Search Results for: gauthe

Three lawsuits have been filed in Lafayette since June against the Diocese of Lafayette and churches over alleged sexual abuse of minors that occurred decades ago, including an alleged victim of former priest Gilbert Gauthe, who admitted to sexually abusing more than two dozen children in a plea deal in the 1980s.

Gauthe’s is believed to be one of the first publicized cases of priest sex abuse in the country and the first to be criminally indicted, decades before such scandals surfaced elsewhere in the country. He served 10 years of a 20-year sentence in jail. According to news reports from 2019, he was living in San Leon, Texas, not far from Galveston.

The three lawsuits followed a June Supreme Court decision that upheld a state law giving abuse survivors a three-year window to sue for damages. The legislature in 2021 gave abuse victims three years to sue their abusers…

TEXAS
USA Today

Church abuse case haunts lawyer who defended priest

SAN LEON, Texas — Pedophile Gilbert Gauthe sought shelter and found it here.

At 68, the former priest convicted in the first sex-abuse case against the Catholic Church is, by his own account, suffering from cancer. He is a registered sex offender and between jobs. His former protector, Judge Henry Politz of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, is dead.

Any supplemental source of income that Gauthe may have is unknown. The Very Rev. Msgr. Richard R. Greene, spokesman for the the Diocese of Lafayette, La., where he committed his crimes said Gauthe receives no money from that diocese or from any other branch of the church.

Gauthe’s status as a cleric also is unclear. Greene said he believed Gauthe had been removed from the priesthood, laicized in church terms. But the diocese has no record…

LOUISIANA/FRANCE
The Advertiser

[with video]

Written by
Evan Moore

On clear mornings he can see the steeple.

It rises from a little russet-stone Catholic church in the village in southern France where Ray Mouton, former Louisiana lawyer-turned-expatriate-American author, now lives.

The view from Mouton’s terrace focuses squarely on that steeple as it cuts a vertical line through the horizon, reaching heavenward against a backdrop of the Pyrenees Mountains, a symbol of solace, hope and inspiration to man.

But not to Mouton.

Mouton has never been to Mass in that church. He has never heard a sermon there.

Mouton no longer attends church services. Not since the case of Father Gilbert Gauthe, whose horrific crimes against children in the Diocese of Lafayette set off a wave of scandal in 1985 that reached from southern Louisiana throughout the nation. Not since that wave rolled across the ocean to Europe, all…

A man who was sexually abused as a child by the first Catholic priest to attract national media attention was beaten to death earlier this month. Our hearts ache for his family and loved ones in the wake of this tragic loss. We have only heard Scott Anthony Gastal’s public story, but those who knew Scott personally realize that he was more than the worst thing that happened to him, and we hope that they will share that side of Scott in the coming days.

SNAP Louisiana leader, Letitia Peyton, called Scott’s murder was “a sad end to a life that was riddled with early childhood trauma.” But Letitia also credited Scott with “preventing so many other children from suffering the horrific abuse that he suffered,” and hailed him as “a truly brave little boy.”

Scott was repeatedly violated by Fr. Gilbert Gauthe. The…

A man who was sexually abused as a child by the first Catholic priest to attract national media attention was beaten to death earlier this month. Our hearts ache for his family and loved ones in the wake of this tragic loss. We have only heard Scott Anthony Gastal’s public story, but those who knew Scott personally realize that he was more than the worst thing that happened to him, and we hope that they will share that side of Scott in the coming days.

SNAP Louisiana leader, Letitia Peyton, called Scott’s murder was “a sad end to a life that was riddled with early childhood trauma.” But Letitia also credited Scott with “preventing so many other children from suffering the horrific abuse that he suffered,” and hailed him as “a truly brave little boy.”

Scott was repeatedly violated by Fr. Gilbert Gauthe. The…

A Lafayette man who was found severely beaten in Lake Charles has died, according to media reports.

Scott Anthony Gastal was found in the parking lot of a motel near the Lake Charles Event Center in the 1000 block of N. Lakeshore Drive around 10 p.m. March 2. Gastal appeared to have head injuries, and he was taken to a Lafayette hospital, where he died Tuesday.

Gastal, 50, was one of the first, at age 11, to accuse a Catholic priest of sex abuse, according to The Guardian. He testified in the 1980s that his priest, Gilbert Gauthe, had raped him.

Gauthe is believed to be the first priest in the United States to be openly accused and prosecuted for child sexual abuse. He served various church parishes in the Acadiana area. 

Reese Iles Chaumont, 28, of Lake Charles, was charged with second-degree battery,…

Critics say that the Archdiocese of Santa Fe’s roster of “credibly accused” priests should be longer — by 59 names — but the church currently has no intention of adding them.

If you have experienced sexual assault, sexual violence or unwanted sexual contact, you can contact the Rape Crisis Center of Central New Mexico at (505) 266-7711

When the Archdiocese of Santa Fe filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 3, 2018, church officials said they were dangerously close to burning through their financial reserves after settling lawsuits with nearly 300 survivors of sexual abuse that occurred in this huge religious district, which encompasses 19 counties in central and northeastern New Mexico and the cities of Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Taos.

As part of the proceedings at the federal bankruptcy court in Albuquerque, any “creditor” — the legal term used for abuse survivors — who had a financial claim against the…

A bombshell new report from NYT details the involvement of the New Orleans Saints’ office in “crisis communications” for the religious institution.

The sexual-assault crisis within Holy Mother Church continues to reverberate. But, I admit, on my Catholic Church Sex Scandal bingo card, I didn’t have deep involvement by a National Football League franchise, much less the one named after our glorious canonized dead. But, then again, this is Louisiana, so anything’s possible. From The New York Times:

So in July 2018, when Greg Bensel, the Saints’ head of communications, saw a local news story revealing that a former deacon who had been removed from the ministry after abuse accusations was serving in a public role at a local church, he sent an email to Ms. Benson. “The issues that the Archbishop has to deal with that never involve him,” Mr. Bensel wrote. In reply, Ms….

“Hecker the pecker checker.” That’s what one survivor called him. Roman Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker, of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Louisiana, pled guilty to aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature, and theft on December 3, 2024. He was sentenced to life in prison on December 18. He died on December 26, 2024.

Hecker was ordained a priest in 1958. Sexual assault allegations against him date back to the 1960s. Why did it take until 2024 to convict him?

This post explains that Hecker repeatedly assaulted children while remaining free from legal liability. Ramon Antonio Vargas of The Guardian, David Hammer of WWL, and Aubry Killion of WDSU provided detailed accounts of Hecker’s treatment by his archdiocese and by the courts of law throughout these difficult years. I am grateful for their stories.

1958-1960s

Hecker was ordained a priest in 1958 and quickly started molesting. One early victim was a preteen altar…

Just how long have Louisiana Catholic officials known about or suspected child sex crimes by their clergy? In these cases, a quarter of a century. That’s right: next month, we’ll welcome a new year – 2025 – which marks the 25th year since Louisiana bishops, chancellors, vicars general, and other top church staffers were told about reports that these clerics had hurt kids. And in each case, Catholic officials kept those reports secret for years or even decades.

1. Fr. Carmelo Ignatius Camenzuli In May of 2000, Baton Rouge church staff received a report that he assaulted at least one child in the early 1980s. Not until 2019 did the Baton Rouge bishop put his name on a church ‘credibly accused’ abusers list. Read more on Fr. Camenzuli. 
2. Fr. Patrick R. Kujawa In 2000, he was arrested in January of 2000 and charged with 62 counts of…

An elderly priest’s guilty plea exposes the church’s history of shielding predators in its midst for decades

In the case of serial child molester and retired Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker, the cover-up failed.

But it wasn’t for lack of trying by a coalition of high-ranking church officials and sympathetic judges, who prioritized the predator’s comfort above justice for his innumerable victims until the evidence against him was so overwhelming that – rather than stand the humiliation of a public trial – he pleaded guilty last Tuesday.

The 93-year-old’s decision not only saddled him with an automatic life sentence. It also exposed how Catholic bureaucrats in Hecker’s home town of New Orleans, one of the church’s strongholds in the US, repeated the same sins that produced an eerily similar scandal in Boston two decades earlier – events later immortalized in the Oscar-winning film Spotlight.

This is the only conclusion to draw from years of…

Seven lawsuits were filed in recent weeks against the Diocese of Lafayette by people alleging they were sexually abused by clergy when they were children, the latest wave of lawsuits since a June court ruling giving abuse victims more time to seek restitution.

Four of the seven lawsuits were filed in November, one on Nov. 12, in 15th Judicial District Court in Lafayette. Three others were filed Oct. 29.

One of the lawsuits, while not specifically naming him, appears to refer to alleged abuse by the former Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, believed to be the first priest in the United States to be openly accused and prosecuted for child sexual abuse. He served various church parishes in the Acadiana area. The lawsuit states that the defendant is living in San Leon, Texas, the last reported residence of Gauthe.

There are currently about 20 lawsuits pending against the Diocese of…

A Lafayette district judge on Monday rejected attempts by the Diocese of Lafayette to dismiss some claims by an alleged victim of priest sexual abuse but ordered disclosure of the victim’s name to be filed under seal.

Lafayette attorneys Seth Mansfield and Collin Melancon filed a lawsuit in August in 15th Judicial Court in Lafayette on behalf of the alleged victim identified in court documents as “JM John Doe” against the Diocese of Lafayette and Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church in Lafayette.

Lafayette is believed to be the first place where a Catholic priest, Gilbert Gauthe, was convicted of child abuse and jailed in the 1980s, long before such cases became public elsewhere. Gauthe served 10 years of a 20-year sentence after admitting he abused more than 30 children in the 1970s and 1980s.

The state Supreme Court in June ruled that victims of clerical sexual abuse have 

LAFAYETTE, LA (KLFY) — A new lawsuit has been filed against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette following an alleged victim of the infamous former priest, Father Gilbert Gauthe, coming forward, accusing the dioceses of negligence.

“We want to applaud this brave man for once again putting father gross’s name in the limelight. He, too, like these other priests, he too, is still alive and could still be a threat to kids,” said David Clohessy with Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. (SNAP)

The accusations against the diocese state they were or should have been aware of the risk in allowing Father Gauthe to remain a priest in the church and having access to children. The plaintiffs claim the Diocese and St. Mary Magdalen church in Abbeville pressured the victim’s family to remain silent about the abuse. Members of SNAP agree the diocese has a history of covering up…

There’s a prevalent misconception about abuse allegations that date back decades. Most people think that older accusations can’t ever really be proven one way or another. This is an ‘easy out’ for many – a way to throw up one’s hands, walk away, and feel OK doing so. But as we suggested when we used the word ‘misconception,’ we at Horowitz Law believe strongly that this notion – ‘No one will ever know the truth about these old allegations’ – is often simply not true.

Here’s a recent example from the ‘comments’ section of a major daily newspaper that reported about a recent abuse and cover-up lawsuit: “We face a conundrum here . . . there is no way to prove these allegations. We have nothing like DNA or a rape kit to provide the ‘smoking gun.’ It’s a shame that it can neither be proven or disproven.” Time and time again, we’ve heard and seen this sentiment expressed…

Geo, the name he prefers, sits in a coffee shop on a rainy afternoon as streetcars clang along outside. He is 64. He arrived at Madonna Manor, the Catholic orphanage he is now suing, in August of 1967, as a ward of Louisiana, age seven.

“My childhood was horrific,” he says matter-of-factly. “My father was an abusive alcoholic, my mother diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. Madonna Manor was a place where dysfunctional parents dumped their children. My mom was subject to electroshock therapy and thorazine. She lost a baby. She had a psychotic breakdown and was placed in a mental hospital. The state took me over.”

Thin, bearded, redolent of nicotine, he holds a sketchbook of his works.

He enjoys the fellowship of a drawing class once a week, sketching figures of live models. Alcoholics Anonymous helps too, he says, adding: “I have been sober since May 30 and intend to…

Phil Donahue was to talk show hosts as Fr. Andrew Greeley was to priests and Jason Berry is to print journalists: the first in his field to credibly address the Catholic Church’s then virtually unspoken problem of pedophile priests.

(At great risk, of course, the National Catholic Reporter was the first newspaper with a national circulation to write about abuses and cover-ups, before both Donahue and Greeley. The two men — and years later, many others — clearly read and were inspired by the NCR’s seminal work exposing this corruption.)

The internet wasn’t around back then and my memory isn’t flawless, so it’s possible that, technically speaking, other outlets may have discussed the abuse crisis even earlier than Donahue (perhaps an ultraconservative Wisconsin-based weekly called The Wanderer, for instance).

But none had anything like the reach and impact of “The Phil Donahue Show” (later shortened to…

At least one new lawsuit has been filed against the Diocese of Lafayette seeking damages from alleged sexual abuse by a priest as the state Supreme Court ruled June 12 to give abuse survivors three additional years to file lawsuits no matter how long ago the abuse occurred.

A St. Martin Parish resident, referred to by the initials C.V. in court records, filed a lawsuit June 11, the eve of the Supreme Court decision, suing the Diocese of Lafayette.

The 5-2 opinion says the “lookback window” unanimously approved by the Louisiana Legislature giving abuse survivors a three-year window to sue for damages is constitutional.

The legislature in 2021 gave abuse victims three years to sue their abusers no matter when the abuse occurred. Before that, survivors had until age 28 to sue.

The first publicized case of priest sex abuse occurred in Lafayette in the 1980s, when former…

Dear Attorney General Bailey,

To help kids who are at risk of abuse now and adults who’ve already been abused, we’ve repeatedly asked you to take a few simple steps.

Three of them you repeatedly ignore. The fourth you claim you can’t do. (We’re adding a fifth today.)

Frankly, we’re insulted and frustrated by your unwillingness to even seriously entertain our very reasonable requests.

But our feelings are secondary. The safety of children is, of course, what matters most. And in our view, you are refusing to do your civic and moral duty to protect boys and girls from unscrupulous, untrained and abusive staff at dozens of essentially unregulated, controversial, ‘under the radar’ purportedly Christian boarding schools.

Fundamentally, we believe that ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ We strongly believe you can do more than you’re doing now. And we know that it’s wrong of you passively and timidly sit back,…

At one point in the deposition even Hecker became overwhelmed at the number of times with which he has been confronted with sex abuse allegations.

WWL Louisiana and the Guardian have obtained a long suppressed, eight-and-a-half-hour deposition of a 92-year-old Catholic priest charged with physically overpowering and raping a boy in a New Orleans church in 1975. 

Taken in 2020 as part of a civil lawsuit demanding damages from him and the church, in the deposition, clergyman Lawrence Hecker provides the most complete account yet of how the US’s second-oldest archdiocese spent much of its recent history taking extreme measures to keep the public from finding out about his abusive past. The questioning – which the church has fought in court for years to keep hidden – also reveals steps the city’s last four archbishops took to help him avoid accountability for decades. 

Eventually, law enforcement officials were able to…

In unearthed deposition, Lawrence Hecker pleaded the fifth 117 times, but still provided damning details of decades-long predatory behavior

The Guardian and CBS affiliate WWL Louisiana have obtained a long suppressed, eight-and-a-half-hour deposition of a 92-year-old Catholic priest charged with physically overpowering and raping a boy in a New Orleans church in 1975.

Taken in 2020 as part of a civil lawsuit demanding damages from him and the church, clergyman Lawrence Hecker provides in the deposition the most complete account yet of how the US’s second-oldest archdiocese spent much of its recent history taking extreme measures to keep the public from finding out about his abusive past. The questioning – which the church has fought in court for years to keep hidden – also reveals steps the city’s last four archbishops took to help him avoid accountability for decades.

Eventually, law enforcement officials were able to obtain an indictment charging Hecker…

A Louisiana priest was convicted in the sexual abuse of the ex-deacon’s son. What followed was a lawsuit and now the Catholic Church’s highest censure.

A Catholic priest who sexually assaulted an altar boy in Louisiana is in prison, and a diocese has paid a settlement to the victim’s family. Now the diocese’s bishop has punished the victim’s father, a former deacon, with the Church’s highest censure: excommunication.

It was the latest turn in a yearslong battle pitting the former deacon, Scott Peyton, and his family against the Diocese of Lafayette.

The Peytons and the diocese have found themselves on opposing sides of a state law that gave childhood sexual abuse victims more time to file lawsuits.

The law, which was passed in the State Legislature in 2021 but struck down on Friday by the state’s highest court, did not apply exclusively to victims of clergy abuse….

Nuns Don’t Just Abuse. Some Enable Abuse

The issue of sexual abuse within the ranks of the Catholic Church has been a headline for many years now. However, a recent Associated Press article has brought to light an equally disturbing aspect of this crisis: the role of some nuns not only as perpetrators of abuse but also as enablers. Yes, tragically, some nuns abuse kids. Tragically, some also ignore or hide abuse by others. And tragically, some punish kids who speak up, thereby deepening their wounds and essentially helping their tormentors. This blog post aims to delve deeper into this grim reality, presenting instances of abuse, the enabling of such behavior by some nuns, and the implications thereof.

Instances of Nuns Enabling Abuse

The sexual victimization of boys and girls by Catholic nuns has sadly re-emerged in recent news, painting a grim picture of reality…

Bishop J Douglas Deshotel issued the order after Scott Peyton had resigned from his post, but the abusive priest was not censured

A Louisiana man who resigned as a Roman Catholic deacon after a priest at whose side he served sexually molested his son has been excommunicated from the church by his local diocese, a remarkably harsh punishment that his child’s abuser does not appear to have faced.

Scott Peyton’s excommunication from the Catholic church at the hands of bishop J Douglas Deshotel comes as the latter’s Lafayette diocese has asked Louisiana’s supreme court to strike down a law that retroactively and temporarily eliminated filing deadlines for lawsuits demanding damages for childhood sexual abuse from years ago.

The law which lawyers for the Lafayette diocese targeted wasn’t exclusively for clergy abuse victims, but it prompted many new cases of that nature against Louisiana’s Catholic institutions and clerics who worked for them.

Peyton…

It shouldn’t be hard to distinguish spiritual direction from psychological torture, spiritual friendship from coercive sexual abuse and violent manipulation, spiritual formation from moral plagiarism.

Several years ago, when I was living in Rome, a confessor told me: “You are too rigid.” I don’t recall precisely what year it was, but it was toward the beginning of the Francis era and “rigidity” was still a new buzzword.

Maybe the fellow thought I really was being too hard on myself, or something. I don’t have the slightest recollection of what the matter may have been, but I know I wasn’t beating myself up about anything. It was a run-of-the-mill, number-and-kind confession that shouldn’t have taken five minutes.

I thought of that when I read Gloria Branciani’s story of how Fr. Marko Rupnik would abuse her on long car rides and in other circumstances, and how he would chide her for rigidity…

Last month, we delved into the unsettling pattern of predator priests being transferred in and out of rural Louisiana, primarily focusing on the Lafayette Diocese. Since then, our scrutiny has turned to other predominantly rural dioceses in Louisiana, namely Lake Charles, Shreveport, and Alexandria. The troubling trends continue in these areas as we unearth more disturbing findings.

LAKE CHARLES

In April 2019, Lake Charles Bishop Glen Provost put forward a list of credibly accused clergy, appending two additional names: Fr. Edward Normanmtowicz and Fr. Valerie Pullman. The Diocese of Lake Charles encompasses the southwestern Louisiana parishes of Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, and Jefferson Davis.

Within this context, alarming evidence emerges of numerous clerics involved in child molestation. They occupy different locations, translating to rapid relocations. Take Fr. Charles Soileau, for instance. He was active in Houston, Texas, and several…

Admittedly, it might be a bit of a broad stroke when we talk about regional characteristics in the context of generous, gumbo-loving, and lively Louisiana. It could be a narrow, unfair assumption by those of us who live and work in a diverse coastal area like Miami; however, many share the perception that the South is more insular and isolated than other parts of the nation, with fewer immigrants and fewer families moving in and out of the region. You may be thinking, “What does this have to do with clergy sex crimes and cover-ups?” But bear with me on this one – because we’ve got something serious to get into, and it involves a dark side of Louisiana most wouldn’t dare to broach.

Are Louisiana’s Clergy Shuffling About More Than Usual?

Our recent research here at Horowitz Law is making us re-examine this view because our examination of predator…

A fellow ran down to the courthouse this week and got hitched, which, in itself, isn’t any sort of a headline. This groom, however, happens to be Howard Hubbard, the former Catholic bishop of Albany – the capital diocese in the U.S.State of New York – who is still a cleric and a bishop even in retirement, and that makes his nuptials more than a little news story.

That Hubbard got married even though the Vatican had told him “No,” after he asked to be released from the clerical state and be permitted to contract marriage … well, that makes this an even bigger news story.

The reason the Vatican denied Hubbard’s request is that Hubbard has admitted under oath to keeping abuse allegations against priests away from police and under wraps, and is currently facing no fewer than seven separate civil lawsuits alleging he personally abused people sexually both…

A fellow ran down to the courthouse this week and got hitched, which, in itself, isn’t any sort of a headline. This groom, however, happens to be Howard Hubbard, the former Catholic bishop of Albany – the capital diocese in the U.S.State of New York – who is still a cleric and a bishop even in retirement, and that makes his nuptials more than a little news story.

That Hubbard got married even though the Vatican had told him “No,” after he asked to be released from the clerical state and be permitted to contract marriage … well, that makes this an even bigger news story.

The reason the Vatican denied Hubbard’s request is that Hubbard has admitted under oath to keeping abuse allegations against priests away from police and under wraps, and is currently facing no fewer than seven separate civil lawsuits alleging he personally abused people sexually both…

It wasn’t until similar abuse allegations came to light in Boston that Lawrence Hecker was quietly retired in 2002.

Three days after the Feast of All Saints in 1999, Lawrence Hecker confessed to his superiors at the archdiocese of New Orleans that he had either sexually molested or otherwise shared a bed with multiple teenagers whom he met through his work as a Roman Catholic priest.

The roughly 15-year period, beginning in the mid-1960s, during which the admitted conduct unfolded “was a time of great change in the world and in the church, and I succumbed to its zeitgeist”, Hecker said in a two-page statement which he gave to local church authorities serving a region with about a half-million Catholics. “It was a time when I neglected spiritual direction, confession and most daily prayer.”

Hecker’s admission – less than two months after he had been…

The inevitable clergy sexual-abuse report from the Archdiocese of Baltimore is a major news story, for legions of valid reasons.

Baltimore is this nation’s “premier see,” the oldest diocese in the United States. This city at the heart of a once-thriving Catholic region that now in a demographic death-dive that is extreme, even by the standards of 21st century America.

To move closer to issues discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), we are also talking about the city and Catholic culture in which the Sister Catherine Cesnik vanished in November of 1969. This is the murdered nun who left behind friends, colleagues and former female students who were convinced that she was about to blow the whistle on serial abuser Father Joseph Maskell, one of the villains at the heart of the famous Netflix who-done-it “The Keepers.”

Yes, the former…

What a difference 30 years makes.

The watchdog organization Voice of the Faithful recently ranked the Catholic Diocese of Belleville the seventh most “financially transparent” diocese in the United States.

The lay organization’s 2022 report states that, while financial transparency wouldn’t have prevented clergy sexual abuse in the past, it would have kept the Catholic Church from secretly paying cash settlements to families of child victims in exchange for their silence.

“The horror of clergy sexual abuse … would have been reported, not covered up, and abusers would have been called to account for their crimes,” the report stated. “Victims of serial abusers would have been protected.”

Recognition for transparency in the Belleville Diocese is significant, particularly considering its reputation in the early 1990s, when victims, advocates, journalists and others complained that it had kept clergy sexual abuse hidden from the public for decades.

The Belleville News-Democrat published its…

An American journalist who was one of the first reporters in the world to expose the clerical child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church says Pope Francis “has gone far beyond his two predecessors in confronting” the issue.

Jason Berry (73), an author and documentary-maker who has a film showing at a Dublin venue on Saturday, said the current pope “has made his share of mistakes, not heeding Ireland’s survivor leader Marie Collins on genuine reform, and his failure initially to believe news reports about the scandals in Chile. But he did change, sacking a third of the Chilean hierarchy and getting to know survivors like Juan Carlos Cruz [a prominent international campaigner on the issue].”

Francis “is still on a learning curve, though he’s light years ahead of John Paul II’s scandalous denial and Benedicts’ failure to oust culpable bishops. After so much suffering caused by the church,…

Here is a brief timeline of events surrounding the clergy sexual abuse crisis and the establishment of the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”

1983

Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, suspends Father Gilbert J. Gauthe after he admits to having sexually abused at least three dozen young boys and girls. Lawsuits and trial over the next three years draw national attention to the issue of sexual abuse of children by priests.

1985

At June meeting, U.S. bishops have extensive discussion of clerical sexual abuse. A confidential report warns the crisis could cost the church billions of dollars. Individual dioceses and state Catholic conferences begin developing policies to respond to sexual abuse allegations.

1992

Allegations against James Porter, former priest in Fall River, Massachusetts, lead to 68 lawsuits. At June meeting, president of U.S. bishops’ conference issues a five-point statement summarizing guidelines sent to dioceses four years earlier. The…

The first six months of 2002 marked a watershed in how sexual abuse of children and the Catholic Church were seen in the United States, as well as an inflection point for how the Church responded to allegations of abuse against priests.

With the passage of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in June of that year, the bishops established national norms to hold dioceses accountable for protecting children and ministering to people who had been harmed.

The charter, which has been updated three times since 2002 and will be reviewed for a fourth update next year, starts with an apology to victims. Its 17 articles discuss how parishes should promote the healing of and reconciliation with survivors of clerical sexual abuse, respond effectively to allegations, ensure accountability and try to create a safe environment “to protect the…

COMMENTARY: The crisis in the Catholic Church burst into the public consciousness two decades ago.

This is the first in a series of Register articles and columns marking 20 years since the 2002 revelations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the toxic avalanche of revelations about decades of clergy sexual abuse of minors in Boston and beyond, two headlines are clear. 

The first is the unfathomable scope of what had happened and remained hidden prior to that apocalypse: tens of thousands of victims, thousands of clerical molesters, hundreds of bishops and senior chancery officials who had covered up the abuse and transferred the abusers, and the entrenched culture of corruption that enabled all of it. 

Before 2002, Catholics in the U.S. were familiar with the notorious cases of Father Gilbert Gauthe, who admitted to molesting 37 boys in…

[This is a Google translation of the Munich report’s Table of Contents. See also the full German text of the report, in which items in the Table of Contents are linked to the sections. For an indented version of the English Table of Contents, see the PDF.]

Sexual abuse of minors and adult wards by clerics and full-time employees in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising from 1945 to 2019

– Responsibilities, systemic causes, consequences and recommendations –

Attorney Dr. Marion Westpfahl, Munich

Attorney Dr. Ulrich Wastl, Munich

Attorney Dr. Martin Pusch, LL.M., Munich

Lawyer Nata Gladstein, Munich

Attorney Philipp Schenke, Munich

January 20, 2022

Table of Contents

A. PRINCIPLES …………………………………………….. …………………………………. 1

I. Mission and objective of the expert report ………………………….. 1

II. Summary of the main results …………………… 10

III. Terminological clarification ……………………… 21

1. Sexual abuse / sexualized violence ……………………… 21

2. Victims / Victims /…

The date Jan. 6 means different things to people. For me, as a Catholic, it is the Feast of the Epiphany. It marks the date on the liturgical calendar when the Magi, according to the Bible, brought gifts to the baby Jesus.

This year, the date became a polarizing remembrance of the 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection, riots or whatever else one calls it, depending on their political affiliation. For me, this Jan. 6 marked a special anniversary — the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking Boston Globe “Spotlight” team’s investigation into predator priests. The series of articles won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 in the Public Service category.

I must admit that the anniversary went by without much fanfare. It’s surprising, given that the ramifications from those original series of news articles reverberate within the church, both in the U.S. and globally, and that it was even made into…

In the United States, the terrible truth that Catholic clergy have sexually violated children has been known publicly now for at least 36 years. For this truth-telling, we are indebted to journalists such as Jason Berry. In stark and unsparing detail he documented in May 1985, writing for the Times of Acadiana (and NCR), the predations of admitted serial pedophile Fr. Gilbert Gauthe in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana.

Over the decades others followed Berry’s groundbreaking truth-telling, often against and despite enormous pressure to remain silent. Led by many courageous survivors and their families, of notable mention are the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), Bishop Accountability, the Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The New York Times and several state attorneys general.

In January 2019, ProPublica published an interactive national directory of credibly accused clergy drawing on the published disclosures of dioceses…

Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of a then-secret crime: Fr. Gilbert Gauthe molested a boy in Louisiana in 1972.

Over a decade later, that crime — and dozens of others Gauthe committed — became national news. (Thanks, in part, to NCR). Thus began an unprecedented and at times overwhelming deluge of abuse and cover up reports which eventually led to over 7,000 U.S. priests being publicly accused of sexually violating children.

If you’re a Catholic, chances are you’re tired of this seemingly endless stream of allegations of clerical corruption (though the flow of abuse reports has slowed in recent years). And at least a few times over the past two decades, you have likely worried, “I wonder if kids in my parish are safe?”

I hope you’ve also asked yourself, several times, “What might I do to help prevent abuse in the church?”

Well, if…

The story was broken by The Pillar, a Substack newsletter founded in early 2021 by former editors of Catholic News Agency.

It had all the hallmarks of a sensationalist tabloid sting.

On July 20, 2021, an article appeared alleging that a senior U.S. priest, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, had used the hookup app Grindr, with data from the app placing him at a number of gay bars. Burrill, the now former General Secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, promptly resigned.

But the report was not published by an outlet that many Americans would associated with such sex “exposés.” Indeed, most would have never have heard of it at all. It was The Pillar, a Substack newsletter founded in early 2021 by former editors of Catholic News Agency, that makes up just a tiny part of the Catholic media landscape in the U.S.

As a scholar of American Catholicism and culture,…

Do you think the Catholic clergy sexual abuse and cover up crisis started in Boston in 2002? Think again.  It really started much earlier, in 1983 in fact, down in Louisiana.

And now – finally, thankfully – there’s a new Louisiana law that may benefit some of those very first clergy abuse survivors who stepped forward, long before the pubic had even heard the phrase ‘pedophile priest.’

Many of those brave pioneers were victims of Fr. Gilbert Gauthe, the first U.S. priest to generate nationwide headlines due to his stunning crimes against kids.

His victims started filing abuse reports in the early and mid-1980s, eventually leading to Fr. Gauthe’s 1985 conviction on charges of molesting at least 39 boys, mostly in the Lafayette diocese.

Imagine, for a moment, what they endured. Horrific childhood sexual trauma, inflicted by a so-called “man of God,” who represented Jesus, who could forgive their sins…

[With thanks to Tom Doyle for providing the full text of his submission, including document exhibits.]

On January 3, 1988, an American bishop wrote to Archbishop Pio Laghi, Papal Nuncio to the United States. The purpose of his letter was to complain that a colleague and I had been speaking to the secular media about the clergy sexual abuse issue that was rapidly developing at that time. His closing remarks are reflective of the attitude then
and still apparent among some clergy and lay people in the Catholic Church:

“I am afraid that such articles [referring to one in which I was quoted] will continue to flow from time to time. The Church has weathered worse attacks, thanks to the strength and guidance of the Holy Spirit. So too will the pedophile
annoyance eventually abate.” (Letter of Bishop A. J. Quinn to Archbishop Pio Laghi, January 3, 1988; emphasis added.)

Two years…

Get Religion blog

Nov. 12, 2019

By Terry Mattingly

If you follow mainstream news coverage of clergy sexual abuse cases in the Catholic church, you know that there are two common errors that journalists keep making when dealing with this hellish subject.

First, there is the timeline issue. Many editors seem convinced that the public first learned about this crisis through the epic Boston Globe “Spotlight” series that ran in 2002.

This may have been when Hollywood grasped the size of this story, but religion beat reporters and many other journalists had been following the scandal since the Louisiana accusations against the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, which made national headlines in 1984. Jason Berry’s trailblazing book “Lead Us Not Into Temptation” was published in 1992. Reporters covering the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops chased this story all through the 1980s.

LANSING (MI)
WILX 10 NBC

September 27, 2019

The Catholic Church scandal has been making a lot of headlines in the last couple years but it goes back more than three decades.

It would be almost impossible to say when the first accusation of sexual abuse by clergy was made, but we know the church opened a treatment center for troubled priests in 1947.

The first major criminal case didn’t come to light until almost 40-years later.
What’s believed to be the first criminal case involving a pedophile priest happened in Louisiana.

Gilbert Gauthe was indicted on 34 counts of sex crimes against children. He pleaded guilty in 1986 and was sentenced to 20-years in prison.

Eleven years later, a jury in Dallas awarded 119-million dollars to 11-survivors of clergy sex abuse.

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Advocate

June 12, 2019

By James Gill

When the Baptists this week trooped off to Birmingham, Alabama, for their annual convention, for instance, sexual exploitation by clergy and staff was much in their thoughts. What used to be regarded as a Catholic curse has gone ecumenical. Thus, in April, repeat child molester Jonathan Bailey, former youth pastor at First Baptist Church in New Orleans, was sentenced to 23 years.

An investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News identified Bailey as one of 400 Southern Baptist church officials — four of them in Louisiana — to have been accused of sex crimes in the last 20 years. “There seems to be a growing sense of vulnerability and a willingness to address this crisis,” the Rev. Russell Moore, the Southern Baptists’ head of public policy, has said.

It’s about time, but then the Catholics…

RIVERSIDE (CA)
The Highlander

April 22, 2019

By Som Chaturvedi

Pope emeritus Benedict XVI is looking to the 1960s sexual revolution in search of a scapegoat for the sexual abuse prevalent amongst the Catholic clergy. In a recent letter, Benedict cited the 1960s sexual revolution as the reason for the recent history of sexual abuse in the Church, suggesting that the solution to the issue is “obedience and love for our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Unfortunately, Benedict’s letter fails to touch on any tangible issue. The question is not whether the Church is being secularized by the lascivious happenings of the outside world. Instead, the Church needs to examine options at the institutional level to ensure that this abuse isn’t allowed to continue. The letter fails to suggest any such option. There is no acknowledgment of the accusations of cover-ups that have been flooding the Church since the 1980s, and…

SAN LEON (TX)
Lafayette Daily Advertiser

April 22, 2019

By Kirsten Fiscus

A small walking path, impossible to travel without bending plants and palm fronds, leads from the roadway to the small, cramped apartment. Behind all the foliage at the end of the path in a courtyard, unseen from the road, is a large chicken coop with a dozen hens nestled together. They roll their heads around to eye the passersby.

An older man, his shoulders hunched, shuffles to the railing outside of an upstairs apartment. His dogs are barking loudly, and he comes forward to see. He looks over his 1970s-style, wire-rimmed glasses, this frail man peering out on to the overgrown court yard.

“Are you Gilbert?” the visitor asked.

The man squints and turns his head to hear better as the dogs continue to bark from behind his apartment’s screen door.

“Yes, hello,” he answered, extending his…

LAFAYETTE (LA)
Acadiana Advocate

April 12, 2019

The Lafayette Diocese on Friday released the names of 38 clergy members who have been credibly accused of child abuse.

The diocese release follows similar ones from four other Louisiana dioceses, including the Diocese of Baton Rouge and the Archdiocese of New Orleans, prompted by new pressure on church officials to disclose the identities of all offenders.

The Lafayette Diocese disclosure is particularly remarkable, as it is often considered “ground zero” for the decades-long Catholic Church sex abuse crisis, since it was the home of the first widely known abuser, Gilbert Gauthe, in the 1980s.

The list below, in alphabetical order, includes biographical information provided by the diocese or found in media reports, court documents and interviews.

Joseph Alexander

Age: Born 1933

Position: Priest

Served: St. Anthony of Padua, Eunice; Our Lady of Wisdom, Lafayette; Holy Rosary Institute; Lafayette; St. Thomas More…

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Associated Press

April 12, 2019

The U.S. Catholic diocese where the first widely reported case of clergy sex abuse became public in the 1980s is releasing a list of clery who face credible accusations of sexual abuse.

Bishop Douglas Deshotel (DEZ-oh-tel) of the Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana has said he’ll release the list Friday. The names of 33 priests and four deacons are on the list.

Other Louisiana dioceses have reported about 150 priests, deacons and other clerics. There may be some overlap, since the Lake Charles diocese was carved out of the Lafayette diocese in 1980.

The Lafayette Diocese employed the first widely known abuser, Gilbert Gauthe (goh-THAY). He pleaded guilty in 1985 to abusing 11 boys and testified that he’d abused dozens while serving at four churches in the diocese.

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times Picayune

February 23, 2019

By Tim Morris

The failures, missed opportunities, mistakes and criminal neglect that allowed a culture of child sexual abuse to take root and grow in the Catholic Church are all found in the story of the disgraced Louisiana priest Gilbert Gauthe.

The first Catholic clergyman in the United States to be indicted for repeatedly sexually abusing children, Gauthe’s 1984 case not only revealed his own repulsive crimes but evidence of other pedophile priests and a church hierarchy complicit in a systemic cover-up.

The tragedy is compounded by the fact that the church refused to heed the warnings that could have stemmed decades more of abuse. It also could have opened the way to reconciliation and healing for the sins that have left one of the world’s most influential institutions crippled by the scandals 35 years later.

The Times-Picayune reporter Kim Chatelain…

KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

February 21, 2019

By Jason Berry

Editor’s note: Jason Berry was the first to report on clergy sex abuse in any substantial way, beginning with a landmark 1985 report about the Louisiana case involving a priest named Gilbert Gauthe. In 1992, he published Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children, a nationwide investigation after seven years of reporting in various outlets. In the foreword, Fr. Andrew Greeley referred to “what may be the greatest scandal in the history of religion in America and perhaps the greatest problem Catholicism has faced since the Reformation.”

Berry followed the crisis in articles, documentaries, and two other books, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II (2004) and Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church (2011), which won the Investigative…

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune

February 20, 2019

By Kim Chatelain

Ray Mouton and Gilbert Gauthe could not have been more polar opposites.

Mouton was a flamboyant, well-heeled defense lawyer whose Louisiana ancestors included a governor, a United States Senator and the founder of the community that eventually became the city of Lafayette. He drove flashy cars, captured media attention, raked in big bucks and lived on a 15-acre estate with his wife and three children near the Acadiana fields where he had quarterbacked his school football team to a state championship.

Gauthe was the son of a struggling farmer, an introvert and a poor student. He was the oldest of eight children raised modestly along Bayou Lafourche in Napoleonville, a village with a total area of 0.15 square miles. Uncertain about his direction in life, the unassuming Assumption High School graduate entered Immaculata Seminary in Lafayette and became a…

KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

February 20, 2019

By Jason Berry

Editor’s note: Jason Berry was the first to report on clergy sex abuse in any substantial way, beginning with a landmark 1985 report about the Louisiana case involving a priest named Gilbert Gauthe. In 1992, he published Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children, a nationwide investigation after seven years of reporting in various outlets. In the foreword, Fr. Andrew Greeley referred to “what may be the greatest scandal in the history of religion in America and perhaps the greatest problem Catholicism has faced since the Reformation.”

Berry followed the crisis in articles, documentaries, and two other books, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II (2004) and Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church (2011), which won the Investigative…

KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

February 19, 2019

By Jason Berry

Editor’s note: Jason Berry was the first to report on clergy sex abuse in any substantial way, beginning with a landmark 1985 report about the Louisiana case involving a priest named Gilbert Gauthe. In 1992, he published Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children, a nationwide investigation after seven years of reporting in various outlets. In the foreword, Fr. Andrew Greeley referred to “what may be the greatest scandal in the history of religion in America and perhaps the greatest problem Catholicism has faced since the Reformation.”

Berry followed the crisis in articles, documentaries, and two other books, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II (2004) and Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church (2011), which won the Investigative…

The Media Project

January 1, 2019

By Terry Mattingly

It was in 1983 that parents told leaders of the Diocese of Lafayette, west of New Orleans, that Father Gilbert Gauthe had molested their son.

Dominos started falling. The bishop offered secret settlements to nine families – but one refused to remain silent.

The rest is a long, long story. Scandals about priests abusing children – the vast majority of cases involve teen-aged males – have been making news ever since, including the firestorm unleashed by The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” series that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.

This old, tragic story flared up again in 2018, and Religion News Association members selected the release of a sweeping Pennsylvania grand-jury report – with 301 Catholic priests, in six dioceses, accused of abusing at least 1,000 minors over seven decades – as the year’s top religion story.

“The allegations contained in this…

KNOXVILLE (TN)
Knoxville News

December 22, 2018

By Terry Mattingly

It was in 1983 that parents told leaders of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, west of New Orleans, that Father Gilbert Gauthe had molested their sons.

Dominoes started falling. The bishop offered secret settlements to nine families — but one refused to remain silent.

The rest is a long, long story. Scandals about priests abusing children — the vast majority of cases involve teenage males — have been making news ever since, including the firestorm unleashed by The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” series that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.

This old, tragic story flared up again in 2018, and Religion News Association members selected the release of a sweeping Pennsylvania grand jury report — with 301 Catholic priests, in six dioceses, accused of abusing at least 1,000 minors over seven decades — as the year’s top religion story.

“The…

NEW YORK (NY)
Commonweal

October 26, 2018

By David Castaldi, Joseph Finn, and Margaret Roylance

Attendees at the annual meeting of the Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference in Atlanta in 2015 (CNS photo/Michael Alexander, Georgia Bulletin)
Reports of sexual abuse and cover-ups within the church hierarchy have led to increased attention to the church’s secrecy around its finances. Until only recent decades, U.S. diocesan financial affairs were kept confidential and knowledge was compartmentalized; even some very highly placed diocesan officials were unaware of the settlements used to keep clerical sexual abuse under wraps. It was generally assumed that once contributions hit the collection basket, parishioners had no business knowing how the bishops used that money. What they would have learned is that the U.S. Catholic Church has spent $3.99 billion related to clerical-abuse settlements.

Before the Boston Globe’s 2002 “Spotlight” report, most Catholics in the pews thought that clerical…

WASHINGTON (DC)
Get Religion

October 22, 2018

By Terry Mattingly

For millions of Roman Catholics, the world began changing in the 1980s — with waves of headlines about clergy sexual abuse cases that eventually led to reporter Jason Berry’s cathartic 1992 book “Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children.”

The National Catholic Reporter wrote article after article about the scandals. A crucial moment came in 1985, when The New York Times published a brutal article about the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, who admitted that he abused dozens of children in parishes in rural, southwest Louisiana. HBO eventually made a movie — “Judgement” — about the Gauthe case.

Mainstream news reporters, including me, covered stories linked to the emerging scandal all through the 1980s, as the U.S. Catholic bishops met behind closed doors to discuss how to solve this hellish puzzle.

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The New Orleans Advocate

July 18, 2018

By James Gill

Pretty much the world’s first inkling that the Catholic hierarchy had been shielding pedophile priests came when Lafayette’s Gilbert Gauthe pleaded guilty in 1985.

New Orleans journalist Jason Berry was in the courtroom for the Gauthe hearing, and thus got to break the biggest, most sordid ecclesiastical story in many years. Now that NOPD is weighing charges against ex-deacon George Brignac, Berry notes how things have changed since the days when church policy was to say nothing and shunt the perverts of the priesthood off to prey on the children of a different parish.

Three years after Gauthe was sent to prison, New Orleans prosecutors dropped charges of child molestation against Brignac after the alleged victim refused to testify. But the evidence was evidently damning, for Brignac was promptly defrocked by then-Archbishop Philip Hannan.

So for…

UNITED STATES
GetReligion

Terry Mattingly

When you hear the term “breaking news,” what do you think of?

I think news consumers, at this point, are pretty skeptical about this term. They know, of course, that there really is such a thing as breaking news. Major decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court are breaking news. The attack on the GOP softball team was breaking news. Another van mowing down citizens on London Bridge would be breaking news.

Also, there are @POTUS tweets that justify the “breaking news” label. There are, in my opinion, many more that do not. And have we reached the point where “Game of Thrones” developments are truly “breaking news”? If not, I’m sure that’s just around the corner.

Anyway, like a few religion-news consumers, I received the USA Today email push product that pinned the “breaking news” label on a long, long news feature with this…

UNITED KINGDOM
The Sun

Allegations have been levelled across the world with the Vatican saying at least 3,400 credible cases were referred to it between 2004 and 2014

By Guy Birchall
12th July 2017

FOR years now the Catholic Church has been rocked by child sex abuse allegations on an almost biblical scale.

Accusations against priests have been levelled across the world with the Vatican saying at least 3,400 credible cases were referred to it between 2004 and 2014.

Years and billions of dollars later the full scale of the abuse around the world is not yet known, and the full extent may never be revealed.

Along with the allegations of abuse, cover-ups are also said to have been commonplace amongst the clergy.

But some countries have gone to extraordinary lengths to uncover the crimes committed by men of the cloth.

The Sun looks at just some of…

LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

[Msgr. Richard Mouton Funeral Announcement – News15]

Claire Taylor , ctaylor@theadvertiser.com June 21, 2017

Monsignor Richard von Phul Mouton of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette passed away Wednesday. He was 86 years old.

Mouton died at 2:21 p.m. Wednesday at Lafayette General Medical Center, according to his brother, Frank Anthony Mouton.

Funeral arrangements are not complete but will be handled by the diocese, he said.

“The monsignor would be the first to admit he didn’t walk on water,” Ted Power, former Daily Advertiser publisher, wrote in response to Mouton’s passing. “But he was a man with immeasurable passion for his faith and he spent his life driven to instill that passion and faith in others.” …

When Mouton was pastor at St. Mary Magdalene Church two parishioners approached him in 1976 with allegations about the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, according to Jason Berry, an investigative…

ARGENTINA/ITALY
Le Monde

[Pope accused of protecting priests suspected of pedophile acts in Argentina and Italy]

Le scandale provoqué par la révélation des viols subis par des dizaines d’enfants sourds et muets dans un institut religieux d’Argentine éclabousse jusqu’au pape François.

LE MONDE | 19.06.2017

Par Christine Legrand (Mendoza (Argentine), envoyée spéciale, avec Jérôme Gautheret à Rome)

Le pape François a-t-il ignoré plusieurs alertes sur la présence, dans un institut pour enfants sourds-muets en Argentine – son pays d’origine –, de prêtres qui avaient été accusés de pédophilie lorsqu’ils officiaient pour le même institut en Italie ?

C’est ce qu’affirment des avocats représentant des enfants qui disent avoir été victimes d’agressions sexuelles dans l’institut catholique Provolo de Mendoza, au pied de la cordillère des Andes, à 980 kilomètres à l’ouest de Buenos Aires.

Selon Carlos Lombardi, conseiller de la Fédération des survivants des abus sexuels ecclésiastiques, le réseau L’Abuso,…

UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, March 29

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

We’re grateful that President Obama is drawing more attention to an award-winning film about journalism and the Catholic clergy sex abuse and cover up crisis. But it should be noted that neither he nor any other US official has taken a single step to deal with that continuing crisis.

Six months ago, Pope Francis spoke to Congress, a body that has refused, over decades, to take a single action to investigate or expose clergy sex abuse and cover up by Catholic priests, bishops, nuns, seminarians and brothers.

Individual members of Congress have TALKED about the crisis. (In 2005, then-Senator Rick Santorum, for instance, cited Boston’s “liberalism” as a…

TEXAS
The Dallas Morning News

Julieta Chiquillo

Before a 2002 Boston Globe investigation rocked the Catholic Church and inspired an Oscar-winning movie, Dallas reporter Brooks Egerton was unveiling the church’s systemic cover-up of pedophile priests.

Egerton was an editor at The Dallas Morning News in the early 1990s when Rudolph “Rudy” Kos was accused of molesting boys at several Dallas-area churches. The newspaper was covering the priest’s civil trial, but Egerton pushed for reporting that went beyond the courtroom.

He was aware of sexual abuse scandals involving priests across the country — most notably in Louisiana, where priest Gilbert Gauthe admitted he abused dozens of children — and saw a story much larger than one bad priest.

“The details of the South Louisiana stuff were just shocking, and to think that it could have happened anywhere, much less in multiple places, was kind of shocking,” Egerton said Monday.

Four…

UNITED STATES
USA Today

William F. Baker February 23, 2016

It is just a single line of dialogue from Spotlight, up for Best Picture and five other Academy Awards this Sunday, but it could be a movie in itself. It’s an allusion to an entire unknown chapter in the history of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals: the role of the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) in first uncovering the clerical conspiracy to shield abusing priests.

“Have you read Jason Berry’s book? He wrote about the Gauthe case,” an abuse survivor asks the team of investigative reporters featured in the film.

The survivor, Phil Saviano as portrayed by Neal Huff, holds up a copy of Berry’s 1992 book, Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children, which expanded on Berry’s reporting for the Times of Acadiana in partnership with the NCR.

The June 7, 1985,…

LOUISIANA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2016

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home,davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

A new bishop has been picked to head the Lafayette Louisiana diocese (where more than 30 years ago, Fr. Gilbert Gauthe became the first pedophile priest in the US made national headlines.) We think this is another irresponsible move by Vatican officials.

A Louisiana native, Auxiliary Bishop Douglas Deshotel of Dallas has been in the “inner circle” in that diocese for years. He’s also been on the priest personnel board and the ‘review board’ that looks at clergy sex abuse reports. We have seen no evidence, however, that he has done anything noteworthy to protect kids and deter cover ups by exposing those who commit or conceal heinous crimes…

TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, 314 645 5915 home,davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

An assistant Dallas bishop has been picked to head the Lafayette Louisiana diocese (where more than 30 years ago, Fr. Gilbert Gauthe became the first pedophile priest in the US made national headlines.) We think this is another irresponsible move by Vatican officials.

Auxiliary Bishop Douglas Deshotel has been in the “inner circle” in the Dallas diocese for years. He’s also been on the priest personnel board and the ‘review board’ that looks at clergy sex abuse reports. We have seen no evidence, however, that he has done anything noteworthy to protect kids and deter cover ups by exposing those who commit or conceal heinous crimes against children. So…

WASHINGTON (DC)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

SNAP: “100,000 US clergy abuse victims, but federal officials do nothing”
Group applauds governmental investigations and reports in other countries
Two United Nations panels have done probes and attacked church hierarchy
Organization says “Welcoming Francis is fine but, for kids’ sake, challenge him too”

What:
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims will blast US federal officials for “doing nothing” about the on-going child molestation and cover up scandal in the church. They will call on

–Congress to hold hearings into the crisis, and–the Justice Department to make crime-fighting funds to states contingent on reforming archaic child safety laws.

They will also

–urge Pope Francis to stop bishops from fighting secular child safety reforms, and
–urge “everyone who saw, suspected or suffered” child sex crimes and cover ups…

UNITED STATES
Washington Examiner

By DAVID CLOHESSY • 9/21/15

It’s ironic that Pope Francis will soon speak to the United States Congress, because the U.S. is one of the western democracies that was most hard-hit by the priest sexual abuse crisis and also lacked any federal response to it whatsoever. No federal legislation or regulations or even resolutions were proposed or adopted. There were no congressional hearings. There was no Justice Department investigation. Nothing.

Abroad, a number of national and regional governments have conducted investigations and issued reports about this continuing crisis, including Ireland, Australia, Canada and Belgium.

Non-profits, like the Child Rights International Network and Amnesty International, have done investigations. International bodies, like the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee Against Torture, have done investigations,

But since the first U.S. pedophile priest made national headlines 30 years ago (Father Gilbert Gauthe of…

UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Aug 3, 2015

It’s been 30 years since Jason Berry broke the Catholic sex abuse story by courageously reporting on the case of serial abuser Fr. Gilbert Gauthe in Louisiana. When national publications refused to touch the story, Berry published his investigation in the Times of Acadiana, and that little paper proved to be the mouse that roared. The National Catholic Reporter immediately took the plunge and before long the mainstream media lost its fear of reporting how bishops systematically put the protection of their clergy and their church’s reputation ahead of the protection of minors.

NCR marked the anniversary last month with a tough editorial, which has drawn an appropriately non-confrontational response from Bishop Edward J. Burns of Juneau, Alaska, chairman of the Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People of the U.S. Catholic Conference…

WASHINGTON (DC)
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas C. Fox | Aug. 1, 2015

ALEXANDRIA, VA — Dominican Father Thomas Doyle, who has worked with survivors of priest sex abuse for more than three decades, said Friday he continues to grapple with its full dimensions.

“It just seems too big to get my head around,” he said.

Dolye spoke Friday at the 2015 gathering of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), which drew several hundred abuse survivors and supporters to the Westin Alexandria hotel here.

He mused, considering the many years of work survivor supporters have been engaged in, adding the when they got into the work “there was no plan.” Those who got into efforts to bring priest sex abuse to the full attention of the church and force bishops to be accountable, he said, “still did not understand the widespread nature of sex abuse within the church.”

…

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jason Berry | Jul. 9, 2015
30 years ago

Editor’s note: This story is part of a weeklong series dedicated to looking back on 30 years of the abuse crisis in the Catholic church. Read all parts of the series.

The reports I did on clergy child molesters in the Lafayette, La., diocese changed my life in ways that reverberate still.

The June 7, 1985, NCR, with my long report on Fr. Gilbert Gauthe’s sex crimes, Arthur Jones’ piece on cases elsewhere, and NCR’s editorial calling for lay review boards, laid the issue before a national media that held back for years.

My piece condensed three articles I had done for the Times of Acadiana, an alternative weekly in Lafayette, the hub city of the regional oil industry (population 90,000). Editor Linda Matys, whom I had known in New Orleans, had given…

UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

This week, National Catholic Reporter is publishing a week-long series of articles looking back at the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church. I highly recommend this series to you. I was particularly moved by hearing Barbara Blaine’s story of how she (and others) came to found the group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. I’m not sure I had ever heard all the details of her own painful, liberating story — certainly not in her first-person narrative.

What stands out for me in this account:

1. After she was repeatedly sexually abused by her parish priest Father Chet Warren (who violated at least 21 other girls, to Blaine’s knowledge) from her early adolescence up to her graduation from high school, when she went to confession and told a priest about all of this on a senior retreat, the priest told her,

…

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

NCR Staff | Jul. 6, 2015 NCR Today
30 years later

1962: Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald, founder of the Paraclete Center to aid troubled priests in Jimenez Springs, N.M., meets with Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, head of the Holy Office in Rome, to warn him that there is no cure for pedophile priests.

1964: Fitzgerald meets with the new pope, Paul VI, to repeat his warnings.

1985: In May, Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, Fr. Michael Peterson and Ray Mouton present a 92-page document to a committee of the U.S. bishops’ conference, warning them to handle pending cases well, defend victims, and be honest with the public.

In June, NCR publishes its first exposé and editorial on sex abuse crisis. The story is based on Jason Berry’s reporting of the case of Fr. Gilbert Gauthe of Lafayette, La., who ultimately served 10 years of a 20-year…

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Caitlin Hendel | Jul. 6, 2015 NCR Today

Editor Dennis Coday is in Buffalo, N.Y., for the Catholic Press Association’s annual conference. In his absence, I agreed to write this column, always willing to take advantage of a good opportunity to promote what we do here at NCR.

Dennis and his team made it especially easy for me this week.

Let’s start with Pope Francis’ historic encyclical, released June 18, “Laudato Si’, Care for our common home.” What you’re seeing here in this edition of National Catholic Reporter represents a culmination of months’ worth of work, preparing for the much-anticipated letter, followed by dozens of news stories and analytical pieces that began with the unofficial leak of an Italian draft of the document on Monday, June 15. …

And, unlike what you’ll find with many other publications, NCR hopes to continue the conversation on…

UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 13

Statement by Peter Isely of Milwaukee, board member of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 414 429 7259, peterisely@yahoo.com )

Last week, Boston Cardinal O’Malley said the church needs new guidelines to discipline bishops who conceal abuse. He told journalists in Rome “When you don’t have a clear path to respond in cases of sexual abuse, people tend to improvise. And when they improvise, they make many mistakes.”

Two full years ago, O’Malley told the Boston Globe the very same thing: “. . .if you don’t have policies, you’ll be improvising, and when you improvise, you make a lot of mistakes,” he said.

[Boston Globe]

How many more children have been raped or sodomized by priests over those two years? How many bishops have concealed child sex crimes over…

UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2015

Statement by Barbara Blaine of Chicago, president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 312 399 4747, bblaine@SNAPnetwork.org )

In September, Pope Francis will address the US Congress, a body that has refused, over decades, to take a single action to investigate or expose clergy sex abuse and cover up by Catholic priests, bishops, nuns, seminarians and brothers.

Abroad, a number of national or regional governments have conducted investigations and issued reports about this continuing crisis, including Ireland, Australia, Canada and Belgium.

In the US, a number of local jurisdictions have done such investigations. They include New York (Westchester County Grand Jury Report, June 19, 2002 and the Suffolk County Grand Jury Report, February 10, 2003), New Hampshire (Attorney General’s Report with investigative archive, March 3, 2003), Maine (Attorney…

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Vimeo

Tom Doyle is a Dominican priest. He holds a doctorate in Canon Law and five separate master’s degrees. Tom served at the Vatican Embassy between 1981 and 1986 and while there he became directly involved with the clergy sex abuse case of former Fr. Gilbert Gauthe that received national publicity. After leaving the embassy he joined the U.S Air Force and served as a chaplain for almost 19 years. Tom worked with Ray Mouton and the late Fr. Michael Peterson, M.D., to compose the report on the problem of sexual abuse by clergy that served as the notice to the Vatican and to the U.S. bishops about the grave nature of the sexual abuse by clergy. He has served as an expert witness and consultant in criminal and civil cases throughout the U.S., in Canada, Ireland, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, the Netherlands and Israel….

LOUISIANA
The Advocate

BILLY GUNN AND RICHARD BURGESS| BGUNN@THEADVOCATE.COM RBURGESS@THEADVOCATE.COM
Sept. 07, 2014

LAFAYETTE — When revelations about pedophile priest Gilbert Gauthe hit the headlines in 1984, the Diocese of Lafayette was shaken by a clergy abuse scandal that, in the years after, spread nationwide.

Gauthe molested scores of children in the 1970s and 1980s throughout Acadiana as the diocese shifted him from one church to the next — and he wasn’t alone.

The scandal here unfolded to reveal other abusers in the priesthood, calling into question what the local Catholic leadership had known, what they might have done to conceal it and just how widespread the problem was.

It’s been some three decades since plaintiff lawyers and journalists first dissected church leaders’ actions, but recently unearthed court documents cast fresh light on an old scandal. The hundreds of pages of internal church records and depositions show the…

LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

Editorial

August 23, 2014

In the face of demands from a victims’ advocacy group, Bishop Michael Jarrell continues to stand firm on his resolve not to reveal the names of 15 priests on whose behalf the Diocese of Lafayette and its insurers paid $26 million to the families of victims in sex abuse cases that spanned the 1980s and ’90s.

In the place of information, representatives of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and the media have received only reports of shoddy record-keeping, poor memories on the parts of investigating bishops and flat-out refusals.

In response to questions from The Daily Advertiser, Jarrell would say only that seven of the 15 priests have died, five moved away and none are in the ministry.

We do know that one of them is Gilbert Gauthe, the infamous convicted pedophile who is reportedly living in Texas since…

LOUISIANA
KATC

[with video]

District Attorney Mike Harson tells KATC without victims coming forward, he can’t prosecute old cases of alleged sexual-abuse by priests.

The priest sex-abuse scandal was brought back in the spotlight after a sweeping investigation by Minnesota Public Radio last month.

The Diocese of Lafayette has acknowledged “credible accusations” against 15 priests, but is refusing to release their names. “The Bishop sees no purpose in releasing their names,” wrote diocese spokesman, Monsignor Richard Greene.

Msgr. Greene adds that none of those 15 priests are still in the church here, or elsewhere. Of those 15 only one, Father Gilbert Gauthe, ever faced criminal charges in Lafayette.

“Put out the 15 names,” says Abbeville attorney Tony Fontana, who represented a number of priest sex-abuse victims and their families. “Start showing that you care more about protecting kids than you do about protecting the pervert priests.”

LOUISIANA
KATC

[with video]

Newly discovered court records from the 1990s are giving us a look back at a dark era for the Diocese of Lafayette and the scope of just how many people were involved.

The church sex-abuse crisis has been back in the spotlight, after an in-depth report by Minnesota Public Radio last month. The report opened an old wound in Lafayette, which saw the first cases of priest sex-abuse in the country. When the scandal seemingly passed, federal documents relating to the scandal were unsealed in 1998. Those documents remained boxed-up in a courthouse in Ft. Worth, TX, until now.

KATC and our media partner, The Advocate, had 5 boxes of documents shipped in from Ft. Worth on Friday. The documents detail the Lafayette Diocese’s suit against their insurance company in the late 80’s. Among the documents are depositions from victims and members of the diocese,…

LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

By Claire Taylor
ctaylor@theadvertiser.com August 6, 2014

In December 2011, when the Diocese of Lake Charles received credible allegations that a former priest had sexually abused boys, church officials immediately reported it to police.

That’s what church leaders are supposed to do, according to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People adopted in 2005 by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“The Diocese of Lake Charles immediately reports any allegations involving the abuse of minors to the local authorities,” the Rev. Nathan Long wrote on behalf of the Diocese in a statement to The Daily Advertiser this week.

But that wasn’t the case before church reforms that grew out of priest sex scandals across the nation, starting in the Diocese of Lafayette in the 1980s with the notorious former priest, Gilbert Gauthe.

LOUISIANA
Inquisitr

Bishop Michael Jarrell, a decade removed from the Diocese of Lafayette and its insurers paying out $26 million to the families of children molested by priests, doesn’t see the point in releasing the names of the guilty.

In a recent post from The Advertiser, it was revealed that the news site had queried for the names, but were rebuffed.

“Bishop Jarrell sees no purpose in such action,” Monsignor Richard Greene, media liaison, wrote in response to The Daily Advertiser‘s request for the priests’ names.

The Advertiser claims that it made the request after sworn statements from the 1990s came to light recently, including allegations by a young man that a priest still ministering in Lafayette sexually abused him. The priest and Diocese have denied the young man’s allegations.

“The obvious purpose is that failing to reveal these names may pose a serious threat or danger to even…

LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

Katie de la Rosa August 4, 2014

The St. Edmond’s Catholic Church priest accused of sex crimes in the 1970s told parishioners Sunday that the allegations that he sexually abused a young boy and coerced young men into having sex with him are false.

“I maintained my innocence then, and I maintain my innocence now,” said the Rev. Gilbert Dutel to a packed sanctuary at the 11 a.m. Mass. The congregation gave him a standing ovation at the end of his five-minute address.

Dutel apologized to his church for having to “forfeit the time” to acknowledge this issue, which was raised last week by an extensive Minnesota Public Radio report that re-explored the widespread sexual abuse within the church in South Louisiana beginning in the 1970s. Similar crimes are alleged to have appeared in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Then-Diosese of Lafayette Bishop Harry Flynn “concluded…

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National Catholic Reporter

Dennis Coday | Aug. 1, 2014 NCR Today

I hope you take the time to read David Gibson’s article on the 25th anniversary of the Survivor’s Network for those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. The history of that organization and its battle to defend victims of sexual abuse from priest abusers and ecclesial cover ups is an important chapter in the larger history of the Catholic church.

That history is also intrinsically intertwined with the history of NCR, something that I have been rediscovering in my preparations for NCR’s 50th anniversary, which is Oct. 28. Readers of our print publication will know that I have been writing a history column, highlighting significant events and personalities NCR has reported on over the last 50 years. Here is an excerpt from a column I did in June, looking back 29 years:

Issue of June 7,…

LOUISIANA
The Advertiser

Claire Taylor August 1, 2014

Ten years after admitting the Diocese of Lafayette and its insurers paid more than $26 million to the families of children molested by priests, Bishop Michael Jarrell this week refused to release the names of those priests.

“Bishop Jarrell sees no purpose in such action,” Monsignor Richard Greene, media liaison, wrote in response to The Daily Advertiser’s request for the priests’ names.

The Advertiser made the request after sworn statements from the 1990s came to light recently, including allegations by a young man that a priest still ministering in Lafayette sexually abused him. The priest and Diocese denied the allegations.

“The obvious purpose is that failing to reveal these names may pose a serious threat or danger to even more innocent children in this diocese than these men have already injured,” Ray Mouton wrote in an email to The Advertiser.

Mouton…

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The Amrican Conservative

By ROD DREHER • July 21, 2014

Minnesota Public Radio’s Madeleine Baran is doing an incredible job of reporting on the roots of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’s current clerical sex abuse scandal. I was stunned to discover from her reporting that the present-day scandals there have their roots in the Diocese of Lafayette, La.

She got her hands on some unsealed court records and went down to south Louisiana to talk to people who knew former Minneapolis bishop Harry Flynn when he was made a bishop and sent to Lafayette to clean up the mess left behind by his predecessor, who allowed the convicted child molester Fr. Gilbert Gauthe stay in ministry, despite knowing that he was raping boys. Bishop Flynn came to town with an agenda to heal the Church. When he left town years later, his reputation as…