Government Inquiry Cites Dallas Morning News Findings on International Transfers of Pedophile Catholic Priests
By Reese Dunklin
The Roman Catholic Church has moved sexually abusive priests across international borders and kept them in ministry, criminal authorities in Australia have concluded. Their finding mirrors that of our landmark 2004-2005 investigative series, Runaway Priests: Hiding in Plain Sight. We identified over 200 cases in which accused clerics escaped justice by going abroad. Police in the Australian state of Victoria, in a report to parliament there, cite a case I first brought to light: The Salesians of Don Bosco religious order moved a priest to Samoa in 1998, when he had one child molestation conviction on his record and was facing a new criminal investigation. The little South Pacific island nation had no extradition treaty with Australia – and when an arrest warrant was issued, the Salesians did not send him back. That priest, who isn’t identified by name in the report, is the Rev. Frank Klep. Salesians leaders told me that they hadn’t tried to shield him, and that he had no active ministry or unsupervised contact with children. But when I visited Samoa, I watched him help lead a Mass and then hand candy to young children who knew him on a first-name basis. I also talked to several teenage boys who reported meeting him alone in his room. “Regardless of whether there was any intent to evade criminal proceedings, the reality is that his relocation, without disclosure regarding his criminal history, put that community at risk,” according to the 20-page report by Victoria police. “It is apparent that the church has assisted offenders who are known to police in moving overseas.” Indeed, Klep wasn’t the only accused member of the Salesians order who’d been moved from Australia to Samoa. My reporting identified one more, the Rev. Jack Ayers, plus another who went to Fiji and then Rome. Our team found several other abusers whom the Salesians had transferred internationally, including some to the U.S. Victoria’s parliament began investigating religious and other organizations’ response to child abuse earlier this year after reports of victim suicides. Hearings are scheduled to start next Friday in suburban Melbourne. This is the second major recent eruption this year in the Asia-Pacific region of the Catholic Church’s decades-long abuse cover-up scandal. Last month came news, reported by my colleague Brooks Egerton on this blog, that the Vatican had finally ordered the suspension of one of the most prominent priests in the Philippines. That action against Monsignor Cristobal Garcia came seven years after he admitted, during our Runaway Priests investigation, that he fled Los Angeles after having sex with and providing drugs to middle-school-aged altar boys. His defense: They threatened to accuse him of abuse, and one boy “not only seduced me, he also raped me.” Brooks found that Garcia, like Klep, was working with boys again despite church leaders’ promises to the contrary.
In a taped interview, Klep told me in 2004 that he still enjoyed “young people’s company.” He added, “I have found a good measure of contentment. I’d be quite happy to stay here.” But Samoan officials, prompted by my questions, confirmed he had lied about his criminal record on immigration papers. That gave them grounds to force his return to Australia, where Victoria police were waiting. Klep’s arrest became a national story in Australia. The attention led at least nine new victims to come forward. The list of charges grew. In 2005, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in jail. Angry prosecutors successfully appealed to increase his minimum stay to a little less than four years. I don’t know his current whereabouts – or whether the Vatican has moved to expel him from the priesthood. Also in the Victoria parliamentary report is a report from a University of Sydney law professor whom Australian church leaders hired to review their child-protection policies. The professor, Patrick Parkinson, said those leaders suppressed his findings.
“It should have been clear that the responsible course was to bring him [Klep] back to Victoria to be closely supervised,” according to Parkinson’s 2010 report. “The only reason why Fr Klep came back from Samoa to face these charges was because of the work of an investigative journalist from the United States and the decision of the Government of Samoa to deport him. The Salesians appear to have played no part whatsoever in ensuring that one of their number was brought to justice.” Parkinson also learned that top top Salesians officials in Australia had directed personal attacks my way, according to the his parliamentary materials and news coverage. “In a letter in September 2009, Fr [Frank] Moloney, as Provincial of the Salesians, claimed that the American journalist who first broke the story about Klep and [Father Jack] Ayers in Samoa in 2004 had since been convicted and jailed for sexual abuse of minors,” Parkinson wrote. “My communications with that journalist and other inquiries indicate that this is completely unfounded. Fr Moloney initially revealed that these allegations were sourced from his lawyers. He subsequently apologised for spreading these false rumours.” Below, I’ve included my original 2004 reports on the Klep case, as well as follow-up stories on his deportation and guilty plea. Follow @ReeseDunklin and @DMNInvestigates on Twitter. Like the DMN Investigates page on Facebook. Convicted sexual abuser and fugitive works with kids under his religious order’s wing June 20, 2004 By REESE DUNKLIN / The Dallas Morning News APIA, Samoa – Frank! Frank! About a dozen children circle around the Rev. Frank Klep after Mass one sun-kissed Sunday. They chirp his name, trying to catch his eye as he begins handing out foil-wrapped candy. He calls them by name, too, beams and hugs some of them. Few, if any, locals are aware that the friendly priest is a convicted child molester who has admitted abusing one boy and is wanted on more charges in Australia. In 1998, his religious order placed him here in the South Pacific, where Australian police can’t touch him because their country has no extradition treaty with Samoa.
Neither he nor the church feels an obligation to tell anyone about all that. “I’d prefer to just leave it,” Father Klep said recently. “If I felt I was still a risk to their children, then I’d think differently. But I don’t think I am a risk anymore.” His order, the Salesians of Don Bosco, has long moved priests accused of sexual abuse from country to country, away from law enforcement and victims. Indeed, it is how many others in the Catholic Church have dealt with the problem, a yearlong Dallas Morning News investigation has found. The Salesians, one of the largest Catholic religious orders, concentrate on educating and housing some of the world’s most needy and vulnerable children. Yet influential Salesian officials have spoken out forcefully against cooperating with law enforcement agencies investigating sex abuse allegations. “For me it would be a tragedy to reduce the role of a pastor to that of a cop,” Salesian Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez of Honduras, a prominent candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II, said at a 2002 news conference. “I’d be prepared to go to jail rather than harm one of my priests.” Salesian officials in Costa Rica and Chile are facing criminal complaints, accused of protecting priests who were shuffled across international borders. A judge in Chile is reviewing whether there is enough evidence to try a Salesian bishop on obstruction of justice charges, which would be the first such prosecution of a Catholic leader anywhere. In the case of one priest from Peru, his superiors have ignored a church panel’s 1995 demand that he have no contact with children, as well as a subsequent request from Chicago police to question him. Salesian officials in Peru say they don’t know where he is, but The News found him working in Mexico – the fourth country he’s been in since he was first accused of misconduct more than a decade ago. Even the Rev. Pascual Chavez, before he became the Salesians’ worldwide leader in Rome, kept an admitted molester in ministry in Mexico. After a judge dismissed criminal charges against the priest, he was reassigned to Africa. He has returned to duty in Mexico but could not be reached for comment. Father Chavez did not respond to interview requests. One of Father Klep’s alleged victims, himself a former Salesian seminarian, draws a painful conclusion about his old order: “This is a corporate sin that they’re feasting in,” he said. “It must be the attitude of the Salesians worldwide.” ‘Best of our ability’ Father Klep is living in exile in Samoa, “not a paradise or a tropical resort,” according to his boss, the Rev. Ian Murdoch, the order’s leader in Australia and the South Pacific. The priest has no active ministry or unsupervised contact with children, Father Murdoch said, and is monitored to “the best of our ability.”
“The Salesians as a community have done their best to respond to the allegations,” he said before refusing to answer further questions. But Father Klep enjoys his ministry on this tiny island nation. People here still respect their elders and honor the Sabbath. He’s surrounded by a colorful, exotic landscape of orchids, poinsettias, and mango, banana and coconut trees. He has picturesque views of the blue Pacific waters and Mount Vaea. “I have found a good measure of contentment,” he said. “I’d be quite happy to stay here.” Father Klep’s victims in Australia have tried unsuccessfully for years to have him removed from the priesthood. A church panel that recently investigated one abuse complaint asked the Salesians to consider suspending his ministry, but not even his admission in that case led to significant discipline. “I made a mistake,” Father Klep said in an interview, acknowledging that he touched one of his Australian students in the late 1970s. Two years ago, he wrote a letter to the former student, who is now an adult, and expressed his regret. The priest’s penance was loss of his ceremonial title: “priest in charge” of the order’s offices near Apia, the Samoan capital. The former student said it wasn’t enough. “Prison is the only punishment deserving of this man,” he said. “All along the way he’s been protected, and no one seems to think it’s serious enough.” Druggings denied The complaints against Father Klep date to the 1970s, when he worked at a boarding school north of Melbourne. At the time, Salesian College at Rupertswood was exclusively for boys, many of whom were from the farming communities in rural Victoria state. The first boys came forward in about 1986, telling their parents that Father Klep had molested them. By then, they were young adults, and Father Klep was the school’s principal. Three former students told The News that the abuse occurred when they went to Father Klep in the infirmary for pain medication or prescriptions. He sexually assaulted them, the students said, while they lay sick or after he had given them incapacitating drugs. “I remember being wasted out the next day,” said the former seminarian. He and the other former students spoke on condition they not be named. About a dozen parents confronted the Salesians and the Archdiocese of Melbourne in a series of meetings. One of the parents, the former seminarian’s mother, said church officials were dismissive. She recalled a Salesian leader telling her: “This all happened very long ago. It has no foundation.” But when her husband threatened to sue, she said, within days Father Klep was pulled from the job. Father Klep denied knowing about any of the complaints or drugging anyone. He said his supervisor described the departure as a routine sabbatical. “Maybe he was being charitable to me,” the priest said. The Salesians sent him overseas, first to an order facility in Rome for a few months, then to the United States. He enrolled in late 1987 at Fordham University, a private Catholic school near the Salesians’ offices in New York City, and pursued a master’s degree. While studying, he also helped at Masses in the area, he said. Shortly after he graduated in early 1989, Father Klep returned to Australia. Within a few years, he was the top official at a youth center and hostel in a blue-collar suburb of Melbourne. The mother of the former seminarian said she and the other parents were horrified. She complained in writing to the Salesians in 1992 and drew a scolding from the order’s regional leader at the time, the Rev. Julian Fox. She dropped her protests. “I just tried to do the right thing, but we never got anywhere,” she said. “They absolutely had it covered like the Mafia.” Father Fox said in an interview this month that he investigated but couldn’t remember what he found because the details were “history under a bridge.” Father Fox also has been accused of sexual abuse while working at the boarding school in the 1970s and 1980s. He, too, was transferred abroad – to Fiji for several years and recently to the order’s Rome headquarters. The Salesians paid Father Fox’s accuser a settlement. Father Fox said a church review had exonerated him. “That’s in the past. I’m not keen to be trolling through all of that again,” he said, cutting off the interview. Going to police Starting in 1993, more young men alleged that Father Klep had abused them at the school. But these former students went to authorities. First, two brothers complained to Victoria state police, whose area includes Melbourne. Officers filed four charges of indecent assault against Father Klep, dating to 1976 and 1979. “He forced himself on them,” said Senior Sgt. Steve Iddles, the prosecutor in the case. “Lie down and do as I tell you.” Father Klep denied touching the brothers. He accused them of fabricating much of their story to get money from the Salesians. He pleaded not guilty, and the Salesians left him on duty throughout his proceedings in 1994. “At one stage in the trial, my defense asked them pertinent questions, and one of them shed a few tears,” he said recently. “I thought they were crocodile tears.” The judge declared Father Klep guilty and sentenced him to nine months of community service. The priest worked off his sentence gardening at nursing homes. One of the brothers said he was let down by the criminal justice system. “When a man is charged on four counts and convicted on four counts and doesn’t go to jail,” he said, “you have to wonder what’s behind it.” Not long after Father Klep finished his sentence in early 1996, another former student reported to Victoria police that in 1973 the priest fondled him and performed oral sex on him. Detectives questioned and fingerprinted Father Klep but did not arrest him. Once again, Father Klep denied the allegations and accused the former student of trying to get money. The possibility of being prosecuted a second time worried him, though, he said. So in 1998, with the investigation unresolved, he readily accepted a reassignment to Samoa. He said the move was the suggestion of his boss at the time, the Rev. John Murphy. “I think he realized that I’d probably feel a bit more comfortable being removed from the situation there,” Father Klep said. “I was happy enough to go.” Father Murphy, who’s now assigned to Samoa as well, said the priest’s account was “not altogether true” but wouldn’t elaborate. He referred questions to Father Murdoch, who declined to comment. Later in 1998, police sought to question Father Klep again and discovered that he had left for Samoa. They charged him with five counts of indecent assault and issued a nationwide arrest warrant. “In hindsight, it’d been better if we charged him on the day” he was questioned in 1996, said investigator John Raglus, one of the Victoria officers now assigned to the case. He said he couldn’t explain why it took authorities more than two years to file charges. Case files show that Australian Federal Police were supposed to contact Samoan authorities on behalf of Victoria, according to Mr. Raglus. But two officials in the Samoan government said the Australians told them nothing about Father Klep. “I had no idea,” said Samoa Assistant Attorney General Raymond Schuster. Australian Federal Police would not answer written questions about the matter. For some, life goes on Beyond the reach of police and church discipline, Father Klep has worked freely. He is the top financial official at the Moamoa Theological College, a two-story colonial-style house where seminarians and lay religious teachers train and reside. He helps during Mass at St. Anthony Church, one of the area’s oldest and more prestigious, and at the nearby Salesian schools. For a time, he supervised the Rev. Jack Ayers, who was accused of raping a student at the Rupertswood boarding school in the 1960s. The Salesians paid the accuser a settlement in 2000, according to documents The News obtained. Father Ayers, who refused to comment, lives a few doors from Father Klep at the college. Samoa’s top Catholic, Archbishop Alapati Mataeliga, said he was startled to learn about the abusive pasts of both priests. He said the Salesians should not have kept the details from him. “I think we have to do something about it; justice has to be served,” said Archbishop Mataeliga, who became leader of the archdiocese last year. “Samoa should not be a place where they send priests like that.” But the archbishop changed his mind after speaking with the Salesians. He said Father Klep told him that what happened was an accident. And he discussed Father Ayers with Father Murphy. “Although these incidents happened with these two priests, they have dealt with it themselves and with their congregation,” the archbishop’s secretary wrote in a letter. “They are valid and allowed to work in our archdiocese, and we are grateful for their services and hard work up to this point.” The company of teens Upstairs, in the theological college’s kitchen, Father Klep sat at a table and explained that when he gave candy to children after Mass the previous day, it was a spontaneous gesture. He still enjoys “young people’s company,” he said, but limits his contact mostly to adults. Downstairs, a group of teenage boys lounged on concrete steps, waiting for Father Klep. One young man said he met Father Klep this spring when the priest pulled up at a bus stop where he was standing and offered him a ride. At the end of the short drive, Father Klep gave him some cash and invited him to church. Since then, the 19-year-old said, Father Klep has “come to where I hang out in the evenings” and offered him small jobs around the college. Also waiting on the steps was a 14-year-old who said he has known Father Klep for about a year and a 13-year-old buddy he said the priest wanted to meet. The 14-year-old said Father Klep has given him spending money and regularly helped him with schoolwork alone in the priest’s bedroom. “He says to me, ‘Any day I want help, I come to Father Frank’s home,’” said the boy, who had a thin adolescent mustache and a shy demeanor. Father Klep has even paid his tuition to Chanel College, a Catholic school near the priest’s home, he said. “He said to me, ‘You are my best friend.’” Staff writers Brendan M. Case in Mexico City and special contributor Andrew Fa’asau in Apia contributed to this report. The human toll June 20, 2004 When his migraines would come on, the boy had to go to the boarding school’s infirmary for his medicine. Father Frank Klep was there dispensing pills. Some of them made the boy woozy and weak. “I’d wake up and find him right there, and it was happening,” he says. He is an adult now, and he’s talking for the first time publicly about what happened in the late 1970s. Father Klep says he would have stopped touching the boy if the 13-year-old had objected. The priest denies drugging anyone. The boy couldn’t tell his parents because Father Klep had won their trust with calls and letters about their son. And he couldn’t confide in his friends because he feared being taunted. “Boarding school gave you a tough veneer,” he says. “You had to internalize it.” His second year at the school near Melbourne, Australia, he tried to avoid the infirmary when Father Klep was around. “I’d just put up with the headache rather than be assaulted again,” he says. But some days the throbbing was insufferable, and he had to have medicine. Father Klep was still there dispensing pills. The boy’s unsuspecting parents refused his request to quit the school. So he let himself fail, which led to his expulsion. And that kept him out of college. As a young adult, he drifted from job to job. He married but couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife about the abuse. She didn’t understand his anger, depression and aloofness, and she considered a separation. Then she became pregnant. He decided to tell her before the baby was born. The couple has grown close again. Together they’re fighting to have Father Klep removed from ministry and kept away from children. “He gets off scot-free,” the man’s wife says. But her husband is haunted. “Every time he gets a migraine,” she says, “it’s a reminder.” - Reese Dunklin Samoa moves to deport fugitive priest June 24, 2004 By REESE DUNKLIN / The Dallas Morning News The Samoan government, prompted by a Dallas Morning News investigation, is moving to deport a fugitive Catholic priest because he failed to disclose his conviction in a previous child molestation case when entering the country. The priest’s superiors in the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order also face an immigration inquiry because they, too, failed to make the same disclosures, said Auseuga Poloma Komiti, the senior adviser to Samoa’s prime minister and cabinet. Samoan authorities will serve the Rev. Frank Klep a deportation order Wednesday afternoon Dallas time that gives him three days to leave voluntarily or seek an appeal, said Mr. Komiti. If he goes without a fight or loses an appeal, he’ll be forced back to Australia, where he is the subject of a nationwide arrest warrant on five indecent assault charges. Samoan officials said they would coordinate Father Klep’s return with Australian authorities. “We can’t help but think what was foremost was to have Father Klep evade the law by assigning him overseas,” said Mr. Komiti. “They were not thinking or giving two hoots about the children of this country.” Father Klep moved to the South Pacific island nation in early 1998 while he was a target of a criminal abuse investigation in the Australian state of Victoria. He told The News his Salesians superior at the time suggested the reassignment because “I think he realized that I’d probably feel a bit more comfortable being removed from the situation there” in Australia. The superior, the Rev. John Murphy, has said the priest’s version of events was “not altogether true,” but declined to elaborate. The Salesians’ present leader for Australia and the South Pacific, the Rev. Ian Murdoch, also has refused to discuss Father Klep’s move. But in a written statement earlier this week, Father Murdoch said the Salesians have not moved priests accused of sexual abuse from country to country “for the purpose of shielding them” from police. He said that the Salesians “have co-operated, and will certainly continue to cooperate, with any law enforcement agency.” Father Murdoch also continued to insist that Father Klep has no contact or ministry with children. But The News observed and photographed him handing candy to children after a Sunday Mass and interviewed teenage boys who said Father Klep had regular interaction with them – from giving them money to tutoring one of them alone in his bedroom. When Father Klep first arrived in Samoa, he was required to fill out immigration papers stating whether he had any criminal convictions, Mr. Komiti said. But, he added, Father Klep “did not state anything.” In 1994, Father Klep was convicted on four charges in the assaults of two former students at a Salesians boarding school outside Melbourne during the 1970s. After he finished his sentence of community service, he came under investigation again. He was questioned and fingerprinted in 1996 but not arrested. While the case lingered, he moved to Samoa. Later in 1998, Victoria police filed five additional charges against him and issued an arrest warrant but did not seek extradition. Victoria officials previously told The News that Australia had no formal treaty with Samoa agreeing to the exchange of fugitives. However, Australian federal authorities this week told The News that Victoria police have never asked them for help. They said they could have sought Father Klep’s return even if the two countries did not have an extradition treaty. Victoria police said the case is under review and declined further comment. Beyond Father Klep, the Samoan government is investigating whether the Salesians had a legal obligation under immigration laws to report Father Klep’s criminal record when they sponsored his move to Samoa. If they did, Salesian officials could face penalties including fines or expulsion as well, said Mr. Komiti. But aside from a legal mandate, Mr. Komiti said, “There was a moral imperative to do so. We were disappointed. We have this feeling of being betrayed.” Victoria police have not answered questions from The News about whether they would investigate the Salesians’ role in Father Klep’s departure to Samoa. The Salesians apparently did not tell Samoa’s top Catholic leader about Father Klep’s 1998 criminal warrant, either. Archbishop Alapati Mataeliga’s secretary told The News that Father Murdoch had informed local church leaders about the 1994 conviction, but did not fully divulge details of the 1998 charges. “My recollection of our conversation is that he mentioned something like, that they were not in possession of any warrant of arrest, or some wording like that,” said the archbishop’s secretary, Puletini M. Tuala. Mr. Tuala said the archbishop was reconsidering his previous decision to let Father Klep remain in Samoa. The archbishop had told Samoan and Australian reporters that he might force Father Klep out of his archdiocese within a day or two. Two weeks ago, however, the archbishop had a much different tone. His secretary wrote in a letter to The News that the archbishop was satisfied after speaking to the Salesians and Father Klep, who admitted abusing one boy but called the incident an accident. The archbishop also decided that a second Salesian priest who was moved to the island despite an abuse case in Australia could remain. The Salesians paid the Rev. Jack Ayers’ accuser a settlement, according to documents The News obtained. “Although these incidents happened with these two priests, they have dealt with it themselves and with their congregation,” Mr. Tuala wrote in a letter. “They are valid and allowed to work in our archdiocese, and we are grateful for their services and hard work up to this point.” The Samoan government is also investigating Father Ayers’ entry into Samoa, Mr. Komiti said. Priest charged with sex abuse in Australia October 6, 2004 By REESE DUNKLIN / The Dallas Morning News A Catholic priest whose Australian bosses let him work overseas as a fugitive has been charged with sexually abusing seven more boys, signaling that his alleged misconduct may be more widespread than previously known. The Rev. Frank Klep remains free on bail pending a hearing on 24 new charges next month in Melbourne, Australia. He couldn’t be located for comment. The seven accusers came forward after The Dallas Morning News revealed last summer that the priest had remained in ministry on the South Pacific island of Samoa despite being wanted on Australian charges since 1998. The Samoan government, prompted by The News’ report, swiftly deported him because he had failed to disclose a 1994 conviction in the abuse of two brothers. He was immediately arrested back in Australia on the 1998 charges, which involved one boy. The allegations against Father Klep date to the 1970s, when he worked at a boarding school near Melbourne run by his Catholic order, the Salesians of Don Bosco. Australian police declined to discuss the new cases. But one man whom Father Klep previously admitted abusing said he is one of the seven victims. The man said police have a copy of a letter the priest wrote during a secret church inquiry in which he described himself as “the perpetrator.” “How often I have wishes that I might in some way be able to undo the damage caused and the suffering inflicted!” Father Klep wrote his religious superiors in 2001. Father Klep made similar statements when The News interviewed him in Samoa this year. He denied, however, that he drugged the student in the school infirmary before the abuse. Ultimately, the Salesians apologized to the man, who was in his early teens at the time of the incidents, and paid him a settlement. Father Klep’s superior, the Rev. Ian Murdoch, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. He has said the order did not send the priest abroad to help him evade the law. Police have said they couldn’t bring him back on the 1998 charges because Australia had no extradition treaty with Samoa. But they have acknowledged failing to keep an alert on the priest’s passport, which allowed him to re-enter the country several times undetected. Fugitive priest pleads guilty to sex abuse He was deported from Samoa after being profiled by The News October 27, 2005 By REESE DUNKLIN / The Dallas Morning News A Catholic priest whose Australian superiors let him work overseas as a criminal fugitive pleaded guilty this week to 13 charges involving the sexual abuse of several teenage boys, the Australian Associated Press news service reported. The Rev. Frank Klep was profiled last year as part of The Dallas Morning News’ examination of Catholic priests moving from country to country to elude sex-abuse allegations and remain in ministry with access to children. Father Klep is living with members of his religious order, the Salesians of Don Bosco, while he awaits his sentencing on Dec. 9. The priest was accused of abusing boys under his care at a boarding school outside Melbourne in the 1970s. He was convicted in 1994 and became the target of a second criminal abuse investigation two years later. While that case remained unresolved, he was sent to work on the Pacific Island of Samoa in 1998 and remained there until last year. Salesian officials had insisted he was not in active ministry and was isolated from children. But The News photographed him handing candy to children after Mass and reported he was tutoring students alone in his bedroom. Prompted by The News’ report, Samoan authorities moved to deport the priest after discovering he failed to disclose his 1994 conviction when he first entered the country. He was arrested upon his return to Australia, and as many as nine new accusers have since come forward.
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