MEMPHIS (TN)
Chattanooga Times Free Press [Chattanooga TN]
October 16, 2024
By Andrew Schwartz
The Rev. Joel Wiggs was Scout leader, worked at St. Francis, Our Lady of Lourdes, Blessed Sacrament
[Photo above: In an April 29, 1961, clipping from the Chattanooga News-Free Press, the Rev. Joel Wiggs is shown, back row, fourth from left. The photo shows 20 Girl Scouts and two Boy Scouts receiving Catholic religious awards at Sts. Peter and Paul’s Church.]
Decades ago, a Humboldt, Tennessee, Catholic priest was coaxing boys to get naked with him, massaging them, molesting them and more, a man has alleged in a lawsuit filed last month in federal court.
The suit focuses on the period of time the Rev. Joel Wiggs, who died in 2001, spent in West Tennessee. But before the priest moved there, he’d spent many years in Chattanooga — as a leader in its Catholic and Boy and Girl Scout communities.
Scouting America records indicate Wiggs was a vice president on the board of the Cherokee Area Boy Scout Council in the 1950s, national spokesperson Scott Armstrong said by phone Wednesday. After a reporter reached out Tuesday, Armstrong said he checked a Scouting America database for Wiggs’ name and found no complaints.
“So from a scouting perspective, I don’t think there’s a lot of story here,” Armstrong said. “There’s clearly plenty of story on the church side of things.”
The priest’s name also does not appear on a list of those accused of abusing minors maintained by the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Memphis, Knoxville or Nashville. The latter encompassed all of Tennessee until 1971.
Still, Turner Casey, the plaintiff in the suit, said he’s sure, at least around Humboldt — north of Jackson — Wiggs abused many other young people, too.
Casey first went public with his own story late last year in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. In a subsequent phone interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press, he recalled how he and many other boys in his Humboldt community played racquetball or went water skiing with the priest, who had built up credibility with some local parents and was often the lone supervisor over weekend getaways.
Casey, 57, said he was around 12 years old when the priest began inviting him to spend the night in the rectory.
Casey recalled a musty smell, clocks and “weird priest stuff” around. He said he slept in the spare bedroom — at first. In time there were massages, baby oil, soft-core porn, nudity and molestations.
“Its just hard to reason,” Casey said. “I don’t think I did think it was all right. I also think I wasn’t one to — I don’t know, I wasn’t going to make a scene about it.”
In the morning, the priest would drop him at school, Casey said, recalling that some asked why. But he added, “I wasn’t the only one that spent the night at his house.”
CHATTANOOGA
The media contact email for the Diocese of Knoxville did not respond to a request for a list of Wiggs’ parish assignments throughout his career. Asked for such a list, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nashville referred the Times Free Press to the Memphis diocese, whose spokesperson, Rick Ouellette, sent an emailed statement.
“Our understanding is that the plaintiff claims he was abused more than 40 years ago by a priest who has been deceased over 20 years,” the statement said. “Few (if any) people still work at the diocese who were employed at that time. We take all allegations of abuse seriously, even very old ones, and we do our best to investigate such claims. Since litigation is now pending, we are unable to publicly comment any further about this matter and have referred it to our legal counsel.”
Typically, historic priest placements can be reviewed on a Boston Public Library collection of Catholic directories, but the host website for that service was offline as of this week.
But the suit said Wiggs was ordained a priest in 1949, and Chattanooga newspaper archives paint a partial story of the years that followed.
“Rev. Wiggs Speaks To Catholic Group On Teenagers,” said an Oct. 19, 1955, Chattanooga News-Free Press headline. Wiggs, who worked at Chattanooga’s St. Francis Catholic Church, explained to parents how they could understand their childrens’ problems, the story said. (That church no longer exists.)
By 1956, Wiggs, identified as the “youth director of East Tennessee,” was addressing the Altar society at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church on the subject of children. A few months later, an article described him as the “East Tennessee deanery chaplain of Catholic Scouting” and the pastor at not just St. Francis Catholic Church but also South Pittsburg’s Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church.
In early 1957, the News-Free Press reported, Wiggs was among several men named to lead two tro0ps of 74 Boy Scouts to the Fourth National Jamboree at Valley Forge the following July. Late that year, a newspaper described Wiggs as an officer on the Cherokee Area Boy Scout Council. And in October 1958, he was master of ceremonies at Youth Week celebrations, held at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church.
Some of Wiggs’ reported engagements involved adults. One paper noted him officiating a funeral. A September 1959 report, which identified him as pastor at Blessed Sacrament church in Harriman and the Harriman Missions, said he spoke at a meeting about the value of adult study groups.
But the main theme of the Chattanooga newspaper record on Wiggs involves his work with children.
In April 1960, for example, Catholic Boy and Girl Scouts of the Chattanooga area were set to receive religious awards at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church. “East Tennessee Scout chaplain” Joel Wiggs was to assist, the story said, noting that applicants for the award passed a board of review supervised by the priest, who was assisted by a local area Scout chair.
In the coming years came more reports of Wiggs conducting Scout ceremonies, and as late as mid 1966, The Chattanooga Times described him as the “East Tennessee Deanery Area Scout chaplain,” set to present awards to Girl and Boy Scouts at Notre Dame High School.
Soon though, Wiggs had moved on. By 1967, he was in Humboldt, according to the suit — an assertion consistent with the April 20, 1969, edition of The Chattanooga Times, which describes him as “the Rev. Joel Wiggs of Humboldt, Tenn.”
The Memphis diocese was carved out in 1971, and the Diocese of Knoxville, which includes Chattanooga, dates to 1988.
In an email, Diocese of Nashville spokesperson Rick Musacchio said it is common for priests to move from one assignment to another within a diocese over the course of a career.
He also said the diocese encourages anyone who suspects abuse to report it to civil authorities and the diocesan safe environment coordinator and that the diocese has an assistance program for people who experienced abuse, no matter how long ago.
Casey’s suit named the Diocese of Memphis and Humboldt’s Sacred Heart Catholic Church as defendants, alleging negligence and fraud. It says that after Casey first went public with his story, other people reached out to tell him of their own experiences of having been abused by Wiggs.
The suit also paints a bigger picture. It alleges it is the practice of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Dicese of Memphis in particular, to conceal instances of child sex abuse.
To this end, the suit said, Catholic dioceses have been known to destroy documents, coerce families to withdraw complaints and to transfer sex offending clergy to church facilities in other locations where their pasts would not be known to parishioners — and the abusers would have a “fresh start” with a new group of vulnerable children.
Contact Andrew Schwartz at aschwartz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.