Sally Ellison does not have an appointment with the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. She is not even a Catholic. But she is flying 900 miles from her home in Wisconsin to Washington today for a meeting of U.S. bishops, and she thinks they should hear what she has got to say.
"Because of their negligence, my son is dead. I think that's a pretty good reason for them to listen to me, don't you?" she said.
After an unusual hearing last month, a judge in Hudson, Wis., ruled that a Catholic priest, the Rev. Ryan Erickson, "probably" murdered James Ellison, 22, and Daniel O'Connell, 39, on Feb. 5, 2002.
The troubled and troublesome priest, who had a penchant for real handguns and for pretending to shoot people with his thumb and index finger, avoided prosecution by hanging himself from a rectory fire escape last year.
But at the conclusion of the "John Doe hearing" -- a form of trial without a defendant that is allowed in just five states -- St. Croix County Circuit Judge Eric J. Lundell said he was convinced that Erickson, 31, shot the two men after O'Connell accused him of molesting children.
"On a scale of 1 to 10 as far as strength of evidence, I would consider this a 10," the judge said.
Today, members of the devoutly Catholic O'Connell family and the staunchly Lutheran Ellison family are coming to Washington in hopes of addressing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which will meet in a downtown hotel for the next three days. The families' goals may sound fuzzy and quixotic; their 10 representatives say they want "accountability from the bishops" and a meeting with the pope.
But they also have drafted steps they think the church should take. They want a mechanism for punishing seminary rectors and bishops "who recklessly ordain troubled seminarians." They want disclosure of the names and whereabouts of "every admitted, proven or credibly accused Catholic cleric." They want each bishop to publicly acknowledge his mistakes, meet with victims and support legislation in all 50 states to lift the criminal and civil statutes of limitations in child sex abuse cases.
They call it the O'Connell-Ellison Five-Point Plan. They take it seriously, and they think the Catholic hierarchy should, too.
"I'm trying to work my way up to the top, because our bishop hasn't called us once. Not once," said Janet O'Connell, 74, mother of one victim. "I want to keep going up the ladder until I get some kind of an answer. It's got to stop."
Of the more than 11,000 cases of child sexual abuse by about 5,000 U.S. priests that have been reported by U.S. dioceses, the Erickson case is the only one that ended in a double murder and suicide. In that respect, it is unique. But there is nothing unique about the desire of the O'Connell and Ellison families to give their loss meaning by demanding changes in the church.
After three years of settling lawsuits, instituting police background checks and removing hundreds of known or suspected abusers from ministry, the bishops appear eager to put the issue behind them. Their former president, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, declared last year that the "terrible history" of sex abuse by priests "is history." The subject is barely on the agenda for this week's meeting, which is devoted to the role of lay ministers.
