CJ was the first to alert me last night to the growing attempts to ‘disappear’ alleged child rapist Frank Lombard from the commune where he lived in Durham, North Carolina.
Lombard’s story can be found here, and in it you can see the minute-by-minute details of the way we first discovered a link between Lombard and the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in nearby Carrboro. Lombard was on the vestry of the church and was scheduled to rotate off in 2010. Saturday morning as the news began to break, ECOTA started removing from its site all references to Lombard, including his name on a page listing vestry members, then a “Who’s Who” PDF that listed Lombard as a vestry member along with his Duke email address, and finally an archived church newsletter from February 2008 that we believe shows Lombard (and perhaps his two adopted children) with a group from the church posing on the front steps of a home-turned-office.
As is our habit with stories like this, we downloaded everything we thought was relevant and stored it for safe keeping before we posted anything on our site; thus we’re able to provide the redacted documents for everyone to see.
We’re not surprised that ECOTA would scrub its site of all references to Lombard, but it is odd that the church has not issued a statement of any kind on the matter. This would be understandable if Lombard were merely a parishioner: Anyone, engaging in any perversion, is free to attend almost any church they want, Episcopal or not. The revelation of criminal behavior may prompt a church to issue a statement, but in that case a church doesn’t owe the public a statement any more than any other organization owes the public a statement in a similar situation.
But Lombard is/was on the vestry of ECOTA. While perhaps a statement on a vestry member’s alleged criminal actions is not called for as it would be had the allegations been made against a rector or staff member, the complete silence from ECOTA is steadily moving from understandable (a small church, a story breaking on a weekend), to odd (presumably the rector and staff were aware of the story on Sunday, and present at the church, and able to cobble together something, no matter how cursory or vague), to frankly suspicious (here we are on a Monday morning, close to midday, and still nothing).
The failure of ECOTA to handle this crisis properly at least has plausible explanations. It is obviously a tiny church. It is probably unaccustomed and unequipped to deal with accusations this horrific, which hit this close to home. So their silence in the first 48 hours is at least explained - perhaps - by their size and unfamiliarity with how to behave in situations like this. However, it’s now time to say something - anything - or risk raising suspicions that what’s behind the church’s silence is not simply shock or incompetence, but something worse.
Now, it appears that the attempt to ‘disappear’ Frank Lombard has moved beyond the confines of his tiny Episcopal church, and into the commune where he lived. Eno-Commons is a community of a couple of dozen homes in Durham, North Carolina, where Lombard lived with his male partner and their two adopted African-American boys, at least one of whom was allegedly molested by Lombard. Eno-Commons pulled their website over the weekend (their site is 403 as of this writing); the internet archive service Wayback Machine has copies of some of the pages available, but the most recent snapshot is from December 25, 2007.
Quotes from this article do nothing but heighten suspicions on what’s going on inside Eno-Commons that they feel they need to block access to their entire web site, as well as to the commune itself:
Neighbors of Lombard had nothing to say about him Saturday to a reporter who visited Eno Commons, a co-housing community in north Durham.
Residents ordered the reporter to leave the neighborhood, which emphasizes communal life.
A roadblock with a “no trespassing” sign and a Subaru greeted visitors Saturday to Indigo Creek Trail, a private street in the 22-home neighborhood.
It’s past time that the Episcopal Church of the Advocate issue some sort of statement. If that doesn’t happen soon, then attention is going to start turning to North Carolina Bishop Michael Curry. If it comes to that, then don’t be surprised if Curry, one of the church’s staunchest advocates of gay marriage, begins to face questions on the appropriateness of homosexuals marrying and adopting children.
Beyond that, it’s beginning to look like Eno-Commons has something to hide as well. Shock and speechlessness are one thing, but whitewashing and wagon-circling - both at the church as well as the commune - are quite another.
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The story was picked up here: http://tinyurl.com/njyz3m
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