Episode Notes

How do you work your way through an avalanche of facts that rock the foundation of your being? Mike Kabeya and I engage in a heartfelt conversation discerning the bombshell outlined in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report. The foundation of the Catholic Church has an Institutional Playbook For Concealing The Truth!

Disillusionment, discomfort, disturbing, horrified, duped, betrayed, devastated. Resolved to learn all of the ugly truth so we can destroy the institutional playbook (no more secrets), embrace survivors, and practice brave leadership, that is what we are doing! We are feeling more deeply so we can think, act, lead, and mentor more clearly and more effectively. I am practicing what I preach. You can too. Download

Learn how the playbook works, the seven strategies. Mike and I talk about what it means for our lives as Catholics and as leaders. You can ask yourself, what do these playbook strategies mean to me and how I lead, and how I feel about this institution? What kind of courageous conversations do I need to have to sort through this? And with whom?

Two big questions I am pondering right now:

1. What does this information mean for a society – and the world – that has allowed these crimes against society to continue over so many decades?
2. What kind of institutional playbook can we create to restore trust and build institutions with underpinnings that support leaders who practice their core values and choose bravery and courage over shame, deceit, and corruption? What would that look like?

Mike and I have started this quest with ourselves. This is the first of seven conversations we will have as we sort out this institutional playbook from different angles. At the end of today’s conversation, I disclose a decision I have made.

Those who wrote the Grand Jury report (1,356 page including Appendices), some Catholics themselves, have found this playbook of strategies used to conceal the truth in effect worldwide. Meaning, this playbook is used in every Archdiocese in every Catholic Church around the world to conceal the truth. This is a sickeningly hard truth and the exact reason we need to talk about it.

As we speak, thirteen states are running investigations to sue the Catholic Church as a nonprofit entity. Washington D.C. statutes allow an attorney general to subpoena documents and seek penalties against a nonprofit if it is continuing to exceed its authority conferred upon it by law. It is a way to dismantle the institutional playbook or dissolve the entity.

You can follow along as I read aloud the summary of the report. It is outlined below.

The Report Introduction

The Grand Jury report is the investigation into six Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses, covering 70 years of child sexual abuse from priests who are sexual predators. “The 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury redacted (some of the information and names are blacked out/censored or withheld subject to subpoena):

We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this. We know some of you have heard some of it before. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere.

We were given the job of investigating child sex abuse in six dioceses – every diocese in the state except Philadelphia and Altoona -Johnstown, which were the subject of previous grand juries. These six dioceses account for 54 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. We heard the testimony of dozens of witnesses concerning clergy sex abuse. We subpoenaed, and reviewed, half a million
pages of internal diocesan documents. They contained credible allegations against over three hundred predator priests. Over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church’s own records. We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward – is in the thousands.

Most of the victims were boys; but there were girls too. Some were teens; many were pre-pubescent. Some were manipulated with alcohol or pornography. Some were made to masturbate their assailants, or were groped by them. Some were raped orally, some vaginally, some anally. But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to
protect the abusers and their institution above all.

As a consequence of the coverup, almost every instance of abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted. But that is not to say there are no more predators. This grand jury has issued presentments against a priest in the Greensburg diocese and a priest in the Erie Diocese, who has been sexually assaulting children within the last decade. We learned of these abusers directly from their dioceses – which we hope is a sign that the church is finally changing its ways. And there may be more indictments in the future; investigation continues.

But we are not satisfied by the few charges we can bring, which represent only a tiny percentage of all the child abusers we saw. We are sick over all the crimes that will go unpunished and uncompensated. This report is our only recourse. We are going to name their names, and describe what they did – both the sex offenders and those who concealed them. We are going to
shine a light on their conduct, because that is what the victims deserve. And we are going to make our recommendations for how the laws should change so that maybe no one will have to conduct another inquiry like this one. We hereby exercise our historical and statutory right as grand jurors to inform the public of our findings.

This introduction will briefly describe the sections of the report that follow. We know it is very long. But the only way to fix these problems is to appreciate their scope.”

The dioceses

“This section of the report addresses each diocese individually, through two or more case studies that provide examples of the abuse that occurred and the manner in which diocesan leaders “managed” it. While each church district had its idiosyncrasies, the pattern was pretty much the same. The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid “scandal.” That is not our word, but
theirs; it appears over and over again in the documents we recovered. Abuse complaints were kept locked up in a “secret archive.” That is not our word, but theirs; the church’s Code of Canon Law specifically requires the diocese to maintain such an archive. Only the bishop can have the key.

The strategies were so common that they were susceptible to behavioral analysis by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For our benefit, the FBI agreed to assign members of its National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime to review a significant portion of the evidence received by the grand jury. Special agents testified before us that they had identified a series of practices
that regularly appeared, in various configurations, in the diocesan files they had analyzed. It’s like a playbook for concealing the truth:

First, make sure to use euphemisms rather than real words to describe the sexual assaults in diocese documents. Never say “rape”; say “inappropriate contact” or “boundary issues.”

Second, don’t conduct genuine investigations with properly trained personnel. Instead, assign fellow clergy members to ask inadequate questions and then make credibility determinations about the colleagues with whom they live and work.

Third, for an appearance of integrity, send priests for “evaluation” at church -run psychiatric treatment centers. Allow these experts to “diagnose” whether the priest was a pedophile, based largely on the priest’s “self -reports,” and regardless of whether the priest had actually engaged in sexual contact with a child.

Fourth, when a priest does have to be removed, don’t say why. Tell his parishioners that he is on “sick leave,” or suffering from “nervous exhaustion.” Or say nothing at all.

Fifth, even if a priest is raping children, keep providing him housing and living expenses, although he may be using these resources to facilitate more sexual assaults.

Sixth, if a predator’s conduct becomes known to the community, don’t remove him from the priesthood to ensure that no more children will be victimized. Instead, transfer him to a new location where no one will know he is a child abuser.

Finally and above all, don’t tell the police. Child sexual abuse, even short of actual penetration, is and has for all relevant times been a crime. But don’t treat it that way; handle it like a personnel matter, “in house.”

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This podcast is about having meaningful conversations about self-mastery, leadership revolution and life success. This report has catapulted us into a revolutionary process that will change us as people and as leaders. We will take the time to reckon with what is going on, rumble with the truth and the feelings drudged up from learning this truth. We are sorting out what is fact and fiction or made up, or misinformation/alternative facts. We dispel some myths.

We are going to take what we discover, incorporate what we learn, and change the trajectory of our lives, however long it takes. We are practicing critical awareness, reaching out, and having courageous conversations with our whole hearts. We DARE TO LEAD. Thank you, Brené Brown, for sharing your research with the world on shame and vulnerability. We will RISE STRONG from this pit of pain to live as BRAVE LEADERS vowing to create a better world than the one we were born into!

Mentoring Tips

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Institutional Playbook For Concealing The Truth, 1 of 7      Episode 148   Kabeya Media