US Prosecutors Consider Legal Action against LA Catholic Church over Paedophile Priest James Robinson
By Jonny Greatrex
AMERICAN prosecutors are considering legal action against the Los Angeles Catholic Church – following a Sunday Mercury exclusive proving bishops knew a paedophile priest shipped to the States had a shameful past. Last week the Mercury revealed how Birmingham church leaders already knew Father James Robinson had an unwholesome realtionship with a man 25 years BEFORE he was jailed for 21 counts of sex abuse on boys. Predatory priest Robinson, who worked at several churches in Coventry and Birmingham, fled to the US in 1985, days after the police were first alerted by a victim who had been abused when he was just a child. Click here to find out more! Months later, the Birmingham Archdiocese wrote to its Californian counterpart, stating that the “immediate reason” Robinson was in America was because he had recently met again “a man with whom he had an unwholesome relationship about thirteen years ago”. Last week the Sunday Mercury published the letter, written by Vicar General Monsignor Canon Daniel Leonard on behalf of the then Archbishop of Birmingham Maurice Couve de Murville to Reverend Monsignor John Rawden, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Child sexual abuse campaigners on both sides of the Atlantic claim that the Catholic Church put more children at risk of being targeted by Robinson by trying to cover up his crimes. Now the LA County District Attorney’s (LADA) office says its lawyers are reviewing the letter to see if a case can be brought against church leaders. “We have received a copy of the letter, ” said LADA spokeswoman Jane Robinson. “We will be reviewing to determine what action, if any, should now be taken as a result.” Robinson, 74, spent 23 years in the US before being extradited to Britain in 2009. He was defrocked in 1993 when the Archdiocese of Birmingham wrote again to LA church leaders to tell them Robinson had been accused of child sex abuse, and that he was being recalled to Britain. But the paedophile remained in the US, and the Archdiocese of Birmingham continued to send money to him until 2000. When he eventually returned to Britain, he stood trial – and was jailed for 21 years at Birmingham Crown Court in 2010. Click here to find out more! The trial heard evidence from six victims who told of abuse spanning four decades, from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. Patrick Wall, a former Benedictine priest who works for a Californian law firm on behalf of abuse victims, said the Sunday Mercury letter could be a “bunker-buster bomb into the heart of the criminal conspiracy in the archdiocese of Los Angeles. “The letter demonstrates the basic elements of the crime of child endangerment and could give the local district attorney probable cause to look at Cardinal Roger Mahony’s activities,” he added. Mahony served as archbishop of Los Angeles from July 1985 until March 2011. Joelle Casteix, from a US group called Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the letter had been a “shot heard around the world”. “The language in the letter is classic ‘churchspeak’ to describe priests who molest kids,” she said. “The Archdiocese has been acting like the hapless victim who contacted the cops the second they learned of trouble in 1993. “Now it looks like they willfully and recklessly covered up for a man who they knew was a predator. John Rawden’s job was to immediately inform Cardinal Mahoney about the letter.” Reverend Monsignor John Rawden is currently bed-ridden and suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. The Catholic Church in Los Angeles has been plagued by sex abuse cases involving priests stretching back decades. In 2007 Cardinal Mahony apologised to 508 victims as the Church agreed to a record out of court settlement of ?324 million for 15 cases. Last night Tod Tamberg from the Archdiocese of LA said: “Taking the letter at face value, there is no word of abuse of children. An unwholesome relationship with an adult that happened more than a decade before could sound like a problem he had overcome. That isn’t child abuse.” Last week the Archdiocese of Birmingham said that the Church had new policies to deal with allegations of abuse since the 1980s and that Monsignor Canon Daniel Leonard, Archbishop of Birmingham Maurice Couve de Murville have since died.
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