CALIFORNIA
Redlands Daily Facts

By Dana Bartholomew, Barbara Jones and Brenda Gazzar, Staff Writers
dailynews.com
Posted: 01/21/2013

Nearly a decade ago, Manuel Vega held a weeklong sidewalk vigil downtown in the hope of persuading the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to come clean about sexual abuse by its priests.

With Monday’s court-ordered release of hundreds of pages of unredacted personnel files, Vega feels that his prayers – and those of other clerical abuse victims – are finally being answered.

“Overall, I think it’s a win-win,” said Vega, a 46-year-old former policeman who lives in Oxnard and who testified more than a decade ago in the early days of the abuse scandal that eventually shattered the church.

“I think this should serve as a model for the release of other (unredacted) files by the archdiocese,” said Vega, a former altar boy whose lawsuit claimed he was abused…