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	Deposition: Mahony Believed Priest’s Contrition San Fernando Valley Sun June 17, 2010 http://www.sanfernandosun.com/sanfernsun/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5366&Itemid=2 Cardinal Roger Mahony did not tell police about a Catholic priest who admitted molesting two boys in 1986 because the clergyman claimed the children were illegal immigrants who had left the area, according to deposition testimony from the Los Angeles archbishop released this week. Mahony was questioned about his handling of the actions of the Rev.Michael Baker over more than a decade as part of a sexual-abuse lawsuit against the Los Angeles archdiocese. The lawsuit has since been settled. In the transcripts, Mahony told lawyers for that he confronted Baker in 1986, and asked about the victims. "He told me they were two families of illegal aliens and they had left the Los Angeles area," Mahony said. The cardinal said that when he pressed Baker as to where the molestations occurred, Baker replied they did not happen within a parish church. "Okay. And you believed him?," Mahony was asked by an attorney questioning him. "Unfortunately, I believed everything he said," Mahony replied. Asked where Baker said the abuses occurred, Mahony answered, "He just said someplace else. I was more concerned about finding the children than I was finding the location of the problem." Mahony said he contacted the pastor of the church where Baker was assigned. "And we told the pastor that there had been -- that he (Baker) had admitted to wrongdoing with children and he was being taken out of that ministry," Mahony said. Attorneys questioning the leader of the largest Archdiocese in the nation if he did not think it important to make an announcement at the parish that boys had been molested there, Mahony said that would be like looking at 1986 through the lenses of 2010. "What we had in effect then was really inadequate," Mahony said. "What we have in effect since is extremely adequate." In a prepared statement timed with the release of the deposition, Mahony said the testimony provides no new details of what happened from 1986 to 2000 -- when Baker was defrocked. But he nonetheless apologized to Baker's victims and others in the Catholic community "for my own failure to deal more forcefully with Baker. "I believed too readily in Baker's contrition and in our ability to treat and monitor him effectively," the cardinal said. Baker was convicted of molestation charges in 2007. Archdiocese spokesman Tod Tamberg said no children came forward from 1986 to 2003 claiming to be a victim of molestation by Baker.
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