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5 Feb, 2013

Sex scandals, lies mar US churches: China Daily

LOS ANGELES – Anyone who rapes teenage boys and girls is a crime, but when priests had sex with teenagers, archbishops tried to cover them up to avoid punishment. That has happened in churches in Los Angeles and other US cities.

In 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid at least $660 million to settle sex abuse charges, and then joined a torturous legal defense of a privilege to conceal its part in that history.

Last week, in response to a court order, the archdiocese released internal records documenting the actions church officials took, or failed to take, when priests were accused of abuse.

Those documents revealed that in the 1980s, then-Archbishop Roger Mahony and his top aide, Thomas Curry, who is now a bishop, maneuvered to shield priests from prosecution, kept parishioners in the dark and failed to call police about sex crimes against minors.

Read the rest: Sex scandals, lies mar US churches |Americas |chinadaily.com.cn.