L.A. church leaders sought to hide sex abuse cases from authorities

[cleanhippie]

Documents from the late 1980s show that Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and another archdiocese official discussed strategies to keep police from discovering that children were being sexually abused by priests.

By Victoria Kim, Ashley Powers and Harriet Ryan, Los Angeles Times

January 21, 2013, 2:31 p.m.


Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement, including keeping them out of California to avoid prosecution, according to internal Catholic church records released Monday.

The archdiocese's failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese's chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation's largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders' own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.

In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.

--snip--

The confidential files of at least 75 more accused abusers are slated to become public in coming weeks under the terms of a 2007 civil settlement with more than 500 victims. A private mediator had ordered the names of the church hierarchy redacted from those documents, but after objections from The Times and the Associated Press, a Superior Court judge ruled that the names of Mahony, Curry and others in supervisory roles should not be blacked out.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-church-files-20130122,0,3114631.story

[Buzz Clik]

1. Well, well. At least you've chosen a substantive subject in your morning question against religion.

[cleanhippie]

2. I was hoping for your approval.

Do YOU have anything substantive to add?



On edit: I'm noticing a trend with your posts. Your first response always seems to be aimed at the poster, not the post. Why? Is it a defense mechanism?

[EvilAL]

3. Not so much against religion

as it is against cover-ups of child molestation. It just happens to be, once again, done by the church.