Nearly 10,000 pages of previously sealed Catholic church
documents have been made public and showed that the Diocese of San Diego
long knew about abusive priests, some of whom were shuffled from parish
to parish despite credible complaints against them.
After a three-year legal battle over the diocese's internal
records, a retired San Diego Superior Court judge ruled late Friday that
they could be made public. Attorneys for 144 people claiming sex abuse
made the papers public Sunday.
The records are from the personnel files of 48 priests who were
either credibly accused or convicted of sexual abuse or were named in a
civil lawsuit. They include a decades-old case in which a priest under
police investigation was allowed to leave the U.S. after the diocese
intervened.
The plaintiffs settled with the diocese in 2007 for nearly $200
million, but the agreement stipulated that an independent judge would
review the priests' sealed personnel records and determine what could be
made public.
The files show what the diocese knew about abusive priests,
starting decades before any allegations became public, and that some
church leaders moved priests around or overseas despite credible
complaints against them.
"We encourage all Catholics, all members of the community, to
look for these documents," attorney Anthony DeMarco said at a news
conference.
"These documents demonstrate years and years and decades of
concerted action that has allowed this community's children to be
victimized, and it is not until the community looks at these documents
that this cycle is ever going to be ended."
Donna Daly, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of San Diego, did not
immediately return a call on Sunday and no one answered at the main
diocese number. Maria Roberts, an attorney for the diocese, did not
immediately respond to a message left with her office on Sunday.
At least one of the priests, Gustavo Benson, is still in active
ministry in the Diocese of Ensenada in Mexico, DeMarco said. In a 2002
interview with The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Benson said he
ministered to children there but had not done anything inappropriate. It
wasn't immediately known what Benson's position at the diocese is now.
A phone message left Sunday night at the office of the Archbishop
of Tijuana who oversees the Ensenada diocese was not immediately
returned.
In at least one instance, the files included documented abuse by a
priest whose name had not before surfaced in any lawsuit or criminal
case, the Rev. Luis Eugene de Francisco, who was originally from
Colombia.
Police investigated de Francisco for allegedly abusing
children, but the diocese convinced authorities to drop the case if the
priest would return immediately to his Colombian diocese and never
return to the U.S.
"In early August 1963, Father was placed under arrest by the
civil police of the City of San Diego for violation of the State Penal
Code," then-Bishop Charles F. Buddy wrote the Colombian bishop in the
Diocese of Cali.
"At that time, arrangements were made between this
Chancery and the civil authorities of San Diego in which, if Father left
the United States with the promise never to return, the charges against
Father would be set aside by Civil Law."
Buddy wrote that de Francisco had crossed the border at Tijuana,
Mexico, and was "directed to return directly to the Diocese of Cali."
DeMarco said the papers in the files were the first time
attorneys became aware of de Francisco. No one filed a lawsuit, the
church never revealed the complaints and it's unclear what happened to
the priest or if he is still alive, he said.
Church files indicate he also served in Florida and Texas before
arriving in the San Diego diocese, where he worked with migrant workers
in the Coachella Valley about 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
"You have won a reputation as a zealous worker and devoted to the
poor," Bishop Buddy wrote the priest in a December 1962 letter.
"On the other hand, the 'incidents' at Indio were more serious
than first presented to me, especially inasmuch as the police have made a
record of them. You know how word gets around, so that you be certain
that the police here will be on your trail. ... It will be more prudent
and more secure for you to return to your own diocese."
Attorneys are still trying for the release of an additional 2,000 pages of documents.
The release of records is biggest so far in a U.S. church case,
said Terry McKiernan, founder of the website Bishop Accountability.org.
The website collects and publishes internal church papers that have been
released as the result of litigation on clergy abuse nationwide.
"I think as we absorb this, it will shed a lot of light on these
issues. It's amazingly rich," McKiernan said.
"These documents are
providing a window into the California experience that we haven't had
before."
SIC: Salon/USA