Editorial: Cum money and greed whores

I had no idea what the word “cumming” meant until December 8, 1993, when my St. Anthony School vice principal groaned it in filth the first time he raped me. I was 13.

I don’t even know whether that term is appropriate for middle school sex education courses. And at any rate, he was a music teacher, and Catholic schools had no sex education courses, at least in those days.

I live a paradox, where the Roman Catholic Church provides the catechism I need for pure joy in my life, but its Archdiocese of Agana disgusts me.

I’m disgusted by its sins of the past – the Baumgartner to Apuron eras, when the diocese actively covered up the rapes of young boys and girls – but that alone does not drive my thoughts. After all, the Archdiocese is nearing the end of a an era of seeming shame, with the first payments to abuse survivors – myself included – on the horizon; albeit a semi-just end forced upon it.

But will there ever really be justice for what happened? Certainly not if the Archdiocese continues its system of cover up and refusal to be held accountable, truly, for its mistakes.

Anthony Apuron’s papal banishment ended a dark era that has been replaced by an overcast. Some in the know will tell you the clouds above are forming a storm the majority of Catholics and citizens here don’t yet see (See JungleWatch for more). But I digress.

What we’ve been treated to has been – to be fair – an Archdiocese picking up the pieces and trying to rise up from under the scandal both Apuron and some very powerful forces from the Neocatechumenal Way’s global leadership thrust upon the church here. But the new leadership, from the interim leader Archbishop Savio Hon to now-Archbishop Emeritus Michael Byrnes to Apostolic Administrator Fr. Romeo Convocar, have made decisions that tell me little has changed, and much is to be desired.

What we’ve observed is a kinder church, but one where I wonder whether institutional change truly has happened. Or is it the facade of a flawed structural renovation painted over by platitudes concealing the last engineer’s mistake?

A few years ago, the Archdiocese all but excused alleged sexual misconduct at Mt. Carmel School, exposing a crack in its marketing campaign that has tried to convince us it cares about what happens to victims of abuse within its organization. Despite all that talk about sex abuse and reporting training, and building a culture of safety from predatory havens, the Mt. Carmel incident simply removed the veil to show the culture of silence and cover up still prevailed.

We may have been able to chalk that up to a misstep under the Byrnes administration, but then an alleged sex scandal emerged at St. Anthony School (that place seems to be a bastion of misconduct and cover up with the Catholic School System), and it was quickly covered up.

My personal disgust, and I’m going to guess the disgust of many others, has been magnified by recent advertisements for the sale of the hotel property in Yona, which once was the Redemptoris Mater Seminary, or RMS.

That hotel became a symbol of the corruption of the archdiocese and the wrongs committed by its former leaders. Let’s not forget how the continuing revolution for truth and justice in the Archdiocese began. It didn’t start with the testimonies of abuse victims (If it had, then change – at least for me – would have started in 1994, when I first came forward about what happened to me).

The public scandal began, when Apuron fired Father Paul Gofigan and Monsignor James Benavente from their posts at the time. Then, people started to wonder, and to get involved. At their personal peril, they began to ask questions about who was arguably the most powerful person on the island at the time, Anthony Apuron.

Those questions led to a discovery by Marine and former Sen. Robert “Bob” Klitzkie, who leads the region’s most popular and educational afternoon talk show, Tall Tales, on 93.3 FM The Point. Nearly a decade ago, Mr. Klitzkie, after having won a long and drawn-out quest for public land records against then-director of land management Michael Borja, exposed a scandal involving the RMS property.

Everything snowballed from there and before we knew it, the first allegations of sexual impropriety were announced publicly against Apuron.

One after another, until the numbers stacked to around 300, victims of abuse over decades of cover up by the Archdiocese began to sue for damages.

And this is where the truly disgusting part starts. As a rape survivor, it was bad enough that the Archdiocese of Agana did nothing but cover up what one of their own did to me. In fact, if my case ever were to go to trial, I have witnesses ready to testify that the Sisters of Mercy helped my predator to flee Guam, and housed him in San Francisco to wait out the statute of limitations that was around at the time.

While I don’t know what the other survivors went through, I can only imagine the destruction the Archdiocese caused in their lives. Think of those who killed themselves. The ones who turned to drugs and alcohol to cope. Those of us who carried that deep dark secret, regret, and self-loathing for decades. The ones who told their mothers, principals, priests, the bishop himself… only for them to be outcast and ostracized.

So, when Sen. Frank Blas. Jr.’s legislation allowing for victims of abuse to sue the organizations that covered up the crimes became law, and society – finally – expressed outrage against the Archdiocese, I and many others had hope and, above all, relief. What was done to us finally was being recognized and talked about.

When Apuron and his protege Adrian Cristobal fled, it was as though the Ceausescus had finally left. The problem, it seems, is that the junta remains, waiting in the wings as a power vacuum sucks in order and exhausts the chaos that only greed and malignancy can bring.

For all the appearances of regret and want for progress, all the Archdiocese of Agana has done since the first lawsuits has been to fight the victims every step of the way in what has become the coldest season for the once-Catholic altar boys and girls, and students of their Catholic School System. As if it wasn’t enough that they actively covered up our abuse, for the past several years of the litigation, the Archdiocese has spent every waking moment trying to deny financial justice and recompense to the survivors of THEIR misconduct.

Again, I didn’t learn the term “cumming” from MTV, pornography, a perverted uncle, or even a sex education course. I learned it from a Catholic school teacher who was raping me, who the Archdiocese helped to house in hiding for the statute of limitations to run out.

Under Hon, Byrnes, and now Convocar, the Archdiocese of Agana has been doing what Apuron and the bishops before him did: Saying they care for the flock and the children within it, then screwing them in silence, when no one is looking.

So, here we are, several years after the lawsuits began, and an entire bankruptcy later, and what is to show for it?

The most visible sign of the post-Apuron era of what was supposed to be a reckoning for justice is this advertisement for the sale of the old RMS. And do you know why it’s for sale? Because someone bought it from the Archdiocese.

Someone bought it from the Archdiocese, because the Archdiocese sold it. And the Archdiocese sold it, because it needed money to pay for the lawsuits followed by the lengthy bankruptcy proceedings.

And it needed money to pay for the lawsuits and the lengthy bankruptcy proceedings because, EVERY STEP OF THE WAY, the Archdiocese refused to truly acknowledge its sins and reconcile itself with the once-innocent boys and girls it had damaged through the active decades-long cover up.

And so, what once was a symbol of hope for change now is an advertisement of disgust. Because that former RMS property was sold by the Archdiocese, and the proceeds for that sale were used to pay the Archdiocese’s lawyers. The ones the Archdiocese paid to fight the survivors and victimize them one more time.

These are the lawyers who dragged all of us into depositions to relive the trauma THEIR client put us through. They had us retell what happened. They asked us to be specific about which part of the body was put where. How old we were at the time. Where did it happen? How many times? Did we tell anybody? Who else knew? Can I remember anything about the rooms where these things occurred? Why did I go in the car with him?

I can even remember the smell of the lotion mixed with the body fluids, but that memory does not bring me or anyone else any closer to justice and reconciliation.

**** you, Archdiocese, and your lawyers. **** you.

For all those proceeds to pay attorneys who fought all this time against justice for victims is among the greatest tragedies the Archdiocese of Agana, post-Apuron, has allowed. The attorneys took that money to defend that filth. Cum money.

Thank goodness for attorney David Lujan, who has shouldered most of this entire litigation for years, both financially and at the expense of his retirement, health, and the time I’m sure he wants to spend with his wife, children, and grandchildren. The RMS sale proceeds should have went to pay him.

Now, here’s that paradox in my life sprouting out: The bankruptcy is nearly at an end, and the Archdiocese actually has turned over to the trustee of its creditors the cash that has remained for payments to the survivors.

I know many people who have refrained from donating during the Catholic Mass. I know many people who stopped practicing Catholicism altogether because of this scandal and how it has shaken their faith.

This is not the forum (this article) for me to try to change anyone’s mind about going back to their Catholic faith, and I’ll just let my journey back to the church speak for itself, considering my story.

But I do want to educate wayward Catholics and so-called Cafeteria Catholics in our archdiocese about what I’ve learned, and how good things can come of bad situations.

Despite the mistakes of church leaders, and the brewing storm of leadership in the Archdiocese, it leads good causes that could truly use your charity.

The post-Apuron era has, for what we can see, weeded out the predator priests. Those who remain are left to pick up the pieces. They need to eat. They rely on very meager stipends from the Archdiocese, supplemented by the charity of parishioners.

Then there are the ministries of the church. Everything from education, to feeding the hungry, helping the poor, trying to save marriages, and the most important of all: evangelization into Christ’s church.

Because, my brothers and sisters in Christ, the evil of some men, and even the corruption of the institution they corrupt, can never overcome the good of Christ’s Word, and His Eucharist. Don’t let evil win by cutting out Christ and His church, where He is. I made that mistake, and it led to an adulthood of joyless nothingness punctuated by self-harm, self-hate, and self-absorption. My life has changed because of Christ and, yes, because of His church, despite the Archdiocese of Agana.

And the people who minister in His church, can use our help. Now that the Archdiocese has turned over the first cash payment to the creditors, parishioners can rest assure that the donations they make at Mass, or whenever, will go to the church’s ministries, and not to its lawyers for the lawsuits.

If I may suggest something, just in case you’re willing to go back to Mass, and to donate again? If you want your donation to go to something specific in the Archdiocese, write a check, pen on the ‘note’ section what you want the church to do with your donation, and drop that into the basket. Or, put your cash into an envelope and on the envelope or in a note, write where you want that money to go. Or, if you want to support your priest’s livelihood, give the money directly to him.

There are good people and good things that happen in the Archdiocese of Agana. They far outnumber the bad. The storm that is brewing (again, see JungleWatch, because we are entering a critical era) will twirl us in the politics of the Archdiocesan leadership, but if we’re committed to truth and justice, and we have the courage to put that commitment into action, then I have no doubt good will prevail. Joy will pervade. I pray you all find joy.

P.s. If you appreciate my writing, I credit those skills to Notre Dame High School, not St. Anthony School. The extent of my memory of vocabulary learned from St. Anthony is the word, “cumming.”