Ex - NYC female transit police officer Eileen M. Ford:

"[I] learned that clerics were not arrested for sex offenses in the subways...

"My partner and I arrested a rabbi for exposing himself to a group of children ...

"I was asked by my sergeant How would you feel if all those priests hanging around the men's toilets were arrested ... ?"


Snippets from her letter to the Jesuit magazine America, July 4 - 11, 2011 -- in re the official report on the Catholic Church's sex scandal.

"The story John Jay Report Depicts Progress (Signs of the Times, 5/30) reminds me of when I was a New York City transit police officer in the 1960s and early '70s and learned that clerics were not arrested for sex offenses in the subways.

"My partner and I arrested a rabbi for exposing himself to a group of children, and I was asked by my sergeant How would you feel if all those priests hanging around the men's toilets were arrested?

"Being a Catholic, I responded, I'd arrest the pope if he was doing this...

"I was then informed that instead of arresting rabbis, ministers and priests, we inform their superiors and they take care of it.

"Many years later everyone knows how the bishops took care of it.

"They didn't help these priests or their victims.

"Instead they protected themselves and the institution -- and the law enforcement community helped.."

Celibacy was not responsible ...

"Celibacy was not responsible for the clergy's abuse of children, but when celibate priests were caught looking for sex in public toilets, the church knew it had a problem but ignored it until The Boston Globe exposed the crimes in 2002..."

Eileen M. Ford
Rockport, Massachusetts

Way to go, Eileen! :)