Brown was arrested in 2020, released to a Missouri treatment facility for pedophile priests, and currently awaits trial. His case may be the last chance local authorities have to hold a former Dallas priest accountable for alleged child sexual abuse that occurred decades ago; abuse that was uncovered by Dallas police detectives in the investigation they began in 2018.
Criminal prosecutions of Catholic clergy are a rarity, but some of the worst predatory priests in the church’s long record of child sex abuse ended their lengthy careers in Texas. The following men all were arrested and charged with a crime, with differing outcomes. Some received long sentences, some short. Others died in prison or while awaiting trial. Here are the details as described in court documents, diocesan records, news accounts and state attorney general reports.
Father Rudy Kos
One of the most serious criminal cases against an American priest played out in Dallas courts in the 1990s, when such prosecutions were almost unheard of. The case of Rudolph “Rudy” Kos brought national attention to Dallas.
In 1997, a civil jury found the Dallas Catholic Diocese had been grossly negligent and had conspired to cover up abuse by Kos, a former priest who molested altar boys in three parishes. The jury awarded almost $120 million to 11 victims. The verdict, the largest sex abuse judgment of its kind at the time, was later negotiated down to $31 million.
Even more rare than the civil verdict was the criminal case against Kos. The civil trial produced a wealth of information that helped the prosecutor and prompted more victims to come forward. Kos, now 81, was convicted in 1998 of seven counts related to child sexual abuse and sentenced to life in prison where he remains today, in Northeast Texas.
Father Ed Graff
Edward Graff served as a priest for about 45 years, most of it in eastern Pennsylvania, followed by a decade in the dioceses of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Amarillo. Texas prosecutors said Graff had a history of sexual misconduct with minors. Because of this, he was sent to New Mexico to receive treatment at a church-affiliated facility, court records show.
The Amarillo bishop at the time recruited Graff at the treatment facility run by the Servants of the Paraclete, a Catholic order. He hired Graff to serve during the 1990s in his rural Texas diocese serving a mostly poor, Hispanic population despite warnings he received from a Pennsylvania bishop that the priest was a serial child abuser.
The Texas Ranger who investigated him said Graff may have had 15 victims in Briscoe County. In total, at least 40 men in Pennsylvania and Texas would come forward to report being sexually abused by Graff when they were children.
Graff was arrested in Texas in 2002 and charged with sexual assault of a child for allegedly molesting a 15-year-old boy during the priest’s time in the Texas Panhandle. While awaiting trial, Graff died later that year at age 73 in a Lubbock hospital after falling in jail and breaking his hip.
Father Tom Teczar
Thomas Teczar was accused of sexual abuse before even becoming a priest.
The bishop of Worcester, Mass., was “satisfied that Teczar had worked out his problem” and ordained him in 1967, according to a 2026 Massachusetts attorney general report on clergy abuse. Teczar was moved from parish to parish after being dogged by accusations and “went on to become one of the most prolific abusers in the Worcester Diocese,” the report said.
The bishop informed Teczar in 1986 that he would no longer be allowed to serve because too much was known about him in the diocese. The bishop, however, had no objection to Teczar’s transfer to Texas, where a place was found for him in the Fort Worth diocese.
He was assigned to the Fort Worth diocese from 1988 to 1993 and served in parishes in West Texas where he “abused many more victims," according to a 2026 Massachusetts attorney general report on clergy sex abuse.
Jurors in Eastland County in 2009 convicted Teczar of aggravated sexual assault and indecency and sentenced him to 50 years in prison. Prosecutors said he abused at least 14 boys. He died in prison in 2015. Teczar was the subject of multiple civil lawsuits, some of which were settled for millions of dollars.
Father John Salazar
John Anthony Salazar, 71, was assigned to minister to a parish in the Texas Panhandle despite being a convicted felon who served time in prison for child molestation in California.
He was ordained and originally assigned to the Los Angeles diocese. Accusations of sexual misconduct with children were soon lodged against him. Salazar was convicted in California in 1987 of oral copulation of a victim under 14 years of age and sentenced to prison, his sex offender records show. He was released in 1990 and sent to New Mexico to receive treatment with other pedophile priests at the Servants of the Paraclete.
When he was transferred to Texas in 1991, while still on parole, he began using the name John Salazar-Jimenez. While none of his parishioners in the Amarillo diocese knew of his past, the bishop did, according to published reports.
Salazar was one of at least eight priests brought from Catholic treatment centers to the Amarillo Diocese. In the ensuing years, Salazar would be accused of sexually abusing more children as well as a teenager.
Salazar was charged in Dallas County with sexually assaulting an 18-year-old former parishioner in 2003 while the man was intoxicated and unconscious at an Irving hotel. He was later convicted and sent to prison. The Amarillo Diocese settled several lawsuits brought by men who claimed abuse involving Salazar.
Salazar is out of prison and living in a West Texas civil commitment facility as a sexually violent predator, according to the sex offender registry. When his prison release date arrived in 2023, Salazar was committed to the Littlefield facility near Lubbock. Texas law allows such a disposition for certain violent repeat sexual offenders.
Father John Fiala
John Fiala was convicted in 2012 in Dallas of trying to hire a neighbor’s brother to kill the man who accused him of abusing him when he was a child. The victim said he was 16 when the abuse occurred in 2008 and Fiala was assigned to a West Texas parish.
Fiala at age 53 was convicted of solicitation of murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison. In late 2014, he pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of the boy and was sentenced to an additional 30 years. He died in prison in 2017.
Ordained in Nebraska in 1984, Fiala was assigned to various parishes in the state and was the subject of complaints about his habit of consorting with boys, according to the 2021 Nebraska attorney general’s report on clergy sexual abuse. Fiala’s authority to perform certain clerical duties
Fiala joined a Catholic society and was assigned to a parish 100 miles west of San Antonio, where he raped a 16-year-old boy at gunpoint in 2008. Fiala threatened to hurt the boy’s family if he told anyone. Subsequent assaults of the boy followed.
The victim swallowed a bottle of pills and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he told counselors about the abuse. Fiala was arrested and released on bail, after which he tried to hire a man to kill the victim for $5,000. The man reported it to police.