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MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.
MS. WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington. After the News Summary another in our continuing series on health care options for change. Tonight: What to do about long-term care? Then Time Correspondent Richard Ostling examines the sensitive subject of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Finally, Charlayne Hunter- Gault has a conversation with a new U.N. representative in Somalia. NEWS SUMMARY
MR. MacNeil: President Clinton marked his hundredth day in office today by noting a report that showed the nation's economic growth had slowed. The Commerce Department said the Gross Domestic Product grew at a 1.8 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year. That compared with a 4.7 percent rate in last year's fourth quarter. Mr. Clinton said the report proved he was right to push for an economic stimulus plan. A Senate Republican filibuster killed the plan last week. The President said in his first 100 days he learned things would not change as fast as he would like. He spoke to reporters before a meeting with Democratic members of the House Ways & Means Committee at the White House.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I believe I got hired to try to do something about the economy and the health care issue and to try to promote political reform, and some other things we're trying to do. I don't -- when we put all these things out here, I don't expect 'em all to be resolved right away, but I think if you focus on the budget first, that's what we're doing today, then we're going to take up, we're going to focus on health care. But this country still needs to remember that we've got to do these things to put people back to work and to solve their economic problems. That is the issue, the economy, and that is what we are spending, what I'm spending 2/3 of my time or more, on the economy and health care. And that's what I hope we can do in Congress in the few weeks ahead.
MR. MacNeil: Senate Republicans had their own evaluation of Mr. Clinton's first hundred days. They issued a report card giving him D's for his handling of the economy, defense and reform, an incomplete for health care, and F's for his budget and deficit reduction plans. Minority Leader Bob Dole also pointed to today's report on the Gross Domestic Product.
SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Minority Leader: That disappointing statistic ought to be a wake up call at the White House that its tax and spend policies and economic plan are scaring a lot of Americans, businessmen and business women, consumers and investors. After 100 days of tax and spend, it looks like the American people are grading the President with their pocket books and they're not buying. Frankly, I'm not surprised. For the first hundred days, Americans had nothing but tax and spend, tax and spend, and tax and spend from the White House. For the past hundred days, the Senate Republicans have challenged the President to take another course, to listen to people for a change, listen to people up and down Main Street all across America to cut spending first, that's what we hear, cut spending first, to cut government, cut the size of government, and to find a cure for this administration's rampant tax fever.
MR. MacNeil: In other economic news, General Motors reported a profit of more than $1/2 billion during the first quarter of the year. GM lost 21 billion during the same period last year. The improvement came mainly from a turnaround in North American auto sales. Both Ford and Chrysler have also reported substantial improvements in profitability for the first three months of the year. Also today, the government reported sales of new homes rose by 4.8 percent in March. Big surges in the Midwest and West offset declines in the Northeast and South. Judy.
MS. WOODRUFF: This afternoon, President Clinton conferred with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sec. of Defense Les Aspin and Sec. of State Warren Christopher about a possible military response to Serb aggression in Bosnia. His press secretary, Dee Dee Meyers, said Mr. Clinton may decide on a course of action by tomorrow or Saturday. He would then seek support from U.S. allies and members of Congress before announcing it. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic met in Belgrade today with the leader of Bosnia's Serbs, Radovan Karadzic. The Bosnian Serbs reportedly agreed to reconsider the U.N.- sponsored peace plan which they rejected earlier this week. Their self-styled parliament will meet next week on the issue. Serbia, which is being squeezed by U.N. sanctions, is believed to be pressing Bosnia's Serbs to accept the plan. Word of possible Bosnian Serb flexibility prompted peace negotiators Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen to call an urgent weekend meeting of the warring parties. The Athens, Greece, talks will also include the presidents of Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Yugoslavia.
MR. MacNeil: Boris Yeltsin summoned Russia's regional leaders in Moscow today to present them with his draft of a new constitution. The Russian president said Sunday's national vote of confidence had given his reforms popular protection. He warned that any officials trying to hinder the program would be swept aside. Yeltsin called the meeting to get the region's help in making the new constitution law. The document is expected to restrict the power of Russia's conservative parliament or replace it altogether. Italy's 52nd post war government was sworn in today, but it appeared headed for collapse only hours later. Its prime minister, Carlo Ciampi, vowed to end decades of political corruption, but later in the day a corruption scandal caused pandemonium in parliament. A majority of deputies voted to block a major investigation of former Prime Minister Betino Croxy. That led to fist fights and the resignation of four ministers in the new government.
MS. WOODRUFF: A three-day hostage crisis ended in Costa Rica this evening when gunmen released 23 people, including 18 Supreme Court Justices. The kidnappers were reportedly being taken to an airport. They have requested safe passage out of the country. That's it for the News Summary. Just ahead on the NewsHour, health care options for change, tonight, long-term care, incidents of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, and the new U.N. representative in Somalia. SERIES - OPTIONS FOR CHANGE - LONG-TERM CARE
MS. WOODRUFF: We lead with another in our series of options for health care reform. Tonight we focus on long-term care. as President Clinton's health care task force prepares to announce its proposal next month, one of the big questions is whether to include long-term care for the elderly and for other people who need it. We'll debate that idea in a moment after this backgrounder from Correspondent Tom Bearden.
MR. BEARDEN: Some 10 million Americans have chronic ailments requiring long-term care, and for many, the medical problems are compounded by financial woes. Medicare, the federal health care program for the elderly, does pay for hospitalization. But benefits for the homebound, chronically ill are strictly limited, often causing severe hardships for patients and their families. Over the years, the NewsHour has done a number of reports on the problem of long-term care and feature cases that can only be described as horror stories, like this one from 1986.
WOMAN: [talking to elderly man] Are you dizzy today? Does the room spin?
MR. BEARDEN: Vladimir Shednun is a stroke victim. He came home last November after 10 days in the hospital. The visiting nurses are caring for hundreds lke him, people who have survived hospital release but are facing an uncertain future in long-term home care. Shednun and his wife Nadya are immigrants whose families fled the Russian Revolution. They had been living a quiet retirement in their three-room apartment. After the stroke, they had to hire a housekeeper to take care of cooking and cleaning and to help Mrs. Shednun care for her husband. Medicare will not help with those kinds of expenses. Their savings are rapidly being consumed. The housekeeper costs $20 for half a day. They have no family, no resources other than themselves. Medicare has been paying for visits from nurse Phyllis Erickson. But those benefits are about to run out because technically Shednun's medical condition is now stabilized. Nurse Erickson says Shednun will still need medical supervision, but the couple could never afford the hundred dollar a day cost of a private nurse. The prospect of losing the visiting nurse terrifies Mrs. Shednun.
PHYLLIS ERICKSON, Nurse: [June 1986] She told me that if I stopped the aid that she would kill herself and kill her husband, that I just could not neglect them and that Medicare certainly should just not ignore them.
MR. BEARDEN: Not only does Medicare pay for little in the way of home care for the chronically ill, it covers almost none of their nursing home bills. Medicare pays for only that one nursing home patient in a hundred who is recovering from an acute condition, or who can be rehabilitated in a short time. In recent years, private insurance companies have developed policies to cover long-term care, but premiums are high, and the industry estimates that fewer than 5 percent of the elderly have bought the insurance. More commonly, those who require nursing home care wind up on Medicaid, the federal and state program for the poor. To qualify, patients must be impoverished. Many elderly people are forced to "spend down their assets" until they're nearly destitute. Those entering nursing homes may keep their wedding rings and burial plots. Dr. Abraham Kauvar is head of the Health and Hospital Departments in both New York City and Denver.
DR. ABRAHAM KAUVAR, Senior Health Care Center: Can you imagine somebody who has lived all their life and saved a little money and has to spend down and has to become a pauper in order to get into the nursing home to have Medicaid? 50 percent of the people who go into nursing homes are financially able to take care of it for 13 weeks. Then at that time they have no money left at all.
MR. BEARDEN: Often, neither do their families as Kwame Holman reported in 1988.
MR. HOLMAN: [May 1988] Lottie Hamm has been in a nursing home for eight years. Parkinson's Disease and a stroke have left her paralyzed from the neck down. Since she can't open her mouth, she must eat pureed food fed through a syringe. Her daughter, Jeanette Miller, visits four days a week to care for her mother and give her treats.
JEANETTE MILLER: [talking to her disabled mother] How's your birthday cake? Good?
MR. HOLMAN: But one thing the forty-seven year old daughter cannot do is pay her mother's nursing home bill of $2500 a month. That's because she already spent her nestegg of $50,000 on her late father's nursing home bills. Lottie Hamm's bills had been paid by Medicaid through the state of Colorado. The medical assistance program for the poor pays the bills for 65 percent of the state's nursing home residents, but in December, when Mrs. Hamm started receiving her late husband's disability and Social Security checks, Medicaid dropped her. The agency said her income was now too high to qualify for assistance, $37 too high, even though she still was $1500 a month short of the money she needed to pay her medical bills. When Medicaid stopped covering her mother, Jeanette Miller signed legal documents absolving herself of financial responsibility for her mother's medical bills.
JEANETTE MILLER: I hate to have to abandon her, and I feel very much like that's what I have done because I don't think she would have done that to me, and I can't tell her, I can't tell her that I can't pay her bill, that she is on her own. That's not what she would do for me.
MR. BEARDEN: It's not just the elderly and their families who struggle with long-term care costs. Pat Hackett's son is crippled by a muscular disease.
PAT HACKETT: We want for our son to be supported with medical needs and access, a choice of doctors, so that he can be a productive, tax paying citizen. We don't want a handout, and we don't want to go bankrupt in the process.
MR. BEARDEN: Hackett testified before Hillary Rodham Clinton's task force on health care reform which is attempting to include long-term care in its overhaul of the nation's health care system. But the price tag looms large. The nation already spends $50 billion a year on long-term care, a number that could well double if the task force includes a long-term care benefit in its recommended package.
MS. WOODRUFF: But not everyone agrees that the government can afford to include long-term care in its overhaul of the health care system. We sample the debate over the issue now with Paul Hewitt, the vice president for research of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, and with Ronald Pollack, the executive director of the Families USA Foundation, a health consumers advocacy organization that is campaigning for health reform and long-term care. Mr. Pollack, first of all, are we all talking about the same thing when we talk about long-term care? Are we talking about nursing homes and home care or primarily home care? Is there agreement on what we mean by long-term care?
MR. POLLACK: I think there is basic agreement. I think the emphasis is really on home care. That's where we have the least services today. That's where families want to take care of a loved one with a long-term disability, and unfortunately, we really don't have support systems for families that want to keep a loved one at home because it's such a tremendous sacrifice. It means for a care giver they may have to leave a job in order to take care of mom or grandma. It may mean juggling between taking care of grandma and taking care of the children, and people need supports for that and unfortunately, today they're not receiving it.
MS. WOODRUFF: So as far as you're concerned, the focus should be on home care when we talk about long-term care?
MR. POLLACK: I think that's the priority. Most people, if they have a disability, want to stay at home. Most families want to keep mom and grandma at home. So I think that should be the priority. It should be a service that keeps families together.
MS. WOODRUFF: Can we, Mr. Hewitt, can we at least agree here that that's where the primary focus should be when we think about what we mean by long-term care?
MR. HEWITT: I think it is appropriate to look at costs, and that's one of the things that Ron is advocating, that we reduce the cost of long-term care by in some cases where it's effectiving having somebody in the home, however, even that will be enormously expensive.
MS. WOODRUFF: All right. And that's what we want to get to now. Do you think we can do, Mr. Pollack, can we do health care reform if we don't include some form of significant long-term care?
MR. POLLACK: Well, I think we will include long-term care in the package. I think it could be done. I don't think it will be done that way. I believe that Hillary Clinton's task force is going to come up with a recommendation for a serious start in long-term care, and President Clinton and the First Lady spoke very eloquently both during the campaign and afterwards about the need for protecting loved ones with long-term disabilities. And their focus was on home care. They tried that in Arkansas. It has worked very well. Other governors have, have looked at that opportunity as well, and so I think they're going to focus on home care, and I think it will be included in the package.
MS. WOODRUFF: You don't believe that it should be part of this package?
MR. HEWITT: No, I would be very alarmed if it was in the package.
MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Tell us why.
MR. HEWITT: Well, it would be an immediate expenditure of somewhere between fifty and a hundred billion dollars a year, which could add up to say an additional nine hundred in taxes, nine hundred dollars in taxes per year --
MS. WOODRUFF: Per --
MR. HEWITT: -- per working family. And so I think that, you know, we have a serious cost problem already built into our health care system. Simply labeling additional entitlements which are going to be extraordinarily expensive, unpredictable, unstable, we don't know what this will cost, but we do know it's very expensive.
MS. WOODRUFF: Fifty to a hundred billion.
MR. POLLACK: That really, frankly, is an absurd figure in terms of what we're going to see in this package. We -- what Paul is talking about is a gold-plated, platinum-plated fleet of Mercedes type of policy, and that's not what we're looking for here. I think what we are looking for is some support for people in the home, and I must say if you look at the price tag for that, it's a fraction of what Paul has said.
MS. WOODRUFF: Well, what do you think the price tag is?
MR. POLLACK: Well, I think that the total price tag for a home care package ultimately, once fully phased in, is about fifteen to twenty million dollars -- billion dollars a year. Put it very differently.
MS. WOODRUFF: Fully phased in?
MR. POLLACK: Once fully phased in. And what that means, if we finance this like we finance Social Security -- I'm not saying that's the way it will be done -- it means adding to say the payroll tax $1.50 a week per taxpayer. So I think that, I think that taxpayers feel that this is a worthwhile expense because it's for mom, it's for grandma, and I think is very well supported.
MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Hewitt, how come there's such a difference in the price tag that you two are talking about?
MR. HEWITT: Well, we could be talking about a very modest proposal here. Bills that are before Congress have been acknowledged by their sponsors to cost in the range of $60 billion. The HCFA, the Health Care Finance Administration actuaries say this could be a program that could run up to $100 billion very easily. So it is an enormous expense that we could incur in this.
MR. POLLACK: Judy --
MS. WOODRUFF: Just a second. Let me ask you, is cost the main problem you have with it? If the numbers could be as low as what Mr. Pollack is arguing, would you be in favor of it?
MR. HEWITT: Well, actually, I would think $20 billion is still a bit stiff, and the reason is, is what we're talking about is protecting assets. We're protecting inheritances. We're protecting piles of money, and if people don't want to take the precautions, themselves, to buy the insurance, it's like life insurance, fire insurance for your house, if you want to protect your assets, this is probably a good insurance product for you to buy.
MS. WOODRUFF: What do you mean, this is piling up assets? What - -
MR. HEWITT: Well, I mean, say somebody with $1/2 million, which is not an unusual case for an elderly family to have assets of around $1/2 million, if they don't spend the extra thousand dollars a year, or maybe as much as two thousand if you want a very nice plan, to protect their wealth --
MS. WOODRUFF: To buy insurance, is that what you're saying?
MR. HEWITT: Yes, through long-term care insurance -- then they will, they and their heirs will suffer the consequences. There is a program for poor people. It is --
MS. WOODRUFF: Medicaid.
MR. HEWITT: That's right. And about 70 percent of all nursing home payments are being picked up by Medicaid and out of pocket payments covered by Social Security.
MS. WOODRUFF: I mean, his argument is that most people ought to be able to take care of these expenses, themselves.
MR. POLLACK: My friend, Paul, I think in terms of the hypothetical he really is living in a fantasy world. Let's look at the numbers in terms of what people with home care need, what their true incomes are. If you compare the income of families throughout the United States versus families that have somebody with a home care need, we're looking at 20 percent of the American families have incomes under $16,000 a year. Now in terms of people with home care needs, almost half of them are below that, 48 percent are below that $16,000 --
MS. WOODRUFF: You're saying they don't have the wherewithal to afford --
MR. POLLACK: They don't have this --
MS. WOODRUFF: -- what Mr. Hewitt is talking about.
MR. POLLACK: They don't have this hypothetical $1/2 million. Now there may be a few people who have that. But we're talking about the vast majority of people have rather small amounts of money. Let me give you one other illustration. 40 percent of the American families have incomes under $29,000 a year. Three-quarters of the families needing home care have incomes below that level. So we're not talking about affluent people.
MS. WOODRUFF: All right. So we're -- I don't think -- and you want to make --
MR. HEWITT: We have a program for non-affluent people. It's called Medicaid. It was discussed on the lead-in, and it's actually providing an enormous amount of funding for long-term care.
MS. WOODRUFF: So you're saying the job is out there, it's being done by Medicaid --
MR. HEWITT: Right. I mean, if you want --
MS. WOODRUFF: -- and anybody else who is not on Medicaid ought to be able to pay for it themselves?
MR. HEWITT: If you want to live well without any fear that your assets would be eroded at some point by long-term care, then you should buy insurance.
MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Assuming that we're not going to reach an agreement on this piece of it, on the cost, and who can afford it, what are your other primary problems with the kinds of measures they're talking about, including long-term?
MR. HEWITT: Well, it's a series of problems. One, it moves us in the wrong direction of inter-generational equity. We're talking about --
MS. WOODRUFF: What do you mean?
MR. HEWITT: -- an additional transfer from the downwardly mobile young to older families. We have an age-based welfare state that I think is, is truly transferring an enormous amount of wealth from young to old. This would increase and possibly drastically.
MS. WOODRUFF: What about that?
MR. POLLACK: Two points that I think Paul misses. No. 1, 40 percent of the families that have somebody with a disability are people with disability 40 percent of which are below 65 years of age. We're not just talking about senior citizens. If you and I get into a car accident and we're paralyzed, we're going to need long- term care. Now, the other thing I think that Paul misses is that long-term care really is a family policy. It's as important to me as it is to my mother. I took care of my -- better say that my wife really took care of my mother for a year and a half and, believe me, her care was at least as important to us as it was to her. And --
MS. WOODRUFF: Doesn't he have a point?
MR. HEWITT: Ron Pollack and his wife, I'm sure, are saintly, but they didn't deserve a government subsidy for doing it.
MR. POLLACK: I'm saying that there -- most families put in that situation, just look at your two illustrations at the beginning of the show, Mr. Shednun and Mrs. Hamm, these are people who quickly are economically devastated when they don't get the care that they need. Mr. Shednun's family is trying heroic efforts to try to keep him in the home, but it's very costly and most families can't afford it.
MS. WOODRUFF: Doesn't he have a point when he says that the whole family is affected by this, that it's not just shifting from the young to the old?
MR. POLLACK: Well, the whole family, of course, has inherited if people -- I mean, is affected if people can't inherit as much as they've intended to. If an estate worth $1/2 million is whittled down to $50,000 as a result of long-term care, that's, that's a tragedy for that family. Let me say, Medicaid currently allows a recipient to receive this long-term benefit and his or her spouse to hold $68,000 in cash and a house of any value from upon which a reverse equity mortgage can be taken out.
MS. WOODRUFF: So this business of selling down assets you're saying is, what, overextended or --
MR. POLLACK: Well, there's a tremendous amount of wealth that can be protected in the home alone, but a big pile of cash can also be set aside for the spouse. So again, these are not rich people by any stretch. You know, somebody who's retired and only has 68,000 is not rich. But it is an amount that people can afford to protect.
MR. HEWITT: I really have to correct the facts on that, Paul. The vast majority of states only protect the spouse with $13,000, not $68,000. Paul is right in one sense, that the states are allowed to enable the spouse to keep the $68,000, but the vast majority of states have chosen not to provide that level of protection. The vast majority, unfortunately, only allow the spouse remaining in the community to hold on to $13,000. And here she was devastated because her husband has gone to a nursing home, and now she's economically devastated as well. I don't think that's humane policy.
MS. WOODRUFF: You, I mean, is that --
MR. HEWITT: There are safety net programs for people who have disasters in life, and we spend a lot of money for them, let's make no mistake. We are in a clear, fiscal crisis. The average family will have to pay an additional 7,000 per year in taxes just to support the growth of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and the federal retirement programs over the next decade. So I mean, these programs are growing at a very rapid clique, and through this end of the mix it's like dousing a fire with gasoline.
MS. WOODRUFF: Again, even if it's at the lower figure that Mr. Pollack is saying is what's going to be proposed, what is likely to be proposed --
MR. HEWITT: Right.
MS. WOODRUFF: -- by the administration?
MR. HEWITT: Well, I think it's certainly the wrong direction on the deficit. It is also in the wrong direction on inter- generational equity, and I would suggest to Mr. Pollack that one way to pay for this might be to reduce Social Security benefits to upper income groups.
MR. POLLACK: You know, if we were living in a world, as Paul would have us believe, that most families dealing with this kind of a problem have $1/2 million, I wouldn't be very worried about this. The reality is that's not the way American families live, and the families that are confronting this kind of problem like the two families that you showed in the beginning of this program, they get economically devastated very quickly. And so I'm worried that after a family's experiencing this terribly emotiona, heart wrenching experience of seeing somebody, in effect, become disabled, now we're going to economically bankrupt them. That I don't think makes a great deal of sense.
MS. WOODRUFF: How do you respond to that, just quickly?
MR. HEWITT: Well, for one thing, I think Mr. Pollack is, you know, a reasonable, he's a compassionate man, but the point is that he would be much better, serving the elderly much better if he would educate them about the availability of 150 policies out there that do provide long-term care insurance, and if they want to preserve their assets, they should go in and buy it. Maybe even if their kids can help them if that's what at issue.
MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Well, we will leave it at that. Paul Hewitt, Ron Pollack, thank you both for being with us. Robin.
MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, sex and the Catholic Church, and the U.N. boss in Somalia. FOCUS - UNSPEAKABLE SIN
MR. MacNeil: We turn now to a story about the worst moral crisis ever to face the Catholic Church in America. At issue is the way the Church has handled a number of sex abuse cases involving priests and children. Some experts claim legal expenses connected to such cases have cost the Church more than $400 million in the past eight years. Richard Ostling, the religion writer for Time Magazine, reports.
MR. OSTLING: Peter Eisley has shocking memories of his student days at St. Lawrence Seminary, a Catholic boys boarding school in Wisconsin.
PETER EISLEY: He paged over the loud speaker. If they wanted to have sex with you, no matter what time of day, they would page you to their office. And there was nothing you could do. You had to go. What he did is that he led me to his back, to the back bedroom, where he raped me. He committed oral sex on me.
MR. OSTLING: Eisley says he was sexually abused by his spiritual counselor. He also charges that the Capuchin friars who operate the school knew the priest was a sex abuser and, nonetheless, promoted him to rector.
PETER EISLEY: I find it unfathomable and incredible, that they knew what this man was doing and they could watch him walk into his office in the main building with a kid, and how many times must they have seen that, and known in their hearts, known exactly what was going on in there?
MR. OSTLING: Eisley's charges became public as a result of another scandal in Wisconsin. Last October, Archbishop Rembert Weakland removed a priest from a different parish for child molesting. Weakland met with parishioners and admitted he'd known of earlier sexual misconduct by the priest. He reflected on the incident in the Milwaukee journal. "Priests need to be reassured by the entire Catholic community that they are loved and supported. My heart goes out to all victims." Peter Eisley felt the archbishop's words to victims didn't go far enough and wrote a reply in the same paper. "We worry that our experience will not be welcomed by the Church because they implicate colleagues, even friends. We worry that you may have more to gain by our silence than by our words." Eisley didn't name his abuser but the school's retired director, Gail Lifefled, was removed from his post at another school. To Eisley's surprise, other victims contacted him and took their stories to the Milwaukee Journal. So far, eight alumni have gone public with abuse charges against five different staffers. But Milwaukee attorney Robert Pledl thinks the full scope of the scandal hasn't yet been revealed. Pledl, who himself attends a Capuchin parish, says he's heard from twice as many victims concerning twice as many molesters.
ROBERT PLEDL, Lawyer: I think the problem is considerably larger than what we've seen to date. I don't think there's any doubt but that there's been a cover-up. I think you can talk about the motivation for that, but the fact is it's been a cover-up.
PETER EISLEY: Many of the victims that have come forward, including those that talked to the Milwaukee Journal, detailed stories of when they were molested going to high ranking members of the faculty, telling them about Gail and other individuals that were molesting them.
MR. OSTLING: The Midwest leader of the Capuchins, Father Kenneth Reinhart, has hired a prominent attorney to investigate the whole St. Lawrence situation.
FATHER KEN REINHART, Regional Director, Capuchins: My major concern, and I only can state my intentions and those of my provincial counsel that made that decision with me is to get to the bottom of all of this stuff, to make sure that there is nothing else at St. Lawrence and to make sure that we have the best policies and procedures in the future so that this never happens again.
MR. OSTLING: The charges swirling around this quiet hilltop in rural Wisconsin are part of a nationwide pattern. Hundreds of priests all over the country have been accused of sex abuse involving underaged children. Only a small portion of the nation's 53,000 priests have been implicated. But as in Wisconsin in case after case, Catholic parents and children complain not only that they were abused but the complaints against priests were ignored, or abusers were quietly shuffled into new church jobs where they abused yet again. Catholic author Jason Berry spent eight years investigating sex abuse in the Church for his book Lead Us Not Into Temptation.
JASON BERRY, Author: There has been a tremendous loss of trust among parishioners and believers not in the faith but in the governing ethos of the hierarchy, the fact that bishops time and again have chosen to recycle men who have abused children rather than to remove them. And I think that begs a profound question. How many kids does a man have to molest before he is considered morally unfit to be a priest?
MR. OSTLING: Berry's complaints are echoed by a church insider. Father Thomas Doyle monitored the public scandals in the mid 1980s for the Vatican Embassy in Washington. He believes that U.S. bishops have badly mishandled the problem.
FATHER THOMAS DOYLE, Canon Lawyer: I know of situations where the bishops, individual bishops, have honestly tried to do the right thing. Others have, have simply tried to stonewall and to make believe that there's no problem. They've lied to the public. I think they've lied to the victims and their families, saying we don't have a problem, there are no real issues, we're taking care of it, when, in fact, nothing is happening.
MR. OSTLING: Archbishop Weakland says that years ago when many of the incidents now surfacing occurred the bishops treated abuse simply as a moral offense.
ARCHBISHOP REMBERT WEAKLAND, Milwaukee: You would call somebody in, you would read the riot act to them, thinking that you could do something to scare them, then we'd send them away on a 30-day retreat, put them with a tough pastor where they'd be monitored, and think that you perhaps were able to do something at least to curtail it which maybe we did better than we thought we were doing.
MR. OSTLING: He says that later on bishops simply did what therapists told them to do.
ARCHBISHOP REMBERT WEAKLAND: We probably thought that psychologists had more answers than they had then and relied very heavily on them, probably more concerned about perpetrators than victims, but I think that was the whole of psychology at that time. It didn't see the enormous amount of damage that could be done to victims.
JEANNE MILLER, Victim Advocate: I think for the purpose of bringing it to the bishops as well in, in certain data, age for instance, the age the person was when he or she was abused.
MR. OSTLING: Many abuse victims and their parents don't feel the Church has yet recognized their pain or dealt adequately with continuing abuse cases. A year and a half ago, Jeanne Miller, whose son was abused by a priest, founded The Link- Up based in Paletine, illinois, to bring victims together. The group now has 3,000 members. Miller says these victims tried first to go through Church channels.
JEANNE MILLER: I have yet to tell someone tell me that their knee jerk reaction was to go to police officals, or to civil authorities. That is not what victims do. Their first reaction is that they are going to turn to the Church, who cares about them, and people call us at the point that they've struggled through that process with the Church and they've been disillusioned by it, and they've been terribly frustrated by it.
MR. OSTLING: Since the Link-Up, other support groups have been founded.
SPOKESPERSON: We should also realize that we don't have to give up God because of what the priests did to us.
MR. OSTLING: The Chicago-based Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests or SNAP recently held a conference for victims. One topic was civil lawsuits against the Church, the usual remedy for victims because the sexual incidents occurred too long ago to file criminal charges. SNAP participants also shared their experiences. Women victims were included, although most charges against priests involve underage boys.
MARY STAGGS: They use that position and that power and the pulpit and the confessional and the bible, and they take it and these perpetrators take it and twist it. And what does that do to our perception of who God really is? This is somebody representing God, saying that you have to go through us, you have to come to confess to us to get to heaven, you have to have our blessing.
JOE JOHNSON: It scares me that there's kids out there, there's kids out there that are still altar boys. There are still, there are still people that trust priests and parents that believe this isn't happening. It frightens me. And what do you? You come forward and tell your story, and you hope the thing snowballs.
JOHN QUINN: When I was younger I was molested by other priests and counselors in Catholic orphanages, and when I told people about it, you know, they said, you shouldn't say things like that, you know, you shouldn't say things like that, so I didn't tell anybody, you know, and I stuffed that stuff inside of me for a long time. You know, and I ran and I ran.
DAVID CLOHESSY: The way I think about the priest who molested me he is a sick guy, okay, but the person who I really can't understand and have a hard time forgiving are people like the bishop, who has more responsibility and presumably, you know, isn't a sick person, presumably is healthy because, you know, he has risen to some position of authority, and that they don't take the step.
MR. OSTLING: The victims movement achieved a breakthrough at the last meeting of the U.S. hierarchy. After picketing and lobbying, they were granted a meeting with a delegation of three bishops.
SPOKESMAN: It's very much incumbent upon you all to take the next step and send those kind of signals that we talked about.
MR. OSTLING: Afterward, the hierarchy issued its first public statement of concern. Roger Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles met with the victims and helped draft the statement.
CARDINAL ROGER MAHONEY, Archbishop of Los Angeles: The lack of evenness in the way these issues are handled is obvious from this group. I think that's something that we as a group need to look at. There's got to be a uniform approach in these cases that people are really not only are treated in a Christian fashion but feel that, that they experience that the Church cares for them and loves them and is aborred by what's happened to them.
MR. OSTLING: The nation's bishops have formed a special subcommittee to study the problem in-depth. The toughest question is what to do with priests guilty of abuse. Investigative reporter Jason Berry.
JASON BERRY: I think any man who shows any true degree of abusive tendencies or predatory tendencies toward young people doesn't belong in the Catholic priesthood. It doesn't mean that you have to send him to jail. It doesn't mean that you have to kick him without the benefit of therapy, but I think there should be a much more wholesome standard.
MR. OSTLING: But others say abusive priests can be treated and restored to active ministry if they're monitored and have no contact with youth. One of the most respected facilities for priest abusers is the St. Luke Institute in Maryland. Though child abuse is not curable, the institute says all the 200 priests who have completed its program have been able to control their disorder and return to other ministries. President Canice Connors says the treatment center now faces a new problem. Because of media exposure and fear of lawsuits, most bishops no longer will reassign priests who have completed treatment.
FATHER CANICE CONNORS, Psychologist: Prior there was a great deal of joy and jubilation when somebody did finish the program because it was a sense of the conversion is there, someone is returning very often as for the first time a very effective minister. They were telling the truth about themselves and I think about a lot of things. But that joy has been certainly diminished if not extinguished in the past six months.
MR. OSTLING: The scandals are causing American Catholics to ask far reaching questions about the priesthood. Baltimore psychologist Richard Sipe, a former priest, thinks one major problem is moral hypocracy. His controversial book, A Secret World [Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy], claims that half the clergy ignore their celibacy vows and engage in sexual activity. Such statistics are hard to pin down but Sipe argues that the whole system of training for celibacy creates an environment ripe for abuse.
A.W. RICHARD SIPE, Psychotherapist: It forms an aura, a safe aura. Then you have -- and I should say a safe aura not only for those who wish to lead a very exemplary life and dedicate themselves to others, but it also is a safe haven for those who are afraid of their sexuality, so that it can attract a group of immature people sexually, psychosexually. Then you have a system which does not train people for sexual maturity, and this is the basic problem that's not being addressed.
MR. OSTLING: Connors thinks what's needed is seminaries where priest candidates can face their sexuality honestly.
FATHER CANICE CONNORS: I do believe that seminary education tended to elicit notions of perfection, what's right about you, prove to me you can live this demanding life-style. So I never reveal my vulnerability. I never get used to talking about it to anyone who has a responsible relationship. And, thus, silence becomes a habit.
MR. OSTLING: This priest who abused a number of teen-age boys in two parishes was treated at St. Luke's and now serves as a hospital chaplain. He says priest candidates need to be more open about sexuality.
FATHER "ADAM": I am a homosexual in orientation, and when I was growing up didn't have much of an, an opportunity to talk about that or to get feedback on what it's like to be homosexual in the world, so there was a lot of stifled kind of growth and a lot of low self-esteem around those issues. I think all sexuality needs to be discussed in the seminary. Pretty much when I went through the seminary you used the term "closeted." It's that secrecy and that under, underworld kind of activity that I think kind of promoted the, the disease in my life.
MR. OSTLING: Archbishop Weakland hopes the bishops have turned a corner and that the acrimony in the Church can now be overcome.
ARCHBISHOP REMBERT WEAKLAND: I hope today we were able to bring all of these forces together so that our concerns can be dealt with not just legally but also and very much so pastorally, psychologically, and that we can be very much concerned about victims without at the same time losing our concern for perpetrators.
MR. OSTLING: But Thomas Doyle thinks more action must accompany the bishop's words.
FATHER THOMAS DOYLE: I don't think that issuing documents and decrees and statements is going to help the situation at all. I don't think hand wringing is going to help. The harm has been done. The train is rolling, and it's a bit out of control. This should have been done years ago to protect a lot of the, the kids and the families who have been grievously harmed, who have avoided the scandal to have avoided paying out the millions of dollars that have been paid out. I think the major area where there's a need for definite action that's publicly known is attention given to the victims and their families.
MR. OSTLING: As new cases continue to erupt, important issues are being raised concerning how the Church is governed. The bishops' slowness to respond adequately when serious accusations against fellow priests indicates Church leaders are too cut off from the interests of families in the parishes.
[DEMONSTRATION]
MR. OSTLING: The emerging victims' movement intends to change that and has already had an impact on bishops as they struggle with this highly complex problem in a story filled with suffering that provides a bit of hope for the future.
MR. MacNeil: A report on the St. Lawrence investigation is due out sometime next month, and the U.S. Conference of Bishops will again take up the issue of clergy sexual misconduct with their next meeting in June. FINALLY - RETURN TO SOMALIA
MS. WOODRUFF: Finally, Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports from Somalia. Tonight she talks with the new United Nations envoy there.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Since December, the United States has led a multinational force of up to 38,000 troops throughout this East African nation. The troops have largely restored order to the country, which is without a government and is struggling with the aftermath of civil war and famine. It's expected that sometime next month retired Adm. Jonathan Howe will oversee the transition of power to a U.N. force. He is a former National Security Adviser to President Bush and the first American to hold the U.N. post in Somalia. I recently accompanied Amb. Howe to the inland town of Bardera, where he addressed local clan leaders.
JONATHAN HOWE, U.N. Envoy, Somalia: This, I believe, in the short time that I have been here is a crucial moment for all of us who care about Somalia. And from the people that I have talked to that have visited or that I talked to on the phone about Somalia, I have a sense from the nations of the world that there is a strong and good feeling about wanting to pull together and help Somalia recover.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: I later spoke with Amb. Howe at the U.S. embassy back in Mogadishu. Amb. Howe, thank you for joining us. You told the elders in Bardera that this was a crucial moment for all of those who cared about Somalia, and yet, it's also a crucial moment for the U.N. undertaking what's been called a most comprehensive stand so far. In fact, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said that there were no lessons and no models to guide its past. How daunting is that?
AMB. JONATHAN HOWE: Well, I think it is a very daunting, challenging assignment that the U.N. has taken on and those of us here in the field are trying to carry out, but I think that this is an exciting moment. The Security Council has given us a wide and flexible mandate, and the countries of the world are continuing to express their support which we desperately need in order to keep the aid, and humanitarian and development efforts going, so that's what I kind of meant when I feel this is a moment when the people of Somalia have this opportunity to, to start to stand up, and it is our job to help them in every way we can to do so.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In terms of the hand-off from the UNITAF forces, i.e., the forces led by the United States, now to the United Nations, how prepared do you feel for that hand-off, and what are the nations -- what nations are contributing now that weren't before, and how is that going to look?
AMB. JONATHAN HOWE: In terms of countries, there is good news, and there's bad news in the sense that we have some very good countries that are staying with us, for example, the Belgians are staying, and they'll probably be down in the Kismayu region. The French are staying with us. The Italians are staying with us. The Morrocans are staying, and many of the other smaller countries like the Botswanans that we saw yesterday that are so good they're going to be now having a field in Bardera. The also good news is that the Pakistanis are coming in large numbers, and instead of the very fine battalion that was here originally, their numbers are being swelled to brigade size, and we should have about 4,000 Pakistanis. And I'm very hopeful that some other countries that have given us an informal indication will also come through, and India is one of those countries that I'm counting on, although theyhave not officially given the U.N. their answer yet. The Germans, we hope, will provide logistics forces and others. Bad news is that we always to see anybody good go home. We hate to see the U.S., portion of the U.S. that are leaving. Of course, some are staying with us, which is very good. The Canadians and Australians have done a fantastic job here, and we will miss them when they finally pull out. But, nonetheless, we have good people coming in, and I'm very confident that we will do a very fine job in terms of the security situation, recognizing we not only have to relieve UNITAF in the area, which is the South Center area of the famine, but then we have to spread on out in other areas of the country where there may be insecurity because our mandate is the entire country.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: There are those who were concerned that when the United States leaves that the confidence factor that's been present with the superpower footprint, as the military call it, is going to be lost, that there won't be the respect and that the bandits and others out there who were intent on doing ill will test your forces. Is that a concern?
AMB. JONATHAN HOWE: Clearly, the U.S. has done a great job, and those countries that came with the U.S. have been extremely effective, and I don't think probably any other nation could have come as quickly with such size of a force, and with no logistics infrastructure existing here to build on, and they have come in and they have started from the ground up. So they've given us a great start but in this next phase, I really believe that the resources that we are being given will be very effective. And a lot of our activity is going to be more in the guerrilla, in the low intensity warfare as some people call it, tends to be sometimes very high intensity, criminal activity, the ability, good detective work, police building, engineering support, and those aspects of military presence. So although there are still some things to be done and there is a whole disarmament challenge ahead, I believe we've got the right forces, and I think one of the, perhaps a misconception by some is that well, if you're not from a superpower, youo're not really good. I think if you ask the Americans or anyone else who's been here on the ground, they're impressed with the Zimbabwans and the Botswanis, and those from the so-called third world countries, they have done an outstanding job there.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Are you expecting that they'll protest it? Are you preparing for it?
AMB. JONATHAN HOWE: Yes, to get to the other part of your question, I suspect there are still those who might want to test us, and we'll be ready for them.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In the past, the U.N. has come under fire from Somalis and others for being slow to respond to the crisis and its initial phase, for being slow to respond to other aspects of the crisis, and even in handing off this job from the U.S. to the U.N. Do you feel that this is justifiable criticism?
AMB. JONATHAN HOWE: Well, it's easy, of course, to criticize. It's pretty hard to actually execute, and when you realize what the world is asking the United Nations to take on at this juncture in the post Cold War period, it is an immense agenda, and so my own assessment would be sure, there are a lot of growing pains as the U.N. steps up to this new mandate that the nations are giving it, and these new kinds of responsibilities, but I think that the U.N. is measuring up.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you have any sense of when this place will actually be functioning again, any timetable for when there might be a government?
AMB. JONATHAN HOWE: Well, my next meeting, as a matter of fact, and this is true, is, is a strategy meeting that is going to address specifically a long-term time frame and how we adjust our strategy to meet that, and what is a realistic end point. The Transnational Committee, the Addis Ababa agreement, talked about a two-year period of transition. I think that's a pretty realistic goal for Somalia getting back on its feet with the help of all the nations of the world and certainly the United Nations as an instrument in that direction. A lot of it will depend on if the people are willing to accept that and if the good people of Somalia, and there are a lot of good people out here, I met with religious leaders this morning, and it was inspiring to talk to them, and they talked across clan lines just like the educators have talked across. There are no clan boundaries when it comes to education.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you believe that? Because one of the arguments that, that has been put forward -- and I put this question to other people -- is that it is simply in the cultural tradition of Somalis to fight and that the best the International Community can do at this point is bringing up to a minimum level of order and then leave, what do you, how do you respond to that?
AMB. JONATHAN HOWE: Well, I think that we will certainly bring back, be able to bring them back to the level that they were before the civil war drove this society into the ground. And I would hope that these structures that we help facilitate being put in place working with the Somali people will, will be even better. But I want to go back to the two years. I don't know if two years is right yet. That's why we're having a meeting, and that's only a benchmark. But I think that's about, is a pretty good timeframe, not only for the political processes to work, and it will take a while for the Somali people to establish a representative government, but for the recovery process to go. And I'm sure you're right. You get different views, in fact, I even in the course of today heard different views about how far we could, we can come in this particular situation. In other words, is it just water and health and education, or are there more institution building efforts that can be achieved. I think the jury's out on that, but my guess is that we can do with the help of the nations of the world and good talent and inate ability of the Somali people. I think we can do a pretty good recovery job, and I'd like to think that two years is about the right time, but I put a little qualifier on that at this point.
MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Amb. Howe, thank you for joining us. And best wishes.
AMB. JONATHAN HOWE: Thank you, Charlayne. It's good to talk to you. RECAP
MR. MacNeil: Again, the main stories of this Thursday, the President marked his hundredth day in office by noting that an economic growth report justified the passage of his rejected stimulus plan. That report showed a growth rate of just 1.8 percent in the first quarter, less than half the previous quarter. The President also met with his top defense and foreign policy advisers on stronger action to stop the fighting in Bosnia. A decision could come by this weekend. And tonight the kidnappers of 18 Costa Rican Supreme Court Justices were captured as they were about to flee the country. They released all their hostages a short while earlier. Good night, Judy.
MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.
Series
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour
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NewsHour Productions
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NewsHour Productions (Washington, District of Columbia)
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cpb-aacip/507-f76639m01d
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Episode Description
This episode's headline: Options for Change - Long-Term Care; Unspeakable Sin; Return to Somalia. The guests include RON POLLACK, Health Reform Advocate; PAUL HEWITT, National Taxpayers Union; CORRESPONDENTS: TOM BEARDEN; RICHARD OSTLING; CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT. Byline: In New York: ROBERT MacNeil; In Washington: JUDY WOODRUFF
Date
1993-04-29
Asset type
Episode
Topics
Economics
Women
Health
Religion
Politics and Government
Rights
Copyright NewsHour Productions, LLC. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode)
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00:57:56
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Producing Organization: NewsHour Productions
AAPB Contributor Holdings
NewsHour Productions
Identifier: 4617 (Show Code)
Format: Betacam
Generation: Master
Duration: 1:00:00;00
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Citations
Chicago: “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” 1993-04-29, NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-507-f76639m01d.
MLA: “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” 1993-04-29. NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-507-f76639m01d>.
APA: The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Boston, MA: NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-507-f76639m01d