TAOS (NM)
Taos News
November 17, 2018
By Cody Hooks
Donald Naranjo had gone back to the old seminary campus in Santa Fe only once since he was a teenager, but he still knew where to turn: Make a right at the midcentury house with a double garage, go east about a mile, turn left.
Naranjo, now 70, was a sophomore in high school when he convinced his parents to let him heed a calling. He started his studies to be a priest at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary on the eastern edge of Santa Fe, a facility that now serves as a retreat. For a kid from the Española Valley, a heavily Catholic community, it was the kind of choice that makes a family proud.
“If you wanted to seek a vocation in the church, it was wonderful,” Naranjo said. “You’d be right there next to God.”
His mother, sitting behind the wheel of the family’s Ford Falcon, dropped him off at the seminary in August 1963, when he was 15.
The abuse started soon after, Naranjo said.
Known as John Doe No. 60 in a civil lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, Naranjo is one of scores of people who have sued the archdiocese, claiming abuse by a priest, and one of thousands nationwide.
Like many other priests from around the country, the man Naranjo accused of abuse, Earl Bierman, came to New Mexico for treatment at a Jemez Springs facility that became a dumping ground for sexual abusers. It was run by the Servants of the Paraclete, a religious order in New Mexico with close ties to both the Catholic Church’s hierarchy and local parishes.
At least two lawsuits allege Bierman abused young men at the Santa Fe seminary: one filed in 1995 and Naranjo’s in 2016.
Bierman died in prison in 2005 as he was serving out a 20-year sentence for pleading guilty to sexually abusing boys in three Kentucky counties while he was a priest there.
Naranjo, who has settled his case with the archdiocese, is one of the few claimants of Catholic clergy abuse to share their stories publicly. He told the Taos News that he hopes his story will help prevent further abuse by clergy and will prompt other victims who have remained silent about abuse to begin a path of healing.
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