LOS ANGELES (CA)
KTVN
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD and CHRISTINA HOAG
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) – The Archdiocese of Los Angeles released 12,000 pages of personnel files on sexually abusive priests that Archbishop Jose Gomez described as “brutal and painful reading.” While many of the names of the abusers and accusations against them were known, the files reveal previously undisclosed details of how the church transferred priests out of state, sent them to therapists who wouldn’t report crimes and suppressed information from reaching the public. Lawyers for the archdiocese and priests who objected to the records being released did not return phone calls or an email seeking comment. Among the revelations in the trove of documents:
A WARNING NOT HEEDED
It’s well documented in the records that the Rev. Richard Henry had a problem. As far back as March 1988, then-Archbishop Roger Mahony was warned in a confidential memo that the priest’s behavior around young boys – long embraces, rubbing noses, leading them to the privacy of his room – was unsettling to those who witnessed it. Nuns and priests confirmed a pattern: “None of the people we talked to accused him of anything illegal, but all of them feared that other adults seeing this would do so,” the memo concluded. In October that year, Henry was ordered in a letter from a superior, then-Monsignor Thomas Curry, to “not be alone with minors.” The documents taper off in mid-1989. In August 1991, Mahony is notified that Henry is under investigation for child molestation. A detective asks for a list of altar boys at the church but Father Timothy Dyer tells Mahony in a memo, “I have declined to have anyone give him such a list.” Henry served prison time for abusing several boys.
STAY AWAY
The church records show the archdiocese maneuvered behind the scenes to avoid a possible lawsuit against a priest over abuse allegations in Los Angeles. In 2007, five former altar boys from Tucson, Ariz., were awarded $1.5 million each as part of the archdiocese’s $660 million clergy-abuse settlement. The five said they were abused by the Rev. Kevin Barmasse, who was sent to Arizona during the 1980s after he’d been accused of child molestation in Los Angeles. The records show Monsignor Thomas Curry told Mahony in a Nov. 10, 1989, confidential memo that “the young boy involved is now about eighteen, so Kevin should certainly not return for another two years by which time the period for filing law suits will have passed.” Later that month, Mahony advised Barmasse to stay away from Los Angeles. “Your presence in this area … would greatly increase the possibility of a suit against you,” Mahony wrote. Barmasse was never criminally prosecuted.
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