A US priest, a Philippine village, and decades of secrecy
https://www.apnews.com/e8c2209aa8144b6c9bc637cb264dcf79
“I should have known better than trying to just have a life,” the priest said in the November 2018 call. “Happy days are gone. It’s all over.”
But, the young man later told The Associated Press, those days were happy only for the priest. They were years of misery for him, he said, and for the other boys who investigators say were sexually assaulted by Father Pius Hendricks.
His accusations ignited a scandal that would shake the village and reveal much about how allegations of sex crimes by priests are handled in one of the world’s most Catholic countries.
Soon after, local authorities arrested Hendricks, 78, and charged him with child abuse. Since then, investigators say, about 20 boys and men, one as young as 7, have reported that the priest sexually abused them. Investigators say the allegations go back well over a decade — though many believe it goes back for generations, and could involve many dozens of boys — continuing until just weeks before the December arrest. Hendricks’ lawyers insist he is innocent.
For nearly two decades, the Philippine church has vowed to confront a looming shadow of clergy abuse.
In 2002, the Philippines’ national conference of bishops ended years of silence to admit that the church faced “cases of grave sexual misconduct” among the clergy. One archbishop estimated that 200 of the country’s 7,000 priests may have committed some form of sexual impropriety. The bishops promised new rules that would “provide steps for profound renewal.”
But in a country home to more than 80 million Catholics and churches that date to the time of Shakespeare, such promises have long disappeared into a haze of tradition, piety and clerical influence that suffuses everything from sex education classes to national politics.
Until about 2013, for example, the church’s own guidelines insisted bishops did not need to report sexually abusive priests to police, saying they had “a relationship of trust analogous to that between father and son.” Media reports and legal action “adds to the pain” in cases of sexual abuse, Manila Cardinal Luis Tagle told the Catholic news site UCAN in 2012. In Asian cultures, he said, it is often better for such cases to be handled quietly, inside the church.
The church’s influence remains vast here, even as it has seen its power chipped away in recent years, weakened by the spread of evangelical missionaries and attacks by the nation’s populist president, Rodrigo Duterte.
Duterte, who says he was sexually abused by a priest while he was a student, has publicly derided bishops as “sons of bitches,” and urged Filipinos to stop going to Mass. Investigators say Duterte is closely watching the Hendricks case.
Prosecutions of accused priests are exceedingly rare here, and convictions are rarer. “No priest in the Philippines has ever been convicted” of child sexual abuse, Bishop Buenaventura Famadico, who oversees a diocese south of Manila, told the Catholic newspaper La Croix last year.By comparison, the group BishopAccountability.org says that since 1990 more than 400 priests have been convicted in the U.S. on child sexual abuse charges.
The local case against the priest would have stalled if U.S. authorities hadn’t started their inquiry, pressuring Philippine authorities to act, according to an investigator involved in the case, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way.
By his late teens, Hendricks was interested in the Franciscans, the Catholic order of brothers and priests known for their long brown robes and centuries of work among the poor.
Hendricks became a Franciscan brother by his early 20s, taking the name Pius. His assignments ranged from the St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe, New Mexico to the then-rough Cincinnati neighborhood of Over-The-Rhine, where he helped run a youth boxing club.
Then there were the boys.
They stayed at Hendricks’ house, rode in his car and walked with him through Talustusan, residents say. He gave them gifts ranging from clothing to money to school fees.
“All of us knew about Pius and his boys,” said a former Catholic clergyman who worked with Hendricks for years, and who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from the church.
“Ever since I was young I heard the stories, that he would touch altar boys,” said a longtime village resident, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing backlash from her neighbors.
Even the local prosecutor barely blinked when the case was brought to her.
“I was not really surprised, because he was always with small boys,” said Edna Pitao-Honor. “We were friends, actually. But that ends when he’s facing prosecution.”
Poverty is deeply rooted in Talustusan, where many people get by working on nearby coconut plantations or rice paddies. Others run informal gas stations, selling gasoline in old Pepsi bottles, or operate home groceries where they offer tiny bars of soap and packets of instant coffee for a few cents apiece.
For a village like Talustusan, having its own priest — particularly an American one — meant a financial boost, with donations to rebuild the chapel, and jobs as drivers and clerks. Hendricks became the center of his own small economy, doling out jobs, loans and gifts. He built a little library, where theological texts (The Law of Christ, The Catholic Catechism) sit beside secular fare (two biographies of Justin Bieber, a British royal wedding video).
“We were the only village that had our own priest!” said Ayelina Abonales, 55, one of the group of local women who now fiercely defend Hendricks.
For parents, having a church also meant their sons could earn a little money by serving as altar boys.
In a tradition common in Philippine villages— a custom often observed to this day — altar boys were expected to stay overnight on Saturdays at the priest’s house. That way, they could get up early to prepare for Mass.
Victims say the abuse often started off with Hendricks’ bathing them, then progressing to oral and anal sex. Boys would often be cast aside once they reached their late teens or got involved with girls.
“He got jealous” if someone had a girlfriend, said a teenager from a troubled village family who said he was abused at age 15. The assaults ended after a couple months, the teenager said, when he refused to work as an altar boy.
“I didn’t want him to touch me. I only wanted to work for him,” the 23-year-old said. “But then I was depending on him.”
Things finally changed in 2015 with a case of “tulo” — gonorrhea — which he says he got from Hendricks. After that “I did not let him touch me anymore,” he said.
Most of Hendricks’ accusers are from the lower rungs of the village’s economic ladder, tough-talking teenagers with spiked hair and a love for noisy motorbikes.
Experts say victims can have immense trouble breaking away from their abusers, many of them adept manipulators who have woven themselves deeply into children’s lives.
That confusion is amplified when abusers are priests, often revered as Christ-like figures in the Philippines, and amplified further when the priests are foreigners.
The accusations have divided the village, cutting through friendships and families and isolating the accusers, who say the benefits Hendricks brought — status, money, jobs — blinded villagers to his crimes. Often, the accusers say, they are shunned on the streets by people they have known all their lives.
Numerous priests and brothers and a retired bishop who oversaw Hendricks either declined comment or did not respond to repeated messages. In Cincinnati, the archdiocese has acknowledged Hendricks received some financial support from its missionary office but added a note to its website declaring, “Fr. Hendricks is not, nor has ever been, a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.”
For now, Hendricks is being held in a Manila jail, facing Philippine and U.S. child abuse charges that could put him in prison for decades. U.S. Attorney Benjamin Glassman in Cincinnati, who filed the American charges, calls them “very serious, very disturbing allegations.” U.S. investigators are also looking into whether Hendricks may have been involved in sexual misconduct during his time as a Franciscan brother in New Mexico and Ohio in the 1960s and 1970s.