CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly
BY GUSTAVO ARELLANO
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2016
People have compiled histories of baseball in Orange County, of our long-gone walnut growers, of films shot here before the advent of talking movies. Chronicles about the Huntington Beach Fourth of July parade, about the Hippie Mafia, about a guy’s visit to the Santa Ana Valley in the 1860s. Tomes devoted to old railroads, orange-crate labels, even Aliso Viejo, where nothing remarkable has ever happened—ever.
But nowhere in OC’s many history books will you find much info on our most unsung industry: sex scandals. Few other places in the U.S. can boast such a hypocritical mix of prudish mores and a libido that matches any Tushy.com ingénue, which usually translates to shocking, sometimes hilarious incidents that no proper history ever bothered to jot down. Thankfully, we ain’t proper, so consider us the Herodotus of smut—but you knew that already, right?
The following is just a sampling of all the nasty, disturbing, crazy, insane or just plain embarrassing sex scandals that Orange County has seen through the ages, ones that sent tongues clucking and authorities scrambling to cover up the dirty deeds. Special attention was given to incidents involving people abusing their positions of power. We mostly excluded hot-for-teacher cases (save the most infamous one) because that deserves a whole volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. We’re a bit light on stuff before the 1980s, but we’ll keep digging. …
1975: The Orange County district attorney’s office (OCDA) tells the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to start psychological care for Eleuterio Ramos, a priest at St. Joseph Church in Placentia, citing “a recent incident.” Ramos would go on to become the most prolific pedophile priest in Orange County history, molesting at least 25 boys and never serving a day in jail.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.