Edward Francis Donelan

The Skin Room

 

During his first stint at the Hacienda, Pierre Nichols lived in a room accessible only through Donelan’s locked quarters. Nichols left, but in late summer 1973, Nichols needed work and returned to the Hacienda, living in the new apartments that had just been built. Donelan took over Nichols’ old room and furnished it with “fur rugs and a TV.” It became the “skin room,”35Letter from [Pierre Nichols] to Archbishop Robert Sanchez, February 20, 1976, p. 4. with an obvious double entendre. It had the only TV the boys could watch. Only boys who were in Father Ed's favor were allowed in this skin room; the others were excluded. Offerings, the boys said, included beer and liquor. Something else was going on in that room. “Boys whispered about things.”36Letter from [Pierre Nichols] to Archbishop Robert Sanchez, February 20, 1976, p. 5.

 

In spring 1974, Nichols received an urgent, long distance call for Donelan. Normally staff were forbidden to interrupt Donelan.

 

 

Donelan was “embarrassed.” After this incident, activity in the skin room began after 9 p.m., when the staff went off duty, and they “had no right to (or way to) to see what was going on at Father Ed’s rear room.”

 

Pierre Nichols later had a conversation with a fifteen-year-old boy who was leaving the Hacienda.

 

Pierre: “Do you think Father’s playing around …I mean really
jacking–off boys, or what?

 

Boy: “I know he does!”

 

Pierre asked what the conditions were for a boy to enter the skinroom.

 

Boy: “Father says he can go in only with his undershorts on,
or without them on.”

 

Pierre asked how Donelan was dressed.

 

Boy: “he doesn’t have any clothes on either.”37Transcript of Conversation between Pierre Nichols and “one 15 yr. old boy” on February 12, 1976, p. 1, attached to letter from [Pierre Nichols] to Archbishop Robert Sanchez, February 20, 1976.

 

Pierre: “I heard in Dec. of 1974, that one boy said that Father
Ed made him get a hard-on and then as he (Father) went
to suck his dick, he said, "Now I’m going to show you
how much I love you!”38Transcript of Conversation between Pierre Nichols and “one 15 yr. old boy” on February 12, 1976, p. 2, attached to letter from [Pierre Nichols] to Archbishop Robert Sanchez, February 20, 1976.

 

Pierre asked what the boys said of Donelan.

 

Boy: “They’d called him a queer.”39Transcript of Conversation between Pierre Nichols and “one 15 yr. old boy” on February 12, 1976, p. 2, attached to letter from [Pierre Nichols] to Archbishop Robert Sanchez, February 20, 1976.

 

The Boy Who Froze to Death

 

On January 25, 1976, Vaughn Bishop, twelve years old, and another boy, Philip Romero, fourteen years old, fled the ranch,40Albuquerque Journal, “Boy Dies of Exposure,” January 29, 1976, B-20. and made it fifty miles to Springer before Vaughn froze to death.41Another graduate of the Hacienda had a suspicious death. Donelan wrote, “Last Friday night one of my sons, who was here some years ago, was killed in a one car accident with his wife. This young man, Mike, was one of my ‘pride and joys’” (Letter from Father Ed to Archbishop Robert Sanchez of Santa Fe, February 1, 1976). Fatal one-car accidents are often disguised suicides. The Rev. Irving Klister, who left El Paso, Texas, because of his involvement in a pedophile ring that staged brutal orgies,42Leon J. Podles, Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (Baltimore: Crossland Publications, 2008), pp. 22-32. was then pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Springer, so he said the funeral mass for Vaughn.43Letter from [Pierre Nichols] to Archbishop Robert Sanchez, February 20, 1976, p. 6. Nichols was unaware of Klister’s past. Nichols’ faith was tried, but he knew that “God does nothing wrong” and that “Vaughn’s death will somehow serve a good purpose,” and the death might be “the key that opens the door at the end of the dark tunnel of wrong doings at the Boys’ ranch.”44Letter from [Pierre Nichols] to Archbishop Robert Sanchez, February 20, 1976, p. 6.

 

It is harder to hide a body than to hide sexual abuse, and Donelan knew his days at the Hacienda were over. Donelan reacted with appropriate histrionics. He wrote to Sanchez that “Father Griego told me of you concern about me on the death of my son, Vaughn. Well, I do not believe that men should not cry; when I told Alan, Vaughn’s brother about the situation, we embraced and both had a good cry for ourselves.”45Letter of Father Ed to Archbishop Robert Sanchez, February 1, 1976. Donelan blamed “a family in the area” that was “trying to cause trouble” by spreading “rumors.” The family was the Fryes, and the rumors were true.

 

In March 1976 the Colfax County Social Services Agency issued a report about the Hacienda. The cover letter to Archbishop Sanchez indicated that “some information and details were omitted from the report. We felt they were potentially harmful and unnecessary in light of your decision.”46Letter from Janet E. Bryan, Field Office Manger, to Archbishop Robert F. Sanchez, March 30, 1976. The report therefore left out any mention of sexual abuse, but took note of the conditions that made it possible. Also in March 1976 Archbishop Sanchez appointed the Rev. J. Sabine Griego to help close down the Hacienda. Griego was himself in 1992 accused of abuse.47Anne Constable, “The Tragic Fallout of Molestation,” Santa Fe New Mexican, June 30, 2002. During the deposition of Archbishop Sanchez, it came out that Grigio admitted abusing children. John Doe I et al v. Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe et al, Second Judicial District Court, County of Bernalillo, State of New Mexico, cases CV-91-11688 et al, Deposition of Robert F. Sanchez, January 12, 1994, p. 254, ll. 8-9. He was never prosecuted and, according to the article by Constable, after resigning “worked briefly as a hospital chaplain and psychologist with the state Corrections department.” In April 1976, despite the agency report, and even after Vaughn’s death, Donelan was still in charge of the Hacienda.

 

Charles and Cruciata Todd first visited the Hacienda in early 1974. They were initially “amazed” and “enthusiastic,” they later wrote Archbishop Sanchez, and Cruciata taught there as a volunteer. The Todds were impressed by Donelan, who “prayed the Mass with extraordinary gentleness and dedication.” But shortly thereafter, “things began to change.” There were “small rebellions, boys running away,” staff turnover; “Father Ed also seemed to change.” This culminated on Holy Thursday 1975, when Donelan gave a bizarre homily.

 

 

Donelan had become the ultimate clericalist: He thought he could command God, and God had to obey.

 

The Todds noticed the increasing isolation of the boys; they “just stopped being as friendly” and “didn’t seem to want to be involved with ‘outsiders’ any more.” They were running away, and while running away one of them died.

 

The Todds suspected that something was very, very wrong at the Hacienda.

 

So did Mrs. Francis Hephner, who wrote to Sanchez about the chaos, the lack of guidance at the Hacienda, and the stream of runaways:

 

 

Despite the fact that “we dearly loved Father,” after speaking with the boys, she was “forced to believe it is true.”50Letter from Mrs. Francis Hephner to Archbishop Sanchez, June 5, 1976.

 

The Gary Frye family also knew what was wrong. Further, they knew that Donelan knew that they knew, and that he hated them for it. On June 4, 1976, Darlene Frye wrote to Archbishop Sanchez that she had done her best to keep the matter quiet and within the Church, as he had requested.

 

 

Darlene Frye wanted to believe that Donelan was “sick,” and not criminal. If Donelan was sick, it was right to protect him from publicity and the law. If he was a criminal, she might be enabling him to continue committing crimes and escaping punishment. Darlene Frye, like many of the victims and their families, was suffering from a form of the Stockholm Syndrome.51Leon J. Podles, Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (Baltimore: Crossland Publications, 2008) p. 272. Even victims often want to think of their abusers as sick rather than criminal. It is easier to accept being hurt by a person who does not have the full use of reason rather than by a malicious criminal.

 

In obeying Sanchez’s request to keep the matter quiet to protect Donelan’s reputation, Darlene Frye was inadvertently caught up in the network of lies that entangled the clergy of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Sanchez himself was living a lie. He had numerous girlfriends, and his own violation of celibacy dulled his conscience. He did not think about how he as Archbishop of Santa Fe was hurting young women by having affairs with them, and he gave no consideration to the harm abuse victims were suffering. The harm he did to the young women may not have been confined to affairs – he claimed he used condoms to prevent pregnancy, but they are notoriously unreliable, and there were ways of disposing of unwanted unborn children. His own behavior, and that of many of his priests, is one reason he took so long to act against Donelan.

 

On June 10, 1976, Paul Nichols wrote to Sanchez and attempted, in his ignorance of Sanchez’s personal life, to appeal to Sanchez’s humanity and conscience to end the nightmare of the Hacienda.

 

 

Sanchez’s blindness was caused by the massive beam in his own eye, but most bishops who tolerated abusers were not themselves sexually active. But they were also blinded – by clericalism, by fear of loss of donations, by fear of disapproval from Rome for not maintaining a bella figura – in American terms, for damaging good public relations.