2 hours ago
1
Survivors of Catholic clergy abuse and their supporters expressed disgust, pain and disbelief after the Guardian and WWL Louisiana’s investigation on Monday into hundreds of emails showing officials with the NFL’s Saints and NBA’s Pelicans aided New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese efforts to soften critical media coverage about the church’s management of a clerical molestation scandal.
Richard Windmann said it was “disturbing” to see the emails mention his decision to go public about his abuse as a child at the hands of a priest and janitor at Jesuit high school in New Orleans in the 1970s.
In 2012, after he came forward about his abuse, the religious order which runs Jesuit deemed Windmann credible and paid him $450,000 to quietly settle out of court. But after media coverage about a local, abusive deacon and a Pennsylvania grand jury report which established Catholic clergy abuse in that state was more widespread than previously realized, Windmann opted to speak publicly about his ordeal.
After Jesuit’s president at the time condemned Windmann’s abuse as a “disgusting” chapter in the school’s past, he received an email from the Saints and Pelicans’ vice-president of communications, Greg Bensel.
“Speaking from personal experience after 23 years with the Saints, when the media and the public attack you at your core, it takes the resolve of people like yourself to lead us to clarity,” Bensel wrote. “The church needs leaders like you, and I just wanted to reach out and say you have the support of myself, [Saints and Pelicans president] Dennis [Lauscha], and [owner Gayle] Benson.
“If I can offer any counsel on any issue, I am here for you,” Bensel wrote, according to copies of the emails, which the Guardian, WWL Louisiana, the New York Times and the Associated Press obtained after they were produced in unrelated clergy abuse litigation.
The Jesuit president in those days, Christopher Fronk, replied that he appreciated Bensel’s offer. Though most of the subsequent emails do not involve Fronk and Jesuit, Windmann said it was “just devastating” to learn of Bensel’s overture.
“That … Greg Bensel proactively offered, for free, assistance to help Fronk with his own scandal is just devastating,” said Windmann, the founder of Survivors of Childhood Sex Abuse. “It’s very, very hard to read.”
In a 2020 article in Sports Illustrated, Fronk denied ever being contacted by anyone with the Saints on the topic of clergy abuse. He has not responded to requests for comment from the Guardian and WWL Louisiana.
Meanwhile, Saints and Pelicans officials have long characterized their emails with New Orleans archdiocese officials – including archbishop Gregory Aymond – as free public relations advice rather than a bad faith effort to shape a narrative.
Kevin Bourgeois, a therapist who was abused in the 1980s as a student at a New Orleans high school which primarily educated boys interested in the priesthood and later mediated an out-of-court settlement, on Monday said: “Today, I’m angry, hurt and retraumatized again.
“Liars have been exposed. … I hope punishment follows.”
Monday’s revelations came amid an ongoing Louisiana state police investigation into the New Orleans archdiocese, in which troopers have alleged in sworn court documents that they had probable cause to believe the church ran a child-sex trafficking ring that allowed clergymen to inflict sexual abuse on minors for decades and then covered up those crimes.
About two months earlier, 93-year-old retired priest Lawrence Hecker pleaded guilty to child rape before receiving a mandatory life sentence and dying shortly thereafter.
The archdiocese has also been struggling to resolve a federal bankruptcy protection case filed in 2020, which could cost the church hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to clergy-abuse victims.
“The New Orleans Saints and … Pelicans chose to stand shoulder to shoulder with Gregory Aymond to ease the harm to the church, not the harm to children,” said Kathryn Robb, the national director of the Children’s Justice Campaign at the Enough Abuse Organization. “Shame on them.”
Scott “Alex” Peyton, whose brother was sexually molested by a priest of the Roman Catholic diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, said on social media that Monday’s revelations only strengthened his belief that “there needs to be better support for survivors”.
Peyton hosts the Resilience in the Shadows podcast and helps his parents lead TentMakers of Louisiana, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting clergy molestation survivors. His father made national headlines in March 2024 after being excommunicated from the Catholic church by Lafayette bishop J Douglas Deshotel after resigning as a deacon over Alex’s brother’s abuse.
“Imagine trying to fight for justice against your abuser,” Peyton said. “And on the other side is the Catholic church … and an NFL football team?”
Louisiana state house member Mandie Landry, a New Orleans Democrat, said she believed the clergy abuse scandal-related correspondence between Benson’s sports teams and the church “calls into question other decisions they make as an organization”.
“The public trusts the Saints – loves the Saints,” Landry said.
