LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Times
Newly released L.A. Archdiocese records showing how officials handled the priest sex abuse scandal have prompted a new call for law enforcement action.
The documents released Monday show that then-Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement.
The archdiocese’s failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement had previously been known. But the new memos offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation’s largest Catholic diocese to keep abusers from the attention of police.
DOCUMENTS: Los Angeles Archdiocese priest abuse files
The SNAP Network, an activist group that works on behalf of abuse victims, released a statement Monday calling on authorities to look into the new documents.
“We urge law enforcement to carefully evaluate all of these files and do the best they can to deliver criminal indictments to anyone who abused or knowingly endangered a child. It is only when criminals are punished to the fullest extent of the law that children are kept safe from abuse,” the group said.
In the confidential letters, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases, proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they had abused young boys.
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