In 2002, Cornelius Buckley, a Jesuit priest and former colleague of McGuire and Fessio at USF, reported to the Chicago Province that McGuire was traveling with the same boy, who was named Dominick. Al Naucke, socius of the California Province, also passed on the information, as well as Fessio's 2000 concern about the suspicious arrangement, to Chicago priests. In 2007, after a phone conversation with Dominick, Buckley reported to Chicago that the boy "had been abused by McGuire for a couple of years" as a teenager, abuse that Buckley described as "being of an intimate character."
What are the legal and ethical implications of how complaints against McGuire, particularly the pivotal allegation brought by Charles's family, were handled? At the time when Charles alleged his molestation, California's Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act required professionals who interact with children — doctors, teachers, therapists, and others — to report suspicions of child molestation to the appropriate government agencies.
Courtesy of alleged victim “Mark”
Jesuit priest and former USF professor Donald McGuire with one of his alleged victims in Walnut Creek in 1982.
Kimberly Sandie
San Francisco priest Joseph Fessio learned McGuire had allegedly molested a Bay Area teenager in 1993, and passed on the information to Jesuit superiors — but not the police.
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Clergy were not specified in the legislation as mandated reporters until 1997. Nevertheless, they can and should be construed as falling under the law's pre-1997 category for adults who professionally supervise or interact with children in any public or private setting, according to San Diego attorney Andrea Leavitt, who has helped draft revisions adopted in the state's reporting laws and has represented plaintiffs in sexual abuse cases.
"The failure to report is to knowingly expose more children to being sexually abused," she says. "You're a handmaiden, if you will, of the abuser."
In 2002, former Assemblyman and Republican Minority Leader Rod Pacheco, who went on to become district attorney of Riverside County, authored a bill that specifically required priests to disclose knowledge of child abuse that took place before they were listed as mandated reporters in 1997. But the bill was watered down before passage.
"It boiled down to more of an encouragement than a requirement," says Pacheco, a former altar boy who attended Catholic schools and described himself as deeply disturbed by priest abuse scandals in the U.S. "Quite frankly, that wasn't satisfactory to me. It was bad enough that priests were molesting children, but 100 times worse that the Catholic Church was protecting them."
In sum, the legal ramifications of how Charles's complaint was handled are unclear. Fessio said he had fulfilled his responsibilities by reporting what he heard about McGuire to Jesuit officials in Chicago in 1993, and said the blame lies with them for not taking action to control the priest. Fessio pointed in particular to a 1998 "letter of good standing" that then-Chicago Provincial Dick Baumann wrote to the Bishop of Las Vegas, indicating that McGuire "had never been accused of improprieties with minors." Two years later, Baumann apparently realized his mistake and declined to issue such a letter when the bishop made another request. "For a later provincial to write a letter saying, 'We have no indication that there have been any complaints about Father McGuire,' to me, that's the most reprehensible thing," Fessio says.
Baumann could not be reached for comment. According to Jesuit online publications, he was posted as of December on a mission in Ghana. A man who answered the telephone at the home of Crotty, the former school administrator who also learned of McGuire's abuse of Charles, refused to speak to a reporter. State law in 1993 unequivocally required that educators report suspicions of abuse to civil authorities.
The question of whether Charles's case should have been brought to police is also complicated by the fact that his family had no desire to do so. Today, Charles's father says that while the Jesuits' early responses to his family's complaints were inadequate, the Society's recent actions have been more satisfactory.
"I think the Jesuits were slow to believe ill of a fellow member; and underestimated [the] nature and scope of the problem," he wrote in an e-mail to SF Weekly. He credited Chicago Provincial Edward Schmidt, who stepped down in 2009, with treating his family more compassionately than earlier officials. "When Father Ed Schmidt did step up to the plate, their response was really excellent in our view," he said, declining to elaborate on what the response entailed, or whether they received financial compensation. "Our family has had what I would call a miraculous reconciliation and healing with them because of their sincerity and good faith."
After Charles's complaint, the legal landscape changed. From 2000 on, when Fessio and Buckley informed the Jesuits of McGuire's additional inappropriate activities with Dominick, clergy were specifically listed under state law as mandated reporters of child abuse. Buckley, now chaplain at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif., declined to comment for this article. "I have nothing to say. That case is dead. He's in jail," he says. "I'm sorry. I can't give you any information." Naucke, the California socius who Jesuit records indicate passed on their concerns to Chicago, said he did not consider reporting the information on McGuire to police or child welfare officials. Fessio and Buckley "didn't tell me anything that would have triggered that," he says. "They had some rather vague concerns."
Fessio defends his actions, saying the report of the suspicious guardianship arrangement did not involve specific suggestions of sexual abuse. "It was not even an allegation; it was only that Father McGuire was in New England claiming that he was adopting this person," he says. "There was no abuse there. I just thought it should be looked into."
