Priest's tip led to pastor's arrest in porn case

[rainbow4321]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/tarrant/stories/020405dnmetgppriest.77cfc.html

He reported seeing images of nude boys on GP cleric's computer

GRAND PRAIRIE – While associate priest Jesús Belmontes spoke with Father Matthew Bagert in his office at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Grand Prairie in December, he noticed a reflection from the pastor's computer screen on a glass picture frame behind his desk.

The reflection turned out to be the image of a nude boy. Father Belmontes alerted a Dallas Catholic Diocese official, and his tip ultimately led to the arrest Wednesday of Father Bagert on charges of possession of child pornography, a third-degree felony. He was released on $20,000 bail.

According to Grand Prairie police arrest affidavits, investigators seized Father Bagert's computer Jan. 31 at the church rectory. They found that the hard drive contained "numerous images, sexual and lewd in nature" of naked boys from ages 4 to 14 years old. Police also seized videotapes and printed materials during the search of the rectory.

According to the affidavits, after Father Belmontes noticed the images on the pastor's computer screen, he returned to the office later and began searching through documents. Father Belmontes said he found numerous images of nude boys on Father Bagert's computer, then confided his findings to a church deacon. Together, the two returned to the computer and used a camcorder to record the pictures they found there.

[Kagemusha]

1. Wonder how the pastor will plead illegal search and privacy...

Expectations of privacy in a rectory perhaps? I'm sure he'll try somethihng.

[LoZoccolo]

2. I caught my boss at a job years back looking at regular porn the same way.

I stepped into his cube to ask him a question and it was dark out so I could see his screen on the reflection from the window behind him! It was legal porn, but he still shouldn't have been looking at it at the company I was at, especially since he was a consultant. I didn't say anything to anyone though, and most likely doesn't know at all that I know.

[yardwork]

3. Some of those children were four years old

[Us vs Them]

4. If you were a priest who didn't like your pastor...

Wouldn't this be a great way to get rid of him?

After all this holy man/boy love scandal news some years back, you'd think it would send a clear message to hide your kiddie porn more successfully.

[rainbow4321]

5. After Dallas' Rudy Kos case, ya think they would know better

http://www.crisismagazine.com/october2001/cover.htm


Rudy Kos, former Catholic priest and convicted molester of altar boys, just spent another hot summer in the unair-conditioned Texas prison where he is serving four life sentences for hundreds of incidents of sexual abuse of minors during the 1980s and early 1990s.


While Kos, 56, was hardly the first Catholic priest to sexually abuse a child, the court cases that have been brought against him since 1997 have made him one of the most significant. They set the precedent that the Catholic Church itself could be held financially responsible for the harm done by a rogue cleric's sins, bringing the issue of priestly pedophilia into a whole new world of punitive damages. A combination of a jury verdict and settlements in related civil suits required the Diocese of Dallas, where Kos had served as a pastor, to pay eleven victims $121 million, a record sum that threatened to leave a flock of 415,000 Catholics virtually without a Church to shepherd it.

Attorneys for the former altar boys, now in their mid-20s and early 30s, convinced a jury that Bishop Charles Grahmann of Dallas and his predecessor, Bishop Thomas Tschoeppe, who headed the diocese when Kos committed the first of his crimes, and their hierarchy knew about Kos's abuse, did nothing to stop it, and then tried to cover it up.

A few years earlier, the Dallas diocese had bluntly admitted that its $121 million liability in sexual abuse cases threatened to bankrupt it. The former altar boys and others who had brought the suits against Kos and two other Dallas priests also alleged to have molested minors said they didn't want to hurt the lay faithful of Dallas and eventually settled for around $31 million. After a legal battle with its insurance company over coverage, the Dallas chancery still found itself $11 million short. Land and other disposable assets were sold immediately and staff positions cut. Eventually, though, diocese officials had to consider closing schools.