Who is Shay Cullen and the Columbans?

“Any cleric or monk who seduces young men or boys, or who is apprehended in kissing or in any shameful situation, shall be publicly flogged and shall lose his clerical tonsure. Thus shorn, he shall be disgraced by spitting in his face, bound in iron chains, wasted by six months of close confinement, and for three days each week put on barley bread given him toward evening. Following this period, he shall spend a further six months living in a small segregated courtyard in custody of a spiritual elder, kept busy with manual labor and prayer, subjected to vigils and prayers, forced to walk at all times in the company of two spiritual brothers, never again allowed to associate with young men.” St. Peter Damian, to Pope Leo IX, A.D. 1049. Letter 31:3

This is just for kissing and was written a thousand years ago.  There was a problem then and there is an even greater problem now.  Bishop Accountability  is a very interesting website but what is truly unbelievable, Shay Cullen even writes on that web site.  He is a master at covering himself in ‘newspapers.’

Click here to see bishop-accountability.org

PHILIPPINES

COVER-UPS GOING ON IN OLONGAPO AROUND THE SAME TIME

REV. MOISES ALEXIS C. JAVIER

Javier was accused by two altar boys (one 18 and another 19 at the time) of molesting them in 2001-02 at a Catholic school about three hours west of Manila, in the Philippines.

Javier left in 2002. The former bishop of his diocese told the AP that Javier went to the U.S., where his parents and a sister live. “We allowed him,” the former bishop said. “His mother got sick and he went there to take care of her.”

Ryan Mau, the parish secretary at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Rowland Heights, Calif., said Javier was the parish’s associate pastor for two years, starting sometime in 2003. Javier died on Jan. 23, 2008.

The AP has copies of two letters sent in June 2002 by the lay leaders at the St. Columban parish in Olongapo to then-Bishop Deogracias Iniguez and other diocesan leaders about the alleged abuse.

Frustrated by the lack of action, one of the lay leaders, Olet Enriquez, e-mailed the Vatican in September 2003 to report the alleged sexual harassment. He said he got an unsigned reply telling him to take his case to the papal nuncio in Manila. He said he sent a lengthy follow-up letter to the same Vatican e-mail address in January 2004, restating the case, but never got a reply.

Anyone who has been abused by Cullen would not have a chance in Hell of getting any support.  

President Duterte  stated recently that he was abused by a priest and it took him years to say such a thing in public.  When I read about President Duterte I didn’t think about him as President of the Philippines.  All I could think about was that he had been a young boy who was afraid of saying anything about a priest, and I started to cry.   I respect him for coming forward.  His statements might allow other young people to come forth and point the finger at priests who were charged with taking care of them but instead ruined their childhood and their trust in the men who were supposed to show them the way.

U.K AND IRELAND

 

                       Half allegations against Columbans involved one priest review
Missionary order ‘commended’ on its commitment to the management of accused men
                                                       Mon, May 12, 2014, 15:59

Twelve priests at the Missionary Society of St Columban (Columbans) faced 41 allegations since January 1st 1975, with one convicted in the courts, a review by the church’s child protection watchdog has found. The National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) review found that “the vast majority of the allegations on file (24 in total, with three which are indeterminate) refer to P.M., who was a Columban priest from 1960 until his suspension from the Society in 2000. P.M .had served as a priest in Ireland, in Japan and in the UK.”
This refers to Patrick Maguire, a Columban priest, who was laicised in 2010. He has been convicted a number of times both in the UK and Ireland. He is currently serving two suspended sentences of three years dating from May of last year and resides under strict supervision at the the Columban’s Dalgan Park in Co Meath. He also featured in the 2009 Murphy report as he abused while in the Dublin archdiocese for a period.

Of the remaining 17 allegations against Columban missionaries, the review has found that “eight refer to five living priests and nine to a total of six deceased priests. Three of the living priests reside in Ireland and their cases have been referred to the civil authorities. There have been no prosecutions in these cases to date. All are subject to internal management by the Society.”

However, the reviewers were advised “of the residence in Dalgan Park of a priest who was not a Columban, in respect of whom a child abuse allegation had previously been made whilst in his own diocese.”

The reviewers noted that the diocese had advised the NBSC “that there was verbal communication, although there is no record of this in the safeguarding files.” This, it felt, was “ far from satisfactory, as none of the current Columban postholders were made aware of the relevant safeguarding information, which included background details and the imposition of restrictions by his own bishop”.

A process is now in place for assessment and risk management appropriate to this particular case, it found but that “the reviewers are critical of the diocese’s failure to inform the Columban Missionaries in writing, which is unacceptable from a child safeguarding perspective.” It is understood this refers to a west of Ireland diocese. The review felt the incident illustrated “the importance of clear lines of communication in relation to safeguarding children in the interfaces between religious organisations and dioceses and the importance of appropriate information sharing.”

The reviewers noted that “the Columban Missionaries have actively sought to provide outreach and support to victims where possible, including those cases where the respondent priests are deceased”. The NBSC reviewers “noted that none of the men against whom allegations have been made have left the Columban community, despite the imposition of restrictions and supervision by the Society. Representatives from the civil agencies have described the management of these men within the community as an important protective factor”.

The review continued “the Society is commended on its commitment to the management of these men, which makes an important contribution towards the reduction of the risk of reoffending”.

It also said that “representatives from an Garda Síochana and from the Health Service Executive (HSE) have confirmed to the reviewers that communication with the Society has greatly improved and is moving in the right direction in terms of reporting allegations and consulting on responding to concerns.” It said the Columbans were “ currently engaged in a worldwide policy review, guided by the experience gained in the Irish region, to improve the safeguarding standards expected from all regions around the world”.

I find the date (May 24th., 2014)  of the above newspaper article interesting, it was published for all to see just a few weeks before Cullen went after me.  I can only surmise that this was Cullen’s attempt to deflect anything away from him.

AUSTRALIA

Another important case concerning the Columban Missionary Fathers.  I found this on  “Broken Rites” an Australian website which covers every case they can find in Australia. 

“SHAUN” (born in 1968) told police (in a sworn, written statement in 2004) that, when he was aged 11 in 1979, he was living in St Vincent’s parish, Strathmore (north Essendon). Shaun’s mother wanted him to undergo the Catholic ceremony of Confirmation, which would involve receiving “religious instruction” from a local assistant priest, Father Raymond Whitehouse. Shaun refused to be alone with Fr Ray Whitehouse because (Shaun says) Whitehouse previously had stroked Shaun’s leg with sexual intent; and, furthermore, Whitehouse was keen to take Shaun away on a trip.
So the parish assigned Shaun to an outside priest, Fr Terry Pidoto. Pidoto was then officially at the Box Hill North parish, but, as explained earlier in this article, he himself had been a teenager in the Strathmore/Essendon area.  Shaun’s preparation for Confirmation involved him having meetings with Pidoto — alone, at night. Shaun alleges that Pidoto sexually assaulted him once at St Vincent’s presbytery, Strathmore, and once at the nearby headquarters of the Columban Fathers, 69 Woodland Street, Strathmore (north Essendon).

That is, Pidoto allegedly took this victim (“Shaun”) to the Columban Fathers headquarters in Strathmore in 1979, in much the same way as he had taken another victim (“Roger”) to Melbourne’s Corpus Christi seminary in Glen Waverley in 1972. Shaun, who was a spectator in court during the 2007 trial, told Broken Rites that the Columban Fathers owe him an an apology for allowing Pidoto to use their premises in this way.

Shaun alleges that a certain Columban priest accompanied Pidoto on the occasion of Shaun’s assault. And, by an interesting coincidence, Pidoto was living at the Columban headquarters in Strathmore during his jury trials in 2000, 2001.   In court, Pidoto was asked for his residential address, and he gave the address of the Columban headquarters.
The “Society of St Columban” was founded in Ireland in 1918 to “evangelise” the people of China and what the Columbans called “the Far East”. The society established an Australian branch in Melbourne in 1920 but its Australian activities are focused largely on fundraising to finance its “missionary” work abroad.
The bulk of its Australian priests are working overseas an alarming situation if the Columban missions provide accommodation for priests of the calibre of Terrence Pidot.

One more  case by a Columban Missionary priest.  Published two days before I was arrested.

UNITED STATES

By EMILY GURNON | Pioneer Press

This article was printed in The Irish Echo – December 14, 2011 

The Head of the Columbans in Chile steps down

An Irish missionary priest is under investigation by church authorities following accusations he sexually abused two young men in Chile during the 1980s.

Fr. Jeremiah Healy stepped down as head of the Columban Fathers missionary society’s operation in the country in May after the first of the two men reported the alleged abuse to the society.

In June a second man made similar claims in a declaration presented to the Archbishop of Santiago, Ricardo Ezzati Andrello.

Originally from Co. Kerry, Fr. Healy was known in Chile as “Padre Derry” and has been a missionary there since 1981, working in communities in Villa Frei, Pudahuel, Valparaíso and Santiago.

The first man, Claudio Ramos, said he met Fr. Healy in 1983 when he was 14 years old, and claimed the abuse started two years later after Fr. Healy offered him space in his house to study as he was unable to do so at home due to family problems. “He was a friend and very sympathetic and open. At this time I liked art films and he had a VHS machine and would invite me to watch videos,” he said. “Then when we were alone he abused this confidence I had in him.”

The second man, Jorge Salas, who is now Mr. Ramos’s brother-in-law, said in his declaration to Santiago’s archbishop that he met Fr. Healy in 1983 when he was 19 years old. The priest became a friend and helped him at a time when he was having difficulties in his relationships with friends and family.

Salas said when he was 23 years old Fr Healy initiated a sexual relationship, claiming it would teach him “new sexual techniques and with all this I would be protected from women.”

Salas said the relationship left him “ashamed and confused” and he broke it off in 1989. He said he finally got the confidence to tell his wife after the exposure last year of one of Chile’s best-known priests Fernando Karadima as a serial child abuser, in a case that stunned the deeply Catholic country.

“I waited for an opportunity and told my wife. She believed me and said she suspected her brother Claudio had gone through the same thing.

“She confronted Derry and he confessed that he had sexually abused Claudio when he was a child,” he said.

Fr. Healy resigned as the Columbans’ director in Chile after the formal accusation was made. His replacement, Fr. Álvaro Martínez, said an internal investigation has already been carried out and presented to the society’s superior general in Hong Kong, who then passed it on to the Vatican.

“Rome will express its will,” he added.

The regional director of the Columban Fathers in Ireland, Fr. Donal Hogan, said the society was “deeply disheartened by news of alleged sexual abuse by one of our members in Chile”.

“I’ve known Derry for years and years,” he said. “With the permission of our superior general, I accessed his files going back to student years. There was not a hint of any complaint. My own reaction is one of total shock.”

JAPAN

 

Abuse by Irish Priest could be Tip of the Iceberg

By Michael Bradley
Japan Times
October 2, 2012

 

Position of trust: Father Patrick Maguire’s 13-year stay in Japan ended when the Columban Fathers spirited him back to Ireland in 1974 following a “problem” with “young male children.” He went on to abuse dozens more minors in the U.K. and Ireland.

It is over three years since it was revealed that an Irish Catholic priest had abused several children in Japan. His victims here are probably still unaware their tormentor was a serial offender.

Father Patrick Maguire worked in Japan between 1961 and 1974, during which time he has admitted to abusing at least 13 boys, 10 of them in 1973. The priest subsequently went on to abuse dozens more children in Britain and Ireland, and has been convicted (and imprisoned) on separate counts of indecent assault in both jurisdictions. He has never been held to account for his actions in this country.

“Bishop Hirata was most understanding but said that it would be best that Pat slip out of Japan quietly.” So wrote a fellow priest in Maguire’s Columban Fathers to the society’s head in Ireland in 1974. The reason for Maguire’s hasty exit was a “problem” involving “young male children” and “a danger that the weekly magazines would latch onto a thing like that and blow it up out of all proportions.” So, fearing adverse publicity, the Church spirited him back to Ireland. For his Japanese victims, that was probably the last they heard of Father Maguire.

Throughout his 40-year career, Maguire consistently exploited his position as a priest to create opportunities for abuse. He once told a therapist: “I thought of ways of meeting boys, engaging (them) in conversation. . . . I planned ways of seeing them with other boys, and eventually ways of being alone with them in places where they felt safe . I planned ways of getting them alone where no one else could observe and where undressing would not be thought out of place, like bathing together, changing at the pool, showering after a swim, and eventually ways of getting them to spend the night, and sleep with me in bed.”

A 2009 investigation into clerical sex abuse in Ireland, the Murphy Report, concluded that Maguire probably “abused hundreds of children in all parts of Ireland as well as in the U.K. and Japan.” He worked in three separate dioceses here: Tokyo, Yokohama and Fukuoka. According to his own testimony, much of the abuse happened in a parish in Kumamoto in 1973. The Murphy Report, which was released in a blaze of publicity in July 2009, led to enormous criticism of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Despite this, it seems Maguire’s Japanese victims have still not been made aware of his awful record.

“One of the huge impacts of Murphy (and other reports into clerical sex abuse) is that it helped victims in Ireland realize they were not the only people this happened to, and this helped to reduce the sense of shame and isolation that they felt,” says Maeve Lewis, the Director of One in Four, an Irish charity set up to help the survivors of sexual violence. She says that each of Maguire’s Japanese victims “may well believe he is the only person this happened to.” If they realized the truth, she adds, some of them would probably begin to speak out.

So far, the society to which Maguire belonged has not tried to identify any of his Japanese victims. Father Donal Hogan, the regional director of the Columbans in Ireland, said, “We only contact victims where they make themselves known to us.” None of Maguire’s Japanese victims has so far done so.

“The principle objective in not approaching victims is to ensure that no stress or further pain is caused by our actions,” Hohan said. “We deeply regret the trauma, suffering and irreparable damage Patrick Maguire inflicted on his many victims.”

The Missionary Society of St. Columban (commonly abbreviated to the “Columban Fathers” or simply “the Columbans”) was established in Ireland in around 1916 with the aim of sending priests to China to convert the country. After World War II, the society began providing missionaries to Japan, at the request of local bishops. For a number of decades the Columbans, rather than the Japanese bishops, ran the parishes where their members worked. The situation has since changed and all parishes in Japan are now administered directly by the bishops (although foreign Columban Fathers continue to work in this country).

While the Columbans in Ireland have not contacted Maguire’s victims, it is possible that the Japanese bishops may have done so. Years before the publication of the Murphy Report, the bishops of the three dioceses where Maguire had worked were informed of his convictions in Britain (1998) and Ireland (2000 and 2007). However, Father Leo Schumacher, the director of the Columbans in Japan, said “the presumption is that there has been no outreach” by the bishops. He added that it is hard to be definitive about this because “there have so many people in positions of authority over the last 40 years.” Bishop Hirata, who oversaw Maguire’s shameful departure from Japan in the early 1970s, died in 2007.

The current bishop of Fukuoka declined to answer any questions on this matter.

Maeve Lewis thinks it would be helpful if Maguire’s former congregations were made aware of his record, either through the media “or through information disseminated through church structures or networks — even things like notices displayed in church porches.”

Schumacher, who was only appointed Japan director earlier this year (and who had no knowledge of Maguire’s abuse here prior to my contacting him), says he intends to “speak to the communities where Patrick Maguire was assigned.” “My priority is to reach out to any victims who may need help,” he said.

Father Hogan, meanwhile, “invites anyone who has been damaged as a result of child sexual abuse by a Columban to contact us and/or the appropriate local authorities.”

The Columbans say Maguire, now in his mid-70s, has been laicized — removed from the priesthood — but continues to live with the society in Ireland “under strict conditions.”

Moving a priest in the face of allegations of sexual abuse was not unique to Japan. (Indeed after leaving Japan, Maguire was summarily transferred from his first parish in Ireland, following more allegations of abuse.) In the U.S., the practice resulted in a major scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston. In 2002 Archbishop Bernard Law had to resign, and the church was forced to pay out $85 million, after it emerged that six serial abusers (among them, Father John Geoghan , whose victims numbered more than 500) had been systematically transferred from parish to parish to avoid exposure.

Coverups of a similar magnitude then emerged in dioceses right across the country, including Dallas, Seattle, Denver and Los Angeles. This same pattern — one or two high-profile cases precipitating an avalanche of complaints, many going back decades — has been repeated in Catholic congregations around the world, from Latin America to Australia to Ireland.

In 1994 the president of Ireland’s main seminary resigned after allegations of sexual abuse against him were made public. Around the same time, another high-profile case emerged against Father Brendan Smyth, who over a 40-year period indecently assaulted over 100 children on both sides of the Irish border. These cases opened the floodgates as thousands of victims began to speak out, forcing the authorities to launch a number of judicial investigations.

The 2009 Murphy Report, which dealt with just one archdiocese, Dublin, found that bishops had effectively turned a blind eye to 46 abusing priests, including Maguire, over a 30-year period. In the same year, another government-commissioned report detailed a horrific catalogue of rapes and abuse at children’s homes and borstals run by religious orders nationwide.

Maguire’s is one of the first cases of clerical sex abuse to come to light in Japan. There have been a couple of other publicized cases over the past decade, but neither involved Catholic clergy. In 2006 Tamotsu Kin, 62, the founder of the Central Church of Holy God in Kyoto, was sentenced to 20 years for sexually abusing seven girls aged between 12 and 16 over a four-year period. The previous year, also in Kyoto, an Epicopalian priest, Fumio Harada, was convicted in a civil court of abusing a young girl and forced to pay damages. He was subsequently defrocked.

The relatively small Catholic community here — there are just half a million members, less than 0.5 percent of the population — will be hoping that Patrick Maguire was an isolated rogue priest. Unfortunately, given the experience of other countries, that’s unlikely to be the case.

I find it ironic that Fr. Hogan states that anyone who has been damaged as a result of child sexual abuse by a Columban to contact them and/or the appropriate local authorities.

My question to Fr. Hogan would be, “Does this include the father of a little girl who, I firmly believe, was raped by Cullen or the men whose lives and reputations have been destroyed by Cullen?  Does it include me who was thrown in a Philippine jail and if it had not been for my family I would still be there or dead?  Does it include the children he had hauled, screaming for me to help them, out of my home in the Philippines?  

I seriously doubt it….. Cullen is the best at making money and ‘good press’ for the Columbans.