LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times
January 22, 2013 | 6:51am
Internal Catholic church records released Monday show that 15 years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, then-Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement.
Times reporters Harriet Ryan and Victoria Kim will join L.A. Now Live at 9 a.m. to discuss the records.
Ryan, Kim and staff writer Ashley Powers reported that the records offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation’s largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders’ own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.
The records contain memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases. In the confidential letters, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they had abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent the priests from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.
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.