Orange Diocese Settles Lawsuit Claiming Priest Molested Child : Courts: Terms of agreement sealed at church's request. Ex-altar boy's story was backed up by letter from clergyman, who said he victimized others.

By MARK I. PINSKY

May 8, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA — The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange has settled a lawsuit brought by a man who charged that a local priest molested him for seven years, beginning when he was a 10-year-old altar boy, the victim’s attorney said this week.

The terms of the settlement were sealed by a judge at the request of the diocese, and church officials declined comment Friday.

The suit, filed in 1991, charged that beginning in 1974, Father Eleuterio Ramos--then a priest at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Santa Ana--plied the altar boy with alcohol, R-rated movies and adult magazines and then committed sex acts on him while he was drunk or asleep.

In court papers, attorneys for the diocese have consistently denied that the priest molested the boy or any others.

But in an extraordinary undated letter to the boy that was submitted with court documents, Ramos admitted molesting him and other boys of unspecified ages. And in depositions, Ramos admitted having sex with the boy and taking nude photographs of him--after the boy reached the age of 18.

“We’re satisfied with the result,” said Werner R. Meissner, attorney for the victim, who had asked for $350,000 in damages. “But we shouldn’t have had to go through this litigation to get it.”

The former altar boy, who is now 27 and a resident of Tustin, told The Times this week that he repressed the memories of the incidents until 1990, when they came out during alcohol-abuse counseling. Ramos cannot be charged criminally because the statute of limitations long ago expired, but a recent California law extends the statute of limitations for civil suits from the time a repressed memory surfaces.

Ramos is the sixth Orange County cleric charged or sued over the past five years for allegedly committing sexual improprieties with minors. The Tustin man’s lawsuit was settled in October, 1992, four months before Father Richard T. Coughlin, a prominent Orange County priest who founded an internationally known boys chorus, was suspended from his priestly duties amid allegations that he sexually molested five youths 10 to 30 years ago.

This week, the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled in an Orange County civil case involving another priest charged with sexual misconduct that diocese officials are obligated to warn parishioners if they have reason to believe that sexual abuse has occurred.

In the lawsuit and accompanying depositions, the former altar boy and others also charged that diocesan officials were warned by at least three other people--a parent, a Catholic school principal and another priest--that Ramos was behaving inappropriately with a number of boys, but were ignored.

According to court documents, the molestations began in the Immaculate Heart of Mary rectory in 1974, when the boy stayed there to assist with a wedding ceremony the following morning. Later, the suit charged, Ramos took him to area motels, as well as on overnight camping trips and visits to Las Vegas and Tijuana.

Included in the court record are suggestive and romantically-worded notes and greeting cards. In one letter in court documents, Ramos admits molesting the Tustin youth and other altar boys.

“Why the molestation?” Ramos wrote. “As best I can presently understand, it is a complication of mental, emotional and physical problems and illnesses all complicated by alcoholism.

“Were you the only one violeated (sic)?” Ramos continued. “No.”

Ramos also claimed in the letter that he was “a victim of physical, sexual, mental and emotional abuse as a child and adolescent” and offered to help the boy undo psychological damage the priest had caused.

In a deposition, Ramos also said he took the boy to motels, shot the photographs and wrote the cards included in the court record. The priest said that as a result of diabetes and alcoholism he was impotent, and that he considered himself to be a bisexual.

But Ramos contended in the deposition that the photos were taken after the boy reached the age of 18. He refused to discuss any sexual activity or photography that might have occurred before the boy or other altar boys reached adulthood.

In deposition questions, the boy’s attorney, Meissner, accused Ramos of molesting at least four other altar boys during the same 10-year period.

After Ramos’ refusal to provide such information, the boy’s attorneys secured assurances of criminal immunity for the priest from the Orange County district attorney and the California attorney general’s office, according to court records.

Lyda R. Brown, a teacher at Immaculate Heart of Mary School for the past 28 years, said in a deposition that she went to the school’s principal with her concerns about Ramos, and that she was referred to Msgr. Michael P. Driscoll, then secretary to Bishop William R. Johnson and now himself an auxiliary bishop.

In an interview this week, Brown confirmed that she spoke with Driscoll on the telephone in late 1979 about her suspicions that Ramos was behaving inappropriately with boys in the parish. When Driscoll seemed unresponsive to her warnings, she said, she urged a concerned parent of another altar boy to telephone him as well. When the woman reported a similar reply from Driscoll, Brown said, she telephoned Driscoll a second time.

“Either you do something” about Ramos, Brown recalled telling Driscoll, “or I’m going to the police.”

Driscoll was noncommittal after the second phone conversation, Brown said, but several days later Ramos left the diocese to enter a chemical dependency program in Massachusetts.

Driscoll, 53, did not return a call for comment this week. However, in his deposition, which is contained in court records, Bishop Driscoll said, “I didn’t receive any complaints specifically to me” regarding Ramos, from anyone.

After Driscoll’s deposition, church officials supplied the boy’s attorneys with a note, with the words “From the desk of Father Driscoll” at the top, in Driscoll’s handwriting, indicating notes from a telephone conversation with the parent regarding Ramos’ behavior with boys: “Offered boys drinks (alcoholic).” The note was made available as part of the legal discovery process.

Driscoll said in his deposition that the only information he received regarding Ramos came from then-presiding Bishop Johnson, who has since died.

When Ramos returned from the Massachusetts program in 1980, he was assigned to parishes in Brea, La Habra and Anaheim, the suit charged, before taking “inactive leave” in 1985. Officials at the three parishes did not return calls for comment Friday. Ramos’ last known assignment was with a church in Tijuana and he is listed as being on “inactive leave” in the 1993 diocese directory.

During a grueling four-day deposition, the former altar boy said that as a youth, he did not understand the molestation was wrong. “I didn’t understand sexuality. I didn’t understand--I guess in that regard, I was . . . typical.”

In his interview with The Times, the man--who is now a graduate student in psychology--said that at the time of the first incident with Ramos, he had no sexual experience and felt the molestation was his fault. He said he was raised in a devout immigrant family and educated in Catholic schools.

During the former altar boy’s deposition questioning, attorneys for the diocese showed him the photos Ramos had taken, an experience that caused him to break down in tears, he recalled in the interview.

“I mean, I see those photos--every night I go to bed I see those photos,” he told a diocese lawyer when they were shown. “This whole deposition is a nightmare.”

The former altar boy said he once discovered another cache of nude photographs--which separately show himself and another boy--in Ramos’ bedroom. He said he burned the photos.

He said he was “too afraid, too ashamed, too embarrassed to do anything about what happened,” or to inform members of his family.

During the time the molestations occurred, the man said in the depositions, he began to drink on his own. Eventually, he was twice arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. After the second arrest, he entered a court-ordered alcoholism program and during his therapy, in the spring of 1990, memories of the molestation first surfaced.

When they did, he said, his counselor urged him to confront Ramos, a process that culminated in his filing the civil suit.