CALIFORNIA
Santa Barbara Independent
[Archive of Los Angeles Archdiocesan Documents – BishopAccountability.org]
Thursday, January 24, 2013
By Nick Welsh
Santa Barbara’s Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry has been accused of “thwarting” potential sex abuse investigations by responsible law enforcement agencies concerning at least three pedophile priests during the 1980s when Curry served as the archdiocese’s chief advisor to archbishop — and later cardinal — Roger Mahony on sex abuse cases.
Attorney Tony De Marco submitted just-released church personnel records demonstrating how concerned Curry and Mahony were that sexual-offender priests might come to the attention of law enforcement investigators. De Marco submitted these documents as part of a lawsuit he filed on behalf of a man who claims he’d been abused by a priest, Nicholas Aguilar Rivera. Rivera remains at large, and De Marco is demanding the opportunity to depose Curry and Mahony to demonstrate the extent to which the archdiocese was “thwarting law enforcement investigations.”
In 1986, Curry wrote a memo to Mahony about Michael Baker, a priest who’d admitted to molesting boys that year. Curry cautioned against allowing Baker to see a California therapist. “I see a problem here, in that if he were to mention his problem with child abuse it would put the therapist in a position of having to report him.” Curry then added, “I think we have to be very careful about whom he goes to see and what kind of information is released to the program. Given the fact that he cannot mention his past problem, the necessity to be so circumspect might defeat the purpose of his going to a therapist.”
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