In the wake of the terrible events of 9/11, anger and suspicion about Islam and its teachings spread throughout the United States. For a few Americans, these events led to an awakening to the rich traditions of this major world religion. Curiosity turned to admiration of a faith that in its core offers peace and solace. How would these converts adjust to life as strangers in their own hometowns?
Mater Dei High School football coaches and players referred to it as “Hell Week,” a string of twice-a-day workouts as the Monarchs prepared for football season shortly before the start of the 1987 school year.
Because of the workout schedule, and in an effort to build team chemistry, players and other students who worked with the team, managers, trainers, stat crew members, slept overnight at the Mater Dei gymnasium.
It was on one of the Hell Week nights that Patrick Callahan, a Mater Dei assistant football coach, allegedly led a 17-year-old stat girl, who was a student at the school, to the Monarchs’ nearby football field and raped her, according to a civil suit filed against Mater Dei and the Diocese of Orange in Orange County Superior Court Thursday.
Callahan repeatedly sexually assaulted the girl over a period of years at different places on the Mater Dei campus, at social functions, and at local restaurants, often in the presence of other Mater Dei coaches, according to a court filing. The suit also alleges Callahan repeatedly served the girl alcohol in the presence of other Mater Dei coaches.
The suit does not state whether the other coaches were aware that Callahan was sexually abusing the girl. The suit also does not name the other coaches who were allegedly present when the girl was served alcohol.
“The significance is that another victim of abuse at Mater Dei has come forward to uncover and expose the culture of abuse and cover-up that is rampant through the athletics of Mater Dei and its community,” said Michael Reck, an attorney for the woman.
Over a period of years, starting in 1985 when the girl was 16, Callahan “sexually assaulted (the) Plaintiff countless times over the years that (the) Plaintiff was a student at (Mater Dei),” according to the lawsuit. The Orange County Register is not naming the woman because of the nature of the allegations.
Callahan when asked about the lawsuit on Thursday said, “I don’t have any comment on that.”
He denied having sex with any minor age girls while coaching at Mater Dei. Callahan, who later worked as an assistant coach at Dodge City Community College in Kansas, said he was unaware of the Orange County diocese making payments to the plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Thursday.
Diocese spokesperson Tracey Kincaid said “we have not yet been formally served with the complaint and as a matter of general practice we do not comment on pending litigation.”
The lawsuit was filed against the backdrop of a Mater Dei-commissioned investigation by a Sacramento law firm into the culture of the school’s football and athletic programs.
The investigation commissioned by then-Mater Dei president Father Walter Jenkins on Nov. 30 was in response to an Orange County Register report detailing an alleged hazing incident involving the Monarchs football team. A current Mater Dei football player punched a teammate, 50 pounds lighter than him, three times in the face during an alleged hazing ritual called “Bodies” on Feb. 4, 2021, while some Monarchs players present shouted racial epithets at the smaller player, according to two videos of the altercation obtained by the Register.
The suit filed Thursday alleges negligent supervision, negligent retention and negligent supervision of the plaintiff, then a minor.
Callahan, who also worked at Mater Dei as an assistant track and field coach, later coached football and track at Santa Margarita Catholic High School, and served as an assistant football coach at Cerritos College.
Callahan was sentenced to two years in jail in 2006 for falsifying government documents in order to secure more than $150,000 in federal grants for athletes who were not eligible for the financial aid.
Callahan admitted fraudulently obtaining federal financial aid grant money for 13 Cerritos football players between July 1999 and March 2004, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.
The suit alleging sexual assault was filed under a California law that allows sexual abuse victims to finally confront in court their abusers and the organizations that protected predators.
Assembly Bill 218, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 and went into effect Jan. 1, 2020, created a three-year window to file past claims that had expired under the statute of limitations. The bill, authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), also extends the statute of limitations for reporting childhood sexual abuse from the time a victim is age 26 to 40. The period for delayed reasonable discovery is also increased from three to five years. The law requires that plaintiffs meet a mental health practitioner and receive a certificate of merit to file under AB218. The woman has received a certificate of merit, Reck said.
Alleged survivors must file civil suits within eight years of becoming an adult or three years from the date an adult survivor “discovers” or should have discovered they were sexually abused, under current California law.
Under the 2019 law, defendants cannot be publicly identified in complaints until the judge formally accepts the case. The initial filings can list the addresses of defendants, however. The addresses of the diocese and Mater Dei are both listed for the two defendants in Thursday’s filing. Reck also confirmed that Mater Dei and the diocese are named in filings with the court.
The girl first met Callahan at a track camp on the Mater Dei campus in 1984, according to the suit. In the following months Callahan groomed her for sexual abuse, the suit alleges. Callahan allegedly began sexually assaulting her in 1985 when she was 16, Reck said.
Callahan “sexually molested, assaulted and abused Plaintiff on the premises owned, operated, and controlled by Defendants (Diocese of Orange) and (Mater Dei), including, without limitation, on the school campus of (Mater Dei),” according to a court filing.
As an assistant to Callahan and Mater Dei, the girl, the suit alleges “was forced to accompany Callahan to various athletic events of or sponsored by (Mater Dei). These athletic events were both on and off the high school campus of (Mater Dei) during the day and night, and included dinners at restaurants and other venues in California where alcohol was served to Plaintiff by (Callahan) and where other coaches and agents of (Mater Dei) were present. Often during these dinners, the PERPETRATOR sexually assaulted Plaintiff while they were sitting at the table with the other coaches and agents of (Mater Dei) present.”
“In his capacity as a track coach and/or an assistant football coach of (Mater Dei), PERPETRATOR often gave alcohol to Plaintiff, then a minor, to consume,” the suit said.
“Why did Mater Dei, why did the adults present during these times not raise a red flag?” Reck said.
The diocese has been aware of the allegations since 2011 when officials agreed to pay for the woman’s counseling, Reck said.
“Why hasn’t the diocese said anything?” Reck said.
Longtime Mater Dei head football coach Bruce Rollinson was not named in the suit. He was an assistant coach on the staff at the time.
Source: OC Register
When the church doors open, only white people will be allowed inside.
That’s the message the Asatru Folk Assembly in Murdock, Minnesota, is sending after being granted a conditional use permit to open a church there and practice its pre-Christian religion that originated in northern Europe.
Despite a council vote officially approving the permit this month, residents are pushing back against the decision.
Opponents have collected about 50,000 signatures on an online petition to stop the all-white church from making its home in the farming town of 280 people.
“I think they thought they could fly under the radar in a small town like this, but we’d like to keep the pressure on them,” said Peter Kennedy, a longtime Murdock resident. “Racism is not welcome here.”
Many locals said they support the growing population of Latinos, who have moved to the area in the past decade because of job opportunities, over the church.
“Just because the council gave them a conditional permit does not mean that the town and people in the area surrounding will not be vigilant in watching and protecting our area,” Jean Lesteberg, who lives in the neighboring town of De Graff, wrote on the city’s Facebook page.
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Asatru Folk Assembly as a “neo-Volkisch hate group” that couches “their bigotry in baseless claims of bloodlines grounding the superiority of one’s white identity.”
Many residents call them a white supremacist or white separatist group, but church members deny it.
“We’re not. It’s just simply not true,” said Allen Turnage, a folk assembly board member. “Just because we respect our own culture, that doesn’t mean we are denigrating someone else’s.”
The group, based in Brownsville, California, says teachings and membership are for those of strictly European bloodlines.
The church was looking for a new church in the eastern North Dakota region when they came across Murdock. It’s unknown how many members they have worldwide or how many people will attend the new church.
“We do not need salvation. All we need is freedom to face our destiny with courage and honor,” the group wrote on its website about their beliefs. “We honor the Gods under the names given to them by our Germanic/Norse ancestors.”
Their forefathers, according to the website, were “Angels and Saxons, Lombards and Heruli, Goths and Vikings, and, as sons and daughters of these people, they are united by ties of blood and culture undimmed by centuries.”
“We respect the ways our ancestors viewed the world and approached the universe a thousand years ago,” Turnage said.
Murdock council members said they do not support the church but were legally obligated to approve the permit, which they did in a 3-1 decision.
“We were highly advised by our attorney to pass this permit for legal reasons to protect the First Amendment rights,” Mayor Craig Kavanagh said. “We knew that if this was going to be denied, we were going to have a legal battle on our hands that could be pretty expensive.”
City Attorney Don Wilcox said it came down to free speech and freedom of religion.
“I think there’s a great deal of sentiment in the town that they don’t want that group there,” he said. “You can’t just bar people from practicing whatever religion they want or saying anything they want as long as it doesn’t incite violence.”
The farming town about a 115-mile drive west of Minneapolis is known for producing corn and soybeans, which are shipped across the country. Latinos make up about 20 percent of Murdock’s small population. Many are day laborers from Mexico and Central America, city officials said.
“We’re a welcoming community,” Kennedy said, rejecting the Asatru Folk Assembly’s exclusionary beliefs. “That’s not at all what the people of Murdock feel. Nobody had a problem with the Hispanics here.”
The AFA purchased its building this year on property in a residential zone. Constructed as a Lutheran church before the zoning was changed, it was later converted to a private residence. The folk assembly needed the permit to convert the residence back to a church.
“It’s ironic the city council didn’t want to commit discrimination against the church, but the church is discriminating against Blacks,” said Abigail Suiter, 33, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “It’s very telling of where the priority is and whose lives matter.”
Prominent lawyers disagree on the council’s options heading into the vote. Some of the debate centered on the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which protects religious institutions and churches from unduly burdens and discriminatory land-use regulations.
Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, said the council might have been able to prevent the private sale of the property, had it known about it, through laws focused on forbidding racial discrimination in property transactions.
“No institution that proposes to exclude people on account of race is allowed to run an operation in the state of Minnesota,” Tribe said.
Kavanagh said he stands by the council vote “for legal reasons only.”
“The biggest thing people don’t understand is, because we’ve approved this permit, all of a sudden everyone feels this town is racist, and that isn’t the case,” he said. “Just because we voted yes doesn’t mean we’re racist.”
Source: NBC News
The Salam Stars hear what some people say when they’re on the basketball court, but that hasn’t stopped them from playing the game they love. WNBA legend Sue Bird heard their story and surprised them at practice. Watch the new episode of “B/Real.” From B/Real x State Farm
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