*****
By Kay Ebeling
TY PENNINGTON: We're here today to visit the Ebeling family in Los Angeles and here’s the deal. Kay, the mother, is a single mom who works two jobs, and not only has she raised her children to be promising adults, but she’s done so while dealing with sometimes devastating physical and mental problems. Kay was raped by a Catholic priest at age five and has been diagnosed with long term post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in her case 40-plus years of PTSD, responding to the crime for 40 years. Long term PTSD is a diagnosis many priest rape victims receive, so we wanted to see what we could do about that here at Extreme Makeover Home Edition.
Now, normally you would expect an organization like the Catholic Church to step forward in a case like this, since, well, they are a church. So we sent two members of our design team over to meet with Cardinal Roger Mahony at the temple on Temple Street in Los Angeles. We wanted the cardinal to give us suggestions as to how to design the recovery centers and how much the church would participate in the costs.
CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: This is the first I've heard that there are still victims of these unfortunate crimes here in Los Angeles. I thought we settled all this last July.
TY PENNINGTON: As is true with many of our families, this mom Kay Ebeling devotes hours of time as a volunteer to a cause that's important to her. She’s a journalist who just happens to also be a victim of Catholic Priest pedophilia, so Kay produces City of Angels blog where she is determined to get out the truth, about sex crimes in the Catholic Church.
So we are going to reward the Ebeling family with a brand new home
AND
We are also going to build a recovery center for victims of priest pedophilia here in Los Angeles.
CUT TO:
CARDINAL MAHONY: In the settlements last summer, as you know we were so generous and willing and caring for these poor victims, and so I thought we could put this all behind us. We gave as much money as we could, willingly, without question.
TY PENNINGTON: We thought you might sell several churches and put that money in a fund that we could use to build more recovery centers.
CARDINAL MAHONY: Honest, Mr. Pennington, we thought with the settlements last summer we could put this issue behind us. I had no idea there were still victims of this unfortunate crime living in Los Angeles.
TY PENNINGTON: You already said that.
MAHONY (Raises his hand for Ty to stop) Even though Ms. Ebeling’s perpetrator was in Illinois, we acknowledge that the church is a national, ne practically an international source of wide open support of Christians no matter what denomination--
TY PENNINGTON: And?
