Faith compels DA Ligon in priest abuse case
He won’t back down against church, takes pride in helping kids, friends say
Brett Ligon has not been to Mass since the Sept. 11 arrest of Father Manuel La Rosa-Lopez.
A longtime Catholic, he was married at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Conroe in 1993 and moved in recent years to St. Mat- thias the Apostle in Magnolia.
Now the district attorney of Montgomery County, he can’t bring himself to go back.
“I haven’t been to Mass since we arrested the priest — but that’s a personal issue,” he said. “I’m a mad DA, which is what victims need. We don’t need a DA who’s looking for forgiveness.”
Ligon, 50, made no secret of his ties to the Conroe church where La Rosa-Lopez worked as more than 60 local, state and federal law enforcement officials descended on the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston’ s headquarters on Nov. 28, looking for evidence linked to accusations that the priest molested two young parishioners
over a three-year period.
And Ligon’s made it clear he won’t stop there — warning that other members of the clergy who may have done wrong will come under scrutiny from his office.
“When I’m there on a Sunday, I’m there to worship,” Ligon said at the time of the search. “When I’m there on a Monday through Friday, my job is to investigate thoroughly.”
It’s the biggest case of alleged priest abuse in the Houston area in decades and the biggest of Ligon’s 10 years as Montgomery County district attorney, where he has built a reputation as an aggressive prosecutor who won’t back down. Ligon has vowed to go all the way to the Vatican to investigate the allegations.
And with the archdiocese poised to release the names this week of any priests since the 1950s deemed “credibly accused” of child sexual abuse, it also threatens to stain the legacy of local Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who leads the U.S. Conference of Bishops as it works to draft a response to sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Ligon declined to comment recently about the allegations and his decade as district attorney, but he made his feelings clear during the November search of the archdiocese.
“There are so many lay Catholics,” he said at the time, “who are ready for the church to come clean.”
‘Not intimidated’
The complicated test of prosecuting a case so close to home is not lost on Phil Grant, the judge of Montgomery County’s 9th District Court whose friendship with Ligon dates to 1996.
The two signed on to work for legendary Harris County District Attorney Johnny Holmes on the same day, and Grant joined him as first assistant district attorney in Montgomery County after Ligon won the election as DA in 2008.
“I think Brett is very challenged to do the right thing in this particular matter because of his faith,” Grant said recently. “I have seen him, in the past decade, growing in his faith and it becoming a bigger part of his life. Because of that, he takes this matter even more seriously.”
As Montgomery County DA, Ligon has targeted two key issues — decreasing drunken driving fatalities and making his home turf what he called a “no-fly zone for sex offenders.”
As he entered office in 2009, he secured funding for a Children’s Safe Harbor investigator and campaigned for tougher sentences for child molesters. He also formed an Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which apprehended more than 60 suspects last year who walked into sting operations believing they were meeting a child for sexual contact.
And he challenged Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg’s decision to decriminalize low-level marijuana possession in 2017, saying her policy to allow citations but not arrests for small amounts of marijuana amounted to selective enforcement. He said he didn’t want Montgomery County to become a sanctuary for “dope smokers.”
“We preserve, protect and defend the constitutions of the United States and the state of Texas,” Ligon said. “When you choose what laws you don’t want to enforce then this becomes mob mentality.”
Grant joined Ligon in prosecuting then-Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson for child abuse, a case that led to the athlete avoiding jail time after he pleaded no contest in 2012 for whipping his 4year-old son. The arrest garnered national attention that only grew after Ligon demanded Peterson be arrested for admitting to smoking “a little weed” while out on bond
“He’s not intimidated by cases that are going to make those national headlines or have a significant repercussion throughout the community,” Grant said.
‘A little over the top’
Ligon left the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in 1999 after Holmes announced his retirement, and joined the Houston Police Officers’ Union.
It was a job that brought him the strong support of law enforcement when he challenged incumbent Montgomery County DA Michael McDougal in 2008. He won 57 percent of the vote in the Republican primary and sailed into office without a Democratic opponent in the general election.
Former HPOU President Ray Hunt said Ligon’s firmness toward the law is an asset.
“His pet peeves are the people who violate the law, even if he’s trying to convict somebody on a misdemeanor,” Hunt said. “He’s not afraid to get into the courtroom.”
Last week, in fact, Ligon was in court prosecuting Rafael Leos-Trejo, a Spring man accused in the Feb. 16 death of his wife, Jessica Torres Leos.
“If you’re a bad guy, you better stay out of Montgomery County. I can promise you that,” Hunt said.
Critics, however, say otherwise.
Conroe defense attorney Gilbert Garcia, who ran against Ligon in the GOP primary in 2012, accused him of being a “publicity hound.”
Garcia attends Sacred Heart and knew La RosaLopez at the time the abuse is alleged to have taken place. He said Ligon went too far while taking questions about the search of the archdiocese.
“When he said he’ll go to the Vatican, that seemed a little over the top to me,” Garcia said recently. “I find it outlandish to go there.”
During the 2012 primary, Garcia took exception to Ligon’s appearance on TV personality Nancy Grace’s show to discuss the capital murder case of a nurse who killed a Spring woman and abducted her newborn baby. Ligon joined Grace onair the day after the slaying — more than a year before the nurse pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
And he likened Ligon’s tough-on-crime approach to a “police state.”
Ligon also may have a bit of a temper. A news helicopter caught him in a heated exchange with a church lawyer as investigators shuffled in and out of the archdiocese in November, as DiNardo loomed over a portion of the 15-minute conversation in a nearby alley.
And once, while working for the police union, he sued a Houston lawyer for defamation after she ac- cused him of “lollygagging” after he asked to delay a case. The suit went to mediation and was dismissed about a year later in 2002.
Focus on the children
La Rosa-Lopez was arrested in 2018 after being charged with four counts of indecency with a child.
The alleged victims — now adults — told Conroe police they were molested at Sacred Heart from 1998 to 2001. A third accuser says La Rosa-Lopez inappropriately touched him at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Houston in 1992 when he was a 12-year-old altar boy.
Investigators have now seized records from St. John Fisher Church in Richmond, where La Rosa-Lopez was previously assigned; Sacred Heart church; the Shalom Center treatment facility for priests in Splendora; and the archdiocese.
Ligon personally helped investigators at Sacred Heart as they executed the search warrant in September and again at the archdiocese.
Before the police reports were filed, however, La Rosa-Lopez was removed from the Conroe parish in April 2001 and sent to the Shalom Center to undergo treatment until January 2002, records show.
He returned to his priestly duties at the St. John Fisher Church in Richmond in about 2003 or 2004, according to church and court records. It’s not clear whether Bishop Joseph Fiorenza was leading the diocese at the time or DiNardo had already arrived in Houston from the Diocese of Sioux City in Iowa.
La Rosa-Lopez remained at the Richmond parish until August, shortly before his arrest, according to the archdiocese.
DiNardo’s handling of the complaints could also come under scrutiny. One of La Rosa-Lopez’s accusers told a Conroe police investigator that the cardinal appeared to be dismissive of her claims when they met to discuss her allegations, and DiNardo’s computers were among the items seized from the archdiocese, according to court records.
Archdiocese officials have said they are cooperating fully with investigators.
DiNardo’s response to the allegations of widespread sexual abuse within the Catholic — and the growing criticism of a widespread cover-up — has put members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at odds with his leadership. The Vatican in November postponed a vote to establish a lay commission for receiving complaints against bishops, reportedly for pushing the measure without giving the Pope adequate time to review the legal implications.
Molestation claims against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in Washington, D.C., and the release of a sweeping Pennsylvania grand jury report in August have further stirred questions about the church’s handling of complaints.
The 900-page Pennsylvania report revealed the names and assignment history of 300 predator priests from six dioceses there who were accused of molesting more than 1,000 children.
The report prompted dozens of nationwide dioceses to release details about sex abuse in their religious jurisdictions by posting lists of “credibly accused” clergy members. The 15 dioceses in Texas, including the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, are set to release their lists by Thursday.
Ligon and his team of investigators have looked to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office as a model for their probe into the local priest. Ligon credits the work of three prosecutors — Wesley LeRouax, Nancy Hebert and Tyler Dunman — for developing the charges and the ongoing investigation.
Dunman said Ligon has kept the focus on the children.
“As a person who grew up in Montgomery County all his life, raised his family here, he takes a lot of pride in protecting kids — it’s a personal thing for him, not just a mantra,” Dunman said.
“We take that and turn it into something that’s workable and what’s most effective. And then we unleash the dogs. You’re looking at them.”
‘Only way to win’
Ligon’s faith offers a measure of hope for the alleged victims of La Rosa-Lopez and others molested by Catholic priests.
Michael Norris, who heads the local chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said he was unaware that Ligon was Catholic until the November search of the archdiocese. But he sees it as key to the prosecution.
“This is the only way we’re going to win this battle — by having good Catholics change this,” Norris said.
Last week, at a SNAP meeting in Houston, the woman who brought the allegations about La Rosa-Lopez to Conroe police told the Houston Chronicle that she didn’t initially believe her complaint would have any impact on the priest.
She credits Ligon with taking charge of the investigation.
“He’s one of my heroes,” she said, asking not to be identified. “Him standing up for the children means the world to me.”
“That parish is on fire for justice.”
“He’s not intimidated by cases that are going to make those national headlines or have a significant repercussion throughout the community.”
Phil Grant, a judge, on his friend Brett Ligon