How did a predator pedophile priest end up as legal counsel at a center for pedophile priests, crafting Catholic legal strategies for pedophile priests at the same time as he was committing sex crimes against minors himself? Today that same monsignor is close advisor to Rudy Giuliani who is running for President of the United States.
It’s been eerie to watch a DVD I got in the mail last week. The video shows Placa when he was legal adviser in the early 1980s to the House of Affirmation in Massachusetts. On the undated disk, Placa speaks to “church leaders” about how to handle this new problem of child sex abuse showing up in parishes. (A sampling from the transcript of that video is at cityofangels 7 click on the link in the top left column.)
Today we know that around the same time this smarmy puffy well fed perpetually smiling Placa is speaking to the camera he is apparently committing sex crimes against children himself.
The fenagling Placa ended up as legal council to a national center for pedophile priests when he himself was a pedophile priest. In fact he became an attorney because in 1978, the year after students say they made their initial complaints about him, the archdiocese sent Placa to Hofstra University School of Law so he could better serve the church as an expert in "social service law."
Sex crime allegations against Placa himself are described best in these paragraphs from an earlier article in Newsday that caused such a ruckus Placa had to resign. That's when Giuliani hired him at his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, assuring that Placa continues to be fed in the manner he’s grown accustomed.
“Richard Tollner, 43, a mortgage broker now living in the Albany area, said he told prosecutors he had his first encounter with the priest in January 1975, on a day that classes were out, and the teen had come in to help make banners for a Right to Life march in Washington, D.C.
“He said the priest pulled out some posters in the deserted administrative area as if to show him something, and then began fondling him - all the while making conversation about the posters.
“Tollner said the incidents repeated every month or so for the next year and a half. "It was always groping," he said. "He'd draw his hand deliberately to the inside of my thigh, and over my penis. It would go on for four or five minutes, sometimes as long as 10."
“A high school friend said Tollner told him about one incident soon after it occurred. ‘This isn't a figment of his imagination 25 years later,’ said Kevin Waldron of San Francisco. ‘He told me about it shortly after it happened. I'm certain of it.’
“A second former student, who asked that his name be withheld, said he described to Suffolk prosecutors what he called ‘the newspaper drill.’
‘He always had a New York Times in his office. And he'd sit down next to you on the couch in his office and open it wide and, inevitably, his hand would brush your crotch," the man said. "He did it over and over again, I can't tell you how many times.’
“That man said he felt so violated that he wrote Placa an unsigned letter 20 years later, blaming him for his loss of interest in pursuing the priesthood.
“Placa has unequivocally denied any sexual misconduct complaints were ever brought against him, and recalled Tollner as ‘a troubled kid, very emotional, who would fly off the handle easily.’
“There is no written record of the students' complaints. But sources confirmed that the two men recently outlined their complaints to officials in the Suffolk County district attorney's office,”
But if that's not enough evidence to make you wonder about close top advisor to Rudy Giuliani Alan Placa’s character, consider how he was known to handle complaints about sex crimes of Catholic priests that inevitably came across his desk as council to the House of Affirmation.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
