Archdiocese accused of moving funds
It says $75 million transfer is not an effort to shield assets
By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
An attorney for victims of clergy sex abuse suggested Friday that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee moved as much as $75 million off its books over the last six years in an effort to shield it from sex abuse settlements - allegations denied by the archdiocese.
Attorney Jeffrey Anderson of St. Paul implied the archdiocese engaged in a shell game during a bankruptcy hearing before Assistant U.S. Trustee David Asbach.
Anderson questioned archdiocese chief financial officer John Marek about the whereabouts of a $75 million account that last appeared on the archdiocese's audited annual financial statements in 2003-'04. And he questioned the transfer of a separate $55 million into a newly created cemetery trust in 2008, a year after the Wisconsin Supreme Court opened the door for victims to sue the archdiocese for fraud.
Marek, who was hired by the archdiocese in 2007, could not answer questions about the $75 million. He said the cemetery funds had previously been in an account under the control of the archbishop but had always been "treated as a trust."
"We have serious questions about what we've seen and heard today," Anderson said after the hearing at the federal courthouse. He vowed to depose current and past bishops, including New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, in an effort to get answers.
In an e-mail response to questions from the Journal Sentinel after the hearing, a spokeswoman for the church denied it moved assets to shield them from victims.
"To the contrary, the archdiocese has been liquidating all nonessential assets for years to help pay for the costs of therapy and voluntary settlements," Julie Wolf said.
Wolf said the $75 million belonged to parishes and was held by the archdiocese in an investment account until 2004, after which it "ceased providing such services." Archdiocese bankruptcy attorney Daryl Diesing said he believes the money was returned to the parishes.
She quoted the bankruptcy financial statements to explain the cemetery trust, saying it was created in 2007 to "formalize the existing trust relationship" that dated to the early 1900s.
The archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January, saying it was the best way to equitably compensate victims of clergy sex abuse and maintain the essential missions of the church. Its financial statements, filed with the court this week, list $40.7 million in assets and $24 million in liabilities, including $13.7 million for a health care plan for retired priests.
The church maintains that the vast majority of its assets are in trusts and restricted accounts, leaving only about $7 million for settlements, though it became clear Friday that victims intend to challenge that.
So far, the courts have barred the archdiocese from tapping insurance to fund settlements because the allegations involve fraud, rather than accidents. However that is on appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Friday's meeting was the first opportunity for creditors to question the archdiocese about its finances.
Anderson, who travels the country handling priest abuse cases, and Los Angeles bankruptcy attorney Gillian Brown dominated the hearing with a line of questioning aimed at undermining the archdiocese's assertions that its parish assets and trusts - including the $105 million Faith in Our Future campaign trust - cannot be used for settlements.
Diesing, the archdiocese's bankruptcy attorney, objected repeatedly, arguing the questions strayed beyond the scope of the hearing, which is intended to focus on the financial statements. Asbach, who had given Anderson some leeway to proceed, eventually reined him in.
"We're not turning this into a deposition," he said.
Brown suggested no asset would be overlooked, asking Marek at one point about the value of bishops' rings, crosses and other jewelry, which was listed as "unknown."
Diesing and Marek agreed to provide information about the appraised value of the items, along with several other documents requested by the victims and Asbach.
But Marek suggested the jewelry - which includes the rings of past bishops - has greater sentimental, rather than economic value.
"You'd look at it and say, 'It's a nice cross,' but I wouldn't give you $10 to wear it to a party tonight."
This article was found at:
http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/116026364.html
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New York Daily News - February 13, 2011
Archbishop Timothy Dolan slams charges that his old diocese hid millions to avoid paying victims
BY DAVE GOLDINER | DAILY NEWS WRITER
Archbishop Timothy Dolan slammed as "ludicrous" Sunday allegations that his old diocese in Milwaukee hid $130 million to avoid paying child abuse victims.
"To think . . . like Dolan's got some off-shore account in the Cayman Islands or something, this is just ludicrous," Dolan said after Mass Sunday at St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Dolan said he was "saddened" by the claims, which were raised by lawyers for alleged victims of pedophile priests.
"Darn it, I think the archdiocese has done a good job," he said. "And Lord knows, I worked my hardest."
The lawyers want to depose Dolan and other top Catholic leaders over the funny-money charges.
Dolan said the allegations have tarnished the good names of those on a financial oversight panel and insisted he welcomes any probe.
"These are terribly irresponsible charges," Dolan said. "Any law enforcement officers want to talk with me, be my guest. I have nothing to hide."
Dolan led the Milwaukee archdiocese for seven years--as accusations of priestly misconduct grew--before being named spiritual leader of New York's 2 million Catholics in 2009.
A lawyer told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel paper that the Milwaukee archdiocese played a financial shell game to hide $75 million. An additional $55 million went to a cemetery fund.
The Milwaukee archdiocese, faced with a flood of child sex lawsuits, filed for bankruptcy last month.
Catholic diocese bankruptcies protect assets from abuse survivors but provide no relief for moral bankruptcy of church leaders
Delaware clergy abuse survivors are first victims to ever testify in any U.S. diocese bankruptcy
**********************************************************************
New York Daily News - February 13, 2011
Archbishop Timothy Dolan slams charges that his old diocese hid millions to avoid paying victims
BY DAVE GOLDINER | DAILY NEWS WRITER
Archbishop Timothy Dolan slammed as "ludicrous" Sunday allegations that his old diocese in Milwaukee hid $130 million to avoid paying child abuse victims.
"To think . . . like Dolan's got some off-shore account in the Cayman Islands or something, this is just ludicrous," Dolan said after Mass Sunday at St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Dolan said he was "saddened" by the claims, which were raised by lawyers for alleged victims of pedophile priests.
"Darn it, I think the archdiocese has done a good job," he said. "And Lord knows, I worked my hardest."
The lawyers want to depose Dolan and other top Catholic leaders over the funny-money charges.
Dolan said the allegations have tarnished the good names of those on a financial oversight panel and insisted he welcomes any probe.
"These are terribly irresponsible charges," Dolan said. "Any law enforcement officers want to talk with me, be my guest. I have nothing to hide."
Dolan led the Milwaukee archdiocese for seven years--as accusations of priestly misconduct grew--before being named spiritual leader of New York's 2 million Catholics in 2009.
A lawyer told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel paper that the Milwaukee archdiocese played a financial shell game to hide $75 million. An additional $55 million went to a cemetery fund.
The Milwaukee archdiocese, faced with a flood of child sex lawsuits, filed for bankruptcy last month.
This article was found at:
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500-plus sex-abuse claims filed against archdiocese as deadline looms
ReplyDeleteBy Annysa Johnson, Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel February 1, 2012
More than 500 people have filed sex abuse claims in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy in advance of today’s 4 p.m. deadline. It is the largest number of claims among the eight Catholic dioceses to seek bankruptcy protection since 2004 in response to sex abuse allegations, and on par with a Jesuit bankruptcy that covered five states.
Victims and their attorneys called the numbers staggering and just the tip of the iceberg, noting that statistically only a small percentage of sex abuse victims come forward.
Archdiocese spokesman Jerry Topczewski said the church had cast a wide net for victims in compliance with the court's instructions, and had no expectations regarding the numbers that would come in. He reiterated Archbishop Jerome Listecki’s assertion that it would seek to bar all claims it is not obligated to cover under bankruptcy law, regardless of whether the abuse occurred.
Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley will consider the first of the archdiocese's motions for summary judgment objecting to three claims from the 1970s and ‘80s involving two priests and a choir director at a hearing Feb. 9. The archdiocese argues they should be thrown out because they were filed beyond the statute of limitations, involve a victim who received a prior settlement and a perpetrator it says was not a direct employee of the archdiocese.
Victim attorneys have characterized the trio of motions as a test case that, if successful, the archdiocese will use to bar the vast majority of claims in the bankruptcy.
The archdiocese has asked the court for permission to establish a $300,000 therapy fund to assist those who were abused but whose claims are dismissed. Topczewski said the fund could be replenished as needs arise.
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/138504549.html
8,000 instances of abuse alleged in Archdiocese bankruptcy hearing
ReplyDeleteBy Annysa Johnson, Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel February 9, 2012
Sealed documents filed in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy identify at least 8,000 instances of child sexual abuse and 100 alleged offenders - 75 of them priests - who have not previously been named by the archdiocese, a victims' attorney said Thursday.
Archdiocese spokeswoman Julie Wolf said she did not have enough information to respond to the assertion, made by attorney Jeffrey Anderson during a pivotal hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley. Anderson represents about 350 of the 570 victim-survivors who have filed claims in the case.
But Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests speculated that some are likely members of religious orders, such as Capuchins or Franciscans. Order officials do not typically make public the names of their accused members, and the archdiocese claims it is not responsible for them, though they have historically helped to staff its parishes and schools.
"This is a public safety crisis, a child safety crisis that needs to be investigated," Isely said at a news conference on the federal courthouse steps, surrounded by fellow survivors and reporters.
"We need to know who they are and where they are. How can there be 8,000 crimes committed by over 100 offenders and there be no accountability?" he said.
Kelley let stand, at least for now, two survivors' claims that the church had sought to bar, arguing they were beyond the statute of limitations.
In the split decision, Kelley also granted the church's motion for summary judgment, effectively dismissing a third claim in which a victim had signed a prior settlement agreement with the church.
In an emotional preamble to her ruling, before a packed courtroom, Kelley expressed a reverence for the Catholic Church and compassion for the victims, saying she was "brought to tears more than once" reading the accounts of the men and women who allege they were sexually abused as children by priests, deacons, nuns, teachers and others over the past 60 years.
"But I cannot let compassion be the basis for my decision. It must be governed by law," Kelley said.
Archdiocese attorney Frank LoCoco acknowledged the gravity of the allegations at the outset of the hearing.
"This will be the most difficult professional decision you will ever make," LoCoco told Kelley.
Kelley made it clear that her rulings applied to the three individual cases at hand, not broad classes of claims they may represent. Allowing the two claims to stand doesn't guarantee they will be paid in the bankruptcy, only that the legal debate over when the statute of limitations begins ticking must be decided at trial.
The archdiocese had sought the dismissal of three claims involving two priests and a parish choir director who were accused of molesting boys in the 1970s and '80s. Church lawyers argued that the cases were beyond the statute of limitations and involved a victim who signed a previous settlement agreement and a perpetrator - the choir director - who was not a direct employee.
Victims' attorneys had characterized the church's objections as a test case that, if successful, would have eliminated 95% of the claims in the bankruptcy.
Kelly disallowed the claim involving the prior settlement because the victim didn't meet all of the criteria for voiding a signed agreement.
continued in next comment...
http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/archdiocese-bankruptcy-judge-allows-two-claims-to-stand-me44pue-139044534.html
continued from previous comment:
ReplyDeleteMuch of the debate Thursday centered on how to apply the state's six-year statute of limitations on fraud allegations. LoCoco argued that the clock began ticking at the latest in 2004, when the archdiocese posted its online list of 44 priests with substantiated allegations of abuse.
Anderson said the victims didn't know they were defrauded until 2006 and 2009, when they learned, in some cases through documents released as part of a California settlement, that the archdiocese had lied to them about their abusers' histories.
"When a few did go forward and asked questions, what were they told? Lies," Anderson said.
Anderson raised the issue of the 100 additional accused offenders, culled from his own clients' claims, as part of his defense of the claims.
The archdiocese has said that it turns over all new claims of allegations involving living priests to the appropriate district attorney's office, though it is not clear whether that includes religious order priests and others it doesn't consider its employees.
The victims were not identified in court or in the documents filed on the issues raised Thursday. The claims of all but about 30 victim-survivors are filed under seal as part of a court order intended to protect the identities of any victim seeking anonymity.
The three cases at issue Thursday involved:
The now-defrocked Father Franklyn Becker, who had served as pastor at Holy Family Parish in Whitefish Bay. The victim alleges Becker abused him between 1972 and '74, when the victim was 13 to 16 years old.
Father David Hanser, also since laicized, who is accused of molesting a 7-year-old boy in 1977-'78 when he was associate pastor at St. John Vianney Parish in Brookfield.
Robert Schaefer, then-choir director at St. Catherine Parish in Milwaukee. Schaefer is accused of repeatedly molesting a boy from 1976 to 1982, beginning when the boy was about 10 years old.
Becker and Hanser have well-established histories as serial sex offenders; both were laicized by the archdiocese and appear on its list of offender priests. At least one other man has accused Schaefer of abusing him as a teenager. Schaefer is not listed on the archdiocese's website.
http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/archdiocese-bankruptcy-judge-allows-two-claims-to-stand-me44pue-139044534.html
Explosive sex abuse lawsuit against Vatican dropped
ReplyDeleteby John L Allen Jr., National Catholic Reporter Feb. 11, 2012
ROME -- A Wisconsin sex abuse lawsuit against the Vatican, which helped trigger a global firestorm in early 2010, was withdrawn late Friday. It marks the formal end of a case that seemed to cast doubt on Pope Benedict XVI’s role in the abuse crisis, and shifted focus from local bishops to an alleged cover-up in Rome.
Lawyers for the victim filed a notice of voluntary dismissal on Friday, effectively abandoning the lawsuit. It had named not only the Vatican but also Pope Benedict XVI and two senior Vatican officials, Cardinals Tarcisio Bertone and Angelo Sodano, as defendants. The suit had been filed by Minnesota-based attorney Jeffrey Anderson, who has frequently represented sex abuse victims against the church.
Anderson said at the time the case was filed that he hoped to take formal depositions from Benedict XVI, Bertone and Sodano, concerning the Vatican’s role in the sex abuse crisis. Bertone is the current Secretary of State, the top official in the Vatican after the pope, a position formerly held by Sodano.
Anderson told NCR on Saturday that the decision to withdraw the case was "pragmatic and practical," based largely on the fact that as a result of proceedings related to the bankruptcy of the Milwaukee archdiocese, he had already obtained most of the files regarding the Vatican's involvement he could have gotten through a separate lawsuit. Those documents are presently under seal, he said, but he said they paint an "ugly picture" of the Vatican's role.
"We have not in any way abandoned our effort to hold the Vatican legally and fully accountable," Anderson said.
While Anderson said he does not plan to refile the Wisconsin case, he still hopes to pursue depositions of Vatican figures such as Bertone and Sodano as part of other litigation. In the meantime, he said, he plans to depose Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York, a former archbishop of Milwaukee, about his role in the Wisconsin case.
The Vatican’s lawyer, California-based Jeffrey Lena, nevertheless welcomed the withdrawal of the case.
“A case like this, which was held together by a mendacious web of claims of international conspiracy, amounts to what appears in its aftermath to have been little more than a misuse of judicial process and waste of judicial resources,” he said.
With the collapse of a similar case in Kentucky in 2010, Friday’s dismissal leaves only the Doe v. Holy See case in Oregon, originally filed in 2002, as an active sex abuse claim against the Vatican in American courts. (Another lawsuit in Chicago has been filed but not served on the Vatican through diplomatic channels.)
Anderson said that another reason for dismissing the Wisconsin case is that it allows attorneys to concentrate on the litigation in Oregon.
In terms of jurisdiction, lawyers for the Vatican argued in the Wisconsin case, as they have in others, that the Vatican is immune because it’s a sovereign state. Substantively, they contended that under church law, responsibility for supervising priests and other church personnel rests with local bishops, not in Rome. ...
read the rest of this article at:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/explosive-sex-abuse-lawsuit-against-vatican-dropped
read the Vatican's response at:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/vatican-lawyers-statement-end-sex-abuse-case
Milwaukee archdiocese to give $21 million to survivors of clergy sex abuse
ReplyDeleteby Marie Rohde | National Catholic Reporter August 4, 2015
The Milwaukee archdiocese has agreed to give survivors of clergy sex abuse $21 million, a move that is expected to end the four and a half years that church has been in bankruptcy court.
In a statement issued by the archdiocese, 330 of the 575 survivors will share in the compensation. They will receive varying amounts to be determined by an outside administrator. There will also be a $500,000 therapy fund established and it will be paid for by all of the parishes in the archdiocese. The agreement otherwise protects parishes and schools from future lawsuits.
Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki acknowledged that the projected total legal and professional fees will be about $20 million when the bankruptcy is complete. That does not include the amount Jeff Anderson & Associates, the law firm that represents many of the survivors, will receive.
The funds will come from a variety of sources, including $11 million from insurance and $16 million from the controversial Cemetery Trust Fund.
The headquarters of the archdiocese will remain at the Cousins Center in suburban Milwaukee. The archdiocese will also voluntarily withdraw a legal action filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to reverse an appellate decision that the more than $50 million placed in the Cemetery Trust Fund was part of the estate.
Listecki said this of the agreement:
"Reaching a settlement is the best way to acknowledge the hurts of the past and try to reconcile for the future. I am pleased that a settlement was reached and that both abuse survivors and the archdiocese can turn the page from this terrible chapter of our history. It is important that we never forget the pain and suffering of abuse survivors. And we will continue to hold ourselves accountable to all the elements of the Dallas Charter and the demands of our archdiocesan Safe Environment protocols."
The archdiocese missed an Aug. 3 deadline for filing a revised plan of reorganization. The original plan had called for about $4 million for the survivors.
According to a press release from the Anderson law firm, the committee that represents all the creditors "was forced to make a decision that would prevent the case from being drawn out longer and incurring additional bankruptcy attorneys' fees."
"We applaud the courage of the survivors who came forward and the creditors' committee who fought every step of the way," said Anderson. "The treatment of the survivors by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has been harsh and hurtful."
[Marie Rohde is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer.]
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/milwaukee-archdiocese-give-21-million-survivors-clergy-sex-abuse
Archdiocese bankruptcy creditors raise concerns about excluded victims
ReplyDeleteBy Annysa Johnson, Milwaukee-Wisconsin Sentinel Journal August 10, 2015
The creditors committee in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy is challenging the terms of the $21 million settlement announced by Archbishop Jerome Listecki last week, saying the church excluded about 73 victims who committee members believed would be compensated when they agreed to the deal, its chairman said Monday.
Charles Linneman, who heads the five-member committee, said members understood that the only survivors who would not be compensated were those who had received prior cash settlements from the church — about 84 people.
That contradicts the statement issued by the archdiocese last week that 157 individuals would not be compensated.
"We want some answers about who is really in this group," Linneman said.
Frank LoCoco, lead attorney for the archdiocese, said it is in talks with plaintiffs' attorneys to determine how their clients will be treated under the plan, which is scheduled to be filed Aug. 24. He said some of the 157 who were deemed to receive no cash payment could be compensated as a result.
"Some of the 157 'may' move into other categories," LoCoco said in an email to the Journal Sentinel.
The $21 million total compensation figure was not at issue in the concerns raised Monday. The archdiocese announced last week that it would pay $21 million to compensate 330 victims who were sexually assaulted as children by priests and others associated with the 10-county archdiocese as part of a plan to emerge from its over 4-year bankruptcy.
An additional 92 victims could accept a $2,000 payment or try to persuade U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley that they should be in the larger pool of compensated victims, the archdiocese said.
James Stang, an attorney who represents the committee, said all victims, regardless of where they are classified, would have an opportunity to challenge their treatment in the settlement agreement and reorganization plan.
"Everyone will have a chance to be heard on the classification scheme," Stang said. "No one's going to be told the court is closed to them."
Stang stressed that the committee "has not repudiated the settlement."
Linneman concurred but said that might change if certain claims are disallowed.
"If it stands the way the archdiocese is presenting it, I believe the committee would object to that."
The archdiocese's original classification announced last week would have excluded several categories of claims, including those from victims who could not identify their abuser and cases that didn't involve sexual abuse.
Linneman and others take issue with the church excluding individuals who sued in state court, but had their cases thrown out because of the statute of limitations.
The archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2011. Kelley has scheduled a confirmation hearing on its reorganization plan to begin Nov. 9.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/archdiocese-bankruptcy-creditors-raise-concerns-about-excluded-victims-b99554333z1-321332941.html
‘You’re only as sick as your secrets’: New Orleans clergy abuse bankruptcy is uniquely acrimonious
ReplyDeleteThe church is using legal tactics to prevent testimony from survivors and spur expensive inquiries into its critics
by Jason Berry and Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Guardian November 29, 2023
This is the first installment of a three-part series exploring how the archdiocese of New Orleans’s bankruptcy stands apart from other cases of its kind.
As his practice grew, the plaintiff attorney Richard C Trahant, 56, sent money to the Jesuit high school of New Orleans. Lots of money.
Trahant graduated from the storied all-boys college preparatory school in 1985, following in the footsteps of his father and great-uncle, a path his two sons would also follow. Jesuit alumni include the former mayors Mitch Landrieu – today the Joe Biden White House’s top infrastructure adviser – and Marc Morial, now president of the Urban League. Others are the jazz singer Harry Connick Jr and the award-winning novelist John Gregory Brown, among numerous other lawyers, public officials, physicians, scholars, CEOs and priests.
Trahant found a mentor in his principal, the Rev Anthony McGinn (class of 66). When McGinn became school president, Trahant’s mother worked 15 years as his secretary. The Jesuit priest presided over Trahant’s wedding with Amy Olavarrieta, baptized their four children and officiated at his mother’s funeral in 2013.
In 2015, Trahant wrote a $20,000 check to endow a scholarship in McGinn’s name. He embraced the Jesuits’ motto: “Men for others.” Yet in 2021, Trahant recalls, priests and staffers shunned Amy and him at the graduation mass at which their younger son, Garrison, spoke as valedictorian. McGinn had broken off contact since Trahant agreed to represent a 1983 Jesuit graduate who alleged being raped as a student by a custodian.
Many secondary schools, notably eastern college preps like Exeter Academy and Horace Mann in Manhattan, have weathered long-ago abuse cases. As Trahant’s school ties eroded, he took on a steadily increasing number of Catholic clergy abuse clients. He also lost his faith.
Yet he never imagined the blowback that would come after the New Orleans archdiocese, facing many abuse lawsuits, sought federal bankruptcy protection in 2020.
Today, Trahant has spent nearly $100,000 on his own legal fees, appealing Judge Meredith Grabill’s $400,000 fine on him for allegedly violating her order barring disclosure of church files. A federal bankruptcy halts the discovery process by which lawyers secure internal documents through subpoenas, subjecting defendants to sworn testimony in depositions.
Trahant in late 2021 advised his cousin, the principal of Jesuit rival Brother Martin high school, that the chaplain – Paul Hart – had a substantial stain in his past. As would later be revealed – yet not by Trahant because of the secrecy order – Hart had admitted molesting a teenage girl in the 1990s. He nonetheless had been stationed at Brother Martin by New Orleans’s archbishop, Gregory Aymond.
Hart quickly resigned.
Trahant claims that as an officer of the court he was legally bound to alert school officials to a known predator. He also insists he did not reveal any protected information, and school officials ultimately backed his version of events.
Nonetheless, a local newspaper article on Hart’s abrupt resignation stirred concern by Grabill and other attorneys in the bankruptcy case for a breach of secrecy blanketing church files.
Grabill ordered sworn testimony from Trahant and an investigation into his actions from the US bankruptcy court trustee. The trustee’s report remains secret from the general public.
continued below
But Trahant could review it. And an accessible transcript shows he testified at one point that the report failed to find that he knowingly or willfully violated the protective order. The transcript does not show contrary evidence.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, Grabill fined Trahant.
A spokesperson for Judge Grabill denied a Guardian interview request, saying: “No comment.”
Yet the $400,000 fine against Trahant – who is arguably one of the archdiocese’s most outspoken opponents – is regarded as highly unusual by many legal commentators, including several who won’t speak publicly for fear of drawing a case in front of Grabill.
One of those attorneys, who is involved in the New Orleans bankruptcy, marveled at how Donald Trump had been fined only $15,000 when the judge overseeing the former president’s civil fraud trial found he violated an order barring disparaging comments about judicial staff. An appeals court has since temporarily stayed the sanction pending an appeal.
The Vermont-based attorney Stephen C Rubino, who has spent three decades representing clergy abuse victims, said: “I have never heard of a sanction like that in a bankruptcy case – never.”
The St Paul attorney Jeff Anderson, a pioneer in clergy malpractice who has several clients in the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy, said that a fine like Trahant’s “has never happened in any of the Chapter 11 [bankruptcy] cases that I know of”.
“My firm has been involved in 25 church bankruptcies,” Anderson said. “New Orleans is unique. A hostile judge has bought into the church’s position to attack a state court lawyer. The judge sees the lawyer as a villain.”
But, Anderson argues, in this case, “The villain is the archbishop.”
The archdiocese of New Orleans declined to make Archbishop Aymond available for an interview or comment on a broad description of what the Guardian intended to report on for this piece.
A worst-case scenario
Remarks like Anderson’s hint at how New Orleans has become the worst-case scenario of about 35 dioceses or religious orders that have sought bankruptcy protection to resolve clergy abuse cases since 2004. Two narratives are unfolding.
One, unearthed by media reports, is the surfacing of a criminal sexual underground in clerical culture stretching back decades, under four archbishops. Yet only a handful of New Orleans-area clergy predators have been prosecuted.
The bankruptcy is its own baroque story of bruising legal tactics that have hindered proceedings as hundreds of traumatized abuse survivors wait, seemingly without an end in sight.
With more than $25m paid in professional fees alone, roughly half to its attorneys at the corporate law firm Jones Walker, the archdiocese has relied on the lead bankruptcy attorney Mark Mintz’s strategy to track the litigation-by-ordeal approach in certain other dioceses, giving the church leeway to whittle down what rape victims and others will receive in compensation.
Well before the grinding three-year bankruptcy, Archbishop Aymond had begun to disgorge, in fits and starts, the names – but not the related internal files – of New Orleans clergymen accused of preying on children.
A man in bishop garb walks with a censer and crosier.
He lists fewer than 80 of those on a roster that his administration curates of clergymen whom the archdiocese considers to be “credibly accused”. But the bankruptcy proceedings have produced a much larger overall total. Claims fully name at least 310 priests, deacons and nonclerical personnel such as nuns who are accused of abuse.
That is a disproportionately huge number for the 41st-largest US diocese in terms of size, serving roughly 480,000 Catholics. A searing 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report on church abuse cover-up schemes found 300 predators in six separate dioceses spread across a much more populous state than Louisiana.
continued below
The unending clergy abuse scandals have driven some state legislatures and prosecutors to take a deeper look at a church successfully protecting pedophiles. Louisiana’s ultra-conservative legislature passed a 2021 law extending the time for victims to file claims. Governor John Bel Edwards, a devout anti-abortion Catholic, signed it despite opposition from the Louisiana conference of Catholic bishops.
ReplyDeleteThe aching decades-long crisis has cost the global church $10bn in legal fees, treatment for predators, survivor settlements and jury verdicts, according to Jack Ruhl, a professor emeritus of accountancy at Western Michigan University, who spent years analyzing church financial reports.
However, few if any bankruptcies have been as acrimonious as the one that saddled Trahant with a harsher consequence than many unpunished clergy abusers – or those who were supposed to supervise them – have ever faced.
A best-case scenario
In diocesan bankruptcies, the first step is establishing a creditors’ committee including survivors and their attorneys, independent bankruptcy lawyers, counsel for insurance companies holding church liability policies, and lawyers for the church-as-debtor in ongoing mediation.
The archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico, stands as a best-case scenario in resolving the labyrinthine process. Ranked 69th in terms of Catholic population, the Santa Fe church last year settled nearly 400 claims for $128m after three years of hard bargaining.
Uniquely, Archbishop John Wester agreed to deposit files outlining the careers and handling of 150 clergy predators in a public archive at the University of New Mexico.
“Wester pledged to do that in the committee’s first meeting, for which I give him great credit,” said Lisa Ford, an Albuquerque attorney for many survivors.
“We’ve always wanted to do more for those who were abused,” Wester said.
Wester – who had been a bishop in San Francisco – arrived in Santa Fe in 2015, after his predecessors’ decisions caused years of litigation and pounding media coverage.
“The victims wanted a public record,” Wester said. “The old saying, ‘You’re only as sick as your secrets,’ made me want to be transparent and help the healing process.”
Asked if he had felt pushback from other bishops on releasing files, Wester said: “I got a trickling of letters saying it was a good move. I haven’t heard anything negative.”
In stark contrast with New Orleans, after years of litigation with the church, abuse survivors’ attorneys in Santa Fe had obtained a major storehouse of documents when the bankruptcy there began.
Hiding church secrets was not an issue, as it is in New Orleans, where the church is battling for control over its sickest secrets.
Early on, Trahant, as well as his fellow attorneys John Denenea and Soren Gisleson, successfully urged lawyers for the bankruptcy creditors’ committee to file a motion to compel the archdiocese to hand over the same kinds of documents Wester voluntarily released to the public. Judge Grabill has yet to rule on that motion.
Battle lines in New Orleans
A New Orleans native and the archbishop there since 2009, Aymond had met with many clergy abuse survivors before the bankruptcy. Those meetings occurred as he approved $11.7m worth of out-of-court settlements between 2010 and 2020.
The archbishop was supposed to gather with survivors again in the summer of 2022 for a meeting with the bankruptcy creditors’ committee. Survivors had prepared statements to read to him.
Yet the survivors’ anticipated exchange with Aymond imploded when Grabill announced Trahant’s purported secrecy order violation and expelled him, his co-counsels Denenea and Gisleson, and four of their clients from involvement with the creditors’ committee. The shunned survivors, who had already arrived at the meeting when it was called off, left with a bitter aftertaste.
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Soon, the church attorney Mark Mintz and the bankruptcy noticing agent Donlin Recano sent Grabill’s order finding that Trahant “knowingly and willfully violated the protective order” governing the bankruptcy to 16,000 recipients (including a girl of 18) through first-class mail. The mass mailing cost nearly $9,200 in postage alone – an expense borne by the bankrupt archdiocese, public court filings show.
ReplyDeleteTrahant and his wife Amy – who manages her husband’s law office – sued Mintz, Jones Walker and Donlin Recano in state court for infliction of emotional distress, arguing that almost none of the mail recipients were involved in the bankruptcy.
Jones Walker later steered the case to bankruptcy court in front of Grabill, who is listed as having taught a Tulane University law school class with Mintz and as serving alongside him on the advisory board for the New Orleans university’s law review publication.
The lawsuit asserts that Grabill ordered the Trahant investigation at Mintz’s suggestion.
Trahant has a copy of the court trustee’s investigation. But the secrecy order bars him from sharing its contents.
The fine covers more than half the cost of the investigation, as outlined in court records: $761,000.
The Guardian obtained unpublished documents – not from Trahant – in which Brother Martin’s attorney, responding to interrogatories from bankruptcy court lawyers, telegraphs disdain for being dragged into strife over an alleged secrecy breach.
The school’s principal, Ryan Gallagher, was trying to learn details of Hart’s abuse which Trahant – his cousin – could not provide, beyond a vague warning about past misconduct. “No formal information or court ordered details were mentioned or provided,” the school lawyer wrote to bankruptcy court investigators about Trahant while stiff-arming other questions.
The documents show a clash of values. Leaders at Brother Martin were upset on learning that Aymond had assigned them a chaplain with a hidden record of sexual misconduct that the archbishop knew about. And the bankruptcy court, along with Aymond’s attorneys, were bent on proving that its confidentiality shield had been breached.
In the documents, school officials assert that Aymond apologized for the details of Hart’s sexual misconduct and for having appointed him to Brother Martin. But the church wanted punishment in symmetry with the court.
Lee Eagan, a lay member of Aymond’s finance committee, called the Brother Martin board’s chairman, asking “how and from whom Brother Martin received information” on Hart, as the school attorney wrote in response to court questions. Aymond called the same board chairman asking “what information was received?” – and how, the school attorney notes.
It was ultimately the archdiocese that provided the details about Hart’s past to Brother Martin. Hart had kissed, groped and had “dry sex” – simulated intercourse while clothed – with a girl, 17, in the early 1990s in a youth group run out of the clergyman’s church at the time, according to documents obtained by the Guardian.
Then, in 2012, the victim – now a mother with her own children attending the same church – reported Hart to the archdiocese after learning that he was working in his old position again.
That complaint prompted an investigation by an archdiocesan board set up to advise Aymond on such allegations. Hart admitted to sexual gratification. But Aymond overruled the advisory board’s finding of an abusive sexual offense, arguing that canon law back then held 16 as the age of consent.
Aymond let Hart stay in ministry, even though church law in 2002 raised the consent age to 18. And when Brother Martin requested a campus chaplain in 2017, Aymond sent Hart.
The all-boys school offers dance and cheer team activities for girls. So in early 2022, Brother Martin asked Aymond to “relieve Hart”, the school president Greg Rando wrote in an email to the campus’s governing board. Hart wrote to Aymond that he would step aside “until the matter … has been resolved”.
Rando advised the school attorney of “several calls from … Aymond apologizing for the situation and requesting updates … of Hart”.
ReplyDeleteAymond soon imposed retirement on Hart.
As New Orleans’s Times-Picayune newspaper prepared an article on the circumstances of Hart’s resignation, the archdiocese released a statement to the outlet saying Hart had retired solely to focus on battling brain cancer, from which he died last year.
Later, in a publicly released “finding of fact” document that outlined her reasons for sanctioning Trahant, Grabill wrote that Hart was “out of work on extended medical leave and thus had no contact with minors” at the time his past fell under scrutiny.
But Brother Martin portrayed the sequence of events quite differently. The school sent a letter to students’ parents saying Hart had retired at Brother Martin’s request after it learned of “an issue from [his] distant past that could preclude his being able to serve as chaplain”. The letter made no mention of Hart’s health.
The behind-the-scenes communications also show the church seeking information on Trahant alongside the investigators appointed by Grabill.
Two federal district court judges have left Trahant’s fine in place. He has now sought relief from the US fifth circuit court of appeals. The case remains pending.
A kick in the gut
Grabill’s dismissal of four survivors from the creditors’ committee in the wake of the Hart drama was “a kick in the gut”, as one of them, James Adams, said.
Adams, 53, said: “She moved with lightning speed on Trahant warning a school about an abuser. We were collateral damage. After two years, she hadn’t ruled on a motion to compel disclosure of church files. It took us [survivors] hard preparation and anxious moments, preparing to confront Aymond. Two years into the bankruptcy, he was personally there for the first time to meet with us. We never got the chance.”
Adams’s odyssey offers another viewpoint on the fortress-church strategy that the archdiocese has adopted on the advice of its bankruptcy attorneys.
Abused as a boy by the late Father James Collery at a parochial school in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Adams graduated from Jesuit high in 1988, just behind his future attorney, Trahant.
Adams buried his trauma within, only to find it spilling out decades later. As a bank officer, settled with children, he had marriage problems rooted in the abuse. Adams was a president and board member of the Catholic Community Foundation, raising funds for church causes. He had been friendly with Aymond, having once served as an altar boy for him.
In 2013, Adams chose Aymond to tell about the abuse. The archbishop apologized and offered to cover Adams’s therapy costs.
But having to continually go back to the archdiocese and request payment for the therapy left Adams feeling demeaned. In 2019, he privately asked Aymond for a financial settlement to let him deal with his issues on his own terms while still serving on the Catholic Community Foundation.
The tables quickly turned. A law firm contacted Adams’s employer and therapist requesting his personal files, seeking information. “I sat there stunned,” he said. “I didn’t have an attorney at that point. They were asking for medical files from my time in grade school, high school and college.”
Adams called Trahant. Aymond forced Adams off the Catholic Community Foundation.
Trahant and his co-counsels agreed to seek a negotiated settlement for Adams, who believed the archdiocese would do right by him after listing his abuser as credibly accused in 2018.
But then Aymond’s archdiocese declared bankruptcy, halting the case indefinitely. That also forced Adams to face the church as something he never wanted to be – an adversary – in a venue where the church was only starting to marshal its power.
To see the photos and numerous links embedded in this article go to:
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Bankruptcy court stacks odds in New Orleans church’s favor over abuse claims: ‘I’ve never felt so powerless’
ReplyDeleteChapter 11 protection is designed to give an organization time to reorganize its finances to pay its debts but victims of clerical abuse feel frustrated by a lengthy and opaque process
by Jason Berry The Guardian December 1, 2023
This is the second installment of a three-part series exploring how the archdiocese of New Orleans’s bankruptcy stands apart from other cases of its kind. The first installment ran on Wednesday 29 November 2023.
In 2020, facing nearly 40 pending clergy sex abuse lawsuits, New Orleans’s Catholic archdiocese took Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, giving the organization time to sell properties or reorganize assets to negotiate debt payment.
The number of people who have gone to bankruptcy court and file abuse-related claims has since eclipsed 500. A 2021 state law opened a “look-back window” enabling the 500 abuse survivors involved in the church’s bankruptcy case to seek redress without concern for previously existing filing deadlines. The law removed the church’s ability to offer low-ball settlements by arguing those claims are invalid simply for being filed too late, arming survivors with more leverage than they otherwise would have.
The church has released names of less than a third of more than 300 accused abusers, a disproportionately high number for what is the 41st US diocese in terms of size. The vast majority of those clergy, nuns and laypeople have never been criminally prosecuted.
Most of the files are deemed confidential by the bankruptcy judge, Meredith Grabill, though victims’ attorneys have filed a motion – pending for years – to compel the archdiocese to turn over all those records.
The archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the only one among more than 30 organizations of its kind to have gone through Chapter 11 and to release its clerical abuse files publicly as part of a settlement.
Yet, the New Mexico attorney Lisa Ford – who had many clients among the 400 survivors involved in the $128m Santa Fe settlement – said: “I have never felt so powerless as in bankruptcy court.”
In bankruptcy court, the ultimate tool that a judge has is “to force a liquidation of assets”, Ford said. But Catholic dioceses are non-profits. “You can’t liquidate a non-profit,” Ford added. “The church wants all the relief bankruptcy affords with advantages commercial debtors don’t have.”
Additionally, the archdiocese in New Orleans stands as an antithesis to its Santa Fe counterpart in terms of transparency.
In New Orleans, the Chapter 11 filing has kept most church clergy files secret.
The FBI has been conducting an investigation for more than a year, though how much information it has obtained is unclear.
A priest named Lawrence Hecker, 92, was charged and jailed in September. That was months after the Guardian revealed that Hecker confessed in writing to his church superiors more than 20 years earlier that he had sexually molested or harassed multiple children whom he met while working. He’s awaiting trial.
A few other clergymen have been prosecuted. One lay deacon died while under indictment. But most documents associated with the many abusers who have never been pursued by authorities are shielded by the bankruptcy court.
Bankruptcy opens a slow negotiation. The church pays its lawyers, the bankruptcy counsel and other professional fees. In New Orleans, that’s been more than $25m, about half of that to the archdiocese-hired Jones Walker firm.
James Stang of Los Angeles, a veteran bankruptcy attorney, guides the New Orleans creditors’ committee, reportedly billing $800 an hour. The Jones Walker attorney Mark Mintz, the leader of the church’s expansive legal team, bills $490 hourly.
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Plaintiff lawyers such as Richard Trahant, John Denenea and Soren Gisleson, who represent about 80 of the 500 claimants against the church, work on contingency, typically earning between 30% and 40% of what cases finally yield.
ReplyDeleteSo far, with no end to the bankruptcy in sight, that’s been nothing – for either them or their clients.
“The bankruptcy system was not established with child sex abuse victims in mind,” attorney Marci Hamilton wrote in 2021 as a co-author for a Norton Journal of Bankruptcy Law article. “Chapter 11, in particular, exists to manage assets for an organization going through difficult times.”
Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor, is founder and CEO of ChildUSA, a thinktank promoting reform of laws on child abuse. She cites “a cruel, though unintended, irony, [that] the focus [of bankruptcy law] is on the wellbeing of the institution that covered up child sex abuse”.
Such a scenario emerged in an 11 October 2022 hearing before Grabill over a New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper article on a local Catholic high school chaplain who unbeknown to school officials had previously molested a teen girl.
The chaplain, Paul Hart, resigned after Trahant warned the school principal – coincidentally, his cousin – that the clergyman had a stain in his past. The archdiocese ultimately disclosed what Hart had done. It also became clear that the archbishop had assigned him to the school after clearing the priest of abuse on a technicality: the girl fit the church-set definition of an adult at the time of the misconduct.
Nonetheless, the hearing before Grabill focused on “the leak” of information to the press that the judge insisted fell under the bankruptcy’s secrecy order. Grabill mentioned the possible dismissal of four abuse survivors – represented by Trahant, Denenea and Gisleson – from the creditors’ committee negotiating toward a resolution for the bankruptcy.
The four survivors on the committee “have never had their abusers brought to any type of justice”, a creditors’ group attorney, Rick Kuebel, argued, according to a publicly available transcript.
Kuebel added the survivors at that point had also been “serving on this committee for two years without compensation”, attending hours-long video conferences discussing court developments.
“They are frustrated that, unlike other cases, this archdiocese has chosen to be opaque or not transparent with all these various documents,” Kuebel said. “They’re very frustrated that this [leak] has become the focus of the case instead of trying to get [the church] reorganized and get through to” a resolution.
“Yes, I understand it’s a nuclear option,” said Grabill, in a striking turn of phrase. “But I have to protect the process and enforce court orders.”
Protecting the process
Several weeks later, when the committee members gathered at Kuebel’s office for a meeting that the New Orleans archbishop, Gregory Aymond, was supposed to attend to hear their statements, word came that Grabill had chosen “the nuclear option”.
She had removed Trahant, Denenea and Gisleson from involvement with the committee. She had sacked their four client-survivors – while later fining Trahant $400,000, an order he has appealed to the federal fifth circuit court of appeals.
Grabill aborted the survivors’ chance to address Aymond.
One attorney knowledgable of the proceedings, speaking on background for fear of angering the judge, called the fine “an overreach” that unduly caused the committee a substantial delay.
The Emory University law professor Lindsey D Simon believes the shield that bankruptcy affords parties such as the Sackler family in the controversial opioid mass litigation becomes much stronger when wielded by Catholic dioceses. That reality warps the Chapter 11 laws’ intent, according to Simon.
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“Many of these bankruptcies deprived victims of their day in court and forced them into the settlement process,” Simon writes in Bankruptcy Grifters, an article for the Yale Law School Journal.
ReplyDeleteSimon adds: “What sets the diocese cases apart … is the way they incorporate some of the most destructive practices that set up hurdles and deprive claimants of meaningful protections.”
Saved from coming clean
Some legislatures have been trying to correct the course at least slightly.
Acknowledging that child victims often go decades before confronting the impact of early sexual trauma, lawmakers have sought to prolong deadlines for survivors to initiate civil and criminal action.
California passed a look-back law in 2002 that led to mass settlements five years later. The Los Angeles archdiocese paid the largest settlement on record: $660m for 508 cases.
Religious orders contributed $200m. The archdiocese borrowed $175m from the Allied Irish Bank, which channeled Vatican funds to complete the settlement.
Dan McNevin, who received a 2007 settlement from the Bay Area diocese of Oakland, has been gathering names of clergy offenders as the diocese continues facing additional claims. “Survivors want information so they can reconcile what led to trauma, their personal stories,” McNevin told the Guardian.
“I wanted it thinking I could put together the pieces of what damaged me, and my brother, who cut off his hand” as a result of his abuse.
McNevin said he thought getting the files on his abuser, Father James A Clark, would help him heal and “erase that shame”.
But, as in New Orleans, the Oakland diocese – which is also in bankruptcy – has its documents under a protective seal, even as the diocese’s own self-reported number of child molester clergymen has steadily ballooned.
In 2003, the diocese admitted to 12. The number doubled after publicity surrounding abuse lawsuits that the diocese had settled.
A 2019 update increased the number to 45, and these days it’s about 60, according to news reports.
The Oakland diocese’s bankruptcy involves accusations against 120 clergy with 330 victims. Citing his own research, McNevin argued the number of accused should really be 174 or so.
“I want the names listed as a form of contrition by the church. The list is proof of the crimes. And enough on the list is proof of the conspiracy to hide. The list keeps growing. These bankruptcies are saving dioceses from ever coming clean,” McNevin said.
The Milwaukee experience
Jeff Anderson, a St Paul plaintiff lawyer and pioneer in the clergy abuse litigation field, faults Chapter 11 as a “strategy to shield bishops’ complicity and incriminating priest files, and to suppress the value of settlements by delaying and wearing down survivors”.
Anderson had survivor clients in Milwaukee, where the archdiocese took Chapter 11 in 2011. Wisconsin had the most restrictive filing deadlines – or statute of limitations – in the US on the issue of negligent supervision, a key factor in church litigation.
Anderson over several years brought cases alleging fraudulent behavior by religious superiors, which the courts allowed. He had 350 clients among 578 survivors suing the archdiocese.
Archbishop Rembert Weakland had a cavalier history of recycling predators through different positions before his 2002 resignation after ABC News reported that he paid $450,000 in hush money to a former lover, a theology graduate student.
The bankruptcy under since-retired judge Susan Kelly took nearly five years in often bitter proceedings. One issue was $57m that the archbishop, Timothy Dolan, had diverted to a Milwaukee cemetery trust, keeping it off the table for settlements.
Dolan soon left for New York, becoming a cardinal.
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Anderson saw the cemetery deposit as “fraudulent on its face” but managed to “claw back” some of the funds for settlement purposes. He said the prospect of having clients’ claims dismissed on statute of limitations grounds loomed over the negotiations, undercutting Anderson’s leverage.
ReplyDeleteAnderson filed 578 proof of claims documents by victims, detailing their abuse, at a time when the archdiocese had a published list of 48 sex offenders.
“The creditors’ committee wanted those files sent to the state attorney general,” according to the survivor and activist Peter Isely, a therapist with a master’s in divinity from Harvard.
“We believed more than 100 alleged offenders were named in those documents, cataloguing thousands of instances of abuse. We wanted them seen by law enforcement to see if some cases could be prosecuted. Judge Kelly refused. She sealed those documents. The settlement was like an unconditional surrender.”
The bankruptcy ended with $21m for 330 claims: a meager $6,363 per person, with scores of survivors receiving nothing.
Anderson had a heart attack after the proceedings. He said the case “remains one of the most painful chapters in my career”.
Years later, however, Wisconsin’s attorney general, Joshua Kaul, reacted as other prosecutors have done to the shocking revelations of bishops’ coddling pedophiles in a landmark 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report. He moved to gain access to the 578 proof of claim files which the bankruptcy judge put under wraps.
“The investigation improperly targets the Roman Catholic church and appears to be a product of anti-Catholic bigotry,” the archdiocese’s lawyer wrote Kaul in 2021, objecting to the files’ release.
Kaul’s request is still being litigated.
The often-glacial pace of litigation has driven victims’ lawyers to seek a wider scope of assets. One example is the targeting of the endowment of Gonzaga University, a Jesuit institution in Spokane, Washington.
At least 29 Jesuits were accused of abuse in Native Alaskan communities, which the order’s north-west Oregon province administered. The Jesuits and their insurers settled the claims in 2009, paying $50m to 110 victims.
The average settlement was $454,545. Gonzaga’s endowment was untouched.
In the New Orleans bankruptcy, the potential value of clergy abuse claimants’ individual cases hinges on whether the 2021 look-back window survives challenges to its constitutionality endorsed by the Catholic church. The law for now remains on the books.
‘I may live to regret it’
Richard Trahant’s life changed in 2018 when he joined attorney John Denenea in taking the case that still haunts both men.
In 1979, a boy of 16 worked part-time in the Salesian priests’ residence at Archbishop Shaw high school in the New Orleans suburb of Marrero. The boy, identified in court records as CJ Doe, cared for an invalid cleric.
One night, as CJ was about to leave, a priest named Salvatore “Sam” Isgro grabbed him by the neck, covered his nose with a cloth soaked in a chemical that stunned him, pulled down his pants and anally raped him. “Don’t tell anybody,” the now-late Isgro said, his breath reeking of garlic and tomato sauce.
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On the bus, children laughed at his pants’ bloody rear. He got into the bath once back home with his aunt and uncle.
ReplyDeleteHis aunt screamed over the bloody water. His uncle drove him to the hospital.
“They said I was ripped from the rectum,” CJ told the Guardian. “I missed 10 days of school and had to wear a sterile pad. I never went to [gym class] after that.”
Fearful of accusing a priest, CJ joined the army. Memories of the rape stalked him. After a mental breakdown, he received an honorable discharge and was subsisting on disability pensions – trailed by post-traumatic stress – when he dragged himself to see New Orleans’s archbishop Gregory Aymond in 2018.
Aymond’s habit of meeting with abuse survivors keeps with the US Catholic bishops youth protection charter of 2002. That document was enacted after the Boston Globe had exposed local bishops’ concealing clergymen who were child predators, igniting a chain reaction of similar media coverage in other communities.
Amid a resulting firestorm of criticism, the bishops pledged “not [to] enter into confidentiality agreements for grave and substantial reasons brought forward by the victim/survivor”. The promise was to halt the practice of negotiated settlements that muzzled survivors by barring them from disclosing the agreements’ terms, hoping to suppress publicity that could produce more litigation.
New Orleans’s archdiocese, however, maintained muzzle clauses long past that, as Kevin Bourgeois learned in 2019.
A therapist who was abused in the 1980s as a student at a New Orleans high school which primarily educated boys interested in the priesthood, Bourgeois is fond of Aymond, whom Bourgeois knew from attending a high school where Aymond once worked.
Bourgeois said Aymond personally and sympathetically listened to Bourgeois’s story of abuse – something the bankruptcy would prevent the archbishop from doing now.
“Now, Greg’s hands are tied,” Bourgeois said. “The frustration shows on his face.”
But the church’s out-of-court mediation of Bourgeois’s claim – which Aymond did not participate in – “was a miserable experience”, Bourgeois told the Guardian.
For that, he blamed Wendy Vitter, the archdiocese’s in-house attorney, for insisting he sign a non-disclosure agreement. Vitter has declined to publicly discuss her work with the archdiocese ever since becoming a federal judge in New Orleans in 2019.
CJ Doe told the Guardian that in his case, Aymond put him in touch with Salesian officials and insisted he go to a psychiatrist in Texas. “He told me be sure you don’t tell anyone,” CJ said, alluding to how Aymond and the Salesians put him through a metaphorical maze.
After meeting with CJ, Trahant drove home and sobbed in his carport, disturbed to his core by the details of his client’s abuse.
“I may live to regret it,” Trahant said. “But I am going into this darkness.”
That was four years before the $400,000 fine he’s facing today.
Trahant, Denenea and Gisleson have taken on CJ and 86 other clergy abuse survivors as clients. All of those cases hang in limbo as the archdiocese’s bankruptcy grinds on, with no clear signs as to what a settlement may look like – or when one might be feasible.
To see the photos and numerous links embedded in this article go to
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‘The devil was in that building’: New Orleans church orphanages’ dark secrets
ReplyDeleteSurvivors of institutions run by Catholic diocese recall litany of sexual abuse as bankruptcy process keeps documents hidden
by Jason Berry The Guardian December 3, 2023
This is the final installment of a three-part series exploring how the archdiocese of New Orleans’s bankruptcy stands apart from other cases of its kind. The first installment ran on Wednesday 29 November 2023, and the second installment ran on Friday 1 December.
Call her Sheila.
She doesn’t want her name used because of court testimony she has given as a state social worker which helped put men who abused their families in jail. She’s retired now, but still a rescuer by nature.
On a recent afternoon she went back to Madonna Manor, the Catholic orphanage in a Spanish colonial revival building, now shuttered, several miles across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. “A reverent place,” she sighed, “but it’s also a crime scene.”
She gazed at the wooden plank covering a window. Raccoons now nested in rooms that were once the dormitory for boys under age 12 at Madonna Manor. Feral cats roamed the empty playgrounds where homeless men sometimes camped.
“I tried. I did everything I could to get that man put away,” she said, referring to Harold Ehlinger, who lived in a dormitory room when her day job was counseling boys at Madonna Manor decades ago.
On the opposite side of Barataria Boulevard, another Spanish mission structure housed the older, adolescent boys: Hope Haven, a name dripping with irony like candle wax given the hell described in victims’ lawsuits against the New Orleans archdiocese.
The buildings warped by neglect stand on vast green acreage – potentially sizable assets in the bankruptcy protection this archdiocese sought in 2020, facing abuse victim lawsuits. The church case now exceeds 500 abuse claims, whose potential value depends on the survival of a recent Louisiana “look-back” law which eliminated filing deadlines for victims.
The outlines of a subterranean criminal religious culture are emerging with roughly 100 abuse claims that center on the two orphanages.
The severity of suffering at Hope Haven and Madonna Manor probably explains why 23 of those claimants, already some of society’s most vulnerable and marginalized, have had legal troubles and been incarcerated – their cases are among those brought by the law firm of New Orleans trial attorney Frank E Lamothe.
“People escaped – sometimes in groups,” said a former resident, not among Lamothe’s clients, with his own lawsuit against the orphanages pending, under a pseudonym.
Call him Leon. Born in 1971, he was sent to Madonna Manor from a splintered family in late 1982 or 1983 – he’s blurry on exactly when. “Instead of taking abuse I’d run away – too many times to count,” he said. “Police would bring you back. It was pretty much a prison.”
A religious brother named Harold Ehlinger is accused of child sexual abuse in several lawsuits pending against the church and Catholic Charities, which ran the two facilities, while utilizing public funds from the United Way and local government.
In the fall of 1980, Sheila had a freshly minted master’s in social work from Tulane University when she went to work at Madonna Manor. In counseling and group therapy she discovered boys angry, cynical and acting out over sexual abuse by Brother Harold in his private room within the dorm. The boys agreed to give her statements – she taped interviews.
When Sheila rapped on his door, Ehlinger answered in a bathrobe, with a flustered child inside. Ehlinger was “furious at seeing me”, she recalled.
She told her supervisor. The supervisor had her meet with a priest who listened gravely and accepted her documentation. Ehlinger disappeared. She was relieved. In 1982, she took a better-paying job with the state of Louisiana.
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Sheila the whistleblower had gone when Leon arrived. Church authorities had allowed Brother Harold to reside in a cottage near Hope Haven.
ReplyDelete“Brother Harold was like the boss,” Leon continued. “Once you’re targeted they got lockdown units. They’d put a pillow over your face so you can’t hear what’s going on. Sometimes they wore masks to conceal [their] identity so you didn’t know who raped you.
“They’d bring you over to the Dark Tower – that’s what we called the church, the cathedral they had on the property. Running away from Madonna Manor you just wanted to be someplace else. You’re still going to an abusive environment, but it was the horrors of being sexually assaulted, like the devil was in the building.”
Leon’s lawsuit alleges beatings and sexual assaults by several men. “Brother Harold performed some form of fondling, groping or molesting of [Leon] on an almost daily basis,” the complaint alleges.
“When I got out,” he told the Guardian, “I was damaged goods.”
In the mid-80s, Sheila was driving past a Catholic school. She saw Ehlinger, surrounded by kids, guiding them into school buses. She was stunned. “I naively thought they’d turned him over to the police or kicked him out of ministry.”
Ehlinger was one in a procession of alleged pedophiles at Hope Haven and Madonna Manor, according to various pending lawsuits, depositions and documents from past cases not subject to bankruptcy judge Meredith Grabill’s secrecy order concealing church documents.
Collectively, those documents provide new, chilling particulars about two of the most infamous institutions linked to the Catholic clergy abuse crisis – but whose details have largely been buried in the past.
Ehlinger’s last known address is a Holy Cross religious house in Austin, Texas. A process server went to hand him legal papers there.
Ehlinger is among the more than 200 accused Catholic church abusers not on the local archdiocese’s “credibly accused” list, though the church resolved past cases identifying him in what became negotiated settlements.
The church declined the Guardian’s request for an interview with Archbishop Gregory Aymond or to answer general questions about this report.
Haunted by nuns
Call him Joe. His lawsuit against the church uses a pseudonym.
In 1976, when he was 11, Joe went to Madonna Manor. He noticed that the pool was closed.
“I was told one of the students drowned in the pool,” he said. “I never knew the boy’s name, only that he snuck out one night and died in the pool.”
Joe said he started wondering about the boy’s death after Sister Martin Marie began “tying me by the genitals and nearly suffocating me to sexually pleasure her between the legs”.
“She liked to sit on my face till I couldn’t breathe,” he remarked.
To this day, he said, he wonders about whether the boy who was said to have drowned may have been abused.
Martin Marie, a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, was named in an earlier wave of lawsuits over the orphanages in 2009. Like Ehlinger, her name is not on the archdiocese’s credibly accused list.
Joe finds that appalling because he says Sister Martin Marie wasn’t the only nun complicit in the beatings and sexual abuse he endured on the verge of puberty.
“I kept running away from Madonna Manor because of those nuns,” Joe said. “They sent me back to my mom and stepdad in Metairie. Things didn’t go well for me after Madonna Manor. My mom didn’t believe me about the nuns.”
Joe said he was committed to a mental hospital in Mandeville, a community across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. He recalled being treated with the anti-psychotic medication thorazine. “I didn’t trust people,” he said. “I became very violent, I did fight the staff.
“I was held down, injected and put in restraints.”
He got out. After scrapes with the law he found a foster father, and slowly began rebuilding his life.
“I’m in a safe place now,” Joe said.
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For many years he avoided Madonna Manor. But on a recent autumn day Joe gave a work buddy, who lived near the complex, a lift home. He found himself on Barataria Boulevard, and the memories started surging. He parked at the back of the Madonna Manor dormitory.
ReplyDeleteHe found Sheila standing there.
Sheila saw the pain on his face and knew in a heartbeat he was a survivor. Like her, she sensed, he had left a piece of his heart there. Thinking of the boys she had tried to help, she stepped toward him and said: “Hi, I’m Sheila.”
“I’m Joe,” he replied. “I used to live here.”
She was a stranger but within a few minutes he was pouring out stories of his past – did she know about the boy who drowned? She did not. Sheila took the Madonna Manor job four years after Joe left. They exchanged phone numbers. He called her that night, sobbing as he let loose memories of the hell he survived, wondering if that boy who was rumored to have drowned was a victim like he was, only worse.
Joe continued by sharing details about his best friend at Madonna Manor, an altar boy who was molested by a priest.
The boy, Rene Perez, was eventually moved to another home across the lake.
“He and two or three others had run away,” Joe said. “They took bicycles and were going across [a] bridge when he got hit by a car and thrown in the water. They found him I think about five days later.
“The funeral was held at Madonna Manor church, but I wasn’t there that weekend.”
Still fighting tooth and nail
In the 1920s, Hope Haven opened as a home for dependent children. Madonna Manor opened a few years later. Eventually boys younger than 12 lived at Madonna Manor, and older teenagers at the other institution.
Exactly when the two institutions became a magnet for pedophiles and people prone to sadistic behavior is unclear. But 17 lawsuits filed in 2005 made allegations going back to the 1950s that described horrific abuses.
Besides the School Sisters of Notre Dame, other authority figures at the orphanages were Salesian priests and brothers, who founded the nearby Archbishop Shaw high school.
A major figure in the 2005 litigation, a priest named Ray Hebert, was director of the two facilities from 1966 to 1971.
Hebert, who held the elevated title of monsignor, was also the director of Catholic Charities, which had responsibility for the orphanages. If any cleric had textured knowledge of the internal dynamics at the two facilities, it was Ray Hebert.
In 2008, during the litigation, Hebert gave a deposition, saying: “If you were a trained social worker, you didn’t speak of orphanages.” Institutions for dependent children was more correct, he said, because state funding was involved.
Yet the survivors of the sexual and physical abuses may as well as have been on another planet from most of society. Most came from dysfunctional families and lacked any freedom to leave on their own, other than by running away, which invited retribution.
Hebert in the early 1990s took another job, as vicar of clergy at the New Orleans archdiocese, a position that required him to investigate priests accused of child sexual abuse.
Attorney Michael Pfau, who represented plaintiff-survivors of the orphanage, asked if Hebert ever reported a priest to the police or child protective services.
“No,” he answered. “I never did.”
Hebert stated that after interviewing a given priest, he sent a report to his boss at the time: the longtime archbishop Philip Hannan.
Pfau asked: “Did you ever ask a priest to sign a written statement?”
Hebert replied: “No, not that I remember. I recall one case, you know, where after interviewing the [priest] and taking notes, I did ultimately write up a report as to what I had learned from him, and asking him to go over the report to see whether he objected to anything I had put in that report not being accurate. But I didn’t ask him to sign this report.”
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On retiring from that job in 2003, Hebert said he destroyed all his notes.
ReplyDeleteDoing so was a serious violation of canon law, according to Tom Doyle, a former priest and canon lawyer in the Vatican embassy in Washington DC in the early 1980s. Canon 1719 reads: “The acts of the investigation, the decrees of the [bishop] which initiated and concluded the investigation, and everything which initiated and concluded the investigation, and everything which preceded the investigation are to be kept in the secret archive of the [administration] if they are not necessary for the penal process.”
How many reports Hebert actually wrote is unknown. But his 4 November 1999 assessment of Father Lawrence Hecker was made public, in a recent filing by the Orleans parish district attorney’s office, after his criminal indictment.
The document is notable for Hecker saying he harassed or slept with various boys but did not rape them. Hecker does, however, concede that a young man “came out, years later, he told his parents that he and I had had sex together. They reported this to … Hannan and he spoke with me about it in early 1988.”
By 2012, when Sister Carmelita Centanni, the archdiocese’s victim assistant coordinator, wrote to Archbishop Aymond, she cited an allegation of sexual abuse against Hecker from the police in Gretna, a New Orleans suburb, stating: “This is the NINTH allegation we have on record against Larry Hecker.”
Hecker retired with the comfort of a church pension until it was discontinued after the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy. He has been in jail awaiting trial since his indictment in September.
In the 2005 Hope Haven-Madonna Manor litigation, three plaintiffs mentioned Hebert among other accused abusers. Hebert responded by filing his own lawsuit against the plaintiffs, alleging defamation and denying he ever abused anyone.
Two other plaintiffs also named Hebert among other abusers but had not filed suit at that stage. Ultimately, after the archdiocese settled the Hope Haven-Madonna Manor litigation for $5m, the plaintiffs who named Hebert withdrew their claims against him.
Religion News Service revealed a bitter divide at the time of the settlement. Some involved in the settlement wanted the church to be required to release all documents pertaining to abuse at Hope Haven and Madonna Manor, but that didn’t happen.
“We’ve had to fight the church tooth and nail for more than four years to get [the church] to acknowledge wrongdoing,” said attorney Roger Stetter, who also had clients in the litigation. Stetter accused the archdiocese of trying to hide evidence.
Archbishop Gregory Aymond, who was recently installed at the time, seemed conciliatory. “It’s important that these wrongdoers come to light and that we admit that as far as we can tell [the charges] are true,” he said.
But the church went on to underreport its list of abusers.
Between 2010 and 2020, the archdiocese settled more than 130 sex abuse claims, totaling $11.7m, in many cases requiring victims to sign confidentiality agreements – a move specifically denounced by the 2002 US bishops’ youth protection charter.
Hebert died in 2014. Several years later, there was a new wave of lawsuits against Hope Haven and Madonna Manor after Aymond published a list of New Orleans Catholic clergymen whom his archdiocese considered to be credibly accused of child molestation.
In January 2020, the archdiocese paid $325,000 to resolve a case that accused Hebert, Sister Martin Marie and others with ties to Hope Haven as well as Madonna Manor. The archdiocese would not pay such settlements if it didn’t consider claimants believable, as one of the organization’s vicars general told an abuse survivor in a separate case.
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But Hebert’s name is conspicuously absent from the archdiocese’s credibly accused list, which has been updated several times since it was first published in 2018.
ReplyDeleteThe issue no one wants to touch
Amid news of the later lawsuits, Joe contacted the attorneys John Denenea and Richard Trahant.
They told him the process could be long and frustrating. But he signed on.
After the bankruptcy began, Joe was surprised at the opportunity to serve on the creditors’ committee, representing other survivors and negotiating toward a settlement. He had few illusions about the church but wanted to help push against the rock of injustice.
Last year, he went to a scheduled meeting with Aymond, where he and three other survivors hoped to speak their truth directly to the archbishop. But then came word that Judge Grabill was removing him, Trahant, Denenea and three more of the lawyers’ survivor clients from involvement with the committee.
Grabill maintained that Trahant had violated a secrecy order by warning a local Catholic high school run by his cousin that the campus’s chaplain had a substantial stain in his past.
Trahant’s warning ultimately forced the archdiocese to disclose that the chaplain had engaged in sexual misconduct with a teenage girl at a past assignment in the 1990s but was allowed to continue his career.
“I think it was a setup by the church,” Joe said. He said his lawyers had long been after the records that vividly outline the abuses at Madonna Manor, Hope Haven and numerous other archdiocesan institutions across the New Orleans area, which serves about a half-million Catholics.
“The church doesn’t want to release that information,” Joe continued. “I think Richard [Trahant] was a patsy and they took us all out. That’s my take.”
The archdiocese’s formidable status in bankruptcy court leaves a trail of questions.
Given the public funds expended at Hope Haven and Madonna Manor, why haven’t federal authorities used their power to do a surgical review into every file archived at the archdiocese, including those detailing the abusive history of the two orphanages?
If Joe had cause to worry about whether a boy drowned there, and if his pal Rene Perez was the victim of a priest and died trying to escape another facility, what kind of oversight did Louisiana officials provide at Hope Haven and Madonna Manor?
Should the sadistic violence and rapes alleged by Leon be swept under the rug of time by the most powerful law enforcement authorities?
If Hebert, who oversaw the facilities, was in fact an abuser – as a $325,000 settlement would suggest – do documents shed light on his decisions that allowed the place to become a pedophiles’ haven, as alleged in the lawsuits?
How much do those 23 former Hope Haven and Madonna Manor residents who are now incarcerated know about what happened there?
Will Judge Grabill seal off information on crimes against children, as alleged in so many cases, to furnish a settlement when the church finally presents a reorganization plan?
More than half of New Orleans’s federal judges have recused themselves from archdiocesan litigation because of ties to the Catholic church.
This fact does not surprise Stephen C Rubino, a veteran plaintiffs’ lawyer who is now retired in Vermont. But that doesn’t mean Rubino – who spent many years in New Jersey litigating against the church – likes it at all.
“You should not be able to maintain a criminal racketeering conspiracy for hiding pedophiles and still function as a religious, tax-exempt charity,” Rubino – also a former Florida state prosecutor – said in response to the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy. “That is the issue no US attorney wants to touch.”
Ramon Antonio Vargas contributed reporting
To see the photos and links embedded in this article go to:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/03/new-orleans-orphanages-church-sexual-abuse
‘He controlled my life’: New Orleans archdiocese ignored woman’s claims before priest’s abrupt dismissal
ReplyDeleteAnthony Odiong – who gave anti-LGBTQ+ sermons – had detailed allegations abuse filed against him before his removal
Ramon Antonio Vargas The Guardian December 7, 2023
A Louisiana Catholic priest’s sudden dismissal from the church where he had been a popular pastor for the last several years has set off a fresh scandal in the embattled New Orleans archdiocese, the second-oldest in the US.
As they tell it, local church leaders rescinded Anthony Odiong’s invitation to serve as a cleric in the region due to unspecified “concerns … about [his] ministry prior” to his arrival in the archdiocese – “and quite possibly during his time” there. As a result, the New Orleans archbishop, Gregory Aymond, told Odiong’s bishop in Nigeria to recall him to his home diocese “as soon as possible to address these concerns”, officials said in a statement.
The statement did not mention whether those concerns stemmed from Aymond’s receipt in 2019 of a detailed complaint against Odiong of years-long sexual and financial abuse from a woman who viewed the clergyman as her spiritual adviser – and who says the church brushed her off.
“These concerns do not include the abuse of minors nor to our knowledge involve anyone in this [church],” is all the archdiocese’s statement said.
The statement added that the archdiocese had reported Odiong to law enforcement authorities, and the organization had ordered him to soon leave the rectory where he had been residing.
Meanwhile, Odiong has offered up a starkly different counter-narrative. He has publicly suggested that Aymond booted him out from serving the archdiocese with about a half-million Catholics after likening members of the LGBTQ+ community to “monkeys and animals and chimpanzees” in a recent sermon that warned of a purported liberal takeover of the church.
The archdiocese’s statement did not deny that it found Odiong’s remarks to be problematic. And it suggested that the comments may have expedited a departure originally scheduled for January.
“Unfortunately,” the statement said, “[Father] Anthony’s words and actions since being informed of this decision have led to us taking action to relieve him as pastor now.”
Whatever the case, the circumstances of Odiong’s departure from the St Anthony of Padua church highlight the layered predicament Aymond and his archdiocese find themselves in.
The archdiocese has racked up nearly $34m in legal and other professional services fees since filing for federal bankruptcy protection in 2020 in the face of a mountain of local clergy abuse litigation. To cope with the bankruptcy court expenses, the church recently announced a plan to close several of its churches.
St Anthony of Padua was not one of the churches affected by the downsizing. Yet Odiong’s dismissal has stirred unrest among his parishioners and their community of Luling, Louisiana, whose population of about 14,500 people resides about 25 miles (40km) south-west of New Orleans.
Masses held by Odiong in which parishioners came to be healed both physically and spiritually proved to be particularly popular and helped attendance for weekend services surge from fewer than 390 to more than 500, according to reporting in the local St Charles Herald Guide newspaper.
Odiong and at least some in his former congregation now feel as though they have been thrust into the split brewing between those who support and those who oppose Pope Francis’s attempts to make the Catholic church more welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community, a prominent agenda item during a recent synod of bishops at the Vatican.
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Francis in November dismissed Joseph Strickland, at that time the bishop of Tyler, Texas, for his criticism of the pope’s goals to be more inclusive of LGBTQ+ people and to give the laity more responsibilities within a church that does not allow gay marriage.
ReplyDeleteThe outpouring of support for Odiong from some of his followers has generally echoed the support among conservative circles that met Strickland after his ouster.
“You have your flock’s unwavering love,” read one of numerous recent Facebook posts from Luling residents. Another read: “I [shudder] to think what my spiritual life would be like without his guidance … My friends and I stand WITH [Father] Anthony Odiong, NOT against him.”
However, what the controversy surrounding Odiong’s departure also seems to highlight is how few – if any – of his most fervent believers realized that he stands among more than 300 clergymen, religious personnel or lay church employees who are accused of abusing vulnerable parishioners – mostly children but also adults – in claims filed as part of the archdiocese’s pending bankruptcy.
Most of the records associated with the bankruptcy are under a court seal. But the Guardian managed to obtain a copy of the claim against Odiong, which was prepared by his accuser’s attorney, Kristi Schubert.
A review of the document – filed under oath – raises questions about whether Aymond could have acted against Odiong long before his abrupt dismissal and the anti-LGBTQ+ remarks that he insisted cost him his position.
When asked about his response to the accusations in the bankruptcy, Odiong said: “We have discussed the allegations, and I have a lawyer taking care of that.”
He said he could not elaborate but maintained that Aymond had rescinded his invitation for Odiong to minister in the New Orleans archdiocese because the Nigerian “went against the pope and the synod”.
Schubert, who represents numerous clergy abuse survivors, said: “I am not surprised at all that it took a public scandal for [Father] Odiong to finally see even minimal consequences. In my experience, credible abuse allegations alone have not been enough to motivate the church to remove a priest.”
‘Dismissed my claim’
Odiong underwent his clerical training in Nigeria and was ordained in 1993, according to his biography on the St Anthony of Padua webpage. For more than a decade, he served in Nigeria.
But the country has historically been convulsed by sectarian violence against Catholics. In 2006, Odiong moved to Austin, the capital of Texas, to minister there on the invitation of the city’s bishop at the time: Aymond.
Odiong later worked in campus ministry at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He obtained a master’s degree in theology from Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.
Meanwhile, Aymond became New Orleans’s archbishop in 2009. In about 2015, Aymond invited Odiong to serve as the pastor of St Anthony.
Odiong’s healing masses helped improve church attendance. Their popularity led to the construction of a new healing chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which opened in 2020.
He took parishioners with him to Medjugorje, the site in Bosnia which has attracted a million pilgrims annually since 1981, when six children and teenagers there said they had witnessed the appearance of the Virgin.
But the year before the healing chapel at St Anthony opened, a woman who described meeting Odiong at Franciscan University in 2007 contacted the archdiocese of New Orleans with detailed abuse accusations against Odiong.
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The abuse claim that the woman later filed in bankruptcy court described how Odiong positioned himself to be her spiritual director.
ReplyDelete“From May 2007 until December 2018, Father Odiong and I spoke daily,” said the woman, who recalled being 37 when she met the clergyman. As her personal spiritual adviser, she said Odiong “came to control nearly every aspect of my life, including my financial and relationship decisions”.
Among numerous other alleged misdeeds, she accused Odiong of forcing her to perform sexual acts – including oral intercourse – with him during the sacrament of confession, at private masses in her home and in at least one motel room. She described the acts occurring in New Orleans, in West, Texas, in Pennsylvania and in Alabama, in her car while stopped in a church parking lot – despite the vow of celibacy that Catholic clergyman make.
The woman said Odiong told her she would earn forgiveness for her sins through her sexual service. She accused him of threatening to “place a curse on her head” if she ever refused, of insinuating that she was mentally ill by calling her a “troubled woman”, and of stealing money, including thousands of dollars from her.
At one point, needing the floors of her home redone, she alleged that Odiong forced her to hire a man who she learned was “a rapist”. Her floors did not end up getting redone, and she was drawn into a legal dispute that cost her nearly $50,000, she said.
The woman said she mostly stopped engaging with Odiong in late 2018. That was weeks after Aymond had released the first version of a list naming several New Orleans Catholic clergymen whom the church considered to be credibly accused of molesting children or vulnerable adult parishioners, igniting a wave of additional claims of church molestation that eventually thrust the archdiocese into bankruptcy.
Odiong was not on the list, which was one piece of the broad fallout from a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report that found Catholic clerical sex abuse in that state was much more widely spread than the church had acknowledged.
And in early 2019, the woman – whose home is in Pennsylvania – contacted a religious brother serving as the New Orleans archdiocese’s point of contact for abuse claimants, and reported Odiong.
She said the archdiocese’s victims assistance coordinator told her: “I do not think you are remembering things correctly.” Then, toward the middle of July that year, she said, she reported Odiong directly to Aymond.
The woman said she sought to boost her credibility by saying she had ghostwritten some of the letters Odiong sent to Aymond over the years, including ones that successfully asked for financial assistance to complete his education while also requesting an invitation to work in New Orleans.
Nonetheless, “I felt like he dismissed my claim as well,” the woman said of Aymond.
The woman cited copies of text messages and phone call logs to establish the volume of contact that she had with Odiong and to support her assertion that she had conversed with Aymond. She captured telephone recordings that showed she contacted detectives in Luling and her Pennsylvania home town about Odiong, though it is unclear if those agencies pursued investigations.
After the woman reported him to the archdiocese, Odiong wrote to her saying that the victims assistance coordinator had contacted him, according to an email her lawyer provided. It is unclear what else the archdiocese may have done in response to her claims.
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Information produced during the bankruptcy’s discovery process and reported on by the Guardian has established that the archdiocese over the last several decades has gone to extreme lengths to shield abusive clergymen – including the handful of ones convicted of or charged with crimes by subpoena-wielding authorities despite the church’s protection.
ReplyDeleteOdiong did serve as the pastor of St Anthony of Padua through most of 2023, presiding over weddings, baptisms, weekly masses and services at the healing chapel.
As recently as August, Odiong, Aymond and a third clergyman hosted a three-day series of masses at a church in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie. Odiong presided over a healing service following the mass, according to an archdiocesan bulletin.
Odiong’s removal
It was not until a Saturday service on 18 November at St Anthony of Padua that Odiong informed his congregation that their time together was coming to an end. He said his plan was to move by January to Florida, where he intended to build a chapel like one whose construction he was overseeing in Texas.
At Sunday mass on 26 November, he elaborated with remarks that took aim at the LGBTQ+ community.
“The church is dividing already,” Odiong said during his homily that day, according to a video available on YouTube. “Now the gays have taken over the church. The LGBTQY – whatever you call them – have a stranglehold on the church now. We’re going to begin to bless all kinds of monkeys and animals and chimpanzees, and priests who will not do it will be persecuted.”
Odiong went on to suggest that he was “not safe” because of his beliefs on that topic. “Yet, I’m not afraid – I’m excited,” he said. “I like a good fight.”
As Odiong tells it, Aymond told him that he had until the next several days to move out of St Anthony of Padua’s rectory. The archbishop had rescinded Odiong’s invitation to minister in the New Orleans archdiocese, the ousted clergyman said.
Before St Anthony’s Sunday mass on 3 December, the church announced it would not livestream video of the service as usual.
At mass, the archdiocese said, parishioners were read a statement telling them that Odiong’s removal was being expedited over various but unspecified concerns. The archdiocese’s statement asked Odiong’s congregation to respect his privacy and keep him in their prayers “during this time of transition”.
The statement triggered a wave of Facebook comments in support of Odiong. One accused the archdiocese of having “besmirched a holy man’s character to his congregation” with no substantial specifics.
The woman who has accused Odiong of abuse is demanding damages from the archdiocese’s bankruptcy case, which remains unresolved. She argues that she lost at least $150,000 in wages after her mental anguish over Odiong’s alleged domination interrupted her ability to work as a licensed clinical social worker.
The woman’s lawyer, Schubert, said it was disturbing but unsurprising that the archdiocese “allowed Odiong to continue to hold a position of trust and authority” for years despite her client’s complaint.
Schubert said her client’s case was only the latest to illustrate how “abuse allegations will typically be ignored or covered up as long as possible” by institutions like the archdiocese.
“The only thing I’ve really ever seen the church respond to quickly is the fear of bad publicity,” Schubert added. “They don’t fix things that are bad. They fix things that make them look bad.”
As for Odiong, he said he plans to continue in ministry as long as he has the permission of his supervising bishop in the diocese of Uyo, Nigeria.
“You have to let this play out,” Odiong said. “This is just the beginning.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/07/new-orleans-archdiocese-anthony-odiong-gregory-aymond
US archbishop secretly backed bid to free priest convicted of raping child
ReplyDelete‘I join you in the prayer to guide those regarding your appeal,’ Gregory Aymond of New Orleans wrote to priest given life sentence
Ramon Antonio Vargas The Guardian December 18, 2023
As he reached the end of his 41-year life, Kevin Portier had endured child rape at the hands of a southern Louisiana Catholic priest for whom he had served as an altar boy; a highly publicized trial that sent the clergyman to prison for the rest of his days; and the trauma associated with those experiences.
But one of Portier’s harshest ordeals came within his final two years alive. Representatives of the church that he had been raised to believe in approached him at his home, at his job and at a relative’s funeral to ask him to lend his support to efforts to secure an early release for his rapist, Robert Melancon.
“I don’t know what the real deal is,” Portier wrote in a fall 2017 email seeking answers from leaders of his local diocese, who didn’t realize until later that the people lobbying for Melancon’s release were actually church officials about 60 miles away in New Orleans. “And [it] doesn’t matter. All that matters now is I will not be lied to by the Catholic church.”
It’s unclear whether Portier, before his death in the spring of 2019, ever learned exactly who was trying to engineer an early release from prison for Melancon. But records that the Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans has fought to keep hidden show the city’s archbishop Gregory Aymond – while not even being in charge of him – furtively sanctioned legal maneuvers that, if successful, would have prematurely freed Melancon from what Portier considered to be a just punishment.
Meanwhile, one of the attorneys who played a key role in the campaign to free Melancon, VM Wheeler III, would himself later be convicted of molesting a child – an act of abuse that occurred years before, but that was not reported to authorities until after he joined New Orleans’s Catholic clergy as a deacon.
The records in question make clear that the effort to free Melancon involved overtures by affiliates of the archdiocese of New Orleans to the highest levels of government: to the warden of the prison where the convicted rapist was incarcerated, to the director of Louisiana’s department of corrections, and to the state’s governor himself.
It brought tension between New Orleans’ archdiocese and its smaller counterpart in Louisiana’s Houma-Thibodaux region, which administered the church where Portier served and met Melancon. After learning an early release for Melancon was a possibility, the bishop of the Houma-Thibodaux diocese told his New Orleans colleagues that he did not support it, regardless of arguments that the convicted rapist deserved it because he was enfeebled at the time.
Ultimately, Melancon died in prison in November 2018 at age 82, as Portier had wanted, before his own life ended about 18 months later.
Nonetheless, the saga of Portier’s pain vividly demonstrates how actions undertaken by the archdiocese of New Orleans in private often do not match its public pledges of empathy for survivors of its decades-old clerical abuse crisis.
The US’s second-oldest Catholic archdiocese, under Aymond’s leadership, declared bankruptcy in 2020, saying it was the most fair way for the organization to make whole hundreds of people abused by its clerics while allowing the church to continue carrying out its intended mission of sharing the gospel.
“The healing of victims and survivors is most important to me and to the church,” Aymond wrote in a letter to the approximately half-million Catholics in the New Orleans area shortly after the bankruptcy filing.
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The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy after paying $11.7m in out-of-court, abuse-related settlements during a 10-year period beginning in 2020. The proceeding has now cost the archdiocese nearly $34m in legal and other professional fees; remains unresolved; and therefore has not yet resulted in any compensation for those with pending abuse claims.
ReplyDeleteRecords that lay out the efforts to free Melancon are not publicly accessible because of a secrecy order from a judge that took effect shortly after the archdiocese declared bankruptcy. The Guardian obtained them through a law enforcement source.
Other confidential records obtained and reported on by the Guardian have established that the archdiocese over the last several decades has gone to extremes to shield abusive clergymen as long as possible – including the handful of ones convicted of or charged with crimes by authorities armed with subpoena powers that can pierce the church’s protection.
New Orleans church officials in a prepared statement maintained: “Archbishop Aymond had no role in requesting or advocating the department of corrections for the temporary release of Robert Melancon for medical reasons in accord with the department’s health care policy. Archbishop Aymond initially considered allowing Melancon to be housed at [an archdiocesan-run nursing home named] Wynhoven under certain conditions but ultimately decided against allowing Melancon to live in an archdiocesan facility.”
The records surrounding the effort to free Melancon – temporarily, if not permanently – stopped short of describing him as terminally ill at the time. Yet the church’s statement also sought to characterize a letter that Aymond sent to Melancon expressing support for an early release as “a corporal work of mercy” consistent with the archbishop’s “pastoral ministry to a dying prisoner”.
Portier’s father, Wilson Portier, said in a brief interview that he was generally aware there had once been efforts to free his son’s rapist from his life sentence. Yet he said he was stunned to learn those had been carried out in part by another convicted abuser – as well as endorsed by Aymond, who wasn’t even technically Melancon’s boss.
“Everybody’s got a right to a lawyer,” Wilson Portier said of those who had backed an early release for Melancon. “But they’ve got to live with their conscience that they knew – they already knew – he had abused somebody.”
‘Leaving it in God’s hands’
Portier pursued rape charges against Melancon at a time when most of the public could not grasp that clergymen were capable of sexual abuse.
It was late June 1995 when police arrested Melancon on accusations that he had raped Portier for several years beginning when he was eight, in about 1985. Several more years would pass after Melancon’s arrest before the 2002 Catholic clergy abuse scandal in Boston’s archdiocese opened the world’s eyes to priests and deacons who were child rapists – and their supervisors who enabled them.
Portier said Melancon began raping him almost immediately after he became an altar boy at Annunziata church in Houma, Louisiana. Melancon was the pastor there. Portier was 18 and Melancon nearly 60 when police made an arrest in the case.
An anonymous donor posted a $500,000 bond for Melancon to be out of police custody while awaiting his trial. The trial occurred about a year later, which is a relatively fast turnaround in Louisiana’s often sluggish criminal justice system.
Local media coverage captured the climate that greeted Portier. Supporters of Melancon insinuated that he had been unfairly targeted for political and religious persecution because the local top prosecutor’s father was Jewish.
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By that time, the Houma-Thibodaux diocese had paid Portier $800,000 to settle litigation stemming from his abuse. It was not the church’s practice to pay that kind of sum if it believed someone was lying. Yet Portier faced accusations from defense attorneys that his only motivation to come forward against Melancon was greed.
ReplyDeleteIn taking the witness stand against Melancon, Portier testified that he had gone ahead with the criminal trial despite having received his settlement because he didn’t want his abuser to rape again.
“I feel I would have the peace of mind – the peace of mind that he won’t do this to anyone else,” Portier said.
Portier’s testimony received a significant boost from another witness who testified that Melancon had recruited him to be an altar boy and molested him for several years. For that torment, the witness said he got a $30,000 payment from Melancon’s superiors.
The jury hearing the case against Melancon deliberated fewer than two hours before finding him guilty of aggravated rape. As a result, Melancon was handed a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.
Though the jurors’ brief deliberations suggested they strongly believed Portier, Melancon vehemently maintained his innocence. He told the judge presiding over his sentencing: “Your honor, I am innocent of these trumped-up charges that have been brought against me.”
He later wrote in gratitude to a college journalist who had penned a column expressing skepticism of Portier, highlighting some inconsistencies between his testimony during the criminal trial and the civil litigation. Melancon thanked Michael Heinroth, saying: “My faith in the justice system as well as my faith in my church has almost disappeared.”
Melancon also wrote that Heinroth’s favorable take on his defense salvaged at least some of his flagging faith in the news media.
“I still have a difficult time believing all this is really happening,” Melancon wrote to Heinroth, who acknowledges learning a lot more about the nature of the Catholic clergy abuse crisis since writing his student newspaper opinion piece challenging Portier’s credibility. “A young man of questionable character … tells an outrageous allegation [about] me … and not only the jury, but many others believe it!”
Portier was much more reserved in his response to the verdict against Melancon. He declined to discuss his case in public, and his only remark to the Louisiana newspaper the Advocate was: “I’m leaving it in God’s hands.”
‘No threat to public safety’
Melancon had been imprisoned for more than two decades when the New Orleans attorney VM Wheeler III sent a letter, on 19 July 2016, to the warden of the Homer, Louisiana, correctional center where Portier’s convicted rapist was housed.
About two years later, the archdiocese of New Orleans ordained Wheeler as a deacon. Months before his death in April, Wheeler pleaded guilty to indecent behavior with a juvenile after being accused of molesting a 12-year-old boy two decades earlier.
All of that was still ahead for Wheeler when he reached out on behalf of Melancon. At that moment, he argued in favor of an early release for the priest because of a new state prison policy meant to benefit certain infirm incarcerated people.
On the letterhead of the influential New Orleans law firm where he worked at the time, Chaffe McCall, Wheeler listed Melancon’s various maladies, including hypertension, type II diabetes, an enlarged prostate and coronary artery disease.
“We believe that, given his medical condition, Melancon poses a low risk of danger to himself or society and no threat to public safety,” Wheeler wrote to the warden.
Adding that the imprisoned clergyman was “permanently and irreversibly wheelchair and bed bound”, Wheeler said the plan was to place Melancon in an archdiocesan-run assisted living facility in the New Orleans suburb of Marrero if he were granted a medical release.
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Wheeler wrote that Melancon would not be anywhere near any “sites of congregation for juveniles”, though a Catholic elementary school would have been about a half-mile away.
ReplyDeleteA week later, the pastor of the Metairie, Louisiana, church where Wheeler would later be assigned as a deacon wrote a letter to Aymond.
Andrew Taormina’s missive mentioned the new state prison policy, which could have led to an early, medical-related release for Melancon. It mentioned that the warden of the prison where Melancon – Taormina’s former classmate – was being kept had already given encouraging news.
The warden, Jerry Goodwin, “has expressed his opinion that Bobby will qualify for this temporary (and perhaps permanent) release to a nursing facility”, Taormina wrote to Aymond. To give him the best shot possible, Taormina added, Aymond would need to approve the plan to move Melancon into the Marrero nursing home, colloquially known as Wynhoven.
“We are told that things could go very quickly for Bobby if he qualifies for ‘furlough’ release,” Taormina wrote.
A stamp on Taormina’s letter shows Aymond’s office received it. Handwritten notes on the document read: “Will it be announced? … Will victims be notified? … Cost who will absorb?”
At the beginning of 2017, Taormina sent another pair of letters: one to Louisiana’s piously Catholic governor, John Bel Edwards, and one to his secretary of corrections.
Taormina’s letter to both argued that Melancon’s various health problems made him eligible for at least a temporary medical furlough that he could spend at Wynhoven. The transfer would both prevent Melancon’s health from continuing to deteriorate in prison and save the state some money as it grappled with a strained budget, Taormina wrote.
“We have met with Archbishop Gregory Aymond, and he is open to Father Melancon ultimately being housed at Wynhoven,” Taormina asserted in his letter to Edwards.
In his separate letter to the corrections secretary, James Le Blanc, Taormina said he hoped to obtain letters of support from the sheriffs and district attorneys of the parishes – Louisiana’s term for counties – where Portier had been abused and where Wynhoven was located.
In August of that same year, Melancon – whose priesthood had not been stripped from him – sent a pair of handwritten notes directly to Aymond.
One was to complain that the bishop to whom he reported, Houma-Thibodaux’s Shelton Fabre, had instructed him to stop celebrating mass in prison as a priest because he was prohibited from doing so given his conviction.
Melancon – who at the time was purportedly bed-bound, if his supporters were to be believed – did not appreciate being called out for his masses in prison. “This man rebukes me for answering God’s call,” Melancon wrote to Aymond. “All I did [was] feed God’s people with the bread of life. No one will take that joy from me – not even a bishop.”
In the other note to Aymond, which was dated a few days earlier, Melancon said he understood that Taormina was scheduled to have a meeting in Baton Rouge – Louisiana’s capital – about his appeal for an early release from prison.
“I asked Our Lady to guide them to make a positive decision,” Melancon wrote, referring to the Virgin Mary. He added that he had heard “nothing” from Fabre’s diocese and complained that he felt as if he had been “tossed aside like a used candy wrapper”.
Aymond sent one reply to Melancon in between the dates of his notes.
“Dear Bobby,” Aymond’s note said in greeting. “I join you in the prayer to Our Lady to guide those regarding your appeal to make a positive decision. We leave such things in the hands of the Lord and pray for His compassion and for justice.
“I am sorry that you feel tossed aside by some in the church. Be assured of my deep respect for you, appreciation for your many years of ministry and for your life of faith that you continue to live now.”
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‘I’m going to let it rest’
ReplyDeleteWhile few Louisianans knew of the clandestine efforts by some in the church to help Melancon win an early release from prison, Portier learned of them by September 2017 because some of the disgraced clergyman’s supporters had personally approached him. Portier reported as much in emails to the Houma-Thibodaux diocese.
The emails collectively described a private investigator showing up at Portier’s home near Houma – in the area where he had been abused and where he still lived – “with an old priest … from … New Orleans”. He also said the church had somehow found time “to send attorneys” to intercept him at his home, at his job while he was on the clock, and as he attended his uncle’s funeral.
The visitors were “trying to get the priest that raped me out of jail”, Portier wrote.
“I know the old priest also went to the district attorney’s office and asked them to file a petition for end of life release” for Melancon, Portier added.
Portier warned his local diocese: “Please … inform all of [your] legal representation that the next time they show up at my home or family event I will press charges for harassment.”
An emailed reply from the Houma-Thibodaux diocese to Portier established that he soon spoke with the local liaison for clergy abuse victims, who previously had worked in Aymond’s administration. The email from the liaison – Carmelita Centanni – to Portier made clear “that the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux is not involved in any way in any effort to get Robert Melancon released from prison”.
A burst of other written communication around that time shows that the Houma-Thibodaux bishop Fabre spoke with Aymond and wrote to Taormina, who turned 87 in July.
In a letter to Taormina, Fabre stopped short of accusing him of being the “old priest” from New Orleans whom Portier described. Fabre also described being informed by a local journalist that both “an unnamed priest [and] unnamed bishop” had recently gone to the local district attorney “to speak about the possibility of getting Robert Melancon released from prison”.
But Fabre – who has since become the archbishop of Louisville, Kentucky – also didn’t accuse Taormina of being the priest who visited the DA. He only wrote: “If you are not the priest referenced and you know who [he] is, then I would appreciate knowing his name so that I can contact him and share my very serious concerns about the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux being perceived as participating in this effort in any manner.”
The campaign for Melancon to be freed from prison fizzled out there, by all indications.
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Melancon has been accused of additional sexual violence as recently as August, when a woman filed a claim in the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy case accusing him of abusing her when she was 13.
ReplyDeleteThe woman, who is seeking damages, said Melancon fondled her genitals and forced oral sex with her on multiple occasions in his car while it was parked outside churches and down the street from a fair, among other settings.
Her complaint said her abuse began in the late 1960s, when Melancon reported to the New Orleans archdiocese because the Houma-Thibodaux diocese had not yet been founded. The claim was filed past a key bankruptcy deadline, but the woman said she hadn’t learned about the date until recently. So she requested special permission to pursue her claim, which remains unsettled.
Melancon died in prison of natural causes on 5 November 2018. Coincidentally, that was three days after Aymond published the first version of a list of priests and deacons who had ministered in New Orleans and were considered credibly accused of child molestation – a roster meant as a gesture of transparency and solidarity for abuse victims.
That list did not name Melancon, though a similar one released later by the Houma-Thibodaux diocese did.
Melancon’s death brought no closure to Portier, who never received an apology from his rapist.
“When a child is hurt like that, it never, ever goes away,” Portier told The Times of Houma/Thibodaux after Melancon’s death. “It is always there.
“I don’t know how a man of God would not try to close that, to go to his death without forgiveness.”
Furthermore, those campaigning for Melancon’s release had triggered Portier’s anxiety over his rape in a major way, his father said.
“He was on edge all the time that [Melancon] was going to get out and come back and get him,” Wilson Portier said. “His mental state was always locking the windows and making sure the door was locked. He called in the middle of the night [worried] somebody was trying to get into his house and stuff like that.”
Portier said his son had tried to treat his trauma by working with therapists. Kevin Portier was still in the middle of that fight when his father said he died of a heart attack on 23 March 2019, leaving behind his parents, his brother, his sister-in-law, a niece and a nephew to grieve.
Wilson Portier listened silently to some of the supportive words Aymond, Taormina and Wheeler wrote on behalf of his son’s rapist. Asked if there was any response he wanted to put on the record, he replied: “Well, I got a lot to say about it but I’m not going to say anything.”
Referring to his late son and the man who raped him, Wilson Portier said: “I’m going to let it rest – because they’re both dead, right?”
See the photos and links embedded in this article at:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/18/new-orleans-archbishop-gregory-aymond-robert-melancon-catholic-church
How US archdiocese helped priest accused of abusing deaf children
ReplyDeleteGerard ‘Jerry’ Howell was supported by New Orleans’s archbishop after credible sexual abuse allegations were made against him by dozens of children
by Ramon Antonio Vargas and David Hammer in New Orleans, The Guardian January 25, 2024
For decades, Gerard “Jerry” Howell had avoided punishment for what his own church considers credible sexual abuse allegations leveled against him by dozens of children – including many deaf youths whom he met through his work.
Now, he’s found another way around what little administrative accountability he eventually faced, this time with the help of New Orleans’s archdiocese and its archbishop.
A court order put a halt to retirement benefits paid to Howell and other similarly accused priests, but only after the archdiocese declared bankruptcy in 2020 as it continued to struggle managing the fallout of a decades-old clerical abuse scandal.
Nonetheless, in a private letter to a high-ranking Vatican official in the US, New Orleans’s archbishop Gregory Aymond made clear how little he thought of that court order, saying the mandate was “unjust and painful”.
Aymond also wrote that a high-ranking aide had sent Howell information about a nonprofit which financially “assists priests such as Father Howell” – even though the group’s leader had previously been shut down by Michigan’s attorney general for misusing donations and misleading donors about his organization’s purpose.
“We fervently pray that Father Howell’s pursuit of those outside resources is successful,” Aymond wrote in a letter to the Vatican’s US ambassador, archbishop Christophe Pierre. “My heart goes out to him.”
The Guardian and WWL Louisiana obtained secret correspondence between church officials about Howell as the news outlets continue reporting on the extent to which the archdiocese of New Orleans coddled suspected – and, in some cases, admitted or convicted – child molesters.
Letters between Howell and Pierre, between Aymond and Pierre and from the church’s own psychological evaluation of Howell provide the fullest account available of support Howell received from the archdiocese for decades, without interruption.
Howell as well as his late brother and fellow priest Rodney Howell are listed among more than 70 clergymen whom the New Orleans archdiocese considers to have been credibly accused of child molestation.
But Jerry Howell’s inclusion on that roster – first published in 2018 – came eight years after Aymond received a psychologist’s report warning that Howell “will always be [considered] ‘high risk’ due to the number of incidents of abuse he perpetrated against young children”.
“One of the few groups of sexual offenders that continue to abuse into the elderly years is pedophiles,” that report said, referring to Howell, now 84. “With a pedophile, one cannot count on the aging process to naturally diminish deviant arousal or extinguish sexually abusive behavior.”
One of Howell’s victims, Kathy Austin, said she had no idea the archdiocese had already reported the priest to law enforcement until WWL and the Guardian informed her. She also could not believe it when told the archdiocese – citing an obligation under church law – ignored the psychological evaluation of Howell and paid his full rent, insurance and utilities, along with a monthly stipend of $650, for another decade.
She was incredulous, too, that when the judge overseeing the archdiocese’s bankruptcy directed the church to stop providing such support to Howell and other credibly accused priests, the archbishop not only complained that the order was unfair – he also gave her abuser advice on how to effectively stage an end-run around the directive.
“That is so far out of the scope of his responsibilities,” Austin said of Aymond. “I do not believe that that is his job.
“There’s no punishment here. No punishment.”
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Howell didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Visitors to a New Orleans church website can still see local Catholic officials tout Howell’s appointment as the archdiocese’s first director of the local deaf apostolate.
ReplyDeleteIn a statement on Wednesday, 24 January, Aymond said he prays for abuse survivors daily – but that does not preclude him and “anyone else from praying for those who have committed sins, even one as heinous as sexual abuse of a child, or offering charity to sinners”.
“It is my deepest desire that this message of love and forgiveness help all to find grace and hope for survivors and their families,” Aymond’s statement said.
Aymond’s statement did not address questions about the legitimacy of the organization he recommended to Howell.
‘Quit and get a job’
Austin, her sister Darlene and about two dozen other people have alleged over the years that Howell molested them as children while at the Catholic Center for the Hearing Impaired that he started in 1967.
The Austin sisters went public with their stories of abuse at the hands of Howell as far back as 1992. As part of that reporting, WWL interviewed a therapist who treated Howell’s accusers and said the archdiocese simply refused to remove him from ministry.
“In this particular case, the church knows, and they’re not doing anything about it,” Linda Conner said to WWL, which also interviewed the Austin sisters for the 1992 report.
Howell himself, in the confidential records obtained by the Guardian, revealed just how long authorities were aware of his allegedly abusive behavior but did little about it.
He wrote that late New Orleans archbishop Philip Hannan reported Howell to local district attorney Harry Connick Sr for possible criminal charges as far back as 1980 – a dozen years before Conner’s interview with WWL.
Connick, a famously pious Catholic who is the father of renowned singer Harry Connick Jr, never filed charges against Howell. Howell added that Hannan then sent him for psychiatric treatment in 1980 but ultimately let him return to ministry in various New Orleans churches.
It was not until a year after WWL’s 1992 report on Howell that late archbishop Francis Schulte ordered the priest to – as he put it – “quit and get a job”. Howell, however, appealed to the Vatican. And in 1995, Schulte let Howell “continue as a priest with full financial benefits”.
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Aymond became New Orleans’s archbishop in 2009. And a year after he assumed that role, Aymond sent Howell to a treatment center.
ReplyDeleteHowell more recently claimed in writing that he was cleared after that evaluation. But a letter to Aymond from the psychologist who evaluated Howell, Monica Applewhite, contradicts him.
Applewhite said Howell should still be considered a pedophile who could not be rehabilitated and warned it was unlikely that either she or the church knew his complete history.
“The archdiocese knows of at least 24 cases and given the young age and exceptional vulnerability of the children (many of whom were deaf) this is likely to be a significant underestimate of the full volume of cases,” Applewhite wrote, adding that Howell would “always be ‘high risk’”.
Aymond said he notified local law and church authorities in the Austin area about Howell’s abusive past to “ensure that he did not receive priestly faculties” enabling him to minister to the public.
Yet Applewhite said Howell blocked her efforts to notify his neighbors and acquaintances about his history. She said he became belligerent when she told him she wanted to talk to some of the families with children in his orbit to find out if they knew about his pedophilia.
“He said it was ridiculous … and couldn’t understand how people get a sadistic pleasure out of degrading other people,” Applewhite wrote. “Jerry stated clearly … that no, he would never accept a situation in which it could be possible for those families to talk with me and know his history.
“Jerry has not demonstrated the level of openness that can make living in a community a safe situation for a man with his history.”
‘I’m speechless’
Applewhite’s findings did not dissuade Aymond’s archdiocese from continuing to pay Howell his rent, insurance, utilities and a $650 stipend while he resided in Austin, where he had moved after living in a monastery in South Dakota for a time.
Howell’s arrangement with the archdiocese came to an end when New Orleans-based federal bankruptcy judge Meredith Grabill ordered it shortly after the organization filed for Chapter 11 protection in May 2020. Yet Howell subsequently found a way around that order.
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In his own letter, Aymond wrote to archbishop Pierre, the Vatican’s US ambassador, and argued that church – or canon – law required New Orleans’s archdiocese to continue supporting him. In his own letter to Pierre, Aymond explained that the archdiocese had to prioritize Grabill’s order over canon law if it didn’t want its bankruptcy case to be struck down.
ReplyDeleteYet Aymond’s letter to Pierre also made it a point to express displeasure with Grabill’s order to stop paying Howell and the other similarly situated priests, only a small number of whom have faced criminal prosecution.
“This is unfortunate. … Needless to say, this situation is unjust and painful,” Aymond said. “My heart goes out to him, and I wish we could pay sustenance as proposed by canon law.”
As both Howell and Aymond’s missives to Pierre pointed out, Howell had not been left completely empty handed. He received social security, and Grabill later allowed medical benefits for priests like Howell to be left in place, the letters said.
But Aymond’s letter in particular added that one of his top deputies had directed Howell to contact the Men of Melchizedek in hopes that the organization could “supplement his social security [and] more fully replace the stipend” he’d been forced to give up.
Aymond described Men of Melchizedek as a nonprofit meant to help “priests such as Father Howell”. The group’s website says it assists priests – especially those behind bars because of criminal charges.
An Associated Press investigation in 2019 found that Michigan’s attorney general had previously shut down a similar nonprofit named Opus Bono Sacerdotii and run by the Men of Melchizedek’s founder, Joe Maher. The attorney general charged that Opus Bono had misused donations and misled donors. Maher settled the case against his group – whose name means “work for the good of the priesthood” – in part by agreeing to never run another nonprofit in Michigan again.
Yet just months later, Maher formed Men of Melchizedek, a reference to an Old Testament figure, and carried out a nearly identical mission. Men of Melchizedek was technically incorporated in Indiana, but the address of its office is in Michigan.
Men of Melchizedek did not respond to a request for comment about its relationship with Howell. The organization’s website touts the extent to which it goes to shield the identities of those involved with the group.
But there was a copy of a handwritten note posted on the Men of Melchizedek’s site which thanked the group and its founder for paying his stipend. The note was signed “Jerry” in what Austin fears could have been the same shaky hand that signed “Gerard Howell” on his 2020 letter to Pierre.
“I saw the thank-you note, and I saw the handwriting – I was like, that looks oddly familiar,” Austin said.
The Men of Melchizedek’s website had cut off the “Jerry” signature from the thank-you note after being asked about it by the Guardian and WWL on Tuesday, 23 January.
Austin could not believe her clergy abuser’s superiors would suggest he get in league with such a group. The suggestion wasn’t illegal, but it struck Austin as immoral and improper.
“I’m speechless because I don’t understand how this – I just don’t understand how this can happen,” she said.
see the links and video embedded in this article at:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/25/new-orleans-archbishop-priest-sexual-abuse-allegations
‘It wasn’t a big deal’: secret deposition reveals how a child molester priest was shielded by his church
ReplyDeleteby Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Guardian in New Orleans and David Hammer of WWL Louisiana May 9, 2024
Longtime New Orleans Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker received a special honor from the Vatican in 2000 despite having confessed to molesting children. Then, for another two decades, church leaders in the city strategically shielded him from law enforcement and media exposure – while also providing him with financial support ranging from paid limousine rides and therapeutic massages to full retirement benefits, according to his own, previously unreported testimony.
A sworn deposition Hecker gave in private in 2020 shows exactly how high-placed Catholic church officials in New Orleans let him keep his elevated position for years, even after they had been advised to oust him from the clergy and – much later – publicly acknowledged that he was a child predator.
“It wasn’t a big deal in those days,” Hecker said at the deposition about how his archdiocese coddled him despite his acknowledged abuse of children.
The scale of the cover-up shocks the conscience. As Hecker walked into New Orleans’ historic St Louis Cathedral in early January 2000 to be handed the honorary, Vatican-bestowed title of monsignor, he had already admitted molesting children he met through his ministry.
Hecker by then had been flown out of town and driven by limousine to a psychiatric facility, which diagnosed him as an inveterate pedophile. He had been forced to take a months-long sabbatical – which was to begin the week after his promotional ceremony, at a cost to the archdiocese of $6,000. And he had already spoken to the archbishop of New Orleans at the time and his predecessor about the allegations against him.
Hecker admitted that the archbishop who presided over his 2000 promotion – the late Francis Bible Schulte – told him he regretted sending his name to his superiors in Rome to be exalted, shortly before the priest confessed to being a serial child abuser.
“Archbishop Schulte told me – he said – ‘If I had known of this, I would not have sent in for your promotion,’” Hecker testified. “‘I would not have asked for you to be a monsignor.’”
But nothing was done.
To borrow one of Hecker’s favorite words when discussing his past, Schulte and his colleagues “evidently” got over it.
First, they went through with conferring the distinction of monsignor upon Hecker, with approval from the then pope, John Paul II. And then Schulte’s successors as archbishop – Alfred Hughes and the present incumbent, Gregory Aymond – ignored a previously hidden recommendation from an official review board calling on them to laicize Hecker, which would have expelled him from the priesthood.
As a result, Hecker avoided being publicly exposed as a predator for nearly two decades. He was also able to collect tens of thousands of dollars in assistance from the second-oldest US archdiocese before at last facing a meaningful consequence: a grand jury indictment in September of last year that charged him with child rape, kidnapping and other crimes.
According to a bombshell search warrant Louisiana state police troopers served on the church in late April, the investigation which produced those charges has evolved into an inquiry over whether members of the archdiocese – in Hecker’s case and others – operated as a child sex-trafficking ring responsible for “widespread sexual abuse of minors dating back decades” that was “covered up and not reported to law enforcement”.
During the 2020 deposition, an attorney for a number of Hecker’s abuse accusers asked the priest if he felt fortunate that he had managed to elude being criminally charged for so long after the truth had started to trickle out. Hecker replied: “I don’t think that was even thought about at the time.”
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The eight-and-a-half-hour deposition offers the most complete accounting yet of the lengths to which an organization serving a region with about a half-million Catholics went to shelter Hecker. He gave the testimony for a civil lawsuit seeking damages from him and the archdiocese.
ReplyDeleteThe plaintiff, Aaron Hebert, has publicly alleged he was an underage altar boy at a church in Gretna, Louisiana, in the late 1960s when Hecker lined him and other children up against a wall, ordered them to drop their pants and fondled their genitals. A May 2020 bankruptcy protection filing by the archdiocese put a halt to a wave of abuse-related lawsuits including Hebert’s, but his legal team, led by Richard Trahant, received special permission to privately question Hecker under oath.
Lawyers for the archdiocese have repeatedly gone to court to oppose public access to that deposition. But the Guardian and New Orleans’s CBS affiliate, WWL Louisiana, collaborated to obtain video of Hecker’s testimony and hundreds of pages of evidentiary exhibits.
The session, carried out over two days in December 2020, provides an unprecedented look at how Hecker, now 92, evaded accountability for so long. It comes as he and his accusers wait to see whether a judge agrees with a psychiatric opinion that Hecker is not mentally competent to stand trial.
Hecker’s testimony was enlightening even as he avoided answering many questions by invoking his rights against self-incrimination under the constitution’s fifth amendment. He did so a staggering 117 times – or about once every four minutes – in a sign of concern that eventually law enforcement could use his answers against him.
Neither the attorneys for Hecker nor the plaintiff commented on the deposition.
In written answers to detailed questions, an archdiocesan spokesperson said the church stood by how Aymond handled complaints against Hecker and referred questions about his predecessors to living members of their former administrations.
The church also maintained that it properly reported Hecker to law enforcement and district attorneys across south-east Louisiana, despite the fact that a 2002 letter that notified New Orleans police about him failed to mention his confession three years earlier, among other omissions.
A long history of molestation allegations
The deposition covered allegations dating back to the 1960s, from more than a dozen accusers. Yet it is unclear how many more people have claims against Hecker, including in the archdiocesan bankruptcy case. When Trahant asked “You have committed so many sexual felonies against children that you can’t remember them all, correct?”, Hecker pleaded the fifth amendment.
For decades, Hecker testified, his superiors did not take victims or their advocates seriously, even in the rare instances when they promised a vigorous investigation.
He said the then archbishop of New Orleans, Philip Hannan, confronted Hecker in 1988 with allegations from the parents of a boy who said he was molested in the late 1970s. Hannan then flew Hecker to a paid sabbatical in New York City, church documents show. There, Hecker took classes at Fordham University while he lived and worked at a Bronx church, St Mary’s.
Church records presented at the deposition show that a high-ranking New York archdiocese official wrote to Hannan asking him to vouch for Hecker.
Hannan wrote back that Hecker had permission to be in New York – without mentioning allegations of child sexual abuse.
“It wasn’t a big deal in those days,” Hecker testified.
That comment prompted his criminal defense attorney, Eugene Redmann, to exclaim: “Wow!”
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Another complaint in 1996 by the mother of three boys prompted then archbishop Schulte’s top aide to confront Hecker, who admitted taking showers, swimming in the nude and sleeping in the same bed as the woman’s sons, according to documents referenced in the deposition. Yet Hecker insisted he stopped short of inappropriate contact with any of those children, and the archdiocese dismissed the complaint as unsubstantiated.
ReplyDelete‘I did a good job’
A fresh complaint was filed against Hecker in October 1999, about a month after Schulte announced that Hecker would be promoted to monsignor the following year. On 4 November, Hecker provided a typed statement to the archdiocese in which he acknowledged “overtly sexual acts” with, or harassment of, multiple children.
Soon after, Hecker said a limousine driver who picked him up from the airport delivered him to a psychiatric clinic near Philadelphia, where he was evaluated over the course of a few days. The clinic concluded that Hecker was a pedophile who “takes little responsibility for his behavior” and recommended he refrain from ministering to “children, adolescents or other vulnerable individuals”.
In the deposition, Hecker took pains to avoid admitting his official diagnosis. Trahant established that the archdiocese withheld Hecker’s treatment records for the session. But Trahant had medical insurance coding records – and he directed Hecker to read the code for his diagnosis as well as to say what it meant.
Hecker balked. He told his attorney, “This seems like a trap,” before finally acknowledging the numerical code referred to pedophilia.
He returned from receiving his diagnosis, accepted his promotion to monsignor, then went on another forced sabbatical – this time to San Antonio, Texas. To do so, he had to resign his position as pastor from a church in Terrytown, Louisiana.
In a letter to congregants, he attributed the break to physical fatigue and “aging”.
Thomas Rodi – now the archbishop of Mobile, Alabama, at the time an aide to Schulte – signed an invoice authorizing a $6,000 payment to cover the sabbatical. Deposition records suggest at least some of that money went to cover $35-an-hour therapeutic massages, although Hecker denied getting more than one.
When Hecker returned, Schulte assigned him to St Charles Borromeo church in Destrehan, Louisiana, which has a grammar school attached. Copied on the letter informing Hecker of his new assignment are Rodi and Aymond, then senior Schulte lieutenants, now among the highest-ranking Catholic church officials along the US’s Gulf coast.
Rodi didn’t respond to a request for comment. An archdiocesan spokesperson said Aymond, then a vicar general and auxiliary bishop, had no administrative role overseeing Hecker at the time.
Hecker at his deposition said they didn’t limit his authority at St Charles Borromeo, but the pastor there was supposed to keep an eye on him. Pressed on whether the pastor could effectively do that, Hecker said: “Frankly, obviously he couldn’t watch me … every moment. No.”
Hecker defended the archdiocese’s decision to let him resume his clerical career despite his confession and two abuse-related sabbaticals.
“You know, like, I did a good job,” Hecker said. “Any time I was asked to do something, you know, I cooperated and so on.”
Keeping it quiet
Hecker retired with full benefits – providing him everything from housing and insurance to retirement income – in 2002, just when a clerical abuse and cover-up scandal in Boston hit fever pitch.
New Orleans’s archbishop at the time, Alfred Hughes, had come from Boston – an attorney general’s report published later said he helped “perpetuate a practice of utmost secrecy and confidentiality with respect to the problem” of clerical abuse there.
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A New Orleans review board advising Hughes on managing fallout from the Boston crisis urged him to laicize Hecker, according to documents provided for the priest’s deposition.
ReplyDeleteLaicization would have ejected Hecker from the clergy and demoted him to a member of the laity. At his deposition, he admitted he would probably have forfeited lucrative retirement benefits if Hughes had followed that recommendation, which has never before been reported and which Hecker said he only learned about from Trahant’s questioning.
But Hughes ignored that recommendation. Instead he wrote to Hecker to order him not to dress as a priest or celebrate masses in public. Hecker showed his displeasure in a letter of his own.
“If I never dress as a priest, fellow priests and family members will almost certainly talk about it and before long the word would be out,” Hecker wrote.
The archbishop said he would be “happy” for Hecker to work as a volunteer at the archdiocesan archives, where workers could “dress informally”. That way, no one would find it odd Hecker was not dressing as a priest any more.
The late monsignor Raymond Hebert, who once served as the archdiocese’s director of clergy, put it even more pointedly.
“Our only concern is that someone in [Hecker’s] past might decide to go public,” Hebert wrote to another top Hughes aide in 2000.
Hecker confirmed to Trahant that the archdiocese by then was invested in keeping his misdeeds – whether acknowledged or alleged – under wraps.
“We all, you know, didn’t want big publicity or anything,” Hecker said. “Oh, yes.”
As an example, Trahant called attention to a 2002 letter that attorneys for the archdiocese – who reviewed personnel files – wrote to New Orleans police, ostensibly to notify officers of accusations against Hecker.
But that letter only mentioned a single person’s allegations, including a purported, out-of-state crime that happened outside the agency’s jurisdiction. The letter made no mention of Hecker confessing to several abusive acts. Police made no move against him.
An archdiocesan spokesperson said: “Archbishop Hughes is responsible for reporting Mr Hecker to law enforcement,” and referred questions to the retired archbishop emeritus. Hughes did not respond to requests for comment.
What Aymond knew
Aymond succeeded Hughes as archbishop in 2009. Though the church continued to suppress the reason for Hecker’s retirement seven years earlier, allegations flowed in.
A 2011 memo written by a nun serving as Aymond’s abuse victims assistance coordinator informed the archbishop that “Larry” – Hecker’s nickname – “was known among … boys as a predator.” The memo told Aymond that Hecker spoke of wanting “to put the past behind him” in a conversation with Hebert in 1996, but he “nevertheless continued to perpetrate through 1997”.
No additional details are available in the deposition exhibits. And the archdiocese said it had no further details about those allegations.
But the memo contradicts repeated claims that Hecker had stopped abusing in the 1980s – assertions he made to the archdiocese and to the psychiatric facility that diagnosed him with pedophilia.
At Hecker’s deposition, Trahant asked if he knew the archdiocese had paid more than $30,000 for his treatment from a local social worker, many of the payments approved by a top Aymond aide, the vicar general Patrick Williams. Hecker said he didn’t.
Hecker also said he was mostly unaware of abuse complaints that came in under Aymond’s watch, costing the archdiocese at least $332,500 in out-of-court settlements over 10 years beginning in 2010.
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Those agreements were among more than 130 abuse-related settlements the archdiocese paid out in the decade before it declared bankruptcy. Many were negotiated by the archdiocese’s general counsel from 2012 to 2019, Wendy Vitter. The US Senate confirmed Vitter as a federal judge in 2019, after she was nominated by then president Donald Trump.
ReplyDeleteIn a strange moment during his deposition, Hecker described receiving an instruction – from someone he swore he could no longer remember – to never contact Vitter under any circumstances.
He didn’t elaborate on why he thought that was, but in addition to her legal career, Vitter is married to David Vitter, a former US senator.
A federal judiciary spokesperson said Vitter was unsure who had instructed Hecker not to speak with her – or why.
Ultimately, acting in part on advice from Wendy Vitter, Aymond decided to include Hecker on the first version of a list of 57 clergy credibly accused of molesting children or vulnerable adults. That list has grown to include nearly 80 names. But Hecker’s deposition revealed how reluctantly the archdiocese acted against him.
Just 11 days before that list came out in November 2018, the archdiocese fielded a new complaint accusing Hecker of spending a weekend in the early 1970s molesting a boy he met at a high school, records mentioned at the deposition show. The accuser said he had tried to report Hecker to a well-known priest named William Maestri, who at various points has been the archdiocese’s spokesperson and superintendent of parochial schools.
The complainant “was not impressed” with the response from Maestri, whose name is misspelled as Maestre in deposition records.
“Yes, we heard stories about things like this,” Maestri reportedly said, according to a written document provided for the deposition. “We did move him around but eventually had to retire him.”
The complainant reportedly said he wanted to see Hecker’s name on the credibly accused list, which the church had announced would be released soon. But before that, Aymond spoke openly about how difficult it would be to determine exactly who would merit inclusion.
In an email to Aymond, a top aide said he told the complainant it “might not be possible” to include Hecker on the list.
When asked about that comment, the archdiocese said that the aide – victims assistance coordinator Stephen Synan – was not involved in creating the list.
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Hecker charged with rape
ReplyDeleteHecker’s entry on the 2018 credibly accused disclosure makes no mention of how many separate accusations of child molestation he has faced. It says the first allegation reported against Hecker arrived in 1996, apparently ignoring the one Hannan addressed with him in 1988.
“That is not true, is it?” Trahant asked Hecker at the deposition. After resisting answering the question, Hecker said: “Yeah. Evidently, that must be an error.”
The archdiocese said it had no record of any complaint to Hannan in 1988, despite Hecker’s written confession and testimony that it existed.
After the list’s release, archdiocesan officials sought to assure parishioners that Hecker for years had been restricted from presenting himself as a priest – much less saying mass. But at his deposition, Hecker recounted how during the last 18 years he had presided over masses for residents at a priests’ retirement home where he had lived.
He even detailed how Aymond himself went to a mass and brunch there in July 2019, breaking bread with Hecker and at least two other priests on the credibly accused list, confirming a long-held rumor that offended clergy molestation survivors and their advocates.
“Yes, I’ve been celebrating the mass there,” Hecker said, of the retirement home. Asked if archdiocesan officials were aware, Hecker said: “Yeah, they knew.”
An archdiocesan spokesperson said that church law allows priests to continue saying mass in private without a “congregation”. But church law expert Tom Doyle – who used to serve as the staff canon lawyer at the Vatican embassy in Washington DC – said that in cases like Hecker’s, private mass cannot involve anyone other than the priest and perhaps an altar server.
Eventually, Hecker’s inclusion on the 2018 roster produced the most serious ramification for him. A member of the US military went to law enforcement and reported that he was a teenager in 1975 when Hecker, then a staff member at his high school, strangled him unconscious in a church bell tower – pretending to teach him a wrestling move – then sodomized him.
The archdiocese of New Orleans waited to turn over Hecker’s complete personnel file until June 2023, when it received a subpoena from the local district attorney. Three months later, a grand jury empaneled by the DA charged Hecker with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft.
He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted as charged, he would receive mandatory life imprisonment.
In August 2023, the Guardian and WWL asked Hecker about those allegations. He flatly denied choking and raping anyone.
But he had already been asked the question. At his 2020 deposition, Trahant asked Hecker if he raped the victim at the center of the only criminal case ever opened against him.
Under oath, he invoked his fifth amendment rights.
see the links, photos and video embedded in this article at:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/may/09/new-orleans-catholic-church-abuse
New Orleans Catholic Church Exposed for Ties to Child Sex-Trafficking
ReplyDeletePriests in the Archdiocese of New Orleans allegedly transported children out of state to abuse them.
by Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, The New Republic May 3, 2024
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans has come under fire as the target of a Louisiana sex-trafficking probe, according to an 11-page search warrant made public Tuesday. But a recent ruling by the Louisiana Supreme Court might stand in the way of any victims seeking to hold the church accountable.
The document requested that the archdiocese hand over “ANY and ALL documents that pertain in any way to the sexual abuse of a minor by clergy members employed or otherwise associated with the Archdiocese of New Orleans,” specifying that those records violate the state’s child sex-trafficking laws.
The warrant also demands any and all communications between Gregory Aymond, the archbishop of New Orleans, and “ANY department within the Vatican pertaining to child sexual abuse.”
Aymand reportedly led a cover-up of the sprawling child sex-trafficking scheme that targeted children for several decades, going so far as to ignore pleas by his advisers to punish and publicly reveal the identities of priests and deacons in at least six separate cases that the church had determined were credible accusations of sexual misconduct with minors, according to a bombshell 48-page memorandum leaked in 2023 to The Guardian.
The warrant, which was filed last week, included disturbing details of the pedophilic scheme—including that, in some instances, “‘gifts’ were given to abuse victims by the accused [molesters] with instructions to pass on or give the gift to certain priests at the next school or church,” noting that the “‘gift’ was a form of signaling to another priest that the person was a target for sexual abuse.” Abuse was also a common occurrence at the New Orleans Seminary, where children were encouraged to skinny dip in front of other members of the Archdiocese before being assaulted, according to the warrant.
But a judgment by the Bayou State’s highest court has effectively stripped sexual assault survivors of an avenue of justice against the church. The judges ruled 3–4 in March that it’s the due process rights of priests and their enablers to not be held accountable in instances of sexual assault.
The case, Bienvenu v. Diocese of Lafayette, was brought by Douglas Bienvenu and several other plaintiffs who claimed they were sexually molested by a Roman Catholic priest during the 1970s, when they were between the ages of 8 and 14.
In its majority opinion, issued on March 22, the court argued that while the facts of the case were largely undisputed, the priest—and the religious institution he was a part of—was actually protected under the U.S. Constitution’s due process clause. Therefore, a sexual assault “look-back” window established by the Louisiana legislature in 2021 was actually, according to the court, unconstitutional.
to see the links embedded in this article go to:
https://newrepublic.com/post/181266/horrifying-probe-new-orleans-catholic-churchs-child-sex-trafficking
These Clergy Abuse Survivors Had a Chance to Find Justice. Then Their Diocese Filed for Bankruptcy.
ReplyDeleteAs more states extend the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse, churches are finding a legal workaround.
by Sophie Hayssen, Mother Jones May 31, 2024
When Teresa Lancaster was a teenager in the 1970s, she was raped by a chaplain at her Catholic high school in Baltimore. But when she and another survivor, Jean Wehner, sued the chaplain and the diocese decades later, the court rejected their case, saying too much time had passed under Maryland law. Lancaster, by then in her mid-40s, enrolled in law school with one goal: to lift the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse lawsuits.
“It was crushing,” she said about losing the lawsuit. “I had to pick myself up and decide what I was going to do. I knew if I became a lawyer, people would have to listen to me, and I could gain some respect back.”
Lancaster went on to become an attorney for victims of sexual abuse, and she eventually testified in front of the Maryland state legislature in favor of statute of limitations reform. Last April, Lancaster finally saw her goal achieved when Governor Wes Moore signed the Child Victims Act into law. It was one of 26 similar laws passed in the wake of the MeToo movement and high-profile sexual assault scandals involving the Boy Scouts and USA Gymnastics.
But even in victory, Lancaster was not fully at ease. “I told everybody, this is a win,” she said. “But I was ready for them to attack back.”
And they did. In September, just two days before the law went into effect, the Archdiocese of Baltimore filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy—meaning all lawsuits against the Archdiocese would be paused, and any sexual abuse claims against a church would have to go through the bankruptcy court. Now, Lancaster is working hard to finish filing claims for herself and 20 clients by a court-imposed May 31 deadline, or else risk losing their one shot to find justice.
In recent years, bankruptcy has become increasingly popular among Catholic dioceses as a tool to avoid bad press and prevent future litigation. After an organization files for bankruptcy, all civil litigation against it stops. Instead, the bankruptcy court sets a deadline for victims or other creditors to submit a claim against the organization. That deadline essentially overrides any statute of limitations reform passed by the state legislature—if victims don’t meet it, they likely can’t sue in the future. Then, claims are resolved with a batch settlement—which makes bankruptcy an appealing option to dioceses, because it allows them to settle hundreds of lawsuits via a single process rather than litigating them individually. In a statement, Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori claimed that bankruptcy would “best allow the Archdiocese both to equitably compensate victim-survivors of child sexual abuse and ensure the local Church can continue its mission and ministries.”
But victims like Lancaster are skeptical. Many survivors and advocates argue that the bankruptcy process protects churches’ interests at the expense of victims. Unlike a civil trial, bankruptcy has no discovery process that would allow further information about abusers’ crimes to come to light—which means victims may be left with lingering questions about how much their churches knew about their abuse, or whether other people were victimized. In addition, because bankruptcy sets a deadline for claims, it can force victims to come forward before they’re ready, or risk losing their pathway to justice forever. Since many victims of childhood sexual abuse often don’t disclose their abuse for decades, the public may never know the full extent of clerical abuse.
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“Survivors have a right to say, ‘This happened to me,’” said Wehner, who is also a claimant in the Baltimore bankruptcy case. “Because after this is done, we don’t get to do that anymore. What this bankruptcy does is shortens our time. It puts a pressure on us.”
ReplyDeleteBankruptcy has long been common as a tool for corporations like Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma to respond to mass lawsuits. According to Marie Reilly, a Penn State law professor and bankruptcy expert, the Archdiocese of Portland was the first diocese to use this legal maneuver back in 2004, when it declared bankruptcy amid child sexual abuse claims. Since then, Reilly said, 35 other dioceses have filed for bankruptcy, with 16 of those cases coming in the past four years.
Reilly attributes the recent acceleration in the trend to the wave of legislation like Maryland’s Child Victims Act. Thirteen of the recent bankruptcies have been concentrated in states like New York and California, which recently passed look-back windows—periods of time in which victims can bring forth child sexual abuse claims previously blocked by the statute of limitations.
There are some potential solutions to the problem. In April, Representative Deborah Ross (D-NC) introduced legislation to amend bankruptcy proceedings in cases of child sex abuse. The bill would give victims the opportunity to submit impact statements and mandate a discovery hearing where information about individual cases and institutional negligence could come to light. It would also require an independent forensic accountant to examine the bankrupt organization’s estate, along with the holdings of any third parties involved in the proceedings, to ensure victims receive a settlement commensurate with the organization’s worth.
Lancaster supports the bill, though she acknowledges that no amount of money will heal the emotional scars of abuse. Ideally, she’d like to see prosecutions of attackers and a memorial for survivors. But she knows that, at the moment, money is the most important tool survivors have at their disposal to hold the diocese to account. “That is the only thing that the church as a corporation is going to understand,” she said. “If we hit them hard enough, maybe they’ll really do something about the abuse situation.”
When I spoke to Lancaster this spring, she was simultaneously counseling her clients on how to file their claims—which often means recounting abuse in excruciating detail—while working on her own claim. It’s a frustrating, emotionally draining process. But Lancaster’s life has been a lesson in moving forward, even at high emotional cost. “It’s upsetting, but I pushed that into the back so that I can be a fighter in the front, you know?” she said.
After the Child Victims Act passed and victims were looking for representation, another lawyer cautioned Lancaster against disclosing her abuse to her clients because, as Lancaster recalled, “They can’t see a weak person standing before them to fight for them.” She disagreed.
“One of the reasons people will come and talk to me is because they know I’ve been there,” she told me. “I say, ‘I’m a survivor, and I understand.’”
to see the links embedded in this article go to:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/05/these-clergy-abuse-survivors-had-a-chance-to-find-justice-then-their-diocese-filed-for-bankruptcy/
Roman Catholic priest jailed for child abuse images charged in Texas with sexual assault
ReplyDeleteNew charges filed against Anthony Odiong after eight accusers came forward alleging unwelcome sexual conduct
by Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Guardian July 19, 2024
Days after being jailed in Florida on counts of possessing child abuse imagery, a Roman Catholic priest with ties to south-east Louisiana and Texas has been charged with two counts of sexual assault.
Police in Waco, Texas, announced the new charges against Anthony Odiong late on Thursday in a statement. It said a total of eight victims had come forward alleging Odiong, 55, tried to use his influence as a priest to pursue sexual contact they either did not welcome or to which they could not consent.
Texas is one of about a dozen states with a law that criminalizes sexual activity between clergymen and adults who emotionally depend on their spiritual advice. Furthermore, Texas deems statutes of limitation – or filing deadlines – irrelevant if a “defendant has committed the same or similar sex offense against five or more victims”, according to officials.
The investigation which led to Odiong’s arrest began after the Guardian published a report in February detailing prior allegations that ranged from sexual coercion and unwelcome touching to financial abuse. That report prompted an unidentified person to walk into the Waco police department and accuse Odiong of sexually assaulting her in 2012.
A judge subsequently granted permission for police to access an email account belonging to Odiong and found messages from another woman who had not come forward, but explicitly detailed sexual encounters with the priest, including one which wounded her colon.
Bradley DeLange, a Waco detective, later spoke with the woman, who allegedly confirmed that Odiong had subjected her to some of the behavior his prior accusers had described.
A judge then permitted police to search Odiong’s iCloud data storage account. DeLange later wrote under oath he “discovered images depicting a clearly prepubescent [disrobed] child”, which had been saved to the account in September 2020.
DeLange said there were two more images of who is believed to be another child with someone who appears to be an adult touching an unclothed body part.
Waco police secured a warrant to arrest Odiong, and authorities took him into custody at his home in Ave Maria, Florida, on Tuesday. That day, DeLange issued a statement through his department asking anyone else “victimized by Anthony Odiong anywhere in the United States” to cooperate with his investigation.
Several new accusers had apparently come forward between Tuesday and Thursday, clearing the way for the new sexual assault charges against Odiong.
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Odiong was ordained in the diocese of Uyo, Nigeria, in 1993. He was invited to work within the diocese of Austin, Texas, in 2006 by the then bishop Gregory Aymond. Odiong was then invited to work in Luling, Louisiana, in 2015, about six years after Aymond became the archbishop of nearby New Orleans.
ReplyDeletePlaces to which his assignments brought him over the years included the St Peter Catholic student center on the outskirts of Baylor University’s campus in Waco as well as St Anthony of Padua in Luling.
Odiong was able to build a loyal following in Texas and Louisiana largely by claiming to have a special understanding with the Virgin Mary through prayer. The charismatic clergyman would hold so-called healing masses after which some parishioners reported recovering from major medical ailments, improving church attendance as well as boosting his popularity with both congregants and diocesan officials.
But Odiong came under scrutiny after his various accusers spoke out against him – including a Pennsylvania native who reported him to the sheriff’s office in Luling, which said it could not determine if the clergyman had committed a crime.
The Austin diocese decided to prohibit Odiong from being able to minister in its region in 2019. Its counterparts in New Orleans waited until this past December to do the same.
In a statement after Tuesday’s arrest in Ave Maria, the New Orleans archdiocese made it a point to say the charges against Odiong “stemmed from allegations reported in Waco”. But on Thursday, a source with direct knowledge of the investigation told the Guardian that at least one of the new accusers who made possible Thursday’s sexual assault charges against Odiong resided in the community of Luling, about 22 miles (35km) from the archdiocese of New Orleans.
Odiong remained in custody in Florida late on Thursday, jail records show. He had been ordered held without bail. It was not immediately clear when he may be transferred to Waco.
Attempts to contact an attorney who has previously represented Odiong have been unsuccessful since Tuesday. Before his arrest, Odiong had posted an open letter on social media dismissing the allegations against him as “a false, salacious, one-sided smear campaign”.
It remained to be seen on Thursday whether Odiong’s arrest would attract the attention of Louisiana state police troopers who served a search warrant on the archdiocese in April as part of an investigation into whether the church and its local leadership had operated as a child-sex trafficking ring responsible for “widespread sexual abuse of minors dating back decades” that was then “covered up and not reported to law enforcement”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/18/catholic-priest-jailed
‘Maybe I lived a naive life’: New Orleans archbishop denies knowledge of widespread child sex abuse in 1970s
ReplyDeleteGregory Aymond blames three predecessors as memo says he socialized or lived with 48 allegedly abusive clergymen
by Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Guardian July 22, 2024
The Roman Catholic archbishop of New Orleans has said the allegations at the heart of a child-sex trafficking investigation being conducted by state police against his archdiocese are a “sin”, “evil” and a crime – but he has insisted he was oblivious to them when they unfolded during a bygone era earlier in his career.
Gregory Aymond’s comments, in an interview published on Sunday by New Orleans’ Times-Picayune newspaper, were his first about an investigation which erupted into public view in April as Louisiana state troopers served the archdiocese’s headquarters with a search warrant that accused the institution of potentially having run a child-sex trafficking ring responsible for “widespread sexual abuse of minors dating back decades”.
A sworn statement attached to the warrant added that the institution – which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020 when faced with dozens of lawsuits stemming from the decades-old clerical molestation crisis engulfing the global church – also purportedly covered up the abuse and failed to report it to law enforcement.
The inquiry which Aymond addressed in Sunday’s interview started in part after attorneys representing clergy abuse claimants seeking damages from the archdiocese provided a 48-page memorandum asserting that there was evidence of many of the allegations cited in April’s warrant within internal documents that the church was compelled to produce during the bankruptcy.
That memo recounted how Aymond “worked, socialized and/or lived with at least 48” clergymen accused in bankruptcy claims alleging child sexual abuse, starting in 1973 – when he became a teacher at a New Orleans high school primarily catering to boys interested in the priesthood – through 2000, which was his 14th and final year as the rector-president of the city’s Notre Dame seminary.
The state police warrant alleged that investigators had spoken with victims who reported being brought to swim nude in the pool at the seminary – which trains priests – and get “sexually assaulted or abused … [while] members of the archdiocese were present”.
Yet Aymond told the Times-Picayune that he “never experienced any of those things”.
“Maybe I lived a naive life,” Aymond said to the newspaper. “I don’t think so. But they say these things happened and I would love to know where, when and by whom?”
Aymond made clear that he viewed the fallout of the clergy molestation scandal as a mess that he inherited from the three preceding New Orleans archbishops: Philip Hannan and Francis Schulte, who have died; and Alfred Hughes. He said the abuse that spurred the scandal “should have been reported”, and it was “wrong” for it to not be.
“But it was a sign of the times” when pedophilia was less understood, Aymond remarked to the Times-Picayune.
Aymond served various roles under Hannan and Schulte, including as a high-ranking aide known as a vicar general whose responsibilities would have included administering misconduct complaints against archdiocesan clergymen. He became the bishop of Austin, Texas, in 2000 and returned to New Orleans to succeed Hughes as archbishop in 2009.
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Reportedly, while in his home gazing at a photograph of him, Hannan, Schulte and Hughes all standing together, Aymond told the Times-Picayune: “I don’t think any of those men … intentionally tried to hurt people.
ReplyDelete“Did they knowingly or unknowingly make terrible mistakes? Yes, knowingly or unknowingly they made terrible mistakes that have cost the church reputation and financially.
“But I cannot judge their hearts.”
Despite Aymond conceding that his predecessors’ management of the clergy molestation scandal hurt people, his administration has left Hannan’s name on an archdiocesan-run high school. And Schulte’s name still graces an imposing building at Notre Dame seminary.
‘I know my legacy’
In other parts of the wide-ranging interview, which the Times-Picayune reported conducting over three days, Aymond for the first time pledged to make archdiocesan files detailing the local church’s clergy abuse scandal publicly accessible after resolving the bankruptcy. He also indicated his willingness to meet privately with small groups of abuse survivors to hear their stories.
And he said he’s frustrated that the focus on the child molestation scandal enveloping his archdiocese has overshadowed some of the good things he described the church having accomplished. He mentioned increased mass attendance, how 200 adults had recently been baptized and confirmed within the archdiocese, and growing youth ministries, among other things.
“I know my legacy will be ‘he dealt with sexual abuse,’ but I did more than that,” said Aymond, 74. “I have taken seriously the role of bishop, being a pastor and being a shepherd.”
As the Times-Picayune noted, Aymond’s interview with the outlet came more than five years after he released a November 2018 list disclosing the names of about 50 clergymen faced with substantial child molestation allegations while working locally. He meant the move to be a conciliatory gesture over the ongoing clergy abuse scandal.
But Aymond has drawn criticism as the list has since grown to about 80 names. And the number of priests, deacons, nuns, religious brothers and lay staffers named in abuse claims filed as part of the archdiocese’s bankruptcy is more than 300, the bulk of whom the church has not labeled as credibly accused.
At the time his archdiocese filed for bankruptcy, Aymond indicated his administration believed it could resolve the proceeding at a cost of about $7m, including compensation for abuse victims. Yet the unsettled bankruptcy had cost the church about $40m just in fees for legal and other professional services while abuse claimants still had not gotten a cent as of Sunday.
The archdiocese’s bankruptcy attorneys at one point were prepared to argue that most of the abuse claims were worth relatively little because they had been brought past filing deadlines known as statutes of limitation. But that strategy absorbed a blow when the Louisiana state supreme court in June upheld the constitutionality of laws temporarily allowing child molestation victims to pursue civil damages no matter how long ago their abuse was.
Furthermore, the archdiocese anticipated the documents spelling out its history of clergy abuse would remain under a court seal while the bankruptcy was unresolved. But they have repeatedly leaked into news media reports, showing how the church had gone to unusual lengths to suppress the truth about the abusive conduct of some of its priests and deacons – and to generously provide for them financially, including under Aymond.
Another source of unflattering headlines for the archdiocese: the pending prosecution of retired priest Lawrence Hecker, 92, who was criminally charged in September with raping a child in 1975 or 1976 at a church attached to the New Orleans high school dedicated to educating prospective priests.
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Aymond was either in his third or fourth year on the school’s faculty at the time the purported rape occurred. And in 1976, the year after his ordination into the priesthood, Aymond assumed the title of “business manager” at the school, according to his archdiocesan personnel file.
ReplyDeleteThat same year, as he has acknowledged, Aymond confiscated sexually suggestive, handwritten letters which another priest – Robert Cooper – sent two of the school’s students. The letters have since purportedly disappeared yet led to Cooper’s dismissal from the school.
Meanwhile, Hecker’s alleged victim maintained he reported his alleged rape to the principal of the school, Paul Calamari, who – along with Cooper – was later named in Aymond’s 2018 list as a credibly accused clergy predator.
Hecker appeared on the 2018 list, too. He had confessed in writing to his superiors in 1999 that he had molested several other children whom he had met through work – but the archdiocese let him minister for three more years before allowing him to quietly retire with lucrative benefits, some of which he still gets.
Aymond was carbon-copied on an archdiocesan letter welcoming Hecker back to work after his acknowledgment to abusing minors repeatedly. He was a high-ranking aide to the New Orleans archbishop at the time, Schulte.
The credibly accused list which Aymond released nine years into his tenure as Hughes’ successor was the archdiocese’s first public acknowledgment that Hecker retired in the wake of his admitted serial child molestation, according to investigative reporting conducted by the Guardian as well as the New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL Louisiana.
The former student pressing the criminal case against Hecker has told authorities that his school paid for him to receive mental therapy after the abuse – yet campus administrators never notified police about the crime. He finally took matters into his own hands and denounced Hecker to law enforcement in the summer of 2022.
‘Blind, incompetent or a liar’
The ensuing investigation not only resulted in criminal charges being filed against Hecker. It also spurred the child sex-trafficking investigation that Aymond commented on in his interview Sunday with the Times-Picayune.
Mere days before the interview’s publication, a priest ordained in Nigeria who Aymond invited to work in Texas and near New Orleans was charged in Florida with possessing child abuse imagery and sexually assaulting two women for whom he served as a spiritual adviser.
Church officials in Austin first suspended Anthony Odiong from ministering in that region in 2019. Their counterparts in New Orleans waited until this past December to do the same. That second suspension came two years after one of the women to speak out against Odiong had filed a clergy abuse claim in 2021 in Aymond’s archdiocese’s bankruptcy case.
Aymond on Sunday did not address Odiong’s arrest.
Lawyers who have the largest contingent of clergy abuse claimants in that bankruptcy issued a statement Sunday saying it beggared belief for Aymond to portray himself as having been unaware of the predatory and abusive behavior around him during his rise in the church.
“He is either deaf and blind, incompetent or a liar – and we know which one he is,” said the statement from Richard Trahant, Soren Gisleson and Johnny Denenea.
Aymond told the Times-Picayune that “it is simply not true” to call him a liar.
“I am a man of integrity,” he reportedly said, “and I do not lie.”
to see the links embedded in this article go to:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/22/new-orleans-archbishop-gregory-aymond-child-sex-abuse-ignorance
US Catholic diocese agrees to pay $323m to child sexual abuse survivors
ReplyDeleteRockville Centre diocese in New York settles with more than 530 victims after proposed deal comes close to failure
Reuters/The Guardian September 27, 2024
A Roman Catholic diocese in Long Island, New York, announced a new bankruptcy settlement on Thursday that would pay more than $323m to about 530 sex abuse survivors who alleged they were abused by priests when they were children.
The diocese of Rockville Centre, which serves about 1.2 million Catholics in Nassau and Suffolk counties, said earlier this year that it did not think a bankruptcy settlement would be possible after abuse survivors rejected the diocese’s previous $200m settlement offer.
US bankruptcy judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan, who is overseeing the case, said the deal represented “enormous progress” after the bankruptcy came “within a hair’s breadth” of failure.
Rockville Centre will contribute $234.8m to a settlement fund, with four insurers contributing $85.3m. The settlement will also receive funding from another insurer that is being liquidated in a separate insolvency proceeding and from attorneys representing abuse survivors.
Diocese spokesperson Eric Fasano said the settlement would ensure “the equitable compensation of survivors of abuse while allowing the church to continue her essential mission”.
A mediating attorney who worked on the settlement agreement, Adam Slater, added in a statement to the Guardian: “Importantly, this is the largest Diocese settlement in the history of New York State, and also the largest Catholic bankruptcy settlement ever.”
The diocese filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York in October 2020, citing the cost of lawsuits filed by childhood victims of clergy sexual abuse.
More than two dozen Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy in recent years, after New York and other states enacted laws that temporarily enabled victims of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits over decades-old crimes.
Thursday’s settlement could provide a new path forward for dozens of Catholic dioceses that have filed for bankruptcy to address sex abuse claims.
For instance, the archdiocese of New Orleans recently proposed that it and its affiliates settle the bankruptcy it filed in May 2020 for just $62.5m, with its insurers contributing nothing. About 500 abuse claimants in that case have counter-proposed that the church and its affiliates settle for about $217m, with insurers then contributing roughly another $800m.
Dioceses had previously relied on bankruptcy courts’ ability to grant sweeping legal protections to non-bankrupt entities that contributed to settlement funds, a practice that the US supreme court shot down this year.
That ruling, in the bankruptcy of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, forced the bankrupt dioceses to come up with new ways to incentivize settlement contributions from insurers and parishes, which in previous Catholic bankruptcies had contributed funds to dioceses’ settlement plans to end their exposure to sex abuse lawsuits.
Rockville Centre solved that problem by first agreeing to have all of its parishes file for bankruptcy, where they could gain legal protections in exchange for subjecting their assets and liabilities to court oversight, the diocese’s attorney Corinne Ball said in court. The insurers then agreed to buy back their policies from the diocese and parishes, which ends their responsibility for covering the sex abuse claims.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/26/new-york-catholic-diocese-rockville-centre