TTSOML #47: The Mt. Angel Abbey Shack With A Bed

Incredibly, perhaps, during my protest, in the very beginning, I still checked out books at the Abbey library. I also still talked to Josef.

Prior to my protest, I even went to a couple of services. I remember one I went to, in the summer, and I didn't know it was a huge priest conference week. All of the priests from the state were in the Mt. Angel church at the Abbey, and this was after I'd been mistreated by the Abbot. I wore the most revealing clothing to date: loose blue jeans and a button-up shirt which was loose and buttoned up except for the top button, had a collar and sleeves that went down to middle of my upper arm, and with this "seductive" apparel, I had matched my tennis shoes. The shirt was pale yellow and I stood there, with all these priests around, any one who could have vouched for my appropriate dress.

When I went to the church after reporting Br. Ansgar, the Abbot Nathan Zodrow and Ansgar would stand together, side by side, and look directly at me and then roll their eyes and laugh in hushed tones, with eachother, until services began.

Upset after one of these services, I went outside and walked back towards the road Br. Ansgar had been taking me on. I saw a garage and what looked like a "chapel" on wheels. I hadn't seen it before and thought maybe THAT was "the exquisite little chapel". It had gingerbread trim, and little windows with cut-outs and was painted prettily and it was small like the chapel in the monk cemetary that Br. Ansgar had first wanted me to go inside with him.

I thought, "Did they MOVE the chapel from the woods to the garage?" and I wondered if they were trying to get rid of it or something. I didn't know.

While protesting, I was across the street from a house where there was a woman who also happened to be a caretaker or nurse in the area. Her family had quit going to the Catholic church, she said, a few years earlier, and one of her very best friends had been abused as a little girl. So this woman was very supportive of my protest and encouraged it, and brought me coffee and tea and invited me in to visit and gossip. One day, I told her about how Br. Ansgar had been trying to take me to this chapel in the woods, and then I told her I thought I'd found it, maybe, in a garage...and I described it. She was wide eyed and then opened her mouth and gasped, saying, "That's not a chapel! That's a concession stand for Octoberfest!" Oh my, she added, and, laying her hand on my arm, was laughing and said she knew exactly what I was talking about and where it was. So she and I sat there, wondering, if THAT wasn't the "exquisite little chapel", what was out there?

I later met an elderly woman further into the neighborhood, with a knot of white hair on her head. She was so pretty, even in her old age, and she was standing outside in her yard. She asked me to come over and wanted to know if I was the young woman she'd seen protesting next to the sidewalk by the road. I said yes, and she looked me straight in the eye and told me she knew some things about this town that other people didn't know. She said she may be old, but that she knew exactly what I was going through, and that I was not alone. Basically, she hinted that she'd either been through the same thing, even though I told her I hadn't been a child and had been an adult woman in more of a counseling relationship. She said she knew what it was like and that she was proud to see me out there.

I decided to go back up to the Abbey, and while the monks were in a prayer or church service, take a little walk. A long walk, back down that dirt road, to find out for myself where Br. Ansgar had been trying to take me.

It was hot outside, Fall, but hot. I walked and walked and walked, until, looking back, the Abbey buildings were a speck in the distance. I was still not seeing the woods before me. The road went on forever, and then there was a fork in the road. The woods were more to the left side than the right, so I took the most direct path, which was the one to the left. Finally, the road curved around into the woods. I didn't see anything at first, and then, there it was. It was most definitely NOT an "exquisite little chapel". It was a very, very, worn and run down cabin or shack. It was the size of one bedroom, had bad paint, and was in disrepair. But, maybe it was still a chapel inside? I walked onto the porch and looked in the window and I still remember hearing myself gasp. I think I said, "Oh my goodness..." next. It was one room, and there was nothing in it except a bed and a dresser with nothing on it. No altar, no books, no icons or crucifix, no cross, no NOTHING except a bed.

THAT was where Br. Ansgar was trying to take me, and he wasn't taking me there, telling me it was a little cabin with a bed, or hinting at a romantic getaway. He first tried to get me to go into a REAL chapel in a cemetary with him, and when I wouldn't, he convinced me to take a walk with him to see some beautiful and "exquisite little chapel" which has NEVER been used as a "chapel". I wondered how many women were taken out there, or men, or children, and who else knew about this.

I was so angry, to find this, and see how my intuition had been RIGHT. Br. Ansgar had acted guilty, because he WAS guilty of trying to do something inappropriate.

Who could have heard me out there? No one. He could have tried anything, and then claimed it never happened. And he had lied to me to try to get me out there.

The Abbot and Human Resource person KNEW what was out there when I first met with them and asked about it, and that was why they had acted so nervously. But they chose to defame me to everyone instead and tell people I was delusional and "paranoid".

I knew then and I know now, that there was a reason I couldn't get this off of my mind. I would almost be convinced I had imagined everything, and start to doubt myself, out of my old habit of trusting others in authority before trusting my own inner voice, and then something inside of me would assert itself and say "No. That's not how it is and you are a good judge. You are right."

I was afraid to go down the road before because I was scared, and worried someone would try to prevent me from going or stop me. But I did it and I got all the evidence I needed that my "suspicions" were well-founded.

After this discovery, things got worse for me as all the Abbey lawyers wanted to do was cover up and do damage control, and they continued to use police and the state to assist them in their goals. They wanted to find a way to create "grounds" for their slander of me.

Enter my new "friend" Christa, and the Abbey lawyers I've been dealing with ever since: Dick Whittemore and John Kaempf, both Catholics, and both lawyers for Bullivant Houser Bailey, in Portland, Oregon.