Report by Cheshire-based Legion of Christ Reveals Its Former Leader Molested at Least 60 Children

By Dave Altimari
Hartford Courant
December 23, 2019

https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-legionaries-sexual-abuse-report-20191223-vigcwgldlnefvdtrduxdtc2moi-story.html

Pope John Paul II gives his blessing to the Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, an ultraconservative Catholic order, at the Vatican in 2004. In 2006, the Vatican punished the Mexican cleric after completing an internal investigation into allegations that he had abused "more than 20 and less than 100 victims," including seminarians and boys placed in his care. (Plinio Lepri / Associated Press)

An internal investigation by the Cheshire-based Legion of Christ has identified 175 victims of sexual assault by priests, including 60 victims of the now-disgraced founder of the order and one victim who still has a lawsuit pending in Connecticut.

The 25-page report released on Dec. 21 is short on details of who the abusive priests were but draws a direct connection between the Rev. Marcial Maciel and the trail of abuse he left behind. In addition to secretly fathering at least three children himself, several of those that he abused became abusers themselves.

“It is worth noting that 111 of the victims were either victims of Father Maciel or were victims of his victims or of a victim of one of his victims. This represents 63.43% of the 175 victims of priests in the Congregation,” the report said.

Macial died in 2008. He denied the sexual abuse charges.

But in 2010 the Vatican announced it was taking over the Legionaries of Christ, an ultraconservative order, and castigated Maciel for "leading a double life “devoid of any scruples and authentic sense of religion. Previously the Vatican had defended Maciel, who was close to Pope John Paul II, including when the Courant first reported in 1997 that Maciel had abused at least nine children.

On the same day the Legion released its report the Vatican reported that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of Cardinal Angelo Sodano as dean of the College of Cardinals. Sondano was considered the Legion’s biggest defender at the Vatican.

Maciel founded the order in 1941 in Mexico when he was a 20-year-old seminarian and led it until his retirement in January 2005. The U.S. headquarters for the order is in Cheshire.

The internal investigation by a commission established by the Legionaries said of the 33 priests “credibly accused” of sexual abuse six have died, eight left the priesthood, one has left the Congregation and 18 are still Legionaries, although all of them are excluded from pastoral work with minors. The report doesn’t name most of the priests. It also doesn’t name any of the seminarians accused of sexual abuse or give a number of possible victims of those seminarians.

"We deplore and condemn the abuses committed in our history, as well as those institutional or personal practices that may have favored or encouraged any form of abuse or re-victimization. We ask forgiveness of the victims, their families, the Church and society for the grave harm that members of our Congregation have caused,” the report said.

Most of the victims were boys between the ages of 11 and 16 years-old.

Two of the victims filed lawsuits against the Legion of Christ in Connecticut, including one of his children, Raul Gonzalez Lara.

New Haven attorney Joel Faxon, who is representing both victims, said Monday the report confirms that "rampant pedophilia has been permitted to fester unabated within the Legion of Christ."

“The Legion ignored Maciel’s centuries-spanning abuse because he was a vital source of international funding for the sect. More than half of the admitted perpetrators, inexplicably, are still permitted among the ranks of the Legion,” Faxon said. “Horrifically, this report proves that the Legion is a dangerous pedophile-infested operation that continues to prey on children around the globe to this day.”

In his lawsuit Lara accused Maciel of repeatedly sexually molesting him starting when he was 7 years old and continuing until he was a teenager. Lara’s mother, Blanca Gutierrez Lara, gave birth to two children with Maciel, who used the alias Raul Rivas, according to the lawsuit. Lara’s lawsuit filed in 2010 is still pending.

A second civil lawsuit was filed in Waterbury Superior Court in 2016 by a victim named John Roe and alleged that he was molested not only by Maciel but also by two other priests, Father Luis Garza, the former head of the North American chapter of the Legionaries, and Father Jose Sabin.

The lawsuit said John Roe enrolled in a Legionaries seminary school in 1989 when he was 12 and was supposed to attend a school in New Hampshire but instead ended up in a school the group ran in Mexico.

Beginning in about 1990 or 1991, John Roe was sexually assaulted on multiple separate occasions by Maciel, Garza and Sabin, the lawsuit alleges.

The boy fled the campus and eventually made his way back to California, where his mother was living at the time, the suit says.

John Roe reported the alleged abuse to officials from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, both in writing and verbally, and in 2014 he reported the abuse directly to Legionnaire officials, but he never received a response from anyone, the lawsuit says.

His lawsuit was withdrawn earlier this year but Faxon said it will be refiled.

Reporting from the Associated Press was included in this story.