December 12, 2002

Bishop and Prosecutor Joust Over Subpoenas on Abuse

HOENIX, Dec. 10 — The leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, Bishop Thomas O'Brien, promised this spring to be the most open church leader in the United States in cooperating with the civil authorities in investigating sexual abuse of minors by priests.

He has turned over thousands of church documents to county prosecutors and announced last month that he had uncovered four dozen accusations of criminal sexual conduct by priests and other church employees over the last 30 years. He said the diocese had paid nearly $2 million to settle such cases since he became bishop in 1982.

But in recent days Bishop O'Brien and the Maricopa County prosecutor, Richard M. Romley, have been engaged in an escalating battle over the diocese's response to broad grand jury subpoenas seeking records of sexual misconduct by church employees.

Mr. Romley said today in an interview that despite the bishop's promise of full cooperation with the expanding criminal investigation, the church's response to requests for information had been grudging and tardy.

"Perhaps we spell `cooperation' differently," Mr. Romley said. "Since the start of this investigation, I have held out my hand to the church because I believe it is in their interest to resolve this more rather than less quickly. Unfortunately, we have had to move into a more traditional, adversarial investigation."

Mr. Romley said he had found evidence that Bishop O'Brien counseled families whose children were abused by priests not to report the incidents to the civil authorities, while promising to deal with the offenders internally. The prosecutor suggested that such actions could constitute obstruction of justice and put the bishop in personal legal jeopardy.

Mr. Romley's remarks prompted an outburst from Bishop O'Brien's lawyer, who said last week that he would have to be a "moron" to advise his client to cooperate with the prosecutor under threat of indictment without a grant of immunity.

The lawyer, Michael C. Manning, said the prosecutor indicated last week that Bishop O'Brien was a potential target of the investigation.

"The bishop has never sought immunity," Mr. Manning said, clarifying his earlier remarks. "But this is certainly a threat you have to take cognizance of as a lawyer."

Neither the prosecutor nor Mr. Manning would say whether Bishop O'Brien had been subpoenaed to testify, citing grand jury secrecy rules. But Mr. Romley said that his investigation was in its early stages and that any decisions about the church's culpability or the bishop's were a long way off.

The investigation is one of many around the country by local and state prosecutors into sexual abuse accusations against priests and the apparent cover-up of those accusations by diocesan officials. Today in Concord, N.H., the bishop of Manchester avoided an indictment of the diocese by acknowledging that the way the diocese had dealt with sexual abuse accusations against priests could probably have led to a child-endangerment conviction. The diocese agreed to state oversight of its handling of such cases.

Last week, the prosecutor's office here indicted a Phoenix priest and a former priest on charges that they sexually molested boys in the late 1970's. Both cases occurred when Bishop O'Brien was a senior official of the Phoenix diocese, and the families of both of the reported victims said he had told them to keep quiet about the incidents. Both of the accused priests were transferred to other parishes and later abused other children, prosecutors said.

The parents of one of the boys who were said to have been attacked, Benjamin Kulina, now a police lieutenant in Mesa, Ariz., said they reported to the diocese in 1979 that John Giandelone, then a priest at St. Joseph's parish in Phoenix, had sexually molested their 15-year-old son on several occasions.

The Kulinas were given an appointment with then-Father O'Brien, the vicar general of the diocese, a statement from the parents said.

"After they advised Father O'Brien about the sexual abuse that had occurred, they were admonished by Father O'Brien not to say anything to anybody, since this would `do more harm to young Benjamin,' and that `they would take care of the matter,' " according to the statement. "Father O'Brien told the Kulinas that to disclose what had happened would hurt Benjamin, it would hurt the church and that nobody would believe them."

Mr. Giandelone was transferred to a parish in nearby Chandler, and four years later pleaded guilty to molesting another teenager. He was then removed from the priesthood.

Mr. Manning, the bishop's lawyer, said that the bishop had no recollection of meeting with the Kulinas and that the church could find no record of such an encounter.

Mr. Romley said the two cases brought last week were just the beginning of a large-scale investigation involving several lawyers and investigators in his office. The office has set up a hot line to accept tips about current or past cases of abuse by priests.

"There is a tremendous amount of information that has come into this office already," Mr. Romley said. "We're taking this one piece at a time."

He said he would meet with his staff this week to decide which cases to investigate and in what order.

Kim Sue Lia Perkes, a spokeswoman for the Phoenix diocese, said the bishop and other diocesan officials were disappointed that Mr. Romley had changed his tone in his dealings with the church.

"We don't want to be in an adversarial relationship with the county attorney's office," Ms. Perkes said. "No one is more anxious to have the county attorney complete his work than the bishop. This is really a miserable situation for him because he really wants to concentrate on the work of the church."

Ms. Perkes said that many of the cases being investigated were a quarter-century old and that the church's record keeping at the time was poor. She said that Bishop O'Brien had repeatedly apologized to families of victims, but that he was constrained by grand jury secrecy rules from discussing the matter more fully.

"It's hard for our compassion and our concern to shine through when we're bound by grand jury secrecy," Ms. Perkes said. "Our hands are tied in a legal sense."