Mahony declined to be interviewed for this article. His spokesman, Tod Tamberg, said the People of God report was not meant to be encyclopedic, but "represented some of our most egregious cases and provided a look into the range of responses over time." Mahony never knowingly concealed information about his oversight of predatory priests, Tamberg said.
But The Times' analysis found that although the report included detailed accounts of mistakes involving Michael Baker, Gerald Fessard, Carlos Rodriguez, Carl Sutphin and Michael Wempe -- priests whose alleged sexual misconduct had already been written about in The Times -- it left out or abridged details of other potentially embarrassing cases that had not been widely publicized.
One abridged story involves Father Lynn Caffoe. The report said the archdiocese sent Caffoe to residential treatment in 1991 on the recommendation of a therapist after three families had complained that he had been "overly familiar with their teenage sons." He was then put on inactive leave.
In 1994, while Caffoe was still out of ministry, a high school boy alleged that the priest had abused him, according to the report. The information was forwarded to child-protection authorities, and Caffoe never returned to ministry, the report said.
The report did not mention that three other complaints came in during Mahony's tenure before action was taken -- the first in 1986, five years before Caffoe was removed. It also does not mention that the archdiocese waited more than a month after the families complained to restrict Caffoe's ministry -- and did so only after the priest's therapist reported the suspected child abuse to law enforcement, according to his personnel file summary. Two months later, the priest was living at a Long Beach parish "on sabbatical."
Another priest whose record is abbreviated in the report is Richard Henry. The report stated that he was removed from ministry in 1991 after he pleaded no contest to four counts of lewd conduct with a child under 14.
His case is labeled as one in which the church intervened quickly. But Henry's summary shows four pre-1991 complaints against him -- the first in 1980, when a parishioner passed on a rumor that Henry had a boy "living in his house" every weekend. The other three were made in 1988, during Mahony's tenure: A layperson reported that the priest "grabs little boys and hugs them," a nun said he "favors boys over girls," and a pastor said Henry was spending too much time alone with a boy.
