PENNSYLVANIA/TEXAS
The Dallas Morning News
By Robert Wilonsky
rwilonsky@dallasnews.com
10:27 am on January 29, 2014
James Brzyski, a defrocked priest from Philadelphia who’s almost always described as “one of the Archdiocese’s most brutal abusers,” has been hiding in plain sight in Dallas while pretending to be “a jovial former Xerox employee who’d lost millions after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” And a support group for men and women abused by priest is calling on the Catholic Diocese of Dallas to do something about it.
The Philadelphia Daily News found the 62-year-old at the Crescent View Apartments near Cedar Springs and the Dallas North Tollway. Residents who once welcomed him warmly quickly discovered there was something wrong with their new neighbor, who played with visiting young boys in the complex’s pool and “bragged about going online to find males who appeared to be underage.” They soon discovered his past as a man accused of sexually assaulting as many as 100 boys, according to a grand jury report, during his years in Philadelphia during the 1970s and ’80s.
Brzyski, who left the church in 1985 but wasn’t kicked out of the priesthood for another two decades, said nothing about his past until he was confronted about it. Because he didn’t have to.
“Brzyski is able to move from one community to another in relative anonymity — at least until his behavior gives him away — because the Archdiocese won’t disclose his whereabouts, or the whereabouts of 23 other Philadelphia priests who have been defrocked for abusing minors,” writes William Bender. A public records search shows Brzyski doesn’t appear to have a Texas driver’s license, and that since leaving Philadelphia he’s lived in Virginia; the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles; and Kenosha, Wisconsin. And he doesn’t have to register as a sex offender, Bender notes, because “the Archdiocese kept his case under wraps in the 1980s, when allegations that he was sexually abusing children were first reported to church leaders.”
Bender later adds that “Brzyski’s choice of Dallas is ironic, because the man who blew the whistle on him in the 1980s lives only a half-hour away. The Rev. James Gigliotti, pastor of St. Maria Goretti in Arlington, Texas, said he was unaware that Brzyski was living nearby and was disturbed to hear neighbors’ reports about his behavior around kids.”
Following the story’s publication Wednesday morning, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests issued a lengthy statement calling on the Catholic Diocese of Dallas to “act now to warn parents about him and help police catch him.” The diocese says it has no further information beyond what was published this morning. Bishop Kevin Joseph Farrell is out of town at the installation of the new bishop of San Angelo. Its director of communications, Annette Gonzales Taylor, says the diocese may release a statement later today.
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