At least six months after Cardinal Roger M. Mahony told his superiors at the Vatican that a videotape provided proof of a priest's criminal misconduct with high school boys, the head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese told the public that the tape showed no sexual activity between Father Lynn Caffoe and the boys, according to court records.
Documents newly filed in the Caffoe civil case provide the first glimpse into confidential priest files that Mahony sought for four years to keep sealed in the midst of a sexual abuse scandal that engulfed the archdiocese. He eventually took the secrecy fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a letter to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before Ratzinger became pope in April 2005, Mahony said Caffoe had videotaped "partially naked" boys in a state of sexual arousal. The tape was "objective verification that criminal behavior did occur," Mahony wrote, according to papers filed last week in Los Angeles County Superior Court in a lawsuit by four plaintiffs who allege that Caffoe abused them.
In October 2005, in what Mahony told parishioners was the "fullest possible disclosure" about the scandal, he reported that a videotape had been discovered in 1992 in Caffoe's bedroom, depicting "improper behavior" with high school boys. But the cardinal said the boys were "fully clothed" and there was no sexual activity.
Since that report, an appellate court ordered Mahony to turn over confidential files to prosecutors, and a Superior Court judge ruled that the files must be given to plaintiffs suing the church for damages for allegedly failing to protect them from pedophile priests.
J. Michael Hennigan, Mahony's lawyer, said he sees no contradiction between Mahony's public statements and the file contents because at the time the cardinal spoke out, the archdiocese was under court order not to reveal the contents of the personnel files. Hennigan said two judges had reviewed the material and considered the summary to be adequate. The statements "were not intended to be a description of the contents of the files, which we were not allowed to do," Hennigan said. They merely served as "an index, a chronology."
He said he does not think Mahony ever saw the videotape, which is not in the church files and may never have been there, Hennigan said.
