CALIFORNIA
The Press-Enterprise
12:50 AM PDT on Thursday, August 11, 2005
By MICHAEL FISHER / The Press-Enterprise
Former Inland priest Edward Anthony Rodrigue said he met with San Diego's bishop in 1976 to discuss a letter from 10 parents who accused the parish cleric of sexually abusing altar boys, according to papers filed in federal court this week.
Rodrigue, a twice-convicted child molester, said in a sworn declaration from state prison in Corcoran that he and Bishop Leo Maher, now deceased, discussed the complaints before Rodrigue was briefly reassigned to Our Lady of Soledad Church in Coachella in 1976. Rodrigue was then sent to a Massachusetts treatment center for troubled clergy members.
In the court papers, Rodrigue, 68, said the San Diego Diocese and, later, the San Bernardino Diocese, paid for his therapy for years as he was transferred to treatment centers in Massachusetts, New Mexico and Cherry Valley in between his assignments at churches in Ontario and Loma Linda.
The declaration is among court papers filed Tuesday by attorneys who are trying to show that the San Diego Diocese knowingly transferred abusive priests among parishes. The court documents mention Rodrigue and three San Diego-area priests.