The worst reported Catholic Church sex abuse cases
A scathing report on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church released Tuesday by a Pennsylvania grand jury found more than 1,000 identifiable victims and perhaps thousands more. It marks the broadest probe yet by a government agency in the United States delving into crimes against children by priests and others employed by the church.
The nearly 900-page report focused on six dioceses from that state over a 70year period — but the San Francisco Bay Area has endured its own piece of the festering scandal:
Joseph McCabe
Joseph McCabe quit the priesthood in 1987 amid allegations he molested boys while serving as a priest in the Diocese of Santa Rosa in Humboldt County. He was extradited to his native Ireland in 2011 to face charges he sexually assaulted six boys there between 1973 and 1981. He had been living in Alameda and allegedly admitted wrongdoing to Alameda authorities in 2007.
A 2009 Irish government report on Catholic Church sex abuse found the Dublin Archdiocese would move priests to the United States and other locations after they became aware of complaints against them.
Rev. Jerold Lindner
In 2010, William Lynch was arrested on charges he lured Rev. Jerold Lindner, who allegedly molested him three decades ago, to the lobby of a Jesuit retirement home in Los Gatos and beat him up.
Lynch and his younger brother settled with the Jesuits of the California Province, a Roman Catholic religious order, for $625,000 in 1998 after claiming Lindner abused them during weekend camping trips in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1975, when the boys were 7 and 5 years old. The priest has also been accused of sex abuse by nearly a dozen other people.
Stephen Kiesle
Stephen Kiesle requested removal from the priesthood following his no contest plea in 1978 on a misdemeanor charge for tying up and molesting two preteen boys in the rectory of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Union City.
Still, five years later, thenCardinal Joseph Ratzinger — who would become Pope Benedict XVI — pushed back against pleas from the Oakland diocese to defrock Kiesle, according to church documents obtained by the Associated Press years ago. Ratzinger delayed the decision on him for “the good of the Universal Church.”
Numerous accusers since then have claimed Kiesle abused them as children at churches in Fremont and Pinole. Kiesle, now 71, lives in the Rossmoor senior community in Walnut Creek as a registered sex offender after serving time in prison.
Robert Freitas
In 2003, a jury ruled that former priest Robert Freitas and the Catholic Dioceses of Oakland had to pay
$17 million to a onetime church volunteer who alleged Freitas molested him in 1979 and 1980.
Freitas was arrested in 2002 and charged with two counts of molesting the 15-year-old boy. The arrest came after his victim wore a wire and got the priest to confess in 2002. Freitas pleaded guilty, but the case was later dismissed after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a statute of limitations law.
Monsignors Vincent Breen and George Francis
Monsignor Vincent Breen of Holy Spirit in Fremont and Monsignor George Francis of St. Bede in Hayward held supervisory roles from 1965 to 1977. Francis investigated Breen during a 1970s abuse investigation, but no action was taken.
Breen was forced to retire in 1982 after a police investigation found he molested at least seven girls ages 7 to 14, although a survivors’ network said there were more victims.