GALLUP (NM)
Gallup Independent via BishopAccountability.org
Diocese fights to limit lawsuit witnesses
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Gallup Independent
July 31, 2012
Gallup — The year 1952 is a pivotal year to the Diocese of Gallup’s Clement A. Hageman “Route 66” priest abuse case.
It’s the year, diocese officials concede, Hageman most probably sexually abused the plaintiff when he was a child in Holbrook, Ariz. The plaintiff, a man in his 70s, filed the civil clergy abuse lawsuit nearly two years ago in Arizona’s Coconino County Superior Court.
Prior to 1952, diocesan records indicate Hageman abused a number of Catholic boys in the Diocese of Corpus Christi in Texas, and he abused more boys in the Gallup Diocese’s Catholic church in Holbrook. According to church records, 1952 is the year a group of Catholic men in Holbrook confronted Hageman and Gallup’s Bishop Bernard T. Espelage with allegations the priest had sexually molested boys in the parish. The bishop’s response was to allow Hageman to lie to parishioners that he was leaving Holbrook for health reasons. After his transfer from the parish in late 1952, Hageman went on to sexually abuse Catholic children in Arizona churches for the next 23 years in Kingman, Camp Verde, Humbolt and finally Winslow, where he died in 1975.
In the Hageman lawsuit, none of that is in dispute.
What is in dispute, however, is if Robert E. Pastor, the Phoenix attorney representing the plaintiff, will be allowed to interview witnesses he believes has information about Hageman and/or sexual abuse in the diocese after the pivotal year of 1952.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.