AG gives Gallup bishop, diocese month to comply By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola Gallup Independent correspondent religion@gallupindependent.com September 8, 2018 Editor’s Note: Gallup Independent readers can access the New Mexico Attorney General’s demand letter to Bishop James S. Wall and the Diocese of Gallup through a link on the newspaper’s website. GALLUP — New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas, who has opened an investigation into clergy sex abuse and cover-up in the state’s three Catholic dioceses, has imposed almost an identical document demand on the Diocese of Gallup as he has imposed on the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the Diocese of Las Cruces. Balderas is requesting thousands of pages of documents from the Gallup Diocese, along with a broad demand for recordings, photographs, other types of communication and financial records by Oct. 5. The AG’s request covers a 68year period of time, from Jan. 1, 1950, through Sept. 1, 2018. In his demand letters to the states’ three bishops Sept. 4, Balderas tailored his correspondence to reference letters each bishop publicly released to their dioceses Aug. 22, apologizing for clergy sex abuse and the cover-up by church officials. “As you referenced in your August 22, 2018 letter, to the Diocese of Gallup, regarding these crimes of sexual abuse committed by clergy, ‘We must recognize, in no uncertain terms, that the actions of abusive clerics and the bishops who sheltered them are not merely shameful, but evil,’” Balderas wrote to Gallup Bishop James S. Wall. Quoting another statement Wall made in his public letter, Balderas said, “However, similar to you, I share the belief that ‘Any complacency or silence in answer to misconduct must not be tolerated.’” It is not known if the three New Mexico bishops released their letters in concert with each other or released them in response to a request by the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office. Noticeable differences There are two noticeable differences between Balderas’ document demand to the Diocese of Gallup and the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. In addition to requesting the complete personnel files of the 78 credibly accused clergy sex abusers listed on the Santa Fe Archdiocese’s website, the New Mexico AG requested the personnel files of about a dozen additional clergymen. On Thursday, the AG sent an additional request for the files of 12 more men. In the demand letter to the Diocese of Gallup, Balderas only requested by name the personnel files of the 34 men listed as credibly accused by the Gallup Diocese. In contrast, there are a number of other former Gallup clergy who have been identified as credibly accused abusers by other Catholic dioceses and religious orders that Gallup diocesan officials have repeatedly failed to include on their list. In addition, the Gallup Independent maintains a list of suspected abusers, as well as those clergy accused of sexual misconduct involving adult victims. Balderas’ demand letter to the Diocese of Gallup also doesn’t include the request made to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe requiring information about any “priest, cleric, clergy member or other church official” who resided at Via Coeli, the Servants of the Paraclete treatment facility in Jemez Springs. The Diocese of Gallup recruited a number of clergy sex abusers from the Jemez Springs facility, including the notorious multi-state, serial abuser John T. Sullivan. The Gallup Diocese also sent an unknown number of its clergy for treatment at the facility. The AG, however, is casting a very wide net. The Diocese of Gallup, like the other two dioceses, is being required to provide the complete personnel files, without any redactions, for any clergy member or church official “alleged to have committed or associated with sexual abuse, sexual misconduct, inappropriate contact, boundary issues, familiarity, addiction, scandal, serious misconduct, grooming of children, pornography, socializing with children, or drug or alcohol abuse” prior to September 2018. Balderas is also demanding the names of clergy members and other church officials “with knowledge of allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct alleged against other priests, clergy members and/ or other church officials.”

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