By Dan Murphy
The recent news that the Rev. Thomas Kreiser, a priest who was serving at the Church of St. Joseph’s in Bronxville, has been removed from his position for accusations of inappropriate behavior with a minor adds another chapter to a national sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church that affects Westchester.
Kreiser, who had only been at St. Joseph’s for a few months, had previously spent time at St. Patrick’s Church in Yorktown. The matter has been referred to the Westchester District Attorney’s Office, which would only say it is investigating the matter.
“We take all allegations of abuse seriously and, as is our policy, immediately turned this allegation over to the Westchester D.A.,” said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York. “And until the matter is resolved, Father Kreiser will not be able to publicly perform his priestly ministry.”
It is unclear whether the accusations come from St. Joseph’s or another parish where Kreiser served, but Zwilling added, “The Archdiocese and the parish have pledged to fully cooperate,” an indication that the allegations stem from an incident at St. Joseph’s in the well-attended, wealthy community of Bronxville.
Published reports have Kreiser arriving at St. Joseph’s three months ago, and parishioners raising questions about his past legal troubles when he arrived. Kreiser was found guilty of fourth-degree larceny for stealing $25,600 from St. Gregory’s Church in Rockland County, and was sentenced to five years’ probation in 2011. He attended a rehab in Pennsylvania for his gambling addiction before joining St. Patrick’s in Yorktown.
So, when Zwilling says “the protection of our children and young people is our highest priority,” many Catholics – both those who still attend mass and those who have left the church, say it’s too little, too late.
After the confirmation battle of Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh, some are questioning why, as a society, we tend to believe some victims who come forward with allegations of sexual abuse that happened decades ago but disbelieve others.
Marci Hamilton in Time Magazine writes:
“For those of us who work on issues involving the sexual assault of children, the Judge Brett Kavanaugh sexual-assault discourse has been jarring… because of how it contrasts with what we’ve supposedly learned from the recent revelations about the trauma of clergy sexual abuse.
“While the tapestry of clergy sex abuse has become increasingly familiar – and its patterns have been broadly repeated in the Penn State, boarding school, Jehovah’s Witness, ultra-Orthodox Jewish, Baptist, Larry Nassar, Delaware doctor and Boy Scout scenarios – there has been a complementary tale being told about men in power who have allegedly sexually abused people. In the #MeToo moment, it is less and less acceptable to assume the man in power is blameless or to say, ‘boys will be boys.’ Rather, the victims are to be heard and honored.
“False claims have not proven to be a significant concern. The survivors’ movement has also pointed to how false allegations of child sex abuse are rare, which is empirically true, and argued that the bishops should have let the authorities decide on credibility. Thus, the culture now takes survivors when they first speak out at their word – to encourage them but also to get as many facts as possible to prosecutors.
“Those insisting on the presumption of innocence for Kavanaugh are stuck in the era when the presumption was that a powerful man simply should not be at fault unless there is overwhelming hard evidence and the woman’s claims in a ‘he said, she said’ scenario are not to be taken too seriously. She can testify emotionally, but if she can’t prove it ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ well, then, he is for sure Supreme Court material.
“The polling tells us that it is becoming less and less acceptable to presume the victim is lying or to build a furious defense for the powerful accused, even when he is Yale-educated and a federal judge. According to a Quinnipiac University Poll, 48 percent of Americans believed Ford; 41 percent, Kavanaugh. The public is learning. It is time our representatives do, too.” (End of Hamilton article.)
The other side of this argument, articulated by none other than liberal talk show host Bill Maher, is that the #MeToo movement has gone too far. “It does seem that things have morphed from listen to any woman who says she has been wronged, which is the right thing to do, to automatically believe. That’s what scary,” said Maher.
In the meantime, those of us with family and children at St. Joseph’s or St. Patrick’s in Westchester have to wonder if anything happened to someone we love.
