Half Measures Won’t Stop Molesting by Priests

A seminary housekeeper walks in on a priest in bed with a boy.

An altar boy, his father dying of cancer, is repeatedly molested by a priest entrusted with his care.

It’s another web of perversion, blackmail and cover-up, this time stretching from Southern California to Tucson. And once more, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony is asked to tell what he knew and when he knew it.

The bulk of the latest allegations were lodged against the Diocese of Tucson, which announced a settlement Tuesday and issued a public apology to 11 victims. Mahony’s attorney, John McNicholas, told me that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles will not have to contribute a dollar to the multimillion-dollar settlement.

Whether that’s true or not, it leaves many questions unanswered. The cardinal’s attorney was no help. “That’s for me to know,” he said, “and none of your concern.”

Will these guys ever learn that keeping dark secrets is what gets them into these messes in the first place?

Mahony was sued earlier this month by one of the 10 victims, who alleged that the archdiocese knew of “several instances” of molestation at St. John’s Seminary in the 1980s and failed to call the police or help the victims.

I couldn’t make up anything this sick or ironic on my best day, but according to court records, some victims were recruits in the seminary’s “Come and See Program.” The program, designed to give youngsters a sense of the priestly lifestyle, apparently succeeded in ways not advertised.

Mahony, as it turns out, will not have to take the stand in this case. Like the $5.2-million Orange County molestation case that was suddenly settled in August on the eve of Mahony’s scheduled deposition, this case was settled within days of Mahony’s summons, sparing him any discomfort his testimony might present.

For those who are scoring at home, Mahony has now been either directly or indirectly tied to three mega cases in 31/2 years.

There’s this one, which was settled for an amount one source put at eight figures; the Orange County case, which involved multiple victims and the typical pattern of a known molester being put back in circulation to molest again; and a 1998 settlement out of Stockton.

In the latter, the Diocese of Stockton was ordered to pay $30 million--the largest amount ever per victim--to two brothers who were repeatedly molested by a priest in the 1980s. The lawsuit alleged that the diocese, headed by Mahony for part of the time in question, did little to end the abuse or assist the victims.

Mahony, who later this year will preside over the opening of a $200-million cathedral that’s been called the Taj Mahony, is going to become the Ken Lay of the Catholic Church if he doesn’t watch out.

Earlier this month, even Pope John Paul II acknowledged that there’s trouble in paradise. On the subject of molestation, his solution was for priests to police each other.

With all due respect, this does not appear to have worked at any time since the Dark Ages, as far as I know, and there is little reason to suspect that anything will change. Anything short of honest reform in the church is an insult to the vast majority of priests, brothers and nuns who devote their lives to good works.

What the pope needs to say, first of all, is that every single allegation of molestation must be reported to the police immediately, not to a panel of preachers. He’d also be wise to acknowledge that the unnatural vow of celibacy is at the root of most scandals, and turns seminaries and rectories into breeding grounds for abuse.

Not that I’m holding my breath on any of this.

But for good measure, since the pope seems in the mood to at least acknowledge the church’s dark secrets, this would be a good time to point out that one of the most homophobic institutions in the world actually has thousands of gay priests.

There. Out of the closet, just like that.

The cost of silence on all these matters is mammoth and unconscionable, if not un-Christian, and we need only look at this latest scandal for an example of what I’m talking about.

Many files in this case are sealed, but a priest familiar with it tells me the alleged molestation at St. John’s, committed by a visiting priest from Arizona, did not go unnoticed. Boys were brought to a room in what’s known as the Tower, he said, and molested.

Did church officials call the police, as any responsible citizen should have? Of course not.

“He was declared persona non grata,” says my source, and St. John’s notified church officials in Arizona that he was someone to keep an eye on.

Keep an eye on? He belonged in jail, or at the very least, he should have been defrocked. Instead, he went back to Arizona, molested again, and allegedly blackmailed a superior. If they came after him, he warned, he’d spill the beans on an Arizona bishop who shared some of the same fetishes.

Monday night, I spoke to one of the seminarian’s victims. The former altar boy says he was molested over several years in Arizona and San Diego. His father was dying of cancer, his mother was broke, and she often left him with the priest when she went to care for her dying husband.

“After he molested me, he would bless me,” says the former altar boy, who was an adolescent at the time and now lives in Southern California, having struggled for years with alcohol, drugs, anger and shame. “It’s very confusing. I was in the center of my mother’s life, the church, and she thought I was doing constructive things by being with the priest. After we did these things, he’d put his hand on my head and make the sign of the cross.”

The former altar boy said he’d like to write a book, and I asked what exactly it would be about.

“I don’t know,” he said. “About a happy go-lucky kid that met a priest and learned how to hate himself.”

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Steve Lopez writes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.