By Adam Aspinall
Sunday Mercury
October 31, 2010
http://www.sundaymercury.net/news/midlands-news/2010/10/31/us-victims-want-new-priest-probe-66331-27572816/
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VICTIMS of paedophile priests in the USA are demanding an investigation into James Robinson's time in California.
Former Catholic priest Robinson, who was known as Father Jim, was found guilty last week on 21 counts of abusing children he met while working in churches throughout the West Midlands between 1959 and 1983.
But the disgraced clergyman escaped to the USA in the mid-1980s and served as a priest until 1993, when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles finally learned about his sordid past. The Sunday Mercury first revealed Father Robinson's depraved crimes in the late 1990s and campaigned tirelessly for him to be extradited, which he finally was last year.
During Father Robinson's time in the USA he served at three parishes across LA, and American victims of paedophile priests are now demanding to know why it took the authorities so long to learn about his vile past.
Joelle Casteix, regional director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said: "The archdiocese never announced anything about Robinson.
"We don't know what they know about him, or when they knew it, but we know that they never made an effort to reach out to potential victims."
The network was formed in the wake of a sex abuse scandal that broke in 2002 at the Archdiocese of Boston, and eventually spread to congregations across the US.
In 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the nation, paid a record $660 million to settle more than 500 claims of abuse by its priests.
Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said they received no reports of Robinson abusing anyone during his time at three local churches.
He said: "If somebody comes forward, certainly we will turn that over to police and extend outreach to those people, should they come forward."
Tamberg explained that the Los Angeles archdiocese received a letter in 1993 from a Catholic bishop in Birmingham, saying Robinson had been accused of sexual abuse, and that he was being recalled by to England.
At that point, Robinson's priestly faculties in Los Angeles were revoked, and he was sent home.
"That's the last we heard of him until 2008, when we received an anonymous phone call saying that he was running a trailer park in Southern California," Tamberg said. "We turned that information over to the police."
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