Clergy abuse survivors who were ousted from a committee trying to negotiate a settlement resolving the New Orleans Catholic archdiocese’s bankruptcy say they have lost their confidence in the judge presiding over the case.
Their comments come after it was revealed that Judge Meredith Grabill ignored federal justice department recommendations against expelling the survivors from the group, delivering the latest twist in a child sexual abuse scandal roiling one of the oldest Roman Catholic dioceses in the US.
“I can honestly say that my faith in … Grabill is greatly diminished,” James Adams said about decisions that at first were largely made in secret against him as well as three of his fellow survivor committee members. “It’s shattered.”
Grabill removed Adams, Jackie Berthelot, Theo Jackson and Eric Johnson from the group in question after tasking a justice department office which assists with administering bankruptcy cases to investigate an attorney for the survivors. The lawyer, Richard Trahant, drew Grabill’s attention after taking steps to tip off a local high school that its chaplain, Paul Hart, was an admitted molester in early 2022.
Investigators concluded that they believed Trahant had violated the terms of an applicable confidentiality order in what he maintained was an attempt to protect children – but their report to Grabill said the clients should not be punished.
Grabill nonetheless ruled that she was “forced” to kick his four clients off the survivors committee; imposed a $400,000 fine on Trahant; and then ordered the findings of the investigation by the US trustee’s office sealed from public view.
The Guardian joined news partner WWL Louisiana in recently obtaining the US trustee’s investigative report through a successful public records request seeking files pertaining to the criminal prosecution of serial child molester Lawrence Hecker, who pleaded guilty to child rape and kidnapping charges in December and died in prison a few weeks later.
An article published on Monday by the outlets marked the first time that many learned of the findings of the US trustee report that preceded Grabill’s punishments against Trahant and his clients, widely seen as one of the most consequential decisions issued during the New Orleans archdiocese’s unusually tortuous chapter 11 reorganization.
Not even Adams, Berthelot, Jackson and Johnson had seen the document, having been barred from accessing it even as they unsuccessfully appealed their removals.
Asked to comment on Grabill’s decision to remove them in light of the exposed US trustee investigation, Jackson said: “We were just blindsided … with something that we [had] nothing to do with.”
Johnson added: “It hurts because you’re trying to do good for the other survivors. Yet [they’re] blaming you for everything.”
Grabill also ignored a US trustee recommendation to hold a court hearing before taking any action after the completion of the Hart investigation. The judge ordered the committee removals one business day after receiving the US trustee report. She has not commented on the Guardian and WWL’s recent reporting on Hart.
Trahant’s four clients all had Catholic upbringings in the New Orleans area and reported enduring child sexual molestation at the hands of clergymen or lay religious personnel amid the worldwide church’s decades-old clerical abuse scandal.
In May 2020, the New Orleans archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in an attempt to limit its liability from such abuse claims. It is one of about 40 US Catholic institutions to do so.
The cases reported by Adams and the others became ensnared in the bankruptcy, with Trahant representing them. And they all successfully applied to serve on a committee of abuse survivor claimants whose job it was to aid in settlement negotiations.
In his role as the committee members’ attorney, Trahant learned that Hart had been allowed to serve as chaplain of New Orleans’ Brother Martin high school despite previously admitting to having sexual contact in the early 1990s with a 17-year-old girl whom he met at a prior assignment.
In 2002, US bishops adopted a policy making 18 the age of consent under canon – or church – law. Before that, 16 was the age of consent. So New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond declined to substantially punish Hart and assigned him to work at Brother Martin beginning in 2017.
Hart was forced to retire after Brother Martin learned of his past, the bulk of which was meant to be kept secret because of confidentiality rules in the archdiocesan bankruptcy.
An investigation into how Brother Martin learned the truth about Hart concluded that Trahant violated the bankruptcy’s confidentiality rules simply by making reference to the name and position of the chaplain while communicating with the school’s principal. Brother Martin’s principal, Ryan Gallagher, was Trahant’s cousin and knew Trahant represented clergy abuse survivors. Trahant later testified he knew his cousin would infer Hart was likely an abuser from the mere mention of his name.
Furthermore, the investigation asserted that Trahant violated the secrecy order by telling a journalist who later reported on the circumstances surrounding Hart’s forced retirement to keep the clergyman on his “radar”.
But the investigation found it was actually the church itself that informed Brother Martin about the particulars of Hart’s abusive past. And it essentially ruled out Trahant as having been the source of the information that the journalist reported about Hart, who has since died.
Trahant asserted to investigators and Grabill that he was careful only to share information about Hart that was publicly available, such as his name and job. That’s because the bankruptcy confidentiality order allowed him to do at least that, he argued.
Despite his assertions, Grabill decided Trahant had violated the confidentiality order – and that he and his clients deserved to be sanctioned.
Trahant and his clients appealed. The appeal pursued by Trahant, who had access to the US trustee report but could not legally discuss it with his clients, remained pending as of Tuesday in the federal fifth circuit court. The clients’ appeal failed after Grabill’s seal on the report impeded them from viewing it.
While the US trustee report opined that only Trahant merited punishment, Grabill said she was “forced” to remove his clients from the survivors committee to ensure the smooth functioning of that entity. Adams, who had been the group’s chairperson, pointed out that the US trustee never publicly indicated that the committee removals were against its recommendation.
The expulsions were unnecessary, Adams added. He said virtually every one of the committee’s votes during his two years of participation was unanimous.
He said he wondered whether he and his colleagues were ousted – on the morning that they were scheduled to address Aymond as part of settlement negotiations – because they had expressed a commitment to “genuinely investigating how the archdiocese ended up in bankruptcy”.
Even with their removals, Adams and his former colleagues noted how the bankruptcy was unresolved as of Tuesday, nearly three years after their June 2022 removals.
Berthelot, a survivor of Hecker as well as of another abusive clergyman, said he “absolutely” believes Grabill “needs to step down” from the case. He described experiencing health problems and losing friendships amid the bankruptcy’s various twists. By Monday, it had all worn him down so much that he resigned his elected office from the city council in the New Orleans suburb of Gretna, which he first joined in 2013.
“Judge Grabill has been compromised,” said Berthelot, whose council term was supposed to last until June. “To me, as a victim, a survivor of clergy abuse, it was extremely shocking.”
Adams said part of him wanted to see Grabill step down from the case after the exposure of the sealed Hart report. But he worried about how much longer something like that might delay the bankruptcy.
Figures associated with Catholic institution bankruptcies settled elsewhere relatively recently suggest the New Orleans archdiocese’s reorganization could cost the church and its insurers more than $300m to settle.
As it continued efforts to finance a settlement with survivors, the archdiocese earlier in March agreed to sell a suburban orphanage with a lengthy history of child abuse to local government officials for $3.8m.
Johnson survived abuse at a sister orphanage across the street from the one being sold. He said he hoped officials followed through on stated goals of redeveloping the property into a multi-use facility and building a memorial to all those who survived abuse on those grounds.
“Use it for something positive,” Johnson said. “Use it for the good of the community.”
