Ron Russell

Mahony's less-than-straightforward dealings with the victims of child-molesting priests is perhaps no better illustrated than by the tragic case of the late Ted Llanos. Similar to O'Grady in Stockton, Llanos was a well-entrenched child molester long before Mahony arrived in L.A. as archbishop. He began molesting altar boys at least as far back as 1973 while a church deacon, a year before his ordination as a priest. And he might still be molesting them had family therapist Sue Griffith not found a sexually suggestive note, accompanied by a poem, written by Llanos to her son, Scott, while cleaning a kitchen shelf in 1994.

 

At the time, Llanos was pastor of St. Lucy Parish in Long Beach. Griffith kept her discovery to herself at first, but a few weeks later, while her husband was away on business, she approached her son. "We were driving in the car and I told him what I had found and asked if anything of a sexual nature had ever happened between him and Father Ted," she recalls. "To my shock, he very calmly answered, "Yes.'"

 

His mother's inquiry helped relieve Scott Griffith, now 29, of a terrible burden. Llanos had secretly abused him for four years, starting at age 13. Although no one knew it at the time, the popular priest had molested at least 25 other young men in five parishes scattered across greater Los Angeles during more than two decades. The Griffiths were doubly betrayed. Not only was Llanos their priest, but he was a trusted family friend and confidante, and a regular guest at their home in the Bixby Knolls area of Long Beach.

 

Barely five-feet five-inches, goateed and with a thinning hairline, Father Ted "drew young people to him like bees to honey. Young people thought the world of him," says Jim Falls, who, along with his younger brother, Michael, was abused by Llanos as a teenager during the priest's stint in a Covina parish. In fact, Scott Griffith's staunchly Catholic paternal grandmother thought so highly of Llanos that she gave him a cherished family heirloom -- the chalice, used to hold sacramental wine, that had belonged to her deceased brother, also a priest.

 

The Griffiths left it to their son to decide what to do after his startling revelation. "After thinking carefully about it, he came to me in the kitchen one morning and said, "Mom, for the sake of other kids out there, we have to do something about this,'" Sue Griffith says. On September 16, 1994 -- a Friday afternoon -- while his unsuspecting grandparents were entertaining Father Ted over lunch, Scott Griffith drove to the chancery office near downtown L.A. alone. There, he met with two of Mahony's most trusted aides, Monsignor Timothy J. Dyer, then vicar of clergy, and Father Terrence Richey, revealing to them what Llanos had done to him. The next day, Llanos was summoned to the chancery office. He not only confessed to abusing Griffith, but gave chancery officials a list of 10 of his victims.

 

Mahony moved swiftly to relieve Llanos of his parish duties (what else could he do under the circumstances?), but the Griffiths and the families of other Llanos victims would soon be disillusioned. The following Monday, Dyer and Richey went to Paul Griffith's office in Century City to discuss the matter involving his son. "Right away, I could see that it was all about damage control on their part," recalls the glass-company executive, referring to the visit. He says the Mahony emissaries told him that Llanos would be removed from the parish before the next Sunday's mass and sent away for psychological treatment, and that the archdiocese was willing to provide therapy for his son and other family members.

 

But beyond that, how the archdiocese proposed to handle the matter disturbed Griffith.

 

Although Dyer, acting on Mahony's behalf, was clearly committing the archdiocese to pay for therapy, Griffith says the vicar explained that the funds would technically come from Llanos. The archdiocese wanted to create a degree of separation for itself in assuming financial responsibility emanating from the priest's misconduct. Engaging in the charade of letting the priest pay for counseling would afford the archdiocese deniability, allowing Mahony and others to say, should the need arise, that the archdiocese had not paid damages as a consequence of Scott Griffith's allegations. That was no small consideration in the event (as, indeed, later happened) more of Llanos' victims came forward. (Child-protection advocates and plaintiffs attorneys say that such squishy financial maneuvers are commonly used by dioceses across the country in secretly settling cases to avoid trials.) In explaining how the arrangement was to work, Griffith says Dyer told him that the archdiocese would extend a "loan" to Llanos, the proceeds from which would be used to pay for the Griffiths' counseling, and that the archdiocese would then forgive the "loan."

 

In essence, it was pure farce.

 

More disturbing, the cardinal's representatives insisted on covering up what had happened, he says. "They stressed that they didn't want the district attorney involved. And the last thing in the world they wanted was for the press to get hold of the story." Griffith, who had already accepted his son's decision to step forward for the sake of helping other possible victims, and who was proud of him for doing so, says the vicar's suggestions left him both amazed and saddened. Although clergy were not at the time required by law to report sex-abuse cases to the authorities (the law would be changed in 1996 mandating that they do so), Griffith felt that, of all people, the cardinal's representatives should have felt morally and ethically bound to turn over Llanos to the police.

 

The clincher was in how the archdiocese proposed to explain Llanos' departure to St. Lucy parishioners. "They wanted to announce to the parish that he had resigned due to administrative stress," Griffith says. "I told them that would be a lie. It would leave a lot of families, whose sons could have also been victimized by Llanos, hanging. I mean how could they do that? It was unconscionable. Scott didn't want that. The whole reason for his coming forward was to help others. I told them it would never fly; that we would never go along with it."

 

To reinforce the point, Griffith wrote a letter to Dyer three days after the face-to-face meeting to formalize what the men had talked about. The next day, Dyer responded with a letter of his own. In that letter, a copy of which was obtained by New Times, Dyer reiterated that the archdiocese would, indeed, provide therapy for Scott Griffith and other family members "in the name of Father Llanos." He instructed them to send the bills "directly to me, or if the therapist wishes to send the bills directly to me, that, too, is acceptable."

 

Faced with Griffith's stated desire to report Llanos' abuse to the authorities, the vicar acknowledged that he was free to do as he wished, but made it clear that the archdiocese had no intention of doing so: "At this point, I do not feel it is the role of the archdiocese to present Father Llanos to the District Attorney...My own thinking is based on my experience that incarceration of the priest neither rehabilitates him, nor enhances the treatment which would be offered your son and your family." Dyer, who now presides over a South Los Angeles parish, declined to be interviewed for this article, saying "it would be inappropriate" for him to discuss the matter "since I'm no longer down there [at the chancery office]." Richey, now a monsignor who heads the archdiocese's alcohol- and substance-abuse department, did not return telephone calls.

 

As for how to explain Llanos' sudden departure to the faithful at St. Lucy, Mahony's vicar suggested a compromise to the Griffiths. "I believe that the parish announcement should read: "Father Llanos has resigned the pastorate of St. Lucy Parish. He has serious issues and problems in his life with which he must deal, and the Archdiocese is affording him the opportunity to do that.'"

 

Instead of making an announcement in church about Llanos' misconduct -- as the Griffiths insisted -- to encourage other potential victims to come forward, the archdiocese wanted to soft-peddle Llanos' departure. With an eye on preventing the scandal from becoming public, Mahony's men suggested that the archdiocese merely conduct private interviews with anyone suspected of having knowledge of his misdeeds. Dyer's rationale, which the Griffiths quickly concluded was bunk, was two-fold. "First, the story given us by your son does not point to any other victims," Dyer wrote. "Second, no evidence has ever been presented to this [chancery] office. No persons have ever come forward to make allegations in Father Llanos' 22 years in the priesthood prior to those of your son on September 16."

 

That, too, was bunk.

 

In fact, the archdiocese had learned that Llanos was a child-molester as early as 1973 -- from one of its own deacons. Jim Dunlap Sr. recalls being in the family room of his Santa Ana home with his wife one night that year when their son, Jim Jr., who was 12 at the time, came in troubled. "I finally said, "Son, what seems to be your problem?'" to which he answered, "Oh, that stupid Deacon Ted tried to kiss me.'" His wife hoped she hadn't heard correctly. But there was no such luck. "He tried to kiss me on the mouth," the boy confided. Dunlap determined right away to report Llanos to the archdiocese (the Diocese of Orange had not yet been created).

 

And he did so at the highest possible level. Not only was Dunlap a church deacon, but he was a friend of Cardinal Timothy Manning, Mahony's predecessor, and was part of a group of priests and others who regularly played poker with the cardinal on Friday nights at a rectory in Orange County. The next week, he pulled Manning aside in the rectory's kitchen and told him personally what had happened. "The cardinal listened very carefully, said how sorry he was and then, without hesitation, he put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and said, "Jim, we can't have this going on here. You can be guaranteed that I will take care of the situation and that you will never hear about a problem with this person again.'"

 

Within days, Llanos was gone. Dunlap presumed that Manning had shipped him to a treatment facility serving pedo-priests. A year later, in 1974, without the knowledge of Dunlap and his wife, Llanos was ordained as a priest in the L.A. Archdiocese and given his first assignment at a parish in Long Beach.

 

Incredibly, not long after settling into that assignment, Llanos secretly reestablished contact with Jim Dunlap Jr., and molested him for two years.

 

The elder Dunlap and his wife didn't learn of the abuse until after Scott Griffith came forward in 1994. If it had been left up to Mahony and the archdiocese, they would not have learned about it even then. The archdiocese went ahead with a fuzzy announcement regarding Llanos' departure from St. Lucy. But the Griffiths, deeply offended, refused to let the matter die. They almost single-handedly helped get the word out about Llanos within Catholic circles. They say they took the story to an L.A. Times reporter, who declined to write about it. They then turned to the Long Beach Press-Telegram, which did. Within weeks, more than two dozen men came forward to say that Llanos had also abused them as teenagers.

 

Meanwhile, Mahony shipped Llanos to St. Luke Institute, and the archdiocese went into damage-control mode. The Griffiths and others had gone to the Long Beach Police Department, but the police complained that the archdiocese wasn't cooperating with its investigation, withholding files and refusing to make available individuals whom detectives wanted to interview. In fact, the archdiocese even resisted turning over the (partial) list of 10 victims whom Llanos had confessed to molesting after being hauled into the chancery office. In a familiar tactic that has resurfaced during the current sex scandal involving the church, the archdiocese back then claimed to be protecting the privacy of the victims. Yet, some of those same victims who had already contacted the Griffiths were agitating for the archdiocese to turn over what it knew to the police.

 

As they did for Scott Griffith, archdiocese officials offered to pay for counseling for other victims. Eventually nine men would go public and -- after months of foot-dragging by Mahony and his subordinates -- file a lawsuit detailing Llanos' abuses. "As soon as we did that, they yanked our counseling out from under us immediately," says Jim Falls. "That, to me, spoke volumes about Roger Mahony. Forget his pastoral role. He just wanted to sweep us under the rug."

 

Llanos was brought back from Maryland in November 1995 to face criminal charges, even as the plaintiffs pressed ahead with their suit against the archdiocese. But there was trouble on both fronts. Judges threw out both the criminal and the civil cases because the alleged abuses had occurred so long ago that statutes of limitation had expired. Llanos returned to St. Luke in late 1995. The victims pressed appeals, both on the criminal and civil fronts. And they turned to the California Legislature to extend the statute limits in child-molestation cases, even as their lawyers held talks with attorneys for the archdiocese. "It was amazing," recalls Mark Roseman, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys. "These victims never even wanted to sue the archdiocese. They just wanted acknowledgment and healing. They wanted Mahony to do right by them. But it became increasingly obvious that the archdiocese saw them as little more than a nuisance."

 

Paul and Sue Griffith concluded as much upon sitting down for an hourlong meeting with Mahony in his L.A. chancery office in the spring of 1995. "He struck me as arrogant," says Paul Griffith, referring to Mahony. "It was as if he was doing us a favor to even talk to us."

 

By then, they had been informed by a sympathetic (and well-placed) source within the archdiocese about a meeting the cardinal had attended with several of his underlings to discuss the Llanos affair. At that meeting, they were told, Mahony had acknowledged Llanos' troubled history and declared that he would never turn over the priest's secret personnel file to the plaintiffs, as they were demanding. The Griffiths say they confronted Mahony with his alleged words about the file and that the cardinal acknowledged having made such a statement, but insisted that it was meant in the context of protecting victims' privacy. "He then held up what he purported was Father Ted's file in front of us and said, "See, there's nothing in it,' as if we would be impressed," Sue Griffith recalls. "It really was quite a disappointing performance."

 

But the victims would get a glimmer of hope -- however brief.

 

In 1996, the legislature changed the law, extending the time limit for prosecuting child-molesters. The law took effect January 1, 1997. On Christmas Eve of 1996, one of the plaintiffs lawyers called the Griffiths with news that the archdiocese apparently had decided to cut the financial cord to Llanos, leaving the cleric to defend himself against the criminal charges that would almost certainly be brought in the coming year. Llanos, still a priest on inactive leave, had finished his treatment at St. Luke and had moved to the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C., sharing a rented house with two other men, and working at a Barnes & Noble bookstore, on the same floor as the children's department. A couple of days after Christmas, he quit his job, telling co-workers that he was moving back to Los Angeles.

 

He never made it.

 

Mahony and the archdiocese would no longer have to worry about a scandal that had seemed finally on the verge of bursting into the open.

 

On December 30, two days before the law took effect exposing him to the criminal justice system, Llanos made sure of that. He swallowed a few cold tablets, placed a plastic bag over his head and stretched out on his bed to die. His suicide note, scribbled inside a blank greeting card, said simply, "Life is too painful. I'm sorry for all the hurt I caused. I hope a better life awaits me."