A coupla more folks in dire need of forgiveness have generated these stories. The good they have done someone vanishes behind the betrayal represented, fairly or not.


Legal battle finally ends for victim of priest abuse

Two decades after the woman first told of seven clerics having sex with her, and of one fathering her child, she receives $500,000 from the L.A. Archdiocese.

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37-Month Sentence for Priest Who Defrauded Parish



By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
Published: December 5, 2007
NEW HAVEN, Dec. 4 — Telling him, "Not even the collar can protect you from prison," Judge Janet Bond Arterton ordered a 37-month sentence Tuesday for the Rev. Michael Jude Fay, the Roman Catholic priest who admitted pilfering $1.3 million from the church he had led in Darien.

Rejecting calls from Father Fay's supporters for an alternative sentence, Judge Arterton told a crowded courtroom in Federal District Court here, "A sentence of probation would be impunity for a crime of enormity." She said the priest's crime was "enormous" in terms of the amount taken and its impact on parishioners and the public trust.


By Susannah Rosenblatt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 5, 2007
Rita Milla's story rocked the Archdiocese of Los Angeles when she first told it 23 years ago. Seven Roman Catholic priests, she said, had sexually abused her when she was a teenager, with one eventually fathering her child. The devout young woman who had once hoped to become a nun instead gave birth in secret in the Philippines.

On Tuesday, her decades-long legal battle came to an emotional end.

Looking somber and relieved, Milla received $500,000 from the archdiocese, part of a $660-million settlement between the church and hundreds of people alleging abuse by priests.

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Good acts are good no matter what flag they may fly. So are harmful acts harmful, regardless of their club or colors.

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