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Wed. event to honor memory of 4 murdered in El Salvador

By Richard Byrne Reilly, TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Twenty-five years later, Bill Ford is still waiting for justice in his sister's murder.

Sister Ita Ford, a Maryknoll nun, was raped and killed along with two other American nuns and a church worker in El Salvador. The women -- Sisters Ford, Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clarke and lay worker Jean Donovan -- will be honored Wednesday in a "Day of Reconciliation" at the Sisters of Divine Providence in McCandless to mark the 25th anniversary of their deaths.

Their bodies were found in a shallow grave in a field in a village by a priest who now lives in Akron, Ohio. The crime ignited debate in the United States about the government's financial support of the Salvadorian government, and launched Bill Ford, a New York criminal attorney, on his crusade for justice.

"A brutal, senseless death like this never goes away," he said. "It's something I think about most days."

The four women were abducted by members of the Salvadoran National Guard as they travelled from the San Salvador airport on Dec 2, 1980. Their bodies were discovered three days later. In 1984, four low-ranking guardsmen were sentenced to 30 years in prison for their roles in the killings.

Two have been released for good behavior, said Bill Ford, who believes the soldiers acted on orders from superior officers.

The tragedy profoundly affected Sister Loretta Jean Schorr, program coordinator of the Kearns Spirituality Center at Divine Providence and an organizer of tomorrow's day-long event. The event is co-sponsored by LaRoche College.

The murders stripped away Schorr's belief that church workers would never be subjected to brutality.

"You used to think that missionaries and people affiliated with the church were guaranteed a certain kind of respect, but in this case, it got violated. It showed how vulnerable you are," Schorr said.

She has visited the graves of Sisters Ford and Clarke in El Salvador, and has worked with poor and displaced people in Guatemala. Sister Kazel, an Ursuline nun, is buried in Cleveland. Donovan is buried in West Palm Beach, Fla.

The Rev. Paul Schindler, pastor of St. Bernard Church in Akron, and Sister Christine Rody -- who both were friends of the women and did charity work with them in El Salvador -- are scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. at the Wednesday event.

Schindler unearthed the women's bodies, touching off a series of events that galvanized the American public with images of the women's battered bodies broadcast on CBS and CNN. The killings are always on his mind.

Schindler remembers having dinner with Donovan, Sister Kazel and former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White to discuss resettling war refugees in the country. The next day, he received a call that Donovan and Sister Kazel had not returned from the airport, where they had gone to pick up Sisters Ford and Clarke, who were returning from Nicaragua.

Two days later, Schindler travelled with television crews to San Vincente province. Villagers directed them to the bodies, which had been hastily buried in a single grave. He borrowed a garden hoe, rolled up his sleeves and started digging.

"I found Jean first, her body stacked upon the others," Schindler said.

A United Nations-sponsored Truth Commission report concluded the abductions and killings were engineered by "higher-ups." The Salvadoran conflict raged for 12 years, and more than 100,000 people were killed.

Five years ago, Bill Ford sued two former Salvadoran generals -- Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova -- under the Alien Tort Claims Act, claiming complicity in his sister's murder. A jury found the generals, who live in retirement in southern Florida, didn't have command responsibility over the men who killed the women. Ford lost an appeal before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Still, he is undeterred. Next month, Ford, his wife and two of their children plan to travel to the village where his sister and her friends were found. He has been there 10 times before -- and met people who named their daughters Ita, in memory of his sister.

"I've tried my best to keep a spotlight on them, to keep their memories and names alive," Ford said.

For more information on tomorrow's events in McCandless, call 412-635-6314.


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