Numerous officers inside the Roman Catholic spiritual order referred to as the Jesuits struggled within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties over easy methods to take care of a person whom they knew molested youngsters – however nonetheless was ordained a priest, in line with a evaluation of inside correspondence regarding his profession.
The correspondence concerning the late Donald B Dickerson stems from a pending Louisiana state courtroom lawsuit filed in June 2024 that alleges he raped a 17-year-old pupil on the order-run Loyola College New Orleans in 1984. It supplies a uncommon, advanced, behind-the-scenes take a look at how native leaders throughout a a lot earlier section of the worldwide Catholic church’s ongoing clergy molestation scandal struggled to comprise a predator priest’s repeated abuse of kids whereas encouraging him to hunt psychological assist.
Born in 1936 in Jerseyville, Illinois, Dickerson entered the Society of Jesus in Louisiana in August 1971 and professed his first vows two years later, a day earlier than he turned 37, courtroom paperwork present.
Jesuits endure a years-long formation interval that begins with a two-year novitiate and concludes after ordination with the ultimate vows, a course of that may take 15 to twenty years. Whereas Jesuits usually are not clergymen till ordination, they start utilizing the initials “SJ”, for the Society of Jesus, upon getting into the order.
Early in his formation, Dickerson was assigned to the Jesuit highschool in New Orleans, the place letters say he abused two boys. In early December 1974, he molested a minor in a automobile en path to a highschool awards ceremony, in line with courtroom paperwork.
In 1974, Jesuit priest Anthony McGinn – who would later function the New Orleans highschool’s president – described Dickerson as lazy and manipulative.
“He does no matter he pleases,” McGinn wrote in a personality appraisal that’s now an exhibit within the courtroom case, which seeks damages from Loyola and the Jesuit order. “It is a harmful signal that the Society may have difficulties with him in future years.”
Dickerson shouldn’t be superior to theology, the subsequent stage in formation, concluded McGinn, who didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Regardless of the detrimental appraisal, Dickerson went to theology instruction in Chicago.
In March 1975, throughout a six-hour assembly attended by a number of clergymen and a brother on the Jesuit provincials’ workplace to debate a number of clergy, Jesuit priest Louis Lambert, the vice-provincial for formation and a prime Jesuit within the area, held that Dickerson “was making nice progress in working by his issues” – and {that a} latest psychological report on him was “constructive”. At that assembly, 4 clergymen voted to ship Dickerson to theology regardless of McGinn’s warnings.
By 1977, issues from high-ranking Jesuit priest Thomas Stahel had reached a disaster level. The provincial of the Jesuits’ former New Orleans province, Stahel had realized of one more accusation that Dickerson had harassed a minor. 5 days earlier than Christmas that yr, the provincial, who would later serve as executive editor at America journal, detailed particular misgivings about Dickerson in a prolonged letter to the Jesuits’ worldwide chief on the time, superior normal Pedro Arrupe.
“I don’t suppose we will in conscience current Dickerson to bishop as prepared for ordination,” Stahel wrote to Arrupe, one week earlier than Dickerson was to be made a priest. “I like to recommend that Dickerson’s ordination be postponed, on the very least, and that we increase with him a query about his staying within the Society.”
‘Below adequate management’
In keeping with the letter, Arrupe had already agreed that Dickerson’s ordination ought to be postponed.
It’s unclear whether or not Arrupe responded to this letter. Nationwide Catholic Reporter has not obtained different paperwork detailing a back-and-forth dialog between the superior normal and the New Orleans provincial.
Stahel wrote that he first contacted Arrupe to assist resolve a debate with Lambert concerning easy methods to deal with Dickerson.
Αccording to a 1977 letter, Dickerson’s Jesuit superiors believed that his “psychosexual drawback was beneath adequate management”.
But Stahel, who particulars severe issues concerning Dickerson’s “suitability” for the priesthood, discovered himself at an deadlock with Lambert. “He thinks Dickerson is not any extra a danger than others who’ve been ordained, and he characterizes the latest incident as a regrettable slip. I’m unpersuaded by his causes,” Stahel wrote to the superior normal.
“I’ve the distinct impression that Fr [Father] Lambert’s resistance on this matter needed to do, not with the deserves of his case, however with the jealous guard he maintains over his Vice-Provincial’s prerogatives,” Stahel wrote. “He was decided that I ought to don’t have anything to say about Dickerson’s ordination, and it was unimaginable to return to a gathering of the minds regarding proof that appeared overwhelming to everybody however him.”
Describing the disagreement, Stahel alleged that Lambert thought of Dickerson’s improper habits to be the results of nerves – and rejected Arrupe’s transfer to postpone ordination as unjust “strong-arm techniques”.
Lambert, Stahel mentioned, “argued that, as soon as a person is accredited for ordination by the Society (as Dickerson had been), the Society is dedicated to him. By this sort of reasoning, nothing an individual may do between approval and ordination may disqualify him.”
In September 1978, Arrupe mentioned in a letter to Lambert that he had acquired a psychological report on Dickerson, however the particulars of that report weren’t available. “I’ll await additional info on the case from Father Stahel,” wrote the superior normal.
Dickerson had acquired psychological remedy at the very least twice by then – in 1975 and 1978. He later famous that he had submitted to “intensive psychological remedy” at Basis Home, a former remedy facility for troubled clergymen run by the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.
Dickerson had nonetheless not been ordained by the summer season of 1979, when Stahel mentioned Dickerson had advised him that sexually harassing an underage boy was “a comparatively insignificant incident”.
The provincial disagreed.
“I didn’t really feel that I may ordain him till we had eliminated as a lot as potential any worries that such incidents would occur once more,” Stahel wrote.
‘I assumed he ought to be ordained’
However Stahel’s worries about Dickerson had apparently subsided by the top of that yr, after Dickerson understood the “scandal” molesting youngsters may trigger. “I mentioned that I assumed he ought to be ordained,” Stahel wrote in a memorandum dated 30 December 1979. Six months later, on 7 June 1980, Dickerson was ordained by Birmingham, Alabama, bishop Joseph Vath.
Dickerson started educating on the boys Jesuit preparatory college in Dallas that same year. However in 1981, he was faraway from Jesuit Dallas following an allegation from a toddler’s mother and father. He was despatched in September 1981 to St John Berchmans, then a co-cathedral in Shreveport, Louisiana.
A $12m lawsuit would later accuse Dickerson of raping a boy there in 1982.
That yr, Stahel had written to Dickerson with the hope “nothing would occur in Shreveport”. The case was settled for an undisclosed sum.
Two years later, in an August 1984 letter to Dickerson, Jesuit priest Edmundo Rodriguez, the brand new provincial in New Orleans, famous that he had “an obligation to guard the Society and the Church from unacceptable habits of its members”.
A 1984 psychological profile of Dickerson written by the Servants of the Paraclete, the lads’s order that handled troubled clergymen, described him as “very sick” and in want of intensive, long-term remedy. Throughout Dickerson’s analysis, he mentioned that he had been molested by a person at age six, in line with scientific notes included in the newest New Orleans lawsuit.
In September 1984, a mom wrote a letter to the bishop of Alexandria-Shreveport that alleged that Dickerson had molested her son.
“Lately he was rejected by his pure father,” the girl mentioned of her son. “As a substitute of assist from Fr Dickerson, he has been mentally broken even additional.” She added that Dickerson ought to by no means work close to youngsters once more.
Courtroom paperwork present that Jesuit priest Thomas Barberito had spoken in August 1984 with the bishop about “the scenario with Fr Dickerson”. In keeping with Barberito, the bishop mentioned he would refer issues to the provincial if one of many events concerned contacted his workplace.
Dickerson’s Jesuit superiors assigned him to Loyola College New Orleans in 1985. There, the New Orleans lawsuit alleges, he abused one other minor. But Dickerson maintained the help of his direct superior even whereas dealing with an investigation.
“Don needs to be given the good thing about the doubt,” Rodriguez wrote in a communication dated 28 February 1986. “We owe Don the identical cautious due course of which we might wish to present for anybody else.”
However in early March 1986, after Rodriguez acquired three separate allegations towards Dickerson in a single week, the provincial inspired him to depart the priesthood “to save lots of everybody from a really painful course of”.
Dickerson complied, thanking the provincial for his “willingness to droop judgment on the query of ethical culpability and to acknowledge my real efforts to beat my tendencies”. On 12 March 1986, Rodriguez wrote that he had contacted Jesuit priest Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, then the order’s superior normal, requesting that Dickerson be dismissed from the society and priestly life.
Since his laicization, Dickerson has been on the heart of a number of lawsuits past the latest New Orleans case. It’s unclear whether or not he ever confronted prison fees for accusations of sexual abuse of minors.
In 2009, a case was settled after he was accused of molesting an eighth grade boy. Dickerson was accused in 2010, within the aforementioned $12m lawsuit, of raping an 11-year-old boy at St John Berchmans in 1982. And a former Jesuit Dallas pupil sued the school in 2019, alleging Dickerson gave him alcohol and raped him throughout a visit to Alabama a long time prior.
Throughout his 18 years as Jesuit superior normal, Arrupe emerged as a broadly revered chief, beloved by the lads’s spiritual neighborhood on the time of his resignation in 1983, two years after a disabling stroke. He was recognized for having ministered to survivors of the US’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima on the finish of the second world warfare.
Arrupe’s cause for canonization, which opened in Rome in 2019, stays lively. Attorneys Richard Trahant, John Denenea and Soren Giselson, who symbolize the plaintiff within the New Orleans lawsuit centering on Dickerson, argue Arrupe shouldn’t be thought of for sainthood.
Whereas Arrupe, as superior normal, may have stopped Dickerson’s ordination, biographies and statements from Arrupe present that he opposed an authoritarian type of management of the Jesuit order. If native Jesuit officers determined to ordain Dickerson, it’s unclear whether or not Arrupe would have stepped in to cease it – or if he had all of the info supporting such a call.
Daybreak Eden Goldstein, an creator and canon lawyer, mentioned it’s unclear whether or not there’s adequate proof to say the way in which the Jesuits dealt with the Dickerson case was a coverup or willful negligence. “At this level, we don’t know whether or not this would possibly fairly be a case of superiors following the accepted procedures of that point,” she mentioned. However, she added, that rationalization doesn’t justify their actions.
The Jesuit Convention of Canada and the US didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark, and it’s unclear whether or not different information about Dickerson are within the Jesuits’ information in Rome. McGinn is the one Jesuit official on this story who continues to be alive.
The lawsuit was ongoing as of the weekend of twenty-two August.
