In an investigation spanning 21 countries across six continents, The Associated Press found 30 cases of Roman Catholic priests accused of abuse who were transferred or moved abroad.
Here are snapshots of some of the cases:
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REV. DENIS VADEBONCOEUR
Vadeboncoeur, a 69-year-old priest, served a 20-month sentence in Quebec in the 1980s after pleading guilty to sexual abuse and sodomy of four teenage boys.
Afterward, he moved to a small parish in Normandy, France — and was convicted in 2005 of raping an adolescent boy. He was sentenced to 12 years in a French prison, where he is now.
The bishop at the time, Jacques Gaillot, said he tried to give the priest a second chance.
"That was my first mistake," Gaillot told The Associated Press. "Retrospectively I realized that I was wrong to take him in, and I was wrong not to say anything."
A 1987 letter to Gaillot from Vadeboncoeur's Canadian superior, Pierre Levesque, clearly spelled out Vadeboncoeur's sex crimes and concerns that he would abuse again. But Levesque also supported Vadeboncoeur's move to France and said "the hard lesson Vadeboncoeur endured had beneficial effects on him."
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REV. FRANCOIS LEFORT
A French priest and humanitarian doctor, Lefort was convicted in 2005 in France of raping and abusing six minors in Senegal in 1994 and 1995. According to his supporters' Web site, he now works in the library in the bishop's office in Puy en Velay.
A witness at his trial said there were similar allegations in Mauritania, where he lived before Senegal.
After the allegations surfaced, Lefort moved back to France and worked in different parishes. Catholic authorities didn't restrict him from working with minors while the investigations were still pending. French observers say such procedure was standard at the time, but has changed in the past two to three years.
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CARDINAL HANS HERMANN GROER
The now-deceased former cardinal was accused in 1995 by former pupils and monks in his care of sexually molesting minors in the 1970s and 1980s at the Goettweig monastery in Austria.
Groer stepped down as Vienna archbishop soon after the first allegations were publicized and relinquished all his religious duties for the Catholic Church in 1998, at the request of Pope John Paul II.
Upon stepping down, Groer was sent to a monastery in eastern Germany, in the Dresden diocese. He did not commit any known abuses while in Germany.
Groer later returned to Austria, where he died in 2003. He never admitted guilt.
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REV. GREGOR MUELLER
The Swiss priest has admitted to abuse with "children and adolescents" in the 1970s in the Cistercian Abbey in Mehrerau, Austria, and a church in Birnau, Germany.
Mueller was dismissed from his post in Mehrerau and Birnau for sexual abuse, and then was hired by the Basel diocese in Switzerland in 1971, although diocese officials knew about his past abuse. They hired him under condition that he was monitored by another priest and given medical treatment.
Basel officials have told the Swiss daily Blick that four alleged cases have been reported against Mueller.
In 1987, Mueller was called back to Birnau. He joined the Chur diocese in 1992 as a priest in the small Swiss town of Schuebelbach. The Chur diocese said it didn't learn about his past until being contacted by a victim on March 15 of this year. The bishop then confronted Mueller, who resigned last month.
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REV. JOSE POVEDA SANCHEZ
Poveda Sanchez, a 50-year-old Spaniard, worked in the Italian diocese of Porto-Santa Rufina and is now in Spain.
The bishop, Gino Reali, said under questioning by an Italian prosecutor Dec. 1, 2008, that the priest came under suspicion for sending sexually explicit telephone messages to several children in the diocese in 2005. The bishop said the priest denied sending the messages but said other people may have used his cell phone.
The bishop said he ordered the priest back to Spain and not to return to Italy. He said he ordered a formal investigation.
Poveda Sanchez was transferred to the Spanish diocese of Getafe, outside Madrid. That diocese says it was not informed in advance of the problems in Italy. Caramella Buona, an Italian nonprofit organization working with abuse victims, said Sanchez was accused of having abused four minors in the parish of Our Lady of Fatima in Aranova, in Rome.
The Getafe diocese said he was assigned to work in his hometown of Belmote de Cuenca in a non-pastoral job, then in 2007 was named parish priest of Valdelaguna and in 2008 of Belmote de Tajo.
The Getafe diocese said it learned of the probe in 2008 from the priest himself, and transferred him to work at a nursing home in Aranjuez.
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REV. BRENDAN SMYTH
Smyth was an Irish visiting priest at Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich, R.I., in 1965-68. Providence diocese spokesman William Halpin said the Americans were told the move was to ease Smyth's difficulties with asthma.
Smyth's stay ended abruptly following allegations of abusing children.
The late Bruno Mulvihill, a priest in Smyth's Norbertine order, has said he spoke of his concerns about Smyth to Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi, the papal nuncio in Ireland, and the then-bishop of Kilmore, Francis McKiernan. In a statement to Irish police in 1995, Mulvihill said: "Archbishop Alibrandi was not interested in listening to my complaints."
After more complaints in 1975, McKiernan barred Smyth from ministry in the diocese of Kilmore. The Rev. Sean Brady, now leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, interviewed two children who complained about Smyth. Brady said this year that he accepted their accounts as true, but did not notify police.
In 1979, Smyth went to North Dakota at St. Alphonsus Church in Langdon.
Smyth was charged with multiple offenses in Northern Ireland in 1991, but fled to the Republic of Ireland, mostly staying at Kilnacrott Abbey. He returned to Northern Ireland in 1993 and pleaded guilty the following year to indecently assaulting five girls and two boys.
In 1997, Smyth was extradited to the Republic of Ireland, where he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing 20 boys and girls between 1958 and 1993. He died of a heart attack one month into his 12-year sentence.
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UNIDENTIFIED PRIEST
This priest is mentioned in a July 2009 report by an Irish commission on priest abuse in the archdiocese of Dublin.
The priest was first sent for treatment by the Servants of the Paraclete in Stroud, England. There was another complaint after he returned to Ireland.
The priest was persuaded to go to New Mexico for treatment in 1982. He briefly returned to Ireland, was accused of making a pass at a 16-year-old boy and went back for treatment in Jemez Springs.
In April 1983 the then-archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Ryan, got Bishop Mark Hurley of Santa Rosa, Calif., to allow the priest to work in Eureka, Calif. After complaints of inappropriate conduct in 1985, Hurley withdrew the priest.
In June 1987 an official from Sacramento telephoned Monsignor Alex Stenson in Dublin about the priest, saying: "Urgent to get him out of the USA to anywhere."
The priest was suspended, and laicization was approved in March 1988. The priest applied to work with a non-church homeless project in Stockton.
"The bishops decided to let him go to the USA. They, in effect, set him loose on the unsuspecting population of Stockton, California. There is no record that they notified the bishop of Stockton of his arrival," the report concludes.
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REV. PATRICK MAGUIRE
Maguire sought to become a priest, he said, to deal with his impulses. "Since priests don't have sex, it wouldn't matter whether he was attracted to boys or girls," according to a report by an Irish commission.
He initially worked in Japan. He was sent to Ireland in 1974 after a nun in Japan complained of his inappropriate conduct with young males. The report quotes a letter from a member of the Missionary Society of St. Columban in Japan to group's head in Ireland:
"Bishop Hirata was most understanding but said that it would be best that Pat slip out of Japan quietly."
In 1974-75 Maguire worked in the diocese of Raphoe in northwest Ireland, where he got altar boys to stay with him overnight. He was then sent for treatment in Stroud, England, where he was diagnosed as a pederast, a man who commits sodomy on boys.
He resumed pastoral work in England in 1976. Following a complaint, he was assigned to office work in Dublin in 1979. That year, a woman complained that she found Maguire in bed with her two sons.
Maguire went to England for treatment in 1982. In 1983, he was appointed to parish duties in the Dublin district of Ballymun, "highly" recommended by a superior of the society. But after complaints, he was sent to England in 1984 for more therapy.
Maguire got a parish appointment in England, where he was accused of sexually abusing a 21-year-old man with a mental illness. The Columbans brought him back to Ireland.
Maguire is now living in a Columban residence in Meath, northwest of Dublin, where he is "monitored very carefully," Bishop Philip Boyce of Raphoe told an Irish newspaper in November 2009.
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FATHER VIDAL (pseudonym)
He had several affairs with women in Britain and sought a post in Ireland.
The report from an Irish commission looking into Dublin archdiocese abuse cases said Vidal's bishop wrote to Archbishop John Charles McQuaid saying: "As you will appreciate, it will not be advisable for him to work in this diocese again."
In 1973, a nun informed the Dublin archdiocese that Vidal was having sexual affairs with a woman and her daughter, aged 12-14. At the time of his laicization in 1979, Vidal acknowledged a physical relationship with the girl from the age of 13. He married her in 1980, but they separated in 1985. He got a divorce in California in 1992; she got a divorce in Ireland in 1997 after divorce was legalized there.
In 1985, Vidal contacted the archdiocese saying he wished to return to the ministry. After Vidal spent time at a monastery, Auxiliary Bishop Dermot O'Mahony arranged for the priest to go to the Sacramento diocese in California. O'Mahony did not disclose the priest's past.
Vidal worked as a priest in Sacramento, retired to Ireland in 2003 and died the following year.
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REV. MOISES ALEXIS C. JAVIER
Javier was accused by two altar boys (one 18 and another 19 at the time) of molesting them in 2001-02 at a Catholic school about three hours west of Manila, in the Philippines.
Javier left in 2002. The former bishop of his diocese told the AP that Javier went to the U.S., where his parents and a sister live. "We allowed him," the former bishop said. "His mother got sick and he went there to take care of her."
Ryan Mau, the parish secretary at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Rowland Heights, Calif., said Javier was the parish's associate pastor for two years, starting sometime in 2003. Javier died on Jan. 23, 2008.
The AP has copies of two letters sent in June 2002 by the lay leaders at the St. Columban parish in Olongapo to then-Bishop Deogracias Iniguez and other diocesan leaders about the alleged abuse.
Frustrated by the lack of action, one of the lay leaders, Olet Enriquez, e-mailed the Vatican in September 2003 to report the alleged sexual harassment. He said he got an unsigned reply telling him to take his case to the papal nuncio in Manila. He said he sent a lengthy follow-up letter to the same Vatican e-mail address in January 2004, restating the case, but never got a reply.
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REV. CRISTOBAL GARCIA
Garcia was expelled from the Dominican order in 1986 after a nun told police that an altar boy had been found in his bed in a Los Angeles rectory. The priest left for his hometown in the Philippines in Cebu province, where he continued to serve and in 1997 was given the title of monsignor.
Monsignor Pedro Quitorio, media director of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, said he had not heard about the Garcia case but that it should be looked into.
Garcia told the Dallas Morning News that he did have sex with the boys, but claimed he was the one who was "seduced and raped," a charge his accusers called absurd. A plaintiff, Paul Corral, said he had obtained a financial settlement.
Copyright 2010 AP Features
