SNAP fact sheet – June 2008

Recently, and especially over the past year, more and more suspended pedophile priests have begun to commit more subsequent crimes. This proves what history, psychology and common sense have long indicated (and we in SNAP have long said): merely removing a child molesting cleric from ‘active duty’ doesn’t ‘cure’ him. These men remain dangerous.

Cases like these and dozens more, show that it’s irresponsible for church officials to do the bare minimum: suspend predatory priests but refuse to house and/or supervise them.

Just last month:

• A New York priest (Thomas Bender) was sentenced to 10 years in jail for enticing a minor for sex. He was arrested in March 2006, when he arrived at a Long Island pizzeria with condoms, gay porn and beer intending to meet a boy and take him to a motel for sex, prosecutors said. In 1998, he was given seven years probation for molesting a Pennsylvania teenager.
  http://www.wnbc.com/news/16273634/detail.html
  
• A New Jersey priest (James Hanley) pleaded guilty to a bail- jumping charge. Last year, he pled guilty to a reduced charge of unlawful possession of a weapon. (He used an aluminum bat to intimidate three hotel employees, one of whom had rebuffed his sexual advances.) Years before, he was sued by more than a dozen boys who he molested in the Paterson Diocese.
  http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-10/121030782269890.xml&coll=1
  

Two months ago:

• A Dominican priest (Aaron J. Cote) was sued for molesting two Massachusetts preschool aged boys in 2003. The crimes took place shortly after he was suspended for molesting a Washington DC teenager in 2002. (Despite a pending criminal investigation into child molestation allegations against Cote in 2002, church officials quietly transferred Cote to a Providence Rhode Island.)
  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17728112
  
• A former Philadelphia priest (Joseph Macanga) who was working as a teacher in Lumberton, N.J. was arrested on child porn charges. The FBI seized his computer last fall after an agent found him in an Internet chat room used by pedophiles. He had more than 300 images of child pornography were on his computer. Evidence showed that he had accessed nearly 30 chat rooms with names like "baby&toddlerlove."
  (http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-04252008-1524721.html)
  
• A former Louisiana priest (Gilbert Gauthe) was arrested in Texas for refusing to register as a sex offender so that his neighbors were unaware of his criminal conviction. He was the very first serial pedophile priest to ever generate national headlines back in the early 1980s. http://www.hcnonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19520104&BRD=1574&PAG=461&dept_id=542100&rfi=6
  

Last year:

• A Delaware priest (Francis G. DeLuca) who’d secretly been barred from ministry in 1993 for child molestation pled guilty to sexually abusing a Syracuse boy from 2002 to 2005. He was later sentenced to 60 days in prison and six years probation. Several new lawsuits have been involving allegations against him have been filed in 2008.
  http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=22120
  http://www.bishopaccountability.org/news2007/07_08/2007_07_14_Gadoua_PriestFaces.htm
  

Other recent similar cases:

• In 2005, a Wisconsin priest (David Malsch) who was previously convicted of a sex crime involving a child, pled guilty to receiving child porn in the mail while living at a church facility in Missouri. Nearly 30 images of child porn were discovered in his room by federal investigators in 2003.In 1993 he had been convicted of child enticement in Wisconsin. (http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=32466)
  
• In 2005, an Iowa priest (James Janssen) was caught attending a training session for adoptive foster parents, holding himself out as an authority on troubled teenagers. The year before the Davenport Diocese paid a combined $9 million to his 38 victims. (In January 2008, he was sentenced to six months in jail for hiding assets and faces perjury charges stemming from charges that he fraudulently transferred his wealth to family after being sued for child molestation.)
  http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2007/11_12/2007_11_07_McGlynn_ExPriest.htm
  http://www.qctimes.com/articles/2008/05/20/news/local/doc4832412ba4eac387157732.txt
  
• In 2004, a Wisconsin priest (Raymond H. Bornbach) was suspended for credible allegations that he'd molested a nine-year-old girl in 1971. Six months later he was caught molesting an elderly woman at a nursing home.
  http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news3/2006_01_23_MarshfieldNews_TheRev_Raymond_Bornbach_4.htm
  http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2004_07_12/2004_09_07_AP_PrayFor.htm
  http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/ethics/ethcont111.htm
  
• In 2003, St. Louis priest (Joseph R. Ross) was arrested in Arkansas and cited for ‘loitering for deviant sex.’ Years before, he had at least two prior sex offense arrests and another accusation of sexual misconduct, according to police reports. In 1988 he pleaded guilty of sexually molesting an 11-year-old boy during confession.
  http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news3/2002_11_08_Bryant_WebsterGroves_Joseph_D_Ross_4.htm
  
• In 2002, a Worchester priest (Joseph A. Coonan) was removed from active ministry for molesting Oxford children years earlier. Twice since then he has been arrested for allegedly beating up his elderly mother and sister, though no charges were filed.
  http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2006/09_10/2006_09_23_Dignam_RevCoonan.htm
  

SNAP - Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
PO Box 6416 Chicago IL 60680
David Clohessy 314 566 9790

Barbara Blaine 312 399 4747

Barbara Dorris 314 862 7688