COLORADO SPRINGS (CO)
Gazette
Dec. 12, 2019
By Debbie Kelley
Sixteen more victims of alleged sexual abuse by priests in Colorado’s three Roman Catholic dioceses have come forward since the Oct. 23 release of an independent report detailing substantiated accounts of at least 166 children who were harmed by 43 priests, according to Colorado Attorney General’s Office spokesman Lawrence Pacheco.
Among those now seeking recompense is an El Paso County resident.
Daniel Masias told The Gazette that from the age of 8 to 14, while he attended the Sacred Heart Cathedral School in Pueblo in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was fondled and inappropriately touched by several priests working at the Catholic school that closed in 1971.
His account was not among those outlined in the special master’s report, Roman Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children in Colorado from 1950 to 2019, which concluded that at least 127 children were victimized by 22 Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Denver, three children were harmed by two predatory priests in the Diocese of Colorado Springs, and 36 children were sexually abused by 19 priests in the Diocese of Pueblo.
Before Colorado Springs became a separate diocese in 1984, an Archdiocese of Denver priest identified as one of the state’s most prolific offenders, the Rev. Harold White, taught at St. Mary’s High School in Colorado Springs and preyed on five victims at least 15 times from 1963 to 1965, according to the probe.
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