Bishop Donald Kettler, head of the Roman
Catholic Diocese in Fairbanks, sat in a tiny meeting room in the Yup'ik
village of St. Michael.
"I've come this evening just to, to hear what you'd like to tell me,
or what you'd like to say to me," said Kettler, who oversees a northern
and western Alaska diocese more than three times the size of Italy.
A
grey V-neck sweater framed his priest's collar and soft features.
"If there's something that you'd like to tell me, please, uh, you know. Do that."
About 10 villagers stared back at the
Bishop in silence. A man and woman sat holding hands next to a window.
Someone had closed the blinds.
Finally, a middle-aged man named Ben Andrews spoke.
"Joseph Lundowski. Father Endal ..." he
began, naming the men who sexually abused him and a generation of other
St. Michael children on an almost daily basis.
"I wish that those who victimized me, I
wish they was here, too," said Andrews, who says his father once beat
him for saying he'd been raped by a priest. Andrews clasped his hands
together on the wooden table, then put his palms to his head as Kettler
apologized on behalf of the church.
The moment is quiet and tense and
creaking under the weight of decades of hurt in Western Alaska villages
where victims suffered rampant sexual abuse by church officials.
It is hard to watch. Later this month it will be seen by nearly 3 million people.
The scene was filmed in early December
and is part of a roughly 28-minute documentary that will air April 19 on
the PBS series "Frontline."
The show, titled "The Silence,"
investigates the sexual abuse by Catholic and Jesuit personnel in a
region that today wrestles with alcohol abuse, suicide and domestic
violence.
Through the voice of victims, the
documentary tells the story of routine sexual abuse of Alaska Native
children in St. Michael and other villages in the 1960s and '70s. The
crime was kept secret for a generation and initially denied by the
church as victims began to come forward in lawsuits in the mid-2000s.
The PBS show bookends earlier news
reports on survivor's stories by following church officials back to St.
Michael for a series of court-mandated meetings between Kettler, victims
and their families.
The producers estimate that nearly four
out of five children in St. Michael were molested by Lundowski, a
church volunteer, as well as by the local priest and others affiliated
with the church between 1968 and 1975.
"No bishop has ever come face to face with that," said Tom Curran, a documentary filmmaker who wrote and produced "The Silence" with reporter Mark Trahant.
Curran grew up in a strict
Irish-Catholic household in Alaska, the son of a former Anchorage
district attorney, he said.
He read about the state's sex-abuse scandal
in the Los Angeles Times in 2005 after leaving the state.
Curran couldn't stop thinking about the
case. He knew he wanted to make a documentary. He didn't know the
Catholic church would help.
'A PARTICULARLY TERRIBLE PREDATOR'
Father George Endal and Joseph
Lundowski, a former Trappist monk and Catholic volunteer recruited by
Endal, spent years traveling to Western Alaska villages before arriving
in St. Michael in 1968.
Lundowski, in particular, targeted
Native boys as he traveled from Dillingham to Nulato to Hooper Bay, St.
Michael and Stebbins.
He plied the children he abused with sacramental
wine and candy, money from collection plates and good grades in
catechism class.
"Joseph Lundowski was a particularly terrible predator," said Robert Hannon, chancellor for the Fairbanks diocese.
"He stylized himself as a Jesuit
brother, but he had never formally been trained or accepted in that
role," Hannon said in a phone interview last week.
But while Lundowski was never ordained,
he "assumed the role of a Catholic priest," teaching catechism,
baptizing children and officiating at weddings, the Times reported.
Lundowski left the Norton Sound village
in 1975 after St. Michael resident Martha Abochook caught him in the
act, according to a 2004 lawsuit.
The diocese removed him from Alaska,
and Lundowski died in Chicago in 1996.
Endal, the Jesuit priest, was accused of knowing what Lundowski and another volunteer did and of abusing children himself.
The priest died in 1996 too. Neither man was ever charged with a crime.
In 1997 the Alaskan of the Year
Committee honored Endal with a "With Great Respect Award," according to
Daily News reports at the time.
The honor is reserved for people who
have made a "permanent imprint" in the history of state, the committee
said.
BISHOP VISITING VILLAGES
In 2004, 28 men filed a lawsuit in
Bethel describing the abuse and seeking monetary damages from the
Catholic diocese and Jesuit Province in Oregon.
Three years later, the Jesuits agreed
to pay $50 million to 110 people living in Alaska villages who said they
were molested by Lundowski, Endal and a dozen other priests and
volunteers.
Meantime, the claims remained against the Fairbanks diocese.
"Cases were being set for trial, and so
they filed bankruptcy to shut down all the cases," attorney Ken Roosa
said in a phone interview. A former prosecutor, Roosa represented the
victims and appears in the "Frontline" documentary.
Hannon, the Fairbanks diocese
chancellor, said church officials realized that even a few of the trials
would bankrupt the diocese, which he said sought to provide a fair
resolution for all the victims.
The diocese emerged from bankruptcy in
early 2010 under an agreement that called for the church to pay about
$9.8 million -- an unusually low figure, Roosa said -- to nearly 300
people who reported abuse.
It also called for the Bishop to read a
letter of apology in every affected parish.
That process, which includes the
bishop's December visit to St. Michael that was filmed by "Frontline,"
has taken more than a year. It still isn't finished.
"That was a welcome responsibility," said Hannon, who estimated the bishop has been to about 30 parishes.
Still, Roosa said many victims aren't interested in meeting with the bishop in their villages.
"The bulk of them don't even go to
these services. The bulk of them can't even stand to be in the same room
as a priest," he said.
FILMING BEGINS
Curran wanted the Catholic Church's
side of the story in his documentary but didn't know what to expect when
he first phoned Fairbanks headquarters in fall of 2009.
He talked to Hannon, the diocese chancellor. He talked about his Irish-Catholic childhood and studying theology in college.
For his part, Hannon said he was
encouraged by the producer's efforts to visit the village again and
again and his seeming interest in filming what Hannon called the healing
process as well as telling the story of past abuse.
"That coincides pretty closely with what we want to do which is heal. Reach out, inform people," he said.
Over dozens of conversations, Curran
arranged to film the bishop's visit to St. Michael. There, men and women
who were abused as children by Lundowski, Endal and others were given
the option of attending meetings with and without cameras, the producer
said.
As the Bishop's meetings with abused
Alaskans continue, Kettler held a "listening session" Friday afternoon
at the Anchorage Marriott Downtown.
The meeting was meant to allow Western
Alaska villagers who have since moved to the state's largest city to
meet with church officials and talk about the abuse.
Of the dozen people who attended, only a
few identified themselves as abuse victims.
Kettler offered apologies
-- both for sexual abuse and for the church prohibiting children from
speaking Native languages in schools or performing Native drumming or
dancing.
A woman told Kettler she had tried to
tell priests in the village what happened to her. But it seems like the
villagers were viewed as "savages," she said, who could be hurt with
impunity
"I'm glad the silence is broken," she said.
NIGHTMARES
Peter "Packy" Kobuk was 12 years old
when Lundowski brought him into a bedroom, locked the door and pulled
the boy's pants down.
Kobuk told the Los Angeles Times in
2005 that he had to block thoughts of burning down the church as an
adult.
In the upcoming "Frontline" documentary, he says he still has
nightmares about Lundowski having sex with him.
"(I) get up sweating, angry, feel like I
could hurt somebody, but I never meaned to get angry at my children,
but the anger went on my children also," Kobuk says.
Reached by phone Friday afternoon,
months after Kettler's visit, Kobuk said it was good for the bishop to
come and apologize. Kobuk said he apologized to Kettler too, about the
lawsuit.
"I'm still a Catholic," he explained.
He's still having nightmares.
SPECIAL SCREENING
About 2.7 million people watch
"Frontline" each week, according to a spokeswoman for the show.
"The
Silence" will likely premiere on the second half of the of the April 19
episode, following another short documentary.
An Alaska screening is planned for 8
p.m. April 28 at the Bear Tooth Theatrepub and Grill.
After the
screening, Curran and others will appear on a panel to talk about the
documentary, said Elsie Boudreau, a victims advocate who settled her
claims involving Jesuit priest James Poole in 2005.
Boudreau told church officials on
Friday that they should not expect a round of apologies to cure
decades-old scars from abuse.
"This has been going on in the church for a
very long time and there's been a lot of cover up," she said.
Boudreau also appears in the
"Frontline" episode.
Near the end of the documentary the Fairbanks
bishop is seen delivering Mass to Andrews, Kobuk and other victims at
the St. Michael church.
Only a few people showed up, the narrator says.
The village church hasn't had a full-time priest in decades.
In the documentary, one by one, villagers walk to the front of the church for a blessing from Kettler.
The bishop traces a small cross on
Andrews' forehead with his thumb.
"Please forgive me and the church for
any hurt that has come to you ..." he says.