A Sad But True Priest Story
August 29, 2024
LOS ANGELES October 21, 2024— Clergy sex abuse scandals have rocked Catholic churches across the world, but few places have seen the financial toll of the Los Angeles Archdiocese.
With a record $880 million settlement with victims announced this week, the Los Angeles Archdiocese has now paid out more than $1.5 billion.
The bill reflects its rank as the largest archdiocese in the nation, with more than 4 million members, and a California law that gave accusers more time to file suit.
But attorneys and others who have been involved in more than two decades of litigation say it also is an indication of the failures of church leaders to identify molesting priests and prevent them from committing more crimes.
Some of those priests, after undergoing treatment at residential centers, were shuffled to new parishes, frequently in immigrant neighborhoods where the abuse would continue.
With the latest settlements, the number of people alleging abuse now stands at nearly 2,500.
But the true number could be much higher, lawyers say.
One reason for the size of L.A.’s payout is that the California Legislature in 2019 opted to give adults more time to file lawsuits over childhood sexual abuse, which prompted more survivors to come forward. This extended the amount of time available for litigation compared with other states, which were also roiled by abuse scandals.
“The L.A. archdiocese is not an anomaly,” attorney Mike Reck said. “It’s larger and been subject to more litigation and so we have found out a lot more about how it operated. I am not sure the archdiocese is worse than other places. I think we just don’t know as much about other dioceses.”
The abuse — and efforts to cover it up — dates back decades.
It reaches into the highest levels of the church. Msgr. Benjamin Hawkes, the second-in-command to two cardinals and a well-known leader who was the inspiration for Robert De Niro‘s character in the movie “True Confessions,” was accused after his death of abuse.
Troves of church documents that served as a road map for the cover-up placed extreme scrutiny on Cardinal Roger Mahony, whose handling of clergy abuse has been roundly criticized.
Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles for more than two decades, was a youthful and high-profile leader who used his position atop the diocese in the 1980s and 1990s to champion social and economic justice, among other causes large and small. But his legacy was obliterated after it was revealed that he supervised the reassignment of numerous priests who admitted to or were accused of molesting young children.
With the behavior left unchecked, the number of victims within the largest archdiocese in the United States grew exponentially.
“The real fault lies at the feet of Roger Mahony,” said attorney John Manly, who for decades has represented victims of sexual abuse. “He could have come here in 1986 and made the change. Instead, he chose to conceal it from the public, the media and, more importantly, law enforcement.”
The culture of secrecy and the practice of shifting accused priests between parishes rather than alerting law enforcement — a feature of the scandal that played out in dioceses across the country — was also a persistent issue in Los Angeles. Delayed enforcement against the accused priests allowed them to move between locations and abuse other children, victims’ advocates say.
The list of abusers within the Archdiocese in Los Angeles includes more than 500 names, according to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“There has been a continuous, uninterrupted flow of hundreds of perpetrators in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” said Patrick Wall, an advocate for survivors of sexual abuse and a former Benedictine monk.
Mahony could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mahony wrote in a letter in 2013 that he had made “mistakes” in handling sexual abuse, but added that he followed the procedures that were in place at dioceses across the country: to remove priests from active ministry if there was reasonable suspicion that abuse had occurred and refer them to a residential treatment center.
He did not know at the time, he wrote, that “following these procedures was not effective, and that perpetrators were incapable of being treated in such a way that they could safely pursue priestly ministry.”
“Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem,” he wrote.
Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez in 2013 temporarily relieved Mahony of all public duties over his mishandling of the sex abuse scandal, a move that was unprecedented at the time in the American Catholic Church.
Mahony, now in his late 80s, lived for several years on the campus of a parish in the San Fernando Valley. After his retirement, he vowed to devote more time to immigration reform, a lifelong passion for him that stems from his experiences with migrant workers in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley during his years in the Fresno and Stockton diocese.
The church’s own records, shielded by an army of lawyers for decades, revealed an orchestrated conspiracy to prevent authorities from learning of criminal behavior.
In memos written in 1986 and 1987, Msgr. Thomas Curry, then the archdiocese’s advisor on sex abuse cases, proposed ways to prevent police from investigating priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused children. Curry suggested to Mahony that the diocese prevent the priests from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid a criminal investigation.
Msgr. Peter Garcia admitted to church officials to preying on undocumented children in predominantly Spanish-speaking parishes. After he was discharged from a treatment center, Mahony told him to stay away from California to avoid legal repercussions, according to internal church files.
“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.
Garcia left the priesthood in 1989 and was never prosecuted. He died in 2009.
Another priest, Father Michael Baker — one of the church’s most prolific abusers — had been accused of molesting at least 40 boys during his decades in the priesthood. In 2007, Baker pleaded guilty in criminal court to abusing two boys. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released in 2011 based on the time he’d served in county jail and good behavior.
Two brothers alleged that Baker began abusing them at St. Hilary Catholic Church in Pico Rivera in 1984 when they were 5 and 7, according to court records. The boys’ family moved to Mexico in 1986, but Baker, over the next 13 years, flew them to Los Angeles, Palm Springs and Arizona, where the abuse allegedly continued until 1999, at least once in the priest’s rectory in Los Angeles County, court records show.
Records show that Mahony knew about Baker’s sexual abuse of boys decades before it came to light publicly.
In 1986, Baker first broached the topic in a note to the cardinal after Mahony appealed for priests to report inappropriate behavior, according to internal church records.
“During the priest retreat … you provided us with an invitation to talk to you about the shadow that some of us might have,” Baker wrote. “I would like to take you up on the invitation.”
At a spiritual retreat in December 1986, Baker made a full confession and was transferred to a treatment facility in New Mexico. The police were not notified, and no effort was made to contact the children who had been abused, according to church records.
Baker returned to ministry in the Los Angeles Archdiocese in 1987, church records show. At the time, Mahony informed Baker that he was not permitted to be left alone with a child, but records show that Baker violated this directive on at least three occasions, all of which were observed by archdiocesan personnel.
Baker remained in the ministry until 2000, when he was defrocked, church records show. In 2002, as the clergy abuse scandal came to light, The Times revealed that the archdiocese secretly paid $1.3 million to two of Baker’s victims two years before.
Criminal Cardinal Roger Mahony remains a “priest in good standing”.
6 Comments
What is Roger going to do now with his bumper crop of “canonical investigators”, who look to be out of work, after this monster settlement has been reached? There efforts and talents won’t be needed now… as they won’t be stalking and harassing claimants anymore…oh what a pity😔 TSK TSK…whatever will they do now? Hopefully, they will be going down to the unemployment office and get in line to visit window L for “loser”. Cant imagine Archbishop Gomez will continue to pay these 6 figure grotesque incomes yo these shiftless malcontents, coming to the office daily…drinking coffee, and talking about their phony exploits and history in law enforcement, however brief that was for most of these clowns 🤡. That should save the archdiocese close to a million a year…well it’s a start.
Roger Mahony has now settled with his accuser, and that means he cut a check…”this means he has been ”credibly accused”, due to the fact that he settled and didn’t litigate. I believe Roger is like many of his homosexual priests, he’s just a rotten molester and scoundrel…who got his “deviant jollies” with a migrant underage male, back in 1986…this is word on the street. He’s like that Irish American lowlife miscreant, ex-cardinal McCarrick. McCarrick was another leprecorn, who was a pederast and buggerer of young men, whom he debauched and violated to assuage his volcanic, homosexual lust. Mahony and McCarrick are both frauds and malcontents. The ☘️ Irish have continued to excel in producing homosexual priests, and a bumper crop of men who delight in the perversion of “ buggery”. I have known over a dozen priest /monk cockroaches, who came to America from the Emerald Isle, with a prayer book in one hand, and a raging boner in the other. These sly conmen had no trouble putting a habit or clerics on, and then going forward to groom or rape a victim, to calm the homosexual fever in their blood! Now observe English and Scots priests from the British Isles and United Kingdom, who are renowned for their virtue, temperance and humility when taking “holy orders”…the exact opposite of the “scandalous Irish”, who brazenly parade their perverse homosexual ideation for the entire world to sicken at! This is the primary reason they were so easily beaten down by the British empire over the centuries, as most of these “ Gaelic hooligans” were shiftless drunkards, easily corrupted by the temptations of the world…primarily liquor and the vice of sexual immorality, in particular pederasty and homosexuality. The Irish never had an empire…they were always just a conquered people. First it was the Vikings and later the Brit’s. The Irish are much like the conniving, sneaky, wheedling Gypsy, that have been spurned by the mainstream for centuries. The great and noble Italians also view the Irish as backwards, clannish simpletons, who are none to bright. In fact this great nation of ours was discovered by an Italian, and our country was even named after the great Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who also discovered and mapped the Amazon and its many tributaries. I’m sorry to educate in such a strong fashion…some of my potent words “hit as hard as steel”. Education can sometimes be uncomfortable and even painful… but it’s for your own growth.
The Hospitaller order in the city of Los Angeles, have harbored pedophiles and miscreants homegrown, and from abroad. Brother Stephen de La Rosa O.H., working in concert with the notorious Brother Brian O’Donnell O.H., along with Roger Mahoney, were working in concert to stash child molesters and rapists in the 1990’s, at the Saint John of God Retirement and Care Center. I need to reiterate this transmission to emphasize the evil that was crafted by these three fraudsters, to use the “geographic cure”, to conceal many Australian monks, who were being sought by the authorities for crimes against hundreds of children. These demonic crimes were perpetrated in Hospitaller schools and infirmaries in New South Wales and Queensland as well as New Zealand. Brother Brian spirited away over a dozen child rapists, concealing them from prosecution and imprisonment in Australia. Chief among these satanic figures was the loathsome creature Brother Bernard Kevin McGrath. This fake religious brother used his power and authority to terrify, enslave and sodomize hundreds of crippled and developmentally delayed children, who were living under the protection of these Hospitaller Brothers. Instead of protecting, guiding, mentoring and healing these children, they chose to crush them through ongoing sexual abuse and assault. They crushed there’s children’s spirit, will and hope, through demonic sexual abuse, that led many of these children and adolescents to commit suicide and lead lives of despair and hopelessness. Instead of admitting the abuse, and removing these maggots from the monasteries and schools, Brian O ‘ Donnell placed these brothers in solemn vows and positions of leadership and authority, allowing them to create a fertile breeding ground for sodomy, psychosexual abuse and the wanton corruption of hope and love, that they were supposed to foster and create in a climate of love, mentorship and hospitality. I have wondered if this game of “ hide the pedophile “ has continued to this day, and if it is ongoing at the Saint John of God Retirement and care Center in Los Angeles? I have hoped and prayed that the Hospitaller Order and its local hierarchy, would be investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department, as well as the State Attorney General for these crimes against children and humanity. Google the name Brother Bernard Kevin McGrath, and Brother Brian O’Donnell, to read about this shocking devilry, and find out about Brothers Brian’s involvement in placing his “ Mephistophelian” hand in this horrifying coverup to protect his fellow brothers, even after employed lay persons came to him begging him to remove Brother Bernard Kevin McGrath from active ministry at the Hebron Trust, in New South Wales. Children in states of terror clung to nurses and family members begging them to be removed from the clutches of this monster who abused them for years in these Hospitaller schools in Australia and New Zealand. He is considered by criminal investigators and prosecutors to be the most prolific and dangerous child molester that this earth has ever spawned. One prosecutor stated that Brother Bernard Kevin McGrath was the most dangerous, prolific and diabolical child molester he had ever encountered and interviewed, in over 30 years of law enforcement. He is estimated to have molested and raped possibly as many as 4 to 500 children, in a reign of terror spanning almost twenty years, in numerous healthcare centers and schools, run by these Hospitaller Brothers. Shocking…positively shocking.
I would like to conduct a longitudinal study, to determine how many Irish ☘️ priests are guilty of pederasty. Worldwide a burgeoning number of homosexual priests are admitting to being pederasts. It’s a well known fact…but what I find bizarre is that 90% and more of these degenerates are either from 🇮🇪 Ireland, or are of Irish descent. Most of the Irish priests I have met are shockingly homosexual in their orientation. Cardinal McCarrick is a flaming Queen…and Roger Mahony is very effeminate and acts quite gay. Bishop accountability lists are a who’s who of Irish and Irish American homosexuals, who took “ holy orders”. I have known dozens of queer’s who are in religious life or the ministerial priesthood, who should have been sent home and kicked out of the seminaries and monasteries, due to the grave scandal they present to the laity who turn to them for spiritual direction and the sacraments. The lion’s share of these men are Irish….Brother Richard Gaule OH assaulted a young man at the Ventura County Medical center. He grabbed the guys dick and got busted, and was forced to surrender his nursing license. He’s from Ireland, he’s guilty of molesting a patient in Ventura County. Ultimately, the scandalous Hospitaller Order threw him out, and I think they still take care of this social deviant who continues to live in Ventura. Can anyone shed some much needed light on why the Irish produce a bumper crop of flaming homosexuals, who are priests and religious. Most of the Irish nuns I have met are dykes, and openly admit that “yes we are lesbians”….😳
I would like to conduct a longitudinal study, to determine how many Irish ☘️ priests are guilty of pederasty. Worldwide a burgeoning number of homosexual priests are admitting to being pederasts. It’s a well known fact…but what I find bizarre is that 90% and more of these degenerates are either from 🇮🇪 Ireland, or are of Irish descent. Most of the Irish priests I have met are shockingly homosexual in their orientation. Cardinal McCarrick is a flaming Queen…and Roger Mahony is very effeminate and acts quite gay. Bishop accountability lists are a who’s who of Irish and Irish American homosexuals, who took “ holy orders”. I have known dozens of queer’s who are in religious life or the ministerial priesthood, who should have been sent home and kicked out of the seminaries and monasteries, due to the grave scandal they present to the laity who turn to them for spiritual direction and the sacraments. The lion’s share of these men are Irish….Brother Richard Gaule OH assaulted a young man at the Ventura County Medical center. He grabbed the guys dick and got busted, and was forced to surrender his nursing license. He’s from Ireland, he’s guilty of molesting a patient in Ventura County. Ultimately, the scandalous Hospitaller Order threw him out, and I think they still take care of this social deviant who continues to live in Ventura. Can anyone shed some much needed light on why the Irish produce a bumper crop of flaming homosexuals, who are priests and religious. Most of the Irish nuns I have met are dykes, and openly admit that “yes we are lesbians”….😳
Reflecting back on the wretch Pat Roemer, who I cannot call Father Roemer, as he was a demonic cleric…not a “real” cleric, aspiring toward holiness. This foul reprobate…this vile wretch was one of many…Pat Roemer was an evil, sinister predator. I do believe he was not only possessed, but in fact was perfectly possessed. As I’ve stated earlier, this is a gravely sinful spiritual state, that allows a person to appear completely in control of their emotional, even spiritual faculties. When in fact, they have completely surrendered their will to the “Prince of lies” through a life steeped in devilry and sexual corruption. The night I visited his parents home in Fillmore California, my body became cold when I entered this house, even though it was midsummer. The stagnant musty air hung like a curtain of mildew over me….I distinctly remember a sinister gleam manifested in his eye shine…as a cruel , almost feral grin curled around his frozen smile. He delighted in reflecting on how other children had visited his family home, and left in a state of mild horror, after he retold lurid tales of the haunted state of this home…he claimed that doors would open and close in front of visitors, and the sound of a shrieking cat could be heard in the avocado trees in the rural acreage surrounding the home. I asked him to turn a light on as it was to dark for me and he chuckled that “it helped to make the house spooky” and “all the kids really liked it”. Even though my knowledge of antisocial personality disorder had not been formally conceptualized, I became aware that this man was something to dread and fear, to spurn forever once this night was over. I had to bide my time and remain calm, fully aware that I was in the presence of a dangerous and evil man. Everything about Pat Roemer seemed macabre and diabolical…this was just a few short months before his shocking scandal exploded in the Conejo Valley.