KCET study: Archdiocese put abusive priests in Latino parishes (video)

LOS ANGELES (CA)
LA Observed

[with video]

By Kevin Roderick | March 14, 2013

“SoCal Connected” aired a story tonight by reporter Vince Gonzales and producer Karen Foshay that analyzes where Los Angeles Archdiocese priests accused of sexual abuse were assigned. The key findings:

“SoCal Connected” has done a comprehensive data analysis of thousands of pages personnel records released by the church in January.

We tracked every accused Los Angeles priest found in those files since 1932. According to our analysis, over that time, 63 percent of the parishes in Los Angeles have had at least one priest on staff who’d been accused of sexual abuse. We also found some parishes had many more, like St. Alphonsus, which had eight; and Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, which had seven. At least 15 other parishes have had five or six accused priests. And our analysis showed many abusive priests served in Latino communities.

Richard Sipe/Former priest and author: “That’s the pattern. That the poorer parishes, the Latino parishes, Latinos are much more reluctant to buck a priest…. I think the Latino community in the end is going to be very, very angry that they were used. They literally were dumped on, and I think your figures are going to show that.”

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