New Orleans archdiocese failed to monitor priests accused of sexual abuse
Victims’ advocates detailed church’s neglect in following oversight recommendations when transferring accused clergy.
Church had no plan by which the archdiocese of New Orleans could reliably protect children from contact with clerics who had been suspended from public ministry following molestation allegations – but who for years stayed in close proximity to and were financially supported by the church.
The archdiocese’s failure to implement a meaningful oversight plan for suspected, still-living predator priests and deacons – as was repeatedly recommended to the organization – is outlined in a 48-page memorandum secretly prepared by a team of attorneys representing some people pursuing clerical abuse claims through the bankruptcy proceeding.
Deacon George Brignac had already been arrested three times on child sexual abuse allegations and was barred from publicly working as a clergyman.
Yet his safe environment certification let him give a lecture – without restrictions – to a group of students at a local Catholic elementary school about the Feast of Fatima. It even let him pick out costumes for the children to wear for a celebration of that feast organized at the school. Brignac at the time was associated with a local chapter of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic community service organization.
Media reports would later reveal that Brignac was reading scripture at local services, setting off a scandal which led to him being arrested a fourth time on child molestation charges. He died in June 2020 without going to trial.
A priest named Lawrence Hecker admitted to his superiors in 1999 that he sexually molested or otherwise harassed multiple teenage boys whom he met through work, he was recommended to be put “under some supervision and [to] be made accountable to a designated ministry monitor”, the memo recounts.
A board advising Aymond’s predecessor, Alfred Hughes, made that recommendation in 2004.
If there has been anyone designated to monitor him, that would be news to Hecker. When he sat for a deposition in December 2020 as part of a lawsuit which accused him of abuse and is part of the church’s pending bankruptcy, Hecker indicated that he “knew of no monitoring”, the memo said.
The archdiocese’s failure to follow through on such recommendations is more than simply embarrassing, the memo’s authors contend. It enabled one of the organization’s most notorious suspected abusers ever – beside Hecker – to come into close, publicly documented quarters with schoolchildren just months before he appeared on the credibly accused clergymen list released by Aymond in 2018.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/a...t-children
Victims’ advocates detailed church’s neglect in following oversight recommendations when transferring accused clergy.
Church had no plan by which the archdiocese of New Orleans could reliably protect children from contact with clerics who had been suspended from public ministry following molestation allegations – but who for years stayed in close proximity to and were financially supported by the church.
The archdiocese’s failure to implement a meaningful oversight plan for suspected, still-living predator priests and deacons – as was repeatedly recommended to the organization – is outlined in a 48-page memorandum secretly prepared by a team of attorneys representing some people pursuing clerical abuse claims through the bankruptcy proceeding.
Deacon George Brignac had already been arrested three times on child sexual abuse allegations and was barred from publicly working as a clergyman.
Yet his safe environment certification let him give a lecture – without restrictions – to a group of students at a local Catholic elementary school about the Feast of Fatima. It even let him pick out costumes for the children to wear for a celebration of that feast organized at the school. Brignac at the time was associated with a local chapter of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic community service organization.
Media reports would later reveal that Brignac was reading scripture at local services, setting off a scandal which led to him being arrested a fourth time on child molestation charges. He died in June 2020 without going to trial.
A priest named Lawrence Hecker admitted to his superiors in 1999 that he sexually molested or otherwise harassed multiple teenage boys whom he met through work, he was recommended to be put “under some supervision and [to] be made accountable to a designated ministry monitor”, the memo recounts.
A board advising Aymond’s predecessor, Alfred Hughes, made that recommendation in 2004.
If there has been anyone designated to monitor him, that would be news to Hecker. When he sat for a deposition in December 2020 as part of a lawsuit which accused him of abuse and is part of the church’s pending bankruptcy, Hecker indicated that he “knew of no monitoring”, the memo said.
The archdiocese’s failure to follow through on such recommendations is more than simply embarrassing, the memo’s authors contend. It enabled one of the organization’s most notorious suspected abusers ever – beside Hecker – to come into close, publicly documented quarters with schoolchildren just months before he appeared on the credibly accused clergymen list released by Aymond in 2018.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/a...t-children
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
