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October 2, 2007

Giuliani hired the man who crafted Church defense of pedophile priests, a New York pedophile priest/lawyer himself

By Kay Ebeling

Placa's pedophilia cost him his priest job, so Giuliani hired the Lawyer who crafted Catholic sex crime defense while an active sex criminal himself was hired in 2002 to work for Giuliani Partners

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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."

As Newsday reported in June 2002, Placa in the early 1980s “crisscrossed the country giving seminars to priests, contributed a chapter in a book on priest sex abuse and consulted for the House of Affirmation in Whitinsville, Mass., a now-defunct treatment center for priests with sex abuse and other problems.”

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.

Placa was forced to stop being a priest not just for sex crimes alleged against himself, but also for his handling of sex crimes as they were reported to him.

The New York Times reported in April 2002, “Several families, for instance, have accused him (Placa) of trying to extract information from victims in his capacity as a spiritual adviser, then using that information to help the diocesan legal strategy.

And as the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported last July:

“Victims in New York have accused Monsignor Placa of presenting himself as a priest in interviews with them when he was really acting as the lawyer for the Rockville Centre Diocese. Monsignor Placa has denied these accusations.

What the f-- do you want me to do about it?

-- Monsignor Placa to priest sex crime survivor trying to report


Newsday reported in that June 2002 article that when Placa visited victims to question them about cases of sex crimes one victim reported:

"His position was to always not believe what I was saying and to stick up for the church," said Carlo Ciliberti, 43, of Phoenix, who said in a 1994 lawsuit that he was abused from age 12 to 17 by the Rev. Jerry Chasse at St. Luke's Parish in Brentwood. The suit was dismissed because it was filed outside the statute of limitations.

"In one phone call," Ciliberti said, "he said to me after I told him about Chasse, 'What the --- do you want me to do about it?' Chasse ruined my life."

"Placa made it worse. I had to beg for everything. He just wanted me to settle and be quiet. He made me suffer even worse."


Placa’s House of Affirmation was a Pedophile Boot Camp

The House of Affirmation “was presented as a retreat for vocational redirection.” Reports the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette, July 22nd.

“What we have found out since, and what it has been called in the Blackstone Valley by people who really know what went on there, is that it was a pedophile boot camp," reports a 1970s employee who settled a “six-figure" lawsuit with the Worcester Diocese due to sexually assault as a minor by the Rev. Thomas H. Teczar at St. Mary in Uxbridge.

It’s amazing: Rudy Giuliani, the divorced Catholic Republican who believes in abortion is a candidate for the president mainly because of his connection to Nine Eleven in which Giuliani was a phenomenal failure.

In the 1980s his close priest friend (the one who annuled his first marriage) was allegedly a child molester while at the same time acting as legal council for priests accused of child molestation. Also at this time Placa was creating the blueprint for defending perpetrator priests for the national Catholic Church.

You can’t make this stuff up:

At Bishopaccountability dot org:

Giuliani Has Connection with Accused Priest
Placa Was Legal Adviser for Whitinsville Center


By Shaun Sutner
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
July 22, 2007


“The monsignor was closely associated with several Central Massachusetts priests who were at the center of a clergy sex abuse scandal in the 1990s.

At least three lawsuits were filed by area residents who said they were assaulted as boys by priests at the Whitinsville facility. The accused priests included colleagues of Monsignor Placa, one of whom was the Rev. Thomas A. Kane, former pastor of St. Mary Church in Uxbridge.

Monsignor Placa still lives in the rectory of the Long Island church where Monsignor Brendan Riordan, a former director of the House of Affirmation who was named in a sex abuse lawsuit settled by the Worcester Diocese in the mid-1990s, is pastor. He has also owned property in New York with Monsignor Riordan and co-owned property in Florida with him and Rev. Kane.”

Also at Bishop accountability on Placa:

Placa is a "childhood friend" of the ferret-hating fascist. But Rudy must've distanced himself from the accused child molester once the charges were made public and Placa was "stripped of his duties" as a priest, right? Right?

Ha ha, of course not. Placa was outed by Newsday in 2002, and it was after Placa's alleged crimes were known and the multi-million-dollar lawsuits were filed and the criminal investigations began that Rudy hired his buddy — Placa has been taking a paycheck from Rudy for five years now.
Wonkette July 23, 2007
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Giuliani’s advisor Monsignor Alan Placa is accused of being a pedophile priest during the same years he worked as legal counsel to a recovery center for pedophile priests. He crafted many of the legal strategies carried out by the Catholic Church attorneys in handling its sex crimes crisis.

Will the abortion-approving Catholic Republican candidate have the pedophile priest who arranged the annulment of his 12-year marriage as a high ranking member of his cabinet if he’s elected president? So if you like the way the Church handled its pedophile priests, you'll love the way Giuliani conducts his presidency.

Undoubtedly he'll have around him advisors such as the seriously implicated predator priest and abetter of other predator priest criminals, Monsignor Alan J. Placa.

See http://cityofangels3.blogspot.com and http://cityofangels7.blogspot.com for more coverage



Authors Website: http://cityofangels4.blogspot.com

Authors Bio:
Wordsmith working in TV production in Los Angeles. Also free lance journalist with an active blog. Old enough to have demonstrated against the Vietnam War but still young enough to dance.

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