A Family Shaken but Unswayed From Faith

The world is full of families like the Griffiths, families of extraordinary faith, families who integrate their churches so fully into their lives that you sometimes can’t tell where the family stops and the church starts--their uncles are priests, their sons are altar boys.

In September 1994, Sue Griffith, a psychotherapist, mistakenly opened a letter that was meant for her 20-year-old son. The letter contained a poem, she says, written by a close family friend. And it was, she says, so strangely suggestive that she showed it to her husband, Paul, a business executive.

Then she took it to her son and asked a most heartbreaking question:

“Did you have a sexual relationship with Father Llanos?”

Theodore Llanos is a Roman Catholic priest, someone for whom Scott Griffith had served as altar boy at St. Barnabas Church in Long Beach from the time he was 13.

With Scott’s simple yes, the rock of faith on which so much of one family’s life rested began to crumble.

“Do you believe other children are at risk?” Sue Griffith asked her son.

“Yes, I do,” he replied.

“Then, Scott,” she said, “you know what you have to do.”

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In November 1995, a year after the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported that sex abuse allegations against a local priest were being investigated by the Los Angeles Archdiocese, and after another 15 men and boys stepped forward to claim they had been victimized by “Father Ted” between 1972 and 1990, Long Beach police issued a warrant for the priest’s arrest.

Llanos was charged with 38 felony counts of child molestation, including oral copulation and sodomy.

Police charged Llanos with the crimes because of a 1994 California law that erased the statute of limitations on child molestation cases involving oral copulation, intercourse and penetration. Llanos, by then the pastor at a different Long Beach church, St. Lucy, was put on inactive leave by the archdiocese. But at his arraignment last Feb. 6, a municipal court judge threw out the charges, ruling the new law did not apply retroactively.

The author of the legislation, Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), had intended the law to apply in cases such as this one. Stung by that and other similar court rulings, she offered a second bill clarifying the intent of the first. Last week, Gov. Pete Wilson signed it into law.

Whether Theodore Llanos, still on leave from the church, ever faces a judge and jury--let alone those who claim he took their innocence and trust--remains to be seen.

This fall, the California Supreme Court is to hear arguments on whether the Boland bill violates constitutional protections against ex post facto laws--laws created after the crimes to which they apply have been committed.

Because of the clashing values we often find in the worlds of law enforcement and civil rights, Long Beach police find themselves in the paradoxical position of “hoping” someone will step forward with a recent tale of molestation and point a fresh finger at Father Ted.

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By nature, sex crimes against children are more delicate than other kinds of transgressions. In addition to the physical violence, they are almost always perpetrated by trusted adults. When the abuser is a figure of religious authority whose influence extends beyond the child into the family and the community, the violation hits harder, the outrage is more intense.

Paul Griffith says church officials tried to fudge the reason for the priest’s suspension. He says parishioners were told that Llanos was leaving for personal reasons and that it was not until the Press-Telegram followed up on an anonymous tip that the community was fully informed about the nature of the investigation of Father Ted, spurring others to come forward with tales of sexual abuse.

Long Beach detectives publicly criticized the archdiocese, saying church officials had a list of other victims provided them by the priest but would not share the names with police.

The archdiocese defended itself vigorously, claiming it had no right to release names of victims and could only refer them to police. And now a church spokesman says he cannot comment on the case at all, since Scott Griffith and five others have filed civil lawsuits against Llanos and the archdiocese.

At a news conference Monday in which the civil suits were announced, Paul and Sue Griffith were asked about the effect of their son’s experience on the family’s religious faith.

The experience has scarred them, they said, but in a curious way, it has also been a kind of awakening. Their faith has been shaken, rearranged, but not extinguished.

The foundation was too strong for that.

* Robin Abcarian’s column appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.