Sitting at a table in the east-side Scholar Inn's Bakehouse, Anne McLaughlin struggles to explain the frustration she feels toward the Catholic Church, St. Charles Catholic School and the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.

Perhaps the worst part about her experience with them is that her children will not look back on their school days with the same zeal she does of hers, she said.

A life-long Catholic with 16 years of Catholic school education, McLaughlin today finds it difficult to even sit through an entire Mass.

"I feel like I'm in a church that doesn't want me," she said.

When McLaughlin and her husband Andrew Shea moved to Bloomington from the East Coast nine years ago, they wanted their children Jack and Claire to attend a Catholic school. They enrolled them in the only one in Bloomington, St. Charles, assuming the children would leave school with the same fond memories they both hold of their formative years.

While McLaughlin was never quite comfortable at St. Charles Church, both she and Shea became involved within the parish because they wanted their children to be as much a part of the Catholic community as possible.

When that comfort failed to materialize, the couple started attending St. Paul's Catholic Center but kept Jack and Claire at St. Charles School, believing it was best for them.

Their view would soon change.

On Oct. 6, 2006, Jack and Claire were expelled from St. Charles after McLaughlin and Shea complained about a pastor at the school and refused to sign a "gag order" that was issued to them by the school.

The problems started in February 2006 when McLaughlin and her husband started having concerns about what they felt were inappropriate comments that the school's pastor, Fr. Charlie Chesebrough, was saying to the children. They requested a meeting with him to discuss these concerns. He refused.

McLaughlin then turned to the Archdiocese for help, but officials there made it clear that they would not intervene.

This is not the first time that the Archdiocese did not respond to complaints about Fr. Charlie's remarks, according to McLaughlin. In 2003-2004, approximately 20 St. Charles School families contacted the Archdiocese regarding the pastor's use of inappropriate language.

But rather than step in this time, the Archdiocese suggested McLaughlin write a letter to Fr. Charlie with her concerns.

"Unfortunately, you have said some things that make me very uncomfortable," she wrote to Chesebrough. "Your reference to Korean children as 'chopsticks' and to young girls as 'blond bombers' or 'blond bombshells' is inappropriate."

While composing her letter, McLaughlin removed her children from three school Masses and the three of them spent "Mass time" performing service work in the community — with the knowledge and approval of the St. Charles principal.

McLaughlin said she could not let her children remain in Mass with a man who used words like "sambo," referred to Indian-Americans as "brownies" and said things like "let's boil all the Koreans in a science experiment."

"I was trying to devise a strategy to protect my children," she said. "... I felt like I was sacrificing my children to this priest."

The Sheas were then informed that Fr. Charlie wanted Jack and Claire back in Mass because it was school policy.

McLaughlin, still uncomfortable with her children attending Masses lead by Fr. Charlie, asked to meet with him again to discuss her concerns. Fr. Charlie again refused to meet with McLaughlin, but he agreed to meet with her husband on Oct. 4, 2006.

At this meeting, Fr. Charlie dismissed and denied the parents' concerns. But he did say he wanted the children back in Mass. He gave no date and offered them time to "figure things out," according to McLaughlin.

Two days later, on the morning of Oct. 6, the letter McLaughlin had written was delivered to Fr. Charlie. By the afternoon, Fr. Charlie arranged a meeting with St. Charles' governing bodies, without McLaughlin or Shea's knowledge, that ended with the decision to expel Jack and Claire, McLaughlin said.

In a letter from the school, the Sheas were told their children's last day at St. Charles was to be Oct. 13.

The children were devastated, said McLaughlin.

Outraged at this decision and the way it was reached, McLaughlin and Shea appealed to the St. Charles Board of Education. On Oct. 11, they agreed to send Jack and Claire back to Mass if the children were reinstated in school.

The parents also agreed to sign a document saying they would abide by all school polices.

Overjoyed, Jack and Claire returned to School Mass on Friday the 13th.

But what seemed like the end was just the beginning of another set of horrors for McLaughlin and her family. Later that day she and her husband received a letter, signed by Fr. Charlie, that they perceived as a gag order.

It read: "You, as parents, will refrain from creating controversy resulting in a negative atmosphere with regards to the school administration, archdiocese and clergy. You will bring important issues directly to the leadership of the school, respect their authority and honor the stated outcomes, regardless of your personal beliefs."

They refused to agree to such terms.

"We both just shook our heads and said we couldn't do it," said McLaughlin.

The children were then expelled for the second time in a week.

McLaughlin and other families on her behalf continued contacting the Archdiocese in hopes of reversing the decision and ridding the church of Fr. Charlie to protect theirs and others' children from his inappropriate language.

The archdiocese refused to do either.

Fr. Charlie was to retire soon, church officials said. Most denied that inappropriate comments were ever made.

"You have to understand the Catholic Church," Greg Otolski, an archdiocese spokesman, told the Alternative in an interview. "The archdiocese doesn't dictate how they (priests) run the details of their church. The family wasn't following the rules, so they were expelled."

But for Otolski, this just is not an issue anymore.

"It's such old news," he said. "The parish has moved on."

But the issue is far from passed in McLaughlin's eyes.

Fr. Charlie was reappointed Dean of the Deanry in Bloomington and has recently lead Masses at St. Charles, according to McLaughlin.

"All this controversy surrounding this man, and they do this?" she asked.

She is still in shock this whole thing ever happened.

"I would love to understand their logic of how they handled this," she said.

And McLaughlin and Shea are not alone with this thought.

At least one other family has removed their children from St. Charles, no longer feeling their concerns as parents were being listened to.

And after the expulsion St. Charles parent, former part-time teacher and substitute at the school Randy Paul sent e-mails to the archdiocese asking that McLaughlin's children be reinstated and that Fr. Charlie's involvement with the school and parish be ended.

"Jack was expelled for no reason," he said. "They (the school and archdiocese) have treated Anne horribly."

While McLaughlin understands that this incident is not nearly as horrific as the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandals, she believes that the poor handling of situations seems to be a trend for the archdiocese.

"I could not understand why more people were not coming forward, but I get it now," she said. "The archdioceses made this process so brutal."

After 24 attempts to speak with the church, the school and the archdiocese, nothing was resolved, she said. Does it have to get as bad as sexual abuse before they admit that some priests may be abusing their power?

"That place is so corrupt with power," said Paul. "This is the leadership of our church, and this is what they are doing to their people. ... It's awful."

Although McLaughlin, Shea and Paul are infuriated at how the archdiocese treated their requests, they are most upset about the way Jack was treated.

Unlike his sister, who had just started St. Charles that year, Jack, a fifth grader, had attended this school for over five years. He had bonded with his teachers and fellow pupils. His mother described him as an outgoing kid, with good grades and lots of friends when he was at St. Charles.

But this incident traumatized him, said McLaughlin.

"It was almost like they took his smile away," she said.

Jack's grades dropped, he became reclusive, McLaughlin said. He was afraid of things he had never been scared of before. She remembers confronting Jack about his dropping grades.

"He told me, 'Why should I (work hard)? I worked my butt off at St. Charles and got kicked out,'" said McLaughlin.

He is just now coming out of his slump after four months at his new school at Edgewood in Ellettsville, she said.

McLaughlin believes that if this situation was approached differently, the outcome would have been completely different.

Paul agreed. The saddest part of this story is what could have happened, he said. But nothing can change the incidents that have occurred.

"So now we have to have a resolution so Jack can say something wrong happened to him and that people had the courage to say he was right," said Paul.

Erica Ballard can be reached at elballar@indiana.edu.