A week after Louisiana state police obtained a warrant to search for documents in the files of the New Orleans archdiocese pertaining to the handling of sex-abuse complaints, a courthouse clerk released a copy of the warrant.
The warrant stated that “previous archbishops, the highest-ranking official in the archdiocese, not only knew of the sexual abuse and failed to report all the claims to law enforcement, but spent archdiocese funding to support the accused.”
The warrant also contended that “multiple victims” were transported “outside of Louisiana where they were sexually abused”; that some victims were brought to the seminary to swim in the nude before being “sexually assaulted or abused”; and that “in some instances, ‘gifts’ were given to abuse victims by the accused with instructions to pass on or give the gift to certain priests at the next school or church.
“It was said that the ‘gift’ was a form of signaling to another priest that the person was a target for sexual abuse,” the document continued.