US priest accused of abusing boys for decades calls action ‘a natural thing’ vanguardngr.com vanguardnews
The American priest’s voice echoed over the phone line, his sharp Midwestern accent softened over the decades by a gentle Filipino lilt. On the other end, recording the call, was a young man battered by shame but anxious to get the priest to describe exactly what had happened in this little island village.
His accusations ignited a scandal that would shake the village and reveal much about how allegations of sex crimes by priests are handled in one of the world’s most Catholic countries. Hendrick’s arrest was a sudden fall for a priest who had presided over this community for nearly four decades. He rebuilt Talustusan’s chapel and installed rooftop loudspeakers to summon parishioners to Mass. He pressed officials to pave the village road. He drove the sick to the hospital and paid school fees for poor children. Many here will still tell you how much he did.
In extracts of the conversation heard by the AP, Hendricks laments the passing of those happy days, and admits to an unspecified “mistake on my part.” But in a country home to more than 80 million Catholics and churches that date to the time of Shakespeare, such promises have long disappeared into a haze of tradition, piety and clerical influence that suffuses everything from sex education classes to national politics.
On Biliran, the poor island where Hendricks spent nearly half his life, his fondness for boys had been widely discussed for decades among villagers, local officials and, according to a former Catholic brother, members of the clergy. While many people had long believed he was a paedophile, almost nothing was said openly. Nor did anyone act on the suspicions.That’s how it happens across the Philippines. Silence continues to shield priest after priest.
“He kept asking why Father Pius was doing these things for boys in the village,” said the 23-year-old, who began wrestling then with his own feelings about what he should say. Kenneth Hendricks was born in 1941 in working-class Cincinnati, as the Great Depression was grinding to an end. His parents divorced when he was young, and Hendricks’ mother supported her two sons by cleaning houses.By his late teens, Hendricks was interested in the Franciscans, the Catholic order of brothers and priests known for their long brown robes and centuries of work among the poor.
While Hendricks never learned to speak Bisaya, the primary local language, he seemed to love the village. He told his parishioners that he’d be buried one day in a storage room behind the chapel. ”‘Here is my tomb!’” he’d call out cheerfully, pointing to four concrete slabs set into the floor, near a battered statue of the Virgin Mary with broken hands and carefully manicured eyebrows.
“All of them knew about Pius,” he said of church leaders on the island, the anger still in his voice years after the confrontation. Yet the church has done little to reckon with its role in what investigators now say was years of his abuse. Poverty is deeply rooted in Talustusan, where many people get by working on nearby coconut plantations or rice paddies. Others run informal gas stations, selling gasoline in old Pepsi bottles, or operate home groceries where they offer tiny bars of soap and packets of instant coffee for a few cents apiece.For a village like Talustusan, having its own priest — particularly an American one — meant a financial boost, with donations to rebuild the chapel, and jobs as drivers and clerks.
He believes most of Hendricks’ altar boys were sexually abused, with some occasionally confiding in others about what was happening. But mostly, he says, it was a silent brotherhood of shame. Things finally changed in 2015 with a case of “tulo” — gonorrhoea — which he says he got from Hendricks. After that “I did not let him touch me anymore,” he said.
That confusion is amplified when abusers are priests, often revered as Christ-like figures in the Philippines, and amplified further when the priests are foreigners. “From their perspective, they’re making huge changes,” said Dr. Gabriel Dy-Liacco, a Manila-based psychotherapist who has studied sexual abuse and is a member of Pope Francis’ sex abuse advisory board.
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