Pedophile Priest Shuffled Around The Globe By Church
06:52 PM CDT on Saturday, June 19, 2004
By REESE DUNKLIN / The Dallas Morning News
APIA, Samoa - Frank! Frank!
About a dozen children circle around the Rev. Frank Klep after Mass on one
sun-kissed Sunday. They chirp his name, trying to catch his eye as he
begins handing out foil-wrapped candy. He calls them by name, too, beams
and hugs some of them.
Few, if any, locals are aware that the friendly priest is a convicted child
molester who has admitted abusing one boy and is wanted on more charges
back in Australia. In 1998, his religious order placed him here in the
South Pacific. Australian police can't touch him now because their country
has no extradition treaty with Samoa.
Neither he nor the church feels an obligation to tell anyone about all
that.
"I'd prefer to just leave it," Father Klep said recently. "If I felt I was
still at risk to their children, then I'd think differently. But I don't
think I am at risk anymore."
His order, the Salesians of Don Bosco, has long moved priests accused of
sexual abuse from country to country away from law enforcement and victims.
Indeed, it is how many others in the Catholic Church have dealt with the
problem, an 18-month, worldwide Dallas Morning News investigation has
found.
The Salesians, one of the largest Catholic religious orders, concentrate on
educating and housing some of the world's most needy and vulnerable
children. Yet influential Salesian officials have spoken out forcefully
against cooperating with law enforcement agencies investigating sex abuse
allegations.
"For me it would be a tragedy to reduce the role of a pastor to that of a
cop," said Salesian Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez of Honduras, a prominent
candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II. "I'd be prepared to go to jail
rather than harm one of my priests."
Salesian officials in Costa Rica and Chile are facing criminal complaints,
accused of protecting priests who were shuffled across international
borders. A judge in Chile is reviewing whether there is enough evidence to
try a Salesian bishop on obstruction of justice charges, which would be the
first such prosecution of a Catholic leader anywhere.
In the case of one priest from Peru, his superiors have ignored a church
panel's 1995 demand that he have no contact with children, as well as
Chicago police's subsequent request to question him. Salesians officials in
Peru say they don't know where he is, but The News found him working in
Mexico - his fourth country he's been in since he was first accused of
misconduct more than a decade ago.
Even the Rev. Pascual Chavez, before he became the Salesians' worldwide
leader in Rome, kept an admitted molester in ministry in Mexico. After a
judge dismissed criminal charges against the priest, he was reassigned to
Africa. He's returned to duty in Mexico but could not be reached for
comment. Father Chavez declined to be interviewed.
One of Father Klep's alleged victims, himself a former Salesian seminarian,
draws a painful conclusion about his old order:
"This is a corporate sin that they're feasting in," he said. "It must be
the attitude of the Salesians worldwide."
Father Klep is living in exile in Samoa, "not a paradise or a tropical
resort," according to his boss, the Rev. Ian Murdoch, the order's leader in
Australia and the South Pacific. The priest has no active ministry or
unsupervised contact with children, Father Murdoch said, and is monitored
to "the best of our ability."
"The Salesians as a community have done their best to respond to the
allegations," he said before refusing to answer further questions.
But Father Klep enjoys his ministry on this tiny island nation. People here
still respect their elders and honor the Sabbath. He's surrounded by a
colorful, exotic landscape of orchids, poinsettias, and mango, banana and
coconut trees. He has picturesque views of the blue Pacific waters and
Mount Vaea.
"I have found a good measure of contentment," he said. "I'd be quite happy
to stay here."
Father Klep's victims in Australia have tried unsuccessfully for years to
have him removed from the priesthood. A church panel that recently
investigated one abuse complaint asked the Salesians to consider suspending
his ministry, but not even his admission in that case led to significant
discipline.
"I made a mistake," Father Klep said in an interview, acknowledging that he
touched one of his Australian students in the late 1970s. Two years ago, he
wrote a letter to the former student, who is now an adult, and expressed
his regret.
The priest's penance was loss of his ceremonial title: "priest in charge"
of the order's offices near Apia, the Samoan capital. The former student
said it wasn't enough. " Prison is the only punishment deserving of this
man," he said. "All along the way he's been protected, and no one seems to
think it's serious enough."
Druggings denied
The complaints against Father Klep date to the 1970s, when he worked at a
boarding school north of Melbourne. At the time, Salesian College at
Rupertswood was exclusively for boys, many who were from the farming
communities in rural Victoria state.
The first boys came forward in about 1986, telling their parents that
Father Klep had molested them. By then, they were young adults, and Father
Klep was the school's principal.
Three former students told The News that the abuse occurred when they went
to Father Klep in the infirmary for pain medication or prescriptions. He
sexually assaulted them, the students said, while they lay sick or after he
had given them incapacitating drugs.
"I remember being wasted out the next day," said the former seminarian. He
and the other former students spoke on condition they not be named.
About a dozen parents confronted the Salesians and the Archdiocese of
Melbourne in a series of meetings. One of the parents, the former
seminarian's mother, said church leaders were dismissive. She recalled a
Salesian leader telling her: "This all happened very long ago. It has no
foundation."
But when her husband threatened to sue, she said, within days Father Klep
was pulled from the job.
Father Klep denied knowing about any of the complaints or druggin anyone.
He said his supervisor described the departure as a routine sabbatical.
"Maybe he was being charitable to me," the priest said.
The Salesians sent him overseas, first to an order facility in Rome for a
few months, then to the United States. He enrolled in late 1987 at Fordham
University, a private Catholic school near the Salesians' offices in New
York City, and pursued a master's degree. While studying, he also helped at
Masses in the area, he said.
Shortly after he graduated in early 1989, Father Klep returned to
Australia. Within a few years, he was the top official at a youth center
and hostel in a blue-collar suburb of Melbourne.
The mother of the former seminarian said she and the other parents were
horrified. She complained in writing to the Salesians in 1992 and drew a
scolding from the order's regional leader at the time, the Rev. Julian Fox.
She dropped her protests.
"I just tried to do the right thing, but we never got anywhere," she said.
"They absolutely had it covered like the Mafia."
Father Fox said in an interview this month that he investigated but
couldn't remember what he found because the details were "history under a
bridge." Father Fox also has been accused of sexual abuse while working at
the boarding school in the 1970s and 1980s. He, too, was transferred abroad
- to Fiji for several years and recently to the order's Rome headquarters.
He said a church review had exonerated him; advocates for his accuser said
the Salesians paid a settlement.
Father Fox said a church review had exonerated him. "That's in the past.
I'm not keen to be trolling through all of that again," he said, cutting
off the interview.
Going to police
Starting in 1993, more young men alleged that Father Klep had abused them
at the school. But these former students went to authorities.
First, two brothers complained to Victoria state police, whose area
includes Melbourne. Officers filed four charges of indecent assault against
Father Klep, dating to 1976 and 1979.
"He forced himself on them," said Senior Sgt. Steve Iddles, the prosecutor
in the case. "Lie down and do as I tell you."
Father Klep denied touching the brothers. He accused them of fabricating
much of their story to get money from the Salesians. He pleaded not guilty,
and the Salesians left him on duty throughout his proceedings in 1994.
"At one stage [in the trial], my defense asked them pertinent questions,
and one of them shed a few tears," he said recently. "I thought they were
crocodile tears."
The judge declared Father Klep guilty and sentenced him to nine months of
community service. The priest worked off his sentence gardening at nursing
homes.
One of the brothers said he was let down by the criminal justice system. "
When a man is charged on four counts and convicted on four counts and
doesn't go to jail," he said, "you have to wonder what's behind it."
Not long after Father Klep finished his sentence in early 1996, another
former student reported to Victoria police that in 1976 the priest had
fondled him and performed oral sex on him. Detectives questioned and
fingerprinted Father Klep, but did not arrest him.
Once again, Father Klep denied the allegations and accused the former
student of trying to get money. The possibility of being prosecuted a
second time worried him, though, he said.
So in 1998, with the investigation unresolved, he readily accepted a
reassignment to Samoa. He said the move was the suggestion of his boss at
the time, the Rev. John Murphy.
"I think he [Father Murphy] realized that I'd probably feel a bit more
comfortable being removed from the situation there," Father Klep said. " I
was happy enough to go."
Father Murphy, who's now assigned to Samoa as well, said the priest's
account was "not altogether true" but wouldn't elaborate. He referred
questions to Father Murdoch, who declined to comment.
Later in 1998, police sought to question Father Klep again and discovered
that he had left for Samoa. They charged him with five counts of indecent
assault and issued a nationwide arrest warrant.
"In hindsight, it'd been better if we charged him on the day [he was
questioned in 1996]," said Investigator John Raglus, one of the Victoria
officers now assigned to the case. He said he couldn't explain why it took
authorities more than two years to file charges.
Case files show that Australian Federal Police were supposed to contact
Samoan authorities on behalf of Victoria, according to the detective. But
two officials in the Samoan government said the Australians told them
nothing about Father Klep.
"I had no idea,"said Samoa Assistant Attorney General Raymond Schuster.
Australian Federal Police would not answer written questions about the
matter.
For some, life goes on
Beyond the reach of police and church discipline, Father Klep has worked
freely.
He is the top financial official at the Moamoa Theological College, a
two-story colonial-style house where seminarians and lay religious teachers
train and reside. He helps during Mass at St. Anthony Church, one of the
area's oldest and more prestigious, and at the nearby Salesian schools.
For a time, he supervised the Rev. John "Jack" Ayers, who was accused of
raping a student at the Rupertswood boarding school in the 1960s. The
Salesians paid the accuser a settlement in 2000, according to documents The
News obtained. Father Ayers, who refused to comment, lives a few doors from
Father Klep at the college.
Samoa's top Catholic, Archbishop Alapati Mataeliga, said he was startled to
learn about both priests' pasts. He said the Salesians should not have kept
the details from him.
"I think we have to do something about it; justice has to be served," said
Archbishop Mataeliga, who became leader of the archdiocese last year.
"Samoa should not be a place where they send priests like that."
But the archbishop changed his mind after speaking with the Salesians. He
said Father Klep told him what happened was an accident. And he discussed
Father Ayers with Father Murphy.
"Although these incidents happened with these two priests, they have dealt
with it themselves and with their congregation," the archbishop's secretary
wrote in a letter. "They are valid and allowed to work in our archdiocese,
and we are grateful for their services and hard work up to this point."
The Company of teens
Upstairs, in the theological college's kitchen, Father Klep sat at a table
and explained that when he gave candy to children after Mass the previous
day, it was a spontaneous gesture.He still enjoys "young people's company,"
he said, but limits his contact mostly to adults.
Downstairs, a group of teenage boys lounged on concrete steps, waiting for
Father Klep. One young man said he met Father Klep this spring when the
priest pulled up at a bus stop where he was standing and offered him a
ride. At the end of the short drive, Father Klep gave him some cash and
invited him to church.
Since then, the 19-year-old said, Father Klep has "come to where I hang out
in the evenings" and offered him small jobs around the college.
Also waiting on the steps was a 14-year-old who said he has known Father
Klep for about a year and a 13-year-old buddy he said the priest wanted to
meet.
The 14-year-old said Father Klep has given him spending money and regularly
helped him with schoolwork alone in the priest's bedroom.
"He says to me, 'Any day I want help, I come to Father Frank's home,'" said
the boy, who had a thin adolescent mustache and a shy demeanor.
Father Klep has even paid his tuition to Chanel College, a Catholic school
near the priest's home, he said.
"He said to me, 'You are my best friend.'"
Staff writers Brendan M. Case in Mexico City and special contributor Andrew
Fa'a
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