‘Predatory behavior’: Priest sex abuse report reveals secret Bay Area case

SAN JOSE (CA)
Mercury News

September 3, 2018

By Matthias Gafni

Los Gatos – Tucked away in Pennsylvania‘s explosive August grand jury report on widespread sex abuse by Catholic priests is the previously untold story of Rev. Benedict Van der Putten, who as part of a traditionalist priest society in Los Gatos 18 years ago was said to have molested one teen girl and tried with another. Then he was whisked away to Europe.

The first Los Gatos abuse allegedly occurred around 2000 at the St. Aloysius Retreat in the wooded hills near the Lexington Reservoir, where priests from the Society of St. Pius X practice a conservative, pre-Vatican II brand of Catholicism with the Latin Mass. The society is not recognized by the Roman Catholic church and St. Aloysius is not overseen by the San Jose diocese.

Local authorities, acting on a tip from Placer County the following year, say they investigated the allegations but were unable to make a criminal case. There are no indications that St. Aloysius ever directly contacted police about Van der Putten.

Following the Los Gatos incidents, the society quickly sent Van der Putten to its international headquarters in Switzerland, and reported him to the Vatican, which later relayed the alleged misconduct to a Pennsylvania diocese where he was seeking reinstatement the following year. That was derailed after he allegedly confessed to molesting another teen in 2001. While he was in Europe, the society expelled him.

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