24 More Clergy Names Added to Alleged Abusers List by Los Angeles Archdiocese

The Republic
February 14, 2013

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/8256b6ac99da4e49bc552239a9d13153/CA--California-Church-Abuse

[Final Addendum to the Report to the People of God - BishopAccountability.org]

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has added the names of two dozen men to the publicly released list of priests and brothers alleged to have molested children.

The names were in a two-page report posted on the archdiocesan website last month without fanfare at the same time that 12,000 pages of internal records were posted, according to BishopAccountability.org, a nonprofit group that tracks public release of clergy abuse documents.

BishopAccountability.org President Terry McKiernan sent a letter to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez this week saying it is essential to make public the nature of the allegations "because some of them may still pose a danger to children in Los Angeles, elsewhere in the United States, and in other countries."

The report said none of the men currently have ministries in the archdiocese. Among them, five have died, three have been defrocked, three are on inactive leave, one was excommunicated and one was suspended.

Details of the allegations against the men, such as the dates they were made, were not released.

The lack of information was criticized by McKiernan, who said he only discovered the document during a recent Google search.

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The archdiocese posted more than 120 confidential priest files online at the end of January, less than an hour after a Los Angeles judge ordered it to release the papers without redacting the names of members of the church hierarchy who made key decisions about how to handle priests accused of molestation.

The archdiocese agreed to the release as part of a $660 million settlement with abuse victims in 2007. Attorneys for individual priests fought for five years to prevent the papers from being made public, and the archdiocese tried to blot out large sections, including the names of hierarchy involved in decision making.

The Associated Press and the Times fought successfully to have the names of top church officials made public.

The church wasn't trying to bury the list amid the mass of released documents and, in fact, had posted it for about a month on its website in 2008, said J. Michael Hennigan, a lawyer for the archdiocese.

The list was located and re-scanned for posting online as part of the massive release of documents, he said.

"It's making something that was a voluntary disclosure into a cover-up. It's just not true," Hennigan said.

Law enforcement agencies were notified about the men years ago although the men were never sued or criminally charged, he said.