Files show L.A. archdiocese manipulation in abuse cases
Cardinal Roger Mahony, former archbishop of Los Angeles, attends a ceremony held by Pope Benedict XVI at the Saint Peter's Basilica Feb. 18, 2012, in Vatican City. / Getty Images
LOS ANGELES Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and other top Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles officials maneuvered behind the scenes to shield molester priests, provide damage control for the church and keep parishioners in the dark, according to church personnel files.
The confidential records filed in a lawsuit against the archdiocese disclose how the church handled abuse allegations for decades and also reveal dissent from a top Mahony aide who criticized his superiors for covering up allegations of abuse rather than protecting children.
Notes inked by Mahony demonstrate he was disturbed about abuse and sent problem priests for treatment, but there also were lengthy delays or oversights in some cases. Mahony received psychological reports on some priests that mentioned the possibility of many other victims, for example, but there is no indication that he or other church leaders investigated further.
"This is all intolerable and unacceptable to me," Mahony wrote in 1991 on a file of the Rev. Lynn Caffoe, a priest suspected of locking boys in his room, videotaping their crotches and running up a $100 phone sex bill while with a boy. Caffoe was sent for therapy and removed from ministry, but Mahony didn't move to defrock him until 2004, a 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 was out of town but issued a statement Monday apologizing for his mistakes and saying he had been "naive" about the lasting impacts of abuse. He has since 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, he said. The card also includes the name of the molesting priest "lest I forget that real priests created this appalling harm."
"It remains my daily and fervent prayer that God's grace will flood the heart and soul of each victim, and that their life journey continues forward with ever greater healing," Mahony wrote. "I am sorry."
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The church's sex abuse policy was evolving and Mahony inherited some of the worst cases from his predecessor when he took over in 1985, J. Michael Hennigan, an archdiocese attorney, said in a separate series of emails. Priests were sent out of state for psychological treatment because they revealed more when their therapists were not required to report child abuse to law enforcement, as they were in California, he said.
At the time, clergy were not mandated sex abuse reporters and the church let the victims' families decide whether to contact police, he added.
In at least one case, a priest victimized the children of illegal immigrants and threatened to have them deported if they told, the files show.
The files are attached to a motion seeking punitive damages in a case involving a Mexican priest sent to Los Angeles in 1987 after he was brutally beaten in his parish south of Mexico City.
When parents complained the Rev. Nicholas Aguilar Rivera molested in LA, church officials told the priest but waited two days to call police — allowing him to flee to Mexico, court papers allege. At least 26 children told police they were abused during his 10 months in Los Angeles. The now-defrocked priest is believed to be in Mexico and remains a fugitive.
The personnel files of 13 other clerics were attached to the motion to show a cover-up pattern, said attorney Anthony De Marco, who represents the 35-year-old plaintiff. In one instance, a memo to Mahony discusses sending a cleric to a therapist who also is an attorney so any incriminating evidence is protected from authorities by lawyer-client privilege. In another instance, archdiocese officials paid a secret salary to a priest exiled to the Philippines after he and six other clerics were accused of having sex with a teen and impregnating her.
The exhibits offer a glimpse at some 30,000 pages to be made public as part of a record-setting $660 million settlement. The archdiocese agreed to give the files to more than 500 victims of priest abuse in 2007, but a lawyer for about 30 of the priests fought to keep records sealed. A judge recently ordered the church to release them without blacking out the names of church higher-ups.
They echo similar releases from other dioceses nationwide that have shown how church leaders for decades shuffled problem priests from parish to parish, covered up reports of abuse and didn't contact law enforcement. Top church officials in Missouri and Pennsylvania were criminally convicted last year for their roles in covering up abuse, more than a decade after the clergy sex abuse scandal began to unfold in Boston.
Mahony, who retired in 2011 after 26 years at the helm of the 4.3-million person archdiocese, has been particularly hounded by the case of the Rev. Michael Baker, who was sentenced to prison in 2007 for molestation — two decades after the priest confessed his abuse to Mahony.
Mahony noted the "extremely grave and serious situation" when he sent Baker for psychological treatment after the priest told him in 1986 that he had molested two brothers over seven years.
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Good thing I was wise enough to save it!
As long as the Catholic Church continues to put their wealth and greed (= power and control) paramount, as their false god, as forbidden by the very FIRST commandment of God, these aberrations and cover-ups will continue. Since Medieval times, when the Church was going broke, and mandatory celibacy was instituted as a primary requirement for being a priest, the Church has gradually lost its way, changing to its false god. You see, wives, children, and separate housing cost money, and celibacy allows the Church to hoard all that money into their coffers, building their power and control! These men, who are mandated into the abnormal celibate life, which only a rare individual can manage successfully, quell their frustration with mental illnesses, alcoholism, drugs, sexual aberrations, including affairs, homosexuality, pedophilia, etc. Even Christ did not mandate celibacy onto His Apostles. A rare person can voluntarily sublimate sexual appetite into acceptable holy and creative outlets, but, since Medieval times, the sacrifice has been MANDATED onto EVERY single man who has the vocation to be a priest. Most have no clue of the power of that sex drive at the time their vows are taken. It is a sick and sinful racket, and some Pope should have abolished it years ago, but they LOVE the money and power! We have never had a Pope with the cojones to do what is right under God's laws! Sex is one rung of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but that is for thinking priests to work on, and join together to rebel against the mandate, which is at the root of years of sinfulness, and loss of God in so very many of our Church leaders. Greed, money, power and CONTROL is the "god" they worship!
They kept moving O'Grady around, he spent time in prison and they still didn't defrock him. They offered him a pension to voluntarily resign.
He moved back to Ireland. When it got a little to hot there, he went to Europe where he served as a Catholic official under the name Brother Francis. There he was involved in doing children's parties and "serving" at a shelter for women and children.
When the film "Deliver Us from Evil" was shown there, he fled back to Ireland. Fortunately, he left his computer on the plane. They found child pornography on it and, last I heard, he is in prison for that.
The film follows him to Ireland but not to Europe. Mahoney is interviewed in the film. It is more than a bit nauseating.
As for the first administrative organization that has kept the Word all these years, the failings of men are always with us, like the poor, and rob of faith the very richness of the gifts of God.
Neither money, nor power nor the passage of centuries has broken the cynicism and disbelief of those who demand purity in all things. We were ALL cast out of the Garden of Eden and there is no going back since the Second Adam has come with reconciliation.
And yes, it is less about justice than it is about money. Prostitution is illegal, except as granted by a court of law for compensation.
but the are the CHURCH,
they will take care of it.
A shoulder for the blindly gullible to place their head upon.
The Catholic church has a history goung back almost 2000 years of,
Murder, Genocide, Paedophilia, Incest, Fraud, Nazi support, Ustachi support,Slavery support [Brazil] etc, etc.