Although he could have immediately claimed a spot inside the clubby legal community that served local corporations and dealmakers, Mouton preferred to jostle and jab as a defense counsel and a plaintiff’s lawyer. Thriving on controversy, he challenged the mayor of Lafayette on a host of political issues and tangled with the all-powerful local sheriff on behalf of a group of deputies. He represented an oil driller who had an affair with his boss’s wife (the boss had shot him when he found out) and he had forced the state legislature to pay millions for a car crash that occurred at a highway construction site. Mouton even sued a judge to have him evicted from an office in a courthouse that was short on space for the public defender. The judge gave up without a fight.
In his love of legal combat Mouton was a younger version of J. Minos Simon. And like the old alligator hunter, Mouton lived a life of considerable excess. He smoked and drank enough for three ordinary men. He spent lavishly on himself and on others. And when a big case was headed for trial, he poured himself into the work as if the fate of the world depended on the outcome. As the trial date neared, he became obsessive and so focused that everything else, including his family, receded from his mind. Facts, arguments and strategies whirled in his head and sometimes he worked around-the-clock for days on end with little or no sleep.
Mouton deployed his full-court press early in the Gauthe case, burying himself in the sordid reports on his client’s crimes and flying to Massachusetts, where the priest had been hidden in a treatment center. There he met a slightly built thirty-nine-year-old who was so bland and well mannered that he would have gone unnoticed in any crowd, anywhere. Indeed, Fr. Gauthe was a man distinguished only by his crimes, and these were grotesque. In each case he began by selecting a boy to victimize as he faced his congregation on Sunday mornings. Once he chose his targets he lavished them with attention and gradually talked them into a variety of sex acts inside the Church sanctuary, in his residence, and on outdoor outings. He photographed them and in some cases persuaded boys to have sex with each other while he watched.
Fr. Gauthe didn’t deny what he had done because he wanted the chance to explain that he too was a victim. He claimed to be under the influence of a dark psychological impulse—he called it a “sex monster”—which he was unable to control.
The sex monster offered Ray Mouton the glimmer of an insanity defense and leverage to seek a plea bargain. The attorney’s goal became a deal that would spare the victims from testifying in court, and give his client some hope of freedom in his old age. As summer turned to fall Mouton grew confident about his strategy because Fr. Gauthe assured him he would say and do anything he asked to help him reach his objective. However, Mouton wasn’t sure the Church would do the same.
From the very start of the case, Mouton found himself stonewalled by the people who were paying his bills. Fr. Gauthe’s guilt might be mitigated if he could show that his superiors in the diocese failed to supervise him and other troubled priests. However, diocesan officials were fighting the civil suit brought by the Gastal family, and weren’t eager to share any information with Mouton for fear that it might then wind up in Minos Simon’s hands. Time and again Fr. Gauthe’s lawyer requested documents or interviews with church officials, and time and again he was refused.
The frustration Mouton felt as he dealt with the diocese built up inside him until his wife Janis could no longer ignore it. Janis had been Mouton’s best friend and closest adviser ever since they met in college and ran away to Mexico to get married. She thought about what her husband told her about the case and instinctively decided that the diocese must have a much bigger problem than her husband imagined.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” she told him. “The Church knows there’s a nest of pedophiles.”
Fortunately for Mouton, information flows in many directions, and from many sources. Even as the Church was stonewalling Fr. Gauthe’s lawyer, Minos Simon received sensitive information from a source inside the diocese, about a secret archive, one separate from the regular records, that was kept under lock and key and could be accessed only by the highest officials in a diocese. He told Simon to ask for access to the “secret archive dossiers” on twenty-seven priests. In Fr. Gauthe’s file was proof that his sexual interest in children was first known to the Church during his time in the seminary more than a decade before the Gastals came forward with their complaint. One church official had even opposed Fr. Gauthe’s ordination, to no avail, on the basis of his “affinity” for young boys.
Simon used the files, which included reports on priests who had been picked up by police while soliciting sex from men, to link the abuse of minor boys to homosexuality in the priesthood. Since at least 1961, the Vatican had made a point of discouraging bishops from ordaining men who might be homosexual, because this orientation was considered sinful. However, over time the Church adjusted its theology to say that being gay is not sinful, but every homosexual act is an offense against God. This apparent softening was accompanied by a steady rise in the proportion of gay men in the priesthood. As church officials knew, the percentage of homosexuals in the priesthood was higher—by a factor of four or more—than that of the general population.
No study had ever found that homosexuals were more likely to abuse minors, but by the early 1980s several researchers, including Richard Sipe, were investigating the ways an exclusively male institution that discouraged all forms of sex actually attracted many men with psychological problems and then steered them toward secret, sometimes criminal sexual practices. A therapist and social scientist, Sipe was also a part-time lecturer in the department of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School. In time he would be recognized as a leading scholarly critic of the Church. However, when he began his research in the 1960s he was still a Benedictine monk and priest, fully immersed in the life of the Church and committed to its culture.
Sipe’s change of heart would grow out of thousands of therapy sessions and interviews with ordained men who had violated their vows and revealed to him the hidden realities of the clerical world. As a mental health professional, he was fascinated to discover and document new truths in a corner of humanity that was previously closed. But as a man who had committed his life to the Church, he experienced a slow-motion personal crisis that left him feeling isolated, and sometimes unmoored. These feelings increased as he realized that almost no one in the priesthood adhered to the rules of celibacy and that a powerful culture of secrecy and discipline allowed priests to get away with serious sexual crimes.
Of course as the sex abuse scandal evolved, traditionalists downplayed the effects of the church culture and returned again and again to the argument that the problem was not pedophilia but a matter of gay clergy seeking out partners who just happened to be legally underage. According to this analysis, the Church didn’t have a sex abuse crisis, it had a problem with homosexual priests who preferred young partners.
In Louisiana of the 1980s, Simon’s move to link the Gastal lawsuit to gays in the priesthood—suggesting homosexuality was to blame—served his need to put the Church under greater pressure. To his mind, the presence of gay clergy was yet another sign of criminality in the Church. On the other side of this argument stood experts like Sipe. Noting that heterosexual and homosexual men abused minors at roughly the same rate, Sipe considered the issue of homosexuality a smoke screen. He said it was deployed by Church leaders to distract people from the fact that Catholic priests were using their status—they were, after all, especially close to God—to commit sex crimes, and their superiors were covering for them.
As Fr. Gauthe’s attorney, Raymond Mouton didn’t need to parse the finer points of what constitutes pedophilia or navigate the issue of homosexuality in the priesthood. He only needed to understand the content and context of Gilbert Gauthe’s crimes. Given his client’s own statements, the content was clear: he had committed every crime he was charged with, and more. However, the context remained occluded. At every turn Mouton saw signs that the dioc
ese had covered up for Fr. Gauthe and many others. But, no one in the hierarchy would tell him the full story. Their refusal was all the more galling to Mouton because in taking up Fr. Gauthe’s defense he had accepted a client he found repugnant and opened himself to ridicule and even death threats from locals. His wife and children had been subjected to similar abuse because, as people said, the head of the household was defending a “pervert,” so that made him a pervert too.
Given the fact that an angry father in Baton Rouge had recently shot and killed a man charged with abusing his son—he did this in front of TV cameras, no less—Mouton reasonably feared for his own safety and the safety of his family. This kind of risk was not what he signed up for when he agreed to take on the case. Neither did he expect the effects that the case had on his own faith. A closet idealist, Mouton found himself hoping that just as Louisiana stands apart from the rest of the United States, the Lafayette diocese might be different from the Church across America. Even people who loved Louisiana understood that the state tolerated more corruption and misbehavior than others. Huey Long didn’t come from Vermont. This understanding of the state as an especially corrupt place gave Mouton hope that national and international church leaders would do the right thing when properly informed.
Ironically enough, it was one of the stonewalling church officials in Lafayette who put Mouton in touch with the men who would help crush his hopes for the larger church. Monsignor Larroque had urged Mouton to speak with Michael Peterson at the St. Luke Institute so he might learn more about the problems of priests and, presumably, develop a bit more compassion for Gilbert Gauthe. When Mouton called, Peterson invited him to Washington, but he warned Mouton that he wouldn’t have much encouragement to offer. As perhaps the leading consultant for the Church on this problem, Peterson knew it was broad and deep and, in his experience, no one in authority was doing much to address it.
* * *
On a day in January 1985 when the press back home revealed that church officials had first heard allegations against Fr. Gauthe ten years before the Gastals complained, Raymond Mouton flew to Washington, rented a car, and traveled to the Maryland suburbs to begin his crash course in sexual deviance and church politics. At St. Luke’s, Michael Peterson couldn’t completely explain how sexual abusers came into being, although he noted that some were themselves abused as children, and that some showed signs of hormonal imbalance or neurological abnormalities. When it came to understanding the causes of this behavior, Peterson told Mouton the answer resided in a combination of nature and nurture.
Peterson could be more definitive when it came to the way men like Gilbert Gauthe operated as adults. Unlike the violent rapists many people imagine when they consider sex crimes, repeated studies had found that most pedophiles were charming and generous. They devote considerable time, energy, and even cash to building trust with their victims, and come to believe they are establishing real relationships with them. In this context, they convince themselves that children are equal participants in sexual acts and that they share in the responsibility for whatever occurs.
“They enjoyed it” and “I didn’t hurt anyone” are familiar refrains that therapists hear from adults who have had sex with children. In the 1970s the idea that children could enjoy sex with adults fueled the rise of a small but vocal group of activists who sought to decriminalize and even de-stigmatize pedophilia on the grounds that it was harmless and perhaps even beneficial for them. At the extreme edges of this perspective stood groups like Vereniging Martijn in Holland, and the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which began advocating the legalization of pedophilia in 1978. In time the world would learn that Catholic priests were involved in both groups. One, a member of the Selesian order, would join Vereniging Martijn’s board of directors.
Because he was in the business of treating them as a psychiatrist, and he felt some priestly empathy for most every sinner, Fr. Peterson hoped that sexual offenders could be helped. This idea was supported by the occasional paper, published in an academic journal, reporting a therapist’s apparent success using talk therapy, or hormones that suppressed the sex drive. It found more currency in interviews that certain experts granted to the popular press and in TV programs like a documentary aired by the Public Broadcasting System in 1984. Titled The Child Molesters, the film featured sex offenders at a special rehabilitation facility in New Jersey. The Child Molesters portrayed patients and professionals who seemed sincerely engaged in a promising program that would likely produce a cure. This thinking found some support from experts such as criminologist Donald West at the University of Cambridge who appeared in the film citing “practical and humanitarian reasons” for authorities to provide pedophiles with treatment instead rather than imprisoning them.
While films such as The Child Molesters and academics like Donald West would suggest pedophiles could be reformed, the best research at the time showed that no specific type or combination of therapies was definitively successful. Indeed, every time experts developed a theory on the causes of pedophilia, evidence arose to contradict the premise. Contrary to popular belief, pedophiles were not more likely to have been abused as children. They weren’t disproportionately homosexual (although the vast majority were male) nor were they encouraged in their crimes by the use of pornography. Indeed, the most confounding thing about pedophiles was that they were so difficult to distinguish from the general population.
Mouton observed that the Church had taken the “good as new” perspective to heart. One of the chief proponents of this view was a doctor named Fred Berlin, who was Richard Sipe’s colleague at Johns Hopkins. Berlin was one of many researchers who argued that with psychological treatment, many if not most sex offenders could get control over their compulsions. As then archbishop of Milwaukee Rembert Weakland would later recall, Berlin attended several national conferences of bishops in the 1980s and suggested that they refrain from dismissing priest offenders and rely on programs akin to the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous to treat them.
“He gave us hope for them,” said Weakland. “And told us we would do a better job with them than any outsiders. They would be more motivated to change if they stayed in the Church.”
Berlin’s advice appealed to ordained men who were already inclined to take care of each other. But Mouton couldn’t grasp why any organization would tolerate repeated criminal behavior, especially crimes against children. Even if bishops considered only their own welfare and status, they should have thrown out the bad apples. When Mouton’s questions about the institutional Church reached a point where Peterson was out of his depth, he suggested a little field trip to the District of Columbia to see Tom Doyle at the Dominican House of Studies. A graduate school of theology, the House of Studies occupied a sprawling, castle-like building set on the south side of Michigan Avenue, across from the Catholic University of America. Since it was run by Doyle’s religious order, he was permitted to keep a small office there, safe from the eyes and ears of the staff at the Vatican Embassy.
* * *
Doyle met Peterson and Mouton at the front door of the Dominican House of Studies and asked them if they wanted to meet in the chapel or his office.
Mouton chose the office and Doyle brought them down a long corridor and then upstairs to a spare little room. In the course of several hours Doyle explained the way canon law and church practices applied to priests charged with abuse. In his view, bishops had the power to immediately suspend someone who was under suspicion and could bar him from acting as a priest while an investigation was conducted. In practice, however, bishops almost never acted decisively and it was extremely difficult for anyone to defrock—the term “laicize” was also used—a fully credentialed priest.
Considered an almost cruel and unusual punishment, laicization would happen only after investigations and arguments that could take a decade or longer. And even then, a priest found to have abused children could retain his priestly status because of a variety of loopholes. It was much eas
ier, Doyle noted, for a bishop to send an accused priest to another parish, another part of the country, or another part of the world.
How often had abusive priests been shuffled around? Doyle, Mouton, and Peterson knew of more than two dozen instances, but no one was keeping a record of cases around the country. Fr. Gauthe, a lone abuser, had confessed to molesting dozens of boys. With more than 60,000 priests and sixty million Catholics in America alone, the possibilities were frightening.
As the only attorney in the room, Mouton couldn’t help but reflect on the financial liability the Church faced if even a small percentage of priests had violated a man, woman, or child. If 2 percent were involved, that would mean 1,200 potential perpetrators and many times that many victims. If victims began bringing lawsuits, the settlements could easily run into the hundreds of millions of dollars or more. This burden would fall almost entirely on local dioceses, which serve as the financial backstop for local parishes. Typically organized as a series of corporations, dioceses manage most Church income while also paying the bills. Although their resources were substantial, with enough abuse settlements many could be pushed into bankruptcy.
However, it wasn’t just the financial threat that troubled Mouton. He also worried about the damage done to everyone from child victims to families and the Church itself. He may not have been a frequent attendee at Mass, but he still loved the Church and, like Doyle, believed it could do important work in the world. However, if the institution was to pursue its worthy missions, it would have to be saved from itself.
Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal Page 4