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| ChrisOLeary.com > Sins of the Fathers > TOC > Terrorist Threats |
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In January 2019 I filed a police report with the Richmond Heights police department, the municipality in which the Church of the Immacolata is located. The hope, in part, was to make it easier for journalists to look into, and ask questions about, my story. I also wanted my story in the computer so, in case someone came in with a similar story and set of allegations, they'd know they aren't alone. After filing a four-page, written statement, and as the police officer who took the report walked me out of the building and to my car, he said to me, "I hate to ask. But I've got to ask. Why is the Shrewsbury police file, and incident, labelled, 'Terrorist Threats?'" Terrorist ThreatsFor whatever reason, the Catholic Church and the Archdiocese of St. Louis feel justified in playing dirty. In saying and doing anything. Anything. And, of all the horrible things the Archdiocese of St. Louis has done to my family and me, the worst was — falsely — accusing me of making Terrorist Threats against Archbishop Carlson and the Archdiocese. What's worse Sandra Price admitted — in front of Archbishop Carlson — during my March 26, 2019 meeting with Archbishop Robert Carlson of the Archdiocese of St. Louis that those allegations were false... ChrisOLeary: ...I know allegations have been made against me that I’ve made “Terroristic Threats” against the Archdiocese… (THE) Shrewsbury (POLICE DEPARTMENT) has a file with that heading… However, and despite my asking him, in person, multiple times, Archbishop Robert Carlson of the Archdiocese of St. Louis refuses to "clarify" much less retract that lie. And set me free. Law and the USCCBWhen Cardinal Bernard Law died in late 2017, the USCCB put out a release that, in addition to memorializing Cardinal Law, also mentioned that survivors should contact their local diocesan Assistance Coordinator. And that triggered the crap out of me. I had spent YEARS trying — without success — to do just that; to contact and get help from the Assistance Coordinator for the Archdiocese of St. Louis. To no avail. So I quickly put together a piece entitled Assistance Coordinators and Other Lies that pulled no punches in describing my efforts to get help from the Archdiocese of St. Louis. Assuming — naively — that the USCCB would want to know that the Archdiocese of St. Louis wasn't honoring USCCB's promise of helping survivors by providing them with Assistance Coordinators, and not realizing that USCCB had NO power over bishops and their dioceses, I sent an e-mail to the (lay) executive director of the USCCB), Deacon Bernie Nojadera... ...to which he responded with a request to contact Sandra Price of the the Archdiocese of St. Louis. I assumed he wanted to get both sides of the story, so I gave him permission. After a few weeks of back and forth, in which I was growing increasingly frustrated, I ended up received a stunning e-mail from Sandra Price of ArchStL in the form of an implicit admission that It Happened... I say "implicit" because, while she all but admitted It Happened, she did so among so many (LIE)s... You chose to litigate (LIE) your claims of sexual abuse by Rev. Leroy Valentine. YOUR CLAIMS WERE ACKNOWLEDGED by Deacon Phil Hengen (LIE), the Archdiocese of Saint Louis (LIE) and the court system...Please know that YOU AND ALL VICTIMS OF ABUSE... ...that it took me literally 10 days before i realized what she had conceded. A few weeks later, and bothered by the obfuscation of the lies, I wrote Sandra Price back, asking her to plainly admit It Happened. I didn't see this as a big deal. I was just a — by this point acknowledged — survivor asking for clarity. But what I hadn't noticed — or appreciated — was this statement in Sandra Price's February 5, 2018 e-mail to me. Because your claim has been fully settled and is final the Archdiocese of Saint Louis will not be responding to any further inquiries regarding these claims. At the same time, I had been in contact with a reporter named Aisha Sultan and she had started reporting and writing what would become Priest Sex Abuse Survivor Says Trauma Lingers. For legal reasons — people at the paper tried to kill the story — the story was delayed until late April, but by late February the story was done and I was starting to get scared by the prospect of going public.
The prospect of going public terrified me, as did a heads-up DM I received from a fellow survivor, all of which led me to publicly express my ability to defend myself.
You can say I was being paranoid, but when fellow, and more experienced, survivors started tweeting at me, I took them seriously.
And when survivors DMed with with stories, I had to take those seriously.
However, the thing to notice is the purely DEFENSIVE nature of my tweets. I used the word "protect."
A day later, I again e-mailed Sandra Price, asking her to plainly admit It Happened. Then, the next day, I sent out a tweet that I hoped would clarify what my intentions were; that they were purely defensive.
If you're looking to assassinate someone, you're certainly not going to do it with rock salt. Rock salt is a defensive, NON-LETHAL weapon. I had no idea my tweets were being monitored, but it turned out that someone at the Archdiocese of St. Louis went to the Shrewsbury Police in early March 2019 and told them I was threatening to assassinate Archbishop Carlson and/or shoot up the offices of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, which are in Shrewsbury. As a result, when I sent another e-mail to Sandra Price asking her, in the spirit of holy week, to admit It Happened... ...that led to a visit by the Shrewsbury Police on March 29, 2018.
That then led to an investigation and the creation of a report... |