24351: Re: Chavraux (pub) The Real Ron Voss (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Serge Chavraux <sergechavraux@hotmail.com>


Warning about ex-priest urged
Suspected abuser is a threat to kids in Haiti, and
church should act, group says.

By Robert King
robert.king@indystar.com
October 9, 2004
The Inianoplis Star

A former priest accused of abusing eight male
teenagers in Indiana a decade ago poses an ongoing
threat to children in Haiti, and the Catholic Church
should do something to stop him, a national group that
represents abuse victims said Friday.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or
SNAP, said Indiana's Catholic bishops also should do
more to find others victimized by Ron Voss, who
resigned his ministry in 1993 and now lives in Haiti.

"We would like to see the bishops do what Jesus Christ
told us to do -- go out and find the lost and wounded
sheep," David Clohessy, SNAP's national director, said
at a news conference in front of the Roman Catholic
Archdiocese of Indianapolis headquarters.

Voss was a priest in the Diocese of Lafayette, which
was the subject of a report that appeared in The
Indianapolis Star in 1997. It documented claims of
abuse against 16 priests, including Voss, and that
diocese's effort to keep the cases quiet.

Voss was not criminally charged.

Efforts to reach him in Haiti were unsuccessful.

Clohessy called on Indianapolis Archbishop Daniel M.
Buechlein to use Catholic publications and media to
warn others about Voss, reach out to Voss' victims and
help police and prosecutors tackle his case.

Susan Borcherts, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese,
said Buechlein has no influence over the Diocese of
Lafayette, which is headed by Bishop William L. Higi.

Monsignor Robert Sell, the vicar general in Lafayette,
said Voss -- having been granted a request to return
to being a lay member of the church -- was no longer a
priest and was not under the authority of the
Lafayette Diocese.

But Sell said it was his understanding that Voss
continues to do volunteer work in Haiti through a
program that encourages Catholic parishes in America
to partner with parishes in Haiti for assistance and
help with parish life.

The Star's 1997 report revealed that Voss, a native of
Anderson, abused teens at a family camp in northern
Delaware County.

After accusations arose against him in 1988, he
received therapy and moved to Haiti.

Clohessy said Voss' move resembles a pattern exposed
recently by the Dallas Morning News. That paper
documented how accused priests frequently move or are
transferred overseas -- often to Third World countries
where law enforcement is lax and children in poverty
are vulnerable.

"This report has re-kindled our long-standing worries
about shrewd, abusive clergy who now live in other
countries," Clohessy wrote in his letter to Archbishop
Buechlein.

Sell said Voss was no longer a threat to children
because he has gone through and continues to take part
in therapy. Experts have determined Voss "was not a
threat to minors and that he had an awareness of what
his weakness and proclivities might be," Sell said.

The Lafayette Diocese contacted state Child Protection
Services officials about each case involving Voss that
it became aware of, but the state took no action, Sell
said. Further, the diocese's weekly newspaper
continues to publish notices urging victims of abuse
by any priest to contact authorities, he said.

Clohessy, who will speak today about the abuse scandal
at St. Thomas Aquinas Church at 46th and Illinois
streets, said the bishops should do more than wait for
the phone to ring.

"All too often we see the bishops doing the bare
minimum," he said.

Call Star reporter Robert King at (317) 444-6089.

************************************************

Abused youngsters and their families face an ongoing
struggle with their emotional wounds.

By Richard D. Walton and Linda Graham Caleca / The
Indianapolis Star/News
(Sun. Feb. 16, 1997) --

Little Linda Schrader believed the kindly priest when
he told her he'd never hurt her.

Then Arthur Sego sat atop the child and rubbed her
breasts.

When he finished, he instructed the obedient girl to
kneel.

Sego prayed over her, recalls Schrader, who -- at 46
-- struggles to believe again.

"If you can't trust a priest," the suburban
Indianapolis woman says, "who can you trust?"

A central Indiana couple trusted Ron Voss. A cherished
friend, the Rev. Voss called their young son "almost
perfect." Then, when he had him off alone, Voss
sexually abused him.

"Our son suffered," says the victim's mother. "This
guy betrayed him."

Betrayal -- it forever links those who put their trust
in men of faith, only to discover their true creed was
satisfying sexual cravings.

Those who fell prey to abusive priests of the
Lafayette Diocese tell stories of despair, anger,
shame -- and loss.

Schrader lost a religion. She bears the guilt of
raising her children outside of the Catholic faith.

For the Voss victim's parents, more than trust was
broken. So were their hearts.

Their tormented son, who used drugs to numb the pain
of his molestation, died tragically after he revealed
his abuse.

Taken from a victim of the Rev. Ken Bohlinger was
innocence -- "a lot of who I was," says the young man.
Ten years later, the victim can't speak of his nights
with the former Anderson priest without crying.

For some abuse survivors, so painful are the memories
that for years they suppressed them.

They were deeply distrustful of those closest to them,
but could not fathom why.

Most of her life, Angela Mitchell distrusted men.

She says she was 33 when she started remembering what
Sego did to her as a child.

The "screams" inside her, as she calls them, have
taken a physical toll. The trauma aggravates
Mitchell's asthma, repeatedly putting her in the
hospital.

The Kokomo woman says that as a girl, she accompanied
Sego on a trip to pick up Communion bread. Afterward,
she says, the priest molested her.

"He took something from me that I wasn't ready to
give."

As if the pain from their abuse weren't enough, some
victims lived for years with an added burden: that
they were somehow to blame.

"Our little secret"

As a sixth-grader at St. Charles School in Peru, Linda
Schrader thought something was wrong with her. The
nuns were always sending her to talk to the priest.

To the naive country girl, that priest seemed like
Christ on Earth. So when Sego locked his rectory door
and told her to remove her blouse, she wondered why
but obeyed.

"Here he was praying over me and I was his prey, easy
prey," Schrader says. "I had no clue what was going
on."

Schrader says the priest made her feel special,
wanted, at a time when she questioned her own father's
love.

Sego, far from helping to mend her family rift,
exploited it. He told the girl he loved her "like a
daughter" and suggested that only he truly cared for
her.

Another young pupil, Cristi Smith Wysong, recalls that
Sego made her feel special, too. She says he called
her his "angel," and proposed a "game."

"He had his robe on and he would pull his penis out
and say it was an elephant. And then he would say, 'Do
you want to touch the elephant?'" Wysong says.

In an interview, Sego said he didn't remember a Cristi
Wysong. His only response to her accusations came in a
court deposition. Asked if he had a pet elephant, he
said, "I did. Golly." He did not elaborate.

Sego suggests that both Mitchell and Schrader
exaggerate what he did to them.

He said under oath that he undressed Mitchell and
exposed himself to her, but did not touch her. He also
denies touching Schrader, but admits he had her
undress and dance for him.

The victims say Sego is lying. Some say not only did
he abuse them, he threatened them after the acts.

The devil, Sego told Wysong, would get her if she
told.

To Schrader the priest said, "This is our little
secret."

It was a secret Schrader would keep for most of her
life. For through decades of unexplained anger and
distrust of men, she clung to the illusion that Sego
actually cared for her.

Only a year ago did she come to accept that she was
victimized, a little girl in the clutches of a master
manipulator.

Schrader has reconciled with her father, who loved her
all along. And she draws strength from other victims
who have come forward with their stories.

With Sego's dirty secret finally out, Schrader now
knows there never was anything wrong with her.

"I'm a good person," she says. "I didn't ask for
this."

A tragic cycle

The boy Father Voss called nearly perfect bore his
dark secret into adulthood.

In a call home from college one night, he started
releasing the pain.

"Mom," he said, "I think I'm going insane -- help me."


Only years later did he finally confide to his mother
what was wrong -- that he had been molested by a Roman
Catholic priest. He didn't name his abuser, though,
and soon after died of a heart attack. It fell to his
outraged father to learn the abuser's identity: "Ron
Voss -- son of a bitch."

The victim's mother insisted on confronting Voss.

Sitting across from the man she had called friend, the
anguished woman read from a statement that bespoke
treachery and loss.

"You have no idea what it is to labor, to birth a
human being -- to give life," she told Voss. "Beyond
words!"

With her she had a photo and a pair of shoes. "This is
all I have left of my son!" she cried.

The woman, who says her boy was 13 or 14 when he was
abused, blasted Voss with questions.

"Do you know how sick it is to sexually take advantage
of a young person?" she asked.

"How do I live (with) this agony forever and forever?"


And of her son's abuse: "Where were you, Ron -- and
how did you do it?"

Voss began to speak.

Sickened, she cut him off.

The woman says the priest admitted molesting her son,
but amazingly proclaimed he didn't know he "was doing
anything wrong."

Had he himself been molested by a priest? she asked.

Yes, Voss answered.

"And ... the priest said he loved me."

Documented information shows Voss told others as well
of his sexual relationship with a priest, starting
when Voss was 15 or 16.

Far from viewing himself as a victim, Voss has said
the relationship was nurturing.

A diocese official who said he knew nothing of Voss'
own victimization acknowledged Voss had been slow to
grasp the full extent of "boundaries" he violated with
young people.

The victim's mother shudders at that mentality.

Still, she recalls that during her confrontation with
Voss, the priest seemed drained, devastated.

At the end, he started to cry.

Exposed as an abuser, Voss said: "This is just so
humiliating."

The woman put her arms around him. Even though Voss
had damaged her son, she still felt compassion. Ron
"was like my son, like my brother ...

"I said, 'It is humiliating. Look what you've done.'"

Near death and back

What Father Bohlinger did to an Anderson boy is
depicted on a curled piece of red cardboard.

It is a collage of disturbing images -- shaped like a
cross.

The victim, now in his early 20s, fashioned it to help
cope with his abuse by a man he trusted, a man, he
says, who "seemed like he wanted to be your friend."

The top of the cross is a rose entangled in barbed
wire. Below are pictures of a bare-breasted woman and
a Smirnoff vodka bottle, symbolizing the pornography
and alcohol Bohlinger used to entice his young
parishioner. Cut from a magazine, these words:

"Your childhood isn't lost."

But for this former altar boy at St. Mary Church, it
was.

He nearly lost his life.

For two days, the teen lay in critical condition after
taking a drug overdose the victim blames on his sexual
abuse.

He recalls that he was 13 when he accompanied
Bohlinger on two camping trips, each time with at
least one other boy. Driving to the wooded area,
Bohlinger stopped to buy liquor and beer, and the
pornographic magazines.

The priest told the boys that what they were doing
wasn't wrong, but urged them not to tell their
parents. "They wouldn't understand," the victim
recalls Bohlinger saying.

During the day, the campers fished and hiked.

At night -- in Bohlinger's tent -- "we'd start
drinking ... and look at the magazines."

"He would masturbate in front of us and we would
masturbate in front of him."

Ask the man whether the priest touched him and he
starts to cry. He waves his hands and says softly,
"Not gonna go there." Later, though, he acknowledges
there was "mutual" touching. Bohlinger, who now lives
in Arizona and no longer works as a priest, says he
doesn't recall touching the boys but admits to the
masturbating.

After his time with Bohlinger, the altar boy's
personality changed. He smashed a hole in a wall. His
parents discovered hard-core pornography in his room.
Then there was the overdose.

His mother remembers the desperate drive to the
hospital, slapping her son's face to keep him awake.

For more than a year, his parents agonized over what
had gone wrong. Each morning they clasped hands and
prayed for their son's healing.

The breakthrough came.

At 17, the victim says, he checked himself into a drug
and alcohol treatment center. There, he mentioned that
the first time he ever got drunk was with a priest.
His statement shocked listeners, and he went on to
reveal the whole story of abuse.

Like other victims, he struggles with feelings of
guilt and wonders whether he'll trust again.

Does he hate Bohlinger? The young man's eyes narrow. A
tear streams down his cheek.

"I don't hate him," he says. "I'm very, very angry at
him."

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