March 12, 2007
Rudy Giuliani - What gets covered regarding morals?
by Sara,
This is about a story that for some crack-pot reason is not getting written up by the national media, even though if you do just a mite of googleing, you'll discover that the Right Wing has long had the story, but gotten no traction on it. To read all the bloody details, what you do is google the two names, Alan Placa and Rudy Giuliani, and you can read about it for hours, should you have a taste for Priestly Pedophilia and the investigations of recent years thereof. I'll sketch an outline of the story here.
Placa and Giuliani became friends when they were 13-14, when they began High School, and remained close friends through College. Post college Placa went to the Seminary, and Giuliani off to Law School. After he was ordained, Placa went off to Law School too. Eventually he became a Monsignor in the Diocese of Rockville Center, Long Island NY, and as we know Giuliani went to DC to Reagan's DOJ. When Giuliani needed an Annulment of his first marriage, Placa did the job.
But Monsignor Placa got into considerable trouble in the late 1990's and early 2000 era, when he not only was accused of abuse of two minors, who could not sue him or the diocese because the five year statute of limitations was long past, but when the whole huge story broke, first in Boston, and then across the country, Monsignor Placa comes up in several parts of it. While serving on Long Island, he had developed a legal strategy for dealing with abuse complaints that involved having an "intervention team" that met with family members and the abused, without revealing that Placa was indeed the Diocese Lawyer on such matters. Placa took great pride that in cases that if litigated might cost the Diocese Millions, he could frequently manipulate the situation, and get out for a few thousand. Of course the Monsignor was flying a false flag -- he was not a spiritual counsel, he was the Bishop's Lawyer. He traveled the country teaching Bishops the technique -- apparently 200 cases where he was successful outside his own diocese.
Well into the 1980's, the preferred method of dealing with Priestly Pedophilia was to send the guy off for "therapy." There were several institutions available, St. Lukes in Maryland still exists and is professional, but there was another, the House of Affirmation run by a Father Thomas A. Kane, which was a huge fraud. Kane lied about his degrees in Psychology, but that was only found out later. In the meantime he acquired lots of high grade real estate, and when he was about to go under, he transferred title to Placa. (Estate in Mass, Estate in Florida among other assets.). The transfers were not discovered till years later. (When evaluated under court order the Houses of Affirmation were judged to have no treatment program that passed a professional review.)
In 2002 when this whole story was all over the papers and all, Suffolk County on Long Island ordered up a Grand Jury to review the whole situation with Rockville Center Diocese, and while they could not charge Placa because of Statute of Limitations matters, they issued a report about his "intervention team" that manipulated victims and their families, and his own unanswered accusations of abuse of two teens, (they didn't know about the House of Affirmation Property deals), and as a result, Monsignor Placa was suspended from the Priesthood, and essentially defrocked. Apparently his case has been sent to Rome where it rests. He was allowed to say one public Mass -- at the funeral of Rudy's Mother. (Which is why her funeral was picketed by victims.)
So after 2002 Rudy is no longer Mayor -- and he establishes a Consulting Firm in his name, supposedly dealing with private-public partnerships and all that, and who does he partner up with? Well Former Monsignor Alan Placa, his best buddy from High School and College. When the Long Island Grand Jury was trying to serve him with a Subpoena, Rudy hid him till the term was out. Then, Placa developed a speciality within Guiliani and Associates of taking private Not for Profit Hospitals owned by orders of Nuns who no longer had the membership to administer or staff them -- from which the Corporate Health Community was willing to pay nice commissions to the Guiliani Consultants.
Now every bit of this has been reported over the years in Newsday, the NYTimes, and to some extent in books by Jason Berry. You can find all the articles archived at the Bishopsaccountability Web site. You can find the report of the Grand Jury there. In fact the Times front paged it when Rudy hired Placa for his firm. And you can find the efforts of the Right Wing Bloggers to make an issue of this -- but they have never gotten any traction. By the way, one little part of it involved a real shouting match between Donoghue of the Catholic Civil Rights outfit, (Anti-Edwards) and Jimmy Breslin -- and I really recommend their essays as informative reading. Breslin wanted to know why a Catholic Civil Rights outfit should not be about advocacy against sexual abuse of minors, and he got a fight and not an answer.
So what I want to know is why did Rudy hire this guy? Is this his version of Affirmative Action? We know he recommended Kerik to George W. Bush for Homeland Security -- is this his taste in Health and Human Services? (God Help Us.)
I invite everyone to google all the documents and get your own take on the matter. But I have problems. Why, given the press that Placa's problems have already had, including Rudy's hiring of Placa, has this not been presented front face to the Religious Right of the Republican Party now discussing nominations -- with the question, do you really believe Christian Conservatives think this taste in appointees or hiring decisions is what they want?
I guess our problem is we have no little blue dress.
No comments:
Post a Comment