Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Other Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Santa Barbara, California, USA · 1993

United States: Franciscan province of Santa Barbara's own investigation finds 34 boys abused by a dozen priests at St Anthony's Seminary

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

Franciscan Friars, Province of St Barbara, Roman Catholic religious order operating St Anthony's Seminary and Old Mission Santa Barbara, a boarding school for aspiring priests

Organization

Franciscan Friars, Province of St Barbara, St Anthony's Seminary

Spiritual nexus

The province's own investigation found that St Anthony's Seminary functioned as a landing point for priests already accused elsewhere, whose combined clerical and residential authority over seminarians in formation was the mechanism the province's report identifies as the cause of the harm.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 1993-11-29 · official province-commissioned investigation and report

    Franciscan Friars, Province of St Barbara (independent panel commissioned by the province, published). An independent panel commissioned by the Franciscan Province of St Barbara found that 34 boys had been sexually abused by a dozen priests at St Anthony's Seminary between 1964 and 1987. The province later expanded its own disclosure to identify 50 priests accused of abusing children across its ministries since 1950, 26 of whom had been assigned to St Anthony's Seminary or Old Mission Santa Barbara — in more than half of those cases, after already having been accused of molestation elsewhere. Of an estimated 76 Santa Barbara children abused by Catholic clergy since 1958, 54 were abused by friars assigned to those two institutions. A related civil settlement in 2006 awarded plaintiffs $28 million.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • residential seminary authority over boys being formed for the priesthood
  • the province's own later admission that accused priests were repeatedly reassigned to St Anthony's after allegations elsewhere rather than removed from ministry

Primary record

Sources

official commission finding commissioned investigation report Stearns, Baggarley-Mar, Mar, Merlin, Bonner OFM and Higgins, 'St. Anthony's Seminary Report' (29 November 1993).

The independent panel's full report commissioned by the Franciscan Province of St Barbara, finding 34 boys abused by a dozen priests between 1964 and 1987.

regional newspaper court reporting investigation report Santa Barbara Independent, 'Moral Dumping Ground' (2009).

Reports the province's later, fuller disclosure of 50 accused priests, the pattern of reassignment to St Anthony's after allegations elsewhere, and the 76-victim, 54-at-these-institutions figures.

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