LOUISIANA
The Advocate
BILLY GUNN AND RICHARD BURGESS| BGUNN@THEADVOCATE.COM RBURGESS@THEADVOCATE.COM
Sept. 07, 2014
LAFAYETTE — When revelations about pedophile priest Gilbert Gauthe hit the headlines in 1984, the Diocese of Lafayette was shaken by a clergy abuse scandal that, in the years after, spread nationwide.
Gauthe molested scores of children in the 1970s and 1980s throughout Acadiana as the diocese shifted him from one church to the next — and he wasn’t alone.
The scandal here unfolded to reveal other abusers in the priesthood, calling into question what the local Catholic leadership had known, what they might have done to conceal it and just how widespread the problem was.
It’s been some three decades since plaintiff lawyers and journalists first dissected church leaders’ actions, but recently unearthed court documents cast fresh light on an old scandal. The hundreds of pages of internal church records and depositions show the abuse was likely more pervasive than the public knew at the time and the roots of the problem stretch back years before Gauthe.
The paperwork also provides something that church leadership to this day has refused to fully disclose: the identities of Lafayette-area priests accused of molesting children.
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