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Liz and Linda’s wait for justice: A 50-year fight against a child rapist and the nun they say enabled him

BALTIMORE (MD)
The Baltimore Banner [Baltimore MD]

January 7, 2023

By Julie Scharper

 

Liz and Linda. Linda and Liz.

Liz was from “Up the Hill,” Federal Hill. Confident and sporty, with thick blond hair and ice-blue eyes, she dominated the basketball court. Her father was a police officer; the family sacrificed to send their nine children to Catholic school.

Linda was from “Down the Point,” Locust Point. She inherited her olive skin and dark brown curls from her mother, who left when Linda was 3 months old. Linda’s father, too, was a police officer. He brought baby Linda to his mother to raise. Linda was softer, shy, a rule follower.

The girls met in John Merzbacher’s class at the Catholic Community School of Baltimore in 1972. You can call me “Merz,” he said. Merz was different. He smoked a pipe in the classroom. He said bad words. He had a stoplight, a real stoplight that flashed green and yellow and red during class. He carried a gun. He played records, loudly. He asked these 11- and 12-year-olds to write an essay about who they thought they were.

Who they became was shaped by that classroom. What happened there, what Mr. Merzbacher did to them, has spilled like dark ink into the next half-century of their lives.

It has been almost 30 years since Liz Murphy, Linda Malat Tiburzi and other former students worked to send Merzbacher, one of the state’s most notorious child rapists, to prison, where he is serving four consecutive life sentences.

And still they wait for justice. Liz and Linda want to see Sister Eileen Weisman, the nun who was the principal of the school at the time, who they say witnessed some of the abuse, held accountable. Weisman knew what was happening, the women say, in accounts echoed by sworn depositions from their classmates. She saw Linda lying on the floor, bare-chested, with Merzbacher on top of her. She saw Merzbacher beating a male student. She saw a girl sitting on Merzbacher’s lap with her underwear around her ankles.She even fired another teacher who told her Merzbacher was molesting students. Why didn’t she put a stop to the abuse?

Liz and Linda hope that a 456-page investigation by the Maryland Office of the Attorney General into sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore will provide that accountability. In court filings, investigators said the report details the archdiocese’s “deliberate failure to protect the children in its charge,” through the “minimizing of sexual abuse” and “efforts to keep all this information from its parishioners and the public.” The investigation could be the first public accounting of what investigators describe as a culture of “complicit silence” within the archdiocese. Liz and Linda hope that it will expose Weisman’s role in covering up for their abuser.

Weisman, 80, resides at the School Sisters of Notre Dame motherhouse in North Baltimore. She declined through a spokeswoman to speak with a reporter. A spokeswoman for the School Sisters of Notre Dame, the religious order to which she belongs, said the nuns pray daily for the Merzbacher’s survivors. “We’re very sorry for these women and the pain that they’ve gone through,” said spokeswoman Caelie Haines. The order has created policies to prevent future abuse, she said.

The archdiocese has said it does not oppose the release of the full report, which prosecutors say details a “pervasive” culture of sexual abuse in Baltimore’s Catholic churches and schools, involving 158 priests and more than 600 children over 80 years. However, the archdiocese is also paying the legal fees of certain people named in the report but not accused of sexual abuse. The identities of the people have not been revealed, but the archdiocese said it has a responsibility to help them advocate for themselves. Weisman is not represented by the archdiocese’s lawyers, Haines said.

Haines said the School Sisters of Notre Dame do not know what is contained in the report but that they support its full release. “We’re waiting like everyone else to see,” she said.Sign Up for AlertsGet notified of need-to-know
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As Liz and Linda wait for the release of the report, which has been slowed by legal wrangling, they call to check in on each other, just as they did during the trial in 1995, and the time Merzbacher tried to get released on a legal technicality in 2012.

“Liz and I have been to hell and back so many times,” said Linda, 61. “Each time we step back out of the flames, we make sure we have a bucket of water in our hands waiting for each other. I will forever have her back and she will forever have my back.”

When it happened

The first time it happened, the children were having lunch in the park. Sporty Liz was broad jumping, trying to see just how far she could fly through the air. Merzbacher asked her to go back to the school with him.

Elizabeth Ann Murphy — named for Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born saint, who lived for a time in West Baltimore — was very Catholic, very naive and quick to follow orders. She was 11.

Back in the classroom, Merzbacher opened a fake book to reveal a bottle of sherry hidden inside. He handed it to Liz and ordered her to drink. Then he raped her at his desk. After that, for the rest of sixth grade and all of seventh and eighth, the rapes were too numerous to count. (This account, and those that follow, are drawn from interviews and court records.)

In the morning, Merzbacher would say, “Liz, go get my coffee.” She would go to the storeroom next to the classroom. Then she would feel his hands on her. Sometimes he would order one or more boys to rape her too. Liz’s mind would be floating on the storeroom ceiling, staring down at her body.

Sometimes Merzbacher would rape her with his pipe. Back in the classroom, he would puff on the pipe and insinuate to the children what he had done. “I still can’t stand the smell of apple tobacco,” said Liz.

For Linda, it started more slowly. He told her to call him Mr. John. He told her to call him Dad.

He called her at 8 and 9 in the evening. “Who’s that on the phone, Linda?” her grandmother would ask. Linda made up stories. She didn’t want to get in trouble.

After dark, Linda was allowed to sit on the front steps of their house, but go no farther. One evening, when she was 12,Merzbacher drove up in his yellow Volkswagen Beetle with red and black trim. “Get in,” he said.

“I can’t,” she said, walking up to the window. Merzbacher yanked her inside and started to drive. A teenage boy, Brian, who lived with Merzbacher, was sitting in the back and soon they picked up a second boy. Merzbacher sent Linda to the back seat and ordered her to give Brian a blow job.

Brian had to explain what that meant. “I think he was afraid both of us would be hurt very badly if I did not do it,” she said.

Then Merzbacher reached into the glove compartment and took out a gun. He drove to Sherrie’s Show Bar, an East Baltimore strip club owned by his mother and stepfather, shooting at stop signs and traffic lights along the way. At the bar, he hurried inside and came out with a bottle of liquor, which he forced them to drink.

After a while, Merzbacher dropped Linda back off at her house and she tottered inside, drunk and terrified. Her grandmother was sitting in her rocking chair, rosary beads in hand.

That was the start of Linda’s hell. Merzbacher raped her in the storage room and ordered a boy to do it as well. When she screamed, he stabbed a banjo next to her head and said her face would be next.

When it was not happening to them, Liz and Linda would witness the terror of their classmates. Court records preserve the sworn depositions from some of the scores of women and men who accused Merzbacher of raping and physically attacking them as children. Prosecutors who brought charges against Merzbacher in the 1990s said at least 40 former students alleged they had been raped or otherwise abused by him.

Merzbacher allegedly raped both boys and girls, often while holding a gun to their heads, both at the school and at the Rockaway Beach Volunteer Fire Department in Essex.

Then there was the gun. He fired it across the classroom and held it to students’ heads, according to court records. “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill your mother, I’ll kill your father, I’ll kill your whole family,” he would say.

The children never spoke about the dark world they were immersed in, even among themselves.

“None of us knew where to put it. We didn’t have words for it,” recalls Liz, 61. “We never talked about this outside of school except to hide if we saw a yellow Volkswagen in the neighborhood. It’s really strange to experience all this torture every day for three years and not talk about it.”

The adults in their lives, for the most part, either didn’t notice Merzbacher or ignored him. Liz and Linda said that his words and actions around Weisman were often sexually charged. He would grab the principal’s buttocks or breasts and make comments about her breasts, they said, allegations that are echoed in court depositions from their former classmates.

One former student said in his deposition that he once witnessed Merzbacher and Weisman having sex. He also said that Weisman on one occasion walked in on Merzbacher beating him. The teacher punched, kicked and choked the boy while telling the nun, “See, I’m not hurting him”; Weisman responded, “Oh, John, stop it,” according to the deposition.

Another former Catholic Community student testified in a deposition that she used to study in an empty classroom across from Merzbacher’s room and would often see him physically and sexually abusing children. The woman testified that she once saw a girl sitting on Merzbacher’s lap with her underpants around her ankles; when she told Weisman, the principal responded that “the girl was having a problem with the elastic in her underwear,” according to the deposition. After the girl spoke to Weisman, Merzbacher took her aside and threatened to kill her, and students who were close to Merzbacher beat the girl on a stairway, according to the deposition.

Once Linda was in Merzbacher’s classroom after school, according to a sworn deposition. The teacher was lying on top of her, biting her breast and causing her extreme pain. The girl screamed for help. Then she heard a key in the lock of the classroom door; Weisman, the school principal, walked in to see Merzbacher lying on top of the girl, the girl’s breasts exposed.

“John, oh John,” said the nun, as she headed away, Linda recalls. “I told you never to lock the classroom door.”


New judge assigned to archdiocese sexual abuse case

The Baltimore Banner

 

Judge Robert K. Taylor Jr. will oversee case to release grand jury investigation into abuse

Published on: January 03, 2023 1:44 PM EST|Updated on: January 03, 2023 4:18 PM EST

The entrance to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore
Catholic Center located in Baltimore, Md., on December 2, 2022.
The debate over the release of a massive investigation into sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore will be decided by a new judge, a judiciary spokesman said Tuesday. (Paul Newson/The Baltimore Banner)
Our nonprofit news organization is made possible by subscribers and donors who value storytelling that impacts and uplifts communities. Thank you for supporting our journalism.

The debate over the release of a massive investigation into sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore will be decided by a new judge, a judiciary spokesman said Tuesday.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylor Jr. will oversee proceedings regarding the release of an investigation from the Maryland Office of the Attorney Generaldetailing the “sexual abuse” and “physical torture” of more than 600 children and teens at the hands of 158 Catholic priests.

The 456-page report is the product of a four-year investigation by the attorney general’s office with the assistance of a Baltimore grand jury. Under state law, grand jury materials are confidential without a court order.

Taylor, 56, has served on the bench since 2018. Previously, he served as an assistant attorney general and was senior counsel for forensic litigation, according to his official biography.

Some survivors of sexual abuse in the archdiocese had raised concerns about the previous judge assigned to the case, Anthony Vittoria. His biography lists him as a parishioner of the Catholic Community of South Baltimore. A now-shuttered school associated with that church — the Catholic Community Middle School — was the scene of some of the most notorious abuse cases associated with the archdiocese. John Merzbacher, a lay teacher who worked there in the 1970s, is serving four life sentences for the repeated rape of a student. More than a dozen other students had also accused Merzbacher of raping and sexually assaulting them, but their cases never went to trial.

The change in judge was “part of the normal management of the court,” judiciary spokesman Bradley Tanner said in an email. “This was expected many months prior to the filing of the case,” Tanner said.

The legal battle around the investigation began in mid-November when the attorney general’s office first asked the court for permission to release the report. In court filings, the attorney general’s office described a history of “pervasive” sexual abuse within Baltimore’s Catholic churches and schools, as well as a coverup and “complicit silence” by church officials.

The archdiocese said it would not object to the release of the report and pointed to numerous steps it had taken to correct its culture and support survivors of abuse. However, the archdiocese also acknowledged that it is paying for the legal fees of 13 people who are named in the report but not accused of sexual abuse and do not want their names released.

These people, whose identities have not been disclosed, are represented by prominent attorneys Gregg Bernstein and William Murphy.

In December, Vittoria sealed the proceedings concerning the release of the names, which kept the public — including survivors of abuse — from learning what was happening in the case.

Attorneys representing two groups of victims have filed motions to unseal the case and expedite the release of the report. Vittoria denied those appeals late last month.


Surviving Hillcrest

Letta Cartlidge created a group for missionary kids who’d attended her boarding school in Jos, Nigeria. The stories of abuse poured in.
December 13, 2022

It was on a Friday in spring 2021 that Letta Cartlidge decided she had seen enough.

In her backyard in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, a stack of bangles on her arm and an oversized cardigan draped around her shoulders, Cartlidge explained to the Century how on April 15, 2021, James McDowell, a former principal at Hillcrest—a boarding school primarily for the children of missionaries in Jos, Nigeria—admitted in a private Facebook group for Hillcrest alumni that he had “molested” two students during his tenure.

As Cartlidge, a 1992 graduate of Hillcrest, watched reactions to McDowell’s post pour in, she estimated that about 30 percent of the people who commented were either angry or used it as an opportunity to share their own stories of abuse by other Hillcrest staff. The other 70 percent called McDowell brave for coming forward and assured him of God’s grace.

It was when the 70 percent began verbally attacking the 30 percent that Cartlidge knew she had to do something. The next day, she created a new Facebook group—Hillcrest Survivors—where people who’d had a negative experience at the school, herself among them, could speak freely and begin to process what had happened to them.

By fall 2022, Cartlidge’s Facebook group had 236 members. Perhaps more significantly, it had launched a nine-member steering committee that has started lobbying Hillcrest leadership for a professional, independent investigation of several decades worth of sexual, physical, and religious abuse allegations.

An independent investigation is key, said Rich Darr, cofounder of Missionary Kids Safety Net, because missionaries are particularly susceptible to a worldview in which literally nothing is more important than winning souls to Christ. According to the theology many of them adopt, Jesus can only save the people who believe in him the exact way they do.

“And the kicker is, Jesus is coming back at any moment,” Darr said— “to take those who are saved to heaven, and everybody else is going to burn in hell.”


Advocates Demand Oakland Bishop Add 100+ Priests to List of Alleged Abusers

OAKLAND (CA)
NBC News [San Francisco, CA]

December 13, 2022

By Candice Nguyen, Michael Bott and Mark Villarreal

Read original article

 

Leaders representing the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) unveiled a list of East Bay church officials, mostly priests, they say have been accused of sexual abuse. Standing at 227 names, SNAP says its list is more than three times longer than the list released by Oakland Bishop Michael Barber in 2019.

Advocates from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests gathered Tuesday at the doorstep of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland to unveil a list of East Bay priests they say have been accused of sexual abuse, mostly against children. 

“We’ve painstakingly gone through all the records we could find,” said Dan McNevin, a survivor of clergy abuse and one of the architects behind SNAP’s list, detailing his process of combing through court filings, news reports and other publicly available sources for bits of new information.


Former Catholic priest convicted in 1985 sex assault in Loudoun

ARLINGTON (VA)
Washington Post

December 12, 2022

By Tom Jackman

 

Scott A. Asalone, a rector in Purcellville, was removed from his church in 1993, but not arrested until 2020. The victim went on to become a D.C. councilman.

A former Catholic priest from Loudoun County, who was quietly discharged from his parish after abuse allegations in the 1990s, was convicted Monday in Loudoun circuit court of felony carnal knowledge of a minor for abusing a boy who would go on to become a D.C. councilman.

Scott A. Asalone, 66, who worked as a stockbroker and consultant in New Jersey for nearly three decades after leaving his parish, was arrested in March 2020, and released on bond during the pandemic. Jury selection for his trial was scheduled to begin Monday when Asalone decided to enter an “Alford” plea, in which a defendant doesn’t admit guilt but admits the prosecution has enough evidence to convict. Loudoun Circuit Court Judge James E. Plowman then found Asalone guilty, and set sentencing for April 13. He faces a minimum of two years in prison and a maximum of ten.

Asalone’s victim in the case, former D.C. councilman David Grosso, was present in the courtroom and preparing to testify. After Asalone’s arrest in 2020, Grosso publicly acknowledged that, “The minor he assaulted was me.” Grosso was 14, and Asalone was 29, when the abuse occurred between April and September 1985.

“It felt good for me to be there,” Grosso said Monday, “to see the judge walk him through the charge, and find that he really is guilty of assaulting me … He realized the case was too strong against him.”

Asalone’s lawyer, Barry Coburn, declined to comment after the hearing. Coburn also represents former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in a number of pending federal and state sex abuse cases.


Was a beloved Bay Area priest also a pedophile? Survivor hopes lawsuit will spark change

Was a beloved Bay Area priest also a pedophile? Survivor hopes lawsuit will spark change

Dec. 9, 2022Updated: Dec. 9, 2022 10:10 a.m.

On a chilly November morning, Derek Lewis sat on a bench in front of a haunted little white building, remembering.

The 34-year-old Hayward man’s psychologist says it’s good to come to this quiet spot in Contra Costa County to confront the past. The structure used to house the office and living area of the head priest at the church that was once next door. Inside the building, as well as inside the church, Lewis said, the priest sexually abused him repeatedly over two years starting when Lewis was about 8 years old, inflicting trauma that set his young life on a tortuous path.

Lewis looked away from the building, hiding tears, as he described what it was like inside: the old brown carpet, the musty smell, the portrait of Jesus looking on as the priest reached to touch him.

“An ugly place,” Lewis said.

After some 25 years of avoiding memories from Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in the small city of Brentwood, Lewis is taking what he describes as the next step in his recovery. He filed suit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland on Nov. 29, making use of a 2019 California law that extended the statute of limitations for victims of child sexual abuse to sue their abuser or abuser’s employer. The complaint is one in a flurry filed in recent months as the deadline to file new litigation approaches on Dec. 31.

Though Father John G. Garcia is dead and can’t face the allegations, Lewis said he suspects there are more victims and wants to empower them to come forward.

“Just because it’s a really hard thing to live with and stay quiet about,” he said.


CA 'Look-Back' Window Closing For Adult Victims Of Childhood Sex Abuse

The legal window for adults to sue their childhood sexual abuser despite the statute of limitations will soon close in California.


Amy Coney Barrett urged to step away from gay rights case because of faith affiliation

Read full story Here....

 

The US supreme court justice’s history with the People of Praise raises questions about her impartiality in upcoming case

Former members of Amy Coney Barrett’s secretive faith group, the People of Praise, are calling on the US supreme court justice to recuse herself from an upcoming case involving gay rights, saying Barrett’s continued affiliation with the Christian group means she has participated in discriminatory policies against LGBTQ+ people.

The former members are part of a network of “survivors” of the controversial charismatic group who say Barrett’s “lifelong and continued” membership in the People of Praise make her too biased to fairly adjudicate an upcoming case that will decide whether private business owners have a right to decline services to potential clients based on their sexual orientation.


New lawsuits filed against Hanna Boys Center as CA clergy sexual abuse law deadline approaches

ByDan Noyes via KGO logo
Saturday, November 19, 2022 11:24AM

SONOMA, Calif. (KGO) -- More than a dozen new lawsuits have been filed against Hanna Boys Center of Sonoma by men who say they were abused by Catholic priests and staff there when they were children. We've been speaking to survivors, former staff, and officials now running the residential treatment center.

A state law that allows survivors of clergy sexual abuse to file lawsuits -- no matter how long ago it happened -- expires at the end of next month. As a result, there has been a rush of new complaints.

No question, Hanna Boys Center has done some good over the years, helping kids struggling with school or family life.

Paul Keschke reported in 1998, "The boys who range in age from 9 to 17 are treated firmly, but with respect."

VIDEO: Survivor of priest sex abuse speaks out as new CA law leads to many lawsuits

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A survivor of Camp St. Michael speaks to I-Team's Dan Noyes as California law now allows victims to sue priests for sex abuse, even decades later.

ABC7 News has covered the residential treatment center run by the Catholic Church, including a report from 1998 featuring Hanna's director at the time, Father John Crews, who said, "I tell the guys 'You're not a man yet, but you're gonna be.'"

But, the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa just paid a large settlement to a man who says Father Crews and Hanna Boys Center staff sexually assaulted him over the course of three years, starting when he was 11. David Love tells the I-Team he still struggles with the memories: "I was in town and someone that looked like Father Crews was standing in line. I wet myself, and I couldn't move, and I left."

In 25 years of covering the clergy abuse crisis, I-Team has never heard an account of such horrific, depraved abuse. Love says to this day, he can't sleep because his attackers often came at night.

MORE: Report names 263 Catholic clergy accused of sexual misconduct in Bay Area

"You don't know what the nightmares are like waking up, not knowing where you're at. Thinking you're back there. I go through this every night, Dan. Every night," he said.


Widow says she was groped by Catholic priest during grief counseling session

NBC NEWS
The Honduran exile also claims in a federal lawsuit that the Diocese of Knoxville tried to protect the priest by tarring her reputation.
Nov. 16, 2022, 3:37 PM EST

A Honduran asylum-seeker living in Tennessee alleges in a federal lawsuit that the Diocese of Knoxville tried to sabotage a police investigation after she accused a priest of groping her during a grief counseling session following her husband’s death. 

Identified in court papers as Jane Doe, the mother of three alleges in the lawsuit filed on Nov. 10  that the diocese “obstructed law enforcement” and tried to intimidate her into “abandoning her cooperation with the criminal prosecution” of the Rev. Antony Devassey Punnackal.

The lawsuit also states that Punnackal hired a private investigator to dig up the widow’s employment records, and she became a pariah in the Hispanic community of Gatlinburg after “agents” of the diocese began spreading false rumors about her.

“The complaint speaks for itself,” the widow’s lawyer, Andrew Fels, told NBC News, when asked to elaborate. He is seeking $5 million in damages for his client. 

Punnackal, who was the pastor of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Gatlinburg, was indicted in January by a Sevier County grand jury on two counts of sexual battery against the Honduran woman. That case is ongoing.

Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Gatlinburg, Tenn.
St. Mary's Catholic Church in Gatlinburg, Tenn.Google

His lawyer, Travis McCarter, said in an email that Punnackal “maintains his innocence, as he has from the beginning of this process.”

“The Plaintiff’s Complaint is riddled with misrepresentations as to the character and conduct of Father Punnackal that we look forward to challenging in open court,” McCarter said. 

In an earlier interview with Knox News, McCarter’s associate, Michael Green, said that “we’ve found nothing to suggest the diocese interfered with the investigation.”

“The diocese was made aware of the filing Monday morning,” diocesan spokesman Jim Wogan said in an email to NBC News. “We have always maintained that the proper way to address the claims is through the courts, which we will do. We trust the process and will not comment while this case is being litigated.”

As for Punnackal, Wogan said the priest was “taken out of active ministry in the diocese on Jan. 6, 2022.”

This is not the first time that the Diocese of Knoxville, led by Bishop Rick Stika, has been accused of trying to cover up alleged sex misconduct by a priest. In February, a former church organist claimed in an ongoing lawsuit that he was raped by a seminarian in 2019 and that Stika and his allies in the diocese tried to intimidate the accuser “into silence.”

Richard Stika, bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Knoxville, Tenn., on Feb. 8, 2019.
Bishop Richard Stika at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Knoxville, Tenn., on Feb. 8, 2019.Calvin Mattheis / USA Today Network

“Bishop Stika was notified of the filing,” Wogan said in February. “The diocese expects the process to be fair and thorough and looks forward to the opportunity to vigorously defend itself if this matter moves forward.”

The Knoxville bishop is not named as a defendant in the federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for Eastern District of Tennessee, but the diocese is and so is the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, the religious congregation to which Punnackal belongs. 

Stika has not commented on the allegations and attempts to reach him by phone were unsuccessful. The Carmelites of Mary Immaculate did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stika’s alleged abuse of his authority has sparked a rebellion by some members of his flock and drawn criticism from prominent lay Roman Catholics like Jeannie Gaffigan, a comedy writer best known for producing the shows of her husband, the comedian Jim Gaffigan. She also co-hosts a podcast called “Field Hospital” that has been examining the wider Catholic priest sex abuse scandal.


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