The leaders of the Catholic Church in Colorado will allow a former federal prosecutor to review decades of files related to allegations of sexual abuse of children as part of a landmark agreement with the state’s attorney general to evaluate how the church handles those claims.
The state’s three Catholic dioceses will have no oversight of the review, Attorney General Phil Weiser said Tuesday at a news conference. The dioceses also announced they have established a fund to pay reparations to victims of Colorado priests.
“This is not a criminal investigation,” Weiser said. “This is an independent inquiry with the full cooperation of the Catholic Church.”
The decision adds Colorado to a growing list of states that recently have opted to pursue independent investigations and reviews of child sex abuse by priests as new revelations of abuse continue to be brought to light. Decades of public pressure and internal turmoil have created an environment that allows state authorities to step in, ushering in a new era in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States, experts said.
“I think that it will take years before all the investigations, the grand jury reports, the disclosure of names are out,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University and an expert on the church. “I believe it’s the beginning of a very long night for the Catholic Church.”
A final report by former Colorado U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer is expected to be completed by Oct. 1, and the agreement requires that it be made public. It will include a list of the names of all of the dioceses’ priests with credible claims of abuse against them since 1950. Victims’ names will not be released, but details of the incidents will be made public as well as the priests’ assignments within the dioceses, Weiser said.
Any new criminal claims that surface during Troyer’s review will be directed to law enforcement agencies if appropriate, the attorney general said.
There have been no new allegations of child sex abuse by Colorado priests since 2002 and no current priests are under such investigation, Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila said Tuesday. The church in Colorado is confident of the steps its leaders took previously to handle allegations of abuse.
“This independent file review presents an opportunity for an honest and fair evaluation of the church in Colorado’s historic handling of minors’ sexual abuse by priests,” Aquila said.
“With humility and repentance, we hope the programs announced today will begin a path for victims and their families,” he said.
Reparations
The dioceses’ agreement with the attorney general grants Troyer access to all of the church’s personnel files and any other documents related to abuse allegations. He will deem an allegation substantiated if he “finds that sufficient evidence exists to believe that the alleged conduct more likely than not occurred,” according to the agreement.
Troyer will not have the authority to compel testimony or documents, but Weiser said any instance where the Colorado dioceses refuse to cooperate will be noted in the final report. Troyer will have authority to interview victims or witnesses in abuse cases if needed, but victims can refuse to participate.
Half of Troyer’s expected fee of $300,000 for conducting an eight-month review will be paid for by the dioceses and the other half will be funded by anonymous donors identified by the attorney general, according to the agreement. The donors will have no oversight over the review or get to see an early version of the report. No state funds will be used.
Troyer’s investigation also will include a review of how the dioceses handled allegations and their current policies and practices.
Before publication, a draft of the final report will be provided to the attorney general and the dioceses, which will have a chance to report any perceived inaccuracies but will not have the ability to edit the document.
The three Colorado dioceses — based in Denver, Pueblo and Colorado Springs — also will fund a reparations program to be developed and administered by two nationally known claims administration experts. The money will come from the dioceses’ reserves — not donations to churches or their ministries — and will be awarded by the experts, who will decide who receives compensation and how much should be given, including for cases in which the statute of limitations has passed.
That program, expected to begin in late summer, will be overseen by an independent committee chaired by Hank Brown, the former U.S. senator and onetime president of both the University of Colorado and the University of Northern Colorado.
Between 2005 and 2008, the Archdiocese of Denver paid $8.3 million to settle dozens of lawsuits and claims regarding sexual abuse by three priests that occurred between 1954 and 1981.
Aquila said Tuesday the culture had changed significantly within the church since 2002, and that he hopes the dioceses’ participation in the inquiry will help restore faith after a time of tremendous pain for all Catholics.
“That is my goal is all of this,” he said.
Reaction to Pennsylvania
Former Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman started looking into options regarding the problem in the state when her office received an onslaught of calls from victims after a grand jury in Pennsylvania released a report in August that found credible allegations that more than 300 priests had abused thousands of victims in the state over seven decades.
“The report from Pennsylvania stirred those feelings again,” Coffman said Tuesday.
Some of the calls were about Colorado priests from decades prior, some about priests who were already dead and others about abuse in other states, she said. The Colorado branch of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests organization also reached out to her office as part of its effort to spur all 50 state attorneys general to initiate investigations and reviews.
The attorneys general of at least a dozen other states have launched similar investigations. One such investigation in Illinois found that the Catholic Church there had withheld the names of at least 500 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors.
Coffman started talking with the offices of other attorneys general and other groups about potential options because her office did not have jurisdiction to take the issue to a statewide grand jury for such an inquiry, she said. When the dioceses learned of these conversations, leaders reached out to Coffman and the groups met to work on a plan.
When Weiser took over the office after the election, he took up Coffman’s work.
“Today we acknowledge your burden and your pain,” Coffman said to victims of priests’ abuse.
Acknowledging the abuse publicly and creating a reparations program is an important first step for the churches and the victims of the abuse, said Dr. Richard Krugman, an expert on child abuse and neglect and chair of Colorado-based National Foundation to End Child Abuse and Neglect. Open discussion can help victims know that the abuse was not their fault, he said.
But the church also needs to address what is causing and allowing the abuse in the first place, which will require difficult conversations, he said.
“Why did (the abusers) do that? What were they like when they were 3 years old?” he asked. “And when did that change?”
Despite the archbishop’s assurance that no priests have been credibly accused of child sex abuse since 2002, other cases have caused the relocation or removal of area priests. A priest was removed from the diocese in 2007 after it found credible a former seminarian’s statements that the priest had abused him for years, starting when he was 18. Another priest was relocated from the Denver diocese after the parents of a teenage boy filed a lawsuit stating the priest was grooming their son so he could later abuse the boy.
It’s unclear what the investigation and reparations will mean for those who were not minors when they were assaulted. Weiser said that the state has focused on child victims but said his office would support all victims of abuse.
Stephen Szutenbach, the former seminarian who said he was abused, was cynical about the dioceses’ announcement Tuesday and said it seemed like a publicity ploy.
“Why did (the archdiocese) take this long to be public and transparent?” he said.
He said that the investigator’s review should not be limited to minors and that it should encompass all sexual abuse, including seminarians, nuns and adults who could have been victimized.
“I would challenge the attorney general to not limit the investigation,” he said. “I think the culture (of the church) has led to much more widespread abuse.”
The new American model
State-initiated investigations are becoming the new norm for addressing the issue in the Catholic Church in the United States, said Faggioli, the Villanova professor. A decade ago, very few dioceses would agree to an outside review of their files, but attitudes have shifted as the church lost credibility, he said.
The defrocking of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — accused of molesting a 7-year-old altar boy as well as seminarians — and the Pennsylvania grand jury report helped issue in a new era for the church in the country, he said.
“The whole narrative has changed,” Faggioli said. “The pressure is so high from the media and, in some states, the local politicians that the church only has one option. They have to say, ‘Yes, please come in.’ ”
The announcement in Colorado comes as more than 100 high-ranking church officials plan to convene in Rome later this week to discuss sexual abuse. Reports of sexual abuse by thousands of Catholic priests across the world have rocked the church and its faithful for decades, including reports Tuesday that more than a dozen Argentine priests preyed on children at a school for the deaf and a list released Friday naming more than 100 priests accused of sexually abusing children in Brooklyn.
Along with media attention, a broader and more empathetic understanding of the effect such abuse has on victims has helped change the national conversation surrounding the issue, said Sandra Yocum, professor of faith and culture at the University of Dayton. The inquiries could soon turn to other categories of victims as well as investigations spread into other religious groups and large social organizations, she said.
“We’re in for a lot of these kinds of investigations,” Yocum said. “It’s going to be part of a story of the Catholic Church in the United States for at least the next few years.”
