Focus: In Depth
"Forgive Me for Using You"
A lawsuit alleges a 'conspiratorial and fraudulent attempt to hide' a priest's molestation record

By Jim Hinch
Orange County Register
October 16, 2003

[See also Chronology of Abuse Attributed to Ramos Begins in 1974 and Lawsuit Says Ex-Priest Admits Abusing Dozens.]

It was 1984 when the 14-year-old boy's childhood priest invited him on a trip to San Diego, where the priest had booked a hotel room, according to an Orange Police Department incident report.

After a day spent horseback riding, the priest -- Eleuterio Ramos -- joined the boy in the hotel shower and molested him.

Ramos, in the report, admits molesting the boy.

On Wednesday, the victim sued Ramos and the Diocese of Orange, alleging that church officials knew Ramos was abusing boys but moved him from parish to parish to conceal the abuse.

Ramos, who worked as a priest for the diocese from 1975 to 1991, admitted in two taped statements to police in May to molesting at least 25 boys in three parishes, according to the report, which was attached to Wednesday's suit.

A diocese spokesman said he would not comment until he had seen the suit and the police report. Ramos, reached by phone at his Pico Rivera home, said, ``I have nothing to say to you,'' and hung up.

``It's the most horrible thing I could ever imagine to think a priest could be guilty of such allegations,'' retired Bishop Norman McFarland said.

McFarland, who led the diocese from 1987 to 1998, said he first learned of problems with Ramos in 1991, when a lawsuit was filed against the priest. Because lawyers told him the accusations appeared credible, McFarland said, he suspended Ramos of priestly duties and subsequently informed parishes where Ramos had worked of the abuse allegations and the suspension.

McFarland said Wednesday that he informed the bishop of Tijuana, where Ramos had been sent on loan in 1985, that the priest had been suspended because of alleged sexual abuse.

Before settling the lawsuit in 1993, church officials repeatedly denied in court documents that Ramos had molested anyone, according to news reports.

Wednesday's suit says officials, rather than acknowledging Ramos' actions, engaged in a ``conspiratorial and fraudulent attempt to hide'' them by repeatedly transferring Ramos to different parishes without warning them of Ramos' past.

Officials concealed from ``parishioners, students, parents, caregivers, teachers, law enforcement authorities, civil authorities and others the true facts and relevant information necessary to bring (Ramos) to justice,'' the suit says.

The 33-year-old plaintiff in Wednesday's suit, who is not named in the suit or police report, said that after Ramos abused him in the San Diego hotel, three strangers entered the room, blindfolded him, tied him up and had sex with him. He passed out. When he awoke, the men were gone, according to the report.

During the police interview, Ramos denied inviting other men into the hotel room.

Another accuser, named in the police report as Victim One, said in an interview with the Register that Ramos abused him from 1983 to 1988, beginning when he was 12. Ramos would take him to motels and movies to molest him, said the accuser, who sued the diocese in June.

Ramos told police he repeatedly fondled him but did not engage in further sex acts.

Once, after throwing up in the bathroom after an episode of abuse, the accuser said, he returned to a motel room, where Ramos asked sarcastically, ``What's wrong with you?''

Another time, in San Diego, the accuser said, a stranger came into a hotel room and tried to molest him while Ramos waited in a parking lot below.

The accuser said he resisted the stranger, who left and promised to come back later.

He said he locked the door and stayed up all night, finally racing from the room at 4 a.m. and sleeping the rest of the night in a train station.

``I want (church officials) to look at this and try to fix it as if these offenses had happened to Jesus,'' said the accuser, whose name is being withheld by the Register because he says he is a victim of childhood sexual abuse. ``It's not their church. It's God's church, and they're just taking care of it for a while.''

Said Ramos in a conversation with the accuser taped by police: ``Forgive me for using you for an instrument for my pleasure.''