UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Jason Berry | Jul. 9, 2015
30 years ago
Editor’s note: This story is part of a weeklong series dedicated to looking back on 30 years of the abuse crisis in the Catholic church. Read all parts of the series.
The reports I did on clergy child molesters in the Lafayette, La., diocese changed my life in ways that reverberate still.
The June 7, 1985, NCR, with my long report on Fr. Gilbert Gauthe’s sex crimes, Arthur Jones’ piece on cases elsewhere, and NCR’s editorial calling for lay review boards, laid the issue before a national media that held back for years.
My piece condensed three articles I had done for the Times of Acadiana, an alternative weekly in Lafayette, the hub city of the regional oil industry (population 90,000). Editor Linda Matys, whom I had known in New Orleans, had given me a special assignment; it didn’t pay enough for the looming time investment.
I was aware of NCR but had never seen an issue when I called Editor Tom Fox, explaining the availability of documents from proceedings underway. He agreed to a joint assignment, which made the work financially feasible, barely. I had hit a brick wall with pitches to The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and The Nation.
Laudato-Si_web.jpg Check out A Readers’ Guide to Laudato Si’, a free resource from NCR.
As a freelancer, I had been writing about oil waste dumping in Cajun country and was about to publish my second book, Up From the Cradle of Jazz, a history of New Orleans popular music. I was 35.
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