GEORGIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
FACT SHEET ON HIDDEN GEORGIA PREDATOR PRIESTS
According to legal records, church documents and mainstream news accounts (mostly from outside Georgia) and other sources, these proven, admitted or credibly accused child molesting Catholic clerics have worked in Georgia but attracted little or no public attention in the state.
Because we want to protect the vulnerable, heal the wounded and expose the truth, we want Georgia Catholic officials to permanently post on church websites the names of all predator priests who have worked or lived – or now work or live – in the Savannah diocese and Atlanta archdiocese. (More on this at the end of this fact sheet.)
Information (and sometimes photos) of these men are available at BishopAccountability.org
The Predators
–Fr. Donald J. McGuire, a high profile, now convicted Jesuit who was Mother Teresa’s spiritual advisor. He led three retreats in central Georgia in the 1990s. Attendees included Savannah area potential seminarians.
From 2000 to 2003, two Georgia families whose teenage sons worked as ‘personal servants’ to Fr. McGuire wrote to Savannah church officials describing the teens “being shown pornography, sharing a bed with Fr. McGuire, nudity, psychological abuse, sexual teasing as well as other suspected sexual abuse.”
–Fr. Jonathan W. Franklin, a Benedictine who committed suicide before his criminal trial on charges of sexually assaulting 12 year old boy. (He worked in Savannah, Atlanta, Florida and Louisiana.)
–Fr. Charles G. Coyle, a Jesuit who was suspended and is accused of molesting at least two boys and spent time in Boston MA, Houston TX, Mobile AL, New Orleans LA and Baltimore MD. (He was in Atlanta from 1991-1995 at Ignatius House.)
–Fr. Charles Arnold Bartles, a Jesuit, who worked in Kansas, Florida, Alaska, Louisiana, Jamaica and Brazil and was, in 2010, accused of molesting at least one child. (He was at in Atlanta the Marist School, with about 700 students, from 1972-78.)
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