Judge Unseals O.C. Bishop's Testimony, by Christine Hanley, Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2007

Judge Unseals O.C. Bishop's Testimony

By Christine Hanley
Los Angeles Times
September 13, 2007

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-la-me-bishop13sep14,0,2085691.story?coll=la-home-center

An Orange County judge today unsealed testimony that Bishop Tod Brown gave this week as part of a civil lawsuit accusing a former assistant basketball coach at Mater Dei High School of sexually abusing a 16-year-old student.

Under the order of an Orange County Superior Court judge, Brown was deposed Monday by the student's lawyers, who want to know what he knew about other sexual abuse complaints made against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange during the 10 or so years that Jeff Andrade worked at the Santa Ana school as a coach and driving instructor.

A 2004 photo of Bishop Tod Brown at the Holy Family Cathedral in Orange.
Photo by Rick Loomis / LAT

The judge had issued a temporary seal of Brown's testimony at the request of lawyers for the diocese.

Venus Soltan, a lawyer for the student, said Brown was also asked in the deposition about allegations of sexual abuse made against him in Bakersfield in the 1960s.

The judge today also ordered Monsignor John Urell, the pastor at St. Norbert's Catholic Church in Orange, to give a deposition in the Mater Dei case. Urell was the church's chief investigator of clergy sexual abuse claims at the time of the alleged Mater Dei incident. He is on medical leave.