LOS ANGELES (CA)
Seth H. Langson
It is evident why the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles fought for years against the release of their once-confidential “personnel” files. Approximately twelve thousand (12,000) pages were posted Thursday night to the Archdiocese’s website. Of course you cannot just click on to the files to read them. First you have to go the a page where the Archdiocese defends itself.
They “boast” that there were only 12,000 pages of secret documents and not the 30,000 that had previously reported by some news organizations. You can read the files here: http://clergyfiles.la-archdiocese.org/listing.html.
Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have excellent articles, which of course, were written before they had time to study all of the files released. The documents they studied showed that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles leadership had taken affirmative action to protect priests who were sex abusers and to see that they were not prosecuted.
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