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Update: Black Collar Crime: Findlay Catholic Priest Michael Zacharias Convicted of Sex Trafficking, Sentenced to Life in Prison

Michael Zacharias

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

In 2020, Michael Zacharias, pastor of St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Findlay Ohio, was accused of grooming and sexually assaulting minors for years. (I attended high school in Findlay in the 1970s. Several of my friends attended St. Michael’s.)

The Toledo Blade reported:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday arrested the pastor of St. Michael the Archangel Parish, alleging that he groomed and sexually assaulted minors for years, beginning in Toledo.

Special Agent in Charge Eric Smith said the Rev. Michael Zacharias, 53, is believed to have groomed and sexually assaulted minors since the late 1990s.

The Northwest Ohio Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force took the priest into custody after he presided at a 7 a.m. Mass at St. Michael the Archangel Parish. Father Zacharias faces charges of coercion and enticement, sex trafficking of a minor, and sex trafficking of an adult by force, fraud, or coercion, according to court documents.

….

Agent Smith addressed the media at a morning news conference outside the priest’s residence on Greendale Avenue in Findlay, which abuts the parking lot of the parish grounds. He said the criminal complaint filed against the priest includes accounts from two victims, but his department believes there have been others.

….

“It’s imperative that those other individuals out there come forward,” he said on Tuesday. “Your contact with us will remain strictly confidential.”

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Toledo announced that Father Zacharias was put on administrative leave effective immediately upon hearing word of his arrest. This means he cannot exercise public ministry, administer sacraments, or present himself as a priest. Administrative leave is a precautionary measure while an allegation is being investigated.

Bishop Daniel Thomas responded in a statement:

“I am profoundly shocked and grieved to learn of these charges against one of our priests,” he said. “The Church cannot and will not tolerate any such behavior and takes any sexual abuse or misconduct on the part of a cleric with the utmost seriousness. As we await the outcome of the criminal investigation, our prayers go out to anyone affected by this situation.”

The diocese indicated that these are the first allegations raised against Father Zacharias.

Father Zacharias was ordained in 2002, according to the diocese.

He is most recently the pastor of St. Michael the Archangel in Findlay since 2017. The parish serves about 3,300 households, and is affiliated with St. Michael the Archangel School, which covers preschool through eighth grade.

The diocese identified his previous assignments as St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Toledo as a seminarian between 1999 and 2000; St. Peter Parish in Mansfield, Ohio as an associate pastor between 2002 and 2007; St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Van Wert as pastor between 2007 and 2011; St. Joseph and St. Ann Parishes in Fremont as pastor between 2011 and 2017; and St. Michael the Archangel in Findlay since 2017.

Investigators allege in court records that he began to groom two male victims, currently ages 32 and 26, while he was a seminarian and they were students at St. Catherine of Siena. One met Father Zacharias in the sixth grade, the other in the first grade, according to the complaint.

Each described to agents drug addictions that began in their teen years, and alleged that the priest would help fund their drug habits by paying them for oral sex. This began while they were underage and, in the case of one of the victims, continued until as recently as July.

The complaint indicates that these exchanges occurred at times in parish rectories, including Father Zacharias’ diocese-owned residence in Findlay.

The complaint also indicates that in the case of the victim with whom he was in touch as recently as July, Father Zacharias would request and at times pay for videos in which he performed sex acts on the victim and in which he confessed to grooming the victim. The complaint references multiple text messages between the victim and the priest.

….

Father Zacharias was one of several ordinands who spoke with The Blade in 2002, reflecting on their vocations amid seismic revelations of widespread clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church as reported by the Boston Globe.

Then-Deacon Zacharias said that his cohort of priests would bring with them an understanding of sexuality as a part of who they are.

“In the past I don’t want to say they denied it, but it seems as though they were told, ‘You’re going to be a priest, you’re going to be celibate,’” he told The Blade then. By contrast, he said contemporary seminarians were taught to have healthy and appropriate relationships.

Findlay Mayor Christina Muryn responded to the news in a statement on Tuesday.

“I am distraught by the news of the arrest of Father Michael Zacharias,” she said. “These allegations are not taken lightly, and the Findlay Police Department and our community at large will support the full and thorough investigation by the FBI. Such abuse of power, and perversion of sexuality is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated by any organization, individual, or society.”

Three years later, Zacharias was convicted of sex trafficking and sentenced to life in prison.

NBC-4 reports:

A former priest has been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of his role in a sex trafficking scandal in Toledo, Ohio.

According to the United States Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Ohio, 56-year-old Michael Zacharias was sentenced to life in prison, five years of supervised release, and fines of $25,500 after a jury found him guilty in May of five counts of sex trafficking.

Zacharias, of Findlay, was a priest-in-training when he first met three victims at a parochial school in Toledo in 1999. At the time the victims were five, 11, and 13 years old, though the release states they were victimized into their adult ages.

Evidence showed that Zacharias groomed the boys and became close with their families before eventually coercing the victims to engage in commercial sex acts. He then continued to victimize the boys into their adulthood by exploiting their opioid addictions to cope with the trauma of their abuse.

Zacharias served as a Catholic priest in northwest Ohio for over 20 years. His victims struggled in school, fell into opioid addiction, developed criminal histories and became financially dependent on him to avoid opioid withdrawal and homelessness.

Zacharias was arrested in August 2020 and charged with sex trafficking of a minor, sex trafficking of an adult by force, fraud or coercion, and coercion and enticement. At that time, the Diocese of Toledo said Zacharias was a priest and pastor of St. Michael the Archangel parish in Findlay and had been placed on administrative leave. 

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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From Segregation Academy to Parents’ Rights

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Guest Post by MJ Lisbeth

When I was verging on thirteen, my family moved from Brooklyn, New York to a small New Jersey town that was turning into a bedroom community for New York commuters.

I forgave my parents for that move when I turned 40.

Seriously, any sort of disruption is difficult for someone entering puberty. In previous posts, I discussed how conservative my old neighborhood—blue-collar, white, and Roman Catholic—was. While our new community was more middle-class and not as Catholic, it was, in some ways even more conservative—and religious. Or, at least, the prevailing attitude is perhaps more influenced by religion. 

Some of that, I believe, had to do with the light and physical space. In Brooklyn, we lived in apartments until I was eight. Then my parents bought a row house, where we lived until we moved to New Jersey.  That house, the apartment buildings, and most other structures in the neighborhood were constructed from bricks flaked and bubbled but somehow held together and insulated the people within them like the worn coats of old people. Those bricks, those houses, simmered softly in summer heat and glowed like embers at sunset, and echoed stories shared on stoops and over hearty meals. 

There were no bricks on our block in New Jersey. In fact, there were few anywhere in the town, except in one of its older sections. Oh, and I was older than the house we moved into, or any of the others on our street. They were single-story or split-level, with no basements—or stoops. So neighbors couldn’t sit outside and chat unless one invited the other into their yard or house. The fronts of those houses were flat, painted in flat shades of white and beige. 

Almost everybody I knew in my Brooklyn neighborhood attended the same church, in the middle of our neighborhood. Many of us also attended its Catholic school. Ironically, as much as we talked, and kids played with each other, we interacted very little, if at all,  during Mass. If anything, the church served a purpose that, I would learn much later, Elizabeth I envisioned for the then-new Church of England: It wasn’t so much a unifying faith as much as a social glue. In other words, she cared more about attendance than belief.  Likewise, we—even those of us who attended the church’s school– didn’t talk much, if at all, about our notions of the triune God but we all knew enough to attend or “assist” at mass on days of obligation.

The New Jersey town had a Roman Catholic parish, which I attended, as well as churches and chapels of the mainline Protestant denominations. If I recall correctly, there was also an Evangelical church, but I (and, I suspect, almost anybody who didn’t attend it) didn’t know what it was. On Sunday morning, the streets—quiet except when people were on their way to work or school—were all but deserted, as most people were in one of those churches. I don’t recall any open hostility or even debates between members of different churches, but there didn’t seem to be much communication between the leaders of those churches, or between members of churches about matters related to their institutions and faith.

As I described in an earlier post, my Catholic school in Brooklyn was, in essence, a Northern segregation academy.  It opened around the time courts ordered the busing of Black and brown kids from other neighborhoods–”trouble,” as some called them—into public schools in white neighborhoods like ours. Our New Jersey enclave was “spared” such a fate because, well, there weren’t Black or Brown kids to bus to the school. I recall only one Black classmate: an extremely intelligent and talented girl whose family had a farm on the outskirts of town and, I would learn later, were descendants of a community of free Blacks and escaped slaves that once lived in the area. I would love to know how many times that girl and her family heard “we don’t mean you” from white people talking about the race “problem.”

 I knew only one kid who attended the Catholic high school: an athlete whom the public high school (from which I graduated) barred from its football and track teams because of a medical condition. My guess is that other kids went to that school because their parents really wanted a Catholic education for their kids—or, perhaps, they wanted to protect their progeny from lowlifes like me!

So, that school didn’t have to be a segregation academy. But, in a sense, the town itself was one. I don’t know whether the local shade of skin has darkened any since I left, more than four decades ago, but it seems that some members of the local Board of Education are trying to “shield” kids from “unsavory” influences, just as they moved to the town to forget, and to keep their kids from knowing about, the darkness and rough edges in the bricks of the cities they left.

Lest you thought that only the likes of Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott are trying to eradicate the existence of LGBTQ kids in the name of “parental rights,” consider this: the town I’m talking about—Middletown Township (ironically, the home of Governor Phil Murphy) has just mandated the “outing” of transgender and other gender-variant kids. Under the new policy, if, students ask to be called a different name or identified by a different gender from the one on their birth certificates, ask to use the bathroom, or participate on a sports team or other activity designated for the “opposite” gender, teachers must notify those kids’ parents.

(Three other New Jersey municipalities, including one that borders Middletown and another in the same county, have proposed policies with nearly identical language.)

Now, I understand parents wanting to know what their children are doing, in school or elsewhere. But I also know how vulnerable such kids are: After all, I was one, though I didn’t “come out” and begin my gender affirmation process until I was in my 40s. Moreover, from other experiences, I know of the perils some young people face. When I taught in a yeshiva, boys confided questions about their sexual orientation, or simply their wish to know what life was like outside the Orthodox bubble, to me. (One also talked about sexual abuse from a rabbi.) Later, as a college instructor—both before and after my gender affirmation—students came to me with questions and fears they couldn’t express to members of their families and communities. And, when I co-facilitated an LGBTQ youth group, I worked with 14 and 15-year-olds who were kicked out of their homes or bullied out of their schools when they “came out.”

Some of those parents who disowned their gay, trans, or genderqueer students, no doubt, thought they could “protect”–segregate– them from the “influences” of people like me. And, by getting rid of the “bad apple,” they can keep the rest from “spoiling.” 

It’s hard for me not to think that the same kinds of people who supported Catholic Northern segregation academies like the one I attended in Brooklyn are also behind the proposals to out kids in the name of “parents’ rights”– in order to segregate other children from the ungodly influences of kids like the one I might’ve been had I the language or awareness to define myself, and those teachers and other adults who might’ve been my allies.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Black Collar Crime: Catholic Priest Scott Asalone Sentenced to Eight Years in Prison for Sexually Assaulting Teen Boy

Scott Asalone

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

Scott Asalone, a former priest at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville, Virginia, pleaded guilty to a single count of felony carnal knowledge of a minor in December 2022. Yesterday, he was sentenced to eight years in prison.

WTOP reports:

A former Loudoun County priest has been sentenced to eight years in prison for sexually abusing a minor nearly 40 years ago.

On Tuesday, Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares announced Scott Asalone, a former priest at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville, has been sentenced to prison on a charge of felony carnal knowledge of a minor.

“Today’s sentencing brings long, overdue justice to the brave victim who came forward and told their story. My office will continue to aggressively prosecute child offenders and I encourage anyone who has been a victim of clergy abuse to contact the Virginia State Police or local law enforcement,” said Miyares in a statement.

Asalone was convicted of sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy in 1985 when he was 29.

In 2020, when charges were first brought, D.C. Council member David Grosso came forward and identified himself as the victim in an interview with The Washington Post.

In an interview with WTOP after Asalone was convicted in December 2022, Grosso said, “I just think more of us need to realize that there is an opportunity for justice out there. And if you don’t say something, nobody knows.”

Asalone, now 66, will also have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Fox-5 adds:

The victim in the case is former D.C. Council member David Grosso, who publicly identified himself as Asalone’s victim when the charges were filed in 2020.

Grosso previously said he wrote a letter in 1992 to Asalone, and the priest responded by admitting his misconduct. Grosso said the letter served as evidence to convict Asalone in a case that stretched back to 1985.

“I love the fact that justice never stops in Virginia,” Grosso said last December.

“Today’s sentencing brings long, overdue justice to the brave victim who came forward and told their story. My office will continue to aggressively prosecute child offenders and I encourage anyone who has been a victim of clergy abuse to contact the Virginia State Police or local law enforcement. I’d also like to commend the Virginia State Police and my Major Crimes and Emerging Threats Section for their outstanding work on this case,” said Attorney General Miyares in a statement Tuesday.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Black Collar Crime: Former Catholic Youth Worker Brian Werth Spent Three Years in Prison for Sexual Abuse, Accused of Child Pornography Crimes

brian werth

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

In 2018, Brian Werth, a youth worker at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church in Rockville, Maryland, was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for the sexual abuse of a church teenager.

The Bethesda Magazine reported:

A former youth minister at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church in Rockville was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison for the sexual abuse of a teen parishioner, according to Montgomery County prosecutors.

Brian Patrick Werth, 34, had been arrested in 2016 in connection with the abuse of a then-16-year-old girl, to whom he had sent explicit text messages for two years and had sexual contact with her earlier that year. He was charged with a fourth-degree sex offense, sexual abuse of a minor and second-degree assault.

Judge Karla Smith sentenced Werth to one year for the sex offense charge and two years for the assault charge, according to a State’s Attorney’s Office press release. The two terms will be served consecutively, followed by five years of probation with COMET, a sex offender monitoring program that will include periodic polygraph and psychosexual testing. Werth is also required to register as a sex offender for 15 years.

Smith went beyond state guidelines, which recommend zero to six months for the charges, in the sentencing. Ramón Korionoff, a spokesman for the State’s Attorney’s Office, said the sentence was appropriate.

“It is our hope that this above-the-guidelines sentence will send a strong message that people in position of authority and trust must not abuse that power over the young people they are supposed to be serving,” he said in a statement. “Hopefully, yesterday’s sentence will be the first step in healing for the victim and the church community in this matter.”

….

Werth, who lived in Montgomery Village at the time, had known the victim through the church, and learned that she “adored him,” according to prosecutors. They began texting, and police later discovered he had sent graphic and sexual texts to her since the summer of 2014.

On about May 20, 2016, Werth kissed the teen and had other inappropriate sexual contact with her during a youth event at the church, according to police.

St. Elizabeth’s had fired Werth in 2016 after the pastor received a complaint against him that summer, according to a statement from the Archdiocese of Washington at the time. The pastor contacted the Archdiocese’s Child and Youth Protection Office, which then reported the case to county police.

After his release from prison, Werth was accused of one count of solicitation of a minor to engage in the production of obscene matter, three counts of possession with intent to distribute pornography, and ten counts of possession of child pornography.

In 2021, the Maryland State Police reported,

A Prince George’s County man was arrested and charged Tuesday after a Maryland State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force investigation developed evidence supporting charges of possession of child pornography and the attempted solicitation of a minor.

The suspect is identified as Brian Werth, 37, of Beltsville, MD. Werth, a registered sex offender, is charged with solicitation of a minor to engage in the production of obscene matter, three counts of possession with intent to distribute pornography and 10 counts of possession of child pornography. He was taken to the Maryland State Police College Park Barrack for processing before being transferred to the Prince George’s County Detention Center, where he is being held without bond.

On June 24, the Maryland State Police Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force received a CyberTip report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children involving the distribution of child pornography online. The investigation led to the identification of the suspect and his residence in Prince George’s County.

Through the course of the investigation, troopers discovered that Werth had also been communicating with a minor in North Carolina. Troopers, with the assistance of Homeland Security Investigations, arrested Werth Tuesday as he went to visit his probation officer in Hyattsville, Maryland. Investigators also served a search warrant at the identified suspect’s residence.

I found no further information on Brian Werth’s 2021 arrest. He could have been violated and returned to prison. I found no news story on the adjudication of Werth’s case. Maryland uses a convoluted sex offender registry. After several attempts to use it, I gave up. Come on, Maryland, it’s 2023.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Letter to the Editor: Stopping the Religious Right’s Attempt to Ban Abortion

preaching anti abortion gospel lexington kentucky (6)

Letter to the editor of The Bryan Times

Dear Editor,

After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade and returned the regulation of abortion to the states, many liberals and progressives thought that culture warriors would move on to other hot-button issues such as same-sex marriage, gender-affirming care for transgender people, and banning library books that offend their religious sensibilities. As someone who was an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five years, I warned my fellow progressives that Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and Mormons were not finished on the abortion front; that their true objective is to pass total abortion bans. No exceptions for rape and incest. No exceptions for the life of the mother or fatal fetal abnormalities. From the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg — no abortion. Period.

Eighty-eight percent of abortions take place in the first trimester. Late-term abortions are rare, and usually the result of fatal fetal abnormalities or threats to the lives of mothers. Yet, forced-birth groups, including those in rural Northwest Ohio, almost always use gruesome photos of late-term aborted fetuses to inflame the passions of supporters. Why is that? I suspect a photo of a zygote or a four-week-old blastocyst doesn’t stir people to open their checkbooks to give money to forced birth groups as a bloody fetus does.

Currently, signatures are being collected for a ballot initiative that will legalize abortion in Ohio. Hopefully, this initiative will be on the ballot in November. Ohio Republican legislators are doing everything in their power to derail the ballot initiative, including upping vote percentage for an amendment to pass.. It is likely Republican attempts to hinder the democratic process will fail and Ohioans will be able to put an end to the religious rights frontal assault on reproductive rights.

The good news is that the majority of voters support reproductive rights. While they may want certain restrictions on post-viability abortions, most Ohioans support a woman’s right to choose. This is especially the case for younger adults who generally oppose the religious right’s culture war. If younger adults turn out to vote, that will put an end to forced birth laws.

We mustn’t underestimate the goal of Evangelicals and conservative Catholics; not only in banning abortion but also banning many forms of birth control. Their goal is to return Ohio and the United States to the good old days of the 1950s. We must not let this happen.

Bruce Gerencser
Ney, Ohio

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Black Collar Crime: Catholic Priest Joseph “Jack” Baker Sentenced to 3-15 Years in Prison for Sexual Assault

joseph jack baker

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

In 2019, Joseph “Jack” Baker, pastor of St. Perpetua Parish in Waterford, Michigan, was accused of sexually assaulting a child.

The Oakland Press reported at the time:

Father Joseph “Jack” Baker, 57, is on an electronic tether following his arraignment July 8 in 29th District Court, according to the Wayne County Jail website. Judge Laura Redmond Mack assigned a $500,000 personal bond at arraignment, which doesn’t require bail to be posted.

Baker, pastor of St. Perpetua Parish in Waterford since 2008, is one of six metro Detroit priests facing sexual abuse charges as part of an ongoing investigation by the state’s attorney general’s office. He was arrested July 8 in Wayne County and is charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct – sexual penetration with a person under 13 years old, multiple variables. Court records list the offense date as Feb. 1, 2004.

Baker is also a former associate pastor at St. Hugo of the Hills Parish in Bloomfield Hills and Sacred Heart Parish in Dearborn, and former pastor at St. Mary Parish in Wayne. He also was administrator at St. Benedict in Waterford in 2011, campus minister at Wayne State Medical School Campus Ministry and administrator at three churches in Inkster. He was ordained in 1993.

Attorney General Dana Nessel is calling the case “just the tip of the iceberg,” and said her office is reviewing “hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and files” seized last fall from Michigan’s seven diocese.

In October 2022, Baker was convicted of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree with a child under the age of 13.

On March 1, 2023, Baker was sentenced to 3-15 years in prison. Afterward, he must register as a sex offender.

WLNS-6 reports:

Joseph “Jack” Baker, 61, was convicted in October 2022 of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree. This charge is used when the victim is under 13.

Baker will spend three to 15 years in prison and must register as a sex offender for life.

He had previously been a pastor at St. Perpetua Parish in Waterford since 2008. He also served as a pastor at St. Mary Parish in Wayne, as associate pastor at Sacred Heart Parish in Dearborn and as an associate pastor at St. Hugo of the Hills in Bloomfield Hills.

The Oakland Press added:

At his sentencing hearing in Wayne County’s 3rd Judicial Circuit Court, Joseph “Father Jack” Baker was ordered to spend 3-15 years in prison, with jail credit of 140 days, for first-degree criminal sexual conduct-sexual penetration of a person less than 13 years old.

Baker was pastor at St. Mary Catholic School in Wayne and his victim was a second-grader there when he was raped in the church sacristy in 2004. Both the victim and Baker were among those who testified at the trial last October, with Baker denying the allegation.

The Oakland Press is not naming the victim due to the nature of the crime.

In handing down the sentence, Judge Bridget Hathaway veered from sentencing guidelines of a minimum 25 years in prison, calling Baker’s case “somewhat unique.”

Noting that the priest was convicted of “one of the most serious crimes in the state,” Hathaway cited several factors for the lighter sentence, including Baker having no other criminal allegations against him and no prior criminal history, compliance with bond conditions for more than three years while he awaited trial, and several dozen letters of support from parishioners and others who, she said, credited him with doing  “a great deal of good for the community.”

….

Wednesday’s hearing, Kriger had asked the judge to sentence Baker to time served and “a period of probation or home confinement,” claiming he has a history of “dedication to service,” community involvement and helping others “in some of their darkest hours” — as evidenced by the letters written to the court on his behalf.

“This offense is 20 years old and is truly an aberration in Father Baker’s otherwise exemplary life…he has spent the last 20 years being the complete opposite of what he have seen in this case,” she said.

Russo Bennetts, however, argued that the “face (Baker) presented to the community and the face his victim saw” weren’t the same.

“This was not an aberration…he changed and destroyed (the victim’s) life,” Russo Bennetts said. “The people who wrote those letters weren’t sexually assaulted by Joseph Baker. The Joseph Baker in those letters in not the Joseph Baker (the victim) knows.”

Baker was given a lighter sentence because of all the “good” things he did as a pastor. Does anyone seriously think that this was the only time that Baker took advantage of a church minor? I mean, really? As has been shown in countless Black Collar Crime stories, judges often give offending clergy what I call the “preacher’s discount,” sentencing them to lighter sentences than non-clerics receive. Lost on judges is the fact that these men abused the trust their victims had in them, causing untold physical and psychological harm. They should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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I Attended a Segregation Academy

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Guest Post by MJ Lisbeth

Last week, the Archdiocese of New York announced that twelve Catholic schools in its domain—which includes three New York City boroughs and seven suburban counties to the north—will close at the end of this school year.

That does not surprise me. The Catholic school I attended, in the neighboring Diocese of Brooklyn, closed in 2004. Three years ago, two dozen schools in the Diocese shut their doors forever. Today, there are roughly half as many Catholic schools and Catholic school pupils as there were in the mid-1960s, when both counts reached their peaks in New York and the United States.

Diocesan leaders and students of such trends cite several factors, which were accelerated by the COVID epidemic and sex abuse revelations. One is cost. When I entered Catholic school, right around the aforementioned peak, a parent, usually the father, could work a few hours’ overtime, or the other parent, usually the mother, could take on part-time work to pay their kids’ tuition. (Notice that I used the plural for children. It was not unusual to find multiple siblings in the same school, or even the same classroom.)  Although Catholic schools still aren’t nearly as pricey as secular private schools, today a working- or middle-class parent’s entire salary could go to the cost of sending one child to a Catholic school.

Another factor blamed for the decline in the number of Catholic schools and their enrollments is the changing demographics of their mostly-urban locations. The closure of my old school is practically a “poster child” of this trend. When I was growing up, my neighborhood was overwhelmingly Catholic with a small, mostly secular, Jewish minority. Today nearly all of the Catholics are gone; now my old neighborhood is part of the largest Hasidic Jewish communities in the United States. 

While it is true that nearly every New York City—and urban American—neighborhood has changed its racial and ethnic composition since the 1960s, many people who moved into those neighborhoods are also Catholic. I am thinking in particular, of course, of Hispanics, but in neighborhoods like Brooklyn’s Crown Heights and East Flatbush, there are large communities of Haitian, Jamaican, and African Catholics. Having come to know some, I can safely say that many are at least as devout—and would want a Catholic education for their children as much– as parents of my community.

Of course, one reason why they don’t enroll their children is the aforementioned cost. While some immigrants are, or become, middle-class professionals, others are working multiple menial jobs just to keep a roof over their heads and food in their kids’ mouths. And it must be said that some who could afford to pay the tuition don’t see the point of doing so when, in contrast to the nuns who taught me and my old schoolmates, most of today’s Catholic school teachers are secular, just like the ones who teach in public school. “How Catholic is their education?” an acquaintance of mine wondered about her grandchildren whose single mother, from what I could tell, could afford the tuition only because of the child support payments and a couple of side jobs that augmented her main salary.

There is, however, a related story that no official in the Archdiocese of New York, or anywhere else in the Church, is mentioning. Most of the Catholic school kids of my generation, while working- or lower middle-class, were White. During the 1960s and ‘70s, many of their families moved. One reason is that they needed larger quarters for their growing families — it wasn’t called the Baby Boom for nothing — and houses outside the cities were more affordable. Or, as in the case of my family, the main breadwinner’s job moved outside the city.

Some of those families continued to enroll their kids in Catholic schools. But most, like my family, sent their kids to the public school in their new locale. As my mother would say, my brothers and I didn’t attend Catholic school because it was Catholic. Rather, she and my father, like other parents in the neighborhood, felt more confident in the education the Catholic school provided. Some of that, I suspect, had to do with the fact that my mother also attended Catholic schools.

But other families moved out of their urban enclaves for the same reason they enrolled their kids in Catholic schools while they were living in those neighborhoods. While some schools date to the beginning of large-scale Catholic immigration—first from Germany and later from Ireland, Italy, Poland, and other European countries—others, like the one I attended, didn’t open until the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, the school I attended opened only a year before I entered.

That was also the same time Evangelical, Fundamentalist, and other conservative Christian churches were opening private schools, mainly in the South and Midwest. Ostensibly, the founders of these schools feared that “moral values” were being erased from public school curricula—and from the nation’s laws and value systems. They cited the end of prayer and the diversification of reading lists (and other things, one of which I’ll mention) in those public schools.

And what was being “diversified?” Well, for one thing, points of view: history and other classes were being revised to include the stories of people who had been left out.  But, most troubling to the founders of those “Christian” academies was the new variation in color among the student bodies that resulted from Brown v Board of Education in 1954.

A few school boards and elected officials—most notably Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus—openly defied orders to desegregate.  But more people, including church leaders, subverted that order through the IRS tax code, which allowed “religious” schools to claim tax exemption, and through exemptions provided in the civil-rights laws themselves for private institutions. 

Those schools are now commonly called “segregation academies.” While few, if any, openly barred students of color (mainly Black), they adopted policies that had the same effect. One was, of course, tuition that most Black families couldn’t afford. Another was professions of faith that may have run counter to the families’ beliefs. And some simply made nonwhite kids and families feel unwelcome.

Such was the case in my Catholic school.  I can recall no non-White students; nearly all of us came from the same few European backgrounds I’ve mentioned. (This, I believe, is part of what some of my old classmates mean by the “good old days” they pine for on their Facebook pages.) School and church officials would claim that the school’s demographics reflected that of the neighborhood, which was mostly true.  But, when I was growing up, a few of my schoolmates actually told me that their parents sent them to that school because there were “too many (N-words)” in the local public school.  And, as I recall, at least some of their parents were furious that “trouble”—a code word for Black kids—was being bused into the school and neighborhood.

In short, I can’t help but to think something that leaders of the New York Archdiocese, Diocese of Brooklyn and the church can’t or won’t acknowledge: some of their schools, like the one I attended, were essentially Northern segregation academies. The irony is, of course, that in some neighborhoods, the very people those parents, and sometimes school and church officials, tried to keep out are now the neighborhood that can’t or won’t support the Catholic schools that are, or are in danger of, closing. 

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Black Collar Crime: Catholic Priest James Beighlie Sentenced to Five Years in Prison on Child Pornography Charges

James T Beighlie

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

James T Beighlie, a retired Catholic priest in Missouri, was sentenced to five years in prison on child pornography charges.

WSGW reports:

A retired priest has been sentenced to five years in prison after it was discovered he had made slideshow presentations containing thousands of images of child pornography. The 72-year-old’s arsenal of abusive material was discovered after he left nude images of himself on a church printer, officials said. 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Missouri said on Tuesday that Vincentian priest James T. Beighlie of St. Louis, Missouri, had 6,000 pictures containing child sexual abuse material on a computer, including child pornography and images of child erotica. 

“Beighlie created two PowerPoint presentations with graphic titles that linked to thousands of the images, and often visited and edited the presentations over a period of years,” the office said, adding that he had a second computer with an additional 236 images and 40 videos of similar content. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Colleen Lang said during court that the now-retired priest revised his slideshow presentations more than 200 times. 

“This criminal conduct was part of his daily life,” Lang said.

Beighlie had been looking at child sex abuse material since at least 2008, Lang said, but it wasn’t until 2021 that it was found out. In May of that year when he was working as an associate pastor at St. Vincent de Paul Parish in St. Louis as part of the Congregation of the Mission, some of his colleagues found “compromising images” of him on a church printer. 

That finding launched an investigation within the church. A private IT support company soon found videos of what appeared to be “minors engaging in sex acts,” the attorney’s office said. During that time, he was removed from his position, according to the Congregation of the Western Province and “placed in a monitored environment.” 

The church’s attorney contacted the FBI, which then began its own investigation.

The priest pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of child pornography in October. On Tuesday, he was sentenced to five years and ordered to pay nearly $25,000. A portion of that money, $4,750, will go to one of the victims who was portrayed in the child pornography, the office said, while the remaining $22,000 will go toward other victims of crimes involving children. 

In a letter to the presiding judge, one of the victims seen in the child pornography spoke out about the abuse. 

“It’s depressing and sickening to know that people were looking at images and videos of my online sexual abuse when I was a little girl and that they were getting pleasure from it – my abuse,” they said. 

Prior to serving at St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Beighlie was on the faculty at St. Thomas Aquinas/Mercy High School and Vincent Gray Academy, both in St. Louis, and had also spent time as an associate pastor at Our Lady Queen of Peace parish in House Springs, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. 

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Update: Black Collar Crime: Catholic Church Volunteer Jeffrey Eisenbath Sentenced to 184 Months in Prison on Child Porn Charges

jeffrey eisenbath

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

In 2018, Jeffrey Eisenbath, a volunteer children’s religious education teacher at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Troy, Missouri, was charged with felony invasion of privacy and possession of child pornography.

Jared Gilmour, a reporter for the Idaho Statesman, wrote:

Detectives were called to a laser tag and bumper car complex in St. Charles, Mo., last week after the business made an disturbing discovery: Hidden in the Adrenaline Zone bathroom was a secret camera, according to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.

When investigators watched the camera’s recording on Jan. 15, it didn’t take long to figure out who had installed the device, they said. The camera had captured Jeffrey Eisenbath, a 28-year-old Adrenaline Zone employee, as he placed the camera in the bathroom to spy on those who entered, according to detectives.

Eisenbath, detectives learned, was out of town until Jan. 22 — so they got a search warrant for computer and recording devices at his Troy, Mo., residence, according to the sheriff’s office.

Ultimately, detectives seized five hidden cameras, a computer and memory drives. Then, as Eisenbath was driving in Wentzville, Mo., on Monday, he was arrested, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said.

Searching Eisenbath’s home revealed more than 1,000 videos showing child pornography involving young girls, KMOV reports. Eisenbath said he is “addicted to child pornography,” according to police.

Eisenbath admitted to authorities that he had secretly installed the camera the Adrenaline Zone bathroom — and also that he had hidden another camera in a bathroom by the sanctuary of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Troy, where Eisenbath had volunteered, according to the sheriff’s office.

“This is a case of an individual crime that affects many unsuspecting people,” Lincoln County Sheriff John Cottle said in a statement. “The Archdiocese of St. Louis has stringent background screenings of volunteers but it cannot always catch their secret habits. This is why law enforcement has cybercrime task forces in place, to catch individuals like Mr. Eisenbath.”

Eisenbath has been charged in St. Charles County with felony invasion of property. He’s being held at the St. Charles County Jail under a $25,000 cash only bond, according to the sheriff’s office. In Lincoln County, Eisenbath has been charged with felony invasion of privacy and possession of child pornography. Bond for the Lincoln County charges is set at $100,000 cash only.

….

The Archdiocese of St. Louis has issued a statement condemning Eisenbath’s alleged actions.

“The allegations against Mr. Jeffrey Eisenbath, if true, are a disturbing and unacceptable abuse of the trust we place in the employees and volunteers at our parishes and schools,” the Archdiocese of St. Louis said in a statement to KSDK. “We are cooperating fully with the authorities in their investigation and will communicate with those impacted as we continue to learn more about the allegations.”

Eisenbath had traveled with the church on mission trips across the country — including trips on which he would have had contact with young people, according to court records reviewed by KMOV.

Adrenaline Zone, where police say Eisenbath worked, says on its website that it hosts children’s parties and school events, offering laser tag, bumper cars a laser maze and more.

In February 2021, Eisenbath pleaded guilty to four counts: production of child pornography, (2) possession of child pornography, and receipt of child pornography. Eisenbath was sentenced to 184 months in prison. (Federal Court Judgment and Sentencing Document)

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Update: Black Collar Crime: Catholic School Teacher Samantha Brasses Sentenced to Ten Years in Prison for Sexting

samantha brasses

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

In 2019, Samantha Brasses, a teacher at St. John Nepomuk Catholic School in Yukon, Oklahoma, was accused of unlawfully communicating with a minor by use of technology.

Fox-25 reported at the time:

On May 9, 2019, officers responded to 600 Garth Brooks Blvd. to a private Catholic school in reference to an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and a student.

Samantha Ann Brasses, 30, was arrested for unlawfully communicating with a minor by use of technology. Officers seized the victim’s phone and conducted forensic evidence to find the inappropriate conversations. Brasses and the 14-year-old victim reportedly communicated through Instagram, sharing inappropriate proposals, pictures, and referring to each other as “babe.”

In June 2021, Brasses pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Fox-25 reported:

A former Yukon Catholic School teacher is now a convicted sex offender for using Instagram to seek sex with a teenage student.

Samantha Ann Brasses, 32, pleaded guilty on June 18 to unlawful communication with minor using technology.

District Judge Jack D. McCurdy accepted the guilty plea and sentenced Brasses to 10 years in custody of Oklahoma’s Department of Corrections.

In her guilty plea, Brasses admitted in May 2019 she had used the Instagram messaging service “for the purpose of soliciting sexual conduct with a minor.”

The underage victim’s parents contacted school officials in May 2019 after they discovered the sexually charged text messages between Brasses and their 14-year-old son, according to a Yukon police report.

A forensic examination of the boy’s cell phone uncovered descriptive remarks about Brasses’ intentions with the alleged victim.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Bruce Gerencser