CALIFORNIA
The Orange County Register
BY TONY SAAVEDRA AND DEEPA BHARATH / STAFF WRITERS
The last of the internal misconduct files on Roman Catholic clergy in Southern California were released Friday, offering new allegations of extensive sexual assaults in Orange County’s Servite community.
Amid thousands of pages of records were letters on the Rev. Joseph Sharkey, who came from Ireland in 1967 to Servite High School in Anaheim.
A year later, Sharkey was accused of sexual misconduct “with at least five students … four of whom are minor seminarians,” said a letter from the Rev. Stephen Ryan at the Provincial Center in Buena Park to the Very Rev. Terence M. O’Connor, Eastern Province of the Servites.
“I’m terribly sorry about the misfortune of Joe Sharkey. I really hadn’t the slightest idea that he was a sadomasochist,” O’Connor wrote in that letter.
Ryan said he’d heard Sharkey committed the same misdeeds at Benburb Priory in Ireland, where a 1956 novice report called him a “mature, solid” person with virtuous character.
Joelle Casteix, an abuse victim and activist from Orange County, called the news “jaw-dropping.”
The Rev. John Fontana, Provincial Superior of the Servite Order in the United States, said Friday that improvements have been made to prevent future assaults on children.
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