Front Royal, Va., Feb 5, 2018 / 03:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Following allegations that Christendom College mishandled student sexual assault reports, the college’s administration has said it is committed to doing better.
Donna Bethell, chair of the college’s board, told CNA that Christendom takes recent reports seriously, and has hired an outside firm to conduct a review of the college’s policies regarding sexual assault prevention and reporting.
“We have brought in a professional group that is expert in sexual assault policies and procedures, and they are reviewing our entire program and will give us a report on whether we are meeting best practices – not just Title IX, those are regulatory minimum requirements – but best practices in providing our students with the protection and services they need.”
In mid-January, the small Catholic college in Front Royal, Virginia was rocked by allegations that the administration had mishandled several cases of sexual assault in the Christendom community. The initial allegations were published in a series of blog posts by Catholic writer Simcha Fisher.
Among those who came forward with their stories is Adele Smith, who says that she was raped by her then-boyfriend during a date in Shenandoah National Park in 2009. Smith was a sophomore at Christendom, where her boyfriend was also a student.
Smith told CNA it took her a while to process what had happened to her. She eventually filed a report with both local police and the park service, but was told that there was very little chance of a conviction.
Meanwhile, she said, her alleged rapist was continuing to verbally harass her on campus, and her physical and mental health were suffering.
“I developed major depressive disorder and rape-related PTSD,” she told CNA. “I’ve been on medication ever since. I’ve struggled a lot with self-harm and suicidal ideations. Medication and therapy is the only thing that’s been helpful in coping with that.”
Smith told CNA she approached the administration during her junior year. She said she was told that because there was no policy against sexual assault in the student handbook, and because the alleged rape took place off-campus, the school could only investigate the harassment charges.
Christendom notified the male student that he was being charged with harassment following what was described as “a prior incident” between the students, according to a July 19, 2011 letter obtained by CNA. The letter said that he was not allowed to talk to Smith or transmit messages to her through other people, during the ensuing investigation.
Christendom found the male student guilty of harassment, according to an Aug. 8, 2011 letter also obtained by CNA.
According to the letter, the college sanctioned the student with a year’s housing suspension, two semesters of disciplinary probation, a prohibition from contact with Adele Smith, and restricted access to campus for one semester.
Initial reports said the student was restricted from on-campus housing for only a semester, though the letter sanctioning the student explicitly stated that he would be subject to “Housing Suspension for 1 year.” A representative from Christendom College told CNA she was unable to clarify the term of the student’s suspension from on-campus housing.
Initial reports also said that the student lived with a founding professor of the college during his housing suspension, though CNA was unable to verify this
Smith acknowledged the complexity of her situation. “I don’t have any proof, because I have no witnesses,” she told CNA.
She said it was several points in the investigative process that made her feel her concerns were being dismissed.
“[T]he sense that reputation was more important was just pretty damaging to my faith and to my confidence and to my self-esteem, because you’ve already been victimized by one person, and then a whole institution just kind of tells you that you don’t really matter.”
She noted that documents charging and sanctioning the male student, which were reviewed by CNA, did not mention the rape allegations. Smith said that omission was “shattering.”
When she reached out to the administration for updates on the investigation, “it was always really slow getting a response.”
She also believes the school should have been proactive in ensuring that she did not have to attend classes with the male student while the investigation was ongoing.
“The burden of me not encountering my rapist was entirely on me. They handed me his class schedule and the time that he would be allowed in the library.”
It was up to her to avoid him, she said, and on a small campus, this was often difficult.
There were usually two different sessions of a class, Smith said. “I would go to the 9:30 for example, and if he was there, I would leave and I would go back to the 10:30 class.”
Smith also said that when her father wrote a letter to college president Dr. Timothy O’Donnell, the president responded with a letter, obtained by CNA, which mentioned Smith by her first name, but referred to her alleged rapist with the formal title “Mr.”
“I thought it was incredibly insulting,” Smith said. “It was just kind of another subtle message to us that we didn’t matter, that I didn’t matter to the school, that I wasn’t even deserving of that small indicator of respect.”
She also said that she raised the question of why a policy against sexual assault was not part of student handbook.
“I was told that these sort of things take time, and that there were a lot of other factors involved in terms of changing the code of student conduct,” she said. A policy against sexual assault was added to the handbook for the 2013-2014 school year.
Donna Provencher is vice president of communications & victim outreach for the Christendom Advocacy and Support Coalition (CASC), a group not affiliated with the college. She told CNA that Smith’s story is not unique.
CASC has “spoken to 12 victims whom the [Christendom] administration personally failed,” Provencher said. She says the group is also aware of six more potential victims via friends or family members.
In total, the group alleges there occurred “18 known rapes and sexual assaults between the 1980s and 2016, 16 of those between 1998 and 2016 under [current Christendom president Timothy] O’Donnell.”
In a Jan. 24 statement, O’Donnell acknowledged failings, and announced that a thorough review process was being undertaken.
“We have failed some of our students,” he said. “I am grateful to each woman who has come forward with her story… To those students who have been harmed, I am deeply sorry. We will do better.”
CASC has called for additional steps to both prevent sexual assault on campus and improve how reports of assault are addressed.
Although the college does not accept federal funding and is therefore not bound by Title IX regulations, the advocacy group believes the school should voluntarily adhere to reporting regulations so that prospective students and families can see the statistics regarding sexual assault cases.
The group has called for faculty and staff training to help them recognize signs of abuse, and for a full-time nurse to be made available to students.
In addition, it says, an independent panel should be used to assess rape cases, because the president and dean of the college could have conflicts of interest between protecting students and protecting the reputation of the school.
Amanda Graf, director of student affairs at Christendom, said that many of these recommendations have been implemented by the college in recent years, or are currently being considered.
A presentation is given to students during freshman orientation outlining the college’s expectations regarding student behavior, policy on assault – including definitions – and instructions on how to file reports, she said.
Faculty members, student life staff, and resident assistants are trained in how to receive reports of assault, and to recognize signs of it.
“Obviously, it’s not just, ‘Do you have a process in place? Do you have the right paperwork?’ But it’s ‘Do the students trust the people that they’re reporting to? Do they actually believe that when a report is made, something will happen?’” Graf said.
She said efforts in the last several years have included adding more female staff members on campus, creating more formation events, and spending more time getting to know the students “so they are really confident and comfortable bringing us any reports they might have.”
Questions of whether to increase the nurse practitioner’s office hours and who should adjudicate cases of sexual assault will be discussed with the firm conducting the review of Christendom’s practices, Graf said. She noted that adjudicating cases of sexual assault currently falls under the Student Affairs Department at Christendom, which she said is in line with practices as most colleges.
“We’re really interested in doing an in-depth study of how effective our education has been and how we can improve it,” she said. “Going forward, we have this great firm that is going to make sure we’re doing everything in the best way to serve our students and to serve our mission.”
Graf stressed the importance of discussing challenging topics in order to move forward and improve.
“We always need to be having these conversations,” she said.
Members of CASC have called for President O’Donnell’s resignation, pointing to numerous reports of poorly handled assault cases during his tenure.
Bethell told CNA that from what she has seen, the Christendom community “very strongly” supports the president.
“While nobody for a minute says bad things could not have happened, they also want to say that this is an excellent institution that has played a very important and positive role in their lives, and you don’t want to lose sight of that,” she said.
In recent days, Bethell said, the college has issued an open invitation to alumni who want to discuss anything that happened to them while they were students, and meetings have begun being held.
“We’re hoping to help to heal, and also to learn how we can improve our practices and policies, and recognize what happened,” she said. “The truth is what’s most important to us, and the welfare of our students and alumni. That’s an ongoing process, and it’s already begun to bear fruit.”
[…]
Bishop Powers was at best clumsy in beginning a Chrism Mass and the blessing of the Holy Oils with an Ojibwa religious ceremonial dance. Having the ceremony at the start gives the impression of formal equivalence.
In the Southwest our bishops had a long history of incorporating Native American ritual, singing and drumming at intervals, the Franciscans had implemented that well especially among the Pueblo, but also with the Navajo, Kiowa, Apache and others so that the impression was simply one of recognizing the culture of the participants without any sense of ritual and belief equivalence.
Well said. And yet there still can be a misunderstood “equivalence” in the minds of, say, the poorly informed/formed within the fold, and the sometimes invincibly ignorant. Three points:
FIRST, this, in our time when the synthesis of Faith & Reason was occasioned in the West when Jerusalem met Athens (Greek culture). And, now, when the West is being positioned as more-or-less equivalent with the variety of non-Western natural religions and worse. A pope who handles ambiguously exchanges his staff for a Wiccan Stang at the Youth Synod, accepts a Marxist crucifix gifted in Peru, and celebrates (?) Pachamama in the Vatican Garden, and then for the fertility goddess approves a niche in St. Peter’s Basilica. True, she was later given a lay baptism in the Tiber…
SECOND, so, this type of engagement when evangelization attempts to connect with populations and cultures wherever they might be at the moment. Speak their language, but then total capitulation under Fiducia Supplicans, toward the pandemic of carnal paganism from within the post-Christian West itself. So, yes to cultural expressions if handled well as you report, but in all cases what of true and clear inculturation of the Faith? A Faith which is received (!) and not only an expression?
Too many self-destructive expressions now embedded in an aggregated and bottoms-up Synodality…
THIRD, this, too, from Cardinal Sarah:
“Without silence, the Church does not live up to here calling. I fear that the reform of the liturgy, especially in Africa, is often the occasion for noisy, purely human celebrations that are hardly in keeping with the will of the Son of God as expressed during the Last Supper. It is not a matter of rejecting the joy of the faithful, but there is a time for everything. The liturgy is the place, not for human rejoicing, passions, a profusion of discordant words, but for pure adoration” (“The Power [!] of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise,” Ignatius, 2017, p. 221).
When it’s contained within the language [liturgical texts in Swahili, Maasai, Navajo] of the populace, and their musical genre, usually drums, religious songs written for the liturgy, melody identified with their culture it has in my experience in Africa, and in the Southwest had positive outcome. Cardinal Sarah is likely criticizing abuses to what Vatican II approved.
So Vigano thinks that there is a Deep State that has much power under the present regime and that threatens Christianity. Hmmm. We have just learned that FBI whistleblower Steve Friend has said that FBI taught Agents that Pro Lifers are more dangerous than Islamic terrorists: “We were shown a video that was produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center” that “ranked people who oppose abortion, pro-life activists, as a greater threat than Islamists.”
There are a lot of confusing and contradictory claims about this entire disturbing affair. To begin with I have seen much online speculation about who “archbishop Vigano” really is which assumes he posts under a pseudonym. Bishop Powers in his complaints against Vigano not only identifies him by name and title but says that he was the papal nuncio who attended his installation as bishop of Superior, Wisconsin in 2016! Bishop Powers then says that such ceremonies were not only practiced then but in every significant church event since! If AB Vigano is correctly identified, then how indeed has he escaped the treatment that befell AB Strickland and Cardinal Burk? Can anyone make sense of this?
Archbishop Vigano was indeed the papal nuncio to the US in 2016, and he does not use a pseudonym. There’s a wikipedia article on him. 2016 was his last year in the office of papal nuncio, as he retired. It would not be surprising either that he witnessed the ceremony and made no objection, or that it has continued every year since, he did not start objecting to practices and personnel choices until years after he retired, and I believe he apologized near the start of that for having held his peace so long.
He has no office to be removed from, so the treatment accorded Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Burke is not possible. Supposedly he has also been physically avoiding contact with any Vatican emissaries, preventing him from being semi-voluntarily carted off to a mental facility, as has happened with some priests, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that anyone would have tried that on him. But then, the only solid evidence possible would presumably be his presence in a mental facility.
Before Archbishop Vigano would be committed to a mental facility, he’d have to get in line. There’s a long list of bishops, Cardinals and Vatican officials who need to have their heads examined because so many of them are deranged. I can’t imagine that all their lunacy can be attributed to moral derangement alone.
Archbishop Vigano has not “escaped the treatment that befell AB Strickland and Cardinal Burk (sic)” as a brief internet search will reveal.
I, for one, have had my fill of the bastardization of the Catholic liturgy at the hands of prelates who are “off the reservation” (pun intended). By the way, Bishop Gumbleton just died.
May Gumby reset in peace.
Praise God for giving Gumby time to reflect and repent.
Thank God for giving us grace to endure.
I would like to know the words which were chanted. Yet I have a problem with women holding feathers gathering around the altar, doing what looks like some non-Christian ritual in the Sanctuary.
I also have a problem with this:
“Powers wrote that it has “long been a tradition in the Diocese of Superior to honor the heritage of our Native Americans before major diocesan celebrations,”
It is a false order of values which becomes more and more widespread in the Western Church. Christianity is the highest = absolute value; the local cultural traditions are secondary. Christianity is the Truth above all so it should not seek “to honor” local traditions. Instead, the local traditions should seek to give what good they have to the Liturgy but only as long as doing so does not violate the Truth expressed in the Liturgy itself. To be clear, I will give an example: being Russian I do not expect the local Roman Catholic Church to invite me to dance before the Mass playing balalaika for the sake of recognizing my culture; being Russian I offer my skills of an iconographer to the local church and paint and embroider which bear an imprint of the Russian culture.
And so, it is unacceptable to insert some pieces of culture into Mass for the sake of “being nice”. In that particular case (on the video) there should be no women in the Sanctuary doing some kind of a ceremony. But the native music could be easily incorporated into Mass if the congregation has natives. Look for example at this short video of the end of the Easter service in the Eastern Orthodox Church in Africa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VNptIdyVzo
Women there are dancing while singing a hymn, a priest is dancing as well standing in the Sanctuary. The women are not in the sanctuary. I find it great and an excellent conclusion of the Easter Liturgy (I think); if I was there I would join them and dance as well. I am sure no one there thought of “honoring local traditions”, the locals just acted their Christian faith out with the means they used to.
As for the accusations of defamation it is laughable. Since when theological accusations are to be defined as “defamation”? Our Church fathers would be buried under pieces of paper sent from the court.
I will add the following. This shamanic (I think) ceremony, the red dragon in the Vatican for the Chinese New Year, a priest who encourages stupid greetings before Mass, Synod on Synodality, are all the same in essence. They all have the same root: those who push them do not have Christ as the felt center, in the Church and their own world. Instead, they have themselves, “the beloved themselves” at the center and that fact they cover by “for the good of others”. If they push “honoring” local culture at the expense of Christ they are “nice” you see and have the glory which they steal from Christ Who by their actions is denied the glory and also the chance to connect with others (including those who do shamanic ceremonies).
All the above things could be verified and done away over a few minutes. How Christ’ Body and Blood in the Chalice are honored by the shamanic ceremony? What the Author of the Revelation would think about the Red Dragon in the Vatican dancing around the Pope, not so much about the fact but about the zero clue the Pope had about the symbol he was giving to the Church? Where is Jesus Christ in the Synod on Synodality? Would He like to participate in such a thing? What would He say? Would He understand their oblique (to themselves as well) language which is so different from His “yes – yes, no – no”?
The further it goes the less I am able to understand the language those people use. They appear to be in another world. My conversations with them usually goes like this:
– Listen, you cannot have the shamanic dance in the Sanctuary before Mass!
– We are honoring local traditions.
– It is Christ who should be honored by His Church, not the local traditions.
– What?
(silence and bewilderment after the following is usually said)
– You are not nice! You do not think of those people who need to know we honor their traditions!”
– But what about Christ? Should you not think of Him first?
(silence and bewilderment etc.; that can go indefinitely)
Those people defend “other people” only because in “honoring them” they honor themselves. They do not care about bringing “those people” to Christ, they care about bringing them to themselves and being seen as “nice”. Christ to them is someone who spoils their show, the one they must bow to and this is why they push Him away (mostly unconsciously).
We have an old saying, a paradigm of a meaningless conversation: two people saying to each other “There is a red berry tree in my garden” – “I have an uncle in Kiev”; “There is a red berry tree in my garden” – “I have an uncle in Kiev”; “There is a red berry tree in my garden” – “I have an uncle in Kiev” etc., endlessly. (sounds a bit political right now but I am unwilling to change our folklore.) This is what is going on in our Church now. Two camps, one which has Christ as their felt center, another one who have “themselves, the beloved” as their center, with an insatiable desire to be seen as “nice”. The second camp will win on this earth because it is nice to be nice. Those who stick to Christ because they know they will sink without Him looking and will continue looking plain disgusting: “unloving, uncaring, cruel, rigid” and so on.
Thank you Anna. No worries, since nice is not a virtue. Charity seeks the good of the other. God is Good. If we love our neighbor, we share our love of Christ with them, our Good Lord and Savior. Happy Mercy Sunday!
Well, this gives the bishop of Superior the opportunity to aknowledge he was wrong to have this ceremony at Mass, especially Chrism Mass.
I suspect that until now they haven’t touched Archbishop Vigano because he knows too much about too many active and important cardinals, bishops, and priests. It’s all part of the smoke, mirrors, and obfuscation that we’ve had to endure for quite a long time now. That said, I do think that Archbishop Vigano has gone off the rails, though these days staying on the rails is might difficult for any faithful Catholic. Bishop Powers’ protest will likely end there; I’m actually surprised that anyone had the nerve to challenge Vigano at all. In fact, don’t be surprised if Bishop Powers gets himself into some sort of trouble for rattling that cage, and his resignation will be for “health reasons.” Sigh.
So are these ladies with the feathers members of the new CCW? Ridiculous paganism. Bishop should be exorcised.
This is what happens when you fail to do the red and say the black!!!!!!!
Pachamama Powers claims Archbishop Vigano’s comments resulted in a “violation of my right to a good name and reputation.” Nope. He did that all by himself.
Touché
I personally find Native American culture quite interesting, as I do several other cultures. However, I do not believe a church sanctuary prior to Mass is the place for such cultural demonstrations. Its been my understanding that most Indian ceremonies of music and dance like this are calling upon the spirits they believe in to purify, help with sickness, chase away evil, etc. These are not simply musical reviews. A Catholic Church is a place to honor Jesus, period. Its not a Broadway stage. I would have suggested this parish have Mass in the church, followed by a display of Native culture in the church yard outdoors, clearly not part of Mass. This stuff should not be done in the Sanctuary, nor inside the church in any way. Vigano is absolutely correct to be critical of this use of church space , which is an attempt to establish an equivalency between the Native Spirit beliefs and Jesus.This is a slippery slope and should be discouraged. Its entirely possible to respect other cultures while recognizing they are not at all the same as our own.
Well, this has been informative about Archbishop Vigano. It has, however, only reinforced the outrage I first expressed when I added this story to the April 3 news thread. When I finally managed to coax Microsoft’s mentally ill AI into isolating the ceremony on the video it was obvious that it was pagan. There was the shaman with his four female assistants chanting. They wound up the lengthy ceremony by briefly invoking the Earth Mother in English. It for sure wasn’t the Virgin Mary!! Bishop Powers only raised my alert status further when he claimed that this was already a long established practice when he took over in 2016! To put all this in context I need to mention the late Deacon Paul Mullens a full blood native American I am blessed to have had for a friend. He was very active in Indian affairs and devoted to Saint Kateri Tikawitha but never brought native religion into the Catholic Church which he served in many ways. Deacon Paul told me once of something he witnessed on an Indian reservation as a child. He was at Mass with his family when a horrible desecration occurred. Someone from off the reservation took the host out of his mouth, laid it on the altar rail and stabbed it with a knife. The host bled profusely. Someone who has experienced the miraculous can never stop being a believer and could never mix his faith with anything else. People who dedicate their lives to the Church you would think would always be the same way would you not?
JJR, it seems to me that sadly, people are more invested in human secular approval than they are in their status with God. There have been too many high churchmen willing to “go along to get along” where church teaching is concerned to think anything else. We are not generally in the age of martyrs here in the US.Humans are compromised creatures and much too much under the thumb of what I call the “tyranny of “nice”. They will say or do anything to be regarded as “nice” by others. Even if in fact they are anything BUT nice.
Wasn’t sure what to think until I read the comments, especially Anna’s. Thanks, Anna.
Curious to see what, if anything, happens next.
I have lived in the Superior diocese for over 30 years. In that time I have seen many abuses. This would not be the first.
You can’t keep equating culture with Rite. Worse, when you insist and demand that you are right to do so. Neither is culture an adoption of Rite.
In centuries gone by, this was precisely one of the problems faced in correcting the traditional Mass when it had fallen into similar abuse. Common sense.
You must stop distracting from Rite back into culture. Culture can be in the parish get-together or harvest and then more in the local play (LJ, above).
The same type problem develops with “taste” and “presentation” like dances that then have more to do with ubiquitous artistry though made out to be “culture”.
The idea of “inculturation” means witnessing faith to the culture not witnessing the culture in the faith. Adding intrusiveness to the latter is not witness.
Archbishop Vigano more directly condemns the abuse according to the nature of the offense. Bishop Powers has to mature quick and accept it as his correction.
This can not be a defamation since defamation in civil law does not apply here and the matter requires to be addressed and administered from faith and reason.
Apparently the good Archbishop likes to follow the rules, but is he in this case? I wonder. Who is this priest’s superior? What authority do the Archbishop have over him? Is it his place to be making public judgments about this matter? I’m confused. Wouldn’t private, brotherly council be the prescribed (according to scripture) method of dealing with this situation? Just asking.j