Key Indicators for Red Flagging Bad Actors
Irregular Assignment history is the earliest indicator I learned after being ordered to replace Bad Actors. Whether the Bad Actor belonged to a Diocese or a Religious Institute, deviation from the typical path is a red flag. The Roman system promulgates consistency. Pastors are in office for six to twelve years or more. X = number of assignments in any ten year period. If X > or = 3: red flag.
There are several thousand examples, Father Michael Stephen Baker is instructive. Ordained for the Archdiocese of L.A. in 1974. Baker had 16 assignments in 25 years.
Geographic Solution A is a personnel management technique of transferring the bad actor to another part of the Diocese/Country/World where people do not know the bad actor. Monsignor Peter E. Garcia was moved around the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, other states and he requested work in a foreign Diocese. While in New Mexico Garcia was not allowed to return to LA because of criminal and civil legal issues. Father Richard Eckroth O.S.B. after teaching philosophy for decades at Saint John’s Abbey was sent to be a missionary to tiny island parishes in the Bahamas.
Geographic Solution B is another management technique of removing the bad actor from their office and tasking them to a monastery. The cleric is required to follow the horarium of the monastery, meet with a spiritual director/confessor and then the Abbot contacts Bishops or other Religious Institutes to place recycle the bad actor. My former monastery did this both Diocesan and Religious Order clerics which is documented in “Worship and Work” by Fr. Colman J. Barry O.S.B.
Geographic Solution C is the management technique of removing the bad actor and giving them the single option of transferring to a monastery to take on a new persona, name and way of life. Father George Pausch was a priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles who sexually assaulted minors, was sent to the Jemez Springs N.M., never returned to Los Angeles, joined the Servants of the Paraclete and is buried in the Orders cemetery.
Geographic Solution D is the technique of retraining the bad actor for working in the Chancery Office of the Diocese or Procurators Office of a Monastery. A bad actor would be sent away for further graduate training in Canon Law, Accounting or Computer Science for future 9-5 office work buried deep in bowels of an office with no outside parish assignment. Fathers Gerald Fessard in L.A., Joseph Wajda in St. Paul and Robert Becker in Chicago.
Life of Prayer and Penance is a common penalty imposed by the Holy See for those who sexually assaulted minors. After a finding of fact by a canonical court or an administrative office, the Holy See removes that cleric from office and sends him to a specific monastery to live out the rest of their life. Bishop Anthony O’Connell was sent to Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.
Treatment Centers and Halfway Houses are facilities controlled by the Institution and staffed by Institution personnel. Most common were the Servants of the Paraclete, Saint John Vianney Institute and the Saint Luke Institute. Bad Actors were sent to these centers for analysis, self-help programs and recycling back into the workforce. The second monk I replaced is instructive, Fr Francis Hoefgen O.S.B. http://www.bishopaccountability.org/assign/Hoefgen_Francis_F_osb.htm
Laicization is the penalty imposed by the Holy See on bad actors who have violated code section 1395.2, the sexual assault of minors (<age 16) and section 1044.2, a psychic infirmity. Fr. Oliver Francis O’Grady is an instructive example.
Patrick J. Wall 