Pedophile Priest Watch
Rev. Richard Emerson
originally ordained for the Diocese of Gary, IN. Emerson transferred to Orlando in the late 1980's where he began abusing two minor boys. He groomed them with gifts, alcohol, and pornography. When he applied for incardination (permanent transfer) to the Diocese of Orlando, he was denied because Orlando found out about his involvement with one of the boys. Emerson had paid for a car and numerous trips for both boys. He is now laicized (removed from the priesthood)and can no longer function as a priest.
Rev. William Weinheimer
he was originally ordained for the Diocese of St. Augustine, Florida. At some point, he became a priest of the Diocese of St. Petersburg. He died in 1986. In 1953-54 he abused Gregory Peake, then 9 years old and a resident of St. Mary's Academy in Jacksonville. At the time of the abuse, Weinheimer was superintendant of Bishop Kenny High School in Jacksonville. Weinheimer sent the young boy letters telling him how much he missed him and in one letter told Peake to destroy the letters since Peake's mother would become suspicious. We have those letters and have shared them with the Diocese of St. Augustine. The Diocese of St. Augustine issued a statement that it is reviewing the matter.
Salesians of Don Bosco
we've represented many victims of Salesian priests and brothers who molested minor boys while they lived at Mary Help of Christians School in Tampa. Fr. William Burke, Fr. O'Donnell, Fr. Clemente, and Brother Dominic abused minor boys in the 1960's, 70's and 80's while they attended the Catholic School in Tampa.
Rev. Robert Capparelli he was a priest of the Diocese of Scranton PA. He abused numerous boys in the 1960's, 70's, and 80's. He was convicted of 26 counts of abuse and sentenced to jail where he died of AIDS. In one of our cases, Capparelli abused a six year old boy on many occasions. The Diocese had been told about Capparelli's abuse in 1968 by a Pennsylvania State Trooper.
Donald McGuire Jesuit priest Donald McGuire has been charged with a new federal complaint of molesting boys.
Priest Sex Abuse Lawyer Molestation Attorney
Clergy Priest Sexual Abuse Alert
Fr. Robert Schaeufele Ordained a Catholic priest in 1975, Fr. Bob preyed on minor boys until his arrest in 2003. He used pizza, video games, and wrestling to entice his young prey into a hellish world of sexual deviation and abuse. In spite of complaints about Schaeufele’s deviant behavior dating back to 1975, the Diocese of St. Petersburg transferred him from parish to parish, allowing him to prey on unsuspecting children and families throughout the Tampa Bay area. Fr. Bob’s trail of human wreckage and tragedy followed his whole priestly career from St. Petersburg, Venice, Tampa, Temple Terrace, and Dade City. During his tenure at Holy Cross parish in St. Petersburg, he was in charge of the Boy Scouts. After a number of Pinellas Park survivors contacted Attorney Joe Saunders in 2003, the abuse and terror stopped. Saunders contacted local authorities who finally brought this priest-pedophile to justice. He is now serving a 30 year sentence in a Florida penitentiary. Survivors continue to come forward and recount their tale of abuse and suffering at the hands of this abuser. As late as the 1990’s a priest living with Fr. Bob at Holy Cross Catholic Church in St. Petersburg warned the Diocese of St. Petersburg about Schaeufele. Yet, he was allowed to continue to abuse. Many of these survivors didn’t come forward immediately because they feared eternal damnation. After all, as good Catholics they had been taught that a priest is another Christ. They didn’t dare accuse a priest of sexual misconduct.
Priest Abuse Lawyer
Why We Care
For many, the priest abuse scandal in the Catholic Church began in 2002 with the groundbreaking exposé of the Boston Globe. The newspaper’s Spotlight Team of investigative reporters determined to search the documents and archives of the Archdiocese of Boston.
What they found and eventually reported was an astonishing history of priest abuse, subsequent cover-up by the Archdiocese of Boston, and the castigation of the victims.
The Globe initially reported on the sexual abuse of one priest, John Geoghan. The incidents of abuse were numerous and the victims were minor boys often from single parent homes with little financial resources. The Team’s research uncovered more than one pedophile’s sick plunder of parishes and families within the Archdiocese of Boston.
They found that the Archdiocese of Boston, including Cardinals Cushing, Medeiros, and Law, had known about Geoghan’s abuse and allowed him to continue serving as a parish priest. Each time Geoghan would sexually molest a young boy and the Archdiocese became aware of the abuse, high ranking officials of the Archdiocese would meet with Geoghan, send him for counseling, and re-assign him to another parish to abuse other young boys.
This cycle of abuse lasted for decades because the officials of the Archdiocese did not report the abuse to civil authorities or parishioners who would welcome the priest predator into their homes and their lives
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Once the Spotlight Team recognized the extent of the conspiracy of silence and cover-up, they focused their investigation on the Archdiocese’s role in allowing priest pedophiles to continue abusing minors. This was not an easy task for the Boston Globe. They had to fight the church in court in order to obtain the internal church documents that revealed the abuse, secrecy, and cover-up by the Archdiocese. The acrimony between Cardinal Bernard Law and the Boston Globe became so intense that Cardinal Law publicly condemned the newspaper and invoked God’s wrath on them for their reporting! The entire time Law denied the cover-up and conspiracy by minimizing Geoghan and his abuse as “isolated incidents”.
As the furor in Boston continued, other dioceses and archdioceses around the country came under the same scrutiny as Boston. A similar pattern of abuse, conspiracy and cover-up was found in these churches as well. Dioceses and Archdioceses as diverse as Davenport, Manchester, Miami, Dubuque, Palm Beach, Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Paul, San Diego, Portland, and Spokane had similar horror stories of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and nuns.
Eventually, every diocese and Archdiocese in the United States was affected by the scandal that had its seminal moment in Boston.
The stories of victims were similar in each locale. A priest abuser would befriend a family, attaching himself to a minor, grooming him with gifts and friendship, then abusing the unsuspecting child. The response of the church was similar as well. Church officials, bishops and cardinals, would receive reports of abusive priests, transfer them to another parish, tell the families that the incident was isolated and that they would “fix” the problem.
In many instances, the families would be instructed not to talk about the abuse and pray for the pedophile priest. In other instances, the victims would suffer in silence and try to cope as best they could with the abuse.
Their lives were marred with alcoholism, broken relationships, drug abuse, and feelings of inadequacy, suicide, isolation, and loss of faith.
The Church’s response to the victims has been to deny their abuse, minimize it, attack them for saying something bad about a priest, or telling the victim that the abuse was his fault.