The leaders of the Jesuit did nothing to prevent pastors from sexually abuse children. The church can provide him for him | New Orleans clergy abuse

num Roman Catholics The religious order was called the Jesuits in the 1970s and 1980s about how to deal with a harassed child they knew, but was still appointed as a pastor.

The correspondence about the late Donald B Dickerson stems from a Louisiana court lawsuit filed in June 2024 that accused him of raping a 17-year-old student at Loyola University where the order runs New Orleans In 1984, it offers a rare, complex behind-the-scenes study how local leaders work to curb predators’ pastors’ repeated abuse of children while encouraging him to seek psychological help during the ongoing scandal of clergy harassment in the Catholic Church around the world.

Dickerson was born in 1936 in Jerseyville, Illinois Louisiana Court documents show that in August 1971, the first vow two years later, the day before he was 37 years old.

The Jesuits went through two years of novice and ended after the final vow of appointment, a process that could take 15 to 20 years. Although the Jesuits were priests until their appointment, they began to use the abbreviation “SJ” as the command of Jesus’ social entry.

Dickerson was assigned to Jesuit High School in its early days New Orleansthere he abused two boys. In early December 1974, he harassed a minor on his way to the high school awards ceremony, according to court documents.

1974 Jesuit Pastor Anthony McKinn – The man who later served as principal of New Orleans High School – described Dickson as lazy and manipulative.

“He will do whatever he likes,” McGinn wrote in his role assessment. Now is an exhibition in a court case seeking damage from Loyola and the Jesuit orders. “This is a dangerous sign that the society will face difficulties in the coming years.”

McKinn concluded that Dixon should not be promoted to theology, which is a level of the next formation, and he did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite negative reviews, Dickson taught theology in Chicago.

In March 1975, several clergymen were discussed at a six-hour meeting with a brother in the Jesuit Provincial Office, Jesuit Pastor Louis Lambertthe sub-province of the region, and the top Jesuits in the region, believe Dickson “has made great progress in solving his problems” and his recent psychological reports were “positive”. At that meeting, despite McGinn’s warning, four pastors voted to send Dickerson to theology.

By 1977, the concerns of senior Jesuit pastor Thomas Stahel reached a crisis. Stahel, a former Jesuit province of New Orleans, learned that Dickerson had harassed minors. Five days before Christmas that year, the provincial capital, and later As executive editor In the U.S. magazine, specific doubts about Dixon were detailed in a lengthy letter to the global leaders of the Jesuits at the time Pedro Arrupe.

“I don’t think we can conscience send Dickerson to the bishop in preparation for appointment,” Stahel wrote to Arrupe, a week before Dickerson became a pastor. “I suggest at least postponing Dixon’s appointment, and we raise a question to him about his stay in society.”

“Under sufficient control”

According to the letter, Arupe has agreed that Dixon’s appointment should be postponed.

It is not clear whether Arrupe responded to the letter. The National Catholic journalist has not yet obtained other documents, detailing the back and forth dialogue between the superior general and the province of New Orleans.

Stahel wrote that he first contacted Arrupe to help with the debate with Lambert about how to deal with Dickerson.

Dickerson’s Jesuit boss, Dickerson’s Jesuit boss, believed that his “psychological problems were under sufficient control.”

However, Stahel details Dickerson’s serious concerns about the “fitness” of the priest, and he finds himself in a stalemate with Lambert. “He believes Dixon has not been at risk for others appointed, and he describes the recent incident as a regrettable mistake. I am not convinced of his reasons,” Stehull wrote.

“I have a clear impression [Father] Lambert’s resistance in this matter was not the merit of his case, but the privilege of insisting on his own vice-publicity in the jealous defender,” Stahel wrote, “He was sure I shouldn’t have anything to say about Dixon’s appointment, and it seemed impossible.

Stahel described the disagreement, saying Lambert believed Dixon’s misconduct was a neural result and rejected Arrupe’s order to postpone it as a “strong weapon strategy.”

Lambert, Stahel said: “Arguing that once a person is approved by society (as Dickerson once), society promises him. Through this reasoning, nothing a person can do between approval and appointment cannot disqualify him.”

In September 1978, Arupe said in a letter to Lambert that he had received a psychological report about Dixon, but details of the report were not readily available. “I will wait for further information from Father Stahel,” the superior general wrote.

Dickerson received psychotherapy at least twice in 1975 and 1978. Later, he pointed out that he had received “extensive psychotherapy” at Foundation House, a former treatment facility. The servant of the deputy Jemez Springs in New Mexico.

Dickerson was not appointed until the summer of 1979, when Stahel said Dickerson told him that sexual harassment of a minor boy was “a relatively trivial incident.”

Provincial level disagrees.

“I feel like I can appoint him until we eliminate as much of any concern that such an event will happen again,” Stahel wrote.

“I think he should be appointed”

But Starhel’s concerns about Dixon had apparently subsided at the end of that year, as Dixon understood what the “scandal” of harassment of children could be caused. “I said I think he should be ordered,” Stahel wrote in a memorandum of December 30, 1979.

Dixon begins teaching at Dallas Boys Jesuit Preparatory School same year. But in 1981, he was removed from Jesuit Dallas after the child’s parents charged him. He was taken to St John Berchmans of a United Cathedral in Shreveport, Louisiana in September 1981.

A $12 million lawsuit Dickerson was later accused of raping a boy in 1982.

That year, Stahel wrote to Dickerson, hoping that “nothing will happen in Shreveport”. The case was resolved with undisclosed payments.

Two years later, in a letter to Dixon in August 1984 Jesuit Pastor Edmund RodriguezNew Orleans’ new province noted that he had “the responsibility to protect society and the church from unacceptable actions of its members.”

In 1984, Dickson’s psychological image, written by the servant of Paraclat, was a man’s order to a troubled pastor, called him “very sick” and required intensive, long-term treatment. During Dixon’s assessment, he said he had been harassed by a man at the age of six, according to clinical notes in the latest New Orleans lawsuit.

In September 1984, a mother wrote to Bishop Alexandria-shreveport, saying Dickerson had harassed her son.

“He was rejected by his natural father lately,” the woman said of her son. “He was not helped by Father Dixon, but was further mentally damaged,” she added, adding that Dixon would never work near the child.

Court documents show Jesuit Pastor Thomas Barberito In August 1984, I talked with the bishop about the “situation with Father Dixon”. According to Barberito, the bishop said he would raise concerns to the provincial level if the party involved contacted his office.

Dickerson’s Jesuit boss assigned him to Loyola University in 1985. There, New Orleans lawsuit alleges that he abused another minor. However, even while facing the investigation, Dixon received support from his direct superiors.

Rodriguez wrote in a February 28, 1986 newsletter: “The benefits of doubt must be given.

But in early March 1986, after Rodriguez received three separate charges against Dickerson within a week, the provincial level encouraged him to leave the clergy “to save everyone from a very painful process.”

Dickerson expressed his gratitude to the provincial level for “willing to suspend judgment on the moral culprit and acknowledge my sincere efforts to overcome my tendencies.” On March 12, 1986, Rodriguez wrote that he had contacted Jesuit Pastor Peter Hans Colvinbachand then ordered the general to take office, demanding that Dixon be fired from the lives of society and clergy.

Since his labor, Dickson has been at the center of several lawsuits outside the New Orleans case. It is unclear whether he faces criminal charges for alleging sexual abuse of minors.

In 2009, a case Being settled He was accused of harassing an eighth grade boy. Dickerson was charged in 2010 with the aforementioned $12 million lawsuit, which raped an 11-year-old boy in St John Berchmans in 1982. Prosecuting the school In 2019, Dickerson raped him on a trip to Alabama decades ago.

During his 18 years as the Jesuit General, Arrupe became a respected leader, and when he resigned in 1983, his religious group was loved by a two-year-old ban on stroke. He is known for his survivors of the bombing of the United States at the end of World War II.

Critical Causes of ArupOpened in Rome in 2019 and is still active. Attorneys Richard Trahant, John Denenea and Soren Giselson represented the plaintiff in the New Orleans lawsuit centered on Dickson, so Arrupe should not be considered as being considered among the Saints.

Although Arrupe was a superior general, he could have prevented Dickerson’s orders, biography and statements, showing his opposition to the authoritarian leadership style of the Jesuit commands. If local Jesuit officials decide to order Dixon, it is unclear whether Alup will step in to stop it-or whether he has all the facts that support this decision.

Author and Canon attorney Dawn Eden Goldstein said it was unclear whether there was enough evidence that the way the Jesuits handled the Dickson case was cover-up or intentional negligence. “At this point, we don’t know if this could be a superior case of the process recognized at the time,” she said. However, she added that such explanations do not justify their actions.

The Jesuit Conference in Canada and the United States did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and it is unclear whether other records about Dixon are in the Jesuit documents in Rome. McGinn is the only Jesuit official still alive in this story.

As of the weekend of August 22, the lawsuit is underway.