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Secret recordings, police interviews raise more questions about Archdiocese's reaction to abuser

“They can’t even do something as simple as put somebody on the list who admitted it,” said the victim.

By David Hammer / Eyewitness Investigator, Ramon Antonio Vargas The Guardian

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Published: 4:58 PM CDT October 16, 2023
Updated: 3:29 PM CDT October 20, 2023

WARNING - this story includes details of sexual abuse that will be difficult for some viewers to read/hear.

More than 10 months after he pleaded guilty to child molestation and after his victim received a substantial financial settlement, the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans has at last acknowledged that deacon VM Wheeler was a credibly accused child molester.

Wheeler, a prominent attorney and church benefactor who died this spring, was ordained in 2018 by New Orleans archbishop Gregory Aymond. Over the next four years, Wheeler would be accused of molesting a 12-year-old boy in the early 2000s, suspended from ministry, arrested on suspicion of raping the child, charged with aggravated sexual battery, accused in a lawsuit of trying to pay the victim $400,000 to stop working with police and – in December 2022 – pleaded guilty to indecent behavior with a juvenile.

Still, Aymond would not make Wheeler the 78th cleric on his archdiocese’s list of clergymen faced with credible allegations of child molestation until this month, after WWL-TV and the Guardian questioned his omission from the roster in August and settlement of the victim’s civil suit against Wheeler’s estate in September.

Now, the station and newspaper have obtained police interviews and secret recordings that raise fresh questions about why Wheeler wasn’t added to the list much sooner, how the archbishop and other church leaders handled repeated complaints against Wheeler, and why prominent Catholics with close ties to Aymond were able to try to intimidate a victim whose identity the church was sworn to protect.

The new information starkly illustrates the amount of pressure those loyal to the church can exert on those speaking out even when they are relatively well-heeled themselves – and as the archdiocese continues roiling from a decades-old clerical molestation scandal that forced it to file for bankruptcy protection in 2020.

Recently, the victim disclosed his identity publicly to the Guardian.

LOSING FAITH PART 1

*A warning - this story includes details of sexual abuse that will be difficult for some viewers to hear.

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