual abuse which might have been recognized in the course of providing regular health care were never recognized.
According to the 78-page complaint,
- Anton Smario, a Franciscan Friar, taught religion classes to the young girls … After catechism Smario would let the young girls stay in the classroom at the rectory and play or color in coloring books, offering them food, juice and sweets as an inducement to remain after class. He would ask the girls to touch his penis, and would rub his erect penis on their backs, necks and arms. Sometimes he would wipe or rub his semen on the girls after he ejaculated.
- Father William J. Loyens, S.J., a member of the Society of Jesus since 1947… testified in his 2004 deposition that the “Native population was fairly loose on sexual matters” and that heinous abuse of Native children by a priest would be “less impressive” than sexual abuse of a white child and that heinous sexual abuse of Native children by a priest “wouldn’t have much of an impact”.
- On unknown dates when she was approximately 8 years of age Plaintiff Jean Doe 3 was sexually molested by Father Endal on numerous occasions. The molestations included … Father Endal forcing plaintiff to lie on his bed.. and penetrating plaintiff’s vagina.
- On unknown dates … when she was approximately 7 or 8 years of age, Plaintiff Jean Doe 4 was sexually molested by Father Endal. The molestation included…Father Endal forcing plaintiff to touch his penis and Father Endal penetrating plaintiff’s vagina. Father Endal then gave plaintiff money to keep quiet about the sexual abuse and told her she would burn in hell if she ever told anyone…
According to the complaint, officials high in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church knew priests sent to Alaska were serial pedophiles and did nothing to protect children from them. Only two accused rapist priests are named in the suit, Father Henry Hargreaves and Franciscan Friar Anton Smario; most of the other rapist priests have died.
The photo above is of one of the accused, Henry Hargreaves, S.J., who is apparently still a priest in good standing with the Society of Jesus. According to the complaint (in which Hargreaves was described as a known serial pedophile):
When he was approximately 5 through 6 years of age, Plaintiff James Doe 94 was sexually molested by Father Hargreaves… The molestation included..Father Hargreaves forcibly bending plaintiff over Father Hargreaves bed… and Father Hargreaves penetrating Plaintiff with his erect penis. Father Hargreaves held Plaintiff’s arms tightly so that he could not escape. Father Hargreaves sodomized Plaintiff for approximately five minutes. For several days after being raped by Father Hargreaves, Plaintiff bled from his rectum, was in severe pain…
Now compare the above with this excerpt of what the “Society of Jesus” has up on the internet about Hargreaves, who is described as the “last of the great missionaries”.
Henry Hargreaves left his imprint on the native peoples of western Alaska as probably the last of the great missionaries. Henry loves to tell the story of his arrival in Chevak, Alaska in 1949 as a newly minted priest. He walked from the Widgen aircraft to the parish residence where Fr. Paul O’Connor, S.J. greeted him by saying that he had housing meetings in Dillingham, Alaska, and here are the keys. Undaunted, Henry accepted the keys and took the challenge to begin the life of a missionary in the most undeveloped area of Alaska.
Photo by Meryl Schenker, Seattle P-I
Some of the victims of the priests who live in the Seattle area attended a news conference at Seattle University last Wednesday. The President of SU is named in the suit as having known priests sent to Alaska were pedophiles and doing nothing about it, but instead maintaining what were referred to as “hell files” relating to the priests.
KOMO News photo
According to news reports one victim, Florence Kenney, (above, holding photos of victims), now 74, said she kept silent for almost 60 years. In a meeting with reporters from the Seattle University newspaper, the Spectator, Kenny, who was abused in the 1940s, said, “”All these years and I never talked about it. Who would understand?” She told of the harsh discipline she suffered at the hands of the Jesuits, of the loss of her culture as a child and young woman, and of going to “Father Supreme” at the mission for help at the age of 13, only to be sexually assaulted by him repeatedly. She is speaking out for the first time in 60 years because, she says, “I want to speak for all the ones who couldn’t speak. I’m speaking now because there’s always a time, an end to silence and an end to secrets.”
Another survivor, Elsie Boudreau, above, has been in contact with other victims and is an advocate on their behalf. She said, “I wish I could take him [Sundborg, President of Seattle University] into the villages and have him look into the eyes of so many people who have been hurt.”
Photo by Courtney Blethen, Seattle Times
Rena Abouchuk (above, holding photos of her cousins who were raped and sexually assaulted) said a priest abused her, her brother and six of her cousins, all of whom later committed suicide. She read aloud a letter she wrote to the priest:
You did so many evil things to young children. You walked into my young life and so many others when we were small, innocent children, just six-, seven-, eight-year-old children, and took it all away from us, touching us in ways that I will never forget, you made us touch you, you did so many evil things in St. Michael’s Church, Stebbins Church, and lived your life like you did nothing wrong. Someday you will have to answer to God. Link
Related: Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust — The Untold Story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples
Heart
I am so angry I can’t write a rational comment on this right now. Every woman in the Catholic church needs to leave NOW, and never give the rapist Church another moment of time or another dollar, ever.
I can’t believe you’re talking about last Wednesday’s revelations that hundreds of minority children suffered institutionalized rapes by men known to be child rapists when last week’s prescribed feminist blogger subject was about an adult, white, Women’s Studies major happily choosing to prostitute her virginity in feminism’s name.
It’s almost like you believe Catholic rapists knowingly allowed multi-decade access to the bodies of minority children is a more relevant sexual rights story than showing the world how ‘real’ feminists are sexy and openminded to feministing prostitution for the betterment of feminism.
Ugh. I could have gone for forever without hearing hearing about someone happily prostituting her virginity.
You know what is so hideous I can barely write it, but it seems important? These rapist priests might well have said, to themselves, to one another, to God, to lawyers, to police, to anyone who challenged them that they paid these children and that they were prostitutes. That’s almost what that one priest did say up there, that Natives were “lax” sexually. Or maybe they’d say their parents prostituted them because they were so “lax.”
And of course, once they’ve said they paid for “sex”, then it could not have been rape because after all, they paid.
In one part of the complaint, a woman describes having gone to a priest or bishop, possibly, about the rape of her child and the guy rebukes her and says she is criticizing a “man of God.”
To even write these things is repugnant. But this is the way of rapists and those who are their allies, those who defend them.
I just noticed a horrifying thing from that hideous bio of accused rapist Hargreaves:
“Since 2003 he has been living at the Regis community in Spokane and continues to serve the native communities of the Spokane reservation. ”
Please god get him away from the Spokane reservation, you’ve got to be kidding me.
I sent this e-mail to “Colleen Wagner” of the NW Jesuits website. She is said to be the person to call about sexual abuse issues.
Yo, {{{ Heart !!! }}}
Way to go.
You have my greatest admiration.
Thanks for emailing Ms. Wagner, Heart. You more than rock. And let me add this little tidbit to the blissfully non-Catholic readers education: I know from personal experience that some priests consider children who have been raped by their fathers “lax” and therefore fair game. Two thousand years of this Holy Church shellgame is enough, people. What a farce.
Thank you for posting this, Heart. Even though it’s made me heartsick all day. There’s no end to this. I wonder if there ever will be an end. Level Best is right–no woman should give any support to a male-dominated church, least of all the Catholic Church, which is really the worst of the worst, if only because they’re so big and so old, and so in love with themselves and their own power. We should not even give them the support of our presence.
This is very personal to me because I was a Catholic from birth until just a couple of years ago. Knowing what I knew, I was still a part of that shame, that evil. And although I don’t go to Mass any more, I still feel, every once in awhile, the tug to go back. I think “Oh, I should have stayed, I should have worked to change things. There’s some good in the traditions. They do a lot for charity.” I know that’s crazy, but I STILL feel it. They call it “brainwashing” for a reason, yo!
It’s not just the Jesuits, either. One of the big reasons I finally broke away was finding out that the pastor of a church in my home town had been raping a child for years–in the rectory of this church, and all of the several churches where he served. When Bishop Povish of Lansing, MI, found out that “Father” Timothy Crowley was a child rapist, what did he do? Sent him for a little rehab–and then to Alaska. And no one, either in Michigan or Alaska, was ever warned about him. He was protected. The children were not. Just as women and girls have never been protected, either, and the rapes of nuns and teenage girls by priests, and the abuse of women in general, wouldn’t get a single headline if it weren’t linked to abuse of boys.
I can’t even go into a church now without starting to feel sick. How do I know what was done there? I can’t know, because they won’t tell the truth. They should be forced to put up little memorial plaques next to the relics and Stations of the Cross–”On this spot, a little girl was raped. On this spot, a little boy was violated.” I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the fact that I was a part of this big, golden engine churning out abuse and deceit. They have lied and lied and lied, to the point where they don’t even recognize that they’re lying, because they have a thousand years of backup for their rationalizations. They don’t even have a context for telling the truth. It is hard to struggle up out of this swamp of lies. It begins with just saying NO. No forgiveness, no excuses. No kings, no gods, no masters. I wish I could say “never again!” But I can’t say that because I know it is happening again, and will go on happening, and it tears me to pieces that I don’t know how to stop them.
I hear you, Anuna and Level Best, and I sure feel it with you. I sit at my computer writing these posts and crying my eyes out. Then I go through my whole rigamarole of despair around the way feminists fail to write about these things. But, what should I expect, I mean really. Writing about issues like this leaves so little room for being oh-so-fricking funny and hilarious and dig-me, I’m just so fucking witty, doing the ol’ entertaining feminist soft-shoe so the reading masses will get their daily dose of chuckles for the day, too often at the expense of women, despite that the chuckles are theoretically feminist. I went poking around to find out about the virginity auction and who blogged about it. Of course, the usual suspects who can always be found being brilliantly entertaining in their snorting and mocking of all the stuff that leftist and centrist and libertarian men also live and love to mock as well (and all the more when they see a feminist doing it, especially if it’s women being mocked along with men, oh, yay, love them some feminist women publicly hating on women), and of course, the usual suspects, who really need those leftist and libertarian and centrist men to please keep coming back to spray around the boundaries of their feminist blogs. Dear god.
Well, time for me to stop.
Imagine if a Principal allowed a sex offending priest to go get transferred to another school? They’d so be imprisoned. But there is not really truly a separation of church and state anywhere- the priests get off everywhere, in every country - why don’t they get imprisoned?!!
In LA it meant nothing to people that “Father” Roger Mahoney covered for paedophiles his entire career, even appealing up to the Supreme Court so as to not allow documents on pedophile priests to be looked at. (The Supreme Court denied him.) He is responsible for possibly the assaults of even thousands of children.
By the way the pope just reinstated four ultra conservative bishops, one being a Holocaust denier. No doubt all four of the bishops are the type to cover up for pedophile priests, at the expense of children. This new Pope is possibly even scarier than the last. The most conservative people and institutions are often the most “liberal” with the bodies of children, seeking to destroy them. Especially poor Native children who will have no recourse or way to defend themselves til 60 years later!!!!!
Too late for most of them! And Still??? Nothing, no consequences.
What a living nightmare these communities lived, these children. :(******** :<*********
And yet little outrage, no, instead, lining up to go hear Father “I love paedophiles, not children” Mahoney at his newly built luxury-cathedral in downtown LA. I remember being shocked when a coworker I liked *really* cheerily told me about how he and his boyfriend went to the new Cathedral’s grand opening/mass. I was shocked–but he was totally clueless! This was right in the middle of all this coming out about Mahoney, and, my coworker had even been sexually abused himself! But people are sick in the head when it comes to protecting these men. No one cares about children. We do not really care about children. I don’t think so. We need them broken. People don’t value children.
I hope the Church has to pay another 2 billion just to these two Native communities alone. Who needs to be a john when you can be a Priest instead? The Catholic Church is one of the safest places on earth for paedophiles. I love Sinead O’Connor and Lauryn Hill for confronting power by speaking out against the church for this- Lauryn Hill even did so at the Vatican in front of everybody she was supposed to be singing for. Sinead O’Connor, who witnessed paedophilic priests and what they wrought on her loved ones and on her country, her whole, life, got flamed for speaking out. So glad they never shut her up though.
The hideous thing is, Jeyoani, that what these diocese or whatever they call them do is just declare bankruptcy when they get these huge judgments against them. The Alaska diocese where these priests were sent has already declared bankruptcy. That would be great if it put them out of business, but it doesn’t. It just allows them to discharge their debt, reorganize and keep on trucking, paying some amount of pennies on the dollar of the judgments against them. Not to mention some of these rapist priests have taken vows of poverty, so if they’re sued, the plaintiffs won’t be receiving any sort of compensation from them, personally (also proof positive that all of these glorious self-sacrificing things like vows of poverty do not necessarily mean anything when it comes to real concern for human beings.)
I just received this e-mail from Colleen Wagner:
Well, I’m going to write back in a stateswomanlike fashion. But at the moment all I have to say is, I believe the plaintiffs. I believe them. Dear god, I believe them, after all of these decades of pain and misery and the way what they say rings true, you better believe I believe THEM. I guess all of the hundreds and thousands of indigenous persons who have spoken up across the world to the Roman Catholic Church were just making things up. GOD.
I believe THEM. And not this Hargreaves.
“Imagine if a Principal allowed a sex offending priest to go get transferred to another school? They’d so be imprisoned. But there is not really truly a separation of church and state anywhere- the priests get off everywhere, in every country - why don’t they get imprisoned?!!”
Jeyoani that’s what I do not understand. You don’t get rapist teachers transferred to another school, even if the courts fail to give an adequate sentence they never teach again and are labeled sex offenders for life and not allowed to work with children. I would like to see the bishops who knowingly *did not report* allegations and knowingly transferred rapist priests to new communities to be charged. Often there is years of this behavior, mulitple incidents of allegations not being reported. Where is the accountability? As you say imagine if it were a school principle who covered this up, his ass would be on the line. These bishops need to be afraid of the law and not above it.
I doubt if this case would have been reported by the media if it had not involved adult males committing rape and sexual violence against male children. Given the named male priests raped both girls and boys for over a decade with impunity, perhaps, just perhaps these rapists will be made accountable for their crimes, but I doubt it. The officials in the hierarchal Catholic church, as we know are very powerful and I’ve no doubt the usual excuses, victim blaming and of course failing that - simply denying such rapes occurred will be made.
None of these rapist priests were strangers to the girls and boys so this immediately debunks claims ‘most men who commit rape and sexual violence against girls and boys are deviant paedophiles.’ Using the term ‘paedophile’ neatly pathologises men who commit rape against girls and boys because such individuals are supposedly not ‘normal respectable men.’ These rapist priests must have thought they’d gone to ‘heaven’ when they were sent to remote parts of Alaska and discovered they could commit rape and sexual violence against Alaskan Native American girls and boys with impunity.
But 300 Alaskan Native Americans speaking out and charging male catholic priests with rape and sexual violence just might force some individuals not to dismiss them as ‘making false allegations of rape and sexual violence against so-called respectable men!’
Are you ready for this? The Cathdral in Los Angeles opened an art exhibit in November, and one of the units of the exhibit is about “violence against women”– They have a small art gallery in there. Just found out about this today through a friend, and I happened to have met this artist many years ago– local, very good.
Creepy hugh? The very structure of the church promotes violence against women. Read “Woman, Church and State” by Matilda Joselyn Gage — a 19th century suffrage colleague of Susan B. Anthony’s. She wrote extensively about priests sexually abusing women and children even back then. To read that book (I think it came out around 1890?) today, you’d think it was taken from the New York Times headlines! HIS-story does indeed repeat itself, it’s part of the entire structure of this institution. I know lots of gay men who just kiss the feet of that evil Cardinal Mahoney, and think nothing of it. Women by the droves still attend the church, and it’s packed on Sundays. You see little girls in the courtyard, and the mothers and fathers are there too. Geez, it is brainwashing, and they love to use the poor and the immigrants as fodder for their aims!
No $$$ to the Catholic Church or any of its subsidiary organizations! I had already come to that conclusion, of course, but here’s all the more reason!
I linked this story to my blog!
This is absolutely horrific! Our communities continued to be colonized by churches and so called “saving,” when it is destroying and annihilating our people. Abuse is not saving. Violence is not saving. Annihilation is not saving.
The Catholic church needs to own up to its wrong doings. This is hurting our communities as well as them. My heart goes out to all these people out in the NW as well as all Indigenous/Native people affected by colonialism and annihilation.
Do you happen to have a contact for the community. I would like to write them and know that I am with this in the legal and healing process.
Rape is a unique crime that highlights the major downfall of the judicial system. Specifically, the problem is the presumption of innocence. That presumption does not apply to rape because the womyn’s statement is itself all the proof that should be necessary.
In my ideal justice system, all that would be necessary is a womyn saying “This man raped me.” and he would be arrested. No investigations, no humiliating exams. Only justice.
Extremely disturbing also because the Jesuits have always been considered the “progressives”… willing to go where no other priests would go, liberation theology, pro-women’s ordination, etc. (Of course, that also makes a good cover story, doesn’t it?)
Thanks for covering this.
[...] Heart has the story here. [...]
Cecilia, great idea to get in touch with some of these women. You might try contacting the plaintiffs’ attorney:
Mr. Kenneth S. Roosa
Roosa & Valcarce LLC
3700 Jewel Lake Rd.
Anchorage, Alaska 99502
(907)276-2744
ken@cookeroosa.com
[...] Alleging Rape Jump to Comments Here is the complaint in this amazing and terrible case (via Women’s Space and Feminist Law [...]
The thing that I just can’t get out of my head is the strength and courage of these victims. Not only managing, somehow, to survive such horrors in the first place, but going through the guilt and fear regarding the abuse of those siblings and cousins while powerless to stop it, and THEN surviving through the multiple suicides of those other abused children and THEN putting one’s name and face out front against one of the world’s most powerful organizations in the context of a small community…
It’s just astounding. And the only part I can think about very long.
This makes my heart sick to read this story…as well as my stomach! I am glad that there are 300 victims coming forward. And at least Hargreaves no longer has access to children–you know these pedophiles NEVER stop–but that’s a very small “at least.”
I am grateful that people like you are raising awareness through things like The Blog Carnival Against Sexual Violence. I founded and maintain THE BLOG CARNIVAL AGAINST CHILD ABUSE. Would you also be willing to submit this post to our carnival? We have a deadline coming up Wednesday (2/4) for a Friday edition. Thanks for considering and thanks for your advocacy. BELIEVE THE CHILDREN!!
marj aka thriver, I’d be glad to submit the link for your Carnival and thanks for the invitation and for your good work. I agree with you: BELIEVE THE CHILDREN. And trust them, as well.
Heart
This article breaks my heart.
Nancy
Thank you so much for letting us use this excellent post for The Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse. In order to believe the children (and trust them) we have to hear them! So, I appreciate you advocacy in raising awareness.
marj, thank you for your fine work on the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse. It’s an honor to be linked.
Heart