DALLAS (TX)
Dallas Morning News [Dallas TX]
November 11, 2026
By Kevin Krause
One North Texas survivor of clergy sexual assault wants her alleged abuser in prison, not a church-affiliated treatment center.
The child sexual assault case against former priest Richard Brown in Dallas has shed light on the Catholic Church’s practice of warehousing accused pedophile priests at “in-house” residential treatment centers and remote monasteries — a practice documented in multiple attorney general investigative reports into clerical sexual abuse.
Many accused current and former priests such as Brown have been sent by the church to clerical retreats and monasteries across the U.S., according to state attorneys general.
Some of these facilities are run by religious orders that oversee priests who were accused or convicted of sex crimes against children, state attorney general reports show. The statute of limitations to prosecute them long expired, often because church officials delayed reporting the abuse or hid it from the public for decades.
Here, the priests live in a “peaceful, tranquil, serene, rural setting,” as described by one such facility.
The Dallas Diocese did not respond to emails or phone calls seeking comment about the practice.
Brown’s last known residence after being arrested in 2020 and released on bail was the Vianney Renewal Center in Missouri, near St. Louis, on a property located in a “tranquil rural setting,” its website says. Messages left with the center, located in Dittmer, were not returned.
The facility is run by the Servants of the Paraclete, a Catholic order that oversees troubled clergy who are not in public ministry and who face “particular challenges,” the Archdiocese of St. Louis says. The Vianney Center offers counseling and other services and provides a place of “growth and healing,” according to the archdiocese.
The Servants of the Paraclete has a troubled history of its own. It was established in 1947 in New Mexico by a priest who later came to believe his incurable residents should be made to live on a deserted island where they could do no more harm.
In 1964, a Texas priest named John Feit joined the order at its New Mexico treatment center where he had been a patient. This was after he assaulted one young woman in Edinburg in 1960, police and prosecutors said, and was a prime suspect in the murder of another young woman in McAllen the same year.
Feit became a top administrator there, supervising other predatory priests undergoing counseling and helping them return to ministry, according to church records that emerged in various victim lawsuits. Feit, who later left the priesthood, was convicted in 2017 of killing Irene Garza, 25, in 1960. In 2020, he died in a Texas prison where he had been serving a life sentence.
The Servants of the Paraclete had to close its New Mexico treatment facility in the mid-1990s due to mounting lawsuits over priests who received treatment there — only to return to active ministry and molest more children, according to allegations in those lawsuits.
Admittance to church-affiliated treatment centers was often referred to as “sick leave,” according to a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy abuse.
Prior to Brown’s 2020 arrest, the Dallas Diocese listed his status as “absent on leave.”
The Rhode Island attorney general’s 2026 report on clergy abuse said the Catholic Church preferred to deal with the problem “in house” by sending accused priests to affiliated treatment centers. The report called the Providence Diocese’s use of treatment centers another example of sequestering accused priests “in order to appease complainants and parishioners.”
“Certainly, psychiatric treatment might be helpful to some offenders,” the March report said, “but the Diocese’s overreliance and misplaced faith in the power of such treatment to prevent future abuse was at best absurdly pollyannaish and at worst a cynical pretext for facilitating the return of accused priests to active ministry.”
Two of Texas’ most notorious predatory priests — Rudy Kos and Edward Graff — were treated at the Servants of the Paraclete’s New Mexico facility. Both men went on to molest more children before they were ultimately arrested and charged, according to prosecutors in the cases.
Graff died in 2002 while awaiting trial in Texas on criminal charges, and Kos is serving a life sentence in Texas after being convicted in 1998 of abusing multiple boys.
“First and foremost, treatment appears to have served at least as a precursor, if not a pretext, to keeping priests accused of child sexual misconduct in active ministry,” the Rhode Island report said.
The Pennsylvania grand jury report was more blunt: “Put plainly, these institutions laundered accused priests, provided plausible deniability to the bishops, and permitted hundreds of known offenders to return to ministry.”
Terry McKiernan, co-founder of Bishop Accountability, a website that tracks clergy sex abuse cases, said church officials found themselves confronted with a big problem as molestation accusations mounted nationwide.
“There are probably something like a thousand prayer and penance priests in the United States now, so you’ve got to put them somewhere,” McKiernan said. “And Dittmer is one of the places where you put them.”
A chapel on the campus of the Vianney Renewal Center, a treatment center for troubled Roman Catholic priests, is seen Wednesday, May 3, 2006, in Dittmer, Mo. Nineteen priests and religious brothers from around the United States are being treated at the one-of-a-kind center for alleged sexually deviant behavior, including offenses against minors. Some are registered sex offenders. \
“It’s kind of a warehouse really,” McKiernan said about the remote Dittmer facility outside of St. Louis.
In such cases, bishops will typically order the priests to “live a life of prayer and penance,” he said. To satisfy that decree, he said, a bishop must find a place to house the fallen priest so he’s not a danger to the community.
“Hence you wind up with places like Dittmer,” McKiernan said, where multiple sex offenders are living together, somewhat like a halfway house.
One of Brown’s alleged victims is embittered by the contrast between their lives. She has battled a host of mental health problems since her abuse while he has lived quietly in tranquil environments without — so far — having to face criminal consequences.
“They kept him hidden away,” said the victim, who sued and settled an abuse case against the Dallas Diocese. “He’s just sitting there living out his life.”
The Dallas Morning News does not name victims of sexual assault.
The Missouri treatment center has been controversial, McKiernan said, due to questions over how much freedom the residents have to come and go. Monitoring, he added, has been an issue.
In Philadelphia, the Catholic archdiocese houses its “prayer and penance priests” at the Saint John Vianney Center in Downingtown, McKiernan said. The center’s website said it was founded in 1946 and is the longest-running “Catholic behavioral health and addiction treatment” facility in North America for clergy.
Like the Missouri treatment center, it’s named after Saint John Vianney, a forgiving priest born in France in the 18th century known for his “devotion to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.”
McKiernan said offending priests also were sent to live in monasteries.
In 2002, a spokesman for the Dallas bishop said Brown was living in a “cloistered monastery” where the priest could not be near minors. He said Brown’s ministry was restricted to serving fellow residents, but he refused to identify the hermitage, citing privacy reasons.
The remote New Mexico monastery where Brown had been living under the name “Father Peter” before his 2020 arrest was established in 1985 in Pecos, New Mexico. The residents of Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey lead a “simple way of life,” its website says.
A woman who answered the phone at the Abbey said most of the elderly residents who would have known Father Brown have died and been replaced by younger monks. The Olivetan Benedictine monastery, located 25 miles east of Santa Fe, offers group and individual retreats, as well as hermitages.
“We hope to bring prayer, healing, compassion and peace to the world as Jesus taught us.”
Kevin Krause has worked for The Dallas Morning News since 2003. He covers federal criminal courts and has been a journalist for 30 years. Kevin is a multiple recipient of the Stephen Philbin Award for excellence in legal reporting. Kevin earned a BA from Boston University.