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}}}>Begin http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl- procco24mar24.story?coll=sfla%2Dnews%2Dsfla Case file shows how church dealt with troublesome priests By Peter Franceschina Staff Writer March 24, 2002 Clerics with the Archdiocese of Miami first documented allegations of sexual abuse against Father Rocco D'Angelo in August 1966. But he kept working as a priest for the next three decades. A mother brought one of her sons to see a church monsignor and told him about a disturbing incident in a Boynton Beach motel room where D'Angelo, then 43 and an assistant pastor, kissed several boys he had invited to spend the night. "Later in the parish he made some advances on one of her sons," John Fitzpatrick, then the chancellor of the diocese, wrote to Bishop Coleman Carroll. "The boy corroborated the story." The monsignor had said the woman knew of other, similar stories. Fitzpatrick ended the three-paragraph memo with a question: "Your directives please?" >From the documents the diocese turned over to Palm Beach County prosecutors, there is no record whether anything was done. New allegations would surface against D'Angelo the next year, when he was sent to St. Bernadette in Hollywood -- and still more in years to follow. The dozens of church documents relating to D'Angelo offer a rare look into how the Catholic Church handled abusive priests over most of the last 40 years -- sending them to psychiatrists for "rehabilitation" and moving them to other parishes, while tormented parents struggled to do what church authorities asked: keep quiet. The documents also suggest why so many victims of sexual abuse are surfacing now to confront the church around the country -- they're outraged at the church's shuffling of suspected molesters from parish to parish. Some of D'Angelo's victims filed suit years after the alleged abuse, only after discovering he was still active in the church ministry. A nationwide crisis in the Catholic Church erupted this year over revelations that church officials in Boston transferred the Rev. John J. Geoghan from post to post, despite their knowledge of his pedophilia. Its reverberations, spreading to Florida, caused Anthony J. O'Connell to admit to abusing a young seminarian years ago and to resign as bishop of the Diocese of Palm Beach. Bishop Robert N. Lynch, head of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, who was in charge of the Palm Beach diocese for six months in 1998, has denied allegations of sexual misconduct brought by a former aide. A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami said that, under current guidelines, church officials would remove a priest who abuses children. D'Angelo's case would be handled much differently today, says spokewoman Mary Ross Agosta. "It would be dealt with swiftly and effectively," she says. The closely held records in D'Angelo's case became public after prosecutors subpoenaed them in a 1995 investigation. The authorities ultimately decided D'Angelo couldn't be charged with a crime 30 years after the fact. The investigative file contains D'Angelo's personnel records and church letters from dioceses in Miami, which used to oversee the Palm Beach County area, and St. Petersburg. The paper trail shows church officials were concerned about appeasing parents, hoping they would stay quiet. The records show that top church decision-makers went to lengths to keep D'Angelo in the priesthood, shipping him off from South Florida to St. Petersburg. For years he was in a sort of purgatory, a priest dumped on another diocese he couldn't call his home. All the while he was a liability, one that blew up in the mid-1990s in a series of lawsuits on both of Florida's coasts. D'Angelo retired as a Tampa parish priest only after one long-ago victim decided he finally wanted something done. "I want him to pay for what he did to me. I want him to be upset and worried and nervous and scared like I was," said the 37-year-old man, as quoted by a church worker in a March 1993 memo. "I want him to hurt and really feel the results of his actions." Attorneys around the country who have filed lawsuits against the church for past abuses say the way the church handled D'Angelo is typical of how the institution has reacted to other accusations of priestly misconduct. D'Angelo couldn't be located for comment. His last known address was in Tampa. "There are certain similarities -- the secrecy, the silence, the coverups," says David Slader, an attorney in Portland, Ore., who has won more than $10 million in abuse cases against priests. "I think it is a deeply held practice in the Catholic Church to keep the clergy secret. What happens in the clergy is what is happening in a private club, and you don't let the riff-raff know about it. If you let them know about your business, you lose your power." Sheldon Stevens, a Merritt Island attorney who handled several suits against D'Angelo and has represented about 50 people who say priests abused them, says the church had a set response for dealing with abuse allegations. "First they locate the priest who is friendliest with the family and they send that priest in there to find out what the family wants," Stevens says. "They do that with all the victims. They explain what has happened is horrible, and they lie and say nothing like this has happened in the past. "They tell the parents you need to deal with this in the church. They say you need to be a good Catholic." Sent for treatment A second wave of abuse allegations against D'Angelo came a year after the first ones hit. A group of distraught Boynton Beach parents went to clerics to tell them the priest had molested and sexually assaulted their boys. The abuse came to light after a boy told his parents he and a friend were molested by D'Angelo during a trip the three of them took to New York. The subpoenaed church records show D'Angelo, who served two years as an assistant pastor at St. Mark in Boynton Beach, held a similar position at St. Bernadette in Hollywood in the summer of 1967. A priest talked to D'Angelo and reported back to Fitzpatrick, who wrote to Bishop Carroll on Aug. 14, 1967. "Father D'Angelo admits that the charges are true: that on this vacation and on last summer's vacation he did have a series of sexual acts with boys ages 15, 13, 11, and 9. He claims he has not had this difficulty except beginning a year or two ago. No other boys, he says, are involved," Fitzpatrick wrote. "The parents are `understanding' but want something done to Father lest others be hurt by him. (There is a possibility that a 4-year-old boy may also be involved.) [sic] Perhaps a report that he is seeing a psychiatrist will satisfy them, but moving him would certainly do so," he wrote. "Father is happy at St. Bernadette. ... He has a `good attitude' and is more than willing to undergo treatment, knows he needs help, is guilt ridden etc." D'Angelo was sent to the Seton Psychiatric Institute in Baltimore in September 1967 for seven months of treatment. A church administrator made several trips to see him and report back to diocese officials. D'Angelo's psychiatrist "feels that Father is definitely progressing in this type of treatment," the administrator wrote just a few weeks after D'Angelo's arrival. "He said that he felt that Father could go back to Parish duties almost immediately, but he could not guarantee that the problem would not reoccur and therefore wants to keep Father under treatment for a while longer and then he would be more certain that Father D'Angelo's problem would be solved." Church records make it clear officials planned to return D'Angelo to St. Bernadette. Bishop Carroll took a personal interest in his situation. He and D'Angelo exchanged letters. "All is well up here but I certainly miss Florida," D'Angelo wrote the bishop on Jan. 16, 1968. "Thought sure I would be home by this time but the doctor doesn't feel I'm quite ready. After many sessions with the doctor I have gotten down to the underlying problem and it is this that I am working on now." Carroll wrote to him near the end of his stay: "I'm confident, as I am sure you are, that upon your return to the diocese you will be able [to] take on the priestly work in a parish and will do so with more than ordinary zeal and dedication." Coming home D'Angelo returned to St. Bernadette after his release in April 1968, but the boys' parents soon found out and protested, writing church officials and asking to meet with the bishop. "It would be impossible to explain the shock and pain we have endured since last August when we found out our two boys, age 11 and 4 at the time, were involved," one Boynton Beach mother wrote to Carroll in June 1968, telling him her family had tried to protect the church. "We were told to tell people he had a `breakdown' if we were put on the spot and we did just that. We have never let on in any way that our family was so hurt, we just buried it deep so no scandal would ever touch the church, Father or the boys." She said she was having difficulty with her youngest son: "It is a full time job trying to retrain a 4 yr. old, and so heartbreaking to see him do unwholesome things a trusted priest taught him." She told the bishop she wanted D'Angelo removed from South Florida so the boys wouldn't be reminded of what happened. "If father were `cured,' as he puts it, he would not want any contact with Boynton and all the boys he hurt. He would want to start over," she wrote. Another parent added: "We do not feel enough time has lapsed since this terrible thing happened for him to be around children." Banished Fitzpatrick met with the parents. They told him they wanted D'Angelo out of the diocese and kept under close watch. "They request no treatment for their boys, although they note that are beginning to detest going to church etc.," Fitzpatrick wrote to the bishop in July 1968. "These people seem sincere and not vindictive, although I think they could cause trouble if we ignore them." The records don't reflect how it was decided D'Angelo would go to the Diocese of St. Petersburg. Records show Miami clerics formally told St. Petersburg officials about D'Angelo's past in January 1976. Records show the transfer was to be temporary. "� Will be looking forward to my return in a year or so," D'Angelo wrote to Fitzpatrick on Aug. 28, 1968, once he had settled into St. Charles Borromeo in Charlotte County. He would never return to the Archdiocese of Miami. He stayed on in St. Petersburg and asked to officially have his affiliation transferred from Miami in 1972, but the transfer wasn't acted on until 1975. That year, St. Petersburg officials said they wanted a "thorough investigation into the background of Father D'Angelo" before accepting him. Neil Fogarty, Miami's monsignor, replied by outlining D'Angelo's psychiatric treatment "for evaluation and correction of alleged homosexual activities involving young boys." The parents wanted him transferred "even though living 60 miles away from Fort Lauderdale," Fogarty wrote, so the Miami archbishop "felt it necessary, in all charity for Father D'Angelo, that he should be allowed to seek a bishop outside the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Miami." The St. Petersburg diocese didn't accept D'Angelo until 1982, after a new bishop was installed. For more than a decade, D'Angelo served as the pastor and administrator of Good Shepherd in Tampa, until his retirement in October 1993. He retired after a man who said he was abused in the early 1960s contacted church officials. More than two years after his retirement, D'Angelo's past was still an issue for church leaders. In February 1996, the new bishop of the Diocese of St. Petersburg read a statement in three Tampa churches to let parishioners know D'Angelo was being accused of abusing two altar boys in the early 1970s. Before that disclosure, D'Angelo was sent away for treatment at a psychiatric institute. A flurry of lawsuits followed, including three in Palm Beach County and, in 1996,three in the Tampa area. One of the Tampa suits alleged D'Angelo molested an altar boy in the mid- 1980s. The Tampa suits were withdrawn. One was refiled in St. Petersburg, but the diocese and the bishop were dismissed as defendants. In August 1998 the suit was tossed out because the claims weren't pursued, according to court records. The three suits in Palm Beach County were settled under confidential terms in 1998. Palm Beach County prosecutors investigated in 1995 whether D'Angelo could be charged with crimes for the abuses in the mid-1960s. Before determining that the law back then didn't provide for assault charges involving boys as victims, investigators paid a visit to D'Angelo's Tampa apartment. "There were approximately 25 to 30 videotapes in the residence that would be of interest to younger children [rather] than to adults," an investigator wrote. "D'Angelo advised he lives alone, however there were pictures of young children in frames located throughout the apartment who D'Angelo refers to as `family friends.' "D'Angelo advised after speaking with his attorney that he would not make any statements." Peter Franceschina can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 561-832- 2894. 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