Fr. Donald McGuire went to jail after being “evicted from a Jesuit nursing home,” according to the Wis. state Department of Corrections, says Janesville Gazette.  It was Terrace Nursing Home in Waukegan, Ill., whose “charter does not allow it to house a convicted felon.”  The home is described in part as a “religious nonmedical health care institution.”  It has 115 beds.  It is not listed on a “map” of Jesuit installations and so is probably not a Jesuit nursing home as such.  The nearest Jesuit installation is the men’s retreat house in Barrington.

McGuire’s probation, which he is serving during his appeal, will apparently be in Illinois.  Sent back to Wisconsin from the nursing home, he lived at a Lake Geneva motel but then was returned to jail Sept. 25 for refusing — on his lawyers’ advice — to take a lie detector test whose results could be used in a new trial if his conviction is reversed.  They cited his Fifth Amendment right to silence.

“The only way we can protect our client’s rights is by instructing him to refuse to participate or answer,” reads a letter from defense attorney Steve J. Watson to McGuire’s probation agent.

He has been meeting with Wis. probation officials but would not “participate fully in sex offender classes, sign related documents and take a lie-detector test,” according to a motion filed Tuesday by his appellate attorneys.

If he complied with the requirements, information from the sex-offender class or from a lie-detector test could be used against him in a new trial if his appeal is successful, the motion says.  A hearing is set for Oct. 10 to stay the probation, in addition to the prison sentence, pending appeal.  A stay would relieve him of the requirements which have led him to jail.

The suit claims the Chicago Province of Jesuits, Loyola University and Loyola Academy all “have information about a number of suspected child molesting agents that it has never disclosed to law enforcement or the public at large, causing people such as the plaintiffs to be harmed as children or vulnerable young adults.

. . . .
The suit alleges that the Jesuits received reports of McGuire’s alleged sexual abuse of minors from 1970 through the 1990s, but they failed to report this information to the police or the public.

. . . .
The suit seeks to have the defendants release the names of any agents of the order or the two schools who have been accused of sexual abuse of minors, and to share that information, as well as any other documents that are evidence of sexual abuse of minors, with law enforcement and the public.

The terrible, awful news from Lancaster area led me to recall what I saw of the Amish in a 2003 trip.  They were part of the scene at the Green Dragon:

. . . Back to Pennsylvania, which in its SE corner is quite traversible. Last night to a small-animal auction at the Green Dragon market near Ephreta, where Amish men and boys in straw hats, some of them black fedoras, others in usual straw, and a wide assortment of other citizens watched the chickens, doves, furry critters, etc. went to the highest bidder.

We sat in the bleachers and were careful not to scratch nose during bidding, lest we end up holding some hamsters at a price low but not low enough to justify the purchase. Mennonites and Brethren and even some apparent Yuppies there, women wearing lace beanies tied under chin, not bonneted like out and out Amish. Not Yuppies, who had their own uniforms but did not flaunt their circumstance.

Some of these Mennonites, Brethren, etc. apparently use the birth control method recommended by our family doc for many years, the late, great Gregory White MD, namely breast feeding. Yes, I know you call people using that method parents, but so what?

Much sobriety and serenity and indeed relaxation seen among all such folks I have seen on this trip. This Green Dragon market is Fridays only. There are at least three others in the general neighborhood, including Roots Market, near Manheim, to which vendors repair on their given days. We had root beer floats and (one of us) a hot dog at the round-stool winding counter where we might also have gotten a variety of hash house food.

And all over the place, families with kids, stopping at dozens of various counters for food, flea market items, antiques, clothing, you name it. It closed down about nine-thirty, with families who run booths sitting in back of theirs sampling the ice cream or pina colada drink, for instance. Friday night out in the great American boonies.

Into this idyl strode a demon.