Victims accounts of sexual abuse fell on deaf ears

They were hearing impaired,but they were not silent. For decades,a group of men who were sexually abused as children by the Rev Lawrence C Murphy at a school....

They were hearing impaired,but they were not silent. For decades,a group of men who were sexually abused as children by the Rev Lawrence C Murphy at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin reported to every type of official they could think of that he was a danger to children,according to the victims and church documents.

They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told the police and the district attorney. They used sign language,written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Murphy had done to them. They were ignored.

This week,they learned that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,now Pope Benedict XVI,had received letters about Murphy in 1996 from Archbishop Rembert G Weakland of Milwaukee,who told the cardinal that the community of the hearing impaired needed a healing response from the Church. The Vatican sat on the case.

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Murphy may have molested as many as 200 boys between 1950 and 1974,according to the accounts of victims and a social worker hired by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to interview him.

Internal church correspondence in a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee included a letter from the Rev David Walsh,saying that students at St Johns had told him about Murphys abuse sometime between 1955 and 1963. Walsh said he told Archbishop Albert Gregory Meyer of Milwaukee,who sent Murphy on a retreat and then put him back to undo the harm he had done.

The students went to the police departments in Milwaukee and in St Francis. They also went to the office of district attorney E Michael McCann and spoke with his assistant,William Gardner. It was only when the victims filed a lawsuit that the archdiocese removed Murphy from St Johns. Murphy continued working in parishes and schools,leading youth retreats in the Diocese of Superior for 24 years.