| The Roman Catholic Diocese of
Albany has once again cleared the Rev. Louis Douglas of allegations
of child sexual abuse, church officials said Friday.
The decision affecting the 74-year-old retired priest became
public after victims of clergy abuse and other critics of the
church's handling of accusations against priests showed a videotape
of an interview with the investigator for the diocese's Sexual
Misconduct Review Board.
The tape was of the March 31 meeting between Thomas Martin, a
retired State Police investigator hired by the review board to probe
allegations against priests, and two mothers whose children attended
an Albany parish school in 1992 when Douglas was the pastor.
The women accused Douglas of abusing boys, though not their sons,
at St. Catherine of Siena parish. Douglas then retired and moved to
Delaware, where he worked part time for the Catholic Diocese of
Wilmington until allegations against him surfaced again in 2003.
During the hourlong meeting with Pamela Brace and Marcia Preusser
of Albany, Martin told the mothers that he had never heard of
Douglas before coming to interview them.
"I check out all the facts and report it to the panel,"
Martin said. "But nobody ever said anything to me about Father
Douglas. That's why I didn't report anything."
Timothy Sawicki, 44, of Schenectady, who was at the news
conference on Friday at which the tape was shown, had also
previously accused Douglas of sexually abusing him in the 1970s. He
named the priest in a 2003 lawsuit he filed in state Supreme Court
in Schenectady. The suit was later dismissed.
Martin said he was busy investigating claims against at least 150
clerics. He said he had "priests coming out of his ears."
He told the women he does not have access to the personnel files of
priests and it is up to the bishop to make them available to the
review board.
On Friday, Brace and Preusser said those files would show that
they had met with Hubbard in 1993 and that he told them at the time
that Douglas was being sent to New Mexico for treatment and wouldn't
be allowed around children.
Clearly, the inquiry into Douglas was lacking, Preusser said, and
"If I had to make a guess, I'd say it stopped after Tom Martin
left us that night."
Diocese of Wilmington spokesman Bob Crebbs said he had received
no word from Albany that Douglas has been cleared to return to
ministry: "(His) status hasn't changed," Crebbs said
Friday. "We're waiting for information before we make any
determination."
Diocese spokesman Kenneth Goldfarb said allegations against
Douglas were investigated three times: in 1992, when they were first
raised by parents at the school; in 2002, after Hubbard returned
from the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference in Dallas which
established a zero tolerance police on clergy abuse; and, again in
March.
"All three investigations revealed the same conclusion that,
based on the evidence, no sexual abuse happened," Goldfarb
said.
Several weeks after the review panel cleared Douglas this year,
Sawicki and the two mothers demanded a new investigation, saying
they had never been contacted about their allegations against the
priest.
Goldfarb said Brace and Preusser misinterpreted their meeting
with Hubbard. Goldfarb also said Martin had no prior information
about Douglas because he wasn't hired until the fall of 2002. |
