NEW ORLEANS — Leaked court records obtained by the Guardian newspaper and shared with WWL Louisiana shed new light on why a Catholic high school chaplain suddenly retired two years ago, directly contradicting public statements from the priest himself and the New Orleans Archdiocese.
The records also show the archdiocese assigned Father Paul Hart to be chaplain at Brother Martin High School in 2017, five years after Hart confessed to sexual acts with a teenage girl. Brother Martin asked Archbishop Gregory Aymond to remove Hart in January 2022 because of those revelations of sexual misconduct, according to a letter written by the school’s principal and president.
The letter makes no mention of Hart’s health, the reason given publicly by the archdiocese and by Hart himself.
Ramon Antonio Vargas broke the story of the allegations against Hart in The Times-Picayune in January 2022. He said he asked the archdiocese at that time if Hart was being removed from the school because of sexual misconduct and was told Hart was retiring to battle brain cancer.
Hart said the same in a telephone interview with Vargas, according to the newspaper story.
Hart did in fact have brain cancer, and he died in October 2022, according to announcements of his death.
But the records leaked to Vargas and first reported in the Guardian newspaper include a letter Brother Martin sent to parents on Jan. 18, 2022, explaining that school leaders had asked Aymond to “relieve Father Paul of his duties as chaplain” after learning about unspecified allegations from Hart’s “distant past.”
The records leaked to the Guardian also confirm that Hart had admitted to a church review board in 2012 that he had kissed, groped and simulated sex with a 17-year-old girl in the 1990s.
The review board wrote in its findings that Hart’s admitted actions constituted child sexual abuse under a 2002 church policy. Church law after 2002 made 18 the age of adulthood. But another document shows Aymond later cleared Hart of any child abuse by rejecting the review board’s 8-2 vote and instead following church law in place in the 1990s, which considered anyone 16 or older to be an adult.
Statements in the documents indicate Aymond repeatedly apologized to Brother Martin’s president, Gregory Rando, for assigning Hart to the school. WWL Louisiana asked the archdiocese if Aymond apologized and if the church stands by its initial statements about why Hart left as chaplain.
“We stand by all past statements and offer no further comment,” spokeswoman Sarah McDonald said.
The Brother Martin officials also say they learned about Hart’s past misconduct from the archdiocese only after receiving a tip from Richard Trahant, an attorney representing dozens of abuse victims. Trahant claims in court transcripts that he didn’t provide any information that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill ordered to be kept secret. But Grabill ordered an investigation of the leak and ruled Trahant violated the secrecy order.
She fined him $400,000. Two U.S. district judges have upheld the fine, which Trahant is now appealing to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Jason Berry, the first investigative reporter to expose the clergy abuse coverup in the 1980s, teamed with Vargas on the Guardian story. He said the New Orleans Archdiocese has gone to greater lengths than other bankrupt dioceses to keep its abuse files secret.
“I would call the New Orleans bankruptcy the absolute worst-case scenario,” said Berry, whose 1992 book “Lead Us Not into Temptation” exposed a massive coverup of child molestation in the Lafayette Diocese.
He interviewed Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, who agreed to make all of the abuse files in his archdiocese public at the University of New Mexico.
Wester said, “You're only as sick as your secrets,” Berry reported in the Guardian.
“And the secrets that keep spilling out of this bankruptcy... in New Orleans stink to high heaven,” Berry said.
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