There should be renewed interest in this story

The Malta Independent
Article published on 22 October 2006

The Archdiocese of Miami barred Rev. Anthony Mercieca on Friday from functioning as a priest anywhere in the world after confirming that he was the clergyman who Mark Foley said molested him in the 1960s.

Mercieca, who now lives in Malta, can no longer publicly celebrate Mass, administer the sacraments, or wear priestly clothes, said Mary Ross Agosta, a diocesan spokeswoman.

Ms Agosta apologised to Foley in a statement and described as repugnant Mercieca’s intimate contact with him, which the priest disclosed to a Florida newspaper last week.

Mercieca, 72, worked in south Florida for almost 40 years and remains under the auspices of the archdiocese.

“Such behaviour is morally reprehensible, canonically criminal and inexcusable,” Ms Agosta said.

Foley, 52, resigned from the House of Representatives last month after the release of sexually explicit messages he had sent to teenage congressional pages.

Soon after, his lawyer announced that Foley was gay, had gone into treatment for alcoholism, and had been molested by a clergyman when he was 13 to 15.

“An apology is due to Mr Foley for the hurt he has experienced,” Ms Agosta said.

So far, she said, no one else had reported sexual misconduct by Mercieca.

He worked in at least eight parishes in south Florida since 1966, most recently at Blessed Trinity Catholic Church in Miami Springs between 1993 and 2003. Ms Agosta said he left Florida to retire.

“There were absolutely no other problems,” she said in an interview.

Ms Agosta said the Archdiocese of Miami had begun an internal investigation that could result in further sanctions against Mercieca. A spokesman for the Bishop of Gozo said an investigation was under way there, too.

Though retired, Mercieca still said Mass every morning at a cathedral in Gozo, the Maltese island where he was raised and now lives with his brother George, also a priest.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, an advocacy group, said the actions of both archdioceses were insufficient and that Mercieca should be put in a secure treatment facility while the police investigate.

The New York Times also reported that he is known in Gozo as Father Tony, though he does not seem to be known very well, as the Rev. Mercieca spent his career as a priest far from Gozo where he grew up. And he is not sociable anyway, say people who know him.

“He is a very solitary man,” said George Borg, 52, a teacher who described himself as a family friend. “He walks alone.”

There seemed to be little anger at Father Mercieca among his neighbours, The New York Times reported. “There are a lot of people like this,” said one, Carmel Grech, 80. “Everybody has sins. What is the big fuss here?”

Experts: Priest in denial about behaviour

Experts on sex abuse say the comments of a Roman Catholic priest who acknowledged being naked with Mark Foley when the former congressman was young, fit a pattern of distorted thinking that they’ve seen over and over among offenders.

The Rev. Anthony Mercieca told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he was naked with Foley in a sauna, and was quoted in other interviews saying he also fondled him.

Mercieca told the AP that the encounters weren’t sexual, a distinction abuse experts found disturbing.

“The priest is very focused on the legalities here and I think it’s important for the rest of us to see the enormous power differential between these two,” said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Centre at the University of New Hampshire.

“There is a tremendous abuse of authority and position involved in these activities whether or not they constitute child molestation.”

Foley, 52, resigned from Congress last month after his sexually explicit computer messages to young male pages were released. His lawyer has said that Foley was an alcoholic, gay and had been molested as a youth by a clergyman.

The Archdiocese of Miami confirmed Friday that Mercieca, 72, is the person Foley said abused him as a teen. In phone interviews, the priest, who is retired and lives in Gozo, has given details about his encounters with Foley four decades ago.

The priest told the Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune that he and Foley “loved each other like brothers” and that although he taught Foley “some wrong things” related to sex, Mercieca insisted their interactions were innocent.

“It was just fondling,” he told WPTV of West Palm Beach, Florida

From the perspective of people who have worked with abusers and their victims, that thinking is typical of a molester. Offenders, who are sexually immature, commonly view their involvement with their victims as normal and are baffled when others see things differently.

“This is the same type of rationalisation that I’ve heard time and time again from priests who have been grooming or setting a young boy up for molestation,” said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer turned victim advocate.

The Herald-Tribune reported that Mercieca said he could not clearly remember one encounter “that might have gone too far” because he had been taking tranquillisers and drinking at the time.

“It’s common that offenders will block out major pieces of the events. I personally believe that it’s also part of the denial process, where they just don’t, frankly, want to remember,” said the Rev. Stephen J. Rossetti, president of Saint Luke Institute, which provides psychological counselling to Catholic priests who suffer from a variety of troubles, including sexual attraction to children. “Those are typical kinds of statements of offenders who are not in recovery.”

Richard Sipe, a former priest who studies sexuality and the priesthood and has counselled abusive clergy and victims, said abusive priests typically deny that their activities were sexual because they often convince themselves that only intercourse violates their vow of celibacy.

“It’s a lack of development,” said Sipe, who has testified on the subject before grand juries and at civil trials against dioceses. “This is not what an adult reasons about sex.”

Abusers assume that because a young person seems to be enthusiastic around them, that any boundary crossing or sexual activity is OK, Finkelhor said. And if no penetration occurs, molesters convince themselves that the interaction does not hurt the youth, he said.

Mercieca’s “basic approach is, ‘You’re trying to take something good and trying to turn it into something evil’,” said Peter Isely, a clinical social worker who counsels abuse victims and a leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“He literally describes this 12- or 13-year old child as if they’re equals in age and in personality and characteristic, as if there’s absolutely no power differential,” Isely said.

“This is what makes these offenders so dangerous.”

States have different legal definitions of what constitutes child molestation, but many consider inappropriate touching a criminal offence. Mike Edmondson, a spokesman for the state attorney’s office in West Palm Beach, Florida, said law enforcement action is over in Mercieca’s case unless other alleged victims come forward, because Foley says he doesn’t want to prosecute.

From a clinical perspective, Mercieca’s description of his actions indicates abuse occurred, Rossetti said.

“The things he’s talking about are very sexually charged and they are sexual abuse,” Rossetti said. “For an adult male to be with a young male naked in a bathtub or a shower would clearly be a major boundary violation in most cases – and also traumatic.”

David Clohessy, SNAP’s National Director, said Foley is probably not Mercieca’s only victim.

“The likelihood that such a twisted predator, in such a powerful position for four decades, would molest only one child – the likelihood is extraordinarily slim,” he said.

Clohessy criticised church leaders for claiming it would have been impossible to try and ferret out Foley’s abuser until Foley gave up the name. He said the statement shows that Catholic leaders have not changed in the four years since widespread priest abuse and cover-ups by the Church became public.

“They passively sit back and wait for the phone to ring and pray that it doesn’t,” Clohessy said. “This isn’t rocket science. If there’s a suspected crime, and a potentially dangerous predator, you take aggressive steps to find out who it is and protect other children.”

Mercieca’s confessions about his behaviour decades ago with Foley startled those who have known him.

“There was a measure of shock and surprise,” said Father Paul Vuturo of St Bartholomew Church in Miramar, who served several years with Mercieca at St James Catholic Church in North Miami in the late 1970s.

IN HIS OWN WORDS

On 6 October, Katie Couric promised that the Mark Foley scandal “is not going away”. And just under two weeks later, on Thursday night, she did her part to keep it alive by leading the CBS Evening News with six minutes on it, starting with salacious descriptions of the teenage Mark Foley’s alleged sexual activity with a Catholic priest.

Ms Couric offered a warning to viewers as she hyped the supposed importance of the priest’s recollections: “A stunning development tonight in the congressional page scandal, and you may not want your young children to hear the story we’re about to tell.

The priest Mark Foley accused of molesting him as a child has come forward. Now retired, the priest admits that he and Foley, then barely a teenager, were naked together in a sauna, but he says, quote, “Everybody does that”.

The following is a transcript of CBS News Anchor Katie Couric’s 19 October interview with the Rev. Anthony Mercieca (left), 72, who resides in Gozo.

Q. Father, I understand that you have told a Florida newspaper that you did have an intimate two-year relationship with former Congressman Mark Foley when he was a teenage altar boy? Can you describe that relationship for us?

A. Yeah, we used to go out together to the games, when I, when my time permitted, you know? And we used to go to the ballgames and to the wrestling matches together and we used to go eat out.

Q. And this was in Lakeworth, Florida.?

A. Yes. Yes.

Q. But when the relationship is described as intimate, what exactly does that mean to you, Father?

A. Well, intimate, it’s like when you are with your brother or so, you know. Like you don’t have any, any… it’s like when you are with a member of your family, you know? You don’t… you’re really joyous and that’s it, you know?

Q. In this article, you described a number of encounters that you believe Mark Foley might have misconstrued as sexually inappropriate. Can you describe some of those for us?

A. No we used to go to the sauna bath, you know, there was a Finnish community there in Lakeworth and we used to go there to take a bath, you know. And maybe at the park, you know, you would jump in the lake, you know. And there was no one.

Q. So you’re saying you went skinny-dipping together, you took saunas together. According to this newspaper account, it also says that you massaged him when he was naked, and you were naked in the same room on overnight trips?

A. Yes, that’s what, that’s what I want to correct, because (Sarasota Herald-Tribune reporter) Matthew Doig, I told him, we used to do, like the athletes you know, he’ll stay with his towel on and go on the bench and I will massage his neck and his back, you know. Like they do to athletes, you know?

Q. Father, you don’t think that was inappropriate behaviour for a priest and a teenage altar boy? People hearing this, even if it was innocent, would think it at the very least creepy and at the very most highly inappropriate?

A. Massage parlours exist, you know. I don’t know, so …

Q. According to this article, you claim that once when you were in a drug-induced stupor, there was an incident that happened that you could not or cannot clearly remember that might have gone too far. Can you tell us what you mean by that and what you do remember from that encounter?

A. I had taken some pills, had taken some alcohol and sort of… that was drugs, not that we used drugs. You know?

Q. And what happened?

A. That’s what I can’t remember, you know. And I guess that’s what maybe Mark is thinking that was something bad.

Q. And what do you believe might have happened?

A. I can’t say, you know. If you are out …

Q. Are you still claiming that these encounters were all perfectly innocent?

A. Well I mean at the time we didn’t think they were malicious, you know?

Q. I’m not talking about malicious, were they inappropriate in your view?

A. It was maybe more spontaneous…

Q. Were you involved in these kinds of encounters with anyone else in the parish?

A. No. Never.

Q. Can you understand why this would be very upsetting to Mark Foley?

A. I can’t. Because for 40 years it didn’t bother him, now how come it bothers him?

Q. Well sometimes there’s such a thing as repressed memories and shame and guilt. Do you feel contrite or sorry for this?

A. I mean, now that I knew that he doesn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it, you know? I thought it was spontaneous, you know?

Q. You’re 72 years old, what are you doing now?

A. I help in church.

Q. In charities?

A. In the church. In the cathedral here.

Q. And what actions do you think will be taken by the Catholic Church in light of these revelations?

A. I don’t know — these are 40 years old. So really, it’s … there is a limit too.

Q. And you don’t feel badly about what happened?

A. I told you if I knew that he was so bothered, you know, I would not have done it.

Q. But Father, he was a teenage altar boy.

A. Well now. That’s the story.

Q. All right, well, thank you very much for talking to me.

A. Ciao.

“IT DOES NOT MEAN HE PENETRATED” – GOZO CATHEDRAL ARCHPRIEST

“The parishioners of the Cathedral parish are shocked, not because Fr Mercieca did or did not do what is wrong, but because he is being accused of something of which we never saw any tendency or inclination,” Fr Joe Vella Gauci, archpriest of the Gozo Cathedral told L-Orizzont.

“If he had these tendencies he would not have acted on them just once but regularly. I would not be wrong to say he had an inappropriate relationship, but this does not mean he performed a sexual act, with penetration.”

Fr Vella Gauci told the newspaper that the media were only seeking sensational news to report. All that has been reported so far are just allegations. Fr Mercieca never admitted to sexual relations or penetration, but only to an “inappropriate relationship”. In no way can this be interpreted as admitting he had sexual intimacy.

Fr Vella Gauci praised Fr Mercieca, who he has known since his childhood, for setting up the Cathedral Library and donating 90,000 books to the library. “He is a very quiet person and never caused any problem but I think his statements were naïve,” Fr Vella Gauci said.