Partners in bigotry: Terry McKiernan and Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org
When the media needs a quote to bash the Catholic Church for abuse from a half-century ago, one predictable source it often turns to is BishopAccountability.org.
The Massachusetts-based BishopAccountability.org professes to act as a sort of library of documents pertaining to sex abuse in the Catholic Church. It claims that it simply seeks to "gather and make accessible all public information about the Catholic abuse crisis and the bishops' role in it." However, a closer examination of the group reveals an organization which is just another anti-Catholic hate group using the old sex abuse issue as a pretext to bludgeon the Church.
Steeped in malice
Though it claims otherwise, BishopAccountability's ultimate mission has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with smearing Catholic priests and bishops as mercilessly as it can.
Both Terence McKiernan, BishopAccountability's president, and Anne Barrett Doyle, the group's catty "clerk/director," have been regular speakers at the conferences of notorious anti-Catholic groups such as SNAP and Voice of the Faithful, while Doyle has been especially vocal in trying to get legislatures to extend the statutes of limitations, a maneuver intended to further line the pockets of the Church-suing contingency lawyers she supports.
Smearing innocent priests
BishopAccountability's nastiest trait, however, is its extensive online database of "publicly accused" Catholic clerics. The group claims it maintains this database in order to track abusive priests so that bishops cannot transfer them about and harm other children.
However, it should be noted that this problem has already been solved. Many years ago, bishops implemented groundbreaking reforms to immediately remove any credibly accused priest from public ministry.
And BishopAccountability is not interested in the truth about accused clerics. No matter how flimsy, old, and/or thoroughly discredited an accusation may be against a Catholic priest, BishopAccountability will adamantly post the priest's name and history – and often his picture – on its site, suggesting the cleric is a child molester. (The group asserts that it removes the entries of those priests whose accusers have recanted, but we have already shown that this claim is demonstrably false.)
Take the case of Fr. Roger N. Jacques, who, after two decades of unblemished ministry, was suddenly the object of a single accusation in 2002. The case had several hallmarks of obvious fraud:
- the accuser invoked the discredited theory of "repressed memory" to claim that she only remembered her abuse after she allegedly underwent so-called "hypnosis therapy";
- she told conflicting tales about the very nature of the abuse;
- she lodged an additional, out-of-the-blue accusation of abuse against a second priest months after accusing Fr. Jacques.
After an intensive and thorough investigation by the Church taking four years, Fr. Jacques was fully exonerated. The priest then went to meet with McKiernan and Doyle from BishopAccountability to try to have his name removed from their database. He even provided the pair with extensive documentation demonstrating his innocence. But McKiernan and Doyle were steadfast and refused to remove the priest from their site. As a result, Jacques' name remains plastered on the site as if the priest were a rabid child molester. Needless to say, the long-time cleric is none too pleased to have his reputation tarnished.
"And my family isn't too happy about it either," adds Fr. Jacques, referring to his siblings and numerous other family members, individuals whom people often forget have to endure this embarrassment as well.
Sadly, the situation of Fr. Jacques with BishopAccountability is far from uncommon. BishopAccountability.org profiles countless innocent priests on its site; so many, in fact, that the number of troubling examples could fill an entire book.
[UPDATE, May 2013: Following this post and the persistence of Fr. Jacques, BishopAccountability.org has taken the rare action of actually removing Fr. Jacques from its database!]
How about a "JewishBankers.org" web site?
The mere premise alone of BishopAccountability.org is clearly bigoted and grossly anti-Catholic. While the best and most reliable evidence reveals that Catholic priests have abused at a rate far lower than that of men of the general population, BishopAccountability.org fosters the filthy stereotype that many, most, or all Catholic priests are child molesters.
Imagine if another organization maintained a vile and bigoted web site chronicling only Jewish bankers merely accused of monetary wrongdoing. Even though the organizers of such a wretched enterprise would likely argue that they are merely "informing the public," such a group would be rightfully dismissed as vulgar and anti-Semitic for propagating a false and repulsive stereotype about Jewish people. Media outlets would never even acknowledge the existence of such a despicable endeavor.
Yet the world's leading media outlets like the New York Times, the Associated Press, and Reuters routinely swarm to BishopAccountability.org – a site that only targets Catholic priests – to get predictably hysterical and hate-filled quotes on decades-old scandals. And they turn to the group as if it were simply some neutral historian on the issue rather than a purveyor of anti-Catholic bigotry that it is.
Our analogy may seem audacious, but we make it to chronicle this noxious and prejudiced double standard.
Bishop Accountability's profitable prejudice
According to its 2011 Form 990 (the most recent form available), BishopAccountability.org has raked in close to $1.7 million over the last five years, except that the primary beneficiaries of all this money have been only McKiernan and Doyle.
Taken together, McKiernan and Doyle have personally pocketed over one half of all of the donations made to the group in the past two years, with McKiernan securing a comfortable $120,000 in 2011.
Meanwhile, the group has spent $56,000 on hotel rooms and travel just in the past two years alone, presumably all for McKiernan and Doyle.
I never trusted these folks and their so-called database.
Interesting that they want the church to come clean from 50 years ago but they won't tell the truth themselves.
What despicable people! Thank you, David, for moving the rock long enough to show what lives under it. Yes, these two have enriched themselves on the backs of so-called "victims." The real victims are those who run from the likes of Garabedian, Doyle and McKiernan!
Ach, ze happy times, ja?
Perhaps at this point the Game is facing the post-Stalingrad moment that another Game faced once in the middle of the last century: for the first time it hits home bigtime that things aren’t going as well as they used to. History buffs may recall that a month after the battle at Stalingrad was lost, Goebbels went to work at the Sportpalast at Berlin, bringing a picked crowd of true-believers to their feet with the screaming Question: Do You Want Total War? In other words, the Game had now become basically a PR gambit, facts (since they were becoming uncongenial) were no longer welcome (as if they ever were to that bunch), and it was going to be merely an ever-intensifying double-down of true-believer willpower.
(Hitler, before Stalingrad was lost, had sacked one of his primary staff generals – Halder – precisely because that old soldier had said that the whole plan was bad and now demonstrating all its weaknesses; then the new guy whom Hitler had picked to replace Halder, one Zeitzler, conducted a serious review and said the same thing. To which Hitler replied: What we need now, Zeitzler, is not military knowledge and skill but rather “National-Socialist ardor”. Meaning: facts don’t matter – it’s all about Keeping The Ball Rolling now and that’s that.)
And as time went on, and one by one not only occupied Central European cities but even German cities began to fall, Goebby saw each instance as merely another chance to Keep The Ball Rolling, claiming that each city in the Reich would now represent just another chance to show the world that The Ball Would Be Kept Rolling, no matter what.
In response to that Question, by the way, he got – who can be surprised? – a standing ovation.
Meanwhile the Party bigwigs made preparations to hide their swag, collected over the years of ze happy times. And partied hearty.
With this article we can begin to contemplate how things are going to start turning out for the Stampede and for the various types that surfed the Wave for whatever purposes.
In an interesting coincidence, a Chinese court (see link at the end of this comment) has just found a Red Guard from the era of Mao’s Cultural Revolution guilty of murdering a village doctor who was variously strangled and kicked to death and hacked-up because he was – in the Guards’ considered opinion – and enemy of the people and the revolution.
The convicted Red Guard is now 80 or more. He got 3 years and 6 months for that murder.
The court – and the government – were over a barrel: a) how do you keep the public sense of the legitimacy of the courts and at the same time convict perpetrators who surfed the Wave? And b) how do you convict one without opening the floodgates for convicting so many others who surfed the Wave in what that now government chooses to call a “special historical period”?
That government has already admitted that the whole Thing – the decade-long Cultural Revolution (which impressed more than a few zealous activists over here in the 1960s) – was a mistake, but it was all Mao’s fault and anyway that was then.
At this point we see the “special historical period” of the Abuse Stampede starting to wobble as its actual interior workings are finally analyzed and exposed. I don’t recommend constructing Truth Commissions to ferret out the various surfers; why continue ripping the fabric of society and culture apart, more than the Abuse Stampede has already done?
But when matters come up in a public forum, I do recommend careful and serious analysis.
In a conversation with somebody recently, the point was put to me: if – as is widely asserted in victim-oriented psychological circles – many child-molestees become abusers and molesters themselves, then how do you legally handle them when/if they come into the justice system? Do they get ‘points’ or ‘credits’ for having themselves been abused? Or are they to be treated as victimizing abusers, plain and simple?
Which led to the next bit of the discussion: how many allegants who claim childhood abuse were/are themselves abusers and molesters – by the simple working of the generally accepted psychological dynamics of the experience? And how do you deal with them in the legal forum?
My response – provisional, since it was a discussion about which I hadn’t done any prior research – was that a) it would first be necessary to know i) the genuine victims from the others, and then ii) determine how many among the genuine victims were now also simultaneously victimizers. And that’s just for openers. Because while it does seem to be a concept that has some notable acceptance in psychological and victim-friendly circles, can a reliable line of causation actually be established between a prior ‘conditioning experience’ and subsequent adult behavior?
Might persons who fall into this category be considered to be Red Guards in the sense that as a result of experiences in their youth they were sufficiently deranged as to commit the acts they then did?
Certainly, it is uncongenial to victim-oriented thinking to consider a victim as simultaneously a victimizer. Certainly, from merely a PR point of view, it spoils the symmetry of the so-easy and classic Pure Innocence Threatened By Pure Evil scripting so dear to the hearts of activists and story-hungry media types.
I am not breaking new ground conceptually here. These types of questions have always been present. But it is only now, as the tide recedes and the surf dies down, that they can perhaps be considered.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/02/187510/chinese-court-sentences-man-to.html
Publion, I think your comments are far too intelligent and insightful to be relegated to a comments section on an albeit excellent blog. Maybe you could ask Dave if you could contribute your own full posts to his blog, or post them on a blog of some other kind? I think the 'big picture' way you describe things would complement Dave's more specific investigative work well.
Sin begets sin. Unrepented, unhealed damaged human beings whom sin has been committed upon them will eventually commit the same sin themselves. Look at narcissism. We have a occupier of the WHite House who does not speak a word of truth. All he knows how to do is perpetuate "Keep the ball rolling" syndrome, and thus all of America suffers & will continue to suffer even more.
Dave has echoed some of my own thoughts about and experience with BA.org. As some of Dave’s readers may know, I have investigated, researched, and written a series of articles with highly exculpatory information regarding the case of imprisoned priest, Father Gordon MacRae who writes at http://www.TheseStoneWalls.com. Some of my articles are published there, while others can be found at my own blog, A Ram in the Thicket, or at Spero News where I also write. Without exception, BA.org was at best unresponsive, and at worst hostile to my attempts to have them publish another side of the story of this priest they and many others were so quick to condemn. When cornered, they have managed to publish a few things, but it is by no means with any enthusiasm for the truth. In some other instances, they have refused to acknowledge my attempts to put new information before them. I can only conclude that Mr. McKiernan and Ms. Doyle have no interest whatsoever in the truth, in fairness or justice, or in sexual abuse or even in protecting children. Wrongful convictions, false witness, and wrongful imprisonment do nothing to protect children. Their interest seems to be in furthering their own agenda. Their travel budget includes trips to Rome where they have attempted to place themselves in front of any news camera that will point in the direction of a dissenting view. The only hopeful news is that these people are obviously in the winter of their lives, and there is no one younger to take up their nefarious agenda when they are gone. They seem satisfied with simply being as hateful as they can be for as long as they can be. They should be pitied, but we should also continue writing the truth. Thank you for that, Dave.
Can these lowlifes not be sued for defamation?
look people what ever it may look like to you. the only low lifes here are the ones trying to stop the mission, the pedifile priest, and all who knew about it, i think they should shut down the whole church system, it is a joke full of fat lying speakers living off of the good of the people who are fooled by the speakers of the church. but good luck with all that.
I offer you this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHC6HrJuoDU.
Jewish Bankers is a phrase that reminds me of the N word. Some Bankers are Jewish so what ?
"Jewish Bankers .0rg" What are you having a Dr. Strangelove moment?
I know you think you were being clever but to me it revealed much.
You have your own cross to bear?
.No one is saying all priests or even amajority of priests abuse. Don't be silly. But the priesthood appears from the outside to be a pretty tight, small club and one bad apple can spoil the barrel, in the public's mind.
None of this is BA's responsability they don't even know where their money comes from.
I was told one man, a Mr. Puddles, comes through every year.
I personally believe that BA is just another sock puppet in the Corporate Church's puppet show.
I mean "Bishop Accountability" Quite the anti-Church irony by connecting the word: Bishop to the word: "Accountability"
That really enlightens the struggle, the contradiction between the two sides by calling the supposed oppressor "accountable" Not my choice for a name of a radical pro victim group that sprang from the mind of the same man, I believe, that created VOTF.
Oh! Miracle of Miracles! 2 major victims groups created by the same man, Paul i forget his name. Baird I think. He came created and went, a bit like Johnny Appleseed, irony intended.
Is this to be somekind of scandal creation? Is BA going to be somekind of blow up scandal that is meant to color the dialog? Like the Cipriano Philly show. Or the SNAP documents farce? What kind of crimes did BA commit?
Got any tax docs for SNAP? You want to see a real fiducial mismanage.
Well, if abortion providors can be converted after thousands of abortions, maybe there is hope for the perpetrayers of this stuff. Perhaps we should pray for them.
Just a thought. Remember St. Dismas, who stole heaven; a thief to the end.
TeaPot562
Responding to 'TJW': Thanks for your thoughts! I am thinking of starting up a Catholic-themed blog, as a matter of fact. But if and when I do, I had already decided that I would continue to keep Abuse Matter material to comments here. As you say, DP does a great job with his pieces, and some contextual reflections from my comments – it seems to me – provide a nice complement to the reporting in the articles. Sort of one-stop shopping: readers can get the reporting and the more contextual material all in the same place.
Let us continyuh, as LBJ liked to say.
Can BishopAccountability.org be sued? Or brought up on charges of harassment?
A Catholic themed blog from Publion and Dave's continued excellent work exposing the Truth Abuse Scandal on TMR would equate to two of the most valuable resources on the Internet.
I thought this was a Catholic themed blog?
Let me get this straight. You are blaming these people for some culpabaility if the abuse crisis in naming a couple of priests who proclaim innocence. How about the thousands of priests over the last 2000 years who have brtualized the innocents. When people care more about protecting one or two priests versus crying out for those who were sodomized and whose lives were stolen from them, then you are truly not followers of the same God that I am.
You are simply anti-Catholic.
How does what Paddy wrote equate to "anti-Catholic. Quite a leap of reason. Still attempting that, huh? It doesn't wash Sir.
You can't just shout names at people and be believed.
When calling criminals to account , and that's all that's attempted to being done here, just attempted". You scream "anti Catholic" like some jacked up car alarm. NO ONE's buying it.
But what of the innocent priest who has had his good name destroyed? Where is his justice?
We know there have been terrible abuses. But two wrongs do not make a right. If an allegation tunrs out not to be credible, it ought to be removed from such sources.
Are you for real?
Did you even read the "About" page?
I guess not.
I think your project is very worthwhile, exposing the real motives and the real modus operandi of the so-called "Catholic" "protectors of children." However, I think you would be more effective if you tempered your prose. Make it coller. Take a "just the facts, ma'am" approach.
It seems to me that we won’t be able to “get things straight” until commenters work out the grounds for some of their assertions. For instance: A) how do we know there were only “a couple” of priests falsely accused? B) how do we know there were “thousands of priests over the past 2000 years” who have “brutalized innocents”? And while the mill is grinding over those two bits, how about C) a working definition of “brutalizing”?
These are exactly the presumed bits of ‘knowledge’ that – never being required to demonstrate rational evidence – were allowed to simply get onto the field and wander around, banging into things. If a serious race is going to be run, then owners of horses have to ensure the critters can actually sustain a run in a more or less straight line on the track before they are given a number and let onto the track.
This is, I would say, one of the downsides of the internet. Anybody can slap a number on their favorite gluebag idea and claim it’s a triple-crown contender. I’d need to see the critter run a few good furlongs before I’d agree.
Odds.
Demographics.
Facts.
Your shouting in the wind.
The genie's out of the bottle and you can't lie him back in.
What "facts"?
What on earth is the relevance of "demographics"?
But "odds" does reveal something profound about what has always been at the core of this Thing. There has always been something of the crapshoot and the gamble: not only in netting a million-dollar payday but also in simply testing to see whether this or that 'story' will actually be accepted by the media with a straight face (feigned or genuine). No need to think or study the problem; the general Stampede atmosphere means the "odds" are good and the surf is up.
And in regard to internet commenting, the only interesting question prompted is: are we looking at the working-out of a strategy or of a symptom? In other words, i) is there actually a conscious and deliberate plan (perhaps left over from ze happy times) to use such hardly-useful material to distract and deflect or ii) do some mentalities actually feel that such material is a good day's work?
But as the end of this "special historical period" starts to assume its shape on the horizon, these are just a couple of the many questions that will also present themselves.
Same old. Same old.
Beat your fake "rational" drum till dooms day.
Nothing's ended. Your corporate Church keeps doing the exact same things ( it ducks and covers and obfuscates and lies) and expects a different outcome.
That way lays madness.
Did I forget to mention among the symptoms/characteristics that “rationality” is considered “fake”?
Readers of the Philly trial site’s comments may have noticed a recent comment to the effect that if it weren’t for the cafeteria food-fight bunch, nothing of any interest would be happening at all in the commentary (and articles) on that site.
It’s revealing – although I doubt the food-fighters realize just how self-revealing it is: Having no concept of ‘school’ except throwing food in the cafeteria, the food-fighters come up with a ‘philosophical’ rationale that makes their rather limited menu of activities appear worthwhile: if it weren’t for the food-fights, the rest of the students and faculty would have nothing of interest to do. Revealing, of course, that to the food-fighters, education and the adventure of actual learning don’t even appear on their radar screens as interesting or worthwhile activities. The food-fight is all. And thus, that makes them the most valuable and important and interesting bunch at school.
Marvelous.
But as we continue to look at the Stampede with a certain amount of historical perspective and analysis, this aspect will continue to stand out: as part of a general national cultural derangement, the mainstream media made food-fights and thus food-fighters worthy elements in the daily life of the nation.
The mentalities that enabled such gambits as Bishop-Accountability continue tossing stuff around.
Here’s to everybody who sticks to doing their homework and trying to learn.
Professor Ecclesiasties, Wants us to learn and do our homework to come to his point of view.
He wants us to ignore the real facts and demographics of Catholic child abuse by our own priests; that their very enablers might be protected .
As though the same Jesus that offered millstones for harmers of children was really on the side of the rapists and not the injured after all.
Well the professor seems to want us to re-think the very tenants of Christian belief in order to protect the abusers. Well really to protect money as well.
No victim wants false claims to occur. The John Jay report estimates no more than 3% of all claims are any where near fraudulent. And the John Jay report is a Catholic analysis.
So patriarcal P will guide us into the new millenia where , like Alice , up is down and black is white; and Jesus cared more about wealth than children. Ah! What a brave new world!
Actually, 19.5% of investigated claims in the JJ Report were either deemed ‘false’ or ‘unsubstantiated.’
What "real facts and demographics"?
What "real tenets of Christian belief" are people supposed to re-think in this regard?
Upon what credible information and authority is the assertion made that "no victim wants false claims to occur"?
I have read both John Jay Reports and I cannot find any statement to the effect that "no more than 3% of all claims are anywhere near fraudulent" – reference to page and Report (first or second) required here.
Note the gratuitous and – of course – utterly irrelevant red-herring about "patriarchal".
Lectures about what Jesus thought about "wealth" from one of the million-dollar payday types whose Wave is now receding, leaving only the flop and the shimmer.
But yes, I can see the relevance in this to the inferred bit about the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.
But I won't take another of that work's character's advice and make myself Believe Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast every day.
Publicon, I think it is best to ignore Robertson as he is not capable of rational discourse as his hate interferes with his thinking.
You mean your fighting 85% true claiments, according to your own John Catholic Jay report. instead of helping the 85% you'd rather smear all in order to pretend you're the victim?????LOL That's which tenant of Christianity?
Sorry that would be 81%.
Responding to Geoff: I know. The objective here is to mine the mine for as many nuggets of revelation as possible, just so folks can see. If I were simply to assert that such mentalities run free-range over the Abuse-nik landscape, who would believe it possible? But then, when actual nuggets from the depths are produced as if on cue in such florid quantity … one picture (as it were) is worh a thousand words. Like manna from heaven … only in reverse.
Publion, I appreciate your intelligence and your patience. [Edited by moderator] You are doing a great service here, IMHO, for those people who truly want to understand this crisis and have both sides of the story … [Edited by moderator] …
Reasonable people can disagree on how to handle certain types of material: does one, for example, follow the bouncing-ball in some types of material no matter where it leads, in order to prioritize the analysis; or does one treat such material deferentially and less robustly out of respect – perhaps – for those who are, possibly, “not altogether well”?
This is not an easy question to resolve. This is not a juridical forum nor is it a therapeutic forum – although in both of those forums it is also an active decision-axis just how to proceed when examining material.
My own objective is to glean as much useful understanding as may be rationally derived from whatever material comes along.
Readers may by now have noticed that Ralph Cipriano has managed to interview a juror in the second Philly trial. His article prompts many thoughts, but I’ll wait to see if DP is going to put up a piece here. There is, to my mind, much material from that juror that deserves a look-see.
Not all together well????? More self revelation?