ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
Albuquerque Journal
October 18, 2017
By Olivier Uyttebrouck and Maggie Shepard
[Note: The front page of the Albuquerque Journal showed excerpts from a document relating to each priest. The article includes summaries of the three priests whose files have been released: Jason Sigler, Sabine Griego, and Arthur Perrault. See also BishopAccountability.org’s database entries on Sigler, Griego, and Perrault.]
Nearly 1,000 pages of Archdiocese of Santa Fe court records were released to the public on Wednesday, including letters written showing that church leaders knew of allegations of sexual abuse against three priests long before the priests left or were barred from ministry.
The records, released by order of District Judge Alan Malott, mark the largest release of Archdiocese of Santa Fe records since alleged victims of clerical sexual abuse began filing lawsuits against the archdiocese in the early 1990s.
The records include a wide variety of documents from the archdiocese’s personnel files, including letters written by three archbishops of Santa Fe, some in correspondence with bishops of other dioceses where the three priests lived and worked.
The records comprise what had been a secret history of the careers of former priests Jason Sigler and Sabine Griego, who both live today in New Mexico, and Arthur Perrault, who has fled the country.
Malott issued the order in response to a request by KOB-TV LLC, which filed in July as an intervenor in seven clerical abuse cases for the purpose of obtaining court records.
The records were obtained in the course of lawsuits filed by Albuquerque attorney Brad Hall, who has filed more than 70 lawsuits since 2011 on behalf of alleged clerical abuse victims. Hall compiled the records to support “timelines” he uses in ongoing lawsuits against the archdiocese.
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.