L.A. to Disclose Clergy Abuse

In an unprecedented accounting of church sexual abuse over three-quarters of a century, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony plans to report today that 244 priests, deacons, brothers and seminarians have been accused of molesting 656 minors in the Los Angeles archdiocese since 1931.

Not all of the allegations are truthful -- indeed, the report lists some accusations that have been discredited. But the number of false accusations is outweighed by the number of abuse cases that have never been reported, church officials and victims advocates agreed.

Over the years, sexual abuse was “woefully underreported,” the report acknowledges.

Of the 656 individuals who said they were sexually abused as minors, 519 were boys and 137 were girls. All of the reported molestations took place before 2000, with eight alleged to have taken place since 1995. The lion’s share of the allegations, however, were reported after 2000, when many long-silent victims, emboldened by a burgeoning national scandal, stepped forward.

In issuing its report, the archdiocese said the time had come for the church to leave its “cocoon of silence.” The history of abuse is “a sorrowful story” in the life of the Los Angeles church, the report says.

“The fact that a priest would use his holy office to prey upon vulnerable children in his care is horrible to contemplate,” the report says. “But we accept that it happened and that it happened in alarming numbers.”

The report, which covers the period from 1931 to 2003, comes just two weeks before a similar study of sexual abuse nationwide is scheduled to be released by the National Review Board of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Both the Los Angeles and national reports were begun after the nation’s bishops decided in 2002 to adopt a zero-tolerance policy and make a full accounting of past abuse cases.

The national survey, conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, remains incomplete, according to two sources familiar with the report who spoke on the condition of anonymity. On Monday, CNN reported that the national study would state that more than 11,000 individuals had accused 4,450 priests of sexual abuse from 1950 through 2002. One of the sources who spoke with The Times said those figures were “in the ballpark.”

Barbara Blaine of Chicago, president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Monday that those numbers, like the ones in Los Angeles, probably understated the problem because they were based on self-reporting by the nation’s diocesan bishops.

“We suspect these numbers are low. It’s not a study or investigation, merely a survey of the same men who have hidden these crimes from the public for decades,” Blaine said. “Common sense and prudence dictate that we assume these figures are incomplete.”

Of the 244 clerics and seminarians in the Los Angeles archdiocese who have been accused of abuse, 113 were diocesan priests. Sixteen remain in ministry because the allegations have not been deemed credible, the report said. Of the rest, 43 have died and 54 are no longer in ministry, according to the report. An additional 75 priests accused, including 22 who have died, belonged to religious orders.

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Naming Names

Along with the figures, the report also lists for the first time the names of 211 of the 244 accused, a disclosure that would have been unheard of only five years ago. An archdiocesan spokesman said Monday that the decision to reveal the names was made in part because the archdiocese wanted to avoid criticism from sexual abuse support groups, who have complained when other dioceses declined to name names.

The 211 named clerics and seminarians all had been identified previously in a civil case, a criminal proceeding or in media accounts, the report said.

The 33 people who were not named are not the subject of any civil or criminal proceedings. Many of those names came to the church’s attention through a hotline set up for alleged abuse victims. Some of the 33 names, the report noted, could not be identified as belonging to current or former priests.

This morning, the full report is scheduled to be placed on the archdiocese’s website, www.laarchdiocese.org.

David Clohessy, national director of the victims group, called the Los Angeles disclosure of names “a decent start.” Only two others of the nation’s 195 dioceses -- the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Diocese of Tucson -- have divulged the names of accused priests and other church workers, Clohessy said.

In listing the names, the archdiocese report cautioned that “we must all resist the temptation to assume that because an allegation has been made, it is therefore true. We have experienced an unprecedented flood of allegations from the distant past. While many of the claims are undoubtedly and tragically true, supported by consistent reports and sometimes even by the conviction of the perpetrator, there also are those that are demonstrably false.”

Mahony, for example, was listed among those accused. He was accused twice in 2002. In one case, police said the woman who had accused him was found to be not credible. A second accuser was convicted of extortion for making a false claim against the cardinal, according to the report.

Among others listed were some of the archdiocese’s most prominent clergy now or in the past.

Former Auxiliary Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann, who resigned as bishop of Santa Rosa in 2000 after he was accused of sexual misconduct, was accused by three individuals of sexually abusing them between 1967 and 1986 while he was in the Los Angeles archdiocese. Retired Auxiliary Bishop Juan Arzube was accused by one person of abuse between 1975 and 1976, the report said; the status of that case is unknown.

Also accused, the report said, was the late Msgr. Benjamin Hawkes, a powerful church administrator who served under Cardinals J. Francis A. McIntyre and Timothy Manning as the archdiocese’s chief financial officer. Hawkes died in 1985.

Another prominent priest, Msgr. Richard A. Loomis, was accused by two individuals of abusing them between 1969 and 1974. Loomis, a former top aide to Mahony, oversaw sexual abuse cases as vicar general. He has denied the allegations, which the church is investigating. He stepped down last week as pastor of Sts. Felicitas and Perpetua Church in San Marino.

The number of sexual abuse cases reported to authorities has grown rapidly in the last two years in Los Angeles and nationally. In Los Angeles during the mid-1960s, only two victims of abuse came forward to report what had happened to them, even though the archdiocese now knows there were 10 to 24 alleged incidents each year during that period. Similarly, only one victim came forward in 1974, a year in which 28 cases of abuse are now alleged to have taken place.

“Some say that over the years, the church was not truly concerned for the victims but was primarily seeking to protect itself from scandal,” the Los Angeles report says. “The church needs to examine its conscience to assess to what extent that may have been a motivation for nondisclosure.”

In 2002, the number of reports of abuse shot up after disclosures that pedophile priests in Boston had been transferred from parish to parish to abuse again while church leaders covered up their crimes.

That year, 102 Los Angeles-area victims told authorities, private attorneys or the archdiocese that they had been sexually abused by clergy. Also that year, the California Legislature decided to lift for one year the legal time limit on filing civil suits in old sexual abuse cases. In 2003, the number of reports swelled to 420 as alleged victims sought to file civil suits before the deadline.

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Zero Tolerance

In June 2002, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in Dallas and adopted its zero-tolerance policy. The conference appointed a National Review Board, headed by a former high-ranking FBI administrator, to hold bishops accountable for keeping their promises. The board also retained John Jay College to undertake the first-ever study of the extent of sexual abuse nationally.

Clohessy, of the victims group, rejected any suggestion that the church was finally managing to stop most sexual abuse. Recent victims, he said, would probably take as much time as others before them to deal with remorse and guilt before coming forward to report abuse.

“Victims always have and always will struggle for years before coming forward,” Clohessy said. “We still have abusive coaches, teachers, Scout leaders and priests. It’s clear some bishops use that [no current reports] to minimize the horror. It’s at best disingenuous and at worse downright dangerous.”

In a letter that will accompany the report, Mahony again apologized for the “incalculable harm” done to victims.

“Apologies are vitally necessary, but, of themselves, are insufficient,” he wrote. “My goal as your archbishop is to do all in my power to prevent sexual abuse by anyone serving our archdiocese now and in the future.”