ERIE (PA)
Erie Times-News [Erie PA]
September 5, 2022
By Ed Palattella
Barletta, 82, was accused of molesting as many as 25 minors but was never charged. The 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report revealed depth of his conduct, said he admitted to abuse.
- The 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy abuse named 41 priests in the Catholic Diocese of Erie
- Among them was the Rev. Michael G. Barletta, who taught at Cathedral Prep from 1975-1994
- Barletta died at 82 in late August. He was never charged
Over his long career as a priest, including 19 years teaching at Erie’s Cathedral Preparatory School, the Rev. Michael G. Barletta was accused of sexually abusing as many as 25 minors.
The conduct made Barletta one of the 41 “predator priests” from the Catholic Diocese of Erie named in the groundbreaking August 2018 statewide grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania.
Barletta has died at 82, leaving behind a dark legacy that only fully came to light with the grand jury report.
The report said he admitted to the abuse. Barletta’s behavior, as cited in the grand jury report, was particularly notable because of its scope and how the complaints against him involved a series of bishops.
Barletta — ordained in 1966, suspended from the priesthood in 1994 and later removed from ministry but never defrocked or charged — died in late August, according to the Catholic Diocese of Erie.
The 13-county diocese on Friday updated its public disclosure list — its list of clergy and laypeople credibly accused of misconduct with minors — to note that Barletta had died in “August 2022.”
The Erie Times-News also confirmed Barletta’s death, but was unable to determine when and where he died. The Catholic Diocese of Erie has no role in funeral arrangements for Barletta and noted his death only for the purpose of updating the public disclosure list, the diocese said.
Barletta’s victims included boys and at least one girl, according to the grand jury and other legal filings. One lawsuit, which a woman filed in Erie County Common Pleas Court in 2020, claimed Barletta molested her in the 1970s, when she was in grade school and high school, and that she witnessed him molest boys.
“Barletta was a danger to children,” the suit said.
Barletta’s conduct cost the diocese.
Though the woman’s lawsuit did not proceed in court because the statute of limitations had run out, Barletta’s behavior was the subject of several claims filed with the compensation fund that the diocese — in response to the grand jury report — set up for victims of abuse. The Pennsylvania General Assembly never passed legislation that would have rolled back the statute of limitations to allow abuse victims to sue in old cases.
“I hope that some of the men who were betrayed and assaulted by Barletta feel relieved at his passing, knowing that he’ll never be able again to hurt another child,” said Adam Horowitz, a lawyer from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who represented two of Barletta’s victims in claims filed with the compensation fund. “Many abuse survivors agonize that their perpetrator — no matter how old or infirm he may be — is still molesting others years later.
“The bishop should remind his parishioners and the public that Barletta admitted assaulting 25 youngsters and that someone they know may be secretly carrying this burden alone, even decades later.”
Barletta started a club for teens at Prep
Barletta was born on Dec. 20, 1939 and grew up in Ellwood City, Lawrence County. He was last known to reside in an apartment in Erie.
Barletta started his teaching career at what was then Kennedy Christian High School, now Kennedy Catholic, in Hermitage, Mercer County. He was there from 1966 to 1975, when he started at Cathedral Prep, according to the grand jury report.
Barletta taught at Prep — then an all-boys school — from 1975 through the 1993-94 academic year. During his first months at Prep, he started the Teenage Action Club, or TAC, through which students from Prep and other local Catholic high schools aided the underprivileged.
Hundreds of teenagers joined TAC. Barletta — known as “Barts” — became a popular teacher who would socialize with students and take some of them on trips.
“He was very charismatic,” one of Barletta’s former students told the Erie Times-News in 2003. “He made being Catholic fun. He was kind of a big kid in a lot of ways.”
The former student said Barletta molested him for several years, starting when the man was 15 and a sophomore at Prep.
“He is a calculating predator,” the man said in 2003.
Former bishop’s notes reveal depth of abuse
The statute of limitations for charging Barletta had long expired by the time Attorney General Josh Shapiro released the 884-page grand jury report on Aug. 14, 2018. The report said 301 priests in six of the eight Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania abused 1,000 victims over 70 years, and that the dioceses covered up the abuse. In addition to Erie, the dioceses are in Allentown, Harrisburg, Greensburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton.
The report listed Barletta as retired since 2002. In the 2003 story on Barletta, the Erie Times-News reported that three Prep alumni who complained to Erie Catholic Bishop Donald W. Trautman about Barletta said Trautman told them he removed Barletta from ministry in 2003, in response to allegations of sexual abuse.
Trautman also suspended Barletta in 1994 and required him to get inpatient psychological treatment in 1994-1995, according to the grand jury report. The report said Barletta worked in diocesan offices from 1995 until his retirement.
Trautman, who died in February at 85, never publicly released the names of Barletta and other abusive priests. Trautman’s successor as bishop, Lawrence T. Persico, who has headed the dioceses since October 2012, broke with that policy in April 2018, when he released the public disclosure list ahead of the release of the grand jury report four months later. The list was one of a number of reforms Persico launched to improve transparency and strengthen policies to prevent child abuse.
Barletta’s name was on the disclosure list, and the grand jury report detailed the abuse claims against him.
The report cites Trautman’s handwritten notes as evidence to support the allegations against Barletta. According to the report: “In Bishop Trautman’s handwritten notes, he recorded the details of a conversation that he had with (a nun) about Barletta. In those notes, Trautman wrote that Barletta has abused 25 children. Trautman noted that Barletta admitted to the number himself.
“Trautman also noted that Barletta needed a restricted ministry, possibly a nursing apostolate. He added that Barletta was very defensive and that his abuse included nudity and rub downs, including genital groping, and that Barletta vacationed exclusively with teens.”
Case exemplified ‘historical failures’ of the church
Barletta’s case also prompted the Catholic Diocese of Erie to call out how another bishop handled sexual abuse allegations. In its response to the grand jury report, the diocese heavily criticized Alfred M. Watson, who died at 80 in 1990 and served as bishop of the Erie diocese from 1969 to 1982.
The grand jury report and its supporting documents detailed how Watson failed to act on a credible abuse allegation against Barletta around 1970. Watson instead transferred Barletta to a different school, “where Barletta abused additional teenagers,” according to the diocese’s response to the grand jury report.
Watson, in the Barletta case, showed “a complete disregard for protecting children from accused priests,” according to the response. Watson, the response said, contributed to “an unholy wall of silence that the Erie Diocese is now fully committed to shattering.”
Watson is also named on the diocese’s disclosure list, for failing “to act to stop abuse which was credibly reported to him.”
Barletta claimed the grand jury report was in error.
Barletta “absolutely and unequivocally denies the scurrilous allegations made against him in the report,” his lawyer said in a statement to the Erie Times-News on Aug. 16, 2018, two days after the release of the grand jury report. “While the victims of clergy abuse must be served justice for the suffering they have endured, the accusations against Father Barletta are meritless.”
The denial went nowhere.
The Catholic Diocese of Erie never took Barletta’s name off the public disclosure list. And the diocese never disputed the allegations against Barletta in the grand jury report, including the allegation that Bishop Watson knew of Barletta’s behavior and did nothing to stop it.
In its response to the grand jury report, the diocese held out the Barletta case as an example — “an example that represents the historical failures of the Church.”
Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNpalattella.