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Catholischism
Letter to the Editor
By John Earl
Orange County Weekly
January 8, 2004
http://www.ocweekly.com/columns/letters/letters/20363/
[See also other
articles by Gustavo Arellano.]
Perhaps the only thing as bad as deliberately abusing a child is to falsely
accuse somebody of abusing a child [Gustavo Arellano’s "Must-See
TV Producer," Dec. 12]. That’s what many older and wiser
reporters learned from the false allegations that created the McMartin
Preschool trial, part of a monstrous witch-hunt that first blossomed during
the 1980s and tarnished the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people.
One major reason why that witch-hunt spread was multitudes of journalists
who happily jumped to conclusions in order to produce a sexy story, however
perverse.
After the McMartin case, many of those journalists happily found other
piles of shit to grow their careers in, like Fox News. Others, however,
learned from their mistakes and became better journalists.
Perhaps Arellano, whose article pretty much accuses Tom Fuentes—without
a stitch of evidence—of ignoring alleged sex abuse by priests, will
become a better journalist too. But first, he needs to search his own
soul and apologize to Fuentes.
John Earl
Via e-mail
Gustavo Arellano responds: First, John Earl says
I falsely accused Fuentes of abusing a child, and then, changing course,
says I merely accused Fuentes of ignoring child molestation during his
tenure as diocesan communications director. I haven’t accused Fuentes
of anything, and certainly not child abuse. I’ve asked him a question,
one that many Orange County residents—Catholics and non-Catholics
alike—have wanted to ask him for years. See, Fuentes likes to assert
that he was the most powerful lay Catholic in the Diocese of Orange from
1976 to 1989, and he has evidence to support that claim: he worked directly
for the bishop and coached that bishop on all media relations. He also
supervised for years a man who that bishop had good reason to know was
a child molester. Given all that, I simply asked Fuentes what many reasonable
people want to know: Did Fuentes know what was apparently going on all
around him? As I reported, Fuentes said he knew nothing.
GARELLANO@OCWEEKLY.COM
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