Excerpt:
Timothy Lee Leonard
Claims to fame: Former associate pastor of North Sharon Baptist Church (near Ann Arbor, MI); honored alumnus of (surprise!) Hyles Anderson College; accused child molester
Moral apex: Charged, in 1992, with 11 counts of first- and second-degree sexual assault on children.
The company he kept: Leonard was accused of child molestation right around the same time as North Sharon Baptist deacon (and — surprise! — fellow Hyles-Anderson grad) Mark Foeller was accused of the same thing.
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1994-08-18/news/the-church-buys-silence/
Excerpt:
Van Heywood, a former member of St. Theresa parish, 5045 East Thomas, was, along with his wife and nine children, seeking civil damages from the church and Bishop O'Brien. The Heywoods claimed their family was destroyed because one of their adopted sons, now 22 years old, had been sexually molested by Father George Bredemann, then an assistant pastor at St. Theresa.
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1989-10-25/news/father-joe/
Excerpt:
Father Joe
The road dips into rocky washes, winds through forests of saguaros and climbs up a windswept hill to a toppled wooden cross that marks the entrance to Father George Bredemann's twenty-acre kingdom. Father George spent practically every weekend at his "Castle." Nestled a few miles south of U.S. 60-89, the highway that links Sun City West and Wickenburg, the priest's desert hideaway is miles away from the nearest neighbors and can be reached only by the primitive dirt road.
The grounds are strewn with donations from Catholic charities and loving parishioners, gifts meant to help the priest as he built his retreat for altar boys, retarded Boy Scouts and troubled youths.
Even when Father George was there, the donations rotted and rusted randomly throughout the acreage--lawn chairs, loose nails, barbecue grills, stoves, wheelbarrows, mattresses, rolls of carpet and padding, used lumber, insulation, roofing, a children's swimming pool. There are also empty beer cans and vodka bottles. At the far end of the hill there are thirteen old toilets and several sinks, and next to them is a grave marked by a wooden cross that bears no name. The grave contains the ashes of a Catholic who wished to be buried at the Castle, says deputy county attorney Cindi Nannetti, who prosecuted Bredemann.
The Castle itself is a two-story shack built by the priest and a few parishioners. On the first floor is a kitchen, living room and a medical room with a doctor's examining table and a large picture of a tortured Christ. On the second floor is Father George's bedroom, where he and the boys slept. It's a room that can be reached only by a set of stairs that swing upward; it's designed for absolute privacy from the rest of the house.
"The pollution up at the Castle is an example of how chaotic that man's emotions are," says one nun, who declines to be identified. "Take a look at the term `castle.' It's the epitome of absolute control. That was his refuge. I don't think he ever had an intention of completing it. He was living a life of absolute fantasy, and the children were part of that fantasy, somehow."
Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Father George Bredemann would pull out his CB radio and alert neighbor boys that he had arrived. Usually, he already had a couple of altar servers (he called them "critters"), a retarded youth or perhaps a troubled boy in need of counseling with him in his old van. Practically the first thing Father George did when he arrived at the Castle--assuming there were no women around--was to take off his clothes. The middle-aged overweight priest loved to swim, stroll and cook naked when only he and the boys were at the Castle. Sometimes, he'd have a boy sleep naked with him in his bed.
"George was a little crude," explains Fred Noll, a semi-retired mechanic and St. Catherine's parishioner who became good friends with the priest after fixing his van.
Noll, who wrote the court on Father George's behalf and is still the priest's most loyal defender, recalls: "Many times after being out at the Castle working all day and living in a building that has no cooling, after the sun goes down you take a shower and sit around in the nude to cool off. I know there were times when we were out there and we'd sit around nude. He's not too modest. I usually had to wear shorts, at least."
Often, Father George would ask the boys if they wanted to take off their clothes, too. It was natural, Father George told them. Nothing wrong with it. One boy later told police that Father George once shot a .22 caliber rifle nestled next to his own naked penis to prove that such a gun had no dangerous recoil.
Father George's nudity upset at least five altar boys who were later interviewed by police. One boy said the nudity embarrassed him so much he would always pretend to fall asleep downstairs in front of the TV. That way, he wouldn't have to go "upstairs" where the priest slept. Prosecutor Nannetti says Father George paraded around nude to "groom" the boys for future sexual activity.
"He didn't see anything wrong with being nude in front of young boys and older men," says Noll. "But if there was ever a lady out there, he never sat around in the nude. He did respect that. But I don't think he differentiated between young boys and men--we were all made the same way and all had the same parts. I never seen George ever do anything you'd consider hanky panky with young kids."
But in the summer of 1989, after he struck his plea bargain, Father George admitted to a polygraph examiner that he'd been sexually involved with a thirteen-year-old boy on at least two occasions while he lived in Scottsdale. He claimed he woke up in the night to discover this particular boy was performing oral sex on him. Father George admitted enjoying it. The priest also told the same examiner that in 1985 he'd engaged in mutual masturbation at least twice with another thirteen-year-old boy.
Excerpt:
"I've been dubbed a child abuser, an evildoer," Emerick tells New Times in his first public discussion of his program's demise. "My wife [Maricopa County sex-crimes prosecutor Cindi Nannetti] and myself have had death threats. Photographers from the Republic snuck behind a dumpster near our home trying to get a picture of the 'evil couple.' Our program handled the worst of the worst juvenile sex offenders. I think we were doing the right thing. But I have to leave Arizona to earn a living."
Judge Ronald Reinstein, who presides over the criminal division of the Maricopa County Superior Court, sums up the episode:
Excerpt:
Pedophilia and hebephilia
Studies examining the efficiency of using penile plethysmograph to distinguish between pedophilic men from non-pedophilic men show that a majority can be correctly assigned to the proper category.[22][23][24] In one study, 21% of the subjects were excluded for various reasons, including "the subject's erotic age-preference was uncertain and his phallometrically diagnosed sex-preference was the same as his verbal claim" and attempts to influence the outcome of the test.[23] In a second study, sensitivity of the method to distinguish between pedophilic men from non-pedophilic men was estimated between 29% and 61% depending on subgroup.[22]
Excerpt:
TARGET: Your Child: Continued
Copyright © 1997 By Ray Thomas, Updated 2007
One of their routine activities is to "treat and counsel" victims of child abuse. Let's look at what they call "treatment and counseling," and what I call sexual abuse and torture of children, some less than twelve years old: Penile Plethysmography: In 1992, it was discovered that Phoenix Memorial Hospital, in Phoenix, Arizona, was routinely raping children, some as young as ten years old, with what they called "penile plethysmography," which was, simply, government-financed rape of the child. This "treatment" was used to determine just what "turned the child on," by applying a detector to the genitals of the child (in the case of a boy, it was a ring that was attached to the base of the child's penis -- while girls got a phallus-shaped detector inserted into the vagina (these are children, for gawd's sake!). Then the child is shown pornographic pictures (kiddie porn!) of other children in sexually-suggestive poses. The "detectors" are used to measure the degree of arousal in each child and to record exactly which pictures were responsible for the arousal. Is this not rape of a child?
http://newjerseydyfsdefense.com/2010/04/01/wounded-innocents-the-real-victims-of-the-war-against-child-abuse-by-richard-wexler/
Excerpt:
“The war against child abuse has become a war against children,” charges Wexler, a reporter for the Albany, N.Y., Times Union , in a well-argued, in-depth study of the “child protection system” in the U.S. and the politics that enmesh it. He maintains that even more alarming than the alleged abuses suffered by children at the hands of their parents are the disruption of home life and the long-lasting trauma of minors assigned to institutions and foster homes that are either as bad as or worse than their own families. He asserts also that “witch-hunts” of foster parents suspected of improper conduct and harried supporting care system administrators, at times involving false accusations of sexual abuse, are all too common. While crediting competent, dedicated caseworkers who struggle in an overloaded welfare system, Wexler deplores what he considers misleading statistics and the presumption of parental guilt that underlie much child protection work. Preventive programs, legal measures and financial incentives meant to preserve original families figure in his detailed recommendations for reform.” - Review by Publishers Weekly
http://www.amazon.com/Wounded-Innocents-Victims-Against-Child/dp/0879759364
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims of the War Against Child Abuse by Richard Wexler
April 1, 2010 at 12:07 pm (Uncategorized)
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
"The war against child abuse has become a war against children," charges Wexler, a reporter for the Albany, N.Y., Times Union , in a well-argued, in-depth study of the "child protection system" in the U.S. and the politics that enmesh it. He maintains that even more alarming than the alleged abuses suffered by children at the hands of their parents are the disruption of home life and the long-lasting trauma of minors assigned to institutions and foster homes that are either as bad as or worse than their own families. He asserts also that "witch-hunts" of foster parents suspected of improper conduct and harried supporting care system administrators, at times involving false accusations of sexual abuse, are all too common. While crediting competent, dedicated caseworkers who struggle in an overloaded welfare system, Wexler deplores what he considers misleading statistics and the presumption of parental guilt that underlie much child protection work. Preventive programs, legal measures and financial incentives meant to preserve original families figure in his detailed recommendations for reform.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
The author, a journalist for the Times Union (Albany, N.Y.), charges that Americans have surrendered their most fundamental liberties to a too-powerful child-protective system that turns everyone dealing with children into an informer and encourages the public to do the same. As a result, Wexler reports, each year one out of every 30 children nationwide is reported to Child Protective Services as allegedly abused; most cases are dismissed as unsubstantiated, but not before the accusations have wreaked emotional havoc with a million innocent families. Meanwhile, some abused children are overlooked by a system whose resources are wasted on unfounded cases. Wexler substantiates his charges with numerous print sources and personal interviews; he offers 35 recommendations for the overhaul of the system. This extensively researched volume deserves to be read by anyone concerned with child abuse. Recommended for all academic, public, and institutional libraries.
- Christy Zlatos, Northeastern Univ. Libs., Boston
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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