OREGON/NEBRASKA
The Oregonian
By Aimee Green, The Oregonian
on March 27, 2013
Thomas Laughlin — one of Oregon’s most notorious pedophile priests who admitted to molesting dozens of boys over decades in parishes throughout the state — has died after spending his last years living a quiet existence near family in Omaha, Neb.
Laughlin was known as an exceptionally charismatic priest and tremendous church fundraiser who hobnobbed with Portland’s Catholic business and political elite — someone many in the church thought could be bishop one day. But he also was the first priest molester to be criminally convicted in the Archdiocese of Portland.
At his 1983 sentencing hearing for sexually abusing two boys, the then-57-year-old priest pondered aloud a concern that he’d be remembered only as a child molester.
“I felt everything good I had done for 35 years would be forgotten, and I would be remembered only for the harm I had done to those I was sent to serve,” he said.
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