10,000 pages of previously sealed Catholic church sex abuse documents released

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Monday, Oct 25, 2010 13:10 ET
Catholic church sex abuse documents made public
10,000 pages of litigation-related paperwork reveal the Diocese of San Diego's disturbing history
By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press

Nearly 10,000 pages of previously sealed Catholic church documents have been made public and showed that the Diocese of San Diego long knew about abusive priests, some of whom were shuffled from parish to parish despite credible complaints against them.

After a three-year legal battle over the diocese's internal records, a retired San Diego Superior Court judge ruled late Friday that they could be made public. Attorneys for 144 people claiming sex abuse made the papers public Sunday.

The records are from the personnel files of 48 priests who were either credibly accused or convicted of sexual abuse or were named in a civil lawsuit. They include a decades-old case in which a priest under police investigation was allowed to leave the U.S. after the diocese intervened.

The plaintiffs settled with the diocese in 2007 for nearly $200 million, but the agreement stipulated that an independent judge would review the priests' sealed personnel records and determine what could be made public.

http://www.salon.com/life/sexual_abuse/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/10/25/us_california_church_abuse_1