The Catholic Church agrees to pay victims of sexual abuse of a Latino pastor in Texas

By Belisa Morillo and Damià Bonmatí - Telemundo Investiga News

In February 2020, two alleged victims of Pastor Manuel La Rosa-Lopez's sexual abuse sued the Vatican and the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston for a cover-up.

However, no representative of the Holy See or the Archdiocese will sit in the dock.

By paying the plaintiffs,

.

In the complaint, consulted by Noticias Telemundo Investiga, each of the two plaintiffs, identified as John and Jane Doe to protect their identity,

 for having covered up the abuses.

The plaintiffs claim that La Rosa-Lopez abused them in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They are both US citizens.

He is a Latino man who now lives in Washington State and she is a woman who lives in Texas.

In those years, they were minors.

He was 17 years old and, of her, it only appears that she was a teenager when the events denounced took place.

[

They trusted their pastor

The events reported describe a similar behavior by La Rosa-Lopez towards the complainants:

In the case of John Doe, the pastor participated in family events and became a reference for the young man.

Later, that trust turned into "sexual abuse, assault and exploitation."

On one occasion, La Rosa-Lopez prevented the young man from leaving the rectory and sexually assaulted him, the document details.

In the case of the female victim, Jane Doe, the pastor was her confessor.

The young woman described in a diary how the father touched her private parts inside the Church of the Sacred Heart, after a theater performance,

.

The applicant claims that she believed she was in a loving relationship with the priest. 

The young woman's father discovered her diary, in which he described his secret encounters with La Rosa-Lopez and, alarmed, notified the superiors of the parish.

Soon after, the family learned that La Rosa-Lopez had been transferred to another parish and years later, in 2010, they discovered that the priest had been promoted to a larger parish in Richmond, Texas.

The young woman, now an adult, went to meet with the head of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, to ask for an explanation.

DiNardo, according to the plaintiff, told her that

and consequently assigned an administrative position where he would not have contact with minors.

Over the next eight years, La Rosa-Lopez worked his way up the ranks of the archdiocese until DiNardo entrusted him with the position of Episcopal Vicar for Hispanics.

In 2018, the case explodes.

The two alleged victims and a third decide to sue the priest in court for sexual abuse and the police issue an arrest warrant containing the facts described by the applicant. 

That same week,

.

After being detained, La Rosa-Lopez was released after posting a $ 375,000 bond, the Montgomery County, Texas, prosecutor's office confirmed to Noticias Telemundo. 

Manuel La Rosa-López in his arrest photo in September 2018 Montgomery County Sheriff's Office

After the arrest, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston published a statement in which it assured that the plaintiff's family had already made a complaint in 2001 to the religious authorities and they reported it to the Children and Family Services of the State of Texas.

The religious institution also said that the family left the country and did not proceed with the complaint.

In 2003, according to the statement, "after an internal review, which included the presentation of the above allegations to the newly created Archdiocesan Review Commission in 2003,

.

The statement concludes that "the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston clearly recognizes that it has a legal and moral obligation to address any incidence of abuse - sexual or otherwise - of the children of God. Such behavior will simply not be tolerated. To anyone affected. for any form of abuse by someone representing the Church, the Archdiocese deeply regrets such a fundamental breach of trust and is committed to eliminating such unacceptable actions. " 

Two months later, the police searched the Chancery where Cardinal Daniel DiNardo works in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston for any evidence of the abuses Manuel La Rosa-Lopez is accused of and took dozens of boxes with documentation.

After several postponements during the process, La Rosa-Lopez awaits her trial in court on January 19, 2021.

Video: The priest who left a trail of pregnant victims

Oct. 1, 201801: 31

20 million for negligence and fraud

As the head of the Archdiocese,

that weighed on Pastor Manuel Antonio La Rosa-Lopez since 1992, including the accusation of sexual abuse of a minor of the sixth degree, according to the lawsuit.

Despite the complaints that reached him, DiNardo not only did not remove him from his tasks but also promoted him through the ranks.

Daniel DiNardo was appointed Cardinal of Galveston-Houston in 2004. In November 2016, he was elected as president of the United States Conference of Bishops, the nation's most important Catholic body, and served as such until November 2019.

"With this civil lawsuit we really try to hold the archdiocese and the Vatican accountable for their conduct of allowing this abuse of children to continue by the same priest for decades," the attorney for one of the victims, Tahira Khan Merrit, told Noticias Telemundo, when the lawsuit was filed.

The legal representatives of the two victims requested 10 million dollars for each of them as compensation for the damage suffered, due to “negligence, fraud and breach of fiduciary duty” of the religious institution and some of its representatives for allegedly having covered up the perpetrator of sexual abuse.

The Church

, but in 2007, Texas changed its legislation to expand the statute of limitations of the offense when it comes to minors, so the motion failed.

In June 2020, both parties said they reached a “friendly agreement” and thus closed the case.

Neither party disclosed the financial amount of compensation to the alleged victims.

In this type of agreement, it is common to include a confidentiality clause.

Noticias Telemundo Investiga repeatedly asked the Archdiocese for comment, but received no response. 

[They sue the Vatican in the case of sexual abuse of a Hispanic pastor]

The Church has already paid hundreds of millions

In 2018, an investigation into the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania revealed that more than 1,000 children were abused by 301 priests and that the Church covered them up for decades.

Following these revelations, hundreds of complaints of covert sexual abuse by the Catholic Church in the United States came to light, also in the Houston-Galveston area, which represents 1.7 million Latinos.

According to the Bishop Accountability organization, as of 2011 in the United States, the Catholic Church has paid at least 2.4 billion dollars in settlements with victims of abuse.

The SNAP association, which brings together victims of sexual abuse from across the country, regrets that civil cases like this one are closed before they are before a judge.

“That is what they want: to reach an agreement with the victims.

and we know that the Church wants everything to be kept secret, ”Eduardo Lopez de Casas, SNAP representative in Houston, told Noticias Telemundo.

With the file of the civil case, DiNardo will no longer have to give "explanations before the judge and public opinion," he adds.

[The priest who left a trail of pregnant victims]

Lopez de Casas, who claims to have been a victim of abuse while working in the Church, regrets that Pastor La Rosa-Lopez is still under the protection of the Archdiocese.

“It gives us a lot of courage.

These parents, like Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, we know that they have done very terrible things.

But getting a father out is a very difficult thing for the Catholic Church.

They can remove them from a parish, they can have them in a home for help or rehabilitation,

”he said.

A new sexual abuse lawsuit against the Archdiocese

A family, headed by the mother, Amber Moreno, filed a lawsuit on September 9, 2020 against the Archdiocese, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, one of its priests, the Diocese of Victoria and his school in Victoria, Texas.

In the lawsuit, Moreno accuses one of his religious of abusing his 10-year-old daughter during a confession session at Nazareth Academy school in Victoria, Texas.

Moreno assures that he gave notice of the touching of a religious to his daughter, a minor, to several school officials and the Catholic Church in November 2018, as he told Noticias Telemundo.

The mother claims that her complaints fell on deaf ears and that no one contacted her afterwards.

According to the police file of the complaint, the uniformed officers reviewed the case but, after questioning the girl, they closed the case due to lack of evidence in a first inspection.

Shortly after a year, when the family has gathered more evidence, the case has been reopened.

Courtesy of Amber Moreno

Moreno assures that he is not interested in a monetary agreement if it implies keeping silence.

"Under no circumstances would I keep quiet about what happened there," said the Texan mother.

“[They] have to accept their responsibility for their employee and for what he has done to our family.

I will never agree not to talk about it. "

If you want to report a case, you can confidentially contact Noticias Telemundo Investiga by email,