The Bishop's Dungeon

Hey, stick around after the episode because we want to talk about this wild tale. Those TV commercials, the dog shivering in the cold, gazing at the camera through rusted chain link fencing, the look of defeated, hopeless resignation in their eyes. Since April 1866, the ASPCA has been fighting a seemingly endless battle to rescue animals from cruelty, to save them from the unspeakable. Now, here's some uncomfortable news. It took us a bit longer to do the same thing for children in this country, and we were very nearly too late for a were starved, beaten, and brutalized by their bishop in a church seminary in one of America's greatest cities. Oops, but better late than never, right?

True weird stuff. In May 1891, a letter arrived at the office of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in San Francisco. It was written by an attorney on behalf of his client, a former priest. The letter read, having had the occasion today to visit the houses of Vladimir, the bishop of the Russo-Greek church, 1713 Powell Street, who was about to depart for Alaska, I discovered about a dozen boys from 6 to 14 years of age who, one and all, complained to me that they were confined there without sufficient food, and whose physical appearance bore ample testimony to the fact that they were strangers to soap and water and decent or sufficient clothing. Some of the boys appealed to me to release them from their captivity, and I promised them I would do something for them. The letter went on, the condition of those children is certainly deplorable.

They were ignorant of their rights and the fact that they are in a free country and have no natural protectors or guardians in this country. The houses of Vladimir? What kind of cheesy vampire story is this? Well, this particular Vladimir was no vampire, though he was a monster and a predator, and this is no made-up story set in a forbidding castle in a dark forest in Romania. This is San Francisco, and while it happened 132 years ago, that wasn't exactly the ages. 1891 is the same year that the Wrigley Chewing Gum Company was founded, the year Stanford University opened its doors, and on the other side of the country, the very first escalator was installed at Coney Island. The escalator. It's always good to have a little context because otherwise we hear these tales of deranged evil and we go, oh yeah, yeah. People back in the times did terrible things because they were superstitious and ignorant and stuff.

Oh, hell no. People did terrible things back then for the same reason people do terrible things now, because a lot of people are just really terrible. Shh, act like you don't know. It's safer to pretend we're not on to them. This story begins in April 1888 when a Russian bishop whose birth name was Vasily Sokolovsky arrived in the city of San Francisco. He was accompanied by eight clerics and 11 young boys.

They made their home at the complex owned by the Russian Orthodox Church on Powell Street. Sokolovsky, known to his parishioners as Bishop Vladimir, immediately set about making changes to his new posting. Services were now delivered in English instead of Russian, and he had the church itself redecorated to the displeasure of many who complained that the bishop's case tended toward the gaudy. There were concerns that the new bishop had a spending problem. The church coffers were being drained at an alarming rate, a situation that was rectified when the church burnt to the Vladimir's reign. The insurance money from the fire put the church's accounts back into the black and started a whisper campaign that the bishop himself had set the blaze.

Vladimir dismissed the idea that he was the arsonist, saying that San Francisco teamed with nihilists and outcasts, troublemakers, and it was this group of misfits who targeted a house of the Lord. Okay, a little deflection, some posturing, business as usual for the dude in charge, right? But Vladimir, in his brief time in San Francisco, had managed to make a number of enemies in his own congregation. They felt attacked by his words. They felt targeted. So about 30 parishioners organized under the leadership of a man named Dr. Nicholas Russel. Dr. Russel, like Vladimir, had left his native Russia in hopes of making a better life in America. But where Vladimir was a powerful figure in an established institution, the Mother Church, Russel was a revolutionary.

Every view he held was in opposition to Vladimir. For belief, every value was a rebuke to the bishop and all he represented. These were two men who opposed each other in every possible way. And had the circumstances been different, perhaps Dr. Russel would have just found another church in the city, or who knows, maybe he would have gritted his teeth and worked quietly behind the scenes to oust this troublesome bishop. But Russel believed that Bishop Vladimir was guilty not only of religious hypocrisy and financial recklessness, but of sodomizing the children in his care. And, spoiler alert, there was plenty of evidence proving it. And we'll get to that.

But first, let's take a look at the bishop's choice of words. In San Francisco in 1889, the word nihilist meant something a little more specialized than the dictionary definition. A nihilist was a very specific sort of Russian, a progressive one, who favored science over religion. A product of the Bolshevik revolution, something Dr. Russel could speak to, having been part of the youth movement that led up to it. By painting his loudest adversary as a godless Bolshevik, the bishop cunningly turned the story from one of arson to one of enemies of the church plotting to take her down. Clever, clever Vladimir, who'd probably be delighted to see this strategy still being so effectively deployed today. Anywho, before the disgruntled parishioners even had the opportunity to accuse the bishop of burning his own church to the ground, they called him arrogant and a despot and a disgrace to the faith. Then they declared he was a drunk who incinerated the building on purpose while in the grip of an alcoholic stupor.

Says a lot about how powerful Bishop Vladimir was that even as these truly foul claims swirled around him, he appeared unconcerned and dismissed all of it as nonsense. And Bishop Vladimir even hired a hitman to eliminate the pesky Dr. Russel. We'll get to that too. His grace, Bishop Vladimir, Archbishop of the Aleutians in Alaska, was born on December 31st, the last day of the year in 1852 in the Poltava province of Russia. It's now Ukraine. In 1878, he was tonsured as a monk and on October 3rd of that same year, ordained as a priest. His ecclesiastical career took off like a rocket from there. I am not mocking this religion when I say that some of the job titles are freaking awesome. Because when you hear these titles, you too will be like, I don't know what that is, but dang, it sounds cool. Like January 14th, 1879, Vladimir was assigned to serve within the Japanese Orthodox mission as an assistant to Saint Nicholas Kasatkin, Enlightener of Japan. Shut up, the Enlightener of Japan. That's got to be a whole lot to live up to.

Then in 1884, Vladimir is promoted to the rank of Igumen. What? Turns out an Igumen is the head of a monastery. And then two years later, our Vlad gets appointed to the faculty at the Kholm Seminary. In no time at all, he's assigned to the position of inspector, what we would call the dean of students at the same seminary and granted the title of Archimandrite. And Archimandrite is not the word for the fossil of a long extinct mollusk, but more or less a title of honor that can only be bestowed upon a priest who's also served as a tonsured monk. In December 1887, Father Vladimir was elevated to the rank of bishop and assigned to the ruling hierarch of Alaska and the Aleutians. And before you ask, no, Alaska and the Aleutians did not have a say in any of this. That's when the newly minted bishop packed up his bags and books and bros and boys and headed for San Francisco, also known as the Paris of the West.

Bishop Vladimir and his crew were not bringing the word to a dusty frontier outpost. By the time Vladimir arrived, San Francisco was well on the way to becoming the major city we know today. The gold rush had lured thousands to the region and sparked a huge boom in immigration, especially from China, first to work the mines, then to work on the transcontinental railroad.

The iconic cable car system wasn't yet complete, but it was close. And thanks to now legends like Richard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ambrose Bierce, and Mark Twain, San Francisco had already developed a reputation as a place for culture and the arts. These were the streets that the bishop, his retinue of clerics, and that bevy of boys solemnly traversed on their way to their new home on Powell Street. And you can believe that this was a procession that turned heads.

The men were clad in somber black robes that reached the ground and they sported dramatic, tall black headdresses. The eleven boys were described by those who saw them as being so pretty, with flushed cheeks and bright eyes modestly cast down. When the group disappeared into the church complex, no one watching could have guessed what horrors would unfold behind those doors. Now, as we mentioned in the beginning of this story, it did take a hot for the abuse and torture of children to really register on the American radar. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals beat them to it by about eight years. And you know why people back then were reluctant to come to the aid of a battered child, but were swift to snatch a neglected beagle off your porch? Privacy. People were hesitant to interfere in private family even if a child of that family was clearly being made to suffer.

It's true that many reformers had expressed deep concern for the needs of children well before the 1870s, but their efforts were focused outside the family. For example, they lobbied to end corporal punishment in schools. They worked to create institutions to shelter orphans. They sought out foster families to provide some of those orphans a more permanent home. And listen, privacy is still protecting abusers today. People are still hesitant, if not downright unwilling, to insert themselves into the lives of their neighbors.

We mind our own business and then act shocked to learn that what we suspected was happening in that house or in that family or to that woman or that child really was happening all along. I have my own fun story about this. I was in my junior year in high school and completely failed a midterm exam. It was a French class. I was called to the guidance counselor's office to discuss how my failed grade and poor attitudes can keep me out of college.

It was parochial school and the counselor was a priest. The unfairness of being dressed down for my bad attitude stung in that hot, bitter way that only a wrongly accused 16-year-old can feel. I didn't have a bad attitude. I loved school. I loved it. I sat there trying not to cry. The priest watched me from behind his desk, took a deep breath, and for the first time in my childhood, I told the truth. I'd failed that exam, not because I hadn't studied, but because my father jacked to the moon on one of his frequent meth binges had kept me awake all night. His favorite bedtime routine of a little game of Russian roulette and some ranting about my mother being a whore and how I was just like her. I stayed silent and impassive and got through that night and escaped to school the next morning. But y'all, a test on the intricacies of French grammar?

I could barely focus on writing my own name. It's no wonder I failed. You know what Father Guidance Counselor did with that information? Not one damn thing. I watched him take it in, watched him weigh the effort and consequences of acting on it, watched him decide it wasn't worth it. He told me to go study at the library next time and dismiss me from his office. And dear listeners, that incident was just one of many and honestly, one of the tamer ones. So yeah, the importance of privacy, the sanctity of the family, minding your own business. That's how we approach the ugly realities of family violence.

And I'm here to tell you as a social worker, this dynamic is still alive and well right now. As a society, we're still doing it every day, everywhere. Home, church, school, work. So when the first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded in 1874 in New Mexico, it was a law enforcement agency with powers to investigate and prosecute those who were found to be abusing children. Some states even gave their SPCCs the authority to issue arrest warrants. It took a long time for the SPCC mandate to shift from prosecution and punishment to what we would recognize today as child welfare. For the SPCCs to move away from the idea of neglect, neglect stemming from poor social conditions. Here's where the demonization of poverty steps into the spotlight. Many SPCC agents got poverty confused with bad behavior and level judgments against families of neglect and moral weakness and mental feebleness.

Judgments that were not only prejudiced and ill-informed, but ruinous. Because those were judgments that dictated who was worthy of aid and who was not. And all of this focus on the social condition also managed to distract the public from the very significant problem of physical abuse. Hang on to something now because we collectively forgot that children were being beaten and broken and grievously harmed until the 1960s. That's when the x-ray became a common part of a doctor visit and holy hell but too many children's bodies revealed the proof of their dark trauma in the form of poorly healed fractures and other injuries. I would ask what is wrong with us as a species? But no one has the answer to that. Luckily for the victims of Bishop Vladimir's seminary school, the SPCC in San Francisco was still very much in the business of prosecuting the physical abuse of children. And thanks to a man named Joseph Levin, whose opposition to Bishop Vladimir led to his dismissal from the priesthood, the SPCC was alerted to the problem. Vladimir had been able to defrock Levin, but Levin's morality wasn't tied to a special color or a religious title. Levin knew what Vladimir was, and he would not be silenced. He refused to mind his own business. He hired an attorney to send the letter that you heard at the beginning of this episode.

In June 1891, the San Francisco Examiner published a shocking expose of the goings-on at Vladimir's Greco-Russian seminary on Powell Street. That letter to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children triggered an investigation into what had long been rumored, that there on the same site where a suspicious blaze had gutted the church two years earlier, a group of boys ostensibly being trained for the ministry were instead being cruelly brutalized and abused. Two police officers named Holbrook and Comstock paid a surprise visit to the school.

To their shock, they found 14 boys huddled in a small dormitory, the filth and smell of which they described as sickening. All the boys expressed what the cops called mortal terror of the school's superintendent, one P. Alexine, and the assistant superintendent, a man named Paul Sigda, and a Bishop Vladimir. The police saw and heard all of this and issued some stern right out of a horror movie. Help finally arrives and sees what's going on, only to disappear with a friendly wave. But something about the scene and the boys didn't sit right with officers Holbrook and Comstock. They returned just a few days later and immediately knew that their warnings had gone ignored. It was go time. Warrants were obtained and police arrived at the seminary. What that search revealed shocked even the most veteran officers.

The paper described a rat infested dungeon where the boys were kept in a state of filth, starving on a diet of bread and water. Their pitifully thin and grimy bodies offered evidence that pointed to the truth of the grave and obscene charges leveled against the school and its And though the delicate Victorian sensibilities of the time meant using the most discreet language to describe the boys' plight, the paper declared that death would be a better outcome for any person than to suffer even one half of what was alleged to have been done to those children.

Only two men were arrested in the raid and Bishop Vladimir was not one of them. It was Alexine and Sigda who found themselves in handcuffs. Of the 14 boys Holbrook and Comstock met on their first visit to the seminary, police were able to locate only 12. Every one of those boys was starved, battered and encrusted with dirt. None of the boys was older than 14.

Most had come with Vladimir from Russia and at least one had been orphaned in Alaska before landing at the seminary school. This next bit will be a shock to modern ears, but guess where they took those starving and mostly naked boys after rescuing them from that grim environment? A jail cell in the city's central station. The boys were said to be delighted by this development, dressing themselves as best they could and falling into an orderly line for the march to the precinct. They inhaled the food that was given to them, grim prison fare that it was, and this next bit might just break your heart. The boys found the bars of their prison cell to be an absolute wonder. They tugged on them and gave them a few kicks and ultimately climbed on the bars and goofed around like they were at a McDonald's play place.

Can you imagine? Meanwhile, Alexey and Insigde each managed to scrape up the 500 bucks in bail money they needed to make a hasty exit. The boys. Can we say their names? Can we give them that small dignity, at least? Nicholas Sabchinikov, age 13. Nicholas Mercuriev, age 11. James Corcoran, age 13. Peter Halstead, age 10. Nicholas King, age 13. Elias Nock, age 13. Nicholas Belikov, age 11. Willie Kaznikov, age 14. Peter Dimitiev, age 14. Andrew Kavitek, age 14.

George Kochergin, age 12. Paul Kokoranin, age 10. The stories the boys shared were the stuff of 13-year-old Sabchinikov recounted a ruthless attack by Ligda. The man grabbed the boy, hoisted him above his head, and then slammed him to the floor. Other boys described being forcefully struck on the head with an open hand, having their ears violently yanked, the hairs on the nape of their necks torn from the flesh. Physical punishment was followed by dungeon confinement. One boy told investigators that he was kept there for eight days for one infraction, fed nothing but water and a crust of bread, his small body tormented in the darkness by the rats that swarmed that foul room. The boys reported that the bishop had his own special means of disciplining them. He had what they called a stout cane, which he'd jab into their stomachs until they became sick. Then they'd be punished again for the crime of soiling themselves.

And there were other things, other ways their young bodies had been used and violated. When Dr. Russel accused Bishop Vladimir of sodomizing the children in his care, he meant it literally. These were not just inflammatory words, but a graphic description of how the boys were being assaulted. And the bishop was so enraged by Russel's accusation that he retaliated by calling the man a bigamist, by excommunicating him from the church and threatening him with anathema, which is basically a whopper of a curse laid upon you by a super powerful member of your church, like a bishop or a cardinal or a pope.

No diss to the creator here, but how insane is religion? You'd expect that a scandal of this magnitude would be the end of a lot of careers. Alexian and Sigda for sure. I mean, they were arrested for it. And probably Bishop Vladimir too, because it can be a little tricky to talk your way past the dozen boys alleging that you've beaten, starved, imprisoned and sexually assaulted them over a period of years.

But the bishop and the two teachers got away with it, despite the fact that Dr. Russel was relentless, relentless. And according to an affidavit in this case submitted by a religious refugee and missionary named Alexander Fedorov, Russel's relentless pursuit of Bishop Vladimir nearly ended in his own murder. According to Fedorov's affidavit, the bishop hired a known desperado named Vladimir Mykolov to assassinate Russel. He gave the man $300 and a revolver for the job.

But despite his love of liquor and money and vice and a stunning twist, Mykolov instead confessed the plot to Dr. Russel. The would-be hitman disappeared back east and Fedorov, civic and moral duty done, headed for Alaska in a teaching position. His parting gift to the bishop? His testimony that Vladimir had already sent several boys home to Russia because he feared they could and would testify to the nature of his brutality.

All of this and yet no justice. How can that be? Twelve victims all talking, a respected physician loudly advocating on their behalf. Evidence out the wazoo. Look, here's the dungeon. Just like the boys said. Look, look at their injuries, the bruises, the fractures, the raggedly healing tissue in the most intimate parts of their bodies.

Listen to what they're saying. Just because they're orphans doesn't make them liars. Just because they're poor and powerless doesn't make them any less human. But here's facts. No one, not the police, not the press, no one could bring themselves to speak the truth out loud. They dressed it up in euphemisms and flowery phrasings. The reality that bishop Vladimir and his men were pedophiles, that these children had been carefully selected and groomed to serve as their victims. It was all just too much for polite society to comprehend.

That a man of God would prey upon these orphans. That a man of God would take children from their poverty stricken families back in Russia under the pretext that they'd receive an education only to assault and violate them. It all went so far beyond the bounds of decency that cannot even be uttered. And these children were the perfect victims. They had no one looking after them. No one to speak for them. No one who'd even know or care what their ultimate fate might be. And also, the late 1890s were not a time when sexual assault or even sex was spoken of openly. Pedophilia? No. Especially when the men accused of it were powerful, held positions of leadership in the community, were men of God. Pedophilia was shrouded in silence and secrecy.

If you're thinking, wow, not much has changed, you're right. What happened in that church complex on Powell Street isn't anything new to us. It just happens to be one of the very first documented cases of a church covering up a child sex abuse scandal while letting the perpetrators go free. We really have only Dr. Nicholas Russel to thank for any part of this story becoming public knowledge. Along with the defrocked priest and whistleblower, Joseph Levin, he's a big part of the reason those 12 boys were ultimately rescued from their seminary prison and given any kind of chance at life. When I said Dr. Russel was relentless, listen. At one point, he wrote Vladimir a letter threatening to cut off the bishop's testicles. In October of 1891, he challenged the clerk to a freaking duel. He would just not let it go, bless the man. Russel even took the fight to the very highest offices in the church itself. And despite finding considerable support to remove the bishop from power, the czar of Russia himself had Vladimir's back.

Dr. Russel was outplayed. And the doctor was now broke, both his spirit and his wallet. When Bishop Vladimir was summoned home to Mother Russia to assume yet another clerical position in the church, Russel left San Francisco too. He ultimately went on to play an important role in the legislature of the then territory of Hawaii. And Vladimir, here's what his church says.

Everywhere he labored, he always sought to elevate the quality of liturgical singing. His published works focus largely on refuting Roman Catholic teachings and missionary activities, particularly in Japan. In America, Bishop Vladimir was primarily known for his cultural refinement, and musical accomplishments. While later in Moscow, he was esteemed as an ascetic spiritual elder. There's no mention of the church fire that was rumored to be arson. No mention of the scandal involving 12 emaciated and injured boys. Oh, sure. The Russian Revolution of 1917 put a real damper on the bishop's comforts and privileges. Revolutions have a way of upending the status quo enjoyed by the powerful. And yeah, he did die alone and in poverty in 1931.

But he's remembered today for his piety and his culture and his service to God. I'm sure a man bathed in that kind of light won't mind at all if we throw a few shadows his way. I mean, news feeds and social media choked with cries of, well, what about the children? It's useful, I think, to recognize how much that's just a thing we love to say. Because actually doing the things that protect and nurture children? Be real. We're arguing right now over whether or not giving kids a free lunch at school turns kids into freeloaders. We talk about hardening security in our schools like they're war zones. Because they are. And as ugly as this is to hear, child sex abuse is rampant in organized religion. Here's a not fun fact. Advizon, a company that collects data for insurance companies, found that child sex abuse accounts for 30% of all financial losses in religious organizations. What the what? Well, just for starters, the Catholic Church has already forked over $4 billion plus in legal settlements, and that party is nowhere near being over.

And go ahead and take a whole seat, Protestant Christianity, and put down those stones, because your houses are made of glass, too. About 260 cases per year of child sex abuse come from Protestant churches, which maybe sounds reassuringly like, well, not all that many. Until, of course, it's your child. What happened to those boys in San Francisco back in the 1890s was tidied up, glossed over, and then it was all forgotten. And you know what happens when we forget our history? Say it with me. We are doomed to repeat it.

As the author Karen Salmonson says, examine what you tolerate, because what you allow continues. And just look at all we tolerate. Look at what we've allowed. Next time on True Weird Stuff, a group of highly trained Russian Navy divers on a routine exercise encountered something they couldn't explain, and when they went back for a second look, not all of them survived. What's in the water? On the next True Weird Stuff.

And if you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, hit the plus button in the top right corner, and now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered. And we really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate, and review True Weird Stuff. Hit our website, trueweirdstuff.com, for show notes and photos and videos when we have it, and bonus content. Everything true weird is waiting for you at trueweirdstuff.com. And follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram and Twitter. True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me, Sheri Lynch, along with my deeply weird director, Max Sweeten. Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser. Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call. Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axland. True weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash. Copyright 2023 Now! Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs remembered.

This was such a strange episode to work on because the idea that those children had been removed from their families, taken all the way to the other side of the world, and then basically tortured, imprisoned, and used for the pleasure of these adult men, it was shocking. And it was all happening in plain sight. And it also is one of the very first instances of organized religion scrambling to cover up the criminal and foul misdeeds of its clergy. But it's a story that's been lost to time, and one we wanted to dust back off. And it's a story that, believe it or not, Max and I have some personal connection to, although we are not Russian Orthodox, and we are not related to any of the people involved here. But we both grew up in Catholic school, and Max actually attended a boys' seminary school where nothing like this occurred. There were no dungeons. Max was in no way harmed, abused, assaulted, hassled, or interfered with. But he understands intimately the dynamic of how a boy can find himself so far from home, and how the parents have a very different idea of what might be happening.

Yeah, it was a high school seminary that I attended. And they came and did a presentation at the school, and I went on some workshops there when I was in seventh and eighth grade. And I had interest in becoming a Roman Catholic priest. I really did at that young age. And so I convinced my parents to send me to the school. So they sent me to the school, and you boarded there. So you went off freshman year of high school, and it was 100 miles from where I grew up.

And while I was there, I didn't realize this at the time, but while I was there, three of the priests who were on staff there did abuse students, sexually abuse them at the school. And so first of all, I want to say that I was not abused in any way. The other thing is, is I'm not trying to be anti-Catholic by saying this. This is just a statement of fact of what happened. And this was happening while I was there. I did not realize it until I had been out of the school for 20 years, somewhere in that vicinity. Because some of the students that I, guys that I went to school with at this school came forward and said, look, these priests sexually abused us. And the priests ended up ultimately, you know, losing their status as being priests. I don't know what is it, defroctor, whatever it is you call it. But so you're saying, how could, if you listen to this story, how could these people let their children go off with these in the church? Well, this part of the story is very similar to the part that I was involved in, in that my parents trusted the priests because they were priests. We grew up Catholic. You revered the priests. So you thought that they were being, we were all as students, we were being put in good care. And so that's what all of the parents believe that the school that I went to, I'm sure that the parents of these Russian children as well, believe the same thing.

They're going in a good place. And so you thought we would be protected and taken care of and safe. And of course, that was certainly not the case in either situation, despite the fact that there's huge differences between the two stories. So I'm not trying to make them the same. But what I am trying to say is, you have to understand why parents would allow children, young men to go off into this situation. You know, the broader conversation is about predator and prey, because why does the wolf circle the flock of sheep? Because the wolf eats sheep and the wolf is going to go where the sheep are. Predators, child predators, hide in plain sight where the children are, schools, churches, the Boy Scouts of America. Now, there's a kid in my life who I love dearly, who made it all the way to Eagle Scout. And it's a phenomenal accomplishment. And I'm not, by all means, not all scouts, but let's get our heads out of the sand. Predators go where the prey is. And people who prey on children go where the children are. And the church for generations has been a really, really ideal hiding place for those who would prey on children. I mean, I can remember, you don't understand what you're seeing as a child. So I was like, maybe toward the end of seventh grade. And it seemed strange to me, you know, as a kid who'd bounced around from school to school to school, and it had so much chaos in my home life. And now I'm at yet another new school.

And it's a Catholic school. It's a pretty strict Catholic school, pretty strict. I mean, we didn't have lay teachers, you know, we had priests and nuns and, and they were grooming us for lives as good Catholics with college degrees, okay. But it was impossible to not notice some of the strangeness around the relationship between some of the boys, who were always chosen as altar boys, altar servers, and some of the priests. And again, maybe it really just was a mentor mentee relationship. And maybe it just was my gosh, I just love the youth. But there was some favoritism and things that triggered alarm bells for me, a child of violence and chaos and abuse, who was ever alert to danger and predators. It triggered some alarm bells for me. And I remember talking to my grandmom about it the end of seventh grade, when the school was putting on its big station of the cross pageant, big theatrical pageant. And my grandmother just shook her head and said to me, be glad you're a girl. Which, you know, at the time, I didn't understand. And listen, sis, we live in a world where it's hard to be a girl, it's dangerous to be a girl. But my grandmother just looked at me and said, be glad you're a girl. And neither of my brothers were permitted to be altar servers. She wouldn't allow it. So and this is a woman who her own parents were immigrants. This is pre Vatican to the Virgin Mary was my grandmother's very best girlfriend. My grandmother prayed the novena and the rosary every day. This is a devout Roman Catholic woman saying to me, be glad you're a girl. So we do know that these things happen.

I think what's shocking about this particular case for me was two things. One, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded and a roaring success long before we turned our attention to children. Did that shock you? Because that was shocking? Yeah. Yeah. Well, like people were like, do not leave your dog out in the cold. Oh, is that your son kick him for me? Okay, like, it was crazy, right? So that was the first thing that shocked me. And the second thing that shocked me was, because of the time, you know, these were this was the Victorian era, people were very, very repressed and, and resistant and repulsed, even by, you know, the human body and its many functions, including sex, that even in the face of all of the physical evidence, all of the damage to the boy's bodies, because no one could bring themselves to speak of it or say the words, it was basically they got away with it. What was your take on that? Yeah, I mean, that's a product of the time, you know, I mean, when you look at something like abusing a child sexually, you're right, as you pointed out in the script, you know, this was something that was that's family. That's our business. That's not your business. It's our But the example that you gave, I think, when you went into the priest who was the counselor, and you said, Look, I got a bad grade, because my father's a meth head. And you know, he's waving a gun around and this and that and this and that. And he weighed the idea of, oh, this is going to unleash holy hell, I'd rather try to keep things quiet and just tell you next time go study in the library. I think that is, I think that was a great example of what happens in these kinds of situations.

You know, I, I've really thought a lot about that moment, because it I had never told an adult before what was happening in our house, ever. Not a friend's mom. No one not a teacher. Not, you know, I've spent, I spent half my life in Mormon youth group and the other half in Catholic school because of, you know, my family's bizarre and colorful shenanigans. I never told anybody until I told I almost said his name. I'm not going to say his name until I told that priest.

And yeah, people mind their business, you know, and we still do it today. Although to a lesser degree, I think I see, there's not a day that goes by that I don't see a child predator, or arrested, charged and convicted. Now I'm looking for it. I'll be honest with you. I'm I'm brought down. Because the problem is when we mind our business, and we don't believe victims, and we say, well, he he just he groomed the boy online, and asked for photos and videos, but he never physically touched him. So like, like these weird compromises that we arrive at, where we decide, that was pretty bad, but it could be worse. So, you know, we don't stop to consider the downstream effect of all of this trauma. And one of the things I thought about with the boys, and why I wanted to say their names, they're long gone. I mean, none of them are still alive today. But one of the problems that we have in the past with all crime, we've talked about this with all crime is there's zero attention to the victim. We often barely know who the victim was beyond a name and an age, right? And what we don't know about those boys that were Bishop Vladimir's victims, we don't know, they disappeared into the currents of time and were lost forever.

But you know, they carried that trauma with them. And that trauma shaped who they became as men, and if who they were as fathers, or as husbands, or as community leaders, and and then that, that trauma shaping their behavior, influence the way they treated others, and so on, and so on, and so on. And until we throw open the doors and let the light in, we don't really have any hope of healing these generational traumas inside families. abused people will often grow up not but will often grow up to be abusers themselves. And so the only way to interrupt the cycle is to is to break it and call it out for what it is, and name it and claim it and get the treatment and the consequences necessary. That never happened for Bishop Vladimir's boys. No, we have no idea what became of them. And I can tell you that for the students that I went to with, who were sexually abused by the priests who were there, I can tell you that it was therapy that brought this out for them. And then they started contacting each other and comparing notes on some things. And that's how this came about. But for one of them that I can think of, in particular, it has been it was so terribly traumatic, that it affected the whole has affected the rest of his life. It has it has sent him spinning out of control. And you can certainly understand why. And I think that's the thing, all of the damage that that that is done to these boys all these years ago from this bishop, and then the the young men who I went to school with at that high school seminary, which by the way, has since long closed.

You can't, no matter how much you don't want it to be true, and however much you just want, can we just live in the present? Can we just let go of the past? Why do we have to keep dealing with it? Why do we have to keep telling these stories? Because those kids, those boys in this story, and the kids that are assaulted and abused today, they, they can't just forget about it and move on. Their lives are forever, the trajectory of their lives is forever changed.

And in a, you know, when you live in a society like we do, that is so profoundly repressed and repressive. These are subjects that are hard to talk about. And, and I, you know, sometimes I see like, I'll be scrolling my newsfeed, and here's the latest. And, and I'm, folks, I'm sorry that it's true that the latest child sex offender was a youth pastor, or the latest child sex offender was a math teacher, or the latest child sex offender was a scout leader. I'm not, I'm, I'm not inventing this. This is what's out there, okay? And I'm sorry, I know it sucks, and it's horrifying. But when I see, when I see these stories pop up, I think, okay, well, that was allowed to happen. That happened for two reasons. One, the child was groomed and was innocent and unaware and vulnerable and available. And two, the perpetrator got away with it somewhere down the road before. So you have to look at that. Like I saw, I saw a tweet today, as a matter of fact, that just made me roll my eyes. It was from some dude on Twitter, you know. Basically, there's a whole category of human now that could be lumped under the title, some dude on Twitter. Some dude on Twitter said, the only sex education a third grade boy needs is to know that girls have cooties.

O-L-O-L-O-L-Zs. But here's the thing. By the time a child is in third grade, they are very vulnerable and perhaps have already been preyed upon. And when, when kids don't know about bodily autonomy, when they don't know what is okay and what isn't, they're vulnerable to skillful adult predators. Why is that so hard? Why is that something that we even debate, Max?

And, you know, when you, when they do this, you know, under the shroud of religion, it's really bad because of all places that you would think would be sacred, this is the place. And it is that vulnerability is the thing that allows them to continue grooming and doing that. And, you know, at the very least, we're more aware of it, I think, than we ever were. I, I absolutely believe that this sort of thing has been going on all along. And we're just, we're just now talking about it. I think, I think this is, I think it has gone along at a high degree for a long time. That's, this story, like my eyes popped out of my head. I'm like, whoa, this, this reads like, like, you could just change the names and dates. And how shocking would it be?

Not very. How sad is that? Right? Not very. The one of the things about this story that I think I want to point out, because it was, it was pivotal. It's the reason that we even know this story is the two police officers that were sent to investigate the school. Their names were Holbrook and Comstock. And the reason that we don't know their first names is because back then, nobody bothered with that. It's, it's, it's maddening, right? But officers Holbrook and Comstock. So they go to the school and they find the kids. Now they're not in the dungeon when the cops show up, but they're in this filthy dormitory that they described as smelling sickening.

And the children clearly there, this is clearly not right, but there's nothing criminal. I mean, neglect of children back then wasn't really a crime. It was just, you know, like what you did, if you want it to. So there wasn't a crime going on, but these two cops were really troubled by what they saw. And they left and they couldn't let it go. They talked about it with each other.

They talked about it with their superior officer. And they were like, there's something here that is not sitting right. And so because those two officers Holbrook and Comstock listened to that voice, that gut instinct, they went back and this time they got search warrants. And that was when they found the rat infested dungeon. That's when they found what was really happening to Bishop Vladimir's boys. So I want you to think about all of the times in this world, all of the times when somebody saw something and didn't go back.

And I'm not just talking about with abused kids and any kind of a situation like that. How many times do you see something and every molecule in your body is going something right here. But we mind our business. Those two cops decided not to mind their business. And because they decided not to mind their business, 12 of those boys, 12 of the 14 original boys were removed to safety. Now, Max, did you like were you like what that they put those boys in jail?

I guess, you know, at that time, they probably didn't have the proper sort of housing for a situation like that. They weren't built for it. It wasn't the kind of thing that they did. So they put them in jail and the boys were boys. They found the bars and they climbed all over them in the jail. You know, that was a shocking part of this.

We didn't have any movement, any agency or organization mobilized for the protection and defense of children. So the city jail was where Bishop Vladimir's boys were taken. I mean, it's shocking, right? Thank God there are people like those police officers who, despite all the things that we've boys from that situation. Thank God.

And then. Yeah, thank God. And how about Dr. Nicholas Russel? Yeah. Who and the and Father Joseph Levin, who was defrocked and lost his his priesthood because he pushed back on Bishop Vladimir. We have two cops, a doctor and a priest who lost everything to thank for this ever coming to light, which just shows you what's that saying?

Not only can one person change the world, it's the only way that anything gets changed. And what I what I really loved about this episode was being able to call out the names of those people that are righteous. They're righteous people. Those four individuals. I really love Dr. Russel writing Bishop Vladimir a letter saying you best knock it off or I'm going to cut your balls off. You thought that only happened today. You thought maybe they were too formal back then to do something like that. Oh, no. Nicholas. Nicholas Russel was not having it. And then, of course, there's the other thing, again, you know, is all of the context around this.

He's in San Francisco, which is already the Paris of the West. I mean, it's already this vibrant city home to the to the arts and the culture. But we've also got the Russian Revolution going on and people riding up and down the first escalator on Coney Island. Like it's a wild thing when you panorama the picture and think about where all of this was was happening. Just absolutely wild. And the idea that, you know, we finally got around to thinking that children were people worthy of protection. And here's what breaks my heart the most is that we have legislation in a lot of states right now that is pending and in some places where it's already been passed, where children are now being permitted back into the industrial workforce. In one place, the legislation argues that children should be allowed to work any of the shifts, including third shift. So it's 2023 in America. And if the idea that children are working in a poultry processing plant in the middle of the night doesn't piss you off and break your heart, then I don't know what to say. If I would have told you this 10 years ago, you would not have believed it. No, we're I mean, we're we're in decline. And for people that want to go, well, you're not a patriot.

No, a patriot is a person who can look and say, we're we're breaking and we need to fix it. Not some Yehu with, you know, an American flag thong and a sparkler yelling at people to sit down because this is America. A patriot as our founding fathers and our early American colonial ancestors taught us, a patriot is someone who sees the injustice and the wrong and the oppression and sets out to set it right. Not somebody that wraps their balls in the American flag and yells at people. Can I get an amen? Amen on that. Amen on that. So, yeah, Bishop Vladimir's boys. And just like we don't really know whatever became of those boys, we kind of do know what became of Bishop Vladimir. And I'm here to tell you that his church whitewashed the entire thing and allowed him to enter the kingdom of heaven or whatever came next for Vlad with his reputation and his glorious service to the church intact. And if we did nothing else on this episode of True Weird Stuff, I hope we took a little bit of the shine off of that.