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Immaculate Deception

Continued from page 2

In a letter dated March 26, 2001, another alleged victim of clergy abuse contacted by Riverfront Times wrote to Burke, stating: "I know I have talked to you about Fr. Raymond Bornbach before, and I thought when you retired him it would take care of the problem of his dirty little hands and his filthy mouth.... But it has not since he still goes to the St. Joseph [sic] Hospital in Marshfield, and visits sick people," the letter reads. "He still goes on the psych unit and tells women there that 'Jesus loves them and he does too.' When he was visiting [illegible] there he not only told her that but he was also touching her breasts and putting his tongue in her mouth.... I know what he did to her because she told me right after it happened." (The letter writer, who supplied Riverfront Times with a copy of the correspondence, blacked out the name of the alleged victim at St. Joseph's.)

The letter writer goes on to detail other instances of alleged abuse by Bornbach, before concluding: "Bornbach even wearing the collar is such a disgrace to all good priests. I'm surprised the other priests don't strip Bornbach of his collar."

As with all allegations of clergy abuse, Burke declines to discuss specifics. "Whenever an accusation is brought, no matter what the status of the priest was, it was thoroughly investigated," he says. "The priest was confronted, and it was thoroughly investigated: That's my policy."

The diocese may well have investigated Bornbach, but any such records are strictly shielded from public view. Nonetheless, at least one other alleged victim cited in the letter says she was never contacted by investigators in relation to Raymond Bornbach.

As the months dragged on, B.V. became increasingly frustrated with Burke's inaction. "It was pointless to talk to the diocese," she says. "I called one of [the members of the Child Sexual Abuse Review Board] and said: 'I want a meeting.'"

It was not until B.V. contacted the review board that she was finally afforded an interview with Bishop Burke, on January 10 -- a full year after she'd stepped forward. Her husband went with her.

B.V. says that during the meeting Burke promised he'd make a decision about the Bornbach matter by the time he left for St. Louis. "We said, 'You leave on January 24th, that's all over the newspapers. We know when you leave. Are you going to be able to make a decision in four days?' He said, 'Yes, I will definitely call you and let you know what we've decided,'" B.V. recalls. "Of course, January 24th came and went with no word from Burke."

Last week B.V. received a letter from the diocese informing her that the Child Sexual Abuse Review Board had substantiated her claim and that appropriate action would be taken.

"We recommended that action be taken against Father Bornbach," says one board member, who spoke on condition that his name not appear in print. "[Although] at his age we were told laicization would probably not take place, but it would be recommended that he no longer act or appear with a Roman collar as a Roman Catholic priest."

B.V. credits the board for investigating her claim and believes that had she not contacted its members, nothing would have happened. "This man is a rock," she says of Burke. "He is not moving. He knows his laws, and he knows he's protected. The law protects the church. They don't have to do anything about these people. Nothing. And this bishop knows that."

"The law" derives from a 1995 Wisconsin State Supreme Court decision in the matter of Pritzlaff v. the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. In that case, Judith Pritzlaff sued the archdiocese in 1992 for $3 million, arguing that an affair she'd had with a priest in 1959 had ruined her marriage. The state's highest court upheld a lower court's finding in favor of the archdiocese. The justices held that a court of law cannot determine whether a church has been negligent in hiring or supervising its priests. The relationship between a bishop and a priest is part of religious practice, they reasoned, and therefore a bishop's decision about an individual priest's fitness for ministry is fundamentally a religious decision. To rule on such a matter, the justices found, would unduly entangle the courts in religious practice.

The watershed decision made it virtually impossible to sue a Wisconsin diocese for its conduct regarding an individual priest's actions -- one of the few ways in which abusers become publicly known and dioceses are held accountable. Victims may still sue individual priests, but rare is the lawyer who'll take a case against a defendant who has taken a vow of poverty.

"Burke has been effectively insulated from accountability," says St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson. "He was operating in a state where there were no effective legal remedies: You can't sue them."

Of course, abuse victims may seek criminal charges against a priest, but the allegations must be presented within the statute of limitations, which for sex crimes against minors in Wisconsin generally means taking action before the victim reaches age 35.

It was the statute of limitations that doomed a lawsuit Anderson brought against the Diocese of La Crosse in 1991. In that case, Jane Y. Doe v. the Diocese of La Crosse, the plaintiff alleged that when she was fourteen years old she was sexually abused by Father Thomas Garthwaite, who was then pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Marshfield.

"[The] Diocese knew or should reasonably have known that Defendant Father Thomas Garthwaite suffered a serious significant psychiatric condition requiring professional treatment and was unfit for placement as a parish priest," reads Anderson's original complaint filed in La Crosse County Court. "Defendant Father Garthwaite regularly and repeatedly sexually abused the Plaintiff. The sexual abuse occurred, among other places, at the rectory and on the grounds of the Defendant Sacred Heart Church, and occurred during counseling sessions. Defendant Father Garthwaite repeatedly told the minor Plaintiff that she was a devil and was responsible for the sexual contact.... Father Garthwaite severely beat the Plaintiff."

Today at age 55, Doe is unflinching in her description of the alleged abuse. "Tom Garthwaite abused me in the confessional. We were having sex on the altar in the church. He was putting the host inside my vagina, and eating it out," she says during an interview at her home in central Wisconsin. "[Garthwaite] made me come to the confessional and tell him how sorry he was that I took a man of God and caused him to sin. Then he made me suck him off. He would hold my head to his penis -- to his belly -- and he would ejaculate in my mouth and say, 'Swallow it, bitch.' Then he would tell me that I didn't do enough penance and it was still my fault.

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