A Priest's Accusers Find Solace in Numbers

A Priest's Accusers Find Solace in Numbers
By PAM BELLUCK
Published: December 31, 2002
New York Times

BOSTON, Dec. 30— Every year, Gary Bergeron has a Christmas party at his home in Lowell, a working-class city about 25 miles northwest of Boston. But this year, the guest list was markedly different.

There was Bernie McDaid, who remembers being molested by the Rev. Joseph E. Birmingham as an 11-year-old altar boy at St. James church in Salem -- sometimes in the sacristy, sometimes in the cloakroom and sometimes in the priest's gold Plymouth.

There was Thomas Blanchette, who says Father Birmingham molested him and his four brothers at Our Lady of Fatima church in Sudbury. And Olan Horne, who says he was molested by Father Birmingham at St. Michael's church in Lowell. And Paul Ciaramitaro, who says the priest molested him at the beach and on the rectory couch at St. Ann's church in Gloucester.

''Ninety percent of the guys who were at the party this year were guys who were victims of Father Birmingham,'' said Mr. Bergeron, who says the priest repeatedly assaulted him and his brother in the Lowell church. ''Before March, I'd never seen them before, but now I feel I've known some of them my entire life.''

Drawn together by their claims of devastation at the hands of a single priest, more than 50 men formed the Survivors of Joseph Birmingham this spring as they and other accusers of Father Birmingham, who served in half a dozen parishes until his death in 1989, came forward in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal.

Since then, the group, whose members are plaintiffs in abuse lawsuits against the archdiocese, has been the most organized group of abuse plaintiffs. They meet virtually every week, press for the archdiocese to pay for victims' psychological counseling, and have lobbied Cardinal Bernard F. Law to apologize to victims and take responsibility for his part in allowing abusive priests to serve in parishes.

An archdiocese spokeswoman has in the past declined to discuss the accusations against Father Birmingham because they are in litigation. The archdiocese has settled at least one case involving Father Birmingham, paying $60,000 in 1996 to a man who claimed he was molested as an altar boy in the 1960's.

Following Cardinal Law's resignation earlier this month as archbishop of Boston, the Survivors of Joseph Birmingham have turned their attention to those who served as the cardinal's top aides and went on to run their own dioceses. The group plans to try to meet with each of the bishops and ask that they explain their actions in abuse cases.

''The clergy have to be accountable to us for what happened,'' Mr. McDaid said. ''They owe us an apology and we don't want a public statement or to read it in the newspaper. We want it personal.''

The group's first priority is Bishop John B. McCormack of Manchester, N.H., who they believe could have stopped Father Birmingham's abuse as far back as the 1960's because Bishop McCormack went to seminary with Father Birmingham, served as a priest and lived in the rectory with him at the Salem church, and later was one of Cardinal Law's administrators handling complaints of sexual abuse.

They have also set their sights on Bishop Robert J. Banks of Green Bay, Wis., and Bishop Thomas V. Daily, who heads the diocese in Brooklyn.

When Bishop Banks, who was vicar for administration for the archdiocese in the 1980's, was informed in 1987 of a mother's accusations that Father Birmingham molested her son, he wrote a memorandum that seemed to express insufficient urgency, Father Birmingham's accusers say. ''I spoke to Joe Birmingham,'' he wrote. ''He admitted there had been some difficulty. He agreed it would be helpful to resign from the parish and to seek assessment and therapy.''

Church documents do not indicate that Bishop Daily played a direct role in dealing with Father Birmingham, but Father Birmingham's accusers believe the bishop bears some responsibility as chancellor and vicar general from 1973 to 1984.

But the group's activism has not followed the traditional route of the angry protester. Unlike many accusers of other priests and many victims' advocates, the Survivors of Joseph Birmingham were not among those calling loudly for Cardinal Law's resignation or demonstrating outside Boston's cathedral.

Instead, the Birmingham group has taken a decidedly more diplomatic approach. Individual members met several times with Cardinal Law, sometimes bringing family members who they felt deserved an apology.

They persuaded the cardinal to attend a meeting in October of dozens of accusers of Father Birmingham and their families, the first and only time the cardinal ventured out of the chancery to meet with a large group of abuse victims. At that meeting, they told the cardinal that a more sincere public apology was needed and the next Sunday he delivered one in an emotional statement from an altar in the cathedral.

Members of the group even crossed protest lines to attend Mass on occasion, where they would sit in front and buttonhole Cardinal Law to express their concern about, say, the possibility that the archdiocese might file for bankruptcy.

''We never set out to put Law out of business or take him down,'' Mr. McDaid said.

Mr. Bergeron said: ''We realized that if we were going to get anything done we would have to open up a dialogue. We needed to let the archdiocese know that somebody had to take a high road here.''

That approach has angered other victims and more confrontational advocacy groups, to the point that, Mr. Bergeron said, the group has gotten nearly 100 ''hate mail'' lettersand e-mail messages.

''We've taken a lot of whacks on the head,'' Mr. Horne said. ''A lot of the people are saying 'They're just playing you for public relations. You're working with the enemy.' We say, 'You got to be kidding me. We're victims. We're not going to be conned again.' ''

It is not that the Birmingham group has had any particular background in what Mr. Horne called its ''more tactical'' strategy of dealing with church officials. Most of the Survivors of Joseph Birmingham are working men: a butcher, a house painter, a construction worker.

''This is like the Bowery meeting Cardinal Law,'' Mr. Horne said. ''We're not eloquent statesmen. This is Joe Sixpack coming to see you.''

But, mostly in their 40's, they are some 10 years older than many of the other priest accusers who have come forward publicly. And, unlike other notorious figures in the abuse scandal, like the Rev. John J. Geoghan and the Rev. Paul R. Shanley, the villain in their stories is dead.

''The younger a man is, the more likely he is to lash out,'' Mr. McDaid said.

Mr. Bergeron said that perhaps unlike younger men, ''I realize I'm not going to live forever, and there's been enough destruction in my life.''

In fact, Mr. Ciaramitaro, at 31 the youngest member of the group, conceded he was initially the angriest. But now, he believes ''the way we go about doing things is a lot smarter because we're talking, we're not yelling and screaming. It's the only way they'll listen to us.''

Several members said they wished Father Birmingham were still alive and could face criminal charges like Father Geoghan and Father Shanley. Mr. Horne said that at least 10 members have relatives buried near Father Birmingham, an especially disturbing encroachment of their nightmares onto their personal lives.

And several said they believed their devout parents had anchored them with a sense of respect for the hierarchy, though at least a few long ago stopped attending church.

When group members began calling the archdiocese, ''they were in total lockdown,'' ducking the calls, Mr. Horne said. ''We just kept saying: 'Well, there's more guys out here than you think. If you would just communicate with us you'd tone things down a little.' ''

At first, the group was mostly concerned about the way people reporting abuse accusations were treated. The members helped persuade the archdiocese to move its victim outreach office off chancery grounds, set up a 24-hour hot line, and pay for inpatient therapy and other services.

Eventually, Cardinal Law agreed to meet with them and their families.

''If Reagan and Gorbachev can sit in a room and make an agreement to end the cold war, I could sit in a room with this man who I didn't agree with and I didn't have to like in order to get something accomplished,'' Mr. Bergeron said.

He said he came away ''convinced that if the cardinal had the opportunity to meet other people like he had met me and they had open and honest discussions with Bernard Law the man as opposed to Bernard Law the archbishop, that there was some healing to be achieved.''

After Cardinal Law resigned, the group focused on Bishop McCormack, holding a news conference in New Hampshire to distribute church documents its members say incriminate him. One member, James Hogan, insisted that then-Father McCormack saw Father Birmingham take him to his bedroom in the Salem rectory in the 1960's.

The group said that in 1970, when some Salem mothers met with Father McCormack to complain about Father Birmingham, he told them to contact Father Birmingham's new parish in Lowell.

And in 1987, after a complaint about Father Birmingham in Gloucester, the archdiocese sent him to treatment, but later allowed him to return to a parish. In one 1987 letter, Father McCormack appeared to take Father Birmingham's word that there was no reason for a father to be concerned that his son might have been molested.

A spokesman for Bishop McCormack, Patrick McGee, said that the bishop ''never saw or suspected any abuse on Father Birmingham's part'' in Salem and that in 1970, when the mothers complained he contacted Father Birmingham's pastor in Lowell. Mr. McGee said he did not have enough information to comment on the 1987 documents.

While most Birmingham group members believe Bishop McCormack should resign, they have, for now, not called for him to do so. Instead, they have been granted a meeting with the bishop.

''We want to put the facts out and say to him, 'Stand there and tell me you should be in charge for this reason,' '' Mr. Horne said. ''If it's a good reason, I'll listen. But I feel McCormack should take an example from Law and say, 'You know what, I shouldn't be doing this job.' And if he does that, that starts a trend for other bishops to follow.''