Olmsted meets with victim’s relatives

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

WINSLOW — In one afternoon, Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted apparently eased some of the pain, anger, and frustration one Winslow family has been struggling with for 26 years.

On March 12, Olmsted met in Phoenix with some of the surviving family members of Marcus Rogers, who was alleged to be abused as a 14-year-old boy in 1983 by the Rev. John Boland, a Diocese of Gallup priest. Olmsted, currently the apostolic administrator of the Gallup Diocese, met with Rogers’ brother, Adam Rogers of Dewey, Ariz.; his mother, Helen Wagner; uncle, Gabe Ribera; and maternal grandmother, Magdalena Ribera, all of Winslow.

Olmsted responded to a request for a meeting by Adam Rogers and Wagner. The bishop was accompanied by Jean Sokol, the director of the Phoenix Diocese’s Office of Child and Youth Protection.

In separate telephone interviews, Adam Rogers and Magdalena Ribera talked about their reactions to the meeting. Rogers said his family appreciated the fact that Olmsted reacted so quickly to their request. Based on their conversation, Rogers believes Olmsted is serious about cleaning up abuse from the past and preventing further abuse in the future. Olmsted told the family all of the Diocese of Gallup’s personnel records are now being reviewed, Rogers said.

“My feeling was that the church has made some steps,” Rogers said. “A lot of people’s faith and trust has been shaken by this.” He added his family is feeling a sense of relief because the truth about the 1983 incident is finally coming out.

“That took such a load off our minds,” Ribera agreed. “We never thought that day would come,” she said of the meeting.

“I have prayed so many times,” she added. “You know, this doesn’t go away.” Ribera and her family believe Marc Rogers’ struggles with alcohol and drug abuse were related to the 1983 incident. “From the day it happened until the day he died — it was a nightmare,” Ribera said of her grandson’s troubled life.

While meeting with Olmsted, Rogers said his family gave the bishop a copy of the recently obtained 1983 Navajo County grand jury’s transcript.

Reading the document proved to be very difficult for his mother, he explained. “It made her sick to her stomach and as sad as she’s ever been.”

Rogers said he was upset to read the transcript and realize that church and legal authorities allowed the incident to be “swept under the carpet” in 1983, particularly when Boland even allegedly admitted to some of the allegations. “This is offensive, what happened here,” he said. “This is a crime.”

Ribera said some people in Winslow hadn’t believed the allegation and had accused the family of making it up in order to get attention.

Ribera, who has remained spiritually firm in her faith, believes Winslow has had some good priests, like her current pastor, the Very Rev. Frank Chacon, and previous priests like the Rev. Daniel Hussey and Rev. Oliver Curran.

However, Winslow has also had many predator priests assigned to its two Catholic parishes, Ribera said, and she believes many victims are still suffering and have not come forward.