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Files show church allowed five priests to continue work despite many allegations
By Denise Lavoie, Associated Press, 09/12/02
An archdiocese spokesman said all five priests were eventually suspended, but could not elaborate and the personnel files did not make clear when all of the priests were disciplined and for what offenses. The files, released by lawyers representing 250 people who say they were abused by priests, indicate one of the five, the Rev. Joseph Welsh, was asked to resign in March. Another, the Rev. George Rosenkranz, was removed from active ministry and placed on sick leave in 1989, two years after allegations against him were first reported. The documents detail several allegations against the Rev. Robert V. Gale, charged last month with raping a boy at a Waltham parish over four years in the 1980s. Gale, suspended last month, has pleaded innocent. Sex abuse allegations are also in the files of the Revs. John Atwater and Richard Coughlin. All the men except Atwater are named in lawsuits by alleged sex abuse victims, but Jeffrey Newman, an attorney representing victims, said the information had not previously been made public. None of the priests could be reached for comment. The Rev. Christopher Coyne, an archdiocese spokesman, said the documents are "just part of the ongoing process of discovery. The files once more indicate the level of the problem that we were dealing with as an archdiocese in terms of abuse of children by clergy and the problems around how we dealt with the allegations." Many of the allegations are contained in correspondence sent to three church supervisors: Bishop John B. McCormack of Manchester, N.H., who served in Boston from 1984-1994; Bishop Robert J. Banks of Green Bay, Wis., who served as an auxiliary bishop in Boston until 1991; and New York Bishop Thomas V. Daily, who was chancellor of the Boston archdiocese in the early 1980s. "The records, when you look at them as a group, are really quite profound in detailing the specific factual basis on which they could have taken them out of parishes and put them where they would have no contact with children, or simply retire them," Newman said. On Thursday, attorneys sued Daily and the archdiocese alleging that the church had received accusations about Gale before 1980, when the abuse of the boy at St. Jude's allegedly began. Gale's file contains allegations dating to 1979, including a letter sent to Daily alleging that Gale had sexually abused two boys, ages 14 and 17, at St. Joseph's Parish in Quincy. Another complaint sent to the late Cardinal Humberto Medeiros in 1981 claims that Gale molested a 13-year-old boy in the boiler room at St. Jude's Parish in Waltham. A letter sent to McCormack in 1992 describes a complaint from a man who said he was sexually abused by Gale from 1971 to 1975, when he was an altar boy at Our Lady of Lourdes in Boston. A 1995 complaint details allegations by a man who said he was sodomized by Gale in February 1979 at the Manchester, N.H., apartment of Gale's sister. The man, who said he was 12 at the time, said Gale first drove him to Camp Fatima, in Gilmanton, N.H., where the priest broke in to a cabin. The boy said Gale was unable to get the heat in the cabin working, so he took him to his sister's apartment. Other accusations detailed in the documents include: -- A student accused Atwater of abuse while he was director of Cardinal Cushing Academy in Scituate in 1971. Atwater denied the allegations. The church sent him to the Institute for Living in Hartford, which concluded that he had no major sexual conflicts. In February 2002, a Yarmouth man described being abused by Atwater some time after he came to the school in 1967. -- In 1987, an unidentified man wrote to Cardinal Bernard Law saying that Rosenkranz molested him for more than a year in Marblehead, where Rosenkranz was a priest. Rosenkranz received a five-day assessment at the Institute for Living. Rosenkranz was removed from active ministry and placed on sick leave in 1989, after he was arrested in a police sting operation in an area believed to be frequented by gay men. -- Welsh was accused of sexual abuse in 1993 by a woman who said her son was raped by Welsh as a boy while at St. Joseph's School in Holbrook, where Welsh was assigned. In May 2001, a woman wrote Cardinal Law to tell him how her son was abused by Welsh at St. Teresa's in Watertown. On March 2, 2002, Welsh -- "as requested" -- resigned as pastor of St. Nicholas parish in Abington. --In 1985, a man who said he was abused by Coughlin in the 1960s met with McCormack, urging him to tell church officials in California about Coughlin, who by then was running a boys' choir in California. The man said he learned seven years later that Coughlin was still in ministry in California. Coughlin is now retired. |
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