http://www.newsweek.com/id/93626
PRIEST ABUSE
‘Absolute Power’
Decades of abuse by Roman Catholic priests and volunteers still taint
Eskimo villagers in rural Alaska.
By Tony Hopfinger | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jan 14, 2008
In the Yupik Eskimo village where Tom Cheemuk lived as a child in the
1960s, there was no running water. Homes in the tiny community of St.
Michael were lit with gas lamps and generators. The town shared a
single telephone. As a boy Cheemuk picked berries and gathered goose
eggs on the pockmarked Alaskan tundra and fished for tomcod on the
windy shores of the Bering Strait. Like most other children, he also
spent many days inside the weather-beaten little Catholic church,
helping the Jesuit missionaries who held such powerful sway over
Eskimo life. That meant doing what you were told—even if it was
wrong—and staying silent about it.
For Cheemuk, now 53, the past was buried for decades, through a
lifetime of struggling with shame, anger and alcoholism. "I remember
Mom asked me why there was blood on my underclothes," he said one
recent frigid night in his cramped house in the Eskimo village. His
sat alongside his wife, sometimes breaking into tears. "I was afraid
to tell her what happened. I thought I might go to jail."
It is one of the darkest chapters of sexual abuse in the Roman
Catholic Church. More than 110 children in Eskimo villages claim they
were molested between 1959 and 1986, raped or assaulted by 12 priests
and three church volunteers. Families and victims believe that another
22 people were sexually abused by clergy members but have since killed
themselves. The Jesuit Oregon Province, which includes Alaska, has
agreed to pay $50 million in damages. It is believed to be the largest
settlement ever against a religious order.
Chris Cooke, a partner in an Anchorage law firm that has represented
Eskimo victims, voices outrage over the staggering level of abuse by
priests and church volunteers. "They had absolute power over the
people and the culture," says Cooke. "They had language power. They
had political power. They had racial power. They had the power to send
you to hell. There was nowhere for victims to turn."
This is a culture that values emotional restraint. Especially among
men, talking about pain is rare. Cheemuk once tried to escape the
nightmares by putting a gun to his head. His wife grabbed the gun as
he pulled the trigger, the bullet whizzing past his head. But two of
his brothers did take their own lives. Cheemuk wonders if they were
abused too.
Cheemuk was allegedly abused by Joseph Lundowski, a volunteer who
performed many of the duties of a priest. In the span of seven
horrific years, Lundowski allegedly abused nearly every boy in the
villages of St. Michael and neighboring Stebbins. Thirty-eight of
these men, now in their late 40s and 50s, have come forward to say
Lundowski abused them. Villagers believe six other alleged victims
committed suicide. Ken Roosa, a lawyer in Anchorage, began taking his
first Jesuit priest abuse cases in 2002. When he later ran a newspaper
ad seeking information about Lundowski, calls poured in, and
eventually the church volunteer, now deceased, was accused by a total
of 60 victims, the majority of the Alaska abuse cases covered in the
$50 million settlement.
Chase Hensel, a retired anthropologist and expert on Yupik Eskimo
culture, says the lasting damage cannot be overstated. "You see the
alcoholism, the severe mental problems, people in and out of jail," he
says, "and you wonder, how do you put Humpty Dumpty back on the wall?"
The Alaskan victims come from the some of the poorest, most vulnerable
pockets in America. Their great-grandparents faced a wave of epidemics
that killed off more than half the indigenous population of western
Alaska. Convinced they had been failed by the shamans and old beliefs,
many turned to the missionaries. The Jesuits descended on the frontier
in the late 1800s.
Only three priests covered in the settlement are still living. They
include Father James Jacobson and Father Jim Poole, both in their 80s.
Jacobsen is accused of fathering a total of four children with four
women, as well as impregnating a 16-year-old who had an abortion.
Poole, who founded a popular Catholic radio station in Nome that can
still be heard in the villages, also allegedly impregnated a girl.
According to court filings, Poole told her to abort the fetus and
blame it on her father. According to Father John Whitney, the head of
the Jesuit Oregon Province, the priests are under close monitoring at
a senior care facility run by the order in Spokane, Wash. Neither
could be reached for comment.
Patrick Wall, a former Benedictine monk and Catholic priest who has
served as a consultant to Roosa and other lawyers in the Alaska suits,
said the Jesuits knew these missionaries were predators. These priests
"had abused elsewhere," he said, "and then were unleashed in the most
uncontrolled environment."
The Jesuits contend that they did not know that the priests were
pedophiles. "These were the most difficult missions in the world,"
said Whitney, "and that is why it's quite challenging for us to
reconcile that some of our heroes have now ended up named in these
accusations."
To this day, many middle-aged men in St. Michael recall that it was
Lundowski who gave them their first drinks. They say he kept a wooden
barrel of homebrew in the bell tower. After catechism or Sunday mass,
the boys often hung out in what Lundowski called "the monkey room,"
where kids played checkers and board games and watched religious
movies. Lundowski doled out candy, juice and food, along with holy
wine and his sour homebrew. Adjacent to the monkey room was a bedroom.
"He knew these kids were very vulnerable," said Wall. "He knew they
were hungry. He knew they were cold. He knew they had nothing. And he
provided food, candy and money, and had his way with them."
In St. Michael it's not difficult to find middle-aged men who can
recount experiences of abuse by "Brother Joe," as Lundowski was
called. One of them is Stephan Tom, 54. Tom says he will never forget
the time Lundowski asked him if he knew about oral sex, and then
attacked him. "He grabbed me and threw me on the bed," says Tom. "He
unbuckled my pants. I was fighting. I was crying. I told him, 'No!
No!'"
Tom Cheemuk remembers Lundowski sternly telling him that he should
never speak about what happened, and that no one would believe him,
anyway. The boy could scarcely have spoken the truth to Lundowski's
superior, Father George Endal, now deceased. The priest was also
sexually abusing him, Cheemuk says.
These days Cheemuk concentrates on spending time with his wife and
children, trying to heal, trying to stay sober. He still hasn't told
his mother about what really happened. She is a village elder and a
regular at Sunday mass. Cheemuk doesn't attend mass himself, but he
sometimes longs for the church of his childhood, the one that existed
before Lundowski and Endal stole his innocence.
"I miss going to church on Christmas," he said. But he cannot go back,
not yet. The memories still haunt.
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