Chet Warren, Defrocked Priest, May Still Have Had Access to Children, by Seamus McGraw, Court TV, May 3, 2006

Chet Warren, Defrocked Priest, May Still Have Had Access to Children

By Seamus McGraw seamusm@ptd.net
Court TV
May 3, 2006

http://www.crimelibrary.com/news/original/0506/0301_chet_warren.html

Toledo, Ohio (Crime Libarary) — For more than a decade, accused pedophile priest Chet Warren maintained a close relationship with a retired local schoolteacher and sometime private tutor. But despite the church's own findings that the disgraced cleric was a "known child molester" who was "in the residence while tutoring was taking place," little was done to limit his access to children.

Warren, now 78, could not immediately be reached for comment.

But according to interviews, documents and published reports, the disgraced cleric has been identified by several women since the mid-1980s as one of an apparent group of pedophile priests in the Toledo area who allegedly preyed on children, some as young as preschoolers, dating to the 1970s. In some of the most chilling accounts, Warren allegedly participated in bizarre Satanic rituals in which the predators were dressed as nuns, and, among other things, sexually penetrated their young victims, in some cases with crucifixes.

Chet Warren

Though Warren was never criminally charged in connection with the attacks, the allegations were considered credible enough that his own order, the Oblates of St. Francis, stripped him in 1993 of both his Roman collar and his clerical duties.

And yet, almost immediately, it seems, Warren again found himself in the company of children.

After leaving the order, Warren apparently remained close and at one point even moved in with an old friend, retired schoolteacher Marilyn Reidy, who ran a private tutoring service.

As late as May of 2000, nearly seven years after he had been forced to leave his order because of the allegations against him, Warren wrote a glowing letter of recommendation about Reidy's talents and the service she offered.

In it, the defrocked priest, still using stationary that bore the legend, "From the desk of Father Chet Warren," wrote that he had "observed her tutoring at home for many years."

Claudia Vercellotti

That raised a red flag for Claudia Vercellotti, an activist with the local chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and other church leaders, and in a series of letters beginning in 2004, Vercellotti raised her concerns with both the Diocese of Toledo and with the county Children's Services Bureau.

Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests

Adding to Vercellotti's concerns was the fact that Reidy's tutoring service was being advertised in local church bulletins.

It was not until a year later, in May 2005, however, that the diocese, apparently aware by then of Reidy's relationship with the accused pedophile priest, issued a warning to the principals in its diocesan schools to steer clear of Reidy's operation.

In an e-mail sent to 30 of its schools, the diocese's assistant superintendent, Carolyn Schmidbauer, warned, "Mrs. Reidy lives with or associates with a former priest who is a known child molester, and that the man is in the residence while tutoring is taking place."

Reidy, who insisted at the time that her tutoring was done exclusively at a local library, could not be reached Tuesday for comment. Nor was it immediately clear whether her tutoring service remains in operation. An answering machine at the number provided on Reidy's flier — which also is listed as her home number — offers no clue whether the caller has reached a business or a residence.

Did Warren's Supporters Stymie Probe?

In the years since he was forced out of his order, Warren has come under increased scrutiny by law enforcement and local and national media, particularly after allegations that he played a central role in a series of ritualistic sex attacks. He gained further notoriety earlier this year when prosecutors added him to their list of witnesses in the murder trial of Father Gerald Robinson, who is accused of the ritualistic slaying in 1980 of a nun at a local hospital chapel.

Gerald Robinson

But in spite of the allegations against him, Warren, who as late as last year was photographed wearing his clerical garb, continues to have some support among members of the Toledo area's Catholic community. In fact, that support may have helped stymie a probe launched last year by the Lucas County Children's Services Bureau, acting on Vercellotti's tip. Despite assigning two caseworkers to the probe and spending a month on it, the investigation went nowhere, said Executive Director Dean Sparks. It stalled when neither Reidy nor the parents of the children she taught would cooperate.

Executive Director Dean Sparks

"The upshot is that we had nobody who would give us any names of any children, "Sparks told Crime Library. "The families of the kids.... wouldn't tell us the names, Mrs. Reidy wouldn't tell us the names."

And without that, Sparks said, he had little choice but to abandon the probe. "We had nobody saying, 'Look, he's doing this to us now,' what we had was people saying, 'He did this to us 20 years ago,' and sowe came up nowhere. Unfortunately."

"We want to believe in the victims and we want to do what we can to make sure the kids are safe, and if something comes back up, we'll look at it again, but for now, we're at a dead end."