LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times
This post has been updated.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Tuesday it plans to review newly released records from the late 1980s that show then-Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top aide worked to conceal pedophile priests from law enforcement.
The office “will review and evaluate all documents as they become available to us,” a spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey said.
[Updated at 12:13 p.m.: Internal Catholic church records released Monday show that 15 years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement.
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.
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