Louisiana Voice

Some readers may be aware that I am currently editing for publication a book about wrongful convictions in Louisiana. Appropriately titled 101 Wrongful Convictions in Louisiana, the book examines 101 cases in which persons were convicted and sentenced to prison terms for crimes they did not commit. In many of the cases, the individuals spent decades behind bars, their lives literally ripped away from them before being exonerated.

Why were they finally exonerated after all that time? In most cases, an organization called the Innocence Project of New Orleans took up their causes and found exculpatory evidence that prosecutors and/or police had withheld from the defense at their trials – evidence beneficial to the accused, but never revealed.

Why would a prosecutor or a law enforcement officer go to such lengths to convict an innocent person while leaving the guilty perpetrator free to inflict more harm on society?

Simply put, some of those in positions of authority are just plain evil.

The same could be said of certain religious leaders, which brings up a second book I am in the process of writing. No title has been selected as yet, but I can say it is a work of historical fiction about child sex trafficking.

Historical fiction, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, is a work that draws on actual events, even citing some of them in the context of telling a fictional story. Figuring prominently in this work are leaders of both Protestant and Catholic churches.

When a minister engages in sexual relations with a child, it’s not only illegal, but it’s sick. But in many of the cases involving Protestant ministers (when the activity is discovered) it is the underage girl, the victim, who must stand before the congregation and apologize for tempting the good reverend.

In the Catholic Church, the victim is most often a pubescent boy and before the national scandal broke wide open, beginning in 1984 in Lafayette, the Catholic hierarchy reacted by requiring the victim, the pre-teen boy, to “confess his sins” as an act of contrition in order to obtain absolution.

Since 1984, the church has been forced by a rash of lawsuits from Boston to Los Angeles and points between, including, of course, New Orleans, to face the ugly truth: Too many degenerate priests have too easy access to too many young boys.

The consequences have been steep: more than $5 billion – and counting – in damages paid out to victims That figure could double given recent lookback laws that have given victims more time to file claims through litigation.

That’s why I kinda raised my eyebrows in skepticism recently when I read story in the right-wing GATEWAY PUNDIT that said the Vatican is “teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.”

The thing that really sparked my disbelief was the reason cited for the so-called financial crisis.

“Donations from churches and individual believers have dwindled as traditionalists express frustration with the Vatican’s drift toward secular progressivism,” the article said, adding that donations have dropped because many Catholics were unhappy with the “progressive reforms” of Pope Francis.

First of all, no one knows within light years what the true financial condition of the Roman Catholic Church is because the Vatican’s ledger is a closely-held secret. The best-guess estimate is around $73 billion in assets, including churches, cathedrals, monasteries, schools, convents, museums, embassies, 177 million acres of land, including farms and forests, throughout the world, gold, works of art and stockholdings which alone are estimated at $1.6 billion in value.

The Vatican is a sovereign country with its own bank and they ain’t talking. For more on this subject, I suggest you read the outstanding Jason Berry book Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church.

The New Orleans Archdiocese alone owns more than $1 billion in property, including real estate, jewelry and other holdings.

But my point here is that while donations may be down, and while the Vatican may well have had an operating deficit of $87 million in 2023, representing a $5.3 million increase from the 2022 deficit, progressive reforms had little to do with the drop in donations – or at least a lesser impact than reported.

Conversely, I would suggest the Catholic Church’s refusal to face the reality of sex abuse of children by its priests and the protection of those priests by bishops and archbishops was a bigger factor in the fiscal difficulties.

And just how were the offending priests protected? Simple. As soon as complaints started about a priest, he would be moved to another parish – where he could continue sexually abusing children – different children. At worst, the priest would be shipped off to some nice rehab center for a while until the furor died down and upon completion of said rehab, he would again be reassigned to a different parish.

Pull from parish, reassign, repeat.

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The sordid story of sexual abuse of children by officials of the Roman Catholic Church continues to grow with seemingly new revelations each day. Many of the stories are rooted in the manner in which leaders in the New Orleans Archdiocese failed to recognize the magnitude of the scandal that now seems to be growing exponentially.

The first lawsuit against the church over sexual abuse of altar boys originated in Lafayette with the alleged assaults of Father Gilbert Gauthe. From there, the lawsuits began popping up all over the country’s landscape like so many wildfires. Just today, The Guardian writer Ramon Vargas revealed that Gauthe and Lawrence Hecker, who just last week entered a guilty plea to sex crimes against juveniles, literally shared one unfortunate victim.

In 1992, Father Gerard Howell and his brother, Father Rodney Howell, were accused of molesting dozens of students at a school for the deaf as early as the 1960s and 1970s.

Let that sink in. They were credibly accused of sexual molestation of deaf children.

Gerard Howell has an interesting HISTORY OF ASSIGNMENTS by the church. Ordained in 1964, he was promptly assigned to St. Lawrence the Martyr in Kenner and Metairie.

He was there two years before being transferred to St. Henry’s in New Orleans before being transferred again in 1967, this time to SS Peter and Paul in New Orleans. To this point, every assignment had been to a parish with a school with both male and female students.

In 1971, he was moved again, this time to St. Ann National Shrine in New Orleans where he remained for three years.

In 1974, he was again on the move, this time to Holy Trinity in New Orleans. He stayed there for three years before taking a year of sick leave in 1977.

He returned to duty in 1978 when he was assigned to St. Francis de Sales Catholic Deaf Center in Baton Rouge where he remained until 1981 when he was sent to the House of Affirmation in Whittinsville, Massachusetts, an indication that all was not good in the priest’s career at that time.

The House of Affirmation was a treatment facility for priests with psychological and psychosexual problems.

Unbelievably, he was returned to duty in 1982 when he was assigned to Our Lady of Prompt Succor in Westwego, a parish with a school with 700 students. In 1983, he was sent to Prince of Peace in Chalmette where he remained until 1986 when he was placed on leave until 1992, when accusations were leveled against him and his brother Rodney charging that they had sexually abused dozens of deaf children in the 1970s.

Rodney never had to answer to the charges since he had died the year before the accusations surfaced.

When U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill ordered in 2020 that retirement benefits for priests accused of child abuse be halted, it was  ARCHBISHOP GREGORY AYMOND who helped him get around the court order so that his benefit payments might continue.

It would be bad enough if Gauthe, Hecker and the Howell brothers were the only cases involving sexual abuse of children by Catholic officials. Sadly, that is not the case.

Joseph Sullivan was named Baton Rouge’s bishop in 1974 and had a reputation of taking a hard line, to the point of excommunication of any Catholic who consented to, participated in or offered advice on abortion. He was, however, sued by three individuals who claim that Sullivan abused them. One of the lawsuits was settled for $225,000 in 2009. Three years prior to that, the diocese settled another lawsuit related to Sullivan. Terms of that settlement were sealed but the name of Bishop Sullivan High School was soon changed to St. Michael the Archangel.

Christopher Springer worked in no fewer than six Baton Rouge-area church parishes and while court filings have remained under seal, it is known that at least 30 people filed lawsuits against him for the alleged rapes of altar boys in the Baton Rouge area from 1968 to 1980.

Springer was probably the most prolific abuser in the Diocese of Baton Rouge with a victim count well above 30, according to an attorney who has filed multiple abuse lawsuits against him. Like Gerard Howell, Springer knew sign language, often worked in deaf communities and would even sign at Mass. Altar boys alleged that he would bring them to a camp and abuse them at a trailer in Clinton. In a 2009 sworn statement, Springer wrote that he had met with then-Baton Rouge Bishop Stanley Ott in 1984, and Ott had recommended he go to a facility for troubled priests in Florida.

THERE WERE OTHERS, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, for Catholic leaders like Archbishop Aymond to try and claim the high ground by professing their ignorance of the events that were taking place under their collective noses.

As is always the case, the crime is bad but the attempted coverup is worse.

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The New Orleans Archdiocese dodged a major bullet last week when retired priest Lawrence Hecker unexpectedly entered a guilty plea to charges of child rape and kidnapping just as the case against him was set to go to trial.

The guilty plea, which carries a mandatory life sentence for the 93-year-old former priest, saves the Catholic Church the embarrassment of a lengthy – and well-publicized – criminal trial that was almost certain to expose a long-standing practice by the archdiocese of protecting predatory priests – and the church – from prosecution for sexually assaulting minor children.

A jury would have heard, for instance, and the public would have learned, that when the then-16-year-old victim reported the rape at the hands of Hecker to his principal, it was not Hecker, but the boy who received the brunt of the church’s punishment.

It was in 1975 and Hecker had hired the teen to help set up masses at the St. Theresa the Little Flower church in New Orleans. One day, when the boy was working out in a gym, Hecker purported to teach him some wrestling moves. The priest subsequently stood behind the boy and put him in a chokehold.

The victim said he felt Hecker rape him before he lost consciousness. Upon awakening, he noticed that the back of his shorts were wet. He later told his mother about the rape. He also told his school principal, Paul Calamari, and that’s when his troubles were taken to another level.

Instead of punishing Hecker, Calamari admonished the boy and told his mother that the teen needed to seek therapy because of his “anger issues and fantasy stories” or face expulsion. He chose therapy which he thinks was paid for by the church. But he also learned that he was not alone.

Another boy told of taking a walk with Hecker in a wooded area outside New Orleans. He said the priest put him in a wrestling hold and began trying to rape him. Only when another child suddenly approached did Hecker abandon his efforts and stroll away as if nothing had happened.

Ironically, years later when that same boy married, it was Hecker who performed the ceremony because Hecker was close to the bride’s family.

Nearly a quarter-century later, in 1999, Hecker admitted in writing to church leaders that he had molested or sexually harassed several other boys he had met through his ministry and as a volunteer with the Boy Scouts. The archdiocese’s response? He was allowed to return to work until he retired several years later – with full benefits.

The courts attempted to do their part in protecting the church by sealing all documents but the ever-resourceful GUARDIAN, a United Kingdom publication, and the publication’s New Orleans writer, Ramon Vargas, in June 2023 managed to obtain a copy of that 1999 admission by Hecker and all hell broke loose.

So now, the public won’t hear the story of what four New Orleans archbishops knew about child sex abuse or how long had they known it and attempted to cover up the scandal. Some of those answers were contained in leaked testimony from a 2020 DEPOSITION given by Hecker.

The indisputable truth that has emerged in all of this is that the New Orleans Archdiocese would rather continue to pay legal and professional fees, now totaling more than $41 million and counting, in its attempts to PROTECT more than a billion dollars in property, buildings and jewels than to see that some measure of justice is accorded some 550 claimed victims of brutality at the hands of God’s servants.

Below are some of the archdiocese’s property. Scroll down to page 182 for the itemized listings.

So, now with the Hecker criminal matter disposed of, the lawyers can direct their full attention to crunching the numbers to see who pays what to whom.

It’s literally taken years to get to this point when the church could have opened itself to transparency long ago and expedited the cleansing process.

But then again, it may not be that easy. The New Orleans Archdiocese may not be stalling the process to protect the New Orleans Archdiocese.

After all, the one-time archbishop of Buenos Aires (1992-2013), JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO, who also once served as president of the Argentine Bishops’ Conference, once boasted that he never encountered any abusive priests when in fact, more than 100 Buenos Aires archdiocesan priests sexually abused children from 1950 to 2013.

The former Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio is now known to the world as Pope Francis.

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After delay after interminable delay and court decisions designed only to protect the New Orleans Roman Catholic Diocese instead of the victims of abuse at the hands of representatives of the diocese, if finally appears as if things are about to get serious.

Last Friday (Dec. 6), two insurance companies have submitted requests for documents to the New Orleans Archdiocese and to the Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the federal bankruptcy case that is part of the sex-abuse case against the diocese on behalf of more than 500 plaintiffs who claim they were sexually abused by Catholic clergy in the archdiocese.

U.S. Fire Insurance Company and International Insurance Company filed their requests in which they asked for:

• All Documents that the debtor (archdiocese) and committee have exchanged concerning the sexual abuse survivor claims that are the subject of a plan of reorganization in this bankruptcy case, including the claims model and/or matrices prepared by archdiocese’s counsel, Blank Rome, and given to the committee;
• The claims valuation model employed by the committee to generate the demands to insurers propounded in the committee plan of reorganization;
• All proofs of claim that assert Indirect abuse survivor claims against the debtor;
• The contracts and/or other agreements entered into between the debtor and the entities filing proofs of claim asserting Indirect abuse claims against the archdiocese that provide or are alleged to provide rights of indemnification, contribution or defense for sexual abuse survivor claims;
• The contracts and/or other agreements entered into between the debtor and the Catholic religious orders that operated within the geographic domain of the archdiocese;
• The document retention and destruction policy of the diocese in place over the time period for which coverage is sought from U.S. Fire and International as well as two other insurers, Sparta and Travelers;
• All insurance, certificates of insurance, subscription agreements and other agreements between the Archdiocese of New Orleans Indemnity Company and/or National Case 20-10846 Doc 3568 filed 12/06/24 entered 12/06/24 23:21:09 main document Page 5 of 20 2 Catholic Rusk Retention Group, on the one hand, and the archdiocese and/or any of its apostolates, on the other hand.
• All Documents concerning the sexual abuse survivor claims asserted against the archdiocese and/or any of its apostolates, including requests for coverage for such claims, and any responses.

While the requests might seem routine steps in civil litigation, there could be an undercurrent of resistance building among the archdiocese’s insurers. For one, the committee is proposing that the insurers cough up $777 million as its share of any billion-dollar settlement.

That promises to be a hard sell – for several reasons. First, do any of the policies cover intentional acts? Most cover unintended incidents but in many cases, deliberate acts or acts done in the commission of a crime, coverage is denied as are “known prior acts.”

And “known prior acts” brings up another consideration. How many more claims are still out there? The insurance companies are not likely to relish shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars only to turn around and get hit with more claims next week, next month or next year. The so-called “lookback window” has been pushed up to June 14, 2027, which opens the door for more claims until that date.

Moreover, the insurers may take a dim view to the propensity of the archdiocese to shield offending priests from prosecution or from being sued by transferring them to other locations where they continued to have contact with children as opposed to ridding the church of pedophiles.

In case after case, the Catholic Church in general and the New Orleans Archdiocese in particular have made it a practice to SHUFFLE OFFENDING PRIESTS around like so many dominos.

Another case illustrates not only how the church protects its own, but also how the courts can be counted on to punish the messenger when a predator is discovered to be in a Catholic school and outed.

New Orleans attorney Richard Trahant indicated to reporter Ramon Antonio Vargas that he might wish to keep an eye on Father Paul Hart and he alerted his cousin

That was it. Trahant gave a heads-up to his cousin, who was principal of Brother Martin High School, that a known predator, Paul Hart, was assigned to the school as its chaplain. He also indicated to Vargas, who was then working for the New Orleans Advocate but since has moved over to The Guardian, that he should keep Hart on his radar.

“I have never provided, disclosed or disseminated any sealed or confidential documents produced by the debtor (archdiocese) or any infomration included in those documents to any person other than members of the committee, their counsel or the committee’s bankruptcy professionals,” he said in a prepared statement.

That was the extent of his comment because the entire record was under seal by court order.

After a complaint by attorneys for the archdiocese, Judge Meredith Grabill ruled that Trahant had violated the confidentiality rules despite Trahant’s insistence that additional information about Hart that Vargas subsequently published had come from other sources.

Grabill, in a classic gesture of punishing the messenger, removed Trahant along with two other attorneys and a number of clients from the clergy abuse claimants committee. Then she hit Trahant with a $400,000 fine, claiming that the amount was derived from the cost of the leak investigation.

Somehow, Grabill managed to justify imposing the cost of that “investigation” on Trahant while looking the other way as the archdiocese did and continues to do everything in its power to drag out the proceedings as the legal bill continue to pile up, some at rates of $800 per hour.

It shouldn’t be that difficult. After all, Blank Rome, the “special insurance counsel” to the archdiocese, has already performed legal work on 13 separate Catholic church bankruptcies even as they have managed to bill the New Orleans Archdiocese more than a million dollars. One would have to wonder how much of the work for New Orleans might be a tad redundant to some of those other 13 cases. In all, the archdiocese has spent some $41 million already on legal and professional fees to defend its pedophile priests.

All of which begs the question of just whom is the court trying to protect – the 550 victims of predatory priests or the officials (monsignors, bishops and archbishops) that kept moving them around from parish to parish so as not to bring any embarrassment to the church?

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This is in no way to be interpreted as an endorsement of violence but if the incoming Trump administration does attempt to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits, yesterday’s killing of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson could well be a precursor of things to come for this country.

Yes, it’s calloused to make such an observation, especially when Thompson’s killer is still at large and we don’t know for certain the motive behind his assassination though the message “delay, deny, defend” found on the shell casings at the scene would appear to refer to the insurance industry’s method of handling claims: delay addressing claims, then deny them and if necessary, defend the denials in court. It’s a proven tactic whereby the insurance industry depends on claimants eventually just giving up out of frustration. It’s always a win for the insurance companies.

HUFFPOST had a slightly different version of the message on the shell casings: “deny, defend, depose.”

You think those folks in South Korea got upset when martial law was declared there this week? You haven’t seen anything until you rip away or reduce benefits that our seniors have paid for all their working lives. We’re gonna have hordes of blue-hairs who are going to say in unison, “What the hell, we got nothing to lose now” and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Why am I attempting to draw a line from the murder of an individual in Manhattan to the possible imposition of benefit cuts to America’s poor and elderly – and perhaps tens of thousands of Louisiana policyholders?

Because United Health Care has been systematically doing the same thing with its policyholders with no signs of the abating of that practice any time soon.

One local physician told LouisianaVoice today that his group no longer accepts United Healthcare because of problems getting the company to (a) approve needed procedures for patients and (b) delays in payments for those it does approve.

In fact, UHC is facing a potential class-action lawsuit over allegations that it used an algorithm to deny claims for post-acute care services in Medicare Advantage, resulting in a “90 percent error rate.”

A 90 percent error rate is pretty drastic in any field of endeavor. A baseball player who fails 90 percent of the time at-bat hits only .100. A .100 batting average won’t even get you a ticket to watch a professional baseball game, much less participate in one. A quarterback who completes only one of nine passes won’t even be issued a pair of cleats, let alone be allowed to play.

And here’s the kicker for 63,000 Louisianians (myself included) who are members of Peoples Health. It was announced in June that UHC had PURCHASED Peoples Health, headquartered in Metairie. The acquisition will make the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UHC the largest health insurer in the U.S.

If UHC follows the trend of corporate takeovers, it will swallow the smaller company, gut it of its assets and pass the hit on to the latter’s customers. Such is the nature, sadly, of corporate TAKEOVERS.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice has SUED to block UHC’s acquisition of another company, Amedisys, a home health and hospice provider.

It was almost two years ago that PROPUBLICA, an online news service, exposed the methods employed by UHC in denying claims. The narrative was eerily reminiscent of the plot of the John Grisham book and movie THE RAINMAKER.

Thompson, meanwhile, along with two other UHC executives, was accused of insider trading in May of this year in a class-action LAWSUIT filed by the firefighters’ pension fund for the City of Hollywood, Florida. The lawsuit accuses the three of dumping more than $120 million of stock while the company was the subject of a federal antitrust investigation.

Between the time DOJ told UHC to turn over their financial records and when that news became public, Thompson cashed out more than $15 million of his Healthcare stock.  Then he sold all his stock in pension funds like those of the Hollywood Florida Firefighters union, which the lawsuit claims cost the firefighters’ pension fund $25 billion virtually overnight.

So, for those of you who are Peoples Health policyholders, be forewarned. Angela Hill is very probably a nice person. The former New Orleans TV news anchor certainly seems to be a great spokesperson for Peoples Health. As of this writing, it’s a great company and I, as one policyholder, have absolutely no complaints or misgivings. But with the takeover by a troubled company, you should be ever-vigilant to any changes in benefit coverages offered as UHC more and more becomes the face of the company that it has purchased.

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