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	Apnewsbreak LA Monsignor Called before Grand Jury San Jose Mercury News December 23, 2009 http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_14051718 Los Angeles -- A Roman Catholic monsignor who served as vicar for clergy at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has testified under a grant of immunity before a federal grand jury investigating how the archdiocese handled claims of sexual abuse, an attorney said Tuesday. Monsignor Richard Loomis testified before the grand jury Dec. 16, said John Manly, an attorney representing plaintiffs in civil cases. He did not know how long Loomis testified or what he disclosed. Manly said Loomis' attorney told him about the testimony last week because Loomis was to give a deposition the same week in a civil clergy abuse case Manly had filed. A second attorney with knowledge of the ongoing grand jury probe confirmed Manly's account but requested anonymity because grand jury proceedings are confidential. Loomis testified in a civil deposition taken earlier this year that Cardinal Roger Mahony ordered him to delay reporting new clergy abuse claims against Michael Baker, a former priest convicted of molestation and considered to be one of the archdiocese's worst pedophiles. Archdiocese attorney Michael Hennigan did not immediately return a call or e-mail seeking comment. He previously said Mahony was not a target of the grand jury probe. Archdiocese spokesman Tod Tamberg did not return a call left after business hours. Christopher Dwyer, Loomis' attorney, also did not return calls. The AP reported in September that Baker also appeared before the grand jury. Baker told Mahony in 1986 at a priests retreat that he had molested two young boys from 1978 to 1985, according to church documents. Mahony did not notify police but sent Baker to a residential facility that treated priests for sexual abuse problems. In the years that followed, Baker was assigned to nine parishes but was barred from having one-on-one contact with minors. He violated those restrictions three times, according to church personnel file summaries released by the archdiocese. In the civil deposition, Loomis testified that Mahony ordered him to delay reporting new clergy abuse claims against Baker to the police until Baker could be defrocked. Loomis said he told Mahony in a memo that he was going to report the new allegations against Baker to police. Loomis said Mahony initially supported the idea, but later told him—through a secretary—not to do so until the Vatican approved Baker's defrocking. Loomis later testified that he wanted to report the new allegations to parishioners who worshipped in parishes where Baker had worked, but was told by Mahony not to do so—an apparent breach of normal church policy. Loomis said the order upset him deeply and he would have resigned if his term wasn't about to end. "I was very upset that we were not going to follow through with our ordinary way of doing it," he said, according to the civil court records. Loomis said when he was appointed vicar, his predecessor told him that Baker was treated differently than other priests accused of sexual molestation because he had "self-disclosed." Mahony removed Baker from the ministry in 2000 after two men filed a lawsuit alleging Baker sexually molested them between 1984 and 1999. The archdiocese settled the lawsuit for $1.25 million. Baker was then charged in 2002 with 34 counts of molestation involving six victims, but those charges were dismissed a year later after the U.S. Supreme Court voided a California law that allowed the prosecution of cases involving acts that occurred before 1988. In January 2006, the former priest was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport as he returned from a vacation in Thailand. Baker, 61, pleaded guilty in 2007 to molesting two boys and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
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