LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times
September 12, 2018
By Gustavo Arellano
California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra has gained a reputation for going after anyone or anything that he feels threatens our Golden State. He’s filed 35 lawsuits just against the Trump administration. He’s prosecuted landlords who gouged renters after the devastating Tubbs fire last year. He has stood with “Dreamers” and against gun manufacturers.
So far, however, Becerra’s office has stayed mum on one of California’s biggest criminal outrages: sex abuse in the Catholic Church.
This decades-long scandal flared up again last month with the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report. It detailed how 300 priests molested at least 1,000 children and groomed them for abuse over the last 70 years. But the equally horrific crime, Pennsylvania Atty. Gen. Josh Shapiro correctly argued, was that church hierarchy and law enforcement officials largely ignored victims and let offenders continue their depravities.
That was the case in California, too. Many of the still-alive monsignors, bishops and cardinals involved in California’s part of the pedophile priest problem have never faced appropriate consequences for their inaction. In New Jersey and New York, the attorneys general have launched new investigations. Becerra should do the same here.
I’ve covered the scandal in the Diocese of Orange since 2003, and even then it was evident to me that this wasn’t just a problem of a few bad padres.
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