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By Kay Ebeling
The Witness: It was Lent. Father Baker was on the right hand, I was on the other side of Father Mahony- I mean Cardinal Mahony was giving the Mass, and my brother and my sister were on the other side of him. We just had good moments and - it started off very nice.
Q: Was that before the abuse?
A: Yes.
That Mass was in 1995, long after Cardinal Mahony knew of Michael Baker's pedophilia. Yet here is Mahony serving at the altar with Baker while Luis C and his siblings are altar servers, the plaintiff said in a recent deposition.
When Luis C and two other men told the L.A. District Attorney about the sex crimes in 2007, finally there was a report that fell within the Statute of Limitations, and finally the pedophile priest went to prison. Baker had confided in Mahony that he had sex problems with children back in 1986, both men of the cloth admit. In fact, by the time Baker preyed on Luis C, he had been sent, by Mahony, to Servants of the Paracletes in New Mexico for treatment of pedophilia.
Yet here is the Cardinal, right there watching, even sharing the altar, with Father Baker, as a new family of children from the parish are put within the pedophile priest's easy reach.
UPDATE: Docs released last night from a different Baker civil case could affect the hearing next Tuesday
"Release of items to the media before trial" is the main reason church attorneys will argue next Tuesday that all documents in the Luis C. civil case regarding former Father Michael Baker have to be protected, sealed. "They'll get out to the public before a trial," is repeated throughout the Motion for Protective Order filed July 6, 2009, on behalf of the L.A. priest.
Funny thing is, around midnight last night the Assocated Press reported on another civil case where two men make charges against Baker and Mahony, saying: "The claims were based on the recent deposition of former vicar for clergy Monsignor Richard Loomis. A transcript of the deposition was attached."
A transcript of the deposition of Loomis was attached!
Plaintiffs in another case that names Mahony and Baker attached a document that the Church was trying to keep secret and sent it to the world, just days before the first pre-trial hearing in the Luis C case takes place next week. Which means now the Judge can just throw up her hands and say, oh, well-
In the age of the Internet, it's impossible to keep the truth from coming out. Motion denied.
Good thing some of the Baker docs are coming out, because as I'm reading the defense motion to keep everything secret, that claim "Until Trial" is astounding. Throughout the world, the Catholic Church's modus operandi for handling civil cases regarding pedophilia is to fight and fight as long as possible up to the trial date, then around midnight the night before jury selection, the Church suddenly is amenable and wants to settle.
So they never get all the way to trial. Which gives them the advantage of never having to admit guilt.
Now with the Motion for Protective Order to be heard next Tuesday, the Church wants to never have anyone ever find out about any evidence at all concerning Michael Baker.
Tuesday's hearing on Motion for Protective Order is still on calendar for 11 AM, barring unexpected developments...
From L.A. Superior Court Website:
09/22/2009 at 11:00 am in department 324 at 600 South Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90005, Motion (MOTION FOR PROTECTIVE ORDER)
Having admitted he's paid by the L.A. Archdiocese years ago, Donald Steier knocks out legal briefs so fast and in so many pages, he must be using voice activated software. Steier appears in court for every L.A. Catholic pedophile priest who needs a lawyer, both civil and criminal.
July 9, 2009, Steier re-emerged, this time trying to prevent discovery in the developing civil case regarding former priest Michael Baker in L.A. Superior Court.
Again, the docs speak for themselves, as we quote freely below from Steier’s request for a “Protective Order” trying to keep secret everything that has anything to do with Michael Baker. The pedophile priest is currently serving out an eight and a half year sentence in a California state prison for sex crimes he committed against children when he was a Los Angeles Catholic priest.
Plaintiffs respond with their opposition to a protective order, and Steier chimes right in days later with another bulging brief, this time, opposition to opposition to motion for protective order, or something like that.
Baker through his attorney is asking the Court for protection based on:
Right to privacy in the state of California
Therapist patient privilege
Mediation privilege
Settlement privilege
Privilege against Self Incrimination
(Oh that wonderful Fifth Amendment, remember Steier is also the attorney who told George Rucker to plead the fifth over and over again as reported here last month.)
First Amendment right to free exercise of religion
Steier chimes in his own “declaration” that he “will work with all counsel before the hearing on the motion, in an effort to arrive at a mutually agreeable procedure to resolve the claims of privilege…”
Wonder how that went.
Quotes from Steier below show the gibberish with which the Church Attorneys, because they can, flood the court and play games with the judicial system, even taking advantage of the United States Constitution:
Citing patient therapist confidentiality, Steier writes, “This privilege is nearly absolute. A handful of narrow exceptions exist, such as ‘dangerous patient.’”
Dangerous Patient?
Isn’t a serial pedophile a dangerous mental patient?
Penitent's Privelege is in the Personnel File?
Baker asserts his right “to prevent disclosure of a wide range of spiritual discussions, therapy, redirection, and related wholly religious matters which may be mentioned” in the records.
Steier cites the “Penitent’s privilege,” where anything said in a practice like Confession where “the discipline or tenets of the denomination has a duty to keep those communication secret." He then says, “Some of those items within defendant’s personnel records include statements protected by that privilege.”
Huh?
If they're privileged and secret under tenets like Confession, what are they doing in his personnel file?
More Steier stuff: “Defendant is both a party and, as the holder of the privileges for the information contained within his personnel records, an ‘affected person’ with the standing to bring a motion to protect the contents of his personnel records.”
Huh?
The motion to keep Baker’s evidence secret “Seeks to prevent ANY disclosure” and if the court does order some records to be disclosed, “An order preventing the public disclosure” until the evidence is entered during a trial.
Right, keep the docs secret until a trial.
Then they never let a trial happen, that's their MO. In city after city across the country, the Church always settles civil cases the night before trial, allowing them to keep all those documents secret-
In perpetuity, so they think.
Steier compares pedophile priest Baker’s situation to cases where corporations claim personnel records are private in “Discharge and discrimination” lawsuits. The court must weigh in defendant's right to privacy, Steier claims.
Unabashedly misleading.
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Manly Stewart for the plaintiffs respond:
We “oppose defendant DOE 3’s motion for Protective Order on the grounds that the information sought is not protected by any of the rights / privileges asserted and because plaintiff’s right to discovery is sufficient to overcome any such protection.
“Doe 3 (Father Michael Baker), arguably one of the most prolific and notorious sexual abusers to ever don a Roman collar, is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence, in part for brutally raping then-minor plaintiff over the course of several years,” reads the Introduction of Opposition to Motion for Protective order filed by plaintiffs.
Baker has “molested several victims in the past, admitting such to senior Archdiocese leadership during a church service in 1986, importantly, the head of the Archdiocese Doe 1 (Cardinal Roger Mahony).
“He was allowed to remain in ministry nevertheless, where he later abused Plaintiff.”
At the Lenten service where Mahony, Baker, and plaintiff were on the altar together: Mahony watched Baker “interact with the altar boys under his command and did not say a word.” If Mahony had acted during that Lenten Mass: “Plaintiff’s sexual abuse would never have occurred.
“Calling this an important case would be a severe understatement,” write the plaintiff attorneys about their case.
The Most Important Clergy Abuse Case the Archdiocese Has Ever Faced
More Quotes from Plaintiff’s Opposition to Protective Order:
“This is the most important clergy sexual abuse case the Archdiocese has ever faced, important because it contains among its cast of defendant characters, the head of the Archdiocese and its most prolific pedophile.
“Through the Motion for Protective Order, Defendants are attempting to prevent Plaintiff from establishing that they ‘knew or should have known’ of Doe 3’s [Baker’s] illicit sexual proclivities towards minors and failed to prevent it.”
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There will be a hearing on this motion Tuesday September 22nd in Judge Emilie Elias’ court, after continuances took place through the summertime.
The Luis C Case #BC376766 names as defendants the Los Angeles Archdiocese, Cardinal Roger Mahony, Michael Stephen Baker, Servants of the Paracletes, and several other religious institutions as defendants.
So of course the Catholic Church is doing somersaults and conducting tap dances in courtrooms, closets, and sermons from the altar, doing everything it can to keep from the public record the truth about Michael Baker’s crimes and those of the Church Hierarchy who enabled them.
Background:
Monday, July 27, 2009
New cases in L.A. re Father Michael Baker & Brother Modesto Leon going through court system; jury trial re Renato Lopez cancelled as case settled
With new lawsuits making their way through the courts in Los Angeles, the pedophile crisis in the Catholic Church is indeed not "behind us" as Cardinal Roger Mahony and other church heirarchy have claimed...
Monday, July 6, 2009
New Michael Baker case moves forward, and missing Victim Impact Statement from sentencing hearing of the pedo-priest finally gets posted
Pedophile Priest Michael Baker is one of a thousand John Doe’s in a lawsuit now working its way through Judge Emilie Elias’ Court, filed in Los Angeles August 29, 2007. Four months later...
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Michael Stephen Baker will be eligible for parole August 18, 2011.
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Baker is at a California Correctional Institution, is subject to transfer, and seems to be getting transferred often. Baker’s sentence on December 3rd 2007 ended up being eight and a half years, after time served. In California there is no parole hearing where victims can speak unless the convict had a life sentence.
But you can send Victim Impact Statements to Office of Victim and Survivor Rights and Services, PO 942883, Sacramento, California, 94283-0001. Refer to his CDC # F96146, and his birth date, which is 12/26/1947.
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Re posts about Nelson's new book:
"The most important points from Sons of Perdition have been summarized in this Timeline of the Sex Scandals," writes Jay Nelson.
Read the timeline then answer these questions:
Why has Pope Benedict revived the cover-up?
What gives the Church the right to deal with cases privately?
What's now being done about current abuse cases?
Are predatory priests being quietly defrocked, ejected back into civil society, with no record or tracking as sex offenders?
Or are they being transferred once again to avoid exposure and allowed to continue to prey in distant locations?
Signed,
Renegade Catholic
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Don't forget the High Five Campaign
Every three months or so, click one of our PayPal Donate buttons and send us $5 of higher. It takes hours to put these posts together and High Fives serve as a sort of cosmic passing of the hat for readers to show their appreciation.
Thanks to all the regular High Fivers, as you really do help keep City of Angels alive...
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Coming soon: Transcript of a deposition with Baker was attached to Plaintiff's Motion in Opposition, so, yes, we will be quoting from that Baker deposition freely, within weeks. AND we have the deposition that was attached to a document at midnight last night, of Monsignor Richard Loomis, which opens:
Q: Why are you on leave?
A: I was accused of abuse.
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