Candor. Openness. Trust.

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jun 13, 2003

Fr. Wilson's reference below to "relationship problems" may also extend to LA Times journalist Larry Stammer, whose piece on Cardinal Mahony is the first unfavorable article from his pen.

In April, Mahony wrote to all U.S. cardinals and major archbishops calling for the review board to terminate its contract with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, which the panel had hired to conduct the study. According to a recipient of the letters, Mahony said he was concerned that information provided for the survey would be subject to discovery motions by prosecutors and civil attorneys representing sexual abuse victims. Mahony also said researchers at the college might leak the information, creating a "media frenzy," and then deny having done so.

Memo to His Eminence: Your concern about an impending media frenzy is exactly sixteen months late. As for the possibility of researchers' falsely denying a leak, you might remember this pertinent paragraph from Ron Russell's May 2002 New Times article concerning the parents of a victim of Fr. Ted Llanos:

Paul and Sue Griffith concluded [the archdiocese saw victims as little more than a nuisance] upon sitting down for an hourlong meeting with Mahony in his L.A. chancery office in the spring of 1995. "He struck me as arrogant," says Paul Griffith, referring to Mahony. "It was as if he was doing us a favor to even talk to us." By then, they had been informed by a sympathetic (and well-placed) source within the archdiocese about a meeting the cardinal had attended with several of his underlings to discuss the Llanos affair. At that meeting, they were told, Mahony had acknowledged Llanos' troubled history and declared that he would never turn over the priest's secret personnel file to the plaintiffs, as they were demanding. The Griffiths say they confronted Mahony with his alleged words about the file and that the cardinal acknowledged having made such a statement, but insisted that it was meant in the context of protecting victims' privacy. "He then held up what he purported was Father Ted's file in front of us and said, "See, there's nothing in it,' as if we would be impressed," Sue Griffith recalls. "It really was quite a disappointing performance."