When Next Priests Are Accused, Remember Salem

In a six-month period in 1692, religion-fired mass hysteria resulted in 19 women being hanged in the Massachusetts Bay Colony town of Salem because a lot of little girls, writhing in the spotlight, accused them of being “possessed.”

When sanity returned to the colony, 150 others awaiting trial were freed and the 19 declared innocent of witchcraft. But they remained, nonetheless, dead.

It was a classic case of the kind of mindless fear that too often results in death or character assassination. In Salem, it was death. In the Commie-hunting McCarthy era less than 300 years later, it was character assassination.

I mention these dark moments in American history only to wonder aloud about the growing number of adults who are coming forward with accusations of pedophilia against members of the Catholic clergy.

It occurred, they say, when they were children, and only now do they have the courage to point to their abusers. The idea of trusted members of God’s crew sexually violating anyone is so repugnant that it threatens to create a hysteria of its own.

I wonder, in view of the tempo of recriminations, if a word of caution isn’t required here. Accusations can cause deep pain even if they’re later determined to be false. Consider, for instance, the case of Thomas Brandlin, an ordained Catholic deacon who spent 11 years trying to get his life back after being called a child molester by an accuser he was never allowed to face.

There were no mass revelations of pedophilia going on in 1986 when Brandlin was accused. He was working at a Catholic home for disabled students in Santa Barbara when the human resources director called him into her office one morning. She told him he’d been accused of molesting a male resident and, without further explanation, suspended him.

“I was shocked,” Brandlin said as we sat together in his seventh-floor Westside office. “Then I was frightened. Then I was angry. After 18 years, I was being shoved out the door without ever being told who had accused me or why.”

He’s a pleasant, round-faced man of 53 who could be anyone’s uncle. His manner is casual and his clothing civilian, giving no indication of his position in the church except for a small gold cross on his collar.

Brandlin said he forced the Santa Barbara sheriff’s office to allow him to see parts of the report on his case. He discovered that the molestation had supposedly occurred during a specific period of time when he was either with dozens of other residents of the home or in New Mexico attending a Boy Scout workshop.

“I didn’t know where this was going,” he said. He had never been arrested or charged and could prove his innocence, but the mere accusation had tainted him. He asked the church for help through Archbishop William Levada, then an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

With Brandlin’s permission, Levada informed Archbishop Roger Mahony of their deacon’s plight. Instead of helping him, Brandlin said, Mahony suspended his powers as a deacon, even though two days earlier “he had taken my hand in his and said, ‘We’re praying for you and want to help you in any way we can.’”

Outraged, Brandlin demanded his ministry back but was told it wouldn’t be restored until he’d been completely cleared. On April 15, 1987, he asked for and received a notice of “factual innocence” from the Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office, without ever having been charged with a crime.

A few days later, Brandlin said, he again confronted Mahony, and finally his ability to function as a deacon was restored, but he was prohibited from working with children. Again burdened by suspicion and wearied by an effort that had already consumed two years, Brandlin decided to fight on.

The anger still comes through as he discusses the ordeal. Clearly, Brandlin said, it had become a grudge fight with Mahony. Reached earlier this week, Mahony’s office declined comment, claiming that it was a “personnel matter” and therefore private.

A psychological evaluation ordered by the diocese in ’87 also cleared him, Brandlin said, “but Mahony still wouldn’t back down and free me to work with children.” His next step was to obtain the services of a canon lawyer.

Letters went back and forth between L.A. and the Vatican, finally bringing pressure on Mahony to lift all restrictions on Brandlin’s ministry. That was in April 1997. The entire process, Brandlin pointed out, took “11 years, two months, six days, 23 hours and 48 minutes.”

When Mahony cleared him, Brandlin said, he immediately made him a prison chaplain. “He thought I’d hate it,” the deacon says gleefully, “but I love it.”

He faults Mahony and the church for not allowing him immediate due process and says he’s speaking out now because others who are falsely accused cannot.

Count me among those horrified by anyone, priest or coach, relative or first-grade teacher, who violates a child. But count me also among those who fear accusations without adequate proof and the denial of due process in pursuit of that truth.

We’ve come a long way from hanging witches, but a tendency to lynch reputations in the heat of passion proves that we still have a long way to go.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. E-mail al .martinez@latimes.com.