This is an excerpt from a longer posting. Here is the URL for the complete article:
http://www.ocanews.org/news/Koumentakos5.3.08.html (in English)
(beginning of excerpt)
The unresolved issues festered throughout the summer and early fall of 2007, until in October, an exasperated Koumentakos wrote to the OCA, again, asking what, if anything, was being done with her claim of “pastoral misconduct” made almost a year earlier. Rev Velencia sent an email as well, not only to the Synod and the Metropolitan Council, but to OCANews.org as well, claiming that:
It has come to my attention that I am the subject of correspondence to you from a former parishioner and employee who is in her letters to you attempting to destroy my professional and personal life. Please find attached my response to her original complaint to Metropolitan Herman in January of this year. Thank you for taking the time to read it.
Members of the Synod, the Metropolitan Council, and the editor of OCANews.org all confirm receiving Mrs Koumentakos and Rev Velencia’s emails.
Rev Velencia’s attachment, a letter to the Metropolitan, some 10 pages long, did not specifically address Mrs Koumentakos’ allegations, but, rather contained intimate, personal, and graphic details about Mrs Koumentakos’s abuse, her subsequent treatment, details about her husband, and their marriage, in what may be described as an attempt to damage her credibility and concerns. OCANews.org will not make the contents of the email attachment received from Rev Velencia public, aside from what the Koumentakoses, in their legal brief, have themselves been forced to reveal.
The OCA, through its new lawyer, Michael Genute, then asked the Koumentakoses for 60 more days to once again review her case. An angry and humiliated Mrs Koumentakos, whose painful past had now been revealed to another 39 strangers (the members of the Synod and Metropolitan Council), not to mention given to a public website to be posted, responded:
…You have asked me to be patient. Respectfully, I find that request to be offensive.
I reached out twice to my local Deanery for help 19 months ago and was not even given the courtesy of a response.
I reached out to the OCSM (Orthodox Church of St Matthew) parish council for help; they were impotent.
I reached out to the Metropolitan for help and received Fr Alexey (Karlgut), who was more interested in having me sign a waiver than investigate, who lied point blank to my husband, who spent more time focusing on my history… than the misconduct of Fr Ray (Velencia), and then allowed him to escalate the issue repeatedly.
Still, I waited patiently for some sort of contact or report from Fr Alexey, hoping that in the end, the national church would do the right thing, the honest thing.
What I got months later was a letter from Fr Alexey with the obvious intent to do more harm, to further humiliate and intimidate me. He wrote about my refusal to sign the waiver, he misrepresented himself as a legal professional, he stated that he found Fr Ray to be a “goal-oriented priest” who had been successful in building his church, that he had been unable to substantiate the allegations I made because “no one had come forward”… interesting choice of words given that he refused to contact my witnesses and made no reference whatsoever to the witness statements he received in writing.
Additionally, he wrote, “As to allegations of violation of ‘pastoral confidentiality’ it should be stated that in the teaching, Doctrine, and Canonical rules, regulations, and tribunal for internal discipline and government of the Orthodox Church no such concept exists”.
Imagine the reaction of the OCA community to those comments!
I then reached out to the entire Holy Synod and the Metropolitan Council for help.
I received a brief letter stating that Metropolitan Herman would “need to look further into the matters at hand”.
I again reached out to the Synod and MC, indicating strongly that such a minimal response was unsatisfactory.
I insisted that appropriate action be taken and asked for the following information:
When will I be contacted?
Who will be conducting the review of information?
In what manner will this be done?
When will the review be complete and when will appropriate action take place?
These questions remain unanswered by the OCA or your representatives, yet you ask me for my patience.
I am confident that you can understand why this is unacceptable to me.
She concluded:
I have begged all involved for help, for intervention for the last time. I will not do it again.
(end of excerpt)
This is despicable, dirty, low, reprehensible, and beyond all words. It stuns one by its brazenness. “As to allegations of violation of ‘pastoral confidentiality’ it should be stated that in the teaching, Doctrine, and Canonical rules, regulations, and tribunal for internal discipline and government of the Orthodox Church no such concept exists”. In other words, the OCA believes that the seal of the confessional and pastoral confidentially in general does not exist. I asked a Russian priest friend about this. His e-mail reply was, “He should be defrocked! Immediately! Without delay! Why, no one would open themselves up to a priest if that were true!” In short, my friend was scandalised badly by this.
If there is anything that proves to all, including the slow learners, that the officialdom of the OCA has left ordinary Orthodoxy, this clinches it. If this does not move you to action, may God have mercy on your soul. The fact that Mark Stokoe did not condemn this in the most ringing phrases possible makes me wonder about his motives. Why are you defending such an abuse, Mr Stokoe? If you stand quiet, you stand in approval. Can you not see that the apparat in Syosset is EVIL? There is no other word for the abuse of pastoral confidentiality shown by this priest. Syosset DEFENDED him. Mr Stokoe, it is time for you to join all the rest of us in refusing to stand by quietly.
I have seen much come out of this crisis over the last 32 months. I thought that I had seen the lowest reaches of corruption. I was wrong. For a priest to reveal ANYTHING spoken to him in confidence is EVIL INCARNATE. This strikes me speechless, truly.
Yes, this is the end result of the scorning of tradition taught by Alexander Schmemann. It has led to an attitude of “the ends justify the means”, and the only good is the survival of the Syosset apparat in its present form. I now understand why the hierarchs of the MP are disgusted with the OCA. No OCA clergy were allowed to serve at the funeral of Vladyki Laurus per the explicit orders of Metropolitan Juvenaly. I understand that the same stricture applied to the 3 May service at St Nick’s in New York. The DECR is aware of what is going on, and it appals them. I would like to see “Hegumen Christopher” defend this noisome act.
If not me and you, then WHO?
I think it is time to saddle up the posse comitatus. Are you with us?
Vara Drezhlo
6 May 2008
