US Catholic Priest Molested Over 200 Deaf Boys

The whole Catholic abuse scandal gets more sickening each day as people who were abused decades ago, are finally having the courage to come forth. I can't imagine it would be an easy confession to make after all these years- that you had been abused as a young boy by your priest. The shame and humiliation for many of these now-older men, often married, is probably what led many of them to keep it a secret. But those secrets, compounded by the fact that pedophile priests were shamefully allowed to continue dealing with children probably exacerbated the problem. But most of the blame, if not all, should be placed on the Catholic Church and even the Vatican for recycling pedophiles, rather than putting them out to pasture, where they belonged. The Church has been in denial, for far to long and they are now suffering the consequences. What they did is reprehensible, and unforgivable.

The latest controversy deals with a U.S. priest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who molested at least 200 deaf students at a school for the deaf, between the 1950s and 1974. What makes this particularly odious is the fact that in the mid-1990s Reverend Lawrence Murphy, the pedophile priest, had the opportunity of being defrocked, but Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (yes, the current Pope) opposed the notion.

Church and Vatican documents showed that in the mid-1990s, two Wisconsin bishops urged the Vatican office led by Ratzinger to let them hold a church trial against Murphy.

However, Ratzinger's deputy at the time decided the alleged molestation occurred too long ago and said Murphy — then ailing and elderly — should instead repent and be restricted from celebrating Mass outside of his diocese, according to the documents.

Now dead, Murphy used his authority and God to get his way with the boys. One of those young lads who was molested is 59-year-old Steven Geier. Murphy molested him in the mid-1960s, when he was 14. Four times

.. Murphy coaxed the then-14-year-old student into a closet at St. John's School for the Deaf just outside Milwaukee and molested him, using God to justify his actions.

Geier said when he told Murphy what was happening was wrong, the priest replied, "Oh, yes. God sent me. This is confession."

"Father Murphy put everything into the context of God," Geier said through a sign-language interpreter Thursday. "I felt like I was really brainwashed."

Murphy's lust allegedly took him from the confessional, to closets, to dorm rooms to field trips. He must have been like a kid in a candy store, with so many young, impressionable and vulnerable boys to coax and coerce. Given they were handicapped makes what he did even more egregious. Understandably, some of the victims are very angry.

"I can't believe (the pope) can be so stupid," Geier said. "He is supposed to be doing God's work and yet abusing children is in direct conflict with that. ... Where is God's punishment for Father Murphy abusing all those boys? Is that kind of behavior acceptable to God?"

Another of Murphy's victims, 61-year-old Arthur Budzinski, was molested when he was only 12 after he went to Murphy for confession. That confession turned into a sexual assault in a closet. He was sexually molested 2 other times, in his own bed and in Murphy's bedroom. Budzinski's daughter, Gigi (26) who interpreted for him said "It seemed like my father would be walking into a trap every time." Since the boys lived in an open dorm, with bunk beds, Buzinski said he often saw other boys being molested, but they were all too afraid to say anything.

And his victims weren't only the boys at the school for the deaf. He also targeted others:

Murphy's alleged victims also included at least one teen in a juvenile detention center in the 1970s.

Donald Marshall, now 45, said Murphy visited him several times a week at the center, where he was sent at age 13 for burglary. Marshall said the abused happened when the priest visited the boy while he was isolated in a cell after a fight.

"He was sitting on my bed, reading the Bible to me, and he put his hand on my knee," Marshall said. "He leaned over and started kissing me. That's when he tried to put his hand down my pants."

And it's not that some of those boys didn't eventually file a complaint. Budzinski (when he was 26) and several other victims approached the police about the molestation, but the 6-year statue of limitation prevented Murphy from being prosecuted. And even if that hadn't been a problem, I'm sure nothing would have come of it, anyway. The Church had a handy way of making scandal disappear.

Not that any money would fully compensate anyone victimized by priest sexual abuse but by mid-2009 the archdiocese had paid $28 million to victims of abuse, though no-one will say how much was paid to the victims of Murphy. Had the Church had a conscience and dealt with their pedophile priests, it would be a lot richer and there wouldn't be so many damaged adults. Hopefully they have learned their lesson.