From Hollywood to the Holy See, a tiny nonprofit dedicated to supporting priests accused of sexual abuse had influential ties reaching well beyond its rural Michigan roots, julietlinderman, mendozamartha and garanceburke report.
Mary Rose Maher, the daughter of Opus Bono Sacerdotii co-founder Joe Maher, holds a photo from her childhood with her parents in Detroit, Wednesday, June 12, 2019. Opus Bono’s finances came under scrutiny after authorities were contacted by a once-loyal employee - Mary Rose - who began questioning the way money was spent.
The Associated Press unraveled the continuing story of Opus Bono in dozens of interviews with experts, lawyers, clergy members and former employees, along with hundreds of pages of documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests. “All of these people that have made allegations are very well taken care of,” Opus Bono co-founder Joe Maher said in a radio interview, contending that many abuse accusations lodged against priests are false. “The priests are not at all very well taken care of.”Opus Bono’s roots reach back almost two decades to a sex abuse scandal that convulsed The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church, a grand stone structure set amid Detroit’s crumbling brick blight.
In 1999, Perrone welcomed the other priest — a West African clergyman named Komlan Dem Houndjame — to come work at Assumption Grotto. Two years later, Detroit Archdiocese officials say, they asked Houndjame to return to his home country, Togo, after learning of accusations of sexual misconduct against him in Detroit and at an earlier posting in Florida.In 2002, Detroit police charged him with sexually assaulting a member of Assumption Grotto’s choir.
In court files, the AP found two other women at Assumption Grotto also had told police about sexual misconduct by Houndjame. But their testimony was never heard in court. One of those was Rev. Gregory Ingels, a well-known priest in San Francisco’s archdiocese who was charged in 2003 with abusing a 15-year-old boy in the 1970s. The criminal charges were dismissed after California’s extended statute of limitations was ruled unconstitutional, but the archdiocese later settled a lawsuit filed by another Ingels accuser.
In a lawsuit, one former altar boy said Sigler forced him into “hundreds of sexual abuse events, each a violation of criminal sexual penetration laws.” Opus Bono also hired accused priest Dennis Druggan, who headed a Catholic seminary high school in Wisconsin for more than a decade. Druggan was put on administrative leave in July 2012 after allegations surfaced that he had engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor at a Catholic high school for Native American teens in Montana in the 1980s.
When contacted by the AP, Druggan said he no longer works for Opus Bono and declined further comment. In 2002, Maher sent a news article about Opus Bono to Father Richard John Neuhaus, the editor of a conservative Catholic journal who served as an unofficial adviser to President George W. Bush. “Some priests have suggested I write to you and let you know what we’re doing,” Maher told Neuhaus.
Cardinal Edwin O’Brien, the former archbishop of Baltimore and now a Vatican official, said he occasionally sent money to Opus Bono over the years but has not done so in at least a year. He said he never met Maher, Ferrara or other founding members and never visited Michigan. “The church benefits from what we’re doing but it doesn’t give it the support,” he said. “The whole point of this is to be a counterpoint to a movement which is also outside the church, a movement of dissent and against the priesthood.”
A radio network founded by Tom Monaghan, a billionaire Domino’s Pizza founder who later advised President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, interviewed Maher and Perrone and promoted Opus Bono’s work, according to archived Ave Maria Radio recordings. The group’s next move, in 2014, was 20 miles away to the village of Dryden. Local officials were puzzled when they heard Maher and Ferrara wanted to set up a Hollywood-style production studio in a dilapidated warehouse off Main Street — again facing an elementary school playground.“They were very tight-lipped and never talked about anything having to do with priests,” said Gyrome Edwards, a building and zoning official in Dryden. “They were just trying to go unseen.
The testimonials, however, were misleading, an investigation by Michigan’s attorney general found. Opus Bono’s lawyers conceded to state investigators that Maher had concocted them by stitching together stories from various priests. The tip landed on the desk of Assistant Attorney General William Bloomfield, a devout Catholic with a law degree from Ave Maria.Investigators concluded the group’s fundraising solicitations had been deceptive. They also found that Maher and Ferrara had violated state charity laws by using donated funds to cover such personal expenses as sushi lunches, chiropractor visits and power tools to work on their homes, according to a cease and desist order filed by Michigan’s attorney general.
Ultimately, Bloomfield oversaw a settlement last December that required Opus Bono to pay $10,000 to cover the costs of the state’s investigation and forced Ferrara and Maher from their jobs at the nonprofit. The group’s entire board of directors was replaced.
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