CA U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris Covered up Clergy Sex Abuse When She Was San Fran DA?

September 20, 2018

Investigative Reporter Katy Grimes (FlashReport.org)

More than eight years ago in 2010, Kamala Harris, then-San Francisco District Attorney, was running for California Attorney General. And for some reason, her record of covering up sex abuse records belonging to the San Francisco Archdiocese was never part of the political news of her record. Today, Harris is a United States Senator, with an eye for running for President in 2020.

She was San Francisco District Attorney from 2003 until her election in 2010 to State Attorney General.

Reporter Matt Smith at San Francisco Weekly reported in 2010 that Harris rebuffed reporters’ efforts for five years to view her office’s files on Catholic clergy sex abuse under the state Public Records Act, despite statements by former San Francisco DA Terence Hallinan saying they should be released.

The files in question involve the San Francisco Archdiocese files on clergy abuse, and contain details of how the church dealt internally with alleged pederast, homosexual and pedophile priests going back as far as 80 years, according to a second SF Weekly article. Cardinal William Levada was archbishop of San Francisco until 2005.

Matt Smith reported:

Portions of this record came to light in stories by then–SF Weekly staff writer Ron Russell in 2005 and in a May 5 story in The New York Times that recounted elements of Russell’s reporting. By sifting through documents made public as a result of lawsuits, Russell learned that during the 1990s and 2000s, Levada helped keep allegations against pedophile priests shrouded in secrecy. Alleged abusers included Salesian Brother Salvatore Billante, who police alleged had sexual relations with at least 24 children, but charges were dropped after the California Supreme Court overturned a state law extending the statute of limitations for pedophiles. And so the full contents of archdiocese clergy abuse files obtained by prosecutors were never revealed at trial.

Relatively unscathed by his San Francisco legacy, now-Cardinal Levada is the chief Vatican official charged with responding to global allegations of clergy abuse.

In response to Smith’s Public Records Request, Harris’s office said her investigative files were not subject to California’s Public Records Act, and claimed her office essentially enjoys a blanket secrecy privilege.

Smith sent Harris’ response to California Newspaper Publishers Association legal counsel Jim Ewert. “That’s flatly untrue,” Ewert said. The District Attorney’s office “can release them if they want to. But they have decided not to.”

As of 2010, the Archdiocese of San Francisco settled 101 abuse cases and paid $68 million in settlements since 2003, the New York Times reported.

An official accounting of accused priests in the Bay Area has never been made public, but an organization that collects news and data about clergy abuse lists the names of 86 publicly accused priests among dioceses in San Francisco (37), Oakland (25), Santa Rosa (14) and San Jose (10). Many of those named have settled lawsuits out of court, and most are not in prison, the New York Times reported.

Kamala Harris could have legally intervened, but did not. Inquiring minds want to know why she did not?

Kamala’s Misplaced Priorities

As District Attorney, Harris ran into some other ethical difficulties as well: In 2010, a California superior court judge excoriated Harris’ office for failing to notify defense lawyers of known misconduct by a drug lab technician that later led the San Francisco police to shut down an entire section of the lab.

As California Attorney General Kamala Harris ordered a raid on the home of David Daledin, who in 2015 exposed Planned Parenthood officials openly discussing buying and selling the body parts and organs from aborted babies for research, through Undercover videos, I reported in 2017. Rather than opening an investigation into Planned Parenthood for trafficking in human body parts, California’s then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Democrat, filed charges against the undercover investigators, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress. Harris ordered Daleiden’s home to be raided, and using 11 agents, confiscated video research and evidence, in an attempt to prevent millions of people from seeing what actually goes on inside Planned Parenthood.

Diocese Payouts To Sex Abuse Victims

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, which covers 20 counties from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Oregon border, came under fire in 2005 when 33 people accused 10 priests of sexual assault from decades earlier. The diocese settled the lawsuit, offering $35 million to victims one day before a civil trial was to begin, USA Today reported.

Since the mid-1980s Catholic dioceses and religious orders have paid out nearly $3 billion in out of court settlements and court orders awards, according to the watchdog group Bishopaccountability.org.

These are the major awards and settlements since 2000 of the San Francisco Archdiocese, according to National Catholic Reporter – all while Kamala Harris was District Attorney:

2005-04-20 — San Francisco, California — $5.8 million — 4

2005-06-10 — San Francisco, California — $21.2 million — 15

2005-07-08 — San Francisco, California — $16.0 million — 12

2005-10-11 — San Francisco, California — $2.6million — 2

Warnings Shelved and Ignored

An NCR cover story reported that in 1985, a 92-page report on clergy sex abuse was distributed to U.S. bishops concerning more than 100 lawsuits that could predictably cost a billion dollars.

The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a Vatican canon lawyer; Raymond Mouton Jr., a Louisiana criminal lawyer who defended the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, a notorious pedophile priest; and the Rev. Michael Peterson, a psychiatrist, produced the strongly worded document that argued for immediate action to deal with sexual molestation in the church.

The New York Times reported:

In 1985, Cardinal Levada, then a young auxiliary bishop from Los Angeles, was sent by church leaders to meet with the men. The meeting at a Chicago airport hotel went on all day, Father Doyle and Mr. Mouton said recently, with Bishop Levada going through their report almost line by line. They said he seemed enthusiastic about their proposals.

Two weeks later, however, the bishop called Father Doyle and told him that their report was being shelved and that the bishops would convene their own committee to examine the issue. But no such group materialized.

Two decades later, in various sworn depositions, Cardinal Levada would assert that he recalled little from the meeting. But his detailed briefing would have given him a far deeper awareness of the issue than a vast majority of church officials at the time.

It is difficult not to believe in a magnificent conspiracy to cover up the sexual abuse, pederasty and homosexual priests and seminarians. It is also not difficult to connect human trafficking rings to this conspiracy.

The May 2010 New York Times article “Cardinal Has a Mixed Record on Sexual Abuse Cases” explains Cardinal Levada’s history in explicit detail.