TTSOML #63: Meeting Amy Roe, Reporter

I first heard about Roe when I read an article she wrote about a priest who married a nun. She wrote about the problems of celibacy within the Catholic church and how it could be time for the church to rethink their position. She wrote this article, which I read, sometime after I had my own personal experience with a monk who wanted to profess his love for me and keep me from dating others (and who tried to take me out to a shack in the woods).

I had a lot of people tell me I should contact someone in the media. The little monk twist was strange, but what people thought was odd was the involvement of the police in coordination with the Abbey. The fact that I'd been given citations as a form of intimidation.

At first I hadn't wanted to make anything public. I turned down going on television. I started to consider having someone do a story though, because I felt it was important, and all of the sex abuse cases were coming out of the woodwork and the cover up stories were always the same.

I had tried to get help other ways too. I hadn't found a lawyer yet, and I had unwittingly gone into several counseling centers only to be turned away (told their organization was for Catholics only--it was a building right next to Portland State University), or getting a bad feeling (finding out my psychologist was also a therapist for monks at the Abbey AND that his clinic was funded with Catholic monies).

I truly did NOT have anything against regular Catholic people, and I still don't, but everytime I turned around, if someone was giving me the shaft, they were later telling me about how they were Catholic and I offended their church, or I was finding out that if they were initially sympathetic, they'd then go to their priest or a monk about me and talk, and come back to me iwth the idea I was one of Hell's angels. It never worked out. I was fine with someone who was Catholic, until they talked to someone about me and got a bad story. So after awhile, I decided it was probably best to limit contact. I knew for sure that counseling, with someone or with a clinic, which was funded by Catholic monies, was a bad idea. Total conflict of interest. The Catholic agencies were always protective of their church over me.

So I called Amy Roe because I thought her interests might be similiar to mine.

When I met Ms. Roe, at my college, Portland State University, she came with a pageboy haircut, blond, and looking winsome, holding a Hello Kitty umbrella. I should have known such overt innocence or girlishness, at her age, could only be a bad thing. We talked and she seemed absolutely interested and shocked by what had happened. She read and reread some emails sent to me by the monks, looking at the one where Fr. Joachim threatens me, most closely. It was the one where he says he would hate to see "your good name dragged through the mud." She looked at me and said it sounded like intimidation.

She met with me twice, and talked to me over the phone. She said she wanted to write my story. Then everything got weird.