COLOMBIA
The American Conservative
March 27, 2018
By Rod Dreher
Even if you are well versed in the clerical sexual abuse scandal, you probably don’t know the name Dino Cinel. He was just murdered in Colombia by his lover. From the New Orleans Advocate, some background on this criminal:
Cinel was a historian on the Tulane University faculty and was living at the rectory of St. Rita Catholic Church in late 1988 when a fellow priest discovered him with child pornography and homemade tapes of Cinel having sex in the rectory with young men.
The story did not become public at that time, and the official response raised immediate controversy when it finally became known more than two years later.
Upon first learning of the discovery, Archbishop Philip Hannan fired Cinel, who was on vacation in Italy at the time. But some suspected the archbishop was giving Cinel a heads-up that authorities were onto him, said Bruce Nolan, who covered the ensuing scandal for The Times-Picayune.
Then-District Attorney Harry Connick, a St. Rita parishioner, let the church hold onto the video recordings for weeks, which church officials explained by saying they were trying to identify and contact any victims involved. Connick later concluded that the evidence in the case was not strong enough to prosecute Cinel.
At one point, a former sexual partner who said he was underage at the time he had a recorded encounter with Cinel sued him in Orleans Parish Civil District Court.
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