Friday, May 3, 2024

"Archdiocese of New Orleans Suspected of Child Sex Trafficking, Warrant Shows"

That's the headline from the National Catholic Register, which includes in its summary sentences like this:

The affidavit requesting the search warrant, first obtained by the New Orleans-based WWL Radio, alleges that multiple sex abuse victims provided statements that claim they were transported to other parishes and outside of Louisiana, where they were sexually abused.

AP:

Separately, the warrant says, predatory priests developed a system of sharing victims by giving them “gifts” that they were instructed to pass on to clergymen at other schools or churches.

“It was said that the ‘gift’ was a form of signaling to another priest that the person was a target for sexual abuse” 

The Guardian:

The warrant was signed by a New Orleans criminal court magistrate on Monday. It avoided singling out any individual church officials who may be part of this criminal investigation for covering up child rape and other abuse by rank-and-file clergymen within an archdiocese now under the command of [New Orleans’ current archbishop], who has been its archbishop since 2009.

However, in the summer of 2023, the Guardian obtained a 48-page memorandum summarizing secret internal archdiocesan records that were handed over after the church sought federal bankruptcy protection in 2020 in order to shield itself from a steadily growing collection of abuse-related litigation.

That memo established that [the archbishop] repeatedly ignored his own advisers who suggested he publicly reveal the identities of priests and deacons facing substantial, credible accusations of abuse.

A month ago:

The Louisiana Supreme Court said a law allowing child sex abuse victims to sue abusers, in some cases decades after the fact, is unconstitutional.

WDSU:

Most of the childhood sexual abuse survivors who will be affected by this decision lost their chance at justice while they were still children. Under the old draconian laws in place back then, child victims were required to file lawsuits within one year of the sexual abuse. This means that if a child was sexually abused at 5 years old, they would have needed to file a lawsuit by the time they turned six, or they would forever lose their chance for justice. It is now well known that these harsh time limits were unfair and unreasonable. 

Related: