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Refusing to Name Names
In January 2001, I contacted the Spotlight Team
and received a call back from Matt Carroll, a reporter who has
come to be known among female victims as the "dead letter office of
the Boston Globe." Although I had
I spoke to Carroll many times during January, February, and March, and even though he was remarkably insensitive, I supplied him with documents related to my lawsuit, as well as copies of my extensive correspondence with the Salesians. Carroll seemed determined to focus, not on the years of abuse that my brother and I had suffered, or on the fact that my brother died after disclosing Fr. Nugent's misconduct, or on the dangers that Fr. Nugent posed while he lived in Massachusetts, but on the more sordid and superficial details of the case. Despite Carroll's abrasive manner, I continued to cooperate even after an interview with him caused my sister to vow never to speak about this issue to any member of the press again. However, after weeks of emails and phone calls, Carroll seemed to lose interest, so at the end of March, I contacted Andy Newman, a reporter for the New York Times, which published the story on April 11, 2002. Round Two In early October, I learned that Michael Egan, one of my brother's childhood friends, had read the Times article and decided to pursue a lawsuit based on his own abuse at the hands of Salesian priests. I also discovered that Joseph Lemme, another plaintiff, had been expelled from a Salesian junior seminary around the time that Fr. Nugent, whose job then was to recruit boys into the priesthood, found his way into my family. As it turned out, Lemme had been ousted by Emilio Allue, an Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Boston, who is also a Salesian. Since Lemme had been forced out after complaining to Allue about the abuse, and since Fr. Nugent was named as a defendant in the case, I sent an article on the new lawsuit, which appeared in The Journal News on October 1,to Michael Paulson, a Globe reporter who is not a member of the Spotlight Team. Although I hoped to avoid dealing with Carroll again, I thought that this new development might convince the Globe to publish Fr. Nugent's name and, consequently, make it easier for other victims in Massachusetts to speak out. Paulson gave the information to the Spotlight Team, and, unfortunately, Matt Carroll called me to follow up. Carroll was particularly interested in background on the new lawsuit because Bishop Allue had just been in the news for ordering Voice of the Faithful, a Catholic reform group, not to meet on the property of St. Michael's, a North Andover church. Although I regretted having to talk to Carroll again, I proceeded to send him a great deal of new information, and he promised that that Fr. Nugent's name would be included in the story (email below). In our last conversation, Carroll assured me that a major article would appear shortly and asked me not to speak to any other reporters until the piece came out. When weeks passed and, once again, nothing appeared in the paper, I was sorry that Fr. Nugent's name had not been circulated. However, having heard from other women who had similar experiences with the Globe, I began to realize that the decision not to publish the story reflected a general policy of excluding female victims from Spotlight reports. Anyone who doubts this policy has only to look at the facts that were excluded from Boston Bishop Named in Lawsuit, the story on the Salesians that the Globe finally published on November 21. Even though Michael Rezendes, the Spotlight reporter who wrote it, had access to the affidavit that I had filed in the case, and, I assume, access to the voluminous information that I had supplied to Matt Carroll, Fr. Nugent, who is a named defendant in the lawsuit, is not named in the piece. Moreover, Rezendes refers to the Journal News article that I had sent to Paulson, which calls specific attention to the New York Times story on Fr. Nugent, "Egan said that it was the media coverage of the Catholic Church's evolving sex-abuse scandal, particularly a lawsuit against a Salesian priest, that got the former schoolmates talking early this year about abuse and, finally, what had happened to them." In addition, the Journal News article states:
Since avoiding any mention of Fr. Nugent in the Globe story clearly required conscious effort, I can only conclude that Rezendes is doing his best to maintain the Spotlight Team's 100% failure to acknowledge any information provided by female victims. Also note that, in keeping with the Spotlight Team's general disregard for survivors, Rezendes' decision not to identify Fr. Nugent directly contradicts reassurances that Matt Carroll gave me in October.
Since there is no justification for excluding Fr. Nugent from the Salesian story, it is difficult to determine what is driving the judgments made by Spotlight reporters. However, having recently been reminded by the Globe Ombudsman that I don't know what their motives are, I must admit that it's not clear whether the Spotlight Team chose to injure victims for the sake of greater inaccuracy or chose to be inaccurate in order to injure victims. In either case, the Spotlight decision not to name a confirmed predator who probably committed prosecutable crimes against children in Massachusetts crosses the line from ineptitude into irresponsible journalism.
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signed
a confidentiality agreement with Church officials in 1998, I was convinced that telling the story
would help other victims to come forward because the priest who molested
my late brother, Patrick, and me in New York and New Jersey throughout the
1970's was later transferred to Ipswich, Massachusetts, where he
supervised overnight retreats for teenagers for over a decade. This
priest, Fr. Frank Nugent, presented an especially dangerous threat,
not only because his position at the Sacred Heart Retreat House, which was
affiliated with the Archdiocese of Boston, gave him enormous opportunity
to recruit new victims, but also because he is a member of the Salesians of Don
Bosco, a Catholic religious order whose stated mission is to minister to
poor children, a purpose that gives the predators among them access to
the most vulnerable targets of sexual abuse.