ARIZONA
Arizona Daily Star
[Kevin Barmasse – Los Angeles archdiocese]
Stephanie Innes Arizona Daily Star
When a young Catholic priest in Los Angeles was accused of sexually molesting a 12-year-old boy in 1983, church officials did not remove him from ministry.
Instead, they sent him to Tucson.
Recently released court documents from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles show church officials allowed Kevin Barmasse to minister in Tucson for seven years after that original accusation.
Once in Tucson, Barmasse worked at three churches in Southern Arizona and was later accused of molesting five local teens who had been members of youth groups he led.
Those five teens, now men in their 40s, later filed lawsuits saying Barmasse abused them. They received a total of nearly $2 million apiece in settlement money from the Los Angeles archdiocese and the Tucson diocese. The settlements in Tucson were part of the local diocese’s bankruptcy case.
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