Detective’s work shames the church

Re “With little to go on, a detective finds an abusive priest’s victim,” Dec. 9

Congratulations to Los Angeles Sheriff’s Det. Mario Loffredo for patiently tracking down the young man, sexually assaulted by Michael Baker, whose case finally helped land the ex-priest in jail.

After the church lost its protracted, expensive legal battle to keep Baker’s personnel files private, Loffredo took the misinformation contained therein and did the investigation that should have been turned over to police by the church in 1996 when the allegations were placed in Baker’s file.

When it comes to concern for victim/survivors, not much has changed over the past five years. The best church officials can say in their defense is that they didn’t deliberately mislead authorities. How many other investigations of abuse allegations by priests were never pursued diligently or honestly?

Margaret Schettler

Tarzana

How heartwarming to learn that Loffredo’s search for “a man who didn’t exist” not only succeeded but led to the sentencing of the priest who had raped the victim as a child.

By contrast, please note the conduct of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles: first it stonewalls the court order to surrender the document recounting the abuse allegation; then it gives investigators a false name for the victim, and only after Loffredo found him anyway does a correction issue through the archdiocese’s attorney, and finally, it has no comment when the detective’s research reveals the church never investigated the sex abuse allegation in the first place.

Whose moral compass is more reliable, Loffredo’s or that of the archdiocese’s? And what frightful conclusions follow from this?

Udo Strutynski

Los Angeles