NEW MEXICO
Courthouse News Service
Monday, August 18, 2014
By VICTORIA PRIESKOP
ALBUQUERQUE (CN) – The Archdiocese of Santa Fe protected a series of pedophile priests in a cover-up lasting at least 30 years, according to three recently filed lawsuits.
The lawsuits in Bernalillo County Court sketch a history of boys between the ages of 9 and 15 being molested by priests who the Archdiocese allegedly knew sexually children, but allowed to work with children nonetheless.
Two of the three plaintiffs claim that the priests had received treatment at the Servants of the Paraclete center in Jemez Springs, N.M., and that the Paraclete center charged an average of $10,000 for the treatment.
The treatment was intended to “cure” priests of sexual attraction to children, but “after some effort at treatment, usually by prayer, these abusers were released into New Mexico parishes and communities and hired by [the Archdiocese of Santa Fe],” John Doe D claims in his complaint.
John Doe D’s lawsuit lists the names of 40 priests, including an archbishop, who the archdiocese allegedly admitted “have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse.” The abuse allegedly occurred from the 1950s through the 1990s.
John Doe D claims that the archdiocese knew that its “culture of the day include(ed) a ratio of pedophile priests to non-pedophile priests of about 40 percent in the decades preceding and including plaintiff’s birth and childhood.”
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