Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004 | 11:13 a.m.
After being sexually molested by the Henderson priest he once trusted, and pushed away by the Catholic community he had called home, one local victim decided he had to leave town to start healing.
Then 19, he gave up a Millennium Scholarship to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, left his mother and stepfather and moved into his father's home in Jefferson County, Mo. He enrolled in college, got a job and started singing in a garage band with friends while undergoing weekly therapy sessions.
A week ago the now 21-year-old victim learned that a Clark County district judge had placed Mark Roberts, the priest who pleaded guilty to molesting him and four others, in a church-run treatment center only 25 miles from his home. He says he's "petrified" that he'll see Roberts again, or that Roberts will escape and hurt someone else.
"I'm trying to heal, I'm trying to get on with my life and I feel strong," the young man said in a phone interview Tuesday. "And now I'm angry. I'm angry that he's in a backwood country club" instead of in jail.
After days of picketing by a victims advocacy group, the Archdiocese of St. Louis is asking why District Judge Donald Mosley placed Roberts at the Recon Center in Dittmer, Mo., nearly in the victim's back yard and not in jail, an archdiocese spokesman said.
Mosley last month took Roberts off formal probation and placed him in the Recon facility under his personal supervision after several states refused to take responsibility for Roberts' probation.
Mosley placed Roberts in the Recon center because the former priest had voluntarily gone there prior to his sentencing and the judge found the center beneficial, Chief Deputy District Attorney Doug Herndon said.
Missouri church officials, who say they were not told of Roberts' placement, have no authority over the treatment center, which is run by a Catholic order of brothers and not affiliated with the archdiocese, archdiocese spokesman Jim Orso said.
Orso said church officials were unsure of what influence they could exert to remove Roberts.
"But we understand the issue that there is a victim here that views this guy as a terrible person," Orso said. "Hopefully something can be done."
The advocacy group SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, meanwhile, has been protesting Mosley's move by leafletting parishioners in Missouri and in Las Vegas.
"We're just terribly upset that a sadistic, repeat sex offender was secretly moved to an unsecure, church-run center 20 miles from the victim who first reported him to police," SNAP National Director David Clohessy said. "It's like the perpetrator is virtually stalking him."
Mosley told the Las Vegas Sun Aug. 26 that he made his decision because SNAP's previous protests had frustrated all efforts to enroll Roberts in an inter-state probation contract. Mosley said he would stay in contact with the facility's director and will be able to "extradite him in a minute" if there are any problems.
The current SNAP leaflets include a letter from the victim's father and ask parishioners to call Diocese of Las Vegas Bishop Joseph Pepe and Missouri Archbishop Raymond Burke to use their influence to have Roberts removed from the Catholic-run treatment center.
Both have some say over Roberts' treatment, Clohessy said, because the Las Vegas Diocese is paying for Roberts' treatment and the treatment center is in Burke's jurisdiction, though not under his direct control.
The Missouri leaflets also ask parishioners to call the director of the Recon center and the governor of Missouri to protest Roberts' placement there.
The leaflets are the organization's first step in getting Roberts out of the state and away from his former victim, Clohessy said. He and the victim's father said they will do whatever they can to remove Roberts, including possibly taking legal action to reverse Mosley's decision. The victim's father said he will not move and neither will his son.
"I'm not going to leave," the victim's father said. "It's time for Mark Roberts to feel uncomfortable. I have a home here and he (the victim) has a home here. Why should we leave?"
Under Mosley's order, Roberts is not allowed to serve as a priest and may not leave the facility without supervision for the three years he is to stay in the center. Roberts, under a plea agreement, also was supposed to be defrocked. A Las Vegas Diocese spokeswoman said the process was still ongoing.
SNAP advocates questioned the center's security as well as how Mosley could properly supervise Roberts in Missouri while the judge is in Las Vegas.
Mosley said in his previous interview that he did not believe Roberts' actions, though perverse, warranted jail time. Roberts pleaded guilty to reduced charges of fondling, verbally abusing and beating five boys between Jan. 1, 2001, and Feb. 1, 2002.
The victims advocacy group maintains Roberts should have been placed in jail or at least in a secure treatment facility independent of the Catholic Church. At the minimum, they say, they want Roberts out of Missouri.
The victim's father said the young man "just wants it to be over, and it will never be over actually. He'll have to deal with this for the rest of his life. And to have this person transferred so close to my house is ridiculous."
The victim said he had to build up his courage to even report the abuse he said he endured from the time he was 15 to age 19. He was the first of 11 teens to report Roberts' misconduct while Roberts was a priest at St. Peter the Apostle Church in Henderson.
"Judge Mosley has kind of slapped me in the face once again, along with the Catholic Church," said the victim, who is part of a civil suit against Roberts and the Las Vegas Diocese. "It's a never-ending fight with them."
Before he left Las Vegas, the victim said, "everything was kind of a reminder of the hell that my life was at that time."
On one occasion, the victim said, he ran into Roberts in a restaurant. Now he fears that happening again, or that Roberts will somehow escape and get another job overseeing children.
"I drive myself crazy thinking of all these things," the victim said. "It happened to me. I would never have suspected a priest to have ill intent toward me, or to have a priest use God to get what he wants sexually."
The victim said Roberts' actions destroyed his relationship with God.
"It's upsetting," the victim said. "I've tried and I've tried, and for a while I tried to go back to the Catholic Church and I would get freaked out because I don't trust priests anymore. I've gone to Christian churches and I just don't feel it the same anymore. ... Being young and involved I was on fire and in tune with Christ.
"It's so hard to untwist Father Mark's words from God's. It was so entangled I can't pull it apart."
SNAP began handing out leaflets over the Labor Day Weekend, with volunteers in St. Louis following Burke from venue to venue and volunteers in Las Vegas passing out leaflets outside the Guardian Angel Cathedral just off the Strip on Sunday, organizers said.
The Las Vegas Diocese declined to comment on the leaflets through its outside public relations agent, Rachel Wilke. Church officials and Roberts' attorney, George Foley Sr., said it was the judge's decision to place Roberts in the Missouri center.
The civil case against Roberts and the church is still in the discovery process.
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