NEWS
2003 NEWS STORIES
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ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
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NEWS
MAY 2003
DIOCESE SUES DIOCESE. In what some say is a first in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States, the diocese of San Bernardino is suing the archdiocese of Boston in civil court. According to an April 2 Los Angeles Times story, the diocese of San Bernardino filed a lawsuit in San Bernardino superior court on April 1.
The lawsuit concerns the case of Father Paul Shanley, a priest whom the archdiocese of Boston "loaned" to the diocese of San Bernardino. Though the archdiocese knew that Shanley had a history of sexual abuse -- and even advocated sexual liaisons between men and boys -- then-auxiliary Bishop Robert Banks of Boston, in a January 15, 1990 letter, told the diocese of San Bernardino that Shanley was a "priest in good standing." While in San Bernardino, Shanley allegedly molested Kevin English, beginning when he was 17. English, now 30, is seeking damages from the diocese of San Bernardino, which, the diocese says, could cost it up to $12 million and bring it "to the brink of bankruptcy."
Shanley was Boston's mistake, not San Bernardino's; "we should not have to pay for Boston's mistake," diocesan spokesman Father Howard Lincoln told the Times. Lincoln said the suit "was intended to send a serious message" to Boston, which is perhaps why the diocese has opted to settle the matter in civil court rather than through the canon law, whose proceedings are held in secret.
FRIARS SUE ARCHDIOCESE. The Indiana-based Province of Our Lady of Consolation Conventual Franciscan Friars filed a cross-complaint in Orange County superior court saying that the archdiocese of Los Angeles is responsible for a Franciscan priest who allegedly molested a boy in the 1970s, said an April 5 Los Angeles Times story. The alleged molestation took place in Orange County when it was still under the archdiocese of Los Angeles. Last June a man brought a suit against the Franciscans, saying that a member of the order, Bertrand Horvath, molested him at St. Killian's church in Mission Viejo when he was child. In their cross-complaint, the Franciscans are asking the judge to order the archdiocese to reimburse the order for any costs the order accrues in the lawsuit. The Franciscans claim that they cannot be held responsible for one of their friars when he is on loan to a diocese.
John Manly, who represents Horvath's accuser, told the Times that the suits filed by the Franciscans and the diocese of San Bernardino "are indicative of the fact that the defendants clearly recognize the potential for huge liability and are going to begin to point the finger at one another."
MAHONY WON'T BUDGE. Cardinal Roger Mahony continues to refuse to turn over about 2,000 pages of Church personnel files to prosecutors who are investigating alleged sex crimes by priests, said an April 2 Los Angeles Times story. On April 1, the Los Angeles superior court held a hearing to determine whether the archdiocese should be forced to turn over the files.
A March 21 National Catholic Reporter article explained that, according to detective James Brown of the juvenile division of the Los Angeles police department, the archdiocese has turned over files to the court; but since archdiocesan lawyers are arguing that the documents are privileged information, they are locked away from police investigators in the judge's chambers in criminal court. The grand jury has issued 17 subpoenas for release of the files to police investigators. In its refusal to turn over the documents, the archdiocese has cited the right to confidentiality and the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.
According to the Reporter, the Los Angeles police department suspects 67 priests of sexual abuse of minors. Some of the suspected priests have multiple victim accusers (which allows the district attorney to proceed with prosecutions); but without access to the archdiocese's personnel files, the police are left with only one accuser for many of the accused priests. Police need further, independent corroboration that the accused priests have committed other acts of molestation before they can proceed with prosecution. The personnel files could provide such corroboration.
IN A STATEMENT on the superior court hearing, issued April 1 and published in the April 5 Tidings, the archdiocese of Los Angeles said that it was "pleased that after months of media pressure generated by the District Attorney to force us to waive all objections we now are in a forum where each victim, each accused priest and the Church caught in between will be fairly, calmly and individually treated." The statement explained that only five of the 17 files subpoenaed by the grand jury "contain a substantial number of documents involving pastoral counseling by the vicar for clergy's office." Though the archdiocese objects to handing over the files "covering the actual discussions with the vicar for clergy and the psychotherapy reports of the priests under treatment," it has, claims the statement, turned over to the district attorney information containing all pertinent information needed for an investigation. In refusing to turn over the documents themselves, the archdiocese said it seeks "only to protect the discussions of the actual spiritual and pastoral counseling of the priests as informed by the psychotherapy reports of the priests' therapists."
The statement argued that a bishop discharges his "obligation to assist the priests to live a life in imitation of Christ;" such an obligation "is a fundamental mission of the Church" carried on through the vicar of clergy. But in order for the vicar's counseling to be effective, the priests must be candid with them. "Few priests will be candid and open unless these essential disclosures, these manifestations of conscience, are maintained in confidence as the archdiocese always has carefully done," said the statement.
EVEN IF THE ARCHDIOCESE releases the documents, the juvenile division's James Brown said he feared that it would be document-by-document, a process, that, in criminal cases where a 12-month clock is already running, means the cases will become moot," said the March 21 National Catholic Reporter. The 12-month process here cited does not refer to a state law, passed last year, that removes the statute of limitations on all sexual molestation cases, but to a 1994 California court ruling that prosecutors could press charges in molestation cases, regardless of the statute of limitations, provided that the victim report the abuse within one year of the time he comes forward with it. Many cases involving Los Angeles clerics cannot be filed until corroborating evidence is found - evidence, prosecutors say, that may only be present in archdiocesan personnel files. Los Angeles prosecutors have warned that the statue of limitations could expire as early as April.
Though the United States Supreme Court is currently considering the constitutionality of the 1994 ruling, Los Angeles prosecutors lobbied the California state legislature to extend the deadline to file criminal charges in sexual molestation cases, said a March 13 Los Angeles Times article. This legislation, written by Assemblywoman Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), was introduced into the legislature on February 20 and subsequently passed. Governor Gray Davis signed it on April 4.
The Times noted that the current showdown between Cardinal Mahony and Los Angeles prosecutors mirrors what happened in Boston, where the archdiocese was ordered to turn over more than 30,000 pages of documents. The disclosures in these documents led eventually to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law -- an ominous fact, that may be influencing the current behavior of Cardinal Mahony.
THE WILLINGNESS TO COOPERATE shown by the diocese of Orange in turning over documents to prosecutors has led the arrest of John Lenihan, formerly pastor of St. Edward's parish in Dana Point, said a March 14 Los Angeles Times story. In personnel documents the Orange diocese turned over to the Orange County district attorney's office, was a letter written by Lenihan to Pope John Paul II, in which the priest asks to be released from the ministry, admitting that he had had two affairs with teenage girls in 1978. In April, the diocese of Orange and the archdiocese settled with one of these alleged victims for $1.2 million. The woman, who lives in San Francisco, then filed a criminal case with the Orange County Sheriff's Department, which led to Lenihan's arrest on April 10. Lenihan, who has been working as the manager of a packing company in Ventura County, was released the same day, after posting $100,000 bail. His lawyer says that his client is innocent of the charges against him.
Lenihan admitted to molesting the other girl, Mary Grant, in the late 1970s. The diocese of Orange settled with Grant for $25,000 in 1991. Despite his admission, the diocese of Orange allowed Lenihan to continue in the priesthood, even making him pastor of St. Edward's. In 2001, after admitting (under the pseudonym "Father X") to Times columnist Steve Lopez that he had had several affairs with adult women, Lenihan was removed from the ministry by the diocese and sent to Canada for rehabilitation treatment. Lenihan, say diocesan officials, did not complete the treatment.
McFARLAND EXPLAINS. The March 21 National Catholic Reporter reproduced a June 19, 2001 deposition in which Bishop Norman McFarland explained to aattorney John Manly why he allowed Father John Lenihan to continue in the ministry and eventually become pastor at St. Edward's. After McFarland admitted that he would not have allowed a child molester to remain a priest in the diocese, Manly asked why he did not remove Lenihan. McFarland said he had fulfilled the "request of the plaintiff and her lawyer that [Lenihan] receive therapy, and also there was payment of money." McFarland said he appointed Lenihan pastor of St. Edward's in 1995 because "I did not see any reason why he should not go there from his record. That is, he had admitted publicly even as I recall to the people of St. Norbert's that he had been guilty of this sexual conduct with an adolescent..he had served well. There was no indication even approaching this kind of conduct, improper sexual contact."
Though he said he knew of the recidivism rate of molesters, McFarland stated that he thought the abuse of a young child very different from that of a 15-year-old girl, which, he said, is "also very wrong." But, said McFarland, "I think there is more a chance for a person that, first of all, being an isolated incident. I can understand the temptation of that more. It can't even occur to me with a child or a baby. Does one make a distinction that's 15 or 17? She may be very, very precocious or adult-looking, and there would be temptation there."
VENTURA COUNTY AUTHORITIES, on April 4, arrested Father Carl Sutphin, 70, who has been accused of having molested four boys in Camarillo and Oxnard in the 1970s, said an April 5 Los Angeles Times story. Sutphin, it is alleged, abused the boys, first when he was pastor at St. Mary Magdalen parish in Camarillo and then when he served as chaplain at St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard beginning in 1975.
Allegations of sexual molestation against Sutphin surfaced in 1991 and the archdiocese sent him to Maryland for treatment. In 1995, the archdiocese placed Sutphin at St. Vibiana's cathedral, where the priest worked with homeless and with Spanish-speaking sex abusers. At St. Vibiana's, Sutphin lived in the same rectory as Cardinal Mahony. In 2001, Sutphin was named associate pastor for the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels "precisely because," said archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg, "it was a very restricted place for him to be." But in the heat of the sex abuse scandals, in February 2002, the archdiocese removed Sutphin from the ministry.
If convicted, Sutphin may be sentenced to 17 years in prison.
BISHOP PATRICK ZIEMANN, who left the Santa Rosa diocese under the cloud of sexual scandal, is "residing in comfortable, if not luxurious, exile at a monastery in the Arizona desert that doubles as a tourist destination," said a March 19 San Francisco Weekly story. The retired bishop, who admitted to a long-standing sexual relationship with a priest he had brought from Central America, has become, said the Weekly, "a fixture on the artsy party circuit in nearby Tucson; he's even spotted occasionally at a karaoke bar." Yet life at Holy Trinity Monastery near Tucson has had its spiritual benefits for Ziemann, who claims, said the Weekly, to spend four hours a day in prayer.
Ziemann, said the article, no longer says Mass. His privileges were removed last year by the Vatican, said the Weekly, when it was discovered that Ziemann had violated the conditions of his stay at the monastery by occasionally filling in for a priest at a nearby town. Ziemann also held seminars for couples engaged to be married.
According to the Weekly, Ziemann has gotten kid-glove treatment because of clerical friends in high places -- Archbishop William Levada of San Francisco, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles (the Weekly says "Ziemann's mentor and chief patron is Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, whose problems with pedophile priests rival the scandal-plagued Boston archdiocese's"), and Bishop Manuel Moreno, until recently bishop of Tucson, Arizona. Ziemann's legal counsel, said the Weekly, is Donald Steier, a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer. Steier represents many Los Angeles archdiocesan priests accused of sexual molestation.
The Weekly also made this surprising claim: "Although [Ziemann's] clerical privileges are restricted while he undergoes "spiritual rehabilitation," church officials haven't ruled out the possibility that the disgraced bishop may someday get a crack at heading another diocese." Ziemann, too, has not ruled out this possibility. "It's whatever the Lord wills," he told the Weekly. "Whatever the Lord has in mind for me, I'm willing to accept."
ZIEMANN-MAHONY CONNECTION. Bishop Ziemann's ties to Cardinal Roger Mahony go back to St. John's Seminary College, where Ziemann arrived a year after Mahony, in 1963, said the Weekly story. In the ensuing years, said the Weekly, Mahony and Ziemann met at "St. John's social events and elsewhere."
After becoming archbishop of Los Angeles in 1985, Mahony made Ziemann the administrator of Queen of Angels junior seminary for high school-aged boys. In 1987, Mahony made Ziemann auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles. "Church sources," said the Weekly, "say the cardinal was instrumental in securing the Vatican's 1992 appointment of Ziemann to head the Santa Rosa diocese."
Both the Los Angeles and San Francisco archdioceses have denied that either Mahony or Levada are seeking Ziemann's rehabilitation, said an April 4 National Catholic Reporter story. Maurice Healy, spokesman for the San Francisco archdiocese, said the Weekly article was "in its entirety full of junk as it pertains to the archbishop. Ludicrous." Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the Los Angeles archdiocese, told the Reporter, that the Weekly article was "filled with inaccuracies and innuendo. Cardinal Mahony is not involved in any so-called 'rehabilitation' of Bishop Ziemann."
A CROSS THAT HAS STOOD atop a hill overlooking the city of Ventura violates the separation of church and state, said Stan Kohls, a member of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. According to the April 3 Los Angeles Times, Kohls may file a lawsuit against the city of Ventura for a cross that stands on public land in Grant Park, atop Mission Hill. City attorney Bob Boehm, however, said that the cross, though maintained by city funds, has the character of a historical monument, since Father Junípero Serra is said to have placed a similar cross atop Mission Hill on Easter morning, 1782. But, though crosses have graced the hilltop in the 1800s, and the present cross has stood there since 1912, it is uncertain that Serra ever placed a cross there.
The result of the Ventura case could decide the fate of crosses standing on public land in other parts of California. The Times article noted that even when cities have sold similar monuments to private individuals, they have been dogged by court cases since, it has been claimed, that bidding was rigged in favor of those who would keep the monuments standing. Meanwhile, it seems, not all Ventura residents are upset by the cross on Mission Hill. Said Rabbi Lisa Hochberg-Miller of Ventura's Temple Beth Torah to the Times, "it's not an in-your-face display and it's not proselytizing. There's a historicity to it."
THOUGH MANY OF THEIR SONS ARE AT WAR, parishioners at Dolores Mission do not object to their anti-war pastor, Father Michael Kennedy, said an April 7 Los Angeles Times story. A banner crying, "NO WAR," hung outside the church on Sunday, April 6, and the parish bulletin carried a flier for a "Stop the War" rally as well as an article by Kennedy laying out his anti-war stance. Still, a memorial to Our Lady of Guadalupe inside the church lists for prayer the names of parishioners and parishioners' relatives at war in Iraq and the parish holds weekly prayer vigils for the troops.
Father Kennedy told the Times that he will not compromise his anti-war stance; still, he recognizes the fears of those of his parishioners who have sons or relatives at war. At the April 6 Mass, Kennedy told parishioners, "we must pray that the Virgin of Guadalupe protects our sons and pray for the children and the people of Iraq." He also allows parishioners to place pictures of their soldiers at the altar, though Kennedy adds colored photos of Iraqi children and civilians as a counterpoint. Some Dolores parishioners, Salvadorans who remember war in their own country, see their own past in the pictures of Iraqi civilians. One such parishioner, Carlos Ortez, 40, told the Times, "We all know what war is. We lived it. The prayers for peace you are hearing are from people who have been victims of war."
THE REAL JESUS is what the April 2003 the widely read Catholic Digest claimed it was presenting to readers in an article titled, "Joe's Boy." "There's the Messiah, and then there's the ordinary person who's a lot like you and me," said the article's teaser. Then is Jesus two persons? The article seems to say, yes; for Joe's Boy is not the Son of God most Catholics are used to. Joe's Boy "must have had a crush on a girl;" he might have "roared at his father, snapped at his mother." Perhaps he "ran naked howling, laughing through the village on a dare," and, "maybe he had way too much wine at a wedding." When his mother found the 12-year-old Joe's Boy in the temple, he answered her inquiries "with some major sass that he had real work to do, and it was all his mother could do to keep her husband from pitching the boy headlong into the manure pile outside the temple." But, unlike most mothers in similar situations, "she treasured those words in her heart."
The author of "Joe's Boy" does admit that some extraordinary events marked the life of the young lad -- he knew the time and manner of his death, for instance, and that his name had come to him through a vision given to his mother. These all form what the article's author called the "legend" of this man. But one must not, in remembering the legend, forget "the skinny intense confusing man himself. for he was once one of us, which to say, he is us."
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE REJECTS PRAYER. On Monday, March 10, the California assembly rules committee effectively killed a resolution honoring the National Day of Prayer. The resolution, introduced by Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe), would have encouraged people to pray "for the nation, its people, and its leaders." To alleviate concerns that he was trying to establish a national monotheistic religion, Leslie agreed to add the word "their" before "God's" in the line, "...the people of California are encouraged to gather together in homes and places of worship to pray, each according to his or her own faith, for God's blessings upon our state and our nation...." This gave the resolution the same language as a previous resolution which passed through the rules committee unanimously last year and passed the assembly with only one dissenting vote (Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood).
The assembly rules committee, however, demanded that Leslie put "their" in front of every instance of "God" in the bill. Leslie refused. After the bill died, Leslie said, "one day this state will realize you can only give God the finger for so long before He exacts some sort of retribution." There are currently no plans to reintroduce the measure.
ISLAMIC REVOLUTION OVER ABORTION. Steven Mosher of the Front Royal-based Population Research Institute predicted in March that the defeat of Saddam Hussein in the United States-led war on Iraq would open up the conquered country to the United States Agency for International Development -- an agency, said Mosher, that is "better at promoting population control and radical feminism than in building free market democracies abroad." According to a March 21 Catholic World News report, Mosher said the agency will "inaugurate programs which will subject Iraqi children, especially girls, to graphic sex education programs. They will stock Iraqi medical clinics with condoms and contraceptives. They will further insist that family planning (population control) programs be in place, warning that the penalty for noncompliance will be a denial of additional aid...." The agency will fund, said Mosher, "radical feminist organizations that lobby for, among other things, the legalization of abortion."
Such lobbying, said, Mosher, will alarm both Islamic and Christian Iraqis. And worse, it could impel "fundamentalist Mullahs, disgusted by the hedonistic lifestyle of Hollywood and the secular materialism of Manhattan," to revolution.
MANWOMAN HONORED. The California assembly, on March 24, chose a man for its Woman of the Year. The Woman of the Year is an annual ceremony held by the assembly to give each legislator the chance to recognize an outstanding woman in his district. This year, Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), himself a homosexual, chose for the honor Theresa Sparks, a Kansas native who underwent a man-to-woman sex-change in Thailand in 2000. In 2001, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown appointed Sparks as the first "transgender" appointee to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, and Sparks was instrumental in the fight to get the city to pay for its workers' sex-change operations. "This is just one step against discrimination," Sparks said at the time. "This is a medical condition, and there are medical procedures that can correct it." Sparks also has the goal of giving transgender issues "more visibility. That seems to be a way to get rid of the perceptions that we're sexual deviants or perverts."
When Sparks was introduced, many of the legislators cheered and clapped loudly. Others were seen literally sitting on their hands. One assembly staffer noted that, given the assembly's make-up, the recognition was perfectly logical. "In their view, it's a woman," said a staffer to a conservative member. "It shows how low our state has sunk."
GUYS AND DOLLS. On March 19, the assembly labor and employment committee passed a bill (AB 196), sponsored by Assemblyman Mark Leno, which expands the definition of "sex" to include self-identified transgender for the purposes of defining unlawful employment discrimination. Derisively known around the capitol as "the Klinger bill," the measure defines gender as "the employee's actual sex, or the employer's perception of the employee's identity, appearance, or behavior, even if these characteristics differ from those traditionally associated with the employee's sex at birth."
Supporters of the bill said no one should be subjected to discriminatory treatment in employment and housing because of gender-related characteristics irrelevant to a person's qualifications. Opponents, made up of a cross section of business and family rights groups, said the measure was unfair to employers because it placed "the desires of an employee above the rights of an employer to set reasonable dress codes for his business." Art Croney of the Committee on Moral Concerns told the assembly committee the measure equates employment with crime. "Cross-dressers and transsexuals can do whatever they want in private," he noted. "In the workplace employers have the right to expect a minimum level of civility. Requiring traditional gender roles is not the same as committing a crime against a person."
The bill now moves to the assembly appropriations committee. Members of the committee representing the Los Angeles area are: Patricia Bates (R-Laguna Niguel), Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), Lou Correa (D-Orange), Lynn Daucher (R-Brea), Marco Firebaugh (D-Los Angeles), Jackie Goldberg (D-Echo Park), Ray Haynes (R-Temecula), Gloria Negrette McLeod (D-Montclair), Fabian Nunez (D-Boyle Heights), Bob Pacheco (R-Walnut), Fran Pavley (D-Woodland Hills), Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), and Sharon Runner (R-Lancaster).
AT A PRESS CONFERENCE on March 3, the Campaign for California Families and several legislators announced the public campaign they would mount against several pro-homosexual bills. The bills are: AB 205, which would allow Vermont-style "civil unions;" AB 17, which would force state contractors to subsidize domestic partnership benefits for homosexual employees or else lose their contracts; AB 458, requiring foster parents to support homosexual behavior among foster children; AB 196, which would fine businesses up to $150,000 if they didn't allow employees to cross dress at work; and AB 1520, which creates the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Veterans' Memorial Commission, which would have the power to build LGBT displays at veterans memorials throughout the state. Another is SCA 5 (Speier, D-San Mateo), which opponents say undermines marriage by awarding a marriage benefit to unmarried cohabitants in the area of property tax.
Randy Thomasson, executive director for the Campaign for California Families, said each of these bills seeks to undermine marriage in some fashion or the other. Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City) spoke out against AB 205 in particular, saying, "American society and law has consistently affirmed that marriage, as a foundational institution, is the most critical relationship of all.... This is why American law has always extended only to married couples certain rights and privileges as an affirmation of the importance of marriage and as a means of strengthening of that institution.... Those of you who wish to [change the definition of marriage] have a right to your view of morality, but it is not the morality of the majority of Californians. Don't force your morality on us. Don't force your redefinition of marriage on the rest of us. Don't change our legal code in a way that holds marriage no more sacred than any other contract of convenience."
THE CALIFORNIA ALLIANCE for Pride and Equality took issue with the pro-family advocates, saying their "statements are hypocritical and a complete betrayal of the position taken by the proponents of Proposition 22," who said that Proposition 22 was only about marriage and not domestic partnerships. A bill such as "AB 205 will enable all parents, gay and straight, to better protect their families by adding significant new responsibilities for domestic partners," said Alliance executive director Geoffrey Kors. "We believe strongly that marriage and responsible, committed partnerships matter, which is why we think it's so important that all families have access to those protections."
Thomasson countered that such views were "intolerant of traditional marriage [and] intolerant of traditional families." He went on to say that because of an AB 17-like ordinance in San Francisco, the Salvation Army is no longer providing meals to seniors and the indigent in that city.
On April 1, the assembly judiciary committee approved AB 205. Its next hurdle was the assembly appropriations committee.
CATHOLIC EDUCATION EXPANDS MINDS. Citing a survey done by the University of California Los Angeles's Higher Education Research Institute, the March 15 Los Angeles Times reported that students generally grow more "liberal" during their years at Catholic colleges and universities. For example, according to the survey, though 38 percent of freshmen entering Catholic colleges support legalized abortion, 58 percent of the same students come to hold that view four years later. The percentage of students at Catholic institutions accepting the morality of pre-marital sex and same-sex marriage also increases. Similar results are shown for Catholic students who attend non-Catholic institutions.
THE CONTROVERSY over the fate of a 29-acre parcel of land in San Juan Capistrano that has pitted members of the Juaneño tribe against Junipero Serra High School has reached a new crisis. The Juaneños say that the parcel between Interstate 5 and Camino Capistrano in San Juan Capistrano is an ancient burial ground of their tribe as well as the site of Putiidhem, a 15th century village. They want to preserve the site as a historical and cultural spot. Junipero Serra High, however, wants to develop the land into a sports complex. According to a March 29 Los Angeles Times story, the school petitioned the council to call a special election to decide whether the zoning of the parcel should be changed from commercial to private institutional use. The Capistrano city council, however, approved the school's project without submitting the zone change to the voters. The council also placed a 2,000-student cap on the school and charged the school a $200,000 head tax. One branch of the Juaneño tribe agreed to this council action, though others rejected it.
The Native American Sacred Site and Environmental Protection Association, however, took the matter to court. The association argued that the city council had altered the original initiative put forth by the school; the council, argued the association, could not alter initiatives, only approve them. On March 28, superior court judge Ronald Bauer agreed with the association and voided the city council's action.
The Juaneños see the superior court's decision as a victory for themselves, since, they say, the original initiative will have to go before the voters. However, Tim Busch, a leader of the drive for the high school, said the judge's ruling means the city council has the power to approve the measure. "Now the city council has to vote on the initiative alone, or it goes to the voters," Busch told the Times. "They have a decision to make, but we believe that the city will support us."
THE CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT refused to review a Monrovia truancy ordinance which the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense says violated the California state constitution, said an April 3 Home School Legal Defense report. In 1996, the city of Monrovia adopted a truancy law that outlawed all children from being out in public between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. on school days. Representing two home schooling families whose children police were stopping on the streets during curfew hours, Home School Legal Defense brought the city to court. In 1999, the court declared the Monrovia ordinance unconstitutional because it did not expressly exempt home schooled students. Monrovia then amended the ordinance, adding an exemption for home schooled students.
Home School Legal Defense, however, argues that the amended truancy ordinance also violates the California constitution, which gives to the state alone the right to regulate truancy, which the state treats truancy as a non-criminal matter. A court, however, upheld the Monrovia ordinance, as did the court of appeals for the second district of California by a narrow 2-1 margin. Home School Legal Defense petitioned the state supreme court to review the case, but on March 19, the court denied the petition.
TRUANCY THREAT? A bill passing through the legislature is causing alarm among home schoolers who fear that they will be subjected to child abuse and neglect investigations, and, perhaps prosecution. SB 950, by California state senator Richard Alarcon, would define habitual truancy a form of child abuse and neglect under the state's health and welfare code. According to Jack Hailey, a consultant in the senate health and human services committee, the legislation originates from the Los Angeles city attorney's office which thinks that the current system that investigates habitual truancy is "broken." Home schoolers fear that the bill will allow overzealous school districts to send social workers to their door steps in order to investigate them for neglect for not sending their children to a conventional school.
Susan Schmitter, an assistant Los Angeles city attorney who has worked closely with Alarcon, denies that the bill is aimed at home schoolers. "This bill addresses social problems that exist, such as when a parent knowingly keeps a child out of school because of domestic violence," she told the Mission. "Under the current system, if the student attendance and review board gets a report of truancy, the process involves five or six agencies. The penalty is a hundred dollar fine and an infraction which doesn't amount to a traffic ticket."
An alert sent out the by Family Protection Ministries in early April produced scores of calls by concerned home schoolers. Jack Haily, a consultant with the senate health and human services committee, said that because of the outcry by home schoolers, the bill was being retooled. "They were hearing from a lot of home schooling parents. A lot of home schooling parents mistrust the government; it raised needless alarm," he told the Mission. Haily said that currently Child Protective Services agencies are opposing the bill because it would add to their workload. According to Haily, the bill is also opposed by the Los Angeles County Department of Education.
The bill was scheduled to be re-heard in the health and Human Services committee on April 23. When told that the bill's proponent did not intend to target home schoolers, a staffer in Senator Tim Leslie's (R-Tahoe City) office retorted, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions."