DENVER (CO)
Office of the Attorney General
December 1, 2020
This Supplemental Report concludes 22 months of work investigating and reporting on a 70-year history of (1) Roman Catholic clergy child sexual abuse in Colorado and (2) the Colorado dioceses’ programs and systems for preventing it. Our investigation has produced a reckoning and accounting of the past and a presentation of lessons from which the Colorado dioceses can continue to improve its child-protection practices into the future.
Our Special Master’s Report on Roman Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children in Colorado from 1950 to 2019 (“First Report”) was issued on October 22, 2019. It can be found at https://coag.gov/app/uploads/2019/10/Special-Masters-Report_10.22.19_FINAL.pdf. That same month, Colorado’s 3 Roman Catholic dioceses launched the Independent Reconciliation and Reparations Program (“IRRP”). Over the ensuing 4 months, the IRRP solicited and reviewed claims from alleged child sex abuse victims of Roman Catholic clergy in Colorado, and it awarded financial compensation (paid by the relevant Colorado diocese) to those victims whose claims it deemed credible. During that period additional victims also made clergy child sex abuse reports directly to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.
In July 2020, we were then engaged under a new agreement with the dioceses and the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to determine (1) whether those newly reported child sex abuse incidents are substantiated and (2) what Colorado’s 3 dioceses have and have not done to implement the 5-6 improvements to their child-protection systems that we recommended after we evaluated those systems in 2019.
The results of our review of all the newly reported allegations are as follows. All of these incidents occurred between 1951 and 1999:
– We substantiated 46 additional incidents of sexual abuse of children (37 boys and 9 girls) by 25 diocesan priests in Colorado. The majority of the children were between the ages of 10 and 14 when they were abused.
– 16 of those 25 priests were already identified in the First Report. 9 of those priests are newly identified in this Supplemental Report.
– 5 of the newly identified priests served in the Denver Archdiocese. They are Father Kenneth Funk, Father Daniel Kelleher, Father James Moreno, Father Gregory Smith, and Father Charles Woodrich.
– 4 of the newly identified priests served in the Pueblo Diocese. They are Monsignor Marvin Kapushion, Father Duane Repola, Father Carlos Trujillo, and Father Joseph Walsh.
– 23 of those children were sexually abused by 13 diocesan priests serving in the Denver Archdiocese.
– 23 of those children were sexually abused by 12 diocesan priests serving in the Pueblo Diocese …
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