Snap releases top ten most dangerous pedophile priests walking free

[moobu2]

SNAP = Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

The List



MD – Fr. Fernando Cristancho
In 2001, he sexually exploited and impregnated Dalia Fernandez. She gave birth to triplets and he molested two of them in 2005-06, according to a ruling by Maryland's second highest court (the Court of Special Appeals). The court gave custody of the six-year-old triplets to Fernandez. The priest is originally from and worked in Virginia and Maryland. In 2004, the Baltimore archdiocese apparently revoked his permission to act as a priest.
http://www.mddailyrecord.com/article.cfm?id=8916&type=UTTM
http://www.baltimoreexaminer.com/local/crime/Priest_loses_custody_of_triplets.html


MA, NY, MD: - Fr. A.J. Cote
He is accused in a civil lawsuit of molesting two Massachusetts boys in 2005. While committing those crimes, he was on suspension for also sexually abusing a Maryland boy in 2001-02. That boy settled his civil lawsuit against Cote and his employers (the Dominicans) in 2007 for $1.2 million. Cote is believed to be living in western Massachusetts or Manhattan.


AZ – Msgr. Dale Fushek
(http://www.kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=8482564)
He is awaiting trial early next year on seven "misdemeanor sex charges" stemming from his relationships with five boys in the 1980s and '90s, including indecent exposure, assault and contributing to the "delinquency of a minor," according to news accounts. For years, he traveled the country promoting the 'Life Teen' program he founded. In January 2008, Phoenix's archbishop warned Catholics to avoid the new church Fushek started and still runs.


NY – New York City - Msgr. Wallace Harris
In August of this year, he was forced to step down as pastor because of allegations of sexual abuse. He now faces ten accusers but many of his parishioners have rallied around him and have basically erected a shrine to him outside his former church.

Harris is charismatic and well connected in both political and church circles. (New York's governor is a parishioner and Harris helped plan the Pope's spring 2008 visit to NY.)


NY – Long Island – Msgr. Alan Placa
In a 2003 grand jury report, Placa is accused of molesting kids himself and of helping other predator priests cover up their own child sex crimes. By virtue of his training (he's a civil and a canon lawyer), his connections across the country (he advised bishops on how to 'handle' abuse cases), and his close relationship with Rudy Giuliani (they're boyhood pals and he's on Rudy's payroll), Placa must be considered very dangerous.

IL - Fr. Kenneth J. Martin
As recently as last month, Martin, an admitted and convicted child molester, was working and living part time for a close friend who heads the Chicago archdiocese. In 2003, six months after bishops pledged to 'reform' and be 'open' about child sex cases, a reporter discovered Martin lived a week each month with Cardinal Francis George's Gold Coast mansion. In the ensuing public uproar, George said Martin would no longer work for the archdiocese. But George kept Martin on the payroll anyway.
Martin is especially dangerous because he's clearly very close to and favored by George, the current head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Because his conviction was before 1996, when Delaware's sex offender registry was created, Martin doesn't have to register as a sex offender. In the only interview he gave to a reporter, he denied having pled guilty to criminal abuse charges.


CA - Fr. Eric Swearingen
In 2006, in a civil trial, a jury found him guilty of molesting then 12 year old Juan Rocha in the late 1980s/early 1990s. (They deadlocked, however, on whether or not church supervisors knew earlier that he was a molester. So the judge declared a mistrial.) Afterwards, he was named rector of a diocesan high school. Now, Swearingen is the pastor of Holy Spirit Church in the Fresno Diocese.
He's still pastor at Holy Spirit Church in Fresno CA:


TX, CO, MO - Brother William Mueller
Just last month, 23 civil lawsuits were settled against this cunning predator, who often used ether to knock teenaged boys out, then sodomize or molest them. Mueller often deceived his victims, claiming to be studying psychology and conducting bizarre 'experiments' about fear and trust. A former Marianist, he walks free now in San Antonio, Texas.


TX – Fr. Anthony Gonzales
In March, a civil lawsuit against him was settled. He molested at least 15 girls and admits, under oath, fathering at least eight children. After one of his teenaged victims gave birth, Gonzales' Oblate colleagues lied, telling her Gonzales had died. He abused, impregnated and then abandoned a teenager who was living with her mentally ill mother in an abandoned house in Houston.
Gonzales now lives in Taylor Texas (population 15,000) where his sister is the mayor.


MO – Fr. Thomas M. Reardon
Reardon is the most widely accused predator priest in Missouri, who faces at least 20 accusers in civil lawsuits. He also has a counseling license and until recent years was seeing drug and alcohol-addicted teens as a therapist. Along with his colleague, Fr. Thomas O'Brien, he's accused of holding wild, liquor-laden parties with teens at a remote lake house where perhaps dozens of boys were molested.

edited to add: I removed the phone #'s snap listed in the 'details'. I dont like posting them but they are on the site.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. OMIGAWD!!!!!

[cliffordu]

2. Kewell !!

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Those poor kids :^(

[undergroundpanther]

4. I would love to see each one of these assholes dead

Child rapists do not need to live,they IMO have forfeited the right to life,because being sexually assaulted as a kid slowly kills the person from the inside out.It is murder but it is a very slow kind of murder.First the trust dies,than the idea the world is a safe place dies,than the mental health deteriorates, ,than love dies,than the soul dies and after that,the will to live dies, the body will follow it to death.Suicide rates of victims of pedophiles happens too often to be mere coincidence.


The molestation victims were more than twice as likely to have tried to commit suicide as the other people surveyed.
http://www.darknesstolight.org/KnowAbout/articles_men_victims.asp?showstaticmenu=1

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

5. See, that's why my kids won't be involved in the church youth group.

Turns out I met one of them. I encountered Fr. Cote briefly at a conference back in my might-be-a-priest days. Nothing about him struck me, and I didn't know about the accusations against him at the time. So it goes.

[varkam]

6. Not to be a party pooper, but....

have any of these folks been found guilty in a criminal court? I see a lot of civil suits, but the thing is that the burden of persuasion used in civil courts differs significantly from that in criminal court.

I'm not saying that none of these individuals haven't done what they're accused of - indeed they may have. But this sort of thing, sans any sort of criminal trial, smacks of vigilantism to me.

[cosmik debris]

7. Trial by Journalism is sooo much cheaper

Than trial by jury. And in these hard times we have to cut corners where ever we can.

:sarcasm:

[varkam]

8. I'm surprised no one has accused me of defending child molestation yet.

Wait for it....wait for it....

[ZombieHorde]

10. Please quit demanding that we all run out and rape children.

[ZombieHorde]

9. Many of the suits are settled out of court for large sums of money.

[varkam]

11. So? eom

[ZombieHorde]

12. That means that conviction numbers, what ever they may be, do not tell the whole story.

[varkam]

13. Couple of things:

first, a settlement isn't an admission of guilt. There are many reasons why someone might settle a lawsuit with only one of them being actual guilt. Second, and like I posted, the standard of evidence is different for civil than for criminal cases.

You are right in claiming that just because there is no criminal conviction doesn't mean they they didn't do it - just as it is similarly true that just because you can't see the Russell's teapot in orbit doesn't mean that it isn't there.