LAFAYETTE (LA)
The Current [Lafayette LA]
February 5, 2026
By Alena Maschke
[Photo above: After working for years to expose systematic child sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, Ray Mouton spent much of the past two decades in his chosen home of St. Jean Pied-de-Port in southwestern France. Photo courtesy of the Mouton family]
F. Ray Mouton, the Lafayette attorney who helped expose a church sexual abuse scandal that would spread across the globe, died in Jefferson, La., on Thursday.
As a young, successful attorney in Lafayette, Mouton in 1984 took on the defense of local priest Gilbert Gauthe, who admitted to sexually abusing 37 children and served 20 years for his crimes.
What followed was an unraveling of unforeseen proportions, exposing the systematic abuse — and subsequent cover-ups by the institution — within the Roman Catholic Church. Billions have been paid out by Catholic dioceses across the country, including the Diocese of Lafayette, on allegations of sexual abuse of minors.
A Catholic himself, and one whose family had donated land to the very diocese from which some of these first documented abuse cases stemmed, the decision to pick up Father Gilbert Gauthe’s defense is one that would haunt Mouton for some time to come, and prompted him to dedicate his time and energy to exposing the scope of the abuse and institutional cover-up.
In 2012, from his chosen home at the foothills of the French Pyrenees, Mouton published the novel In God’s House, informed by his years of investigating child sexual abuse in the church and the institutional efforts to conceal it.
“There’s not a day I don’t think about the children. When I was writing the book, whenever I wanted to quit, I thought about the victims and their families,” he told Reuters following the publication of the novel.
Mouton continued to spend much of his time in France, but recently returned more frequently for cancer treatment at Ochsner Medical Center – New Orleans, where he died Thursday morning at the age of 78.
“He had the unusual fortune of peering into one of the greatest institutional scandals of our time,” his son, Todd Mouton, tells The Current. “He never wavered in his calls for accountability.”
And while his work to expose church sexual abuse became a defining thread in his life, Todd said many who met his father would likely remember him for his creative pursuits and social nature. “He was multi-faceted,” the younger Mouton said.