KNOXVILLE (TN)
Knoxville News
December 22, 2018
By Terry Mattingly
It was in 1983 that parents told leaders of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, west of New Orleans, that Father Gilbert Gauthe had molested their sons.
Dominoes started falling. The bishop offered secret settlements to nine families — but one refused to remain silent.
The rest is a long, long story. Scandals about priests abusing children — the vast majority of cases involve teenage males — have been making news ever since, including the firestorm unleashed by The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” series that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.
This old, tragic story flared up again in 2018, and Religion News Association members selected the release of a sweeping Pennsylvania grand jury report — with 301 Catholic priests, in six dioceses, accused of abusing at least 1,000 minors over seven decades — as the year’s top religion story.
“The allegations contained in this report are horrific, and there are important lessons to take away from it,” said Michael Plachy, a partner at Lewis, Roca, Rothgerber, Christie, a national law firm that emphasizes religious liberty cases. However, “to be candid, much of what’s in this report has been known for years. … It’s important, but it’s mostly old news.”
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia — a diocese not included in the grand jury report — requested an analysis of the 884-page document focusing on the impact of the church’s 2002 Charter for the Protection Children and Young People. Among the law firm’s findings: Of 680 victims whose claims mentioned specific years, 23 cited abuse after the charter — 3 percent of claims in the grand jury report. The average year of each alleged incident was 1979.
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