“Cardinal Mahony Kept Cleric’s Abuse Secret for 16 Years,” reads
the above-the-fold headline in Thursday’s Los Angeles
Times. Glenn Bunting, not religion reporter Larry Stammer,
wrote the story
— a concession perhaps to those who questioned the paper’s
credibility after leaked e-mails from the cardinal revealed
Stammer’s cozy relations with him.
The New Times — a Los Angeles alternative weekly
newspaper staffed, in part, by former L.A. Times reporters
— has shamed the mainstream editors on Spring Street into covering
the Mahony story seriously. Ron Russell, a former Times
reporter, has been smoking out Mahony for weeks in the pages of the
New Times. In this week’s
story, Russell revealed that Mahony blocked a molested
seminarian’s entry to St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo after he
learned that the seminarian had knowledge of allegations of
misconduct involving high-ranking church officials.
But Mahony could ignore Russell’s reporting since it didn’t
appear in the “respectable” press. A revealing story in the Los
Angeles Times, on the other hand, commands his full attention.
Anticipating Bunting’s story, Mahony penned a non-apology apology
to the archdiocese’s priests this week. “It is quite likely that
very soon the public media will highlight the case of Michael
Baker, a former priest of this archdiocese. You need to be aware of
the seriousness of his case,” he wrote.
Well, they won’t learn the seriousness of the case from his
letter. He relies first on euphemism, calling Baker’s molestation
of children “acting out sexually with two minors.” Then he moves to
rationalization: “Baker was sent to a treatment center for
evaluation and recommendation for his future. Following treatment,
it was decided that he could do specialized priestly ministry not
related to children and youth. He was subsequently given various
ministries, such as special outreach to our retired priests. All
during this time, we had no reports of abuse.”
This leaves the impression that Baker was holed up in an obscure
office. In fact, the Los Angeles Times reports, he served
at six parishes with “elementary schools adjacent to the rectory”
and “was sent to at least three parishes to fill in for pastors who
had either retired or been transferred, leaving no superior to
monitor his day-to-day activities.”
Did Mahony inform any of the parents at these parishes of
Baker’s record as an accused molester? No, they didn’t need to know
such a trivial detail, deemed the cardinal. But then, he didn’t
want to know too much about Baker’s past either. According to
Baker, when he told Mahony in 1986 about his abuse of minors, the
cardinal “was very solicitous and understanding” and neither he nor
his aides asked for more specific information: “I don’t recall them
pressing for details, and I didn’t give them any.”
Mahony, known for his detail-oriented administration, told the
Los Angeles Times last month that he couldn’t remember
this meeting with Baker. Apparently it wasn’t momentous enough to
lodge in his usually sharp memory. Baker, however, thought the
meeting particularly memorable. During it, John P. McNicholas, a
lawyer for the archdiocese, suggested that the cardinal call the
cops to investigate Baker. The Times reports that Baker
said “he became startled when McNicholas blurted, ‘Should we call
the police now?’ Baker said he recalled Mahony’s response : ‘No,
no, no…”
Even after the Boston scandal broke, Mahony still hoped to avoid
informing the police about Baker. Sister Judy Murphy, an
archdiocesan lawyer, said he was “reluctant” to call the police.
Why? Perhaps because he had gone to so much trouble to prevent the
Baker story from ever coming out. He used $1.3 million of the
faithful’s money to settle with two of Baker’s accusers, because,
as their attorney put it, archdiocesan officials knew “the
allegations against Baker were true, there would be more victims,
and they didn’t want any publicity. What they were buying was
silence.”
After years of protecting accused felons, exposing children to
known molesters, and asking for money from parents he left in the
dark, Mahony is suddenly a wised-up, get-tough reformer. “No one
who has been determined to have sexually abused a minor can be
allowed to serve in any ministry in the church,” he says.
In the case of Michael Baker, Mahony’s enlightenment came 16
years too late.
