Church in
Crisis
Principal reports pastor’s misdeeds; now she’s
ousted
By DICK RYAN
New York
A Catholic parochial school principal in New York who accused the
parish’s former pastor of physically assaulting her, theft of school funds
and sexual harassment was told not to report for work Sept. 3.
After a meeting with Fr. Steve Ferrari, who replaced Fr. John
Thompson as pastor at St. Elizabeth’s in Queens, N.Y., Barbara Samide,
learned the diocese was placing her on unpaid leave of absence.
During the meeting, she had informed Ferrari that she planned to
amend a $5 million lawsuit alleging that Thompson had sexually harassed her and
accusing Brooklyn Bishop Thomas Daily of negligence. The new charges in the
suit are physical abuse and sexual assault by Thompson. She said her last words
to Ferrari at that meeting were: “I’m remaining here.”
A few hours later, her lawyer received a faxed notice saying that
Samide was being put on an unpaid leave of absence immediately and was
forbidden to enter school property at any time. The next day Ferrari was seen
on the street corner outside the school handing out leaflets about her
dismissal.
“Those are my children, and the faculty is my family,”
Samide said over the phone. “It has always been my dream to be a Catholic
school principal, and this is my reward. Fr. Thompson stole thousands from the
school, lived in the rectory with a young male friend and then was simply
transferred to another parish with his salary. But I am the one who is being
punished.”
The diocese contends that Samide’s removal has come at her
own bidding. “She asked for a leave of absence,” said Frank DeRosa,
diocesan spokesman, referring to an Aug. 29 letter in which Samide requested
either a transfer from the school or a paid leave of absence.
“Technically,” DeRosa continued, “she is still the
principal and has a contract until next June. She is still receiving medical
benefits but no pay.” He later told the press, “She has not been
fired, absolutely not. It’s a response to her request.”
‘She was fired’
“Call it what you will, she was fired,” her lawyer,
Michael Dowd, told The New York Times. “Her threat to expose more
of what happened to her at St. Elizabeth’s resulted in the victim of these
despicable acts being attacked yet again.”
Samide had worked at the school every day during the summer. She
said that when she wrote the Aug. 29 letter, she had been thinking that perhaps
a change would be best for her health. But as the opening of school approached,
she changed her mind.
Thompson was hired at the school two years ago. She said that she
had no idea then that her biggest problem would be Thompson, the 50-year-old
pastor. Her story has been detailed in recent months in press accounts in
several New York newspapers.
According to those accounts and interviews with Samide, she should
have been forewarned, in a way, when her predecessor, Sr. Frances Marie
Sheridan, left Samide with three words of parting advice: Watch the money. The
warning became all too real when, a few days later, the pastor quietly
transferred the six parish accounts to another bank with the principal’s
name on only one of them. Some time later, he abruptly announced that $40,000
was unaccounted for but, in a bizarre about-face a few days later, calmly told
the 39-year-old principal not to worry.
On another occasion, he told her to write out several large checks
to “cash,” give them to him and not to ask questions. There were
other occasions, Samide said, when he simply took money from her office
safe.
She said the pastor would openly admit that much of the money was
being spent on a 19-year-old male prostitute go-go dancer he called Jonathan,
who lived with him in his rectory suite. Thompson boasted about being
Jonathan’s “sugar daddy.” When the pastor ordered the principal
to give Jonathan a paying job in the school, she decided it was time to call
the diocesan office and report both the unsettling situation with Jonathan and
the serious financial problems.
When Thompson heard about her call, he accused her of requesting
an audit behind his back and angrily threw a gay magazine called Next on
her desk, yelling, “There’s your audit!” As for the money that
the pastor used on Jonathan and his own trips to gay bars in New York and gay
resorts in Florida, $14,000 was allegedly taken from the school candy drive,
and thousands more from student tuition money.
$150,000 unaccounted for
Eventually, Samide called Msgr. James Spengler, the episcopal
vicar for southeast Queens, and asked for his help. A diocesan audit was
initiated this past January but there have been no definitive results outside
of the revelation that up to $150,000 remains unaccounted for.
“Msgr. Spengler kept reassuring me,” Samide said
recently in her office, “reminding me that St. Elizabeth’s has been
the diocese’s biggest problem. But still nothing was ever really
done.”
There were two occasions when, after a special school function,
Thompson took Samide to dinner and then proceeded to take her to two gay bars
in Greenwich Village. One of them was an African-American gay bar, “The
Hangar,” where Thompson, who is white, confided “this is where a man
can pick up black boys.” A monsignor whom they both knew was sitting at
the bar and walked to the back when he saw them. At the other gay bar, called
Ty’s, another monsignor was at the bar having a drink.
Samide was the only woman in both places. “I was
uncomfortable and very offended on both occasions,” she said later.
“I wondered what I had done to engender such disrespect from
Fr. John, but I felt it was his way of showing me that he’s not alone in
his lifestyle.” Thompson later boasted that he “could take down half
the diocese” with what he knows about gay priests in the diocese.
She said on several occasions she was attacked by the priest. She
said Thompson continually threatened to hit her and fire her unless she did
what he ordered. According to her lawyer, Dowd, Thompson hit her with his belt
and would occasionally place it on her desk with the warning, “Don’t
make me use this.”
Eventually, with Samide calling the diocese constantly, Thompson
was removed on March 24, and Spengler told the parish that he “hoped that
Fr. Thompson would be reassigned to a compatible position in the
diocese.”
Earlier, on May 4, several files and documents relative to the
audit were stolen from the principal’s desk. But when she reported it to
the diocesan office and said that Thompson had a key to her office, she was
told that going to the police would only create more of a problem.
It was at this point that two priests advised her to get legal
counsel and go to the district attorney. She acted on that advice, and a round
of subpoenas was soon issued for a special grand jury to investigate the
finances at St. Elizabeth’s and to consider criminal charges against
Thompson.
Samide then filed the civil lawsuit for sexual harassment and
negligence. She alleged that Daily ignored her constant complaints about
Thompson while protecting his priest and the image of the diocese.
Officials in the Brooklyn diocese have told The New York
Times that they expect a grand jury to indict Thompson soon. While they
acknowledged that money is missing from the parish, they say the amount is far
less than Samide has alleged. Thompson, they said, is currently not functioning
as a priest.
Dick Ryan is a freelance writer living in New York.
National Catholic Reporter, September 13,
2002
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