Dozier named in Richmond list of priests accused of child sexual abuse

By Bill Dries
Daily Memphian
February 16, 2019

https://bit.ly/2EdtWUT

Carroll T. Dozier

The first bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Memphis is among 42 priests from the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, who have been accused of child sexual abuse over several decades.

Carroll Dozier’s name is on a list released Thursday by Richmond Bishop Barry C. Knestout. Knestout is the latest U.S. bishop in recent years to release such a list.

Knestout said all of those on the list had “a credible and substantiated claim of sexual abuse against a minor” that was reported to church leaders either in Richmond or elsewhere.

In Dozier’s case, the allegation was made to church officials after his death in 1985.

The listing provided no further details of the allegation or when and where the alleged abuse happened.

The Richmond Diocese released four lists of alleged abusers based on where they were ordained. Dozier appears on the list of priests who were ordained in Richmond and served there.

Knestout decided who would be on the list in consultation with canonical advisers in the Richmond Diocese.

In an FAQ section with the list on the diocesan website, the Diocese says it used a standard of a preponderance of the evidence in finding that an accusation of child sexual abuse was “credible and substantiated.”

“This determination was made after carefully considering many factors and circumstances including, but not limited to, admissions, convictions, arrests, settlements of civil claims, detailed, consistent and plausible complaints, number of victims, priest’s assignment history, adverse actions against the priest by Church authority and whether the name was published on other lists of known abusers,” the website reads. “The facts and circumstances that could substantiate a credible allegation varied from case to case.”

“As your bishop, I am called to be a good shepherd, attentive to the care and needs of all our people, especially the most vulnerable,” Knestout wrote in a letter posted on the Richmond Diocese website along with the list.

“By publishing this list, we can help bring about healing to those who have experienced abuse in the Church and heighten the awareness of this tragic situation,” he wrote. “To those who experienced abuse from clergy, I am truly, deeply sorry. I regret that you have to bear the burden of the damage you suffered at the hands of those you trusted.  I am also sorry that you must carry the memory of that experience with you.”

“By publishing this list, we can help bring about healing to those who have experienced abuse in the Church and heighten the awareness of this tragic situation.”

Barry C. Knestout, Bishop, Catholic Diocese of Richmond

Dozier was ordained in 1937 as a priest in Richmond, where he was born.

When the Diocese of Memphis was formed in 1971 – making West Tennessee, including Shelby County, a separate diocese from the Diocese of Nashville – Pope Paul VI named Dozier its first bishop.

He served as bishop for 11 years before retiring, and died three years after his retirement.

The Diocese of Memphis released information, including internal church documents, about child sexual abuse allegations in 2010 in response to a lawsuit filed by The Daily News and later joined by The Commercial Appeal.

The more than 6,000 pages of documents and depositions chronicled 50 years of allegations of child sexual abuse by 15 Catholic priests in Memphis dating back to the late 1950s. The records included the names of most but not all of the priests. That included those who were priests in Memphis during the time Memphis and West Tennessee were part of the Catholic Diocese of Nashville.

Dozier was not among those named.

The documents and depositions were compiled as part of one in a series of civil lawsuits filed against the diocese in Shelby County Circuit Court starting in 2004 by alleged victims of child sexual abuse. Most of the allegations covered the time in the 1970s and early 1980s when Dozier was bishop.

The lawsuits contended the diocese covered up the abuse allegations and moved accused priests to different parishes, and even out of the city and diocese.

The John Doe lawsuit that resulted in the release of the information involved Father Juan Carlos Duran, a priest who sexually abused a 14-year-old boy over a six-week period in 1999. As an adult, the boy sued the Diocese and the Dominican religious order that Duran was a member of.

Duran had been a Franciscan priest before he became a Dominican. He was expelled from the Franciscan order for sexually abusing children at an orphanage in Bolivia. Franciscan officials warned Dominican officials of the abuse. The Dominicans did not pass any of those warnings onto Memphis diocesan officials.

Memphis diocesan officials moved Duran out of the city after the teenager’s family came to them with the allegations. Neither the family nor the diocese reported the abuse to Memphis Police.

The Memphis Diocese and the Dominicans settled the lawsuit for a combined total of $2 million – the largest settlement of priest sexual abuse case ever made public in Memphis.

One of the priests identified only by number in the Duran court documents was Walter Emala, who left Memphis in 1968 after nearly 10 years of internal church complaints about his conduct with children. Emala was named in 2002 when the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore published a list of all priests in the archdiocese accused of child sexual abuse.

After the Diocese of Memphis was formed, Dozier brought Emala back to Memphis, years later writing of the decision, “I know him least of all.”

Dozier also wrote a letter of recommendation in 1975 in behalf of Emala that was instrumental in Emala getting an assignment to a parish in Wilmington, Delaware, following complaints of sexual abuse by two families in Baltimore and threats by those families to go to civil authorities.

Dozier wrote the bishop of Wilmington that same year in considering a recommendation for Emala, “I made a mistake in the division of the diocese in accepting (Emala) as a member of the Diocese of Memphis.”

“I am unable from this point of view to judge the validity of the event and I only know what (Wilmington) Monsignor (Francis X.) Murphy has confided in me concerning him,” Dozier wrote of the allegation. “I would not hurt a priest for anything, and would be supportive of whatever decision you make.”