A scandal hits home

Deepa Bharath

For Joelle Casteix, going to church is not the same as it was when

she was a little girl.

The 33-year-old Corona del Mar woman says her faith in the

Catholic Church, an institution she revered throughout her childhood

and part of her adolescence, was shattered after she was sexually

abused by her own high school teacher, a Catholic priest.

Casteix is among the thousands of Americans who have claimed they

were sexually abused by priests, leading to a scandal that has raged

for the last year.

As many as 800 claims were filed statewide over the last year by

people who said they had been molested years ago as children. The

civil cases grew in number last year after the U.S. Supreme Court

overturned a California law that had permitted the retroactive

criminal prosecution of old child molestation cases.

Newport-Mesa is home not only to several people who say they were

victims, but to an attorney, John Manly, who is representing 80

clients statewide, including eight victims from the Newport-Mesa

area, Casteix among them.

Manly’s list of alleged abusers is long. He rattles off priests’

names as if he were a teacher in the middle of a roll call. His

clients are suing several priests, many of whom no longer serve in

Orange County churches.

The Costa Mesa-based attorney’s cases includes victims who say

they were abused by Daniel Murray of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on the

Balboa Peninsula; Michael Harris, former principal of Mater Dei High

School in Santa Ana, who used to conduct Sunday masses at St. John

the Baptist; and Donald Stevens, a custodian at St. Joachim Catholic

Church in Costa Mesa who passed away.

Murray has been placed on administrative leave, and Harris was

defrocked in 2001.

Most of these victims cannot file a criminal complaint because the

statute of limitations has run out on their cases, Manly said.

“A simple apology is just not enough after your whole emotional

life has been stolen from you,” he said. “Jail would be nice, but

it’s not possible. All these people have left is a civil remedy.”

The Diocese of Orange is doing its best to make sure that justice

is served, said Chancellor Shirl Giacomi.

The Diocese formed the Sexual Abuse and Misconduct Oversight and

Review Board in 2002 whose primary job is to investigate victims’

claims and make a recommendation to the bishop, she said.

Casteix joined that board, but soon resigned.

“I wanted to help,” she said. “But I’d go to all these meetings

and realize that this board had no power or no backing. They were

nothing more than informational sessions and a means to tell everyone

that it was all OK.”

But Giacomi said Casteix did not give it a chance.

“She left in December when the board was still being formed,” she

said. “It was in a state of transition. The process of forming the

board wasn’t completed until three or four months after she left.”

Board members, who are all volunteers, include people from

different walks of life, Giacomi said.

“They have a difficult job in front of them,” she said.

“Regardless of the outcome of a lawsuit, they must examine the

evidence in a case. They hire an outside investigator if necessary.”

Investigation in such cases is difficult because some of them are

decades old.

“It’s hard to find witnesses,” Giacomi said. “And in some cases,

the priests themselves have passed on. They need to make sure the

victims also remember exactly what happened. We want to be just to

all.”

But Casteix said she had lost confidence and hope that the board

was going to do any justice.

“It only made me feel more and more frustrated,” she said.

YEARS OF AGONY

For a long time, Casteix had no idea she had legal options, she

said. For years, she agonized over what happened. The alleged abuse

happened when she was in her junior year of high school, when Casteix

was struggling with problems at home. Rector Thomas Hodgman offered

her friendship and comfort, she said.

“He told me no one understood me like he did,” she said. “He told

me I was in love and that it’s very special to be in love. I was an

innocent 16-year-old, and I’ve always been taught in Catholic school

that you do what your teacher tells you to do. So that’s what I did.”

She loved the positive attention Hodgman showered her with,

Casteix said.

“I was his favorite,” she said. “I felt special.”

But reality hit her hard when she became pregnant in her senior

year.

“My parents, at that time, told me it was my fault,” she said. “My

problems at home spiraled.”

She started to question her faith in Catholicism. She still has

problems with her religion.

“I had an abortion,” she said. “So I was going to hell anyway. All

I started seeing when I saw the church was hurt, anger and fear. The

church does not speak to me any more at a spiritual level. In my

mind, it’s destroyed the hearts and minds of people and the bodies of

children.”

Casteix says she is horrified looking back because all the

incidents happened right under the school administrators’ noses.

“It happened on campus, in his apartment and even in the school

van,” she said. “Where was everyone and what were they doing?”

Emotionally, it wreaked havoc on her personal life.

“I had a lousy marriage and a series of failed relationships,” she

said. “The pain just doesn’t go away. I still struggle with it. It

still affects all my relationships.”

A CHANGE IN LIFE

People such as Casteix need to get their justice and their day in

court to find closure to a bitter, shameful episode that has

tormented their lives for many, many years, John Manly said.

“The Catholic Church has been doing a number on the kids in Orange

County,” he said. “If you were a child rapist and were wearing a

Roman collar, that gave you license. And you wouldn’t be punished but

protected, coddled and promoted in the hierarchy.”

The officials are “incapable of telling the truth,” Manly said.

“What’s grotesque about that is they’re doing this at the expense

of children,” he said. “They treat them like human debris.”

Giacomi said the church admits that “poor decisions were made” in

the past.

“But many of those poor decisions were not made in this diocese,”

she said.

The public is judging the Catholic Church by its current knowledge

of pedophilia, Giacomi said.

“We didn’t know in the ‘70s what we know today about pedophilia,”

she said. “Priests who showed warning signs were sent off to be

treated for alcoholism when in fact they were trying to medicate this

sickness with alcohol.”

Some of them were even brought back into active ministry, Giacomi

said.

“But today, with all the information we have about pedophilia,

that would never happen,” she said.

For Manly, it’s been a “holy fight,” so far, he says. The

attorney, who lives in Newport Beach, dealt only with lawsuits

related to construction defects until 1997. The course of his

practice changed after he won a record $5.2 million for Ryan DiMaria,

a former Mater Dei student who alleged that then-principal Michael

Harris had sexually abused him. The Diocese of Orange settled with

him during the pretrial stages.

Now the cases keep piling up. Giacomi said the Diocese has no idea

how many lawsuits have been filed.

“We haven’t been served on all the lawsuits yet,” she said.

The financial impact on the Diocese is going to be significant,

Giacomi said.

“It’s going to have a direct effect on our services here in Orange

County,” she said. “We don’t have reserve money we can spend on these

lawsuits.”

But they don’t know yet how much the legal battles and settlements

are going to cost, Giacomi said.

On the other hand, it takes a lot of courage for victims to come

forward in these cases, Manly said.

“These few people who have filed these lawsuits have given voice

to what happened to so many people,” he said. “We believe that there

are hundreds if not thousands of victims in Costa Mesa and Newport

Beach who haven’t come forward.

“Representing these people has been the greatest honor of my

life,” he said. “But it’s also been the hardest thing I’ve ever had

to do?”

What makes it so torturous?

“I’m Catholic,” Manly said, his face bearing a grave expression.

“And when you’re Catholic, your coping mechanism is your religion.”

He still goes to church with his family.

“When I go to mass and announce who I am, it’s painful,” he said.

“I do what I do because I have a choice. What do you do if you were a

German in World War II? I wasn’t going to keep quiet. I had to do the

right thing.”

He derives great satisfaction from helping people such as John, a

former Costa Mesa resident -- a victim who does not wish to identify

himself.

John, now 39, still remembers the day he was “violently raped” by

Michael Harris, who in addition to his duties in Mater Dei also

visited St. John the Baptist in Costa Mesa.

John grew up and went to school in Costa Mesa. He was deeply

involved in his religion. He was considering becoming a priest at age

13. He was an altar boy at church when Harris visited.

He approached Harris with questions about dating, which clashed

with his desire to join the seminary, he said. That’s when Harris

starting abusing him, John said.

“He said he had to teach me how to release myself sexually,” he

said. “He took me off campus and to his private residence. He

threatened me and told me never to repeat what happened to anyone.”

The “numerous” instances of molestation culminated in the rape,

John said.

“Right after that incident, I remember sitting in my parents’ car

for 45 minutes, just shaking,” he said. “My first sexual experience

had been with a priest.”

John decided never to tell anyone about it, he said.

“I decided that I would bury it so deep that I wouldn’t let it

affect me,” he said. “But then, I fell apart emotionally and

psychologically.”

He has never been married.

“My family was very traditional,” he said. “I didn’t want to hurt

them by telling them what happened. I thought it was only me that was

affected. I could live with it.”

STILL FULL WITH FAITH

But something snapped inside when John saw he was not the only

one.

“I became angry when I saw that the Diocese of Los Angeles and

Orange were trying to brush this off and that they had known all

along about Harris,” he said.

John approached Manly about six months ago, and that was the first

time he had told anyone about the abuse, he said.

But John still has his religion.

“I believe in the Catholic faith,” he said. “I don’t believe in

the bureaucrats. If we take this on our shoulders and fight that

bureaucracy, I’m sure we’ll win, and I believe things will reform in

the Catholic Church.”

Personally, John’s goal is to get married and have a family, he

said.

“I want to make sure this never happens to another child ever

again,” he said. “I want to be able to afford therapy and help to

help me not associate sexuality with abuse.”

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at deepa.bharath@latimes.com.