LOUISIANA
The Advertiser
Katie de la Rosa August 4, 2014
No new allegations of sex crimes involving children by Diocese of Lafayette clergy have been made since 1984, Bishop Michael Jarrell told parishioners of St. Edmond Catholic Church in Lafayette on Saturday.
Jarrell addressed parishioners following a week of news reports that St. Edmond Pastor Gil Dutel was accused in legal documents from the 1990s of sexually abusing a boy in the 1970s and making sexual advances to an adult male. The documents only recently were made public in a Minnesota Public Broadcasting investigation of priest sex abuse and cover-ups.
“No additional priests have been accused in recent decades,” Jarrell said in an email response Monday to questions posed Sunday by The Daily Advertiser. “I stand by my 2004 statement: The Diocese knows of no act of abuse by a cleric that may have occurred since 1984.”
Jarrell declined The Daily Advertiser’s request for an interview and did not respond to the newspaper’s second request for the names of 15 priests. Jarrell acknowledged in 2004 that the diocese and its insurers has paid settlements to the sexual abuse victims of those priests.
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