Files detail how high clergy hid ranks’ sex abuse

— Fifteen years before the clergy sex-abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger Mahony and a top adviser discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement, according to internal Catholic church records released Monday.

The archdiocese’s failure to purge pedophile clergy and its reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement previously has been known. But the memorandums written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief adviser on sex-abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation’s largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders’ own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being abused.

In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil-court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent the priests from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.

The records offer a glimpse at some 30,000 pages to be made public as part of a record-setting $660 million settlement. The archdiocese agreed to give the files to more than 500 victims of priest abuse in 2007, but a lawyer for about 30 of the priests fought to keep records sealed. A judge recently ordered the church to release them without blacking out the names of church higher-ups after a challenge from The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times.

They echo similar releases from other dioceses nationwide that have shown how church leaders for decades shuffled problem priests from parish to parish, covered up reports of abuse and didn’t contact law enforcement. Top church officials in Missouri and Pennsylvania were criminally convicted last year for their roles in covering up abuse, more than a decade after the clergy sex abuse scandal began to unfold in Boston.

One such case that has previously received little attention is that of Msgr. Peter Garcia, who admitted preying for decades on children in Spanish-speaking parishes. After Garcia’s discharge from a New Mexico treatment center for pedophile clergy, Mahony ordered him to stay away from California “for the foreseeable future” in order to avoid legal accountability, the files show. “I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors,” the archbishop wrote to the treatment center’s director in July 1986.

The next year, in a letter to Mahony about bringing Garcia back to work in the archdiocese, Curry said he was worried that victims in Los Angeles might see the priest and call police.

Garcia returned to the Los Angeles area later that year, but the archdiocese did not allow him to work in any church because he refused to take medication to suppress his sexual urges. He left the priesthood in 1989, according to the church.

Garcia was never prosecuted and died in 2009. The files show he admitted to a therapist that he had sexually abused boys “on and off” since his 1966 ordination. He assured church officials his victims were unlikely to come forward because of their immigration status. In at least one case, according to a church memorandum, he threatened to have a boy he had raped deported if he went to police.

The memorandums are from personnel files for 14 priests submitted to a judge on behalf of a man who claims he was abused by one of the priests, Father Nicholas Aguilar Rivera. The man’s attorney, Anthony De Marco, wrote in court papers the files show “a practice of thwarting law enforcement investigations” by the archdiocese. It’s not always clear from the records whether the church followed through on all its discussions about eluding police, but it did in some cases.

Mahony, who retired in 2011, has apologized repeatedly for errors in handling abuse allegations. In a statement Monday, he apologized once again and recounted meetings he’s had with “some 90” victims of abuse.

“I have a 3-by-5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day,” he wrote. “As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story.”

Curry did not return calls seeking comment. He currently serves as the archdiocese’s auxiliary bishop for Santa Barbara.

Garcia’s was one of three cases in 1987 in which top church officials discussed ways they could stymie law enforcement. In a letter about Father Michael Wempe, who had acknowledged using a 12-year-old parishioner as what a church official called his “sex partner,” Curry recounted extensive conversations with the priest about potential criminal prosecution.

“He is afraid ... records will be sought by the courts at some time and that they could convict him,” Curry wrote to Mahony. “He is very aware that what he did comes within the scope of criminal law.”

Curry proposed Wempe could go to an out-of-state diocese “if need be.” He called it “surprising” that a church-paid counselor hadn’t reported Wempe to police and wrote that he and Wempe “agreed it would be better if Mike did not return to him.”

Perhaps, Curry added, the priest could be sent to “a lawyer who is also a psychiatrist,” thereby putting “the reports under the protection of privilege.”

Federal and state prosecutors have investigated possible conspiracy cases against the archdiocese hierarchy. Former District Attorney Steve Cooley said in 2007 that his probe into the conduct of high-ranking church officials was on hold until his prosecutors could gain access to the personnel files of all the abusers. The U.S. attorney’s office convened a grand jury in 2009, but no charges resulted.

During those investigations, the church was forced by judges to turn over some but not all of the records to prosecutors. The district attorney’s office has said its prosecutors plan to review priest personnel files as they are released.

In a statement Monday on behalf of the archdiocese, a lawyer for the church said its policy in the late 1980s was to let victims and their families decide whether to go to the police.

“Not surprisingly, the families of victims frequently did not wish to report to police and have their child become the center of a public prosecution,” lawyer J. Michael Hennigan wrote.

He acknowledged memorandums written in those years “sometimes focused more on the needs of the perpetrator than on the serious harm that had been done to the victims.”

“That is part of the past,” Hennigan wrote. “We are embarrassed and at times ashamed by parts of the past. But we are proud of our progress, which is continuing.”

Hennigan said that the years in which Mahony dealt with Garcia were “a period of deepening understanding of the nature of the problem of sex abuse both here and in our society in general” and that the archdiocese subsequently changed completely its approach to reports of abuse.

“We now have retired FBI agents who thoroughly investigate every allegation, even anonymous calls. We aggressively assist in the criminal prosecution of offenders,” Hennigan wrote.

Mahony and Curry have been questioned under oath in depositions numerous times about their handling of molestation cases. The men, however, have never been questioned about attempts to stymie law enforcement, because the personnel files documenting those discussions were only provided to civil attorneys in recent months.

Information for this article was contributed by Harriet Ryan of the Los Angeles Times; and by Gillian Flaccus of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/22/2013

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