ALBUQUERQUE, NM – Two law firms have filed eight civil lawsuits against dioceses in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, alleging that priests sexually abused children between 1956 and 1990.
Levi Monagle, a partner at the law firm Huffman, Wallace & Monagle in Albuquerque, is representing some of the plaintiffs, who were between the ages of 3 and 15 when the alleged abuse occurred. He claims the priests named in the suit had abused children elsewhere and, when they moved to southern New Mexico and western Texas, that the church shielded them to protect its reputation.
The priests named in the suits are believed to be deceased. Neither diocese has responded to the Mountain West News Bureau’s requests for comment.
Priests were sent from parishes throughout the country to the Servants of the Paraclete facility in Jemez Springs, New Mexico for rehabilitation, Monagle alleges.
After their stay at Servants of Paraclete, they were sent to parishes in the dioceses. Neither pastors nor the members of these congregations were made aware of the priests’ backgrounds according to the lawsuits.
“The people of the parish would be kept in the dark, essentially, that even the pastors of the parishes would be given as little information as possible about the background of the new priest,” Monagle said, “because disclosing the conduct, or that the priest was implicated, would interfere with his rehabilitation and that the pastor wouldn’t trust the new priest if the pastor knew why he was in treatment.”
The impact of these actions affected entire communities, Monagle said.
“This is not just the past, this is the present, and unfortunately, the future,” he said. “The ripple effects of these abuses, you know, [can be seen] in the form of alcoholism, substance addiction, domestic violence, at times, broken families – these things ripple through whole communities.”
New Mexico has a long history of such cases, involving hundreds of survivors. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe faced waves of claims in the 1990s, early 2000s. Then again in 2013, Monagle said, followed by bankruptcy in 2018.
“In the course of that bankruptcy 400 victims came forward,” he said.
Monagle said the door is shut to further claims in Santa Fe.
Citing his decades of experience with such cases, he added that dioceses are no longer mounting aggressive legal defenses in light of allegations like those made in the eight suits out of respect for the victims.
“There is an effort to be more respectful of survivors' experiences and conciliatory as to those experiences,” he added.
The Las Cruces Diocese, under New Mexico rules, has 30-days from the filing of the complaint to submit its formal response to the court.
