Richard Sipe
Aquinas Walter Richard Sipe (December 11, 1932 – August 8, 2018) was an American Benedictine monk-priest for 18 years (1952–1970 at Saint John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota[1]), a psychotherapist and the author of six books about Catholicism, clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, and clerical celibacy.
Life[edit]
Born in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, Sipe was an American Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor trained specifically[2] to treat Roman Catholic priests. He practiced psychotherapy, "taught on the faculties of Major Catholic Seminaries and colleges, lectured in medical schools, and served as a consultant and expert witness in both civil and criminal cases involving the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests". During his training and therapies, he conducted a 25-year ethnographic study published in 1990 about the sexual behavior of celibates, in which he found more than half had sexual relationships. In 1970, after receiving a dispensation from his vows as a priest, Sipe married a former nun, Marianne; they had a son.[3]
Sipe was a witness in more than 57 lawsuits, testifying on behalf of victims of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests.
Sipe died on August 8, 2018, of multiple organ failure in La Jolla, California, at age 85.[3][4]
Media coverage[edit]
Sipe participated in 12 documentaries on celibacy and priest sexual abuse aired by HBO, BBC, and other networks in the United States, United Kingdom, and France, and was widely interviewed by media, including CNN, ABC, NBC, CNBC, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, People magazine, Newsweek and USA Today.[5] On January 21, 1995, he made an extended appearance on a special edition of the British television discussion program After Dark, alongside Garret FitzGerald and Sinéad O'Connor, among others.[6]
In popular culture[edit]
Sipe's research and his book Sex, Priests and Power are depicted in Tom McCarthy's 2015 film Spotlight as crucial in the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize–winning 2002 investigation of predatory priests and the decades-long cover-up of their crimes by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The 1995 book is shown onscreen in its bright-red-covered hardback edition when the investigative team meet the first victim, Phil Saviano, the founder of the New England chapter of SNAP.[7] As a favor to McCarthy, actor Richard Jenkins performed uncredited as Sipe's voice in three phone calls, each based on real conversations with Spotlight reporters.[8][9]