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Hello everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil from Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio.
We are your hosts. I'm Rosha Pecquerrero.
And I am Evet Genteel and as always we are with our amazing producer, mister Trevor Young.
Hey, Hey, how's it going.
Hello, ha Trevor Trevor.
So, I know we have a pretty interesting case coming up today. A very important case has to do with the existence of sexual assaults in the Catholic Church, which I know can be a very touchy issue, and we're going to get into a very I think powerful story that illustrates some of those issues. But you know, in that vein, I was thinking back as we were starting research for this case about the movie Spotlight. I don't
know if y'all remember watching that. It had Michael Keaton, but it was about some of the very real life events involving sexual misconduct in the Catholic church in Boston is very good movie. I think it won Best Picture of the year it came out.
Yeah, I remember that movie very well. You know, me myself being Catholic and you know, becoming a Catholic actually when I got married to my husband, who was you know, born and raised in the Catholic community. But for me, my mom couldn't remember if she had been baptized or not. And I just really wanted that blessing if you had been baptized or not, right, yeah, if I had been baptized or not. But yeah, I do remember that movie
and it's a very very movie. But I also want to talk about The Keepers, and we're going to get into that, you know, much later in the episode. But my voice is a little hoarse because I had just had laryngitis. But while I was home, I spent seven hours watching this particular documentary called The Keepers, and it was mind blowing. And we will talk about that later. And Trevor, now will you take us through today's case.
I've talked to the hunter that found Kathy and he said, since the day that he found her, the police have never talked to him except for that day.
They sought to do the same thing that senior church leaders in the diocese we investigated have done for decades. Bury the sexual abuse by priests upon children and cover it up forever.
And I can hear Kathy saying, I told you I'd take care of this, and I.
Said, I didn't think you meant Twenty years later.
Sister Catherine Sesenik was a young teacher at a Catholic school in Baltimore, Maryland. Early on the evening of November seventh, nineteen sixty nine, she disappeared while outrunning errands in her neighborhood. The next morning, two friends found Sister Kathy's car parked haphazardly nearby, but weeks went by with no sign of Kathy. Finally, on January third, nineteen seventy, the body of Sister Catherine Sesenik was found in a remote area south of the city.
No one was ever charged with her murder, but some of the investigators were suspicious of the community in the Catholic school where she taught, especially one of the priests. In the years that followed, more and more sinister events came to light. Painting a story of sexual abuse and intimidation at the hands of a powerful diocese that controlled everyone in its territory, including the police. And so what happened to Kathy Sesnik, why weren't the police able to
make a determination in her case? And what does the story reveal about the dark secrets of the Catholic Church.
Okay, you guys, this is one that we really have to buckle up for. I mean, this case just gets more and more crazy. You know, as you go along the stories that we've told this season, they've touched on some major issues, and today really is no different. But we're looking at sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, which is a huge, huge issue that is still very prevalent today.
Yeah, it's really just I think one of many. You know, it seems like every year there's another story of how this sort of wide scale abuse is allowed to go on somewhere or it's just swept under the rug entirely right, And you know, I think no matter your personal faith, this story especially illustrates the enormous power that a religious group or institution can have over an entire city, a community, and neighborhood. And I think that's super dangerous and the story is a huge example of that.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Trevor. It's a very dangerous issue. I was actually doing some research.
And the numbers don't lie.
They show that in the United States alone, more than eleven thousand complaints have been documented by victims of abuse by priests.
Like that's a lot.
Yeah, that's a lot. And you have to remember too, that's just those that have told.
Their stories, right, right, the documented cases, right.
There are so many other people that have not even come out yet. So, yeah, that number is shocking, but you know there's way.
More, way more.
Yeah, And there are numbers like that for countries all over the world, not just the US. So this story of sister Catherine Seysnik just brings issue down to a human scale.
Right.
It's just a super insane, crazy story. But sister Kathy Ssnick was a human.
Yeah, So let's talk about Kathy Sesnick. Then. She grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She had three siblings, was supposedly very bright, and by many accounts, just had this very sparkling personality. She was also an achiever. She was senior class president, a member of student council, and even may queen at her school, but she was also valedictorian of her high school. And then after that she joined the
school Sisters of Notre Dame. So she then goes on to be a teacher at Archbishop Kio High School in Baltimore, Maryland. It was an all girls school, and she taught English there as well as drama, and everyone said that her students loved her. She was everybody's favorite teacher.
Yeah. So I read this Huffington Post article and it says that Sister Kathy Saysnick was a real life version of Maria, like the Julie Andrews character from the Sound of Music. I mean, she was super exuberant, she sang, she played her guitar, and her students would even drop by her apartment, you know, and they would sing and dance. And you know, when I hear that, I think of like Sister Act. You know, the character in Sister Act, Sister Mary Robert, who was like always smiling and you know,
happy to see her students and so giving. Like she seemed exactly like that.
Yeah, all of those beautiful things that you've just said about her, Vet, I think it absolutely makes what happened next so heartbreaking. On the evening of November seventh, nineteen sixty nine, she left her apartment, which she happened to share with another nun. She left to go buy a
gift for her sister's engagement party. It was around seven thirty at night that she left to go go on this errand, and apparently she got into her car, stopped at the bank to cash her paycheck, and then she went to a local bakery and bought some bakery buns, and that was the last time anyone ever saw her alive.
We'll talk about what happened after we take a quick break.
So after sister Kathy Sessnik didn't return home, her roommate was, of course frantic, and she later told reporters quote, nuns in their order didn't stay out late, and Kathy would have called if she needed to run an additional errand end quote. But now it was eleven o'clock at night and she hadn't heard from her, so she called a couple of priests who wear their good friends. So these particular priests came over immediately and they had learned what
had happened. At four point forty in the morning, the priest decided to take a walk around the area. That's when they found Kathy's car. It was parked carelessly across the street from the apartment, even though she had her own designated parking spot right behind the building, and it didn't look good. They saw signs of a struggle, including a broken umbrella in the back seat. They called the police, who found that box of bakery buns she had purchased,
along with leaves and twigs. Branches had also been caught in the cars antenna.
Yeah, so a quick sidebar that we should mention about one of the priests who comes over to investigate. His name was Gerard Coob, and he was apparently totally like in love with Kathy Sessnik. And that is a whole myriad of problems, right. You know, Yvette, you can probably chime in here, but my understanding is that in the Catholic Church, you know, you're not supposed to have any sort of romantic relationship, certainly not nuns, but I don't think pres either. Is that correct?
That is very true, That is very true. You take you take a vow, Yeah, so priests and nuns take vows and nuns.
Yes, right right, So, in fact, you know, two years before this event happened before either of them had actually taken said vows. Kathy and Gerard had spent I guess a lot of time together. They had written each other letters. He even asked her to marry him, but she turned him down, I guess, wanting to you know, maintain her job.
And apparently, three days before she disappeared, he even called her one last time to tell her that he loved her, and he told her he would leave the priesthood to marry her if she'd leave the nun hood to you know, for them to be together. And I don't think she went for it.
I'm not sure what to think, you know, like, was it romantic or is it suspicious. I kind of always go back to Russia, you know, when she says it's always the boyfriend or you know, it's always the romantic, you know, the love interest. But you know, I do feel like this is how rumors get started.
Unrequited love leads to something. Yeah.
I think it's maybe possibly romantic in you know, the case of their not being a homicide involved, but the fact that someone was killed, you know, I think makes it very suspicious. You know, and even if there wasn't a death involved, in this. You know, there's something I
think kind of creepy about it. You know. It's not quite to the level of, you know, say a stalker, which we talked about on the previous episode, but somebody who's just kind of so obsessed that they're willing to forego certain boundaries that someone has put up in their life always strikes me as problematic. You know. That's that's
always a bit of a red flag for me. Asking someone to leave the nun hood to run off with them, you know, and they've clearly said that they are like uncomfortable with this before, right, Like, I think there's probably something there to look at that's not what it should be for sure. And in fact, police actually brought Gerard Coup in for questioning, but he had an alibi of having been at the movies earlier that night, so I guess that was that he had a solid alibi for where he.
Was, so it wasn't the unrequited love interest got it.
So there ends up being a massive man hunt, with thirty five Baltimore officers and residents of the area joining in sweeping a fourteen block area of Southwest Baltimore. But they don't find anything and more importantly, Baltimore police tell the media they do not believe foul play was involved.
Yeah, I mean that, and that strikes me as just that statement alone, when you don't really know, right, that's political agenda, I mean to me, right, because there were sticks and branches that were found in her car and other clear signs of a struggle. But the police say that they don't think that there's foul play, so that doesn't sit too well.
Yeah.
But finally, on January third, Mathie's body is found by a father and a son out on a hunting trip in Lansdowne, which I believe that's a remote area south of Baltimore.
Yep, I've actually driven through there, have you. Anyways, the police said it was likely that she had been either carried or forced to walk down there, and an autopsy found a skull fracture caused by a blow to her head with some sort of blunt instrument, most likely a brick, they said, and the pathologist noted that the quote disarray of clothing suggested possible rape. But unfortunately that's about as far as the police get with us. Investigators work on
the case up until nineteen seventy seven. But you know. Honestly, they're unable to make any real breakthrough, do they say, to the lack of any physical evidence in the case, even though we know there's quite a bit. So in nineteen seventy seven they closed the case.
But that is not the end of the story. So fast forward to nineteen ninety four, two former students of Archbishop Keio that's the school where Sister Cathy says Nick taught, file a lawsuit against a priest in that school whose name is Joseph Maskell. So the suit claims he sexually abused them repeatedly when they were students there. The women filing the suit are named Gene Wayner and Teresa Lancaster. And apparently these are not the first accusations Maskal has faced,
by the way. In fact, back in the nineteen sixties and seventies, Maskeal was widely feared in the school because everyone, including the students and the staff, knew he was a predator, but no one spoke up about it.
Right, So, you guys know how I love documentaries, and I talked about this earlier in the beginning of our episode about this documentary The Keepers, and in it, Teresa Lancaster says, when you were called over the loud speaker to report to Father Maskell, a dead silence would come over the c room and other girls would look at you with sad eyes, and the teacher would just look down. They knew something was going on.
Wow, and then he gets accused of this.
It's so so disgustingly awful, and it's so shameful, right, Like, it's like this abuse has been normalized, like that mom stood up for her son, but no one was standing up for these girls at Kio.
It's yeah, it's heartbreaking to me, right.
So obviously these claims against Father Mascal are pretty egregious, and Teresa Lancaster said that Father Maskal took her to a gynecologist named Christian Richter, who prescribed douches that the priest then administered himself in his school office, and numerous others after this stepped forward to say that he assaulted them frequently in his office. This is not a one
time occurrence. And I think it's also important to note here that these claims are in fact corroborated by court records as well as interviews with up to eight other Kio students, So there's clearly a pattern here right.
Clearly, and he wasn't stopped. Oh I'm so grossed out. Yeah.
So basically this was an open secret and this reign of terror by a criminal man who used his power as a priest and his power in the church as an authoritative figure to literally intimidate everyone. But I feel the most for these young girls who were students at this school and they were completely trapped.
They probably felt like they had nowhere.
To go exactly, and no one to tell, you know. But we also know that this did not go unnoticed, and at least one person did try to stop it from the inside, and that person was sister Kathy, says Nick.
Yes, and this gets into a big conspiracy, and we will talk about that right after we take another quick break.
There was at least one person who we know of who was fighting back against Father Joseph Maskell, and that person is the popular young teacher, Sister Kathy Sesnick. Her students loved her, and many of them confided in her about the abuse of Maskal and his colleagues, and she tried to stop it by doing things like making excuses for girls when he was calling them to his office, you know, like saying things oh, they can't get there.
They couldn't get away, Sorry about that. In May of nineteen sixty nine, sister Kathy had approached young Jeen Wayner and just asked her straight out whether the priest had been hurting her, and Jean admitted that yes they had, and apparently Kathy promised her that something would be done about it and basically tells her to go off and just try to enjoy her summer because she was going to take care of it.
And apparently this is where things start to really take a dark turn. So as we know, Kathy Sesnick disappeared in November of nineteen sixty nine and then was found dead the following January. But after she went missing, Geene Wayner says that Father Maskell took her Gene for a car ride, which I guess was a common thing that the priests would just take these young girls for trips places, right. I guess at the time families really trusted these priests
like Joseph Maskull to do this. But when Jean and Father Maskeal get out of the car after they've driven somewhere, he walks her over to a field where she says that she saw sister Kathy's body there in the field. Some pretty graphic details here for anybody who's sensitive to that. If you are, I recommend you skip ahead a few seconds.
So.
According to the Huffington Post quote, Sesnick was still clad in her aqua colored coat and maggots were crawling on her face. Yer tried to brush them off with her bare hands. Help me get these off of her, she cried, turning to Maskell in a panic. Instead, she says, the priest leaned down behind her and whispered in her ear. You see what happens when you say bad things about people.
H shit, it makes my skin crawl, my blood boil to think that you know a priest who you look up to, supposedly trust, and this is going on. You can't make this up. This is like a movie, right, but this is actually happening.
Yeah, I mean this is something you would expect to see, like in The Godfathers rights right, Like it's just absolutely insane, like too diabolical to you know, even be real. But when Jean Wayner finally builds up the courage to tell the story in nineteen ninety four, she describes details about Kathy Sestek's body that were only known to investigators at the time, like the blue coat exactly.
And then there's Teresa Lancaster, the other woman who filed the nineteen ninety four suit along with Gene Wayner. And it's important to note here that both of these women were actually anonymous at the time of the filing, and Teresa at the time she also experienced retaliation for confiding
in sister Kathy. She claims that Maskal drove her out to a wooded area where there were lots of police milling around, and that two police officers raped her in the back seat while Maskell stood outside of the police car talking and laughing with the other cops.
I mean, this is just pure evil on every level possible.
So I think it's interesting here to realize that this is now becoming a much bigger issue, right, this is no longer just about abuse within the catholictures. Obviously that's a huge part of it. But now all we're seeing law enforcement get involved in a very dark way, a very criminal way. And so what we're seeing is this balloon out, this picture of abuse and cover up that involves an entire city and all of the forces within a city, like law enforcement.
Yeah, I mean, this explains a lot obviously about why the police never saw this case because so many of them were a part of it. You know. It's just it's really just corruption at every level. It's when you talk about above the law, this is that and so much more.
Right. It's different types of people, but they're all taking advantage of authority and power in very evil ways. Right.
So this actually reminds me of the corruption that was happening in LAPD when our great grandfather George Hodell was a cue used of killing Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia. Because he had so much, so much dirt on the police officers of the LAPD. We all believe that's one of the reasons that he was never convicted. You know, like corruption to the nth level. And that's it feels just like that right now.
Yeah, this can take place in Baltimore, LA, you know, nineteen forties, nineteen sixties whenever. So moving forward, other victims also described Maskell as bringing them to places where police officers would abuse them. So this is just keeps going on. It turns out that Maskell's brother was a police lieutenant, and it seems he really had the entire police force in the area under his complete control. So they're like one family that has authority over this entire region.
Feels very much like the Godfather.
So gross, and so as you said earlier, this is probably a huge part of the reason why, again this case wasn't solved because the police are in on this. So other media reports on the story have pointed out that as late as nineteen ninety four, there is still really no justice. The court dismisses all the claims against Mascal at that point because it's past the statute of limitations.
So in Maryland, victims of sexual abuse have just three years from the time the abuse ends or from when they discover it to file a civil suit, which is not a long time.
No, I mean three years. That's I mean, that's just ridiculous. That has to.
Change, Yeah, especially for sexual abuse.
So it's basically saying it's too late because your memory may not be reliable enough. Meanwhile, all these other women are coming together and corroborating on the same type of abuse, right that has happened to Jane and to Teresa, And what is that?
Yeah, So the idea there was statute of limitations is that after a certain number of years, your account as an eyewitness is just not as reliable, like you said,
because of memory or whatever. But you know, I think if you have enough detail and you have you know, enough of a pattern of abuse, and especially like this kind of abuse, like I don't think this is something that you forget, Like I don't think your memory is just going to fade about being raped by two police officers after three years, Like that's something that is going to stay with these women for the rest of their lives.
Exactly, Trevor, Exactly, you don't forget about that. These women fight every day to probably just walk through life because that is a memory that is so deep embedded in their spirit.
True, and you know, the law is frequently unjust, and this is why we have things like amendments to improve upon this. But it doesn't end there. A police detective talking anonymously to the Hfington Post said that he got a call in nineteen ninety four from a grave digger. The man said that Maskell had ordered him to bury
a bunch of boxes in the graveyard. When police went and dug them up, one of those boxes contained a bunch of nude photos of underage girls, but then when all the boxes were delivered to the evidence room, those containing the photos were inexplicably missing. Other retired detectives have also come forward in recent years and confirmed that they were quote pressured to back off the Catholic priests during their investigations.
Gross it's obvious that this was a cover up at the highest level possible.
Yeah, so this goes from being a conspiracy theory to a full blown conspiracy that can be proven and corroborated and every detail of it tracked down right. Unfortunately, none of this really leads to a lot of consequences for Joseph Maskell. In nineteen ninety four, he was removed from the ministry, but he fled to Ireland until his death in two thousand and one at age sixty two. He worked as a psychologist and unfortunately supposedly continued his pattern of abuse while working there.
So basically nothing happened to him, There were no consequences, and I'm sure he continued to do it over and over and over again because he got away with it. They let him. They let him get away with it.
Right, that was his entire life. He knew nothing else, and he'd gotten away with it for so long. But it's not until twenty sixteen that the Archdiocese of Baltimore releases a list of seventy one clergymen that had been accused of sexual abuse and then backed that up with credible evidence.
And Maskell is on that list.
Of course he is. And I'm sure he was at the top of the list.
Yeah, but conveniently it was after he died, of course. And victims of the listed clergy are off for money. They got financial settlements by the archdiocese for that abuse, and some victims claimed that, considering the sheer horrificness of these crimes, that money was not enough. They wanted to see legal changes, like you always tell us, Trevor, and they wanted to see changes within the church, and they wanted to prevent anything like this from happening again in the future.
Yeah, I mean money, money can't buy what they've been through. I mean, it can't take that away.
It's just.
I can't even tell you, guys, like just spending seven hours of watching this documentary and I had no voice, and I was yelling like through my spirit of what these victims had gone through. And then to offer them, you know, it was something like twenty five to fifty thousand dollars, Like.
That's not thing compared to what they've been through.
I do want to say this, you know, one good thing we always look for, that silver lining. That school ko was torn down. It's no longer there, and you know the fact that these women, some of these women were there, like when it came down was you know, I don't want to say closure because you know, they can never have closure on you know, something so evil that happened to them. But I think there was a part of them that just the fact that this was no longer there helped in some way.
That's so beautiful to hear that that school Kio was torn down. You know, we also have some additional momentum going in the right direction. In recent years, more and more people have joined the fight for justice in this case. So a school alumni group that began with with one person asking questions on Facebook has exploded and sparked a brand new murder investigation into the murder of sister Kathy Sesnik.
It's officially an open case again, and this quest for justice has brought all of these women together and has helped so many of those abuse survivors find healing and find support, and that brings us to this week's IMOA. This week's message of hope and healing goes out to Gen Wayner, Teresa Lancaster and the thousands of women and men like them who have come out about abuse they have suffered at the hands of religious clergy.
It is for the founders of SNAP, the Grassroots Survivors Network of those abused by priest.
Back in nineteen ninety three, when SNAP held listening sessions for survivors to tell their stories, not a single Catholic bishop came out to hear them, but the group persevered and grew. It is making noise and sparking change.
The stories of abuse are painful to hear, but more painful still is to have lived them and to have your voice silenced when you try to speak your truth. Because so many have stepped forward and refused to be ignored, people are now listening.
And calls for changes such as the elimination of statutes of limitations for reporting abuse are getting louder.
To all the victims out there, those who have come forward and those who have not, we see you, We wish you justice, we wished you healing, and most importantly, we wish you peace. Onward and upward emua Ema. That's our show for today. If you are a survivor of clergy abuse, the advocacy group SNAP has resources that you can turn to. Visit snaptwork dot org. That's SNAP Network all one word dot org.
We'd love to hear what you thought about today's discussion and if there's a case you'd like for us to cover, find us on social media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv and one favor. If you haven't done it already, please leave us a review and a good rating. If you like what we do, your support is always cherished.
Until next time, ah Loha.
Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. Jo is hosted by Russia Peccuerero and Avet Gentile. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk, Donald albright In Payne Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Claudia Dafrico. Original
music by makeup and vanity set. Find us on social media or email us at Facing Evil pod at tenderfoot dot tv. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.