Photo by Sarah Callender

But if you talk to the victims who should benefit from this clean bill of pedophilic health, you'll hear a different verdict.

"The audit's conclusions for the Orange Diocese was nothing more than a self-congratulatory exercise on behalf of the bishops," argues Joelle Casteix, a 33-year-old Corona del Mar resident. "It's like congratulating a parolee for not committing any crimes but not knowing that they had killed five people three weeks beforehand."

The former St. Joseph's parishioner, who has a lawsuit pending against the diocese alleging she was abused while attending Mater Dei High School in the 1980s, should know. As recently as one year ago, Casteix belonged to the same sexual misconduct oversight board praised in the USCCB report. The diocese established the nine-member group in May 2002 to deal with sex-abuse complaints against clergy. Casteix volunteered to represent victims on a board otherwise consisting of church-affiliated lawyers, priests and employees.

All of this appears in the USCCB audit. What the audit doesn't reveal, however, is that Casteix resigned in December 2002 after only six months, disgusted by the board's inaction.

"The majority of the meetings involved discussions on how to protect the reputations of priests alleged to have molested children and concern that the rash of lawsuits would turn into a witch hunt," claims Casteix.

Her resignation came soon after an incident involving the Diocese of San Bernardino. At the urging of the Diocese of Orange, San Bernardino officials asked her to write a letter for their diocesan newspaper stating that she had forgiven the church despite her abuse.

Casteix declined, but a diocese official, apparently misapprehending her reticence to write the first-person piece as a bout of writer's block, informed Casteix that they would write it for her. All she had to do was sign.

"I hadn't forgiven the church, and they just wanted to use me as a public relations beard to cover up what was actually going on," said Casteix.

The Orange Diocese wasn't pleased with Casteix's decision or subsequent public critiques. Bishop Tod D. Brown went as far as to call Casteix a liar in a July 2003 interview for the diocesan newspaper Orange County Catholic, saying Casteix's stories were "false and misleading."

If the USCCB investigators knew this—and knew that the only other abuse victim serving on the board also stepped down in protest a couple of months after Casteix—perhaps they wouldn't have blessed the Diocese of Orange with such a glowing report. But Casteix figures they didn't know—and still don't. The Gavin Group, an independent, Boston-based agency hired by the USCCB to conduct the audit, didn't contact Casteix or any Orange County abuse victims for its study. In fact, it interviewed only three survivors of abuse throughout the nation.

"The report was flawed from the start," says Casteix. "The Gavin Group didn't speak to any critics. The audit had no subpoena power, and reviewed whatever documents any diocese decided to make available. And, in the case of the Orange Diocese, I'm not sure what they could've possibly provided, if anything."

Casteix is specifically critical of how the USCCB study commends the diocese's sexual abuse outreach program without mentioning its uncharitable origins. All the programs the diocese now offers—a 24-hour 800 number where victims can report priests, an official victim's advocate and the sexual misconduct oversight and advisory committee—were instituted only after the 2001 Ryan DiMaria case. The landmark civil suit required the dioceses of Orange and Los Angeles to pay the former Mater Dei student $5.2 million for alleged abuse committed by former Mater Dei principal Michael Harris. In addition, the judge required the Diocese of Orange to institute the remedies.

"There was no goodwill in these reforms," says Casteix. "They were done at the point of a gun. And any further reform will have to occur the same way."

The USCCB audit of the Diocese of Orange is available at www.usccb.org/ocyp/audit2003/orangeca.htm.
[Note from BA.org: See also our cached copy of the Orange audit.]

GARELLANO@OCWEEKLY.COM