Lynn Priest Placed On Leave Due To Sex Abuse Claim

By The Associated Press September 23, 2012

BOSTON — The Archdiocese of Boston has placed a Roman Catholic priest in Lynn on leave because of an allegation that he sexually abused a child in 2006.

The archdiocese released a statement Sunday saying the Rev. James Gaudreau will remain on an administrative leave of absence pending the outcome of an archdiocese investigation. Gaudreau is the pastor of St. Joseph Parish.

Church officials say the allegation was only recently reported to the archdiocese, and they have notified police.

Gaudreau couldn’t be reached Sunday. An operator for a call service for the St. Joseph rectory declined to take a message.

Lynn police and the Essex County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment Sunday.

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley said in a statement that church officials are committed to protecting children in their parishes.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002144986982 Neil Allen

Catholic priests have been raping children and being
hidden by their pedophile protecting pals in the priesthood for decades. The fact is that most priests are social, psychological,
and sexual misfits, who thought that by being the “goody two shoes”
types, they could become a priest and get a great spot in heaven.

Then they discover that sexual urges are too powerful,
that children are easy prey, and that other priests will huddle around them and
protect them from the law, and will fight the victims. Even more shocking, the parishioners will
also protect the pedophile priests instead of the children.

The Catholic church admitted 4,392 pedophile priests in
their own, voluntary John Jay report of 2004, which was 9-10% of the priests in
the height of their child rape spree in the 70s and 80s.

This is a bizarre, dangerous cult, and not God’s
church. Real Christians shoudl shut it
down.
- Madeline
  
  I attend St Joseph Parish in Lynn , Father Gaudreu baptized me and my siblings and I know him for several years now. In the several weeks our church been attacked in many ways and now this happens. Our church community is devastated by this cliche news and refuse to believe that any allegations are true. Anyhow we ask for everyone to pray for the ones affected by this news.
  
  “don’t judge others and you won’t be judged ”
- Tom Hiroko93
  
  Putting aside the obvious anti-Catholic bigotry of posts like Allen’s, both his pop-psych ramblings and statistical analysis are deeply flawed. He would perhaps do well to at least read a summary of the John Jay Report that he cites, including the 2011 final version, well summarized in Pyschology Today. See, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/do-the-right-thing/201105/the-new-john-jay-report-clergy-abuse-in-the-catholic-church. It is clear that the problems in the Catholic Church, which were inexcusable, were faced in all organizations in the broader society dealing with children, though the Catholic Church has since done more to address them. It is also clear that the problem did, as Allen seems to admit, spike during the 1960′s and ’70′s, and is has declined radically starting in the 1980′s. Allen probably fails to mention this, since it probably wouldn’t fit his narrative to mention how the current conservative Church leadership and its efforts to repair the confusion of the immediate post-Vatican II period has been much more part of the solution than the problem. None of this is to excuse the horrible sins and crimes of child abuse and cover-up by many local church authorities, which will be on their souls forever, but we should get our facts straight (one of which is that the number of priests accused was around 4% at the height, not 9-10% as Allen says).
  As important a flaw is the lack of any sense of due process; there has been an accusation, and immediately Allen starts invoking the raping of children. The Church has to take all accusations seriously, and is doing so with this one, but as someone who has known Fr. Gaudreu and his tireless service on behalf of the community for many years, I believe he is a priest of integrity, and this accusation will be proven false. You may not believe that, Mr. Allen, but at least you should refrain from casting your gleeful diatribes until more is known.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002144986982 Neil Allen
    
    Tom is lying above.
    
    He says, for instance, that “we should get our facts straight (one of which is that the number of priests accused was around 4% at the height, not 9-10% as Allen says).”
    
    If you check out the John Jay report at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay_Report you’ll see that the 4% number was derived from the total number of accused, child sex abusers over a 502 year period. If you look “at the height” which was the 70s and 80s, the number was 9-10%.
    
    Tom is lying, but that is what his priests and bishops do.
    
    The Catholic church has been able to hide many more pedophiles than this, because children rarely come forward, especially since they know they won’t be believed by Catholic parishioners who always come to the defense of the priest, even though Catholic priests are much, much, much more likely to be a child rapist than anyone else, despite the lies Catholics tell.
    
    And Catholic protect their pedophile priests and pedophile protectors better than any other organization. In Philly this year alone, it was proven that 5 priests, including Cardinal Bevilacqua, Bishop Cullen & Cistone, and 2 other priests) had documented evidence of 35 known pedophile priests in 1994, and destroyed the evidence. They were caught last year, and Msgr Lynn, who admitted to creating the document and then shredding it at the Cardinal’s request, went to jail, even though the Catholic church admitted spending $11 MILLION to save him from jail.
    
    Catholics rallied around proven pedophile protecting Msgr Lynn, even though he admitted hiding 35 known pedophiles. THAT is what the Catholic church is. It isn’t God’s church.
    - Tom Hiroko93
      
      It seems Mr. Allen’s first instinct is to engage in ad hominem attacks and accusations of lying rather than a careful analysis of the lessons to be learned from this shameful tragedy.   I do not accuse him of lying, only of introducing unnecessary confusion.   Suffice it so say that when he asserts “4,392 pedophile priests . . . which was 9-10% of the priests during their spree in the 1970’s and 80’s”, a reader not familiar with the 2004 John Jay Report might be forgiven for thinking that there was a numerator of 4,392 priests accused in that period over some denominator of priests in the relevant time frame of around 40,000, and coming up with 9-10%. But the John Jay Report, as Allen belatedly admits, found 4,392 accused priests over the entire 52 year period from 1950-2002, for which the denominator is 109,964, yielding the roughly 4 percent number over the period of the study, including accusations at the height. Now, perhaps Mr. Allen is referring to priests accused of abuse as a percentage of that priest’s “cohort”, i.e. ordination year, a statistic that the Study does report. It is true that 1970 saw a peak where about 10 percent of that ordination year cohort was, at some point between 1970 and 2002, accused of abuse. (2004 Report at 27.) But that 10% figure was not of all priests at the time, and more importantly, as the Report shows, starting decreasing, radically so after 1980, to less than 4% in 1990. Why doesn’t Mr. Allen, if he is really concerned about the welfare of children, focus on what has improved that environment.
      It is unseemly to be obsessing on statistics with something as grievous as child abuse is at issue, but there are important lessons at stake, from which we can best protect children going forward. Unfortunately, Mr. Allen is too obsessed with demonizing the Catholic Church to note those lessons. One, made very clear in the follow 2011 John Jay Report, is that sexual abuse of minors has been a problem for the broader society, not just the Church. Again, I would suggest he and others interested read the full 2011 Report (available at http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2011_05_18_John_Jay_Causes_and_Context_Report.pdf) Estimates based on several studies and extrapolation suggest that annual rates of child abuse for the United States in 1992 were approximately 246 children per 100,000. (2011 Report at 13.) Finding an apples-to-apples comparison is difficult, because there are so many ways in which children interact with the Church, but using the number of confirmations in a year (530,925 in 1992), which it was noted is far less than the total number of minors who had contact with a Catholic priest, and thus overestimates any abuse ratio, the corresponding figure was 15 abuse cases per 100,000. Basically, the Catholic Church is one of the safest places for children today.   And why this development? Again, the 2011 Report, crediting four pillars in priestly formation advanced by Pope John Paul II in Pastores Dabo Vobis, stated: “Over the past twenty-five years, a remarkable intensification of human formation and deeper understanding of the importance of its role are evident in almost every seminary. Over the same period, the total number of accusations of sexual abuse of a minor by a Catholic priest has fallen from 975 for the period of 1985 through 1989 to 253 for the period of 1995 through 1999, and then to 73 for the period of 2004 through 2008. An awareness of the problem of sexual abuse surely informed the development of the curriculum, but the benefits to seminarians may be seen in the continuing very low levels of sexual abuse of minors.” Basically, sound and orthodox priestly formation has cured what was a very serious problem of lax standards and discipline in many seminaries in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, which was part of a broader breakdown of mores in society and even parts of the Church.
      Meanwhile, on what basis does Mr. Allen assert that the Catholic Church is lying? There is no question that the Catholic Church has been profoundly more transparent about and aggressive in responding to this scourge than other organizations, whether schools, youth athletic programs, day care centers, or Protestant or Jewish religious organizations. “No other religious organizations have conducted methodologically sound study of this issue,” the 2011 Report states. “No organization has undertaken a study of itself in the manner of the Catholic Church in the [2004 and 2011] studies.”   It does note that an American Association of University Women (AAUW) study “showed that nearly 7 percent of students in grades eight to eleven experienced an unwanted sexual contact, with 21 percent of these unwanted contacts reportedly perpetrated by educators.” Tragically, the Report continues, studies support the conclusion that 55 out of 100,000 children in day care, and 89 out of 100,000 in their own families suffer sexual abuse. Compare that to the rate of 15 per 100,000 in the Catholic Church noted above. As for Protestant churches, Time Magazine noted in 2008: “the lack of hierarchical structure and systematized record keeping in most Protestant churches makes it harder not only for church leaders to impose standards, but for interested parties to track allegations of abuse.” In other words, we don’t even know about accusations of abuse in those churches (we do know that the insurance industry estimates reports of abuse of minors by 165,000 Protestant churches covered by three insurance companies – obviously just a part of the total – exceeded 260 per year in 2007, or far more than the number of accusations in the Catholic Church that year. (The Houston Chronicle, June 14, 2007, http://stopbaptistpredators.org/article07/three_insurers_shed_light.html.)
      There is no leniency in this writer to any priest who would sexually abuse a child, but Mr. Allen seems more concerned with exploiting this tragedy for vitriol against the Church than for constructive approaches to making churches, and all venues, safe for our children.   And his disregard for basic due process is striking – I regret not observing at the output that his reference to “4,392 pedophile priests” is a gross distortion: that figure is 4,392 priests with an accusation at any time. I guess in Mr. Allen’s mind there’s no presumption of innocence, despite the fact that out of the more than 1,000 priests from the 1950-2002 period accused population who were reported to the police, 384 were determined to merit charges, and 252 of those were convicted – meaning Mr. Allen slanderously throws the “pedophile” label around to apply even to priests deemed innocent in a court of law.
      In my view, slander is exactly what is going on in the case of Fr. Gaudreau.
Ltreggiefan

Let law enforcement do the investigation. Stand by the

alleged victim; if accurate, the victim and family needs support. The

alleged perp is an adult and has support. Less than 1 % of abuse claims are false
John Bernadyn

Source: United Advocacy Group, Inc.
�
When Clergy Are Asked To Leave Quietly, There Is No Justice
�
(CHICAGO) – Br. John Woulfe, an ex-Marianist brother, has been accused by numerous ex-students at Chaminade College Preparatory School in St. Louis, MO of sexually molesting them. Of course, he wasn’t the only member of this religious community accused of such acts. There were many more. Many, many more.
            In 2002, Michael Powel filed a lawsuit against Chaminade College Preparatory School for a lifetime of suffering and damages (2002. Powel v Chaminade College Preparatory, Inc, Marianist Province of the United States, Archbishop Justin Rigali, William Christensen [aka Fr. William Christensen, S.M.] and John Woulfe [aka Br. John Woulfe, S.M.]). Powel would ultimately win the lawsuit for millions of dollars several years later.�
            Br. John Woulfe, after being accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with students in the 1970s left the Society of Mary (aka “Marianists”). Instead of notifying the local police department for prosecution Fr. Robert Osbourne, the school principal, allowed Woulfe to leave ‘quietly’. Unfortunately, this did not stop Woulfe’s desire to prey on the weak and vulnerable.
            Eventually Woulfe would end up in the small town of Onarga, Illinois. In this area, Woulfe would once again continue his predatory sexual behavior on children until he was caught. “John Woulfe was a monster,” recalls Illinois-based author John Bernadyn in his newly released memoir Betrayed By The State: A Ward of the State Speaks Out in which he discusses the experiences he faced with this ex-clergyman. “He was demeaning, pushy, and manipulative.”
            After suspicion took hold of this town, Woulfe moved to the small town of Watseka, Illinois. He landed a position as a guidance counselor in the Kankakee School District – an occupation he knew all too well while serving at Chaminade. In 2002, Woulfe was arrested for predatory sexual behavior with a student. Defiantly, he refused to appear at court hearings.
            Woulfe would eventually find himself in a nursing home after suffering a stroke and ultimately dying in 2005 from the after-effects. “The real tragedy in this case is that all the people he victimized would never get to tell him directly how they felt or if they ever forgave him. I, too, felt robbed of this chance to say I forgave him but would never forget,” said Bernadyn.
            All allegations of sexual abuse are now required to be reported to local justice authorities. “This is a little too late,” whispers Bernadyn.

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