Predator Priest Let Loose on the Public: Father Mahan Diagnosed as Sociopath,Threat,Predator;Liar

The Archdiocese of Boston turned former priest Paul J. Mahan loose on the public in the mid-1990s after he had been diagnosed as a ``sociopath'' and a ``threat to adolescent males,'' according to documents released yesterday.

In a sign of just how sick therpists deemed Mahan, doctors at St. Luke Institute in Suitland, Md., expelled him as hopeless in 1995 - kicking him out of a hospital that has specialized in treating clergy with severe sexual disorders.

At least one plaintiff alleges he was raped by Mahan at a home on the North Shore soon after the priest was discharged by the archdiocese without a warning to civil authorities or former parishioners.

``They released a sexual predator into the Marblehead community and did not warn a soul,'' said Joseph G. Abromovitz, a lawyer suing the church and Mahan on behalf of two of the ex-priest's nephews, both of whom claim he raped them from 1993 to 1995. ``My clients were told Mahan was on a routine sabbatical when he was in fact being treated for incurable pedophilia,'' Abromovitz said.

Mitchell Garabedian, the lawyer who won the release of Mahan's personnel file, and represents 11 of his accusers, made two of the documents available yesterday after Superior Court Judge Constance M. Sweeney ordered that the archdiocese hand over the records.

Garabedian said he would review the full file before commenting in detail, but added: ``These psychiatric characteristics obviously are of some concern.''

The latest documents unveiled in the Roman Catholic Church abuse scandal include a summer 1995 evaluation from the Southdown treatment center in Ontario, Canada, a facility where now-defrocked pedophile John J. Geoghan was also shipped by the church.

The Southdown report states that Mahan's ``behavior has been aggressive and intrusive and in some instances predatory.'' Therapist Michael John Sy wrote Mahan acknowledged his ``high risk for re-offending'' against children.

But more damning information is contained in a September 1995 letter, also released yesterday, in which the Rev. Brian M. Flatley, then a top archdiocesan official handling sexual abuse matters, argued that Mahan should be dismissed from the priesthood. There had been eight sexual misconduct allegations against Mahan, ``a number of them involving more than one child,'' Flatley wrote.

Flatley cites an incendiary series of evaluations from St. Luke covering Mahan's two separate visits there - one in 1994, a second that spanned late 1994 and early 1995 - that made clear he was a predator.

Upon being discharged after his first 1994 visit, Flatley wrote, Mahan ``immediately lapsed into his pattern of predatory behavior.''

A therapist there concluded ``there was a real question about Father Mahan's ability to tell the truth,'' Flatey's letter states.

After Mahan was sent back to St. Luke for a second time, Flatley wrote, Mahan's therapist telephoned to say he was recommending the priest leave the facility.

``It was his judgment that Father Mahan was not able to be helped at St. Luke Institute and perhaps not anywhere,'' Flatley wrote in a letter to Rev. Richard G. Lennon, one of Bernard Cardinal Law's top aides. The therapist ``is convinced that Father Mahan is exhibiting the symptoms of a sociopath,'' Flatley continued. ``He is a dangerous person. He is a threat to adolescent males.''

In addition to being a chronic liar in therapy - ``he has a lapse of memory whenever there is a victim involved'' - Mahan also misled therapists by saying he had stopped drinking when in fact he had not, Flatley wrote.

At the very time church officials were exchanging the damning assessments, they stood by as Mahan ended his priestly career and moved unfettered to Marblehead.

Mahan later relocated to Arlington, Va., where he worked at a Radio Shack near two elementary schools until earlier this year.

Repeated efforts by the Herald to reach Mahan, including visiting his Virginia apartment building in March, were unsuccessful.

His lawyer, Martin Cosgrove, had fought to keep the psychiatric data away from Garabedian and other plaintiffs' lawyers. Attorneys for the Boston Herald and other media argued in court that the Mahan papers, like the Geoghan files, should be publicly filed.

Flatley concluded his 1995 letter by writing that Mahan should be allowed to leave the priesthood, lest he ``be a source of scandal to the people.'' Garabedian's plaintiffs, including William and Paul Oberle of Boston, allege they were abused by Mahan between 1969 and 1982 at St. Ann's in Dorchester and St. Joseph's in Needham.

``It was his judgment that Father Mahan was not able to be helped at St. Luke Institute and perhaps not anywhere,'' Flatley wrote in a letter to Rev. Richard G. Lennon, one of Bernard Cardinal Law's top aides. The therapist ``is convinced that Father Mahan is exhibiting the symptoms of a sociopath,'' Flatley continued. ``He is a dangerous person. He is a threat to adolescent males.''

Here we go again. The more I see, the more I'm convinced that this is just the tip of the iceberg in a homosexual scandal that will affect the Church from the diocesean level all the way to the highest levels in Rome. Unless the Church takes action now, I don't think it will ever be the same in America at least. The problem is, I'm not sure there are enough good men who are not at least implicated in covering it up to clean house.

In a sign of just how sick therpists deemed Mahan, doctors at St. Luke Institute in Suitland, Md., expelled him as hopeless in 1995 - kicking him out of a hospital that has specialized in treating clergy with severe sexual disorders.

Kicked him out? Out to where? Maybe it's just the "new" medical ethics. In today's WSJ (p. B1), an article on reactions to plans to counter bioterrorism: "Even some hospital groups have fought against plans for bioterror attacks because they don't want contagious patients in their facilities." [emphasis added.]

Is there some cause-effect relationship here to the movement in the 60s and 70s to de-institutionalize the insane? Laws in MA about sexual predators seems especially weak; from time to time in the papers, I read of a recidivist who had been released from prison only a short time before because, under the law, he had served his sentence, and there was no way under state to hold him longer, in spite of warnings from psychiatrists.

Sadly, they seem to still be in a stricly damage-control mode.
Protect the hierarchy at ALL costs.
I feel so badly for the many genuinely righteous, hard-working priests that made a marraige vow of "for better or for worse, in sickess and in health..." to the Church
Thier incredible integrity will not allow them to abandon thier church no matter what.
(Kind of like a man who sticks with his cheating, disrurbed wife through affair after affair just because he made a vow "till death do us part".
God bless those priests of integrity.

At the very time church officials were exchanging the damning assessments, they stood by as Mahan ended his priestly career and moved unfettered to Marblehead.

I can't stand the way the hierarchy had no conscience about allowing this priest to continue molesting kids. How is it possible for priests, bishops, and cardinals to have no conscience?

The more I see, the more I'm convinced that this is just the tip of the iceberg in a homosexual scandal that will affect the Church from the diocesean level all the way to the highest levels in Rome. Unless the Church takes action now, I don't think it will ever be the same in America at least. The problem is, I'm not sure there are enough good men who are not at least implicated in covering it up to clean house

I think you nailed it. It looks like during the 60s and 70s the liberals took over much of the church creating an environment (squishy "tolerance", etc) where homosexuality and therefore pedohilia could flourish.

Since church is "where the boys are" the pedophiles then flocked to the church as a sanctuary that provided many potential victims.

The liberal ideology had robbed the church of an institutional ability to recognize evil and the moral courage to oppose it, and the rest is history.

I hope my Catholic friends will have the courage to leave a church that has abandoned them and demand leaders who are capable of moral leadership and are not afraid to take on media causes.

I feel so badly for the many genuinely righteous, hard-working priests that made a marraige vow of "for better or for worse, in sickess and in health..." to the Church Thier incredible integrity will not allow them to abandon thier church no matter what. (Kind of like a man who sticks with his cheating, disrurbed wife through affair after affair just because he made a vow "till death do us part". God bless those priests of integrity.

Beautifully stated, Psalm 73.

The focus on the liberalization process in the Church in the '60's and '70's is, I fear, misplaced. Many of these abuser priests were ordained well before Vatican II's wrecking crew went to work, which means their formative years in the Church (when perhaps many of them were abused as well) was in the '40s and 50s. The problem is now in the the open, and the liberalization of attitudes since Vatican II has perhaps accelerated the process of lavenderizing the clergy, but as a serious issue this goes back many decades, even hundreds of years. Yesterday someone quoted Luther as having referred to 'bishops satisfied with just the love of a woman anre worshipped as gods' -- implying there was a serious problem with homosexuality in the clergy even then. I don't know, I'm a modern historian, not a renaissance/reformation scholar.

If, as hinted in yesterday's New York Post, there is at least one American cardinal who will soon be outed as an active homosexual, this is only going to get worse.

There should be a court order to send in the D.A. with all the force necessary to relieve the Archdiocese of all records pertaining to all sexual abuse Matters by Clergy.

Law and his Cronies continue to hold back on information that is crucial,germaine, and Material to the prosecution of all these cases moving through the courts.

I have never witnessed such a pack of Rats like Law and his 5 or 6 Bishops who continue to maintain Secrets of Abusers and their dirty deeds while in the uniform of Priests.

This bunch should be removed from the priesthood and put in jail.

Law and his Outlaws continue to drag the Church deeper and deeper, into the depths of disgrace and dispair.

They should send in Law enforcement to St. Lukes Psychiatric center and others to gain all their records as well, the time for pussy footing around is well over.

If, as hinted in yesterday's New York Post, there is at least one American cardinal who will soon be outed as an active homosexual, this is only going to get worse.

It's truly becoming the Church of Sodom.

The focus on the liberalization process in the Church in the '60's and '70's is, I fear, misplaced.

I agree. I don't have a link, but there was an article earlier this week about how many of these priest abusers (men in their 50s, 60s and 70s) had been abused themselves as children. This means *their* abusers were themselves doing it and were "formed" themselves back in the "good old days" way before Vatican II. This can't be blamed entirely on Vatican II, in other words.

The Church may not be the same, but it will continue to florish. I wonder what we would find if the light of truth were cast on Muslim clerics. Of course, that would require a free society. I don't know why people are so upset about all this anyway; sociopathic sexual predators have been elected to some of the highest offices in the land.

"If, as hinted in yesterday's New York Post, there is at least one American cardinal who will soon be outed as an active homosexual, this is only going to get worse.

It's truly becoming the Church of Sodom.

Then, let's get ON with it. Let's lance this boil and get the rest of the putrescence out of our Church. Don't blame the whole Church because its leadership is corrupt. The Magisterium is the same as always, and is incorrupt. The problem is with the human/sinful officers. Pray for God to make sure this purification is thorough, and that ALL the evil ones are expunged. And pray for US, the Faithful, and our GOOD priests, that we can keep our courage up and see this through to the end.

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