51 Comments
User's avatar
Samuel Abraham's avatar

This is a structural and cultural problem in the white church globally who are strangulated with the white disorder - homosexuality and the white disease - pedophilia. The problem at the fountain is the undead Greek culture which informed the European cultures and the Greeks themselves being intermarried or integrated with the people who launched this vice as a war against man and god - the Phoenicians. Fr Seraphim Rose was no saint and was a practicing homosexual as well who once was in an open relationship with a gay orthodox man who too converted to Orthodoxy at one time. The cheapening and politicisation of Sainthood is another spiritual crime of the white church. If any one doesnt meet the exacting standards of Christ and his apostles he isn't a saint at all.

More on Serpahim Rose's homosexuality https://slavlandchronicles.substack.com/p/that-father-seraphim-eugene-rose

Expand full comment
Matt Stein's avatar

I was one of the young men that Fr Herman assaulted. It was a devastating experience at the time but, after over 30 years of reflecting upon the experience, I have come to realize that it may have been the only thing that could have broken the spell that Fr Herman’s charisma had on my 21 year old self at the time. I have also come to terms, more or less, with the fact that, when one speaks openly about such an experience, most people will not believe that such a thing actually happened or even that such things can happen in the Orthodox church. They happen and they happen a lot more than people realize. I have to remind myself that, had I not personally experienced Fr Herman’s dark behavior myself, I likely wouldn’t believe it either.

It is for the others who may have experienced similar abusive behavior, at the hands of Fr Herman or some other abuser, that I share my first hand experience because, had I not been with others who had similar experiences, I might have lost my sanity. Knowing that you are not alone is essential to surviving such experiences, at least it was for me.

I appreciate and admire what you are doing. Thank you!

Expand full comment
Steven's avatar

God bless you for coming forward with your story Matt. Very upsetting that the ROCOR took Pauffhausen under its wing. He has a monastery in Virginia with I believe only 1 other monk, an elderly cradle American man.

Expand full comment
Bianca's avatar

Thank you Matt for trusting us, I believe you & am blessed to have you here with us. Sending you solidarity & love x

Expand full comment
The Grand Inquisitor's avatar

Thank for providing your testimony Matt and I'm sorry you had to experience that. Our work here will continue to shine the light on all these awful cases and those responsible. God bless!

Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Thank you Matt.

Such a betrayal, for you, for the others. Was teary when the Rosentool case was being heard & he was being sentenced every time the thought of how incredibly courageous those guys here were who testified, in court, in public. Having to repeat their story to police & lawyers.

Despite having max confidentiality & security surrounding their identities & the case, what they did was the epitome of selflessness.

Small inane minds in ROCOR here, seem to be spending more time guessing their identity, than allowing the full gravitas of these crimes to sink into their shrunken minds.

Бог с ними.

You speaking up may help others to do so as well.

Expand full comment
Matt Stein's avatar

Thank you, Marianna

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Sep 25
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Read the other comments more carefully. We have tight laws of confidentiality, suppression orders & nondisclosure to protect Vulnerable individuals at risk of harm from goons in Australia.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Sep 25
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Profound

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Sep 25
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 8
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Matt Stein's avatar

Anna, I assume you knew Fr Herman. I sympathize with you and your support for him. He was wise and could be such a warm and loving person. He helped many people. There’s no denying that. But you only experienced that side of him. Some of us, though, who trusted him and loved him as a father, unfortunately, saw his shadow side. We’re telling the truth. I know where you stand on this but at least hold space for the possibility that what I report could have happened. There are others besides myself who experienced that side of him.

Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Matt I was going to write something to you along the lines of “please ignore these victim blamers if at all possible” but thought it disrespectful.

The individual above has been reported, this is totally unacceptable behaviour.

This is exactly the reason that which happened to you, happens to others, is enabled. This is a mind games tactic, gaslighting in more current language.

It is designed to make others doubt reality & facts. It is also the strategy that Perps & predators use to groom & confuse not only their targets, but also those who surround them, family, friends & community. People who lack both critical thinking & moral courage.

The most dangerous aspect of Perps is just this, that they cause this Cognitive Disonance between reality & their image.

They are not 2 separate selves, one sweet one hideous.

They are one character who has meticulously planned a path so that his darkness could be expertly concealed & tracks covered.

Perps are methodical & stratgegic. None of this is EVER any fault of the target child or young person.

It is also NEVER their role to need to understand or help others to understand anything.

Their only task is to heal the harm as much as is humanly possible & if able to, courageously speak out to help protect others or to see justice done.

That makes them a far more virtuous person than any enabling goon of a Perp.

I hope nothing that I’ve said has been upsetting. I come from a profession associated with protecting the most Vulnerable in society. Perps all have the same modus operandi.

God bless

Expand full comment
Matt Stein's avatar

Thank you, Marianna. I can’t know Fr Herman’s heart and inner struggles, his sincerity or duplicity, all I know are his actions. I also know that he never showed any remorse or apologized in any shape, form, or fashion to me or the other people who had similar experiences with Fr Herman that I have spoken to about it.

There are some people who will never believe that Fr Herman did such things. And that’s okay. All I can do is speak my truth.

Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Reporting you to Editors

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Sep 5Edited
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Matt Stein's avatar

I’m very sorry that you had to experience such a thing, especially at such a pivotal age as 15. It boggles the mind as to how such people can so brazenly get away with such behavior. How many other adults had to turn a blind eye to this teacher’s sick behavior? Sadly, these occurrences usually involve a community not just the individual.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 8
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Matt Stein's avatar

Anna, I’m curious what in this makes you believe that it is bogus?

Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Reported

Expand full comment
Mother Elizabeth Bacha's avatar

Yes, this is a clearly written and coherent history of abuses that integrates elements of missionary work and monastic life. These two things, missionary work and monasticism, and the publication of saints' lives to use as a cover-up mechanism. Then, how they are used in formative processes to enable sexual abuse, need circulation and responsive actions to this playbook that is often repeated. Accountability before God by all those who, in one way or another, have suffered as the abused or have been complicit as an enabler requires dissemination of these facts as well as demands for responsive actions...I hope through Pokrov Truth and other websites as Prosphon Healing, you will collect additional private data to demand change and secure justice. ..Truly, then we can process clarity for what is needed for a clean, "cheetsi" Orthodox Christian life that can bring forth the flowers of Grace, peace, and love, and not have these environmental poisons as fertilizers for fronts of a falsified sanctity, which the Bible defines as actions of the "Anti-Christ". . . As a former missionary bookstore worker in Miami in the 1970's, with the Orthodox Book Center, I was uneasy with what came across to us from Platina and St. Herman's, even in print, as it all did not balance. Your clearly written timeline of the abuse should shake the poisonous fruit down from the branches that have come down through this network of calculated and formative actions that have used good things of mission and monastic life to cover the evils being perpetrated historically and now today.

Expand full comment
Bianca's avatar

The similarities bw Rosenthol & Fr Herman are outstanding Rosenthol channels Fr Herman always wanting to be under the Serbian Hierarchy ( I remember in high school visiting HTM & Rosenthol telling us that his monastery HTM will go under the Serbian hierarchy soon).

The Serbian hierarchy will not accept Rosenthol whilst suspended & Rosenthol has the HTM & the women’s monasteries praying for the Serbian hierarchy and not ROCOR for the past few years which is schismatic And all ROCOR Clergy & Matyshke who visited the monasteries know this and don’t disclose to the ROCOR hierarchy. And my question is how did we get here?

Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

While we’re on traitors, Dante’s last inner circle of the Hells, has a particularly nasty position for them, particularly those who have betrayed their teachers & mentors.

Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Bianca, there’s always been power games & grabs in the church. Disturbed characters hiding behind their piousness.

But yes, prayer in this instance is being weaponised & politicised.

The Serbs need to take a firm stand on this. They do seem to be getting a bit too cosy eg St Sergius & Pokrov Cabramatta.

All the historical Russian Serbian ties aside, humans aren’t honourable, particularly when huge multi million $ assets like St Sergius or the monasteries are involved.

Genghis Khan would accept information from traitors of his enemy. He’d them have them liquidated because he didn’t want traitors in his ranks.

Am not suggesting traitors & schismatics be liquidated, it’s not

the Middle Ages, however they aren’t to be trusted & it might be time for some nice painful ATO audits of the monasteries.

Surely they must fall under the Charities Act?

As with Child Safeguarding, they get nervous, start making mistakes & out themselves once they know they’re being watched & assessed.

There’s a time for a monastery retreat & a time for bean counting.

Follow the money always works.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 8
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Ты наверно имя отчество не поняла бы, ты что в деревне выросла с таким воспитанием и манерами?

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 5
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Irrelevant & that’s more than enough detail thank you.

We’re discussing an immediate matter here in Sydney & NSW.

Serbian Orthodox in Serbia need to sort out their own issues.

Those issues & allegations say nothing about the Serbian Orthodox Church in Australia.

This is separate matter of reigning in a group of schismatics & keeping an eye on church assets given recent conviction of Rosentool.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 6
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Bianca's avatar

Yes & it’s happening in Aust with Rosenthol’s supporters ‘going after’ his accusers and those that want our Church to act.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Sep 5
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Bianca's avatar

ROCOR HTM Bombala the title is in Alexei Rosenthol’s personal name and ROCOR women’s monastery in Bungarby, the title is Anna Karipoff’s personal name but they are not under the Serbs and not praying to the ROCOR hierarchy but another hierarchy is schismatic

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 8
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Bianca's avatar

Purchased for himself not in the name of the Russian Church Abroad at the time. Monastic property is purchased in the Church’ ‘Head’ name but Rosenthol always thinks he’s above the law. That’s why he leads the Bombala and Bungarby monasteries not to pray for the ROCOR Hierarchy, which is schismatic. What monastic owns property? Only Mother Anna Karipofff and suspended Father Alexis Rosenthol

Expand full comment
The Grand Inquisitor's avatar

Thank you Mother Elizabeth. We are only just getting started and this will be a long term project.

Expand full comment
Mother Elizabeth Bacha's avatar

It is good to hear about your commitment. St. Matthew 23:26, we need all hands on deck to be transformative with God's Grace to help to clean the inside of the cup. S'nam i Bog!

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Sep 1
Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

-go to profile of user, clear when people use their surname

-google their name.

-if so inclined, go to Facebook & “like” their work &/or organisation

-if it’s not your interest, you have that information & don’t need to make readers here cringe

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 1
Comment removed
Expand full comment
The Grand Inquisitor's avatar

The Pokrov Truth team.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Sep 2
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
The Grand Inquisitor's avatar

Jesus is the Supreme Editorial Director. Our work is done in His Name because He doesn't tolerate pedophile priests and their enablers in His Holy Church. The Lord says: “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:16) Below Him there is The Grand Inquisitor. He is the primary editor. Then there are 5 Grand Consiglieres of The Inquisition. They are advisors to the The Grand Inquisitor and act as sub-editors and major contributors. Below them are The 25 Noble Agents of the Inquisitorial Magisterium. They are intelligence operatives located in every part of the ANZ Diocese. They know all and see all and deliver a constant information flow to the Grand Editorial Chamber.

Expand full comment
andreas's avatar

Thanks for the great article. Seraphim Rose and "Fr. Herman" were inseparable for decades. I imagine Seraphim knew a lot more about what was going on than he let on. Podmoshensky related that Seraphim's last words to him on his deathbed were "I curse you!" Pretty angry and emotionally bitter for a supposed saint. No blessed "равнодушие," forgiveness, or attempt to offer spiritual direction to his long-time monastic partner.

As for Psarev praising Podmoshensky for his "devotion to beauty..." What in the world does that have to do with anything, and what does it even mean? As you suggest it sounds more like a homosexual code word than anything Christian. These people seem to be incapable of distinguishing Orthodox Christianity from Greek paganism and worship of Aphrodite. ROCOR never seriously cleaned house of these people, probably afraid that if they did, not many would be left.

Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Also as I’ve said elsewhere on Pokrov, perp ability to groom not only their targets, but those around them, is beyond sinister & pernicious.

Often people are left feeling intense shame about the fact that they were so deceived & conned of their reason & values.

And, that’s exactly what Perps want them to feel, all responsibility, so they don’t.

Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Agree, the “devotion to beauty” remark is chilling.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 1
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Cringe was used in other context & comment. Read through comments again.

Chilling is used in response to Andreas’ comment, there is nothing cringy there.

If you’re outside Australia where most of us at this point are, keep in mind that our idiom, language use & expressions will

differ from other parts of the Anglosphere.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 1
Comment removed
Expand full comment
andreas's avatar

Sadly, exposing festering moral corruption will always be a "strange" and unwelcome phenomenon for those who have made themselves comfortable with that situation.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 1
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Great often means interesting rather than as used for Peter the Great.

It’s an interesting, well investigated, evidenced & written article.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 1
Comment removed
Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 3
Comment removed
Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 3
Comment removed
Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 3
Comment removed
Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 3
Comment removed
Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Sep 3
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 3
Comment removed
Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 1
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Thank you Nicholas. Excellent documentary.

I’ve spent a few weeks in beautiful Montenegro a few years ago.

This is such a dark & sad process.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Aug 31
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Marianna GK's avatar

Vanessa Beeley, always thorough investigative journalism.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 3
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Bianca's avatar

Your question is an example of ‘protecting pedos’ Why are you all angry for being called out as peter file supporters and protectors? You chose to attend Moleban Services for Rosenthol and sign petitions calling for Rosenthol to be unsuspended, and spread misinformation re the victims.

Shame on all who have supported and protected Rosenthol. We have victims who have given evidence of molestation by Rosenthol when they were children.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 8
Comment removed
Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment removed
Sep 8
Comment removed
Expand full comment
Bianca's avatar

Rosenthol supporters are infuriated/angry with being outed in the community and have called this platform and other media outlets ‘defamatory’ but they are not defamatory. Because they report the ‘truth’ The truth is that the people named as Father A Rosenthol supporters did and do support him, a suspended priest and have signed petitions of support for him & attended Moleban services for him.

Your question relates to the person’s identity which is a way that peter filer protectors go after the ones that want justice for victims. Given your earlier comments, you are a person who aligns herself with this pedo supporter camp bc Rosenthol was suspended by Met Hilarion, then charged and convicted for molestation.

Expand full comment