ORANGE (CA)
The Good Men Project [Pasadena CA]
November 23, 2025
By Scott Douglas Jacobsen
How does Joelle Casteix explain coordinated Catholic clergy abuse, why settlements vary, and what reforms are needed for real accountability?
Joelle Casteix is a leading advocate, author, and educator on child sexual abuse prevention and institutional accountability. A survivor of abuse at a Catholic high school in Southern California, she became a spokesperson and Western Regional Director with SNAP, supporting survivors and exposing cover-ups. Her book, The Well-Armoured Child(River Grove Books, 2015), equips parents to recognize grooming, build safeguards, and empower children without fear. A former journalist, Casteix lectures widely, consults on safeguarding policies, and writes about transparency, restitution, and reform. She champions evidence-based, survivor-centred change through public education, media engagement, and practical, accessible tools for families and institutions.
In this discussion with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Casteix explains coordinated Catholic clergy abuse through Orange County cases involving Eleuterio Ramos, Siegfried Widera, and Michael A. Harris, detailing settlements including $10 million to a single survivor in 2024 and prior awards of $5.2 million in 2001 and $3.5 million in 2024. She outlines why outcomes vary—evidence of diocesan knowledge, scope of abuse, and victim impact—and describes the 2004 $100 million global settlement’s grid for allocating compensation. Casteix exposes institutional gaslighting, misogynistic binaries, strategic transfers, and opaque data practices, while acknowledging limited reforms. Her central point: only transparency, external oversight, and survivor validation can counter reputational protectionism.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is an example of a coordinated clergy abuse case?
Joelle Casteix: One of the coordinated clergy abuse cases in Orange County involved a priest named Eleuterio Ramos, who was accused of sexually abusing children. His abuse led to multiple civil settlements; most recently, a California case involving Ramos and Siegfried Widera resulted in a $10 million settlement to a single survivor in 2024. Another set of cases involving Michael A. Harris—a former principal at Mater Dei High School and later founding principal at Santa Margarita Catholic High School—produced a $5.2 million settlement in 2001 to Ryan DiMaria and, separately, a $3.5 million settlement in 2024.
Jacobsen: Why such differences in outcomes?
Casteix: Because the cases are still under protective orders, we do not know the full details. But generally, a higher settlement or verdict usually means there was much more evidence showing that the diocese knew—or should have known—about the abuse and failed to act. It can also depend on the extent of the abuse or the number of victims.
When the Diocese of Orange reached the $100 million global settlement in 2004, one of the most challenging tasks the attorneys faced was dividing the money among survivors. The diocese said, “Here is the money—now you figure out how to split it.” That is when they used the grid: How many instances of abuse occurred? What were the damages? How has each survivor been affected?
It is harrowing work. Unfortunately, our civil justice system has only one real form of punishment for wrongdoing—money. It is not a perfect system, but it gives survivors something tangible. Many have never been able to live their lives to their full potential. They have hospital bills, addiction issues, and decades of trauma. These settlements at least help them begin to rebuild.
Just as importantly, the process gives survivors validation. It provides proof—official documents and depositions confirming: “Yes, this happened. Yes, it was covered up. No, it was not your fault. Yes, it was illegal.” That acknowledgment is the most healing part.https://ff512a195178562804b09bc8af479180.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html
If you ask many survivors, they will tell you, “I would not have settled. I did not want the money—I just wanted them to admit what they did.” The Church often denies it, even to your face. They will tell you, “It never happened,” or “You are crazy.” But when you have hundreds of pages of documents showing the truth, you finally have something undeniable.
Jacobsen: How does the Church internally frame these cases?
Casteix: As short-term liabilities. And this is just my opinion. The Catholic Church operates on what I call “geological time.” It thinks in centuries. It is run by men who have never had to feed a family or pay bills. Their understanding of money is limited to what appears on a ledger.
For most of its history—until maybe eight or nine years ago—the Church saw abuse survivors as temporary problems. The thinking was: “Yes, the kid was abused, but now the kid is a mess, a drug addict, a liar.” So they wrote that child off. Their loyalty lay with the priest, not the victim, because the Church had already invested heavily in that priest’s education, housing, and lifelong support. It was easier to protect him than to face accountability.
And priests are not exactly employable outside the Church. They cannot simply become plumbers or lawyers. So the institution doubles down on protecting them. Survivors, meanwhile, are treated as disposable—people to be vilified, marginalized, or discredited. The goal is to run out the statute of limitations, label them as enemies of the Church or even of Jesus himself, and move on.
Jacobsen: When the Church treats survivors as short-term liabilities, part of that seems to involve institutional gaslighting—essentially trying to convince victims that they are misremembering or exaggerating what happened. By “gaslighting,” do you mean that in the institutional sense?
Casteix: Yes, absolutely. Institutional gaslighting. The Church tells survivors things like, “You’re the only one,” or, “We found no evidence that anything happened.” I once had an attorney for the Diocese of Orange look me directly in the eye and say, “I went through your file—there was no evidence whatsoever that anything happened to you. I’m so sorry you feel that this happened.” That was the language: I’m sorry you feel that way, instead of I’m sorry for what we did.
They frame it as, “Let bygones be bygones,” or, “Things happened in the past, but let’s move forward.” It is a way to erase accountability. The gaslighting is intense, and they have done an equally effective job conditioning ordinary Catholics to believe that speaking out about abuse is wrong or disloyal to the Church.
When I came forward in 2003, other Catholics—even people I knew—wrote to me saying, “Joelle, how dare you do this? Are you even sure it happened?” Years later, some of those same people admitted, “The reason I was so mad at you is because I was ashamed about what happened to me. You made me face it.” The gaslighting operates on multiple levels: it isolates the survivor, controls the community’s perception, and protects the institution.Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
Jacobsen: In my research on evangelical denominations, I have noticed some of the exact mechanisms—pastors or leaders using coded theological language to stigmatize victims. For instance, a woman who speaks out against abuse might be labelled a “Jezebel” or referred to as “that woman,” which in their community is shorthand for someone deceitful or morally corrupt. To outsiders, it doesn’t sound very sensible, but within that theology, it signals that she should be shunned. Does something similar occur in Catholic settings?
Casteix: Yes. Absolutely. In the Catholic Church, women are stereotypically placed into one of two categories: the virgin or the whore. You are either the saintly mother or the fallen woman. There is no middle ground.
When it comes to abuse, this mindset becomes devastating. If you have seen The Keepers on Netflix—a six-part documentary—you know that many of those young women were sexually abused by priests in high school. But the Church did not see them as victims. It saw them as temptresses.
Abuse of boys was treated as abhorrent and sinful. Still, abuse of girls was rationalized—”at least he’s not abusing boys.” That is the mindset. I believe that there are far more female survivors in the Catholic Church than have ever come forward, precisely because they were conditioned to believe it was their fault all along.
Women are not empowered in the Catholic Church. They are not taught that they are equal or that their voices matter. So when abuse happens, it is easy for them to internalize blame: “The priest is the embodiment of God on Earth; if he sinned, I must have caused it.” That is the underlying theology that enables silence.
Women in this system are trapped in a binary—the virgin or the whore—and both categories serve to keep them powerless. It is not an easy place to be a female survivor of abuse in the Catholic Church.
Jacobsen: Not in the negative evaluation, the negative balance of “whore,” although certainly that is within the implication. Also, in popular culture in the United States, I am aware of the Madonna–whore complex that is colloquially discussed. But in terms of what women are supposed to be within the theology—and therefore the social gender roles derived from it—it is Mother Mary or Virgin Mary.
Casteix: Yes, right. A great point, yes.
Jacobsen: That duality. Then another might be the barren woman, the inverse of the mother.
Casteix: The Catholic Church—although they do not emphasize it as much now—has a long tradition of consecrated virgins. These are women who, and I had not even heard of this until I was an adult and visited Rome, dedicate their lives to God through a formal consecration ceremony. They are not nuns; they are everyday women who have jobs and lead normal lives, but they take vows of perpetual virginity. It fits neatly into that same mould of idealized femininity.Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
Jacobsen: I do not suspect that they are Ceausescu’s henchmen going in to check on whether or not they are having sex—or how do you confirm this label?
Casteix: It is a vow. You cannot confirm the celibacy of any person who has taken such a vow. You cannot verify it for men either.
Jacobsen: That is right. From the research with which I am familiar—for instance, Pokrov was active, and then Prosopon Healing compiled data to build a database further from them—there is enough evidence for a rough four-quadrant analysis. Anyone can be a victim, but statistically, based on verified cases and legal filings, pedophilic assaults tend to involve boys, while sexual assaults against adults are more often against women. Does that align with your understanding of how things have played out?
Casteix: I do not think there is sufficiently reliable data on that, because within the Catholic Church, there is such a repressed view of sexuality that priests will never be forthcoming about their relationships with adults. For example, there was a bishop in Santa Rosa, G. Patrick Ziemann, who was accused of coercing adult men into sexual relationships. One of them sued him, and all of them were adults.
Some studies suggest that around 80% of priests are not celibate. Still, many of them are engaging in consensual relationships with adults, so they are not committing crimes. Historically, the priesthood also became a refuge for closeted gay men. When I graduated from high school in 1988, I had three male friends who were gay but had not come out. They went to their priests for guidance, and the priests told them, “You should join the priesthood because you have to be celibate there.” So these poor kids were funnelled into that life. Two of them became priests and later left.
Once you are inside that culture, there is a kind of quid pro quo—it is “everybody’s doing it.” So I do not think we will ever have reliable data on whether men or women are victimized more in the adult sphere.
In the case of children, we have seen many different kinds of perpetrators. Some were what I would call omnisexual. Take Oliver O’Grady, for instance—he sexually assaulted boys and girls alike. Also, he had relationships with women to gain access to their children. He did not care about gender or age. Michael Baker did something similar: he groomed mothers to get close to their sons. That was how he cultivated access and control.
There’s another priest in the Bay Area who did the same thing. That pattern was familiar. You see these priests who are what I call the “omnisexual” types—they do not have a specific preference. Others, however, have a clear pattern or “type” and build entire communities around that access.
For example, in Orange County, we had Richard Coughlin, who abused prepubescent boys. To gain access, he founded a boys’ choir that operated for more than thirty years. The chorus still exists today, which is astonishing to me—people still send their sons there. And we are now seeing more survivors come forward, including women who were abused as little girls.
Especially in Southern California, where there is a large Latino Catholic population, the culture has made it even harder for girls to speak out. If a girl came forward and said, “Father so-and-so did something to me,” her mother might slap her across the face and say, “You’re sinful.” If a boy said something, the family might at least sense that something was wrong. So the reaction toward girls was very different.
That is why I do not think we have good enough data. We probably never will, because the people we would need data from—the Church hierarchy—are not honest brokers. It is not that they are insane; it is that no one in that system is going to fill out a form saying, “Yes, I prefer prepubescent boys,” or “Yes, I assault adult women.”
We regularly see cases of adults being sexually assaulted as well. There was a case in San Diego, where he invited a nineteen- or twenty-year-old woman to his rectory on New Year’s Eve and violently raped her. She went to the police and filed a report. The priest claimed, “There were lots of people there; I just patted her on the back.” Then he organized parishioners to protest the victim’s mother’s Bible study classes and had her brother expelled from the church. The District Attorney tried to prosecute, but the victim withdrew, even though the evidence was strong.
A few years later, I received an email from someone in Oklahoma City who said, “Hey, this priest is at our parish—we think it’s the same guy.” And it was. The Church had quietly transferred him out of San Diego and hidden him in Oklahoma. The bishop in Oklahoma City was reportedly furious—he had not been told the truth. The priest went on to assault women there as well and was eventually arrested.
The Church did not see it as a problem. Suppose the perpetrator had abused children or stolen money. In that case, they might have acted quickly to remove him or bury the story. But when the victims were women, it was not treated as seriously.
Jacobsen: Within the Catholic Church, the pattern is distinct and, in a way, easier to classify than in the Eastern Orthodox case. In Orthodoxy, even though Patriarch Bartholomew is considered “first among equals,” the churches are self-governing, decentralized, and more complex to map institutionally. The Catholic Church, by contrast, is pyramidal—hierarchical, centralized, and global.
Suppose an order comes from the top to conceal wrongdoing. In that case, the system ensures that the cover-up continues for decades, three, sometimes four generations of leadership. Much of this traces back to the era of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), who led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handled abuse cases.
So, let’s say hypothetically that five out of every hundred priests commit acts of sexual abuse. If Church policy then transfers each of those priests to four new parishes, the apparent rate—based on observed incidents—would inflate to twenty out of every hundred priests, even though the actual number of abusers remains five. The institutional practice of relocation multiplies the harm and distorts the statistics.
If the Church had implemented meaningful canonical reforms and mandated external reporting—say, to independent civil authorities rather than internal ecclesiastical channels—it could have contained the crisis decades ago. Instead, its secrecy policy perpetuated systemic abuse and compounded the suffering of survivors.
Jacobsen: Is that basically what generally happened?
Casteix: So, I am not a data person. There are two people you should talk to about the data: one is Patrick Wall, and the other—ironically—is my husband. He was responsible for compiling a lot of that information.
The main data set comes from the John Jay College Study, commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. They compiled and cross-referenced lists of known priest perpetrators and reports from dioceses across the country. At its peak, the study found that roughly four percent of priests had credible accusations of abuse. But when survivor networks and advocates expanded the dataset through lawsuits and archives, that number—based on identifiable, named individuals—rose to closer to 20% in certain dioceses. These were not anonymous complaints; these were named priests or priests flagged by their superiors as known problems.
The pattern of movement is one of the most evident warning signs. When a priest is ordained, there is usually a predictable career trajectory: their first parish lasts around five years, their second around seven, their third about fourteen, and so on. If someone deviates sharply from that pattern—say, they move every year or two, take unexplained leaves, or are suddenly transferred to obscure assignments—that is when advocates start to pay attention.
Survivors and watchdog groups often use the Official Catholic Directory—that enormous annual publication listing clergy assignments—to track these movements. It is now online, which makes it easier to map a priest’s history. Most priests follow a steady pattern: seven years here, fourteen there, maybe a short sabbatical. But then you will find the outliers—priests who bounce around erratically. That pattern usually indicates one of two things: they are either on the fast track to the Vatican or they are a problem being quietly moved.
So that irregular trajectory often tells us who the Church itself has identified as a risk. We cannot say with certainty, “This person is a perpetrator,” just by looking at the record—but we can say, “The Church clearly thought something was wrong.” Those men are often sent away to remote places—Guam, an Indian reservation, or Alaska—or quietly retired to isolated communities like San Dimas, with restrictions on being around children.
The data we have is not inflated. In fact, they are almost certainly underreported. When the first wave of cases came to light in the early 2000s, the peak appeared to be in the 1980s. But that was only because it takes survivors an average of thirty years to come forward. As time passes, the bell curve shifts—now the data show higher peaks in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Church tried to argue that the problem was unique to “the crazy eighties,” but that is simply false.
So yes, the actual numbers are higher. This is one of the most underreported crimes in existence, mainly because of complications with order priests versus diocesan priests.
Diocesan priests belong to a specific diocese and report to a bishop. Order priests—such as Jesuits, Franciscans, or Oblates—belong to religious orders with distinct chains of command and international mobility. That makes accountability harder. Survivors often only know a priest by his first name—”Father Mike” or “Father Steve.” If there are nineteen “Father Mikes,” identifying the right one can be nearly impossible.
So, the numbers are likely far higher than what is reported. The apparent decline in cases does not necessarily reflect fewer perpetrators—it reflects fewer priests. The pipeline has collapsed.
Not my generation, but the one before—those men were entering seminary at thirteen. That is part of a larger shift. Christianity itself is in decline, and the priesthood is no longer attracting young men. Those who do enter are often older, sometimes second-career seminarians. But yes, abuse still happens. The difference is that the pool of priests is smaller, and the institution’s capacity for cover-up—while not gone—has shrunk along with it.
Jacobsen: In religious organizations, is abuse increasing or decreasing?
Casteix: I do not know. I do some work with evangelical churches—the Southern Baptist Convention, for instance—and I can tell you this: anytime you have a hierarchical structure combined with a charismatic personality, you are prone to abuse. People often accuse me of being “anti-church.” I am not. Churches themselves do not make bad people.
Bad people are attracted to churches because those institutions provide instant credibility, instant access, and instant cover. The same applies to other environments. When people say, “Oh, there are teachers abusing children,” it is not because public schools are bad—it is because people with predatory inclinations seek out environments where they can access vulnerable populations. A person who wants to abuse children might think, “You know what would give me access? Becoming a gym teacher.”
So the real issue is not the church or the school—it is about training institutions to identify problematic personalities early and remove them before they cause harm.
The Catholic Church, oddly enough, has been forced to do this somewhat effectively simply because fewer people are entering the priesthood. The seminaries are empty; it is no longer a sustainable lifestyle. Many of the priests now being ordained are from Africa and Vietnam, where vocations are still growing. Even so, the Church is losing ground in Latin America, where large portions of the population are turning to evangelical Christianity.
So, the institution is changing, but problems persist—especially with volunteers, choir directors, and teachers within Catholic settings. They are protected by the same internal systems that once shielded priests.
For example, I was not abused by a priest. I was abused by a choir teacher at my Catholic high school, which was under the Diocese of Orange. He was protected by the exact mechanisms that protected priests—the same kind of confidential file, the same pattern of documentation, and the same layers of institutional silence. The only real difference between his file and a priest’s file was that the diocese withheld taxes from his paycheck. That was it.
Jacobsen: Where has the Catholic Church done well in addressing these issues—aside from what we already know they did wrong?
Casteix: That is a fair question. I do not know if I would call it “doing well.” Still, the Catholic Church was the first large organization to be placed under such intense public scrutiny. The scope of exposure forced them into a kind of institutional reckoning. Many people in the Church—perpetrators, enablers, and even those who were simply negligent—were exposed for committing terrible acts or making disastrous decisions.
As a result, other organizations under similar scrutiny, such as the Boy Scouts of America, have learned from those mistakes. They have studied both the Church’s best and worst practices to improve their own responses.
Jacobsen: Has the Church learned from this?
Casteix: In some ways, yes. They now have policies and procedures designed to keep children safer than before. Programs like Virtus—which focus on awareness and prevention—exist to educate clergy, staff, and volunteers. But the Church remains deeply insular. They rarely invite outside experts or organizations to review their procedures or offer oversight.
I work with organizations that enter evangelical churches to teach practical safeguards—how to conduct background checks, design safe environments, and recognize red flags. The Catholic Church, by contrast, keeps these efforts in-house. If they opened the doors to outside professionals and allowed absolute transparency, not only would they become safer, but they would also rebuild trust with their communities.
So, the reluctance to let outsiders in—despite having improved internal mechanisms—is still part of the culture of secrecy. The Church could be a model for institutional reform, but only if it learned to share what it has learned—and to let others look honestly at the cracks still left in the walls.
Unfortunately, the Church is still litigating aggressively against survivors. I understand they have a fiduciary duty—a financial responsibility to protect Church assets—but they also claim to be a moral institution. You cannot claim moral authority while simultaneously re-traumatizing people you know were abused.
They are more open now, yes, more transparent—but that is a relative statement. They are better than they were twenty years ago, but I would still never feel comfortable sending my own child to a Catholic school or camp. They have not implemented the most basic safety protocols that any responsible institution should have in place.
If you walk into a well-run organization and ask, “What are your policies and procedures for protecting children from sexual abuse?”, the person in charge should be able to respond instantly: Here they are. They’re posted here, here, and here. Staff are trained regularly, and here’s the number to call if you suspect abuse. You can ask a teacher: Do you know the policy? And they’ll say yes.
But in Catholic schools, that infrastructure is often missing. Ask about reporting, and you’ll get, “Just come to me—I’m the principal.” It’s as if they’re still running on dial-up—metaphorically pulling out the old AOL disk and waiting for the connection. The culture is decades behind.
Will they make the pivot they need to make? Not anytime soon. But to be fair, we have come a long way since 2002, when the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation blew this open. Twenty-three years later, I never would have imagined we’d see even this level of exposure and reform. So progress exists—but it is slow, inconsistent, and far from enough.
Jacobsen: Let’s connect this to a broader question. If you look at the Larry Nassar cases, the #MeToo movement, lots of Hollywood cases, and the Catholic Church scandals—and even similar problems in the professional class of the handful of atheist organizations—what structural through-lines do you see?
Casteix: You always see the same architecture: a hierarchical system that prioritizes the charismatic personality over the welfare of the people it serves. Whether it is a priest, pastor, coach, or professor, the institution invests its energy in protecting that individual and the organization’s image, not the victims.
These organizations behave like corporations that only care about shareholders. But in this analogy, the shareholders are not the public—they are the institution itself and its power holders: the priest, the pastor, the principal, the president. Protecting reputation comes before protecting people.
You also see an ingrained belief that transparency is a flaw. Discussing abuse publicly terrifies these institutions because it risks exposure. So they suppress conversation, which allows the abuse to continue. You see fear, intimidation, and retaliation against survivors who speak up.
There’s also a hierarchical culture among children and young people in these systems. Look at the Nassar case: if you wanted to be a top gymnast, you learned not to complain. Speaking up meant losing your career. In Catholic schools, the student who complains is punished. In evangelical settings, the child who speaks up is told they are disobedient or unfaithful. Religious children often internalize this to mean, “If I complain, God will not love me.”
In secular institutions, the barrier is bureaucracy and the human tendency to avoid confrontation. People do not want to believe that someone they know—”Mike,” for example—could be a predator. So when a complaint comes in, the administrator says, “Mike, don’t do that again,” and Mike says, “Okay, I won’t.” And then, inevitably, Mike does it again.
It’s a universal human flaw: our wish to believe the best in others. In public schools, this dynamic has been devastating—principals not wanting to confront teachers, afraid of the fallout. They settle for a weak warning instead of accountability. “Don’t do it anymore,” they say. But without real consequences, the cycle repeats.
Jacobsen: So across sacred and secular spaces, the pattern is the same—hierarchy protecting hierarchy, and good intentions shielding evil.
Casteix: Until institutions start valuing truth and accountability over image and authority, this pattern will keep repeating—just with different uniforms. And then they think, “Okay, I’ll stop—or at least I’ll hide it better.” Those are the through-lines I keep seeing.
Jacobsen: Understood. Thank you so much for your time and expertise.
Jacobsen: Excellent. Thanks so much, Joelle.
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-