By Steve McGonigle and Brenda Rodriguez
Dallas Morning News
October 21, 2002

Being assigned to run three dirt-poor Catholic churches scattered across 25 miles of the remote Texas Panhandle was a welcome second chance for the Rev. Ed Graff, and he made the most of it.

During a decade of work in Silverton, Quitaque and Turkey, Father Graff, 73, established a reputation for kindness and generosity that made him a beloved figure to his predominantly Hispanic congregants.

Maria Garcia of Silverton keeps a photograph of Father Graff on a makeshift altar in her living room and prays for him daily. "Of all the priests we've had," she said, "he did the most for the church."

Ms. Garcia and other admirers have had their faith in Father Graff put to the test since Oct. 4, when the retired priest was arrested and charged with molesting a 15-year-old boy in his former residence in Silverton.

The closest supervisory priest is in Tulia, 27 miles west of Silverton. Amarillo, the headquarters of the Catholic diocese that covers the 26 northernmost counties in Texas, is 80 miles to the northwest.

The Texas Ranger investigating Father Graff said he may have 15 victims in Briscoe County and about a dozen more in eastern Pennsylvania, where Father Graff worked for the first 33 years of his priesthood.

"I've got victims going back to the late 1950s," Ranger Jay Foster said. "I've been told that there may be 40 at one school. There could be hundreds of victims in other places."

The accusations surfaced less than three months after Father Graff's home diocese in Allentown, Pa., advised Amarillo Bishop John Yanta that the priest may have had a history of sexual misconduct with minors.

The cleric's denial

Father Graff denied the old charge but resigned from ministry, citing his age and ill health, a spokeswoman for the Amarillo Diocese said.

Father Graff has had no public comment and may never talk. He is said to be unconscious and on a ventilator in University Medical Center Lubbock, where he was taken for hip surgery after a fall in jail.

His prognosis is poor, according to retired Bishop Leroy Matthiesen, who accepted Father Graff into the Amarillo Diocese in 1992.

Bishop Matthiesen, like Bishop Yanta and several of Father Graff's parishioners, expressed shock over the allegations that he molested boys.

"That never entered my mind that he would have a problem like that," he said.

Father Graff once had a drinking problem, the retired bishop said, but he had completed a treatment program in New Mexico before going to work in the Amarillo Diocese and was not known to have relapsed.

Father Graff was one of eight priests from other dioceses hired by Bishop Matthiesen after they had been sent to a program for troubled clerics run by the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs, N.M.

Three of those priests have retired. Father Graff was one of the last five active priests who were removed from their parishes this year and barred from working as ministers because of old sex-abuse allegations.

No others suspected

Bishop Yanta has maintained that none of the "program priests" committed new offenses after they joined the Amarillo Diocese.

Ranger Foster said he interviewed Bishop Yanta and was convinced that he did not know about Father Graff's activities, which spanned at least three or four years in Briscoe County.

According to Ranger Foster, Father Graff would approach teenage boys he had hired to perform small jobs around the church or his home and offer to instruct them on sex education.

Once inside his home in Silverton, the priest would show sexually explicit videos, engage in oral sex and take photographs of the naked boy, Ranger Foster said. The man also would expose himself, he said.

Some boys told their parents about their contact with Father Graff and were admonished to stay away from the priest, Ranger Foster said.

None of the parents ever notified law enforcement authorities, he said.

The teen's accusations

The teenager whose allegation led to Father Graff's arrest first disclosed the priest's behavior to a juvenile probation officer who was questioning him about providing adult videos to an 11-year-old boy.

The 15-year-old, who has not been charged with a crime but was removed from his home for two weeks of counseling in a county-run treatment center, repeated his charges to Ranger Foster.

At the Ranger's request, the teenager made a tape-recorded phone call to Father Graff during which the priest talked about being sexually aroused and asked when the boy could spend the night with him, according to a sworn affidavit Ranger Foster filed to obtain a search warrant.

A search of Father Graff's home in Quitaque yielded 57 pre-recorded videotapes and a Polaroid camera. Ranger Foster also photographed the priest's genitals and buttocks, court records show.

Other charges?

Father Graff has been charged with only one sexual assault, but at least one additional charge is likely, Ranger Foster said.

The Ranger and Floyd County District Attorney Becky McPherson, who will be prosecuting the case against Father Graff, said they were convinced of the credibility of their chief complaining witness.

The boy's mother and older sister described him as a former altar boy who had worked for Father Graff mowing his lawn and cleaning his house.

Both consented to speak on the condition of anonymity.

The mother said her son stopped wanting to go to the church in Silverton about a year ago. She said she had not talked to the boy about any sexual relationship with Father Graff and does not want to know.

Father Graff baptized one of her younger sons, the woman said, and she never suspected anything was wrong with her son or other boys spending time around the priest.

"A father is someone professional, an educated person," she said. "How are you going to think of him other than a public servant? How are you going to believe he could do bad things?"

The boy's sister said her brother had no reason to make false accusations against Father Graff. As for those in the community who doubt her brother, the 17-year-old girl said, "They don't know the evidence."

Father Graff was renowned among his followers for his practice of giving away frozen turkeys and hams at Thanksgiving, co-signing car loans and offering his home to those without a place to live.

'Falsely accused'

Connie Patino of Silverton is one of those who doubts that a priest so devoted to helping the needy would be capable of abusing children.

"We're all for Father Ed," Ms. Patino said. "I think he was very falsely accused."

Judy De Leon, another member of Our Lady of Loreto in Silverton, said her 14-year-old son was one of the boys questioned by Ranger Foster.

The boy said Father Graff had done nothing to him, she said.

Ms. De Leon said she knows the families of all the boys questioned, and none had made any accusations against Father Graff.

"They're all mad," she said, "because none of it happened."

To non-Catholics in Silverton, Father Graff was known as friendly but reclusive.

Bishop Matthiesen described Father Graff as "kind of a loner," but someone who seemed happy with his assignment to three of the poorest, most remote outposts in the sprawling Amarillo Diocese.

The bishop said he saw firsthand how the community felt about Father Graff. "People just flocked around him wherever he went," he said.

'Just a normal guy'

Carl Zito had a similar recollection of Father Graff, whom he knew as a Catholic high school student in Roseto, Pa., from 1958 to 1962.

Mr. Zito, now in retirement and living in Stockertown, Pa., said he and other boys admired Father Graff as a man and a teacher and spent many evenings after school walking with the priest in nearby woods.

"We knew he was a priest, but he didn't come off like he was a priest," Mr. Zito said. "He came off like just a normal guy."

Kathleen Graff, a sister-in-law of Father Graff, said he was born in Philadelphia and had 10 brothers and sisters. His father died when Ed was 12.

Her husband, Bernard, was the last living sibling, said Mrs. Graff, who lives in the Philadelphia suburb of Southampton, Pa.

She said she had not seen Father Graff in many years, although he made phone calls to her husband around Christmas.

When she told him of Bernard's death in late September, Mrs. Graff said, Father Graff told her he was no longer able to celebrate Mass because of his own poor health.

Mrs. Graff said she did not know about Father Graff's arrest.

After being ordained in 1955, Father Graff worked in seven churches and three high schools in Easton, Allentown and Reading, Pa., according to Matt Kerr, a spokesman for the Diocese of Allentown.

Sent to New Mexico

Mr. Kerr confirmed that the Allentown Diocese sent Father Graff to New Mexico for treatment of an alcohol problem. He did not receive another assignment and was granted retirement from that diocese in 1992, Mr. Kerr said.

The first rumor of sexual misconduct arose after Father Graff left for New Mexico, Mr. Kerr said. The Amarillo Diocese was advised of the allegations of misconduct in 1993 and reminded in July, he said.

The Allentown Diocese also forwarded its file on Father Graff, along with several other priests, to prosecutors in its area in April, Mr. Kerr said. None of the allegations has produced criminal charges, he said.

Classmate's recollection

The Rev. Edmund Speitel, a seminary classmate, said Father Graff complained to him during a visit to Texas in 1997 that he had been falsely accused of misconduct by boys in Pennsylvania.

Father Speitel, who is now retired and living in New Jersey, said he told Father Graff to change the subject. Father Speitel said he never mentioned the conversation to Bishop Yanta, a longtime friend.

"He was so gentle. He was so kind. He was so caring. But I don't know what happened," Father Speitel said.

E-mail smcgonigle@dallasnews.com and brodriguez@dallasnews.com