Priests: Escapes, Evasions By Jason Berry Los Angeles Times March 20, 1988 New Orleans - A Roman Catholic priest assigned to two parishes in Los Angeles fled to Mexico in mid-January after accusations that he sexually molested as many as 26 altar boys, according to police investigators. An archdiocesan spokesman said that Father Nicolas Aguilar Rivera was removed from all church duties and two days later "chose to leave" -- before police had an opportunity to investigate. Doubt and bitterness cloak these events. Families, worrying about impact on their children, feel betrayed by the institution of their faith. Police feel thwarted by the church's failure to prevent Aguilar's escape. Pedophilia -- the sexual fixation of an adult on children -- is an addictive disease, often marked by years of encounters with many victims. This is not a case without precedent in Los Angeles. In 1986 a distraught mother told a sheriff's deputy that her pastor, the Rev. John A. Salazar, had sodomized her 13-year-old boy. The priest was sentenced to six years in prison. Only later did authorities learn that Salazar had been transferred from another parish, before the case, after similar allegations. Nor is the Aguilar incident the first time a priest left the country stalked by allegations. In 1985 in Lafayette, La., Father John Engbers was accused by five women, siblings, of having systematically molested them as children. Their attorney, Anthony Fontana, unable to convince the diocese to suspend Engers, privately informed the bishop that he would be filing suit on behalf of the women. Engbers promptly fled to his native Holland. Litigation is continuing. The church has yet to develop a national policy for dealing with such delicate matters. A statement issued in January by U.S. Catholic Conference general counsel Mark E. Chopko correctly observed that pedophilia affects "religious and secular groups alike." But the church is not at all like a secular group. Newspapers and TV networks have reported cases sharing an unmistakable pattern -- of accused priests recycled to new assignments, of victims and their parents held at arm's length by church officials. This seeming concealment triggered a chain reaction of lawsuits. Between 1983 and 1986, 135 cases (most involving boys) were reported to church authorities. About 95 entered the criminal or civil arena. At least 17 priests received prison terms. Some received suspended sentences; others were never prosecuted. When plaintiff attorneys bargain silence for dollars, criminal charges are often never filed. In January, 1985, at a pre-sentencing hearing for a priest in Boise, Idaho, Dr. Jay Fiereman, consulting psychiatrist at a monastic treatment center for Catholic clergymen in Jemez Springs, N.M., said that 200 pedophiles had been treated there in the previous 10 years. The issue is not that a small percentage of U.S. priests are pedophiles, but that Catholic bishops and dioceses have not yet dealt with the problem effectively. While the cost in church moral primacy cannot be calculated, a partial accounting of civil litigation losses can be. As of Jan. 1, actions in eight states involving 13 priests and one former seminarian had resulted in $19 million paid to 38 victims and their families. The figures do not include attorneys' fees, medical treatment for priests, increased clergy health insurance or secret payments to families without counsel. In most litigated cases, dioceses are believed to have paid up to 15% of the total amounts, with insurance companies absorbing the bulk. As a result, liability coverage has evaporated, placing dioceses in a vulnerable self-insurance posture. While the Los Angeles archdiocese's offer of therapeutic assistance to Aguilar's victims reflects pastoral sensitivity, a group of activists has engaged a local law firm, Hennigan and Mercer, to explore litigation in behalf of affected families. The failure to commit Aguilar to a treatment facility and ensure his availability to legal authorities runs counter to recommendations in a 100-page internal church report. The document, written in 1985, was addressed to the emergent problem. At the time, 30 cases were known to the authors -- F. Ray Mouton Jr., a Louisiana attorney; the Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, a Dominican canon lawyer, and the late Rev. Michael Peterson, a psychiatrist who specialized in treatment of troubled clergy. They proposed immediate intervention with affected families, suspending the priest in question and placing him in a competent medical facility. The confidential report, which predicted that dioceses could face $1 billion in claims, became a controversy within the church and was never adopted as policy. Instead, the authors have conducted clergy seminars in several dioceses on an ad-hoc basis. "Every bishop in America has faced these problems," Mouton claimed. "To adopt a policy is to admit that the problem exists, and bishops are afraid to do that. Chopko's statement was limited at best." Other prominent laymen echo these concerns. Author Eugene Kennedy, professor of psychology at Loyola University of Chicago, said that the bishops "have chosen to take the advice of lawyers on issues that cannot be resolved merely by making the church legally defensible. It is a very narrow vision of life. Lawyers are not intrinsically interested in morality, but in making their small area no wider than a ledge on which to balance themselves and their clients. "Nationally, responsible journalists are beginning to interpret it as a cover-up story, which has a terribly negative potential for the church. It has failed to examine the conflicts about human sexuality that throb within it." A.W. Richard Sipe is a Baltimore therapist who has consulted with 1,000 priests. Sipe -- like Kennedy, a former priest -- sees outmoded clerical tradition as the root problem.: "The church demands celibacy but does not train for it. What we need is direct, honest confrontation with the whole problem of sexuality." Chopko cited diocesan programs to educate lay workers and clergy on child abuse. This approach, he wrote, includes a "commitment of the diocese to heal the victims and their families, rehabilitate the offender and reconcile all involved in the ministry of the church." Pedophiles, however, have such high recidivism rates that many judges view them as incorrigible. While Catholicism stresses the forgiveness of sins, penance and rehabilitation are not synonymous. Last July, in an internal report to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on issues of canon law surrounding these cases, Bishop Adam J. Maida of Green Bay, Wisc., wrote: "There are some who with proper medical and psychiatric treatment, and counseling and ongoing supervision, can continue to function in the church in some capacity with limited risk to young people." Maida listed three conditions that could warrant laicizing -- or defrocking -- a priest: serious harm to innocent victims, potential for grave scandal to the church and exposure to heavy liability "should negligence on the part of ecclesial authority be proven." Innocents are harmed. "Serious" is a matter of degree. The other two factors hinge on disclosure -- or secrecy. A pragmatic national policy might begin with the immediate removal of all known pedophiles among the ranks of clergy.

.