Dubuque

Men recount how priests befriended, abused them
by MARY NEVANS-PEDERSON

Mel Loes tried to think about something else. Father Patnode was doing it again.

As he did many mornings, Loes, then 16, walked to St. Joseph Catholic Church in Key West, Iowa, to assist
at Mass for the Rev. Joseph Patnode.

And as had happened many of those mornings before Mass, Patnode molested the altar boy.

Loes had grown used to it.

Shortly after Patnode came to St. Joseph's as pastor in 1939, he started abusing Loes. It usually happened
before Mass.

On another occasion, Patnode had the teenager drive him to Preston, Iowa, for an overnight stay at St.
Joseph Church, where Patnode previously was assigned. That night, in a rectory bedroom, he assaulted
Loes.

After the first time he was abused by Patnode, Loes went home and told his mother, "He's fooling around
with me."

He still remembers what his deeply devout mother said:

"Father Patnode wouldn't do that."

The teenager told no one else about the abuse. He thought he was Patnode's only victim.

"I couldn't do anything about it," said Loes, now 82. Years later, he learned that Patnode had abused other
teenage boys. At least 10 men, now in their 70s and 80s, have told Loes that as teens they were molested by
Patnode.

An ostensibly innocent but telling entry appears in a parish history book. It states that Patnode "helped
many boys by keeping them at his rectory and giving them jobs to do."

By the time Loes graduated from Loras Academy in 1941, the pastor had lost interest in him. "He had other,
younger playboys by then," he said.

Loes joined the Air Force in 1943 and served as a tail-gunner on a B-17, flying missions over Germany.

He returned home in 1945 and soon married the sweetheart who had waited for him. Mel and Georgeann
Loes had three children, who gave them grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The memories of his abuse faded in the face of war's more horrific images.

During this time, Loes received a shocking phone call from a friend.

"He told me Father Patnode was abusing his two sons and asked what he should do. I told him that
(Patnode) had done it to me, too. This was a good Christian man who was so upset. He went to Archbishop
(Henry) Rohlman and Patnode was gone soon after that," Loes said.

Patnode was next assigned to be chaplain of the Mercy Sister Novitiate in Marion, Iowa, where he worked
until he retired in 1964.

"I thought that was great. He wouldn't bother the nuns," Loes said.

But in October 2002, at a public diocesan gathering of priests in Waterloo, a priest told Loes that although
Patnode was assigned to a facility full of women, he continued to befriend young males and "take them to a
cabin."

The story Mel Loes tells is similar to those told by scores of other men and women. The victims usually
came from devoutly Catholic homes - homes where priests were revered and often invited to family
functions.

Although Loes had a stable family situation, many of the abused youngsters came from families disrupted
by illness, death, poverty or alcoholism. Struggling mothers and fathers were happy to push their sons into
the circle of friendship and mentoring offered by an amiable priest who took an interest in them.

The priests often enlisted teenage boys to work as their drivers. Victims of Patnode, William Roach and
William Goltz claim that the priests either abused them while en route or after driving to a destination.

The assaults took place in church sacristies, rectories and basements, in remote woods and rock quarries, in
cabins and confessionals.

Priests assigned to parish schools called students into their offices or the school basement, where they
abused them.

Didn't recognize abuse
Daniel Kortenkamp was just 13 when the Rev. Robert Swift began to abuse him.

Swift was an assistant pastor Sacred Heart Parish and a chaplain at Mercy Hospital, both in Oelwein, Iowa.

"He would put his hands down our pants and squeeze and rub us. He said he wanted to see if we were
developing normally. He called it 'sex education,'" said Kortenkamp, 68, of Stevens Point, Wis.

This happened at the hospital and in the church before Mass, Kortenkamp said.

Kortenkamp, who went on to become a professor of psychology at the University of
Wisconsin-Stevens Point, said he "never experienced any injury from my abuse."

It was 50 years before he told anyone about it.

"I was very naive. My friends and I thought at the time that he was just 'queer' and that's what
queers do. Of course, Father Swift's behavior was sexual abuse," he said.

Having said that, Kortenkamp is quick to point out that his four decades of work in clinical
psychology have taught him that "homosexual men are no more likely to be sexual abusers
of children than are heterosexual men."

Boy befriended by priest

Larry Kramer was being raised by relatives when the Rev. Robert Reiss came into his life.
Kramer's mother had died in a car accident and his father was an alcoholic.

To pay his tuition, Kramer worked at Visitation Parish School in Stacyville, Iowa.

One hot day in the 1970s, Reiss invited the teenager into the church rectory for some lemonade. They went
upstairs to the priest's bedroom, where Reiss had sex with Kramer on the floor.

"I had to look at a picture to get through it," Kramer said, his voice quavering nearly 30 years later. It was
the first of many such assaults by Reiss.

"I didn't tell anybody. I thought I was the only one at the time and my uncle, who I lived with, was close to
Father. There were rumors around town, but people were divided about (Reiss)," said Kramer, who now
lives in Byron, Minn.

A few years later, Reiss was given a one-year leave of absence and was then reassigned to other parishes.

"When he was transferred away, I was never so relieved in my life," Kramer said.

Reiss next served as pastor in Sabula and Green Island, then in North Buena Vista.

In 1990, Reiss was involved in a bizarre incident while living at Immaculate Conception Parish in North
Buena Vista. He befriended an ex-convict who kidnapped a Maquoketa girl and threatened to rape her.
After the girl escaped, Michael Cavins, 25, drove to the church, where Reiss hid him from authorities.

Three days later, Dubuque Archdiocesan leaders announced that Reiss had requested a leave of absence.
His activities as a priest were restricted and in 1997 he was defrocked by the Vatican. He died last year in
Mexico at age 75, and authorities there investigated his death as a murder/robbery.

How cases were handled

Dubuque archdiocesan officials handled each of these cases differently.

* In 2002, when Mel Loes finally told the archdiocese about his abuse, they admitted they had heard other
accusations against Patnode. Loes volunteered to be a part of Dubuque's archdiocesan Review Board - a
confidential, consultative body that examines all claims of sexual abuse of minors in the archdiocese.

Less than a year later, Loes quit the board, saying, "I object to the confidentiality. To me, it means
cover-up." He claims the church continues to "hide priests behind Canon Law" and has turned his back on
the church, which was part of his life for some 80 years.

* Daniel Kortenkamp said working with church officials has been "like pulling teeth."
Three years ago he made abuse accusations to the archdiocese about Swift and the Rev. Thomas Knox,
who also worked at Sacred Heart in Oelwein. Correspondence from archdiocesan officials indicated they
were already aware of abuse claims against both priests. Yet, when the archdiocese published a list of
accused priests in January, neither man's name was on it.

"Then I noticed that the table only listed those with 'public accusations,'" he said.

Kortenkamp wrote a letter to the Telegraph Herald naming the priests as abusers. A few
weeks later, the archdiocese added the priests' names to the list.

However, Kortenkamp did praise the archdiocese for making the list public.

* At first, Larry Kramer was bitter about his abuse and angry that his abuser was allowed to
minister in parishes for years before he was removed.
Kramer is satisfied with how the current archdiocesean administration handled his case when he
approached them in 2002.

"I met with the archbishop (Jerome Hanus) and the vicar general (Monsignor James Barta) and they
believed me right away. They both apologized to me for what (Reiss) did," he said. The archdiocese has
paid for his therapy treatments since then.

"After all, there are different people in (archdiocesan administration) today. They didn't hurt me," Kramer
said.
Copyright 2006 Telegraph Herald

Girls also victims of molestation by Catholic priests
by MARY NEVANS-PEDERSON

Most of the children and teens predatory priests abused were male, but girls were not safe, either.

Of the 20 plaintiffs in the recent $5 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Dubuque, 12 were men and
eight were women. Five of those women identified one priest, the Rev. Patrick McElliot, as their abuser.

By contrast, only one of the 37 plaintiffs who settled lawsuits with the Davenport (Iowa) Diocese in 2002 was
a woman.

In court documents, Mc- Elliot's female victims described bizarre rituals in which the priest forced them to
participate.

He abused one girl as she held up her dress while praying the rosary. He took pornographic pictures of
another girl in the church rectory. One girl was forced to read sexually explicit material while the priest
tape-recorded her. He then pulled down her panties, blessed her with a medal and sexually abused her.

A handful of women have accused the Rev. Henry Dunkel of sexually abusing them in the
late 1940s. Some of them were his own nieces.

Jane Flynn Rodell said Dunkel "groomed" her for two years before he started sexually
abusing her at St. Columbkille Catholic Church in 1947.

One night, the priest, then 26, instructed her to sneak out of a school dance to meet him
for a driving lesson. He stopped the car near a cemetery and started to kiss her.

"I was horrified. I knew it was wrong and I pushed him away. He screamed at me to get out of the car and if
I told anybody, he'd hurt me or someone in my family," said Rodell, now 73, of Indian Creek, Ill.

"I couldn't tell anybody. I thought I'd committed a sin."

More than four decades later, she found out Dunkel had abused her older sister and other St. Columbkille
classmates. It was the priest's first assignment. (Jane and Sheila were both one year ahead of me in school.
Not until Aug. of 1992, did we find out dunkel's flagrant abuse. He sexually abused his sisters, nieces,
sister-in-law, students, athletes, parishioners, friends...you name it. He was an evil sociopath that the church
covered for While I am at it, I believe clergymen abuse many more females than males. Benita)

Dunkel also had his eyes on Benita Kane Kirschbaum. His increasingly friendly advances toward the junior
high school student developed into sexual abuse when she was in the ninth grade.

"I was so naive. He would teach me to drive by having me sit between his legs. Other times I had to put my
head down on his lap so no one could see me," said Kirschbaum, now 72, of Bloomington, Minn.

The priest insinuated himself more deeply into her life. Her father had died five years earlier.

"I needed the attention. I felt special," Kirschbaum said.

In a church confessional, Dunkel raped the 15-year-old Kirschbaum. During the act, he
professed his love for her.

"I felt like a mess and was totally confused," she said. "I had to change my bloody clothes
before my family saw them."

For the next 16 years, Dunkel had sex with Kirschbaum regularly, she said. The engraving on a ring he
gave her read, "Remember you are mine."

"I was under his power. He exploited me," she said.

Eventually she met and married Curt Kirschbaum. When she told Dunkel, he tried to rape her and
threatened to kill her. The priest stalked and verbally harassed the couple until his death in 1998, she said.

In 1992, Kirschbaum confronted archdiocesan officials with her story and demanded Dunkel be defrocked.
His priestly activities were restricted and Kirschbaum settled with the archdiocese, entering into a
confidentiality agreement about the details of the settlement.

In 2002, she and two others filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to nullify all such agreements between the
church and victims. The suit was dropped in 2004.
Copyright 2006 Telegraph Herald

Mar 19, 2006
TH series overlooks issue of bishop accountability
Catholics should demand more of the hierarchy
by JAMES GIESEN

The recent Telegraph Herald series, "Sins and Silence," was
valuable. It brings sexual-abuse problems out into the open and it
describes corrective measures taken. However , it leaves a
glaring void that I will address later.

I want to reflect on some of my background with the hope of
establishing my experience and involvement at a trusted level in
the Catholic Church.

In 1950, I was confirmed as a Catholic in Delano, Minn. The
presider was Auxiliary Bishop James J. Byrne.

While living in Waterloo in the 1980s, I was elected to the
Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, which was then presided over by
Archbishop James Byrne. Through this position and because we
had mutual friends, I got to know him better.

As chairman of that group, I had many discussions with
Archbishop Daniel Kucera, whom I believe was a significant
factor in my wife Judy and I getting positions at Loras College as
ministers of peace and justice in campus ministry.

Archbishop Kucera asked me to initiate and chair the
archdiocesesan Due Process Board, which addressed
administrative problems not under the authority of
Canon(church) Law. I was impressed with the just approach
taken by the archbishop - even when it impacted some of the
members of the archdiocese in a difficult and challenging way.

In 1990, I was hired by Catholic Charities to manage more than
200 units of low-income housing. I had continued contact with
Archbishop Kucera and then Archbishop Jerome Hanus. During
this time, Archbishop Kucera installed the Sexual Misconduct
Policy for all employees in the archdiocese. His leadership and
implementation of policies concerning protection of children and
others was commendable.

In the late 1980s, I was elected to the Iowa Catholic Conference,
an advisory group to all the bishops of Iowa. Through this, I got to
work with Bishop Soens, Bishop Bullock and Bishop O'Keefe.

In the late 1980s, I attended a two-day program and had the good
fortune to talk with Cardinal Joseph Bernadin and Archbishop
Rembert Weakland on issues affecting the laity.

I count Bishop William Franklin of Davenport as a personal
friend.

I tell you all of this to demonstrate that I am not a fringe Catholic.
Not only has my life been characterized by service to the church,
I also have relevant experience working with the hierarchy. My
experiences with Bishops Kucera, Hanus and Franklin tells me
that they are of the highest character.

My concern is this: While our recent two archbishops have acted
positively on sexual abuse of minors, the national and global
church has not addressed the issue of accountability of the
hierarchy.

It is clear that several bishops were complicit in moving known
pedophiles from location to location without any notice to
authorities or to parish members. In my mind, this was aiding
and abetting a crime. Little or nothing has been admitted
regarding this issue.

Only when the priests of Boston signed a letter of "no
confidence" in their archbishop did Cardinal Bernard Law leave
his position. Other bishops had equally evident records of hiding
and moving felons within dioceses and across diocesan borders.
This is knowledgeable complicity.

It is wrong for the church to hide these bishops behind their
robes. Much greater transparency and openness on the part of
the hierarchy is required for me to be convinced that the Gospel
vision is more important than power and control.

Until there is more accountability and openness at the national
leadership level, I can't be as positive as the March 12 TH
editorial that these abuses or similar ones won't happen again.

The series should have been more focused on church
hierarchical leadership. We need to challenge the church to
accountability.

My heart goes out to the great priests that I know who now suffer
the stigma of this problem.

Some of my friends ask me why I remain with the Catholic
church since I criticize some of its positions. In response, I reply
that it has nourished me, and I have been devoted to it all of my
life. Even though it is going through some trials and tribulations,
the church is my family, which I can't walk away from. I have to
stay with it, express my opinion and hope that it will change.

Yes, I'll stay with the church, if the church lets me stay.

Giesen, who is retired, is a community volunteer as chair of the
Dubuque Community Development Advisory Commission.

Mar 19, 2006
Series shallow, exploitative attack on the church
Sexual-abuse problem in Catholic Church is infinitesimal;
victims should move on
by GUY WOODWARD

The recent series regarding sexually abusive priests of the
Archdiocese of Dubuque appearing in the Telegraph Herald
cries for rebuttal. That's correct: rebuttal.

In spite of its seemingly objective narration of tragedy, triumph
and resolution, it remains an astonishingly uni-dimensional
piece. Why? Because it resolutely refuses context: it presents a
narrative bereft of the comprehensive scope promised by the
editor.

First, numbers. How many priests served in the archdiocese in
the course of the events narrated? That would contextualize the
extent of the abuse. In fact, a miniscule percentage of priests who
have served in the archdiocese have ever committed such
outrages.

The national average for all priests ordained between 1950 and
2001 (the dates inclusive of the Telegraph Herald narrative) is
1.5 percent. That's right: 1.5 percent! That statistic is gleaned
from The New York Times, in a 2003 article, "Decades of
Damage: Trail of Pain in Church Crisis Leads to Nearly Every
Diocese." The archdiocesan percentage is, I am sure, very
similar.

I note, only for comparison, that in 2000 the Baptist General
Convention in Texas reported 12 percent of Baptist ministers
were sexually engaged with congregants, while 40 percent
admitted sexually inappropriate behavior (without further
specification). This from a 2002 article in the Knoxville (Tenn.)
News Sentinel, "Baptist Tradition Makes It Hard to Oust
Sex-Abusing Clergy."

Other examples too many to mention can be cited. The point:
Proper context would reveal the literally infinitesimal scale of
the problem among Catholic priests. The articles make it seem
like a tsunami.

Second: A great many of these men have families, friends and, I
dare say, former parishioners who remember them for good they
undoubtedly did. Catholic theology teaches that no human being
is utterly depraved: All human beings remain essentially good.
That they did great harm is true; that they did good is, too, beyond
doubt.

The scorched earth portrayals of these men do little good save to
excite loathing and hatred.

Third: The majority of these men are dead, unable to defend
themselves or offer explanation. I note that the entire
"survivors" movement is quite ready to overthrow the American
legal tradition of innocent until proven guilty. How odd. The legal
system is quite wonderful as a means of the public settling of
wrongs against victims, but its protection of the accused is
conveniently forgotten in the pursuit of what seems at times
more akin to retribution than justice.

Fourth: The entire culture of victimhood is at work here. It might
sound hard, but it is true: Life is cruel; it brings terrible
suffering on everyone, sometimes at the hands of fellow human
beings. One can transcend life's cruelty or wallow in the status
of its victim.

The comparison of horrors inflicted and suffered, as if there is a
scale to such things, is odious. But I do it here to make a point.
Elie Wiesel suffered the full force of the Shoah: He endured
Auschwitz, saw the extermination of his family and the attempted
extermination of his kind. Rather than the cult of the victim,
Wiesel translated these horrors into a literature of humanity
and a Nobel Prize.

In our culture of victimhood and litigation, transcendence is sold
cheaply.

The entire series of articles was not as the editor would have it, a
"serious and comprehensive examination." Had it been
comprehensive, it would have possessed context; had it possessed
context, it would have addressed the points made above, and more
besides.

It was shallow exploitation, playing to crass and bitter and angry
audiences, seeking only to wound the church.

Woodward teaches at Beckman High School in Dyersville, Iowa,
and at Divine Word College in Epworth, Iowa.
Copyright 2006 Telegraph Herald