Mahony’s Chickens Come Home to Roost – with Links to Complete Document Files

By Joelle Casteix
Worthy Adversary
January 21, 2013

http://theworthyadversary.com/1665-mahonys-chickens-come-home-to-roost-with-links-to-complete-document-files

[The complete library of documents can be viewed here.]

Cardinal Mahony: Save your prayers for your own soul

For years, all we heard from Cardinal Roger Mahony was that he “may have made mistakes” and that “new policies would ensure child safety.”

Now we know that Cardinal Mahony’s role in the cover-up of child sex abuse in the Los Angeles Archdiocese was hands-on, insidious and evil.

From the Los Angeles Times:

In a letter about Father Michael Wempe, who had acknowledged using a 12-year-old parishioner as what a church official called his “sex partner,” [Msgr. Thomas J.] Curry recounted extensive conversations with the priest about potential criminal prosecution.

“He is afraid … records will be sought by the courts at some time and that they could convict him,”Curry wrote to Mahony. ”He is very aware that what he did comes within the scope of criminal law.”

Curry proposed Wempe could go to an out-of-state diocese “if need be.” He called it “surprising” that a church-paid counselor hadn’t reported Wempe to police and wrote that he and Wempe ”agreed it would be better if Mike did not return to him.”

Perhaps, Curry added, the priest could be sent to “a lawyer who is also a psychiatrist” thereby putting”the reports under the protection of privilege.”

Curry expressed similar concerns to Mahony about Father Michael Baker, who had admitted his abuse of young boys during a private 1986 meeting with the archbishop.

In a memo about Baker’s return to ministry, Curry wrote, “I see a difficulty here, in that if he were to mention his problem with child abuse it would put the therapist in the position of having to report him … he cannot mention his past problem.”

Mahony’s response to the memo was handwritten across the bottom of the page: ”Sounds good —please proceed!!” Two decades would pass before authorities gathered enough information to convict Wempe of abusing boys.

From The Associated Press:

In one instance, a memo to Mahony discusses sending a cleric to a therapist who also is an attorney so any incriminating evidence is protected from authorities by lawyer-client privilege. In another instance, archdiocese officials paid a secret salary to a priest exiled to the Philippines after he and six other clerics were accused of having sex with a teen and impregnating her.

The documents described here and others were released in a current legal proceeding against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles by a victim of Father Nicholas Aguilar Rivera. These are NOT part of the documents promised in the Archdiocese 2007 settlement with more than 500 victims of abuse. We are still waiting for those. Who knows what we will learn?

Mahony’s response: he prays.

“I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day”

How utterly insulting.