ST. LOUIS, June 21 -- Twice a year, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops meet. Twice a year, for more than a decade, sex abuse victims have shadowed them, holding angry signs or bowing heads in prayer, chanting slogans or marching with candles.
Whatever their form of protest, they were always outside, in the June heat or December cold. Then, a year ago, they were invited inside. Four victims of priests stood before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Dallas last June and told their stories.
Among those at the convention was Cardinal Bernard Law, former archbishop of Boston, where the church's current sex abuse scandal first erupted.
(James A. Finley -- AP)
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It was their first chance to do so. Now, they're wondering if it was the last.
"We're on the street again," Mark Serrano, 39, of Leesburg, Va., said outside the St. Louis hotel where the bishops today concluded a three-day meeting without the participation of people claiming sex abuse by priests.
Yet, in a measure of how far the victims have come in the past year, they were not only on the street. They had a rented ballroom of their own, in a downtown hotel eight blocks away.
The two conventions went on side by side this week, reflecting the complex attraction and repulsion that has developed between bishops and victims, who are adversaries in lawsuits but also members of the same church and partners in its regeneration.
About 185 activists from around the country attended the first national conference of the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, which began Friday, a day after the bishops convened. They held three days of training and morale-boosting -- all timed so members could join a silent morning vigil outside the bishops' hotel and still attend an afternoon workshop on, say, "building relationships with local bishops."
Some bishops were invited to the SNAP conference. None attended.
Yet, in a report to the bishops' conference today on progress in carrying out the "charter" on sex abuse adopted in Dallas a year ago, Archbishop Harry J. Flynn of St. Paul and Minneapolis spoke of the importance of reaching out to victims.
"Individual bishops across the country have made great efforts to meet with victim-survivors and their families," said Flynn, who chairs the bishops' ad hoc committee on sex abuse. In the committee's workshops, he said, "We have urged the bishops that they should not allow litigation to get in the way" of such meetings.
A common complaint among the 280 bishops meeting here was that victims' groups have not given them credit for strides they have made in the past year. In his progress report, Flynn said the bishops have removed "hundreds" of past abusers from the ministry, hired a former FBI agent to head a new office of youth protection, contracted for an independent audit of every diocese's compliance with the charter, and begun studies of the extent and causes of the church's sex abuse problem.
Members of both camps said that all across the country, victims and bishops have built good working relationships, but that some gulfs seem more impassable than before.
Serrano first confronted his bishop, Frank J. Rodimer of Paterson, N.J., in 1985. Then 21, Serrano said he had been abused by his parish priest, the Rev. James T. Hanley, in Mendham, N.J., starting when he was 9 and ending when he was 16.
"I begged him to take Father Hanley out of ministry, and he refused," Serrano said. "He said Father Hanley had admitted that he abused me but promised he would never do it again. He said, 'Mark, he's said he's sorry. I have to trust him, I have to give him another chance.' "
Rodimer, 76, also recalled that conversation, though not in such detail. He said he regrets that he did not immediately remove Hanley, now 66, who was transferred from parish to parish and has been accused of abuse by 15 young men. "I was going on what I thought was the best advice at the time," he said.
Serrano received a $350,000 legal settlement from the diocese in 1987 and did not speak publicly about his experience of abuse until last spring, after the sex abuse scandal erupted in Boston. He has since emerged as a national spokesman for SNAP, traveling the country with his parents to encourage other victims to come forward, and to urge their parents to support them.
Louis Serrano, 74, a retired New York City police officer, and Patricia Serrano, 70, a semi-retired travel agent, are leaders of the New Jersey chapter of SNAP. It is one of 33 regional chapters formed in the past 18 months as the organization has grown from 3,000 members to more than 4,600.
"I carry a tremendous load of guilt because of what happened to Mark," Louis Serrano said. "The way I have found to ease that -- and I tell this to other parents -- is to channel it into action."
Rodimer said dealing with the Serranos used to be "awkward, but it isn't anymore." Over the past year, he said, he has removed five former abusers from ministry, appointed a victim to his lay review board on abuse allegations, and disclosed that the diocese has spent $2 million on abuse-related legal settlements and counseling fees.
"I really owe a lot to their persistence and their efforts to be heard," the bishop said. "They've been a great help to me in my own understanding of the pain, the seriousness of the crime and the tremendous responsibility of the church."
Mark Serrano said all is not forgiven. The thought that most bothers him is that Hanley could have been prosecuted when he first came to Rodimer in 1985. The alleged abuse is now beyond the statute of limitations in New Jersey. The church has defrocked Hanley, but he has not been criminally charged.
"They asked me whether I thought he belonged in jail, and I said 'yes,' but there's nothing I can do," Rodimer said. "I think that's a resentment that is always going to make it difficult for any kind of reconciliation or closure."
