Southdown Gambit

The Southdown Institute is a mental hospital located about 50 km from Toronto. It's a Roman Catholic facility specializing in Roman Catholic clergy, but open to others. I think it's a little odd that a private, religious mental facility would have a flash-only website, but maybe they have a disturbed priest with flash skills residing there. Or maybe they just want to make it harder to find via a Google search.

Almost five years ago The Boston Globe published this article about Southdown, written by a priest who was a "resident" there.

Southdown is not primarily a treatment center for pedophiles or child molesters. It was founded in 1965, originally as a place of recovery for alcoholic priests and male religious from across Canada. Over the years, as its holistic and eclectic therapeutic philosophy evolved -- encompassing everything from traditional talk therapies and group process to more cutting-edge things like bioenergetic body work and yoga -- its mission eventually embraced women as well as men, and its client population expanded to include priests and religious from the States.

Recently, an Orange County priest, Monsignor John Urell was admitted to Southdown for acute anxiety disorder. He broke down while giving a pre-trial deposition in a case involving a female student who had a two-year sexual relationship with a non-clerical coach at a Catholic high school in the 1990s. Despite the judge's order to return to complete the deposition, Urell's attorney says he had to go to Canada because of his ill health "caused by the strain of his prior responsibility for responding to complaints of sexual abuse by others."

Urell is said to have been the point man for the Orange County diocese in handling allegations of sexual abuse. Indeed, here is a 1993 Boston Globe article about a Father Coughlin who was transferred from the Boston archdiocese to California in 1965. Father Coughlin was suspended in 1993.

According to Msgr. John Urell, chancellor of the Orange diocese, Father Coughlin was removed because of allegations that he had abused four former members of All-American Boys Chorus in Costa Mesa, a group he founded in 1970.

Urell has been accused of being part of the conspiracy of silence on the subject of priests molesting children. Last year these accusations were raised when Urell was up for re-appointment to the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

The Toronto Sun was intrepid enough to send a reporter out to Southland Institute to try to get an interview with the ill Urell. Unfortunately, he was too ill to receive visitors, but the article gives a good summary of his history.

It's just too bad that Urell couldn't pull himself together to finish his deposition so that the alleged victim isn't left just hanging. And, even if he couldn't get it together, it's pretty surprising that no facility in southern California could be found to accommodate him. If he was closer, the court might be able to come to him for his deposition. One can see why many people, including the alleged victim's attorney, are claiming that this is just one more attempt at cover up by the Roman Catholic church.