Monument to survivors of abuse
Mark Crawford
Registrant
I just wanted to share this story. People do care, and there are religious people who absolutely advocate for victims of abuse.
Please read the article below...They are raising money to have the monument put in place very soon.
I couldn't say enough about Fr. Lasch and what a great person and victims advocate he is.
_______________________________________________
Parish of Pain Sees Millstone as a Monument
By RICHARD LEZIN JONES
Published: November 26, 2003
MENDHAM, N.J.
THERE had been so many lives altered, so much pain caused by a pedophile priest at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church here that Father Kenneth E. Lasch can only compare it to another horror.
"We call this ground zero, this parish, with respect to this issue," Father Lasch said as he sat in the church's rectory yesterday.
"It's a visceral wound that was inflicted on those boys and on this parish by those crimes. So why would we treat the victims with any less dignity?"
Yet dignity and even empathy toward victims of abuse was often lacking, and they walked a treacherous gantlet: church leaders often questioned their credibility, and their fellow parishioners sometimes accused them of trying to destroy the church.
Through all the accounts of abuse here at St. Joseph's and elsewhere over the last few years, Father Lasch was struck by how much abuse victims sounded like war veterans. There was one significant difference, however.
"People go to wars and they come back and they're treated like heroes," Father Lasch said yesterday. "Victims came back and they're treated like enemies."
But Father Lasch has a plan that may be considered a measure of the still-halting movement toward reconciliation by the church and abuse victims: he would like to establish a monument to victims of sex abuse on church grounds next month.
Over the next few days, Father Lasch will share with parishioners at this church so deeply affected by the scandal a design for a memorial by a member of the church who was abused as a boy. The monument, which has already been completed and is ready to be put in place, is a simple foot-and-a-half wide, 400-pound replica of a millstone.
The symbolism is drawn from the New Testament admonition that whoever harms children should have a "heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."
"This is not about reliving the horrors of what happened," Father Lasch said yesterday. "But healing and what we can do as a parish and as a family to help our survivors to heal."
It was an idea born not only of the pain of past abuse but more recent sorrow.
Last month, James Thomas Kelly, 37 who like at least 18 other men said that a former parish priest, James T. Hanley, had abused him two decades ago committed suicide by walking in front of a commuter train.
Even those closest to Mr. Kelly warn against drawing a direct cause and effect relationship between the abuse and his death. No note was left and friends said that he was otherwise troubled.
However, friends concede that the abuse Mr. Kelly said that he suffered at the hands of Mr. Hanley certainly played a role.
"Jim Kelly paid a high price in his childhood for what took place," said Bill Crane Jr., a childhood friend and a spokesman for Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, an advocacy group to which Mr. Kelly also belonged. It was Mr. Crane who first discussed the idea for the millstone at Mr. Kelly's funeral here and returned to his home in Clackamas, Ore., inspired.
AFTER finding a local artist, Mark McLean, and a landscaper, Toni Hartung, Mr. Crane selected a slab of black basalt that weighed about a quarter-ton and got to work on plans. The finished stone, glazed and etched with six arcing lines emanating from its center on one side, was completed in a week.
Mr. Crane, who also said that Mr. Hanley had victimized him, did not want the stone to be viewed as a gesture meant to condemn the Catholic church.
"We're not looking to blame the church," Mr. Crane said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I hope that this millstone has a dual message of acknowledging what happened and also protecting the children of today and tomorrow."
Father Lasch, who eight years ago long before the recent disclosures about abuse and the changes in church policy toward it publicly disclosed the allegations against Mr. Hanley, said that he expected the parishioners to welcome the monument just as victims of abuse have begun to be embraced in recent years.
"We as the church should take on the pain of the victims to help with their healing," Father Lasch said. "And one of the things we can do is say that we're sorry." He paused. "Not once but over and over and over again."
Please read the article below...They are raising money to have the monument put in place very soon.
I couldn't say enough about Fr. Lasch and what a great person and victims advocate he is.
_______________________________________________
Parish of Pain Sees Millstone as a Monument
By RICHARD LEZIN JONES
Published: November 26, 2003
MENDHAM, N.J.
THERE had been so many lives altered, so much pain caused by a pedophile priest at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church here that Father Kenneth E. Lasch can only compare it to another horror.
"We call this ground zero, this parish, with respect to this issue," Father Lasch said as he sat in the church's rectory yesterday.
"It's a visceral wound that was inflicted on those boys and on this parish by those crimes. So why would we treat the victims with any less dignity?"
Yet dignity and even empathy toward victims of abuse was often lacking, and they walked a treacherous gantlet: church leaders often questioned their credibility, and their fellow parishioners sometimes accused them of trying to destroy the church.
Through all the accounts of abuse here at St. Joseph's and elsewhere over the last few years, Father Lasch was struck by how much abuse victims sounded like war veterans. There was one significant difference, however.
"People go to wars and they come back and they're treated like heroes," Father Lasch said yesterday. "Victims came back and they're treated like enemies."
But Father Lasch has a plan that may be considered a measure of the still-halting movement toward reconciliation by the church and abuse victims: he would like to establish a monument to victims of sex abuse on church grounds next month.
Over the next few days, Father Lasch will share with parishioners at this church so deeply affected by the scandal a design for a memorial by a member of the church who was abused as a boy. The monument, which has already been completed and is ready to be put in place, is a simple foot-and-a-half wide, 400-pound replica of a millstone.
The symbolism is drawn from the New Testament admonition that whoever harms children should have a "heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."
"This is not about reliving the horrors of what happened," Father Lasch said yesterday. "But healing and what we can do as a parish and as a family to help our survivors to heal."
It was an idea born not only of the pain of past abuse but more recent sorrow.
Last month, James Thomas Kelly, 37 who like at least 18 other men said that a former parish priest, James T. Hanley, had abused him two decades ago committed suicide by walking in front of a commuter train.
Even those closest to Mr. Kelly warn against drawing a direct cause and effect relationship between the abuse and his death. No note was left and friends said that he was otherwise troubled.
However, friends concede that the abuse Mr. Kelly said that he suffered at the hands of Mr. Hanley certainly played a role.
"Jim Kelly paid a high price in his childhood for what took place," said Bill Crane Jr., a childhood friend and a spokesman for Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, an advocacy group to which Mr. Kelly also belonged. It was Mr. Crane who first discussed the idea for the millstone at Mr. Kelly's funeral here and returned to his home in Clackamas, Ore., inspired.
AFTER finding a local artist, Mark McLean, and a landscaper, Toni Hartung, Mr. Crane selected a slab of black basalt that weighed about a quarter-ton and got to work on plans. The finished stone, glazed and etched with six arcing lines emanating from its center on one side, was completed in a week.
Mr. Crane, who also said that Mr. Hanley had victimized him, did not want the stone to be viewed as a gesture meant to condemn the Catholic church.
"We're not looking to blame the church," Mr. Crane said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I hope that this millstone has a dual message of acknowledging what happened and also protecting the children of today and tomorrow."
Father Lasch, who eight years ago long before the recent disclosures about abuse and the changes in church policy toward it publicly disclosed the allegations against Mr. Hanley, said that he expected the parishioners to welcome the monument just as victims of abuse have begun to be embraced in recent years.
"We as the church should take on the pain of the victims to help with their healing," Father Lasch said. "And one of the things we can do is say that we're sorry." He paused. "Not once but over and over and over again."