NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WWL-TV [New Orleans LA]
June 12, 2025
By David Hammer / WWL Louisiana Investigator, Ramon Antonio Vargas / The Guardian (The Guardian)
Patrick Wattigny tells parole board he gave Archbishop Aymond his word he will “not do it again.” He did it again.
NEW ORLEANS — A Catholic priest who admittedly molested two children publicly recounted Thursday for the first time how New Orleans’ archbishop tried to give him a chance to continue his career even after catching the cleric sending inappropriate texts to a minor.
Patrick Wattigny made the revelation while appearing before Louisiana’s parole board and unsuccessfully requesting an early release from prison.
As Wattigny put it, his downfall began when the mother of a student at a high school where he worked had found unsettling texts between the priest and her son. The woman reported Wattigny – then the chaplain of Pope John Paul II in Slidell – to New Orleans’s archbishop, Gregory Aymond, who summoned him to a meeting in February 2020. As Wattigny put it, at that meeting, Aymond asked him, “Do you give me your word you will not do it again?”
Wattigny said he gave Aymond his word and temporarily stuck to it, buying him another eight months or so in ministry. But, during questioning from parole officials, Wattigny acknowledged having a strong sexual attraction to the teenager he was texting. So “I gave in, … and I texted this person again” amid the stress of the ensuing Covid-19 pandemic, he remarked.
Wattigny said Aymond then sent him to a 30-day retreat in June 2020, which involved psychological testing. He then went to a behavioral health clinic in Hattiesburg, Miss., the following September for a psychological evaluation which required him to take a lie-detector test. At that point, Wattigny confessed “to having an inappropriate relationship and touching one of my students at that time.”
“The polygraph was something I knew I … couldn’t outrun, and so I decided it was better for me to come clean and tell what I had done,” Wattigny said. “I knew I would probably lose my career, my family, my friends, my reputation, everything – but I felt like it was better for me to come clean with what I had done.”
His admissions came at a time when New Orleans’s archdiocese believed none of its clerics had been credibly found to have committed abuse in recent years. The archdiocese announced Wattigny’s removal from ministry on October 1, 2020.
Criminal prosecutors eventually charged Wattigny with molesting two children. Prosecutors did not charge Wattigny in connection with the texts that resulted in his being caught because – though inappropriate – they had not yet led to physical harm.
Wattigny pleaded guilty in July 2023 to one count of molestation of a juvenile under his supervision in a case dating back to 2013. With respect to the other charge, Wattigny entered what is known as an Alford plea, in which he denied wrongdoing yet acknowledged that overwhelming evidence against him would likely get him convicted at trial.
Judge John Keller then sentenced Wattigny to five years in prison, sex offender registration and time on probation after his release. Louisiana allows most people serving time in prison the chance to shorten their actual periods of incarceration – sometimes significantly – by demonstrating what officials deem as good conduct, setting the stage for Wattigny’s parole hearing Thursday.
Wattigny told parole officials that he deserved to be released after 23 months in prison because he had completed a sex offender treatment program at the Bayou Dorecheat correctional center in Minden, La.
He added that he had tutored other program participants, taught social studies at the prison and wanted to go home to care for his parents, including his 82-year-old mother, who had suffered two strokes and “is no longer capable of independent living”. He also offered tepid apologies to his victims.
Two people identifying themselves as friends of Wattigny verbally endorsed his early release bid during Thursday’s hearing, including one who called him “a model prisoner.” But officials administering the hearing rejected Wattigny’s request, citing numerous letters opposing his early release, including from authorities who prosecuted him as well as the public.
The abuse survivor at the center of the Alford plea, Tim Gioe, also spoke Thursday in opposition to Wattigny’s being granted parole.
Gioe, 38, who came forward and relayed that he had been in grade school, back in the 1990s, when Wattigny befriended him first and then molested him, said his abuse is something with which he struggles daily.
“It affects how I parent my kids. It affects my marriage. It affects how safe I feel in the world,” Gioe said. “Letting Patrick Wattigny out early would send a message that the pain he caused can be minimized – that accountability for child abuse has an expiration date.”
Gioe more recently championed an effort for Louisiana to outlaw grooming, which is defined as behavior attempting to gain children’s trust with the intent to sexually abuse them. His push received vital support from his wife, Sarah, whose father is Louisiana state Sen. Pat Connick.
Connick subsequently presented a bill criminalizing grooming to Louisiana’s legislature, which passed the proposal without opposition in early June. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry then signed Connick’s bill into law on Tuesday.
The archdiocese said in a statement that “Archbishop Aymond’s response to Patrick Wattigny’s actions prompted Wattigny’s admission of abuse, leading to his immediate removal from ministry, a law enforcement report and his subsequent conviction for abusing a minor.”
Wattigny is among at least three clergymen within the archdiocese of New Orleans to plead guilty to sexually violent crimes since the organization filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2020 while seeking to limit its financial liability in connection with hundreds of claims of clerical abuse, mostly victimizing children. The other two have died; the bankruptcy remained pending as of Thursday.