TEXAS
USA Today
Church abuse case haunts lawyer who defended priest
SAN LEON, Texas — Pedophile Gilbert Gauthe sought shelter and found it here.
At 68, the former priest convicted in the first sex-abuse case against the Catholic Church is, by his own account, suffering from cancer. He is a registered sex offender and between jobs. His former protector, Judge Henry Politz of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, is dead.
Any supplemental source of income that Gauthe may have is unknown. The Very Rev. Msgr. Richard R. Greene, spokesman for the the Diocese of Lafayette, La., where he committed his crimes said Gauthe receives no money from that diocese or from any other branch of the church.
Gauthe’s status as a cleric also is unclear. Greene said he believed Gauthe had been removed from the priesthood, laicized in church terms. But the diocese has no record of that and Gauthe’s name does not appear among the more than 300 U.S. priests who have been laicized since 1985.
Whether a priest or layman, however he supports himself, life for Gauthe may be more difficult now than it was inside prison walls.
Seeking to avoid exposure and publicity, he has withdrawn to the farthest point in Trinity Bay, just south of the Houston Ship Channel.
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