In God's House (39 page)

Matt nodded.

“When Johnny Wilcox, my investigator, turned his file on Owen Dante Ellison over to me, I was sure that he was the only Catholic priest in the world who had ever sexually abused and murdered his victims. I was as sure about that as I had been that Dubois was
sui generis
, one of kind. I was wrong about Dubois being the only sex abuser. Maybe I am wrong thinking Ellison is the only priest who ever killed children.”

Bonded like brothers over four months of intense battle, Des, Matt and I marched through the hard stuff in a matched cadence. We talked the same language and could finish each other’s sentences, reducing paragraphs to phrases, phrases to words.

The fog of war was fading and in the clear light we were beginning to see the horizon and beyond. The Louisiana delegation of the Catholic Church, their lawyers and their political fixer had fought me hard, tried to kill off the truth. Then the American Church had fought Des, tried to kill off the truth. But in the process, the Church hierarchy, bishops everywhere, were beginning to panic as they looked at the disaster down in Louisiana, realizing how close they were to having the same situations in their dioceses.

We had been embraced for a time by bishops and cardinals across the country. Together we had flown thousands of miles at the invitation of bishops, addressed large audiences of clerics in retreat houses all over the country, given legal, canonical and clinical advice day and night in person and over the phone, working to a state of complete exhaustion over and over.

Now our time had come. We had assembled a document that told the truth of the coming crisis and predicted the concomitant scandal we saw as inevitable in the United States and perhaps globally. Our document provided legal, canonical and clinical solutions to the massive quake rumbling under the foundation
stones of the Vatican, heavy stones that had buried the sins and shame of the Church for centuries. It proffered advice on policies and procedures grounded in the teachings of the Catholic Church; its mission was to heal. We were sure no individual cardinal or bishop, no group of four hundred bishops attending the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, could or would ignore the contents of the 120-page document we had prepared for them.

We were going to win. We believed this in our hearts and minds. Children would be saved and the Church would at last have the opportunity to save itself from its own worst instincts. A light was going shine in the dark back-corridors of the Church. We knew we had won.

We were assembled in a suite in the Hilton Hotel at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Long ago I had lost count of the hotels where we huddled, discussed problems and planned strategy. We arrived Wednesday evening. Des didn’t arrive until almost midnight.

When we ordered room service, Matt asked me, “Do you eat anything but cheeseburgers and fries, drink anything but Coke floats?”

Indignantly, I said, “Sure. Pizza.”

As Des stole fries from my plate and washed them down with a beer, Matt perused the final copy of our document Des had carried with him. He had a stack of them in a big briefcase. I tossed my copy on a chair.

Matt said, “Des, you changed nothing. You ignored everything Bishop Franklin said.”

Crunching my fries, his mouth full, Des grumbled, washed down the bite and said, “Well, you see, my friends, it appears you fellows, my esteemed colleagues, were right – His Excellency, Bishop Garland Franklin, is an asshole of the highest order. He was not a good guy, and he was not with the program. He’s a Vatican agent and up to no good like the rest of them. But I may have worst news for you guys, if ya want it …”

“Shoot,” I said.

“It seems Cardinal Laurence will not be with us tomorrow. He canceled. They’re flying in an assassin.”

Matt set the document down. “What?”

“Ever heard of Bishop Miguel Chistera?” Des said.

Matt shook his head.

Des said, “Nobody’s heard of Bishop Miguel Chistera. No reason anyone should have heard of him. On paper he appears to be a nobody – an auxiliary bishop in a big diocese, a fifth wheel on a car.”

“And?”

“I pulled his file yesterday after Cardinal Laurence called me and said he had other commitments and was sending Bishop Chistera in his place. Know where Chistera spent the last five years?”

Des had our attention. Both Matt and I were leaning in toward Des, waiting for him to supply the answer to the question he threw out.

“Bishop Miguel Chistera is fresh from five years in the Holy City. He wasn’t singing in the Vatican choir. He was on the staff of Cardinal Hans Kruger. Chistera was one of the German’s fair haired boys. Pretty high on Kruger’s staff. I don’t know why he was rotated stateside recently.”

“So, this means exactly what?” I asked.

“Tomorrow, Ren, you’re going to meet a proxy for the most powerful man in the Curia, a cut-out. Chistera will not be acting for himself or Cardinal Laurence, but acting for Cardinal Hans Kruger. Cardinal Hans Kruger wants to know what is in our document. No one in the Vatican hierarchy has seen it yet. Bishop Miguel Chistera will walk out of here with a copy and it will be in Kruger’s hand as fast as a plane can fly from Chicago to Rome. I believe this Bishop Chistera will be Kruger’s eyes and ears in our meeting tomorrow.”

We spent the entire day locked in the hotel suite with Bishop Miguel Chistera. We went through our document page by page,
covering every phrase in detail. Bishop Chistera was cordial, appeared sincerely interested, and at the same time acted as an inquisitor, albeit in a relaxed manner. He attempted to pull every thought the three of us had from our minds as he scribbled notes on a legal pad.

Without having had Des’s warning that this man was an agent of Cardinal Hans Kruger, I know both Matt and I would have been taken in by him. We would have been convinced Bishop Chistera was on our side as it was obvious from all he said. He actually told us the Bishops’ Conference would have to act to adopt this document officially, and he was confident this would happen. He said this as he packed his briefcase and left the hotel suite, the briefcase in one hand, a garment bag in the other.

Des believed when Bishop Chistera walked out of the hotel room he was bound for a concourse of O’Hare Airport where he would board an overnight flight for Rome.

I was in my townhouse in Thiberville on Sunday when I got the word. Des called in the late afternoon. “Bishop Chistera just got off the phone with me. He told me we are to shut down our operation immediately. This would be coming from Cardinal Kruger himself, I imagine. Bishop Chistera said he would not distribute copies of our document at the Bishops’ Conference. He basically ordered me to destroy all drafts of the document and any notes we might have relating to information we obtained during visits to dioceses. He said the information is too sensitive to remain in existence in writing. And he said the Conference has been working on their own program that they’re going to adopt.”

“Fuck me!” I said.

“Me too, buddy. But we’re not going to destroy anything.”

“Damn straight,” I said.

“Yeah. Well, fuck ’em, Ren. They’re not going to get away with this,” Des said.

“This is some rotten news. Damn.”

“Right. Well, this is not all the cheery news I have. The good Bishop Garland Franklin filed a report with Cardinal Antonio Marcello in Rome. It came across my desk as it was routed through the nunciature.”

“Okay.”

“Listen to this bullshit, my friend. And I quote from Bishop Franklin’s report, ‘From my observations, Attorney Renon Chattelrault in Louisiana is a panicky young man who is trying to push the Church leadership into paying exorbitant legal fees to him for his legal advice. There is only one legal case involving a criminal prosecution and substantial sums of money in the entire United States. It is in this one case Chattelrault has some small minor involvement.’”

“Fuck Franklin,” I said. “He wants to risk the diplomatic status of the Vatican state by hiding personnel records on Embassy grounds to obstruct justice, and he’s talking crap about me. Des, keep a copy of that asshole’s letter. I’m gonna tattoo it onto Franklin’s ass one of these days.”

“I throw nothing away. I’ll get it to you. It’s been a bloody Sunday, brother.”

When I hung up the phone, I dialed Matt.

“Ren?”

“How did you know it was me?”

“Des talked to me earlier and said he was calling you right then. I knew you’d ring me and the answer is NO.”

“No? No to what?”

“You cannot bring Poppa Vidros and his shotgun up here to Baltimore to snuff out Bishop Franklin or hit Bishop Chistera either.”

“I hadn’t thought that far yet.”

“Things are worse than Des thinks, Renon. I just didn’t have it
in me to tell him what kind of closed-door presentation the bishops are going to get tomorrow afternoon on the subject of clergy abuse. I’ve been told it will all be verbal, no documents, no paper trail, no proof it was ever discussed. If we destroy all our drafts and notes like the Vatican ordered, then it will be like this never existed.”

“They’re criminals. The whole lot of them.”

“Yep. They ought to put the collective bunch in the dock and try them. But we have to stay focused on what we’re trying to do.”

“What do you mean? What we’re trying to do is in the past tense. We’re done.”

“No way. I’m already fighting back.”

“With what?”

“With our document. We’re not going to destroy it. We’re going to copy it and mail it to every cardinal, archbishop and bishop in the country and get it in the hands of the right cardinals in the Vatican too.”

“Damn good idea. Put it in their laps.”

“Ren, this document of ours is the smoking gun. That’s why the Vatican wants it destroyed. It is documentary proof of what they knew and when they knew it. Our data, predictions, warnings and advice were known only to us, Bishop Franklin and the Bishop Chistera character, and Cardinal Kruger. Now when they receive their copy of our document in the mail, every bishop will know, and the Vatican will know. Some of the staff at Hope House are copying our document now. They’re running off over five hundred copies. There will be a brief cover letter from me, giving a summary of the history of the genesis of the document and the urgency of the message it contains. On the cover page of the document I will credit the authors. Under my name and Des’s name I will list our titles, degrees, whole pedigree. Under your name I’ll put the words ‘Panicky Young Man’.”

The tension that seized my neck and back when Des called began to loosen. That Matt and Des were determined to fight on at what I could only imagine would be great cost to their careers
was inspiring. These were the only priests I knew who cared about any of this.

The last thing Matt said was, “The bishops will never be able to deny that they knew the truth in 1985. They will continue to lie, but it will come out one day somehow that they had the truth in their hands. And this Bishop Chistera, Cardinal Kruger’s agent, had the truth. Kruger had the truth. The Vatican had the truth in 1985. The Vatican appointed Bishop Franklin in writing this year too. One day all this will be known.”

We had believed we were going to save thousands of children from having innocence ripped from their hearts and souls by removing thousands of perverted priests who would be dealt with justly and severely by the legal justice system. We felt the thousands of children who were dying inside as a result of having been victims of priests, discarded after degradation was inflicted, would be placed in extensive therapy regimes designed to restore some of the damage done to them by priests and Bishops.

We had been wrong. To state the truth of what had happened and couch same in military parlance, the three of us had been “walking point” for the Church, sent on a mission to seek and engage the enemy. We found the enemy. When we radioed the message, “We found the enemy and the enemy is us,” the most powerful man in the Catholic Church, Cardinal Hans Kruger, got a fix on our coordinates, our exact location, and called a direct bombing strike on our position designed to obliterate us and all evidence of our work. The Church knew its real enemy. The enemy was truth.

By early September, Shelby, Jake and Sasha were back in school after the summer holidays. I was back in my office trying to pick up the pieces of a lost law practice, fallen to ruin through my neglect over such a long time.

The mail brought an invitation, a standard invitation every lawyer in the diocese received each year, an invitation to attend the Red Mass at Saint Stephen’s. The tradition of the Red Mass dated back to thirteenth-century Europe, when a Catholic Mass would mark the official start of term for civil courts. In Thiberville, celebrants, judges, and some attorneys donned the traditional red robes for the annual Mass, and everyone attended the public reception afterwards. This year, in a separate envelope was an invitation to a private lunch at the Old Bishop’s House after the Red Mass. It had been issued by Monsignor Belair, the vicar of finance for the Diocese of Thiberville, and was accompanied by a handwritten note. “Please attend. Yours in Christ, Monsignor Buddy.”

The summer had passed quietly. On the civil side, because the Rachou case was being handled by Kane Chaisson, I heard nothing. On the criminal side, I had convinced Hannover House in New Jersey to take Dubois from the Stalder Institute. The Hannover facility specialized in the treatment of serial sex offenders. Dubois would serve his prison sentence there, and
receive medical treatment, conditional upon the diocese agreeing to pay all associated costs. DA Sean Robinette was amenable, saying only, “It’s not where he serves, but how long he serves that matters to me.”

Des had had me on the road to a number of dioceses throughout August. Most of the time, Matt was with us. The results were the same and no less frustrating.

Julie had spent the summer months learning to cook – with mixed results. Our friendship was like an accordion. At times, we were real close and saw each other a lot, and then several weeks would go by without contact. It was a curious relationship to me and the more I got to know her, the more fascinated I became with her simple approach to life and the goodness that came through in all she did and said. I had not ever known anyone like her.

When Julie went to see Will Courville on Saturdays, I often went with her. When Matt could get down to Louisiana, he joined us. Every week since Matt first met Lil’ Will, he had his assistant buy a book that was right for Will’s age and mail the book to Amalie. Sometimes Matt sent toys as well.

On weekends when he could not come to Amalie, Matt always called and spoke with Will and his parents. He was staying in close touch with Iris Dubois as well. Over time I realized that Matt extended himself to hundreds of people in all walks of life in places scattered across the country. All of them had been hurt badly by some deep injury inflicted by another or by a pathological condition that made them act out horrors and caused deep sadness in their families. Once Matt told me, “The families of these pedophile priests suffer as much as the families of the children, but in different ways.”

Hattie and Weston Courville always insisted we bring Sasha to the Courville farm. She and Will rode horses together and played in his tree house. Sasha and Will seemed to spend all their time laughing. She and Will became fast friends. Sasha was smitten for the first time in her life by the dark, handsome kid with the great
smile. We had some good times with Hattie and Wes Courville, and Lil’ Will seemed ready to return to school in the fall, even if he would have to repeat a grade.

The most important parts of the summer were the two long holidays I spent with my children at a beach on the Gulf Coast. I was able to temporarily push all the things relating to Dubois and the Church from my mind and I felt I got to know my children again. I wondered if that time would one day seem as important to them as it did to me then.

Nothing could have dragged me to the Red Mass, but I did accept the invitation to the private lunch. In the dining room of the Old Bishop’s House, Monsignor Moroux’s domestic servants, Joe and Fanny, were filling water goblets as Moroux, Monsignor Buddy Belair, Sister Julianne, Jonathan Bendel, Thomas Quinlan, Lloyd Lecompte, and Joe Rossi were seated. It was the first time I had been in the Old Bishop’s House since Bendel and his colleagues had stopped talking to me months before. All of us took the places we’d had at the first luncheon a year earlier.

It was odd being in that setting again and trying to ignore Julie, pretending we were still strangers. If everyone else in the room had secrets, Julie and I shared a secret too. We had a stack of fifteen personnel files that could blow the diocese apart.

The oddest thing about the luncheon was the presence of the ever absent Bishop Reynolds. I assumed he had celebrated the Red Mass at the cathedral. From the way he looked at me as I entered the dining room, I could not tell whether he was acknowledging me or even recognized me.

As salads were set down, Joe Rossi opened without any preliminaries. “Renon, we’re gonna get the Chaisson case out of the way this month. The new cases coming in are easy. The lawyers in the new cases don’t know about the amount of the settlements paid in the Ponce–Thomas cases. These guys have their hands out and are settling for chump change, whatever we want to pay. Jon paid one guy twenty-five grand last week, bought
a claim for twenty-five. Chaisson’s Rachou case is the only big one left. It cost this diocese a million dollars to get rid of the Ponce–Thomas cases. We can buy the Rachou suit out from under Chaisson too. Maybe Chaisson won’t want to settle with us, but we can flash enough money at the Rachou family to choke a horse. They will make Kane Chaisson fold his hand. This can all be over in a couple weeks.”

Bendel was more cautious in his approach. “Renon, you’ve done a magnificent job of representing the priest’s interests. It’s true not much of what you’ve done pleased me or those colleagues of mine who had interests that conflicted with Father Dubois’s interests. But here, in front of these people, I want to extend an apology to you for things I may have said and done out of anger, things that might have offended you. Professionally and personally, I hold you in the highest regard. I ask you to please be
open-minded
today.”

I believed what Rossi said was mostly the truth. I even suspected the diocese might have chipped in a million in cash to pile on top of the insurance money to settle the Ponce–Thomas suits. I knew everything Bendel had said was a lie.

Monsignor Moroux had a speaking part too. He cleared his throat, sipped water, wiped his lips with a napkin and turned to me, speaking in a low voice, softer than any voice I had heard him affect. “Well, Renon, it is not just about us at this table anymore. And it’s not about the archbishop in New Orleans, or even Bishop Franklin in Baltimore, or those people you know in Washington at the papal nunciature. This is now about Rome and the Vatican.”

I had heard the same thing from Des in an early-morning phone call from the Vatican Embassy a week ago. Rome had spoken.

The monsignor sipped tea from a goblet, patted his mouth again with a linen napkin and continued. “Bishop Franklin has informed me that Rome does not want a criminal trial of any Catholic priest on these kinds of charges. They will not abide that kind of publicity. Rome has said your criminal trial involving Father Francis will not happen.”

It was my turn to talk and I passed. After an awkward silence, Thomas Quinlan emphasized the hopelessness of my situation. “You entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Could you inform us of the name or names of the expert witnesses you’ve retained who will testify on behalf of Father Dubois that he was legally insane at the time he committed these crimes?”

Quinlan, a seasoned pro, instinctively knew the weakness of my case. I had consulted fourteen psychiatrists and psychologists who had been previously accepted by courts as expert witnesses in cases where the defense was “not guilty by reason of insanity”. Not a single one would testify that in their opinion Dubois was legally insane at the time he committed those crimes. I am certain Quinlan suspected that I had nothing, but he was not going to get that out of me. I ignored his question.

When I did speak, I looked directly at Monsignor Moroux on my left, ignoring everyone else in the room. “Monsignor, I’ve had this conversation too many times in too many settings not to know where we’re heading. Let me get to the issue. Let’s assume for the sake of this conversation that I do enter a guilty plea on behalf of Father Dubois this very afternoon, and Rome has its way and everybody in the Church is happy. Let’s also assume that the DA helps me convince Judge Labat to allow the sentence to be served at Hannover House, a penal institution especially for serial sex offenders, a place where the best medical treatment in the country is afforded to prisoners, providing them the best chance to be rehabilitated and live the most productive life possible in prison and upon release.”

I paused as Fanny and Joe entered and began serving the entree of shrimp creole. Fanny and Joe returned to the kitchen twice to get more plates and during that time no one spoke. When the serving was done, I resumed.

“Here is the issue. It’s all about cost. The per-day cost of caring for a prisoner at Hannover House is expensive compared to a Louisiana prison, which would cost the diocese nothing. The
question is this: can I get a commitment from this diocese to pay all costs incurred for the medical care and imprisonment of Father Dubois at Hannover House?”

Moroux said, “I would not have the authority to answer that question. If you wait, I’ll make a phone call.”

As Monsignor Moroux left the room, headed in the direction of his office, Bendel said, “Then you’re in agreement now?”

“I have not said anything like that. What I’ve said is I have the commitment from Hannover to hold Dubois during his incarceration and to have him treated. If I can get the commitment from the diocese to pay the costs at Hannover, I have another piece of the puzzle in place. All that would be left would be for DA Robinette and me to have a meeting of minds regarding the length of the sentence.”

Moroux entered the room, pulled out his chair and took his seat. We were all looking at him. “Well, Renon, I am informed that the answer to your question is ‘No’. There’s no way this diocese will commit to pay any expenses related to Father Francis once he’s convicted and placed in prison. The expense over his lifetime could be enormous. It could set a kind of precedent that would apply to other priests elsewhere.”

“Wow,” I said sarcastically, feigning a kind of innocence and naivety that fooled no one. Actually, I was wondering who Monsignor Moroux had consulted over the phone. His bishop was in the room. Except to bring his fork and wine glass to his mouth, the bishop had not moved, nor had he spoken.

I pushed away from the table a bit. “So, let me see if I have got this straight. The Vatican is ordering me not to bring this case to trial, and when I present an alternative to trial, the Church refuses to pay for that.”

Rossi was lighting a cigar which he waved in my direction. “Now you get it, Renon. It’s not just us talking. This is coming straight from the Vatican. The leader of all Catholics, our Pope, has weighed in on this. The Pope says no trial; there’s no trial. We have no choice. Not even you have a choice anymore.”

I looked at Rossi. “Joe, just tell the Pope I said no.” I started walking to the door.

“Wait a minute!” Rossi shouted. “Wait one damned minute!”

Joe followed me outside, all the way to my car. When I got in the car, he went around, opened the door and sat in the passenger seat. I turned on the motor, reset the air conditioner and ejected a Ray Charles tape. Rossi was out of shape, overweight, and breathing hard from the exertion of chasing me down, almost gasping for breath. He looked straight ahead as he spoke.

“Renon, you got some big problems. Real big problems. And I don’t think you know what they are.”

“Well, Joe, somehow I feel confident you’re going to tell me what they are.”

“You know what moral turpitude means? From what I’m told, this is how someone gets disbarred. They commit an act of moral turpitude, like advising a man of God to destroy evidence under subpoena and assisting this man of God in destroying evidence, and telling him to lie if asked about it under oath.”

“Bullshit, Rossi. Quinlan is the one who told Moroux to sanitize the personnel records, and Bendel seconded the motion. I might have been the chorus, but I wasn’t singing lead. Any acts of moral turpitude were committed by archdiocesan and diocesan counsel.”

“Suppose the good monsignor would not remember it that way? Suppose Quinlan and Bendel could not recall being present for such a discussion? Suppose there was only one witness at your disbarment proceeding? Suppose it was a Roman Catholic monsignor’s word against the word of a young lawyer? What do you think the result would be?”

I put the car in gear and turned to Rossi. “I think Moroux would double-cross you and tell the truth under oath. That’s what I think. Now, get the fuck outta my car.”

Rossi opened the door. “I’m just talking supposes. Suppose this, suppose that.”