LOS ANGELES (CA)
Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission
BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER
The Los Angeles archdiocese has called it "full disclosure and transparency," but critics call it kicking up more dust.
On October 11, as part of settlement talks with lawyers of alleged victims of sexual molestation by priests, the archdiocese released an "Addendum to the Report to the People of God." The first "Report," issued in 2004, contained the names of 211 archdiocesan, religious, or visiting priests that have been accused of sexual molestation of minors. The "Addendum" adds to that number 26 priests that "have come to our attention" since the report was filed. Both the "Report" and the "Addendum" do not list about 30 priests who have been accused but against whom no one has filed suit; the archdiocese, too, says it has not found the accusations against these priests credible.
But the archdiocese's alleged dust kicking is not so much the release of the 26 new names but the addendum's offering of details from the personnel files of 126 priests and lay employees who are the subjects of lawsuits currently filed against the archdiocese. These offerings are really nothing more than sketch-like summaries of information from the files. Mary Grant of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests is among the critics of what she calls a "public relations ploy" on the part of Cardinal Roger Mahony and the archdiocese. "It's a very watered down, sanitized version of what is in the priests' personnel files," she told me in late October, "and some of the most important information -- which church officials were receiving the reports and what they did with them -- is covered up in this report."