• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1532 0

into ministries and church jobs with access to new victims? Mahony had unseemly proximity to several men like Wempe. Father Carl Sutphin lived in the same rectory with Mahony in two cathedrals over a span of seven years until a 2002 LAPD investigation of charges that Sutphin molested two sets of brothers, which caused the cardinal to force his retirement. Sutphin had been a classmate of Mahony’s at St. John’s Seminary on the hilly estate in Camarillo. In 1991 Mahony removed him from ministry when a Phoenix man said that Sutphin had abused him and his twin brother in the 1970s. Mahony sent Sutphin to St. Luke Institute in Suitland, Maryland, but did not report him to authorities; California at that time did not include clergy as “mandated reporters” of abuse. Sutphin came back to be chaplain in a retirement home. In 1995 Sutphin moved into the St. Vibiana rectory with Mahony, and on to Our Lady of Angels, until his 2002 removal.

“Father Sutphin was another example of someone whose prognosis was favorable,” Mahony told me calmly. “One of his ministries had been dealing with men in jail, so the old cathedral rectory, which is right downtown near the jail, seemed to be a good place for him to be in residence, and certainly under supervision … We have absolutely no report of any reoffense on his part the whole time.” He seemed detached from the reality of what Sutphin had done.

Monsignor Richard A. Loomis had been vicar of clergy with the responsibility to investigate sex abuse allegations in the 1990s. He was himself accused in a civil case, as Mary Grant, a California SNAP leader, wrote in a February 23, 2004, letter to the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Office of Child and Youth Protection in Washington, D.C.

Although Msgr. Loomis was being sued for sexual molestation, the church deemed him innocent, largely because but a single accuser had come forward. On February 8 of this year, SNAP leafleted [Loomis’s] church, only to be mocked and scorned by parishioners. But the publicity from the event caused another victim of Msgr. Loomis to come forward, apparently with a story sufficiently credible to cause the removal of Msgr. Loomis from ministry on February 15, one week later.39

“The case proves that our procedures are working,” Mahony said in his mild, unruffled way. “If there’s sufficient credible evidence and the board decides to recommend that he be taken out of active ministry, and they did in this case, I obviously concurred in their recommendation.” As to why SNAP had to leaflet in the first place, Mahony said, “You know, I can’t remember the exact sequences. A lot of these problems with civil suits filed in 2002–2003 are because we did not have names of victims or any way to talk to them.”

“John Doe” names were routinely given to the church, attorneys told me.

The archdiocese cited expenses of $4,871,000 “related to legal fees, and other costs related to sexual abuse claims in fiscal year 2004. As of September 30, 2004, the Archdiocese has received $4,070,000 in reimbursements of legal fees and settlements” from insurance companies—leaving $801,000 presumably covered by church funds. The insurance companies were reimbursing the expenses for Michael Hennigan’s white-shoe firm as part of the policy coverage. In January 2005 three insurers asked the court to relieve them of responsibility, on grounds that the archdiocese had withheld documents. In November California superior court judge Haley J. Fromholz, a yeoman figure in keeping the complex proceedings in motion, ruled for the archdiocese.

In a 2004 Report to the People of God, Mahony stated: “I acknowledge my own mistakes”—but he did not explain them. The report summarized charges against several of the 113 priests and 130 religious brothers, deacons, and seminarians accused over seventy years. It said that 16 priests, unnamed, had been falsely accused. “My goal as your Archbishop is to do all in my power to prevent sexual abuse by anyone serving our Archdiocese now and in the future. Moving the healing and reconciliation process forward requires the fullest possible