For decades, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and other high ranking members of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles made secret efforts to shield child molesting priests. Their aim was to keep their parishioners in the dark and control the damage to the church, church personnel files have revealed.
According to the Daily Mail, previously confidential records filed in a lawsuit against the archdiocese disclose how the church handled abuse allegations for decades. They also reveal that a top Mahony aide criticized his superiors for covering up all the allegations of abuse, rather than protecting children and alerting the authorities.
Notes signed by Mahony demonstrate that he was disturbed about abuse cases being reported to him and that he sent accused priests for treatment, but psychological reports that he received on some priests mention the possibility of many other victims, and there is no indication he or other church leaders investigated them.
'This is all intolerable and unacceptable to me,' Mahony reportedly wrote in 1991 on a file concerning Reverend Lynn Caffoe, a priest suspected of locking boys in his room where he videotaped their crotches. He also ran up a $100 phone sex bill while with a boy.
Caffoe was sent for therapy and removed from ministry, but Mahony didn't actually move to defrock him until 2004, a full decade after the archdiocese lost track of him.
'He is a fugitive from justice,' Mahony wrote to the Vatican's Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. 'A check of the Social Security index discloses no report of his demise, so presumably he is alive somewhere.'
Caffoe died in 2009, six years after a newspaper reporter found him working at a homeless mission two blocks from a Salinas elementary school.
Mahony released a statement on Monday apologizing for his mistakes and saying he had been 'naïve' about the lasting impacts of abuse. Reporters were told he was out of town and unable to make further statements.
Mahony has reportedly met with 90 abuse victims privately and keeps an index card with each victim's name in his private chapel, where he prays for them daily. The card also includes the names of the molesting priests 'lest I forget that real priests created this appalling harm.'
Mahony inherited a list of offending priests from his predecessor when he took over in 1985, J. Michael Hennigan, an archdiocese attorney, told the Daily Mail. Hennigan added that priests were sent out of state for psychological treatment because therapists were not required to report their child abuse offenses to law enforcement as they were in California, he said.
The files reveal that one priest victimized the children of illegal immigrants and then threatened to have them all deported if they told authorities.
When Reverend Nicholas Aguilar Rivera molested in LA, the files allege, church officials waited two days to call police, allowing him to flee to Mexico. At least 26 children told police they had been abused during his ten months in Los Angeles. The now-defrocked priest is believed to live in Mexico and remains a fugitive from law enforcement.
The personnel files of 13 other clerics show a similar pattern of denial and cover-up, said attorney Anthony De Marco, who represents one 35-year-old plaintiff.
The growing tide of abuse and the church's habitual secrecy in response to it saw one memo to Mahony suggest sending a cleric to a therapist who also is an attorney, in the hope that any incriminating evidence would be protected from authorities by lawyer-client privilege.
In another instance, archdiocese officials paid a secret salary to a priest who had been exiled to the Philippines after he and six other clerics were accused of having sex with a teen and impregnating her.
The newly published files offer a startling glimpse at the 30,000 pages still to be made public as part of a record-setting $660 million abuse settlement.
The archdiocese agreed to give the files to the more than 500 victims of priest abuse in 2007, but a lawyer for about 30 of the accused priests fought to keep records sealed. A judge recently ordered the church to release them without blacking out the names of church personnel.
The files demonstrate how church leaders moved 'problem' priests from parish to parish for decades, covering up each report of abuse and failing to contact law enforcement.
Mahony, who retired in 2011 after twenty six years at the helm of a 4.3-million person archdiocese, has come in for particular criticism for his handling of the case of the Reverend Michael Baker, sentenced to prison in 2007 for molestation, two decades after he confessed his abuse to Mahony.
Mahony sent Baker for psychological treatment in 1986 after the priest told him that he had molested two brothers over seven years. Baker returned to ministry the next year with a doctor's recommendation that he be defrocked immediately if he spent any time with minors. But despite several documented instances of being alone with boys, Baker wasn't removed from ministry until 2000.
Church officials also reportedly discussed announcing Baker's abuse in churches where he had worked, but Mahony rejected the idea.
'We could open up another firestorm — and it takes us years to recover from those,' Mahony wrote in an October 6, 2000, memo. 'Is there no alternative to public announcements at all the Masses in 15 parishes??? Wow — that really scares the daylights out of me!!'
The aide, Monsignor Peter Garcia Richard Loomis, noted his dismay over how higher ups were handling the matter when he retired in 2001 as vicar for clergy, the top church official who handled priestly discipline. In a memo to his successor, Loomis said Baker's attorney disclosed the priest had at least 10 other victims.
'We've stepped back 20 years and are being driven by the need to cover-up and to keep the presbyteriate & public happily ignorant rather than the need to protect children,' Loomis wrote.
'The only other option is to sit and wait until another victim comes forward. Then someone else will end up owning the archdiocese of Los Angeles. The liability issues involved aside, I think that course of complete (in)action would be immoral and unethical.'
But Mahony preferred targeted warnings at schools and youth groups to a blanket warning read at Masses, Hennigan said. Parish announcements were only made two years later.
Baker was paroled in 2011 and is alleged to have molested 20 children in his 26-year career. The newly released files show that Mahony worked tirelessly to keep molester priests out of state to avoid criminal and civil consequences.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.adrienrain | Feb 01, 2013, 11:29 PM EST
And something like this will always happen until the RC church rescinds celibacy. Because celibacy is as natural and wholesome as constipation.
The Commentator | Jan 31, 2013, 05:39 PM EST
The world is aware of the pedophile priests and their protectors. Until the Catholic Church thoroughly investigates each and every priest and member of the church hierarchy complete with lie detector tests and cleans house including those in the Vatican, no one will have any respect for the Roman Catholic Church. Not only is the church rife with molesters, it also has been laundering money for the Italian mafia. Much of the vast riches were obtained through wars against non Catholics and stealing their possessions. What a legacy the Roman Catholic Church is leaving for the future. These criminals and those who protect them should spend the rest of their life in jail. It might prepare them for where they are going after death.
merefalow | Jan 25, 2013, 01:38 PM EST
defending the indifencible,no decent rightous man,black brown ,blue,or yellow would ever seek to hide such evil men as these,and its one of the reasons the church is held in such contempt by some,there is no place in any organization for such as these.and the leaders of these organizations should have made that plain,2,000 years ago,And what of the many thousands of decent men and women in organisations tainted by the actions of these.
hollabackgurl | Jan 25, 2013, 08:04 AM EST
Mortimer74 is reduced to arguing that 'everyone was doing it.'Smyrnian thinks that holding the Church accountable for an international scandal that victimized and abused children is 'anti-Catholic muckraking.' With defenders like these two, who needs enemies?
eiriamach | Jan 24, 2013, 06:09 PM EST
The question is, what has the RC Church done to reduce the problem of clerical sexual abuse of children? It tightened up canon law to make it easier to kick abusive priests out of the Church -- and turn them loose on unsuspecting children because their bishops had not initiated police investigations, so the sexual predators are not identified as sex offenders. Yes, Cardinal Dolan and others have gifted our society with unprosecuted, unregenerate, and unidentified ex-priest sexual predators. Bishops' conferences have produced rules, and in the USA, diocesan bishops like Finn have routinely ignored and circumvented lay boards appointed to investigate allegations of sexual abuse. Given what RC has done to deal with its continuing problem of sexually predatory clergy, we can only anticipate many more scandals like the L.A. cases in the news. If I have "an agenda," Mortimer, it's keeping up the pressure until Catholics demand from themselves and their hierarchy a serious and honest response to this horrific continuing problem, in the form of full cooperation with law enforcement -- full disclosure of all past records and immediate reporting of all current evidence. An end to cover ups now!
Mortimer74 | Jan 24, 2013, 05:22 PM EST
“We would be naïve and dishonest were we to say this is a Roman Catholic problem and has nothing to do with us because we have married and female priests in our church. Sin and abusive behavior know no ecclesial or other boundaries." Rt. Rev. William Persell, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, Good Friday Sermon, 2002.
Mortimer74 | Jan 24, 2013, 05:21 PM EST
"But the facts—and the selective way they are dealt with in too much of the mainstream media—do suggest that the story line declaring the Catholic Church a uniquely perverse institution is a lie; those who perpetrate it are either ignorant bigots, or people with agendas other than the protection of young people, or both." (George Weigel, firstthings website, Dec 5th 2012) (George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.)
Mortimer74 | Jan 24, 2013, 05:18 PM EST
Hilarious! eiriamach would have us believe that her beloved Episcofailin' church is somehow exempt from sexual abuse problems. She knows the real figures like everybody else. She is an embittered hypocrite, deluded by her all-too-obvious agenda.
SingleDonald | Jan 24, 2013, 02:40 PM EST
This has been said before, but deserves repeating. The Church should finally disregard Matthew 5:28, at least in the literal sense. It should also distance itself from the guilt ridden confessions of St. Augustine. When a more enlightened attitude towards human sexuality is achieved, guilt will be eradicated. Responsibility should be stressed, in the place of guilt. Always respect the needs of one's partner, and be sure that partner is of legal age. The exception to the last would be near age, consenting teens. Catholic schools should immediately stop warning dancing teens to "leave some room for Jesus", as was depicted in a 1970's movie. If this Jesus needs to get between a boy and girl dancing, he has a problem! A visit to an earthly shrink would then do him much good!
eiriamach | Jan 24, 2013, 02:31 PM EST
Mortimer thinks that the RC abuse problem is not as extensive as elsewhere -- wrong! As Ray Boucher, a lawyer in the L.A. cases, told the NY Times, the files that the diocese must release will be “particularly damning” evidence of “wanton disregard for the health and safety of children, and a decision by the highest members of the church to put its self-interest and the interest of abusive priests ahead of those of children.... the public will begin to understand just how deep a problem this is.” Other religions have sex-abuse problems too. This week an ultra-Orthodox Jewish therapist was sentenced by a Brooklyn court to 103 years in prison for prolonged abuse of a client beginning when she was 12. (In fact most of the convictions so far have been of conservative priests and rabbis, for example, Opus Dei Bishop Finn of Kansas City.) But some Churches have handled cases well and taken steps to safeguard children. For example, In 1984 Episcopalian priest Margo Maris heard one woman's story of being sexually abused by a male priest. Fr Maris together with other women clergy, some of whom had law degrees, launched a comprehensive policy and strategy for dealing with sexual misconduct in their Church. By 1992, the EC had paid $7 million in claims from victims but had few new cases, in comparison to the RC's $800 million in claims between 1980 and 98 with many cases emerging since then. Not only Episcopal priests, but vestry members as well are now trained to spot sexual abuse cases. This shows what women can contribute when they have a voice in their religion!
McNamara31 | Jan 24, 2013, 10:11 AM EST
Since the abuse scandal came to light in 2002, politically oriented, power driven clergy, here and in the Vatican have been "a plague" on the victims and the house of God. In every city can be seen, churches being torn down to pay of the huge cost of abuse litigation.The last two papacies have enabled tremendous harm to the church, its people and the good clergy who attempted to report these atrocities. I truly can't believe, these men, even believe in God, to allow such harm to be done to children.
eiriamach | Jan 23, 2013, 07:34 PM EST
"Moral relativism" is a smear tactic that Roman Catholics use to label those who disagree with Vatican moral teachings. For example, Gearoid04 wrote recently on "Irish Priest to break silence,..." "Catholic doctrine and tenets in relation to the priesthood and sexual matters are not influenced by relativist secular currents" (He thinks the equality of women is only a "secular current" rather than an eternal teaching of Christ!) So it strikes me as ironically, ludicrously funny that SeamusMor says, "It is unjust to judge actions taken (or not taken) in the past by contemporary standards" as though it were not always wrong for priests to rape children! And Phan says sexual abuse of children was "Standard Operating Procedure," implying that it was morally OK because everyone was doing it! And Mortimer thinks "In hindsight they made some questionable decisions, but so did every other institution which took professional advice on this matter in those days," as though the morality of Catholic clerics is relative to the morality of "every other institution"! No, guys, you're spouting moral relativism, which your pope condemns--except when he does it or other Catholics do it to defend Catholic immorality! Sexual abuse was wrong when bishops covered it up in the 1960s and 1990s, it is wrong now, and it was wrong when priests of Baal raped boys in their temples in ancient times. To think you can make it OK by appealing to the immorality of the times or of others is hypocritical moral relativism, and clear evidence that tolerating immorality in your priests has blinded you to the eternal moral law.
Mortimer74 | Jan 23, 2013, 05:41 PM EST
"Jewish Therapist Sentenced to 103 Years for Child Sexual Abuse" (2013/01/23)New York Times. It seems IC is interested in generating a conversation about the epidemic of child sexual abuse. Just a little surprised that the above - shocking - case was not mentioned. I'd imagine there are more readers in Brooklyn than LA. Might be interesting to explore the ramifications of this case, no? But it didn't seem to meet the strict editorial criteria. I wonder what those might be with regard to such a serious matter as child sexual abuse. Perhaps IC should be more respectful of non-Catholics and also cover the many (and more numerous)instances of child abuse in other religious and secular institutions.
Mortimer74 | Jan 23, 2013, 05:25 PM EST
"Jewish Therapist Sentenced to 103 Years for Child Sexual Abuse" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/nyregion/nechemya-weberman-sentenced-to-103-years-in-prison.html It seems IC is interested in generating a conversation about the epidemic of child sexual abuse. Just a little surprised that the above - shocking but not abnormal - case was not mentioned. I'd imagine there are more readers in Brooklyn that LA. Might be interesting to explore the ramifications of this case, no? But it didn't seem to meet the strict editorial criteria. I wonder what those might be with regard to such a serious matter as child sexual abuse.
Smyrnian | Jan 23, 2013, 05:10 PM EST
Usual IC anti-Catholic muckraking. They have some agenda.
Mortimer74 | Jan 23, 2013, 03:46 PM EST
""This is all intolerable and unacceptable to me,' Mahony reportedly wrote in 1991 on a file." Does that sound like a person hell bent on shielding sexual predators? The Church back in those days did what professionals advised them to do (and advised other institutions in the exact same way). They were advised not that this was a permanent sickness but one that could be cured through therapy. In hindsight they made some questionable decisions, but so did every other institution which took professional advice on this matter in those days. The difference is that those institutions continue to have a huge contemporary issue with child sex abuse. The (Catholic) Church does not. There are many people reading this post who have become aware of child abuse in their immediate families or place of work over the years. Did you report the offender - or suspect - to the police straight away? Was that last year or 30 years ago?
ancavker | Jan 23, 2013, 03:16 PM EST
Seamus: You cannot rationalize this, or attempt to justify it in any manner. It was wrong plain and simple.
hollabackgurl | Jan 23, 2013, 02:03 PM EST
In the 1990's it was not believed that priests who molested children could be 'saved.' Psychologists then believed they ought to be reported to the authorities, which Mahony knew, so he shipped them out of state. The letters show the first concern was to protect the church, not the children
kilaspy | Jan 23, 2013, 01:48 PM EST
@ Seamus Mor, Can't you read?
SeamusMor | Jan 23, 2013, 12:50 PM EST
The two thousand year old Catholic Church changes direction about as deftly as a super tanker. Originally, abuse was treated as a sin, then as an illness, and now, finally, as a crime. It is unjust to judge actions taken (or not taken) in the past by contemporary standards. Cardinal Mahoney has served the Lord, the Church, and his flock with piety, integrity, and Christian love every day of his priesthood.
CitizenWhy | Jan 23, 2013, 12:12 PM EST
Meanwhile the Pope gives a papal knighthood to Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, while Fox News is screeching that Obama is a tyrant. Accusing Obama of being a tyrant is a way to legitimize and advocate his assassination. They know very well that Lincoln's assassin mouthed the slogan of Virginia as he shot the President: "Sic semper tyranis" ("This is what we do to tyrants.").
CitizenWhy | Jan 23, 2013, 12:11 PM EST
Meanwhile the Pope gives a papal knighthood to Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, while Fox News is screeching that Obama is a tyrant. Accusing Obama of being a tyrant is a way to legitimize and advocate his assassination. They know very well that Lincoln's assassin mouthed the slogan of Virginia as he shot the President: "Sic semper tyranis" ("This is what we do to tyrants.").
Butch1 | Jan 23, 2013, 11:37 AM EST
This is typical of these low-lives. In their minds it has always been protect the church at all costs then, protect the Cardinals, Bishops and last, those filthy, raping priests. The hell with the victims, it was probably their fault anyway. They would blame the victims for making the priests weak!! They would transfer the priests to other parishes where they could continue their horrible acts on innocent children whilst the Bishops would look the other way or the Cardinals like it didn't even happen. They are just as guilty in my opinion for enabling these pedophiles to continue to rape those children and I think they should go to prison along with the actual rapists. Cardinal Law, of Boston, rather than go in for questioning, escaped the country and flew to the Vatican where he resides in sanctuary unto this day under the protection of the Pope. This is how they protect their own from the law regarding pedophiles. They are more important than the victims. Cardinal Law should be brought back in chains for what he pulled. He is obviously guilty.
PhlutiePhan | Jan 23, 2013, 11:02 AM EST
In the 90s, this was SOP. It was presumed that those who strayed could be counseled and forgiven. Psychology has made great advancements and rightfully it is now seen as an addiction and obsession. Unfortunately, this has now evolved into an addiction and obsession on the part of the left to destroy the Catholic Church and make the Church pay for its own dismantling.
pilib04 | Jan 23, 2013, 09:49 AM EST
JohnGalt wants the Feds to enforce RICO laws??? Isn't that an oxymoron? Although I agree with the sentiments, I wasn't sure of the political consistency.
JohnGalt | Jan 23, 2013, 09:18 AM EST
If state and local prosecutors start arresting the criminals and their accessories, if the Feds begin to enforce RICO laws, the epidemic would cease. As well, would institutionalized rape.
JimmieM | Jan 23, 2013, 08:37 AM EST
I think it shows a shocking lack of understanding the job of representing GOD