A Catholic clergy abuse survivor who helped convict the priest who molested him while he was growing up outside New Orleans is pleading with officials to not grant the disgraced cleric parole at a hearing scheduled for June – just 24 months after he pleaded guilty and in return received a five-year prison sentence.
“Please, please do not let this man out,” the survivor, Tim Gioe, wrote to a Louisiana department of corrections official after recently being informed of a parole hearing for Pat Wattigny that is tentatively scheduled for 12 June.
He added: “I believe he should serve the full five-year sentence that he pleaded guilty to … for the harm he caused me as a child and the harm that I continue to experience as an adult because of his actions.”
Wattigny, 57, is one of three priests serving within New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese – the second-oldest entity of its kind in the US – to plead guilty to sexually violent crimes since the organization filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2020. The church’s bankruptcy filing was meant to limit its financial liability with respect to hundreds of claims of clergy abuse throughout several decades that mostly victimized children.
Of those three, Wattigny is the only one still living, with the other two having died while serving out their sentences.
Wattigny drew scrutiny from his superiors – and, later, law enforcement authorities – when the New Orleans archbishop, Gregory Aymond, learned in 2020 that Wattigny had been sending inappropriate text messages to at least one child at the Catholic high school in Slidell, Louisiana, where he was chaplain.
Aymond’s initial response was to order Wattigny to stop the texting. But Wattigny did not, and his superiors eventually sent him to a behavioral clinic for evaluation, according to documents that were provided to authorities and reviewed by the Guardian.
At the clinic, Wattigny confessed to groping, fondling and kissing children as well as lusting over the students around him, admissions that came at a time when his archdiocese believed none of its clerics had been credibly found to have committed abuse in recent history. Criminal prosecutors eventually charged Wattigny with molesting two children – including Gioe, who came forward and relayed that he had been in grade school, back in the 1990s, in a suburb of New Orleans when the priest preyed on him.
Ultimately, on 12 June 2023, Wattigny pleaded guilty to one count of molestation of a juvenile under his supervision in a case dating back to 2013. For Gioe, Wattigny entered what is known as an Alford plea, in which he essentially denied wrongdoing yet acknowledged that overwhelming evidence would likely lead to his conviction at a trial.
Gioe, 39, and the other survivor asked the judge presiding over their case to give Wattigny at least 10 years in prison – preferably more – in connection with his guilty plea. But the judge, John Keller, whose online biography prominently lists his involvement with the Catholic Knights of Columbus organization and a local church, gave Wattigny just five years’ imprisonment while also requiring him to register as a sex offender and to spend time on probation after his release.
Louisiana law allows most people serving time in prison to shorten their sentences – sometimes significantly – through good conduct while incarcerated. In late February, Gioe and his wife, Sarah, opened a letter from state officials informing them that Wattigny would have a hearing on the second anniversary of his guilty plea in which he would be considered for a paroled release from prison.
Gioe described how the same feeling of “hopelessness, helplessness and worthlessness” that Wattigny inflicted on him during his abuse rushed back with a vengeance. He said he had barely finished processing Wattigny’s conviction and was now all but being asked to prepare for the possibility of his abuser’s release.
“It’s gut-wrenching,” said Gioe, who submitted his opposition to Wattigny’s release before a Friday deadline. “It’s very hurtful.”
Sarah Gioe echoed her husband, with whom she is raising four children, all younger than age 10. She said the entire family is “at war every day” as Gioe grapples with post-traumatic stress from his abuse as well as from what the couple believe is an exceedingly light punishment for Wattigny – and which they hope will not become shorter.
“It’s heartbreaking because there is so much hurt with Tim,” said Sarah Gioe, who like her husband is a nurse practitioner and runs a psychiatric office with him. “It’s not just him who’s affected. It’s a really big deal. It’s just not right.”
David Hammer of WWL-TV contributed reporting
