ARKANSAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Monday, April 11, 2016
Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home,davidgclohessy@gmail.com)
An Arkansas priest once suspended after child sex crimes were reported is getting a new parish. We worry about this move and about Arkansas Bishop Anthony Taylor’s continuing secrecy about clergy sex crimes, sexual misconduct and cover ups.
As best we can tell, besides just one notice in 2011, Bishop Taylor has never updated parishioners or the public about Fr. Ruben Quinteros who was temporarily taken off the job and “threatened” after a man reported that a priest had molested his child.
Now, Fr. Quinteros is being sent to Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in North Little Rock. http://www.arkansas-catholic.org/news/article/4647/Leadership-changes-coming-to-parishes-diocesan-offices#.dpuf
In 2011, Bishop Taylor says St. Joseph Parish in Fayetteville “received a phone call in Spanish to warn us that a priest was in danger of suffering bodily harm at the hands of a man who believed that his child had been touched improperly (in Springdale) by a priest” and that Fr. Quinteros was being “threatened” but Taylor believed it “may be a case of mistaken identity.”
Bishop Taylor claims he “could not follow up on the call because the number was blocked” but that the priest was temporarily removed from ministry, the State Child Abuse Hotline was called, but neither church officials nor the police “were able to locate the alleged victim.” He also said a church panel “determined that the allegation against was not credible” and Fr. Quinteros resumed “his ministry in De Queen.”
Notice the wording in Bishop Taylor’s written 2011 message: The abuse of a child is portrayed as possible (“alleged”), but the threat to a priest is portrayed as real (“The priest being threatened is Father Ruben”), even though the source of both pieces of information is the same. That wording, we feel, shows the inherent bias that religious figures bring to clergy sex abuse and cover up cases.
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