LOS ANGELES (CA)
Calgary Herald
[the files – Law Offices of Raymond Boucher]
BY GILLIAN FLACCUS, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS JULY 31, 2013
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Hundreds of pages of secret church files released Wednesday expose the troublesome careers of a dozen religious order priests, brothers and nuns accused of sexually abusing children while working in the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the U.S.
The files include one case of a priest who admitted to having sexual contact with more than 100 boys while serving in several California parishes for years.
The papers, released under the terms of a $660 million settlement agreement reached in 2007, are the first glimpse at what religious orders knew about the envoys they posted in Roman Catholic schools and parishes around the Los Angeles area.
The files cover five different religious orders that employed 10 priests or religious brothers and two nuns who were all accused in civil lawsuits of molesting children while working within the Los Angeles archdiocese. Among them, the accused had 21 alleged victims who complained of abuse between the 1950s and the 1980s.
The files include more than 500 pages on a priest named Ruben Martinez who belonged to a religious order called the U.S. Province of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a nearly 200-year-old Catholic organization with roots in France. The Los Angeles archdiocese settled eight lawsuits over Martinez’s actions in 2007.
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