Inland Empire was dumping ground for abusive priests, law firm claims as it releases exhaustive list of clergy

A Minnesota-based law firm specializing in sex abuse cases released a 76-page report Thursday listing all clergy accused and/or convicted of sexual abuse in San Bernardino and Riverside County parishes dating back to 1950.

Unlike the report released in October by the Diocese of San Bernardino listing 34 priests, the new list comprises 84 priests who had worked in Inland Empire parishes and predated the formation of the Diocese of San Bernardino in 1978, when San Bernardino and Riverside county parishes were overseen by the Diocese of San Diego.

“We’re doing this today because the information contained in this report about accused sexual offenders is of a vital and burning public need,” attorney J. Michael Reck of the law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates said during a news conference Thursday at the Doubletree Hotel in Ontario.

“We’re doing this because disclosing this information makes children safer and it lets those survivors who are still suffering in silence, thinking they may be alone, know that they are not alone. They did nothing wrong, and this is not their fault.”

Reck said the information included in his law firm’s report “could have, and should have, been shared by church officials long ago.”

Secret archives?

“We’re doing this because the Diocese of San Bernardino did not, and the bishop did not,” Reck said. He said the diocese maintains secret archived files of priests accused of sexual abuse.

In a phone interview Thursday, a spokesman for the Diocese of San Bernardino denied the diocese maintains a secret archive of files of priests accused of sexual abuse.

John Andrews said that when the diocese posted its list of accused and/or convicted priests in October, it was a complete disclosure. He said the diocese also posted on its website the list of accused and/or convicted priests released a few weeks prior by the Diocese of San Diego.

“We made sure to put the two of them together and encourage people to read them both,” Andrews said. “Those lists are still on our website.”

He declined further comment.

Priest shortage led to ‘dangerous dynamic’

The law firm’s report maintains that the Diocese of San Bernardino historically has suffered a shortage of priests, depending on an influx of clerics from religious orders such as the Jesuits and Franciscans. It has created a “dangerous dynamic,” Reck said, allowing the diocese to serve as a dumping ground for problem priests.

In 2018, he said, 78 percent of clergy serving within the Diocese of San Bernardino were not diocesan priests. The shortage has led to an “international movement of child sex offenders” into and out of the diocese, he alleged.

“We’re able to verify that at least seven accused priests left the Diocese of San Bernardino and entered Mexico,” Reck said. Those priests, he said, worked in the “most vulnerable communities” within the diocese, which also includes parishes in Riverside County.

Of the 84 priests included in the law firm’s report, 53 are believe dead, and it is unknown how many of the remaining 31 are alive or dead or still involved in ministry outside the Diocese ofSan Bernardino, said Jennifer Stein, an attorney with Jeff Anderson & Associates.

As far back as 1950, when the Diocese of San Diego oversaw Riverside and San Bernardino County parishes, problem priests were an issue in the Inland Empire, according to an April 26, 1950, letter by Charles F. Buddy, the first bishop of San Diego, in which he singled out parishes in Beaumont and Banning.

“During the 13 years since this Diocese was erected, to my own personal knowledge, the Santa Barbara Province of the Franciscan Fathers has used this Diocese as a dumping ground for their moral, mental and physical problems,” Buddy said in his letter to the Rev. James T. Booth at Pontifical North American College in Rome.

‘One misfit after another’

“It became necessary for me some time ago to demand the withdrawal of one misfit after another,” he wrote. “I asked for the removal of the sick priest the Franciscans had sent to Beaumont and now it becomes necessary to request the removal of his successor. It is the same old story.”

Buddy went on to recommend that Franciscan leaders “consider giving up the two parishes in Beaumont and Banning.”

From the late 1970s until the early 1990s, the Servants of the Paraclete, a Latin Rite Catholic ministry, operated a treatment center in Cherry Valley for sexually abusive priests, Reck said. Church documents included in the law firm’s report refer to the former facility as a “halfway house for priests requiring aftercare and ongoing spiritual, psychotherapeutic, and pastoral supervision.”

Victims speak out

Two alleged survivors of clergy sexual abuse who have filed lawsuits — Tom Emens, 50, of Camarillo, and Manuel Vega, 52, of Oxnard — spoke during Thursday’s news conference.

Both men filed their lawsuits in October — Emens in Los Angeles Superior Court and Vega in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Defendants named in Emens’ lawsuit include the California Catholic Conference and dioceses across the state, including San Bernardino. Vega has sued the Vatican. Both men are fighting to expose the alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church, which they say is worldwide.

Vega, a retired Oxnard police officer, alleges he was raped by Rev. Fidencio Simon Silva-Flores at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Oxnard, where Silva-Flores worked from 1979 to 1984. Silva-Flores also worked at St. Philip Neri Church in Barstow in 1998. Vega said he was merely one of dozens of other boys abused by Silva-Flores

“When we presented out lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, there was 29 of us who came forward, plus another 10 who never came forward for whatever reason,” Vega said. He said other priests at the church were aware of what was occurring.

“This is worldwide,” Vega said. “The level of abuse that has occurred to children throughout the world is devastating.”