Church Faces Dilemma Over Sex Allegations : Rights: Should future employers know about cases that have been settled? Are priests not charged with crimes entitled to privacy?

By TRACY WEBER

Oct. 23, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

When James Rogan was a boy, Father Eleuterio Ramos was the parish priest he and his parents knelt before, took communion from, confessed to and prayed with at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Placentia. Rogan became an altar boy at age 10 and worked in the church rectory.

But every time Rogan, now 29, thinks of the parish priest of his childhood, his stomach knots and an anger boils inside. Father Ramos is also the priest Rogan says plied him with alcohol and adult movies and magazines, then molested him while he was drunk or asleep.

Last month, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange quietly settled the lawsuit Rogan brought against it for the alleged abuse, demanding the amount of the settlement be kept confidential.

In May, 1993, the diocese settled--and similarly sealed--another almost identical suit brought against Ramos, a priest in the diocese for 19 years. In a letter contained in the court file, Ramos admitted that he molested the Tustin man who brought the suit and other boys of unspecified ages.

Even though his sexual improprieties were known to church authorities, Ramos continued to work as a parish priest. He moved south to Mexico, where until six months ago he was the vicar at Divine Providence Church in Tijuana, with a special ministry to families and youths. The Diocese of Tijuana said Friday that it does not know of his current whereabouts.

“Of any priest that has been accused of this--why have they not taken his vows away?” Rogan asks angrily today. “What was the purpose of the settlement? Was it hush money?”

The Ramos case, and the flurry of recent settlements and suits involving priests who once worked in the Diocese of Orange, has raised questions about how the church handles the allegations. And, perhaps just as important, how it protects others if an accused priest leaves the diocese for another posting as a priest, or for a job outside the church.

“We’ve been struggling with it--what do we do?” said Father John Hardin, assistant to the head of the West Coast province of the Franciscan Friars, which is separate from the Diocese of Orange. “You cannot not deal with it today. It’s financial and political suicide.”

In the past two months, the Diocese of Orange has settled lawsuits accusing three priests who formerly worked in the diocese of sexually molesting minors. Additional suits against two of those priests are pending, as is another claim against Ramos.

And last month, a former Mater Dei High School student sued Msgr. Michael Harris, the former principal who helped found Santa Margarita High School, accusing the priest of molesting him in his office at Mater Dei.

Officials at the Diocese of Orange--which has 118 diocesan priests and 68 from religious orders--would not comment on their procedures for alerting future employers once they have substantiated claims of sexual abuse against a priest. There are about 500,000 Catholics and 53 parishes in Orange County.

But in dioceses and religious orders across the country the issue has become a moral and legal hot potato, especially as more and more alleged victims of priestly misconduct take their complaints to court.

For years, bishops either discounted allegations of sexual abuse or quietly reassigned the priests to other parishes and dioceses, or moved them to other countries, frequently without alerting anyone to the complaints.

In the case of Ramos, San Pedro attorney Werner R. Meissner believes that the diocese shuttled the priest from parish to parish once allegations were made. In 1979, Ramos entered a chemical dependency program after a veteran teacher reported to diocesan officials the complaints of a mother who said the priest had shown her son dirty movies and behaved inappropriately. Despite the allegations, Ramos went on to serve as a pastor at three parishes in the diocese.

According to diocesan records obtained by Meissner, Ramos was at eight parishes from 1966 until he went on inactive leave and moved to Tijuana in 1985.

“We want it so that it’s published to everyone, everywhere that this priest has been accused,” said Meissner, who represented both men who settled suits with the diocese over Ramos. “He’s been suspended. There’s been admissions and findings and they’re true. This guy has molested children. . . . What if he goes off to somewhere small, some parish where they don’t know and no one tells them?”

In April 1993, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal in Santa Ana ruled that a diocese may be liable if it doesn’t tell others. The court ruled that the mother of an abused boy could sue the Diocese of Orange for failing to warn parishioners about a priest it knew had previously been charged with abuse.

The appeals court reversed an Orange County Superior Court judge who found that “the diocese had no special relationship with, or duty toward, its parishioners,” and was thus immune to damages.

Damning in the appeals court case was a February, 1985, letter written by then Msgr. Michael P. Driscoll to a monsignor in Plymouth, England, regarding the prior allegations. In the letter, Driscoll, who is now an auxiliary bishop, attempted to obtain employment in England for a priest ho had undergone psychiatric treatment for performing a sex act on an 8-year-old boy.

Driscoll said the boy’s mother “had made it impossible” for the priest to continue as a parish priest by demanding he no longer be able to work with children. “No arguments have succeeded in swaying her,” Driscoll wrote. “She has threatened to go to the police . . . (The priest) is in jeopardy of arrest and possible imprisonment if he remains here.”

The Diocese of Orange eventually settled--and, once again, sealed--cases with both the mother and her son.

Though the appellate court decision was not published as a precedent-setting case, which limits its value, attorneys who deal with such matters say it bolsters future suits where it can be proved that the church had previous knowledge of abuse.

“The decision reflects that there are situations where one can have a valid fraud case against the church if they have the information and yet hide their heads,” said Thomas Hahn, the Newport Beach attorney who represented both the mother and her son.

For officials at the Archdiocese of Chicago, the quandary of what to reveal about their clergy came down to a moral decision. These days, if employers call them about priests who have had substantiated allegations of sexual abuse involving minors, they’ve decided to tell all.

“We think we might be liable if we tell them. We think we might be liable if we don’t,” said Carol Fowler, director of personnel services for the archdiocese. “We think we could get sued either way. Since you have to make a choice, we chose to take the risk for the protection of the children.”

The archdiocese, which has 1,050 diocesan priests and 1,000 from religious orders, also tells other dioceses if any allegations have been made against a priest, even if they have not been proved.

Fowler said the archdiocese doesn’t laud itself over its choice to tell. The current policies were decided upon after a spate of allegations became public around 1992.

“It’s great in hindsight, you know?” Fowler said.

For the Franciscan Friars, the issue of what to do and what to say about priests who have been accused--in some cases confessed--of sexual abuse with minors, sits like an unwanted guest on their doorstep.

In November, 1993, after a yearlong inquiry, the Franciscan order announced that 34 boys had been molested by 11 monks over a 23-year period at St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara. At the conclusion of the investigation, the Franciscans were praised for digging out every case of abuse.

But now that it’s over, the order faces the task of how to handle the priests, especially if they have not been criminally charged.

“What responsibility do we have? Say this friar goes out and looks for work at a McDonald’s and they call us,” said Father Hardin, who is in charge of pastoral counseling for the victims in the St. Anthony’s case. “This person has not been accused and (dragged) into court.”

But Hardin said the bottom line remains keeping others safe, despite the potential legal ramifications of telling others of allegations against a priest.

“The friars also have civil rights, and that’s where it gets tricky,” he said. “We have a moral obligation to keep this from happening again. . . . We don’t want to be driven by attorneys and not by our values.”

One former Franciscan, Gary Pacheco, was recently sued in separate suits by two men who alleged he molested them when they were boys. The Franciscans settled the suit with one of the men last week.

Hardin said if someone called him up about Pacheco tomorrow he’d be straight. “I’d tell them I wouldn’t personally hire him.”

But for Mary Staggs, founder of the Southern California chapter of the Survivors’ Network for those Abused by Priests, this is all too little, too late--and she questions whether the dioceses will rat on their fallen brothers.

“It’s almost as if we’re forced to file lawsuits to stop the abuse, to expose it,” said Staggs, who settled a suit with the Diocese of Orange against an Anaheim priest in 1991.

Staggs said victims of abuse have started their own database to keep track of problem priests. The Survivors Connection, operated by a Rhode Island couple, keeps track of allegations and puts alleged victims of the same priest in touch with one another, she said.

“People need to be aware there’s a priest out there that has sexually abused children,” she said.