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: Lawbeat

What led up to latest church scandal revelations

By Mark Obbie

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Tom Roberts has done some valuable and enterprising work in recent weeks to cast a light on historical insights into the Catholic church pedophile scandal. Today's story by Laurie Goodstein in the Times, which graciously credited Roberts' National Catholic Reporter story on Monday, tipped me off to Roberts' work. His most recent story, like the Times', looks at the role of a whistleblowing insider named Rev. Gerald M. C. Fitzgerald, founder of the order Servants of the Paraclete, who started trying in the 1950s to wake the church up to the presence of child molesters in the ranks of priests. His warnings are documented in letters that have come to light in recent litigation. Both papers link to them (here's the Times'). What's the significance? Here's how Roberts explains it:

Fitzgerald's convictions [about the problems] appear to significantly contradict the claims of contemporary bishops that the hierarchy was unaware until recent years of the danger in shuffling priests from one parish to another and in concealing the priests' problems from those they served.

Back in February, Roberts -- in a story datelined from Costa Mesa, Calif. -- gave a heads up about efforts by journalists and plaintiffs' lawyers to pry open the church's documents vault. He wrote of

years of legal maneuvers by the [Los Angeles] archdiocese to keep documents sealed and by a small but determined segment of the plaintiff's bar dedicated to seeing the full story told, particularly through disclosure of thousands of diocesan documents still under wraps. In several days of interviews here with plaintiffs' lawyers and others who have been close to the scandal for years, it became clear that despite the massive settlements and an archdiocesan system now in place to protect against a recurrence of abuse, a deep frustration still exists among many who believe the whole story hasn't begun to be told.

Thanks to work by Roberts and others, readers now know more about a coverup that still has the capacity to shock, years after the church starting paying big settlements to put this all behind it.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on April 03, 2009 (boomark / email).