He declined comment.Ī fourth case publicized in 1987 produced an ambiguous resolution. ![]() Since then, he has served as chaplain at the St.Īugustine Manor retirement home on Detroit Avenue. ![]() When it became known, the bishop of Biloxi sent Romansky back to Cleveland. Romansky's past remained a secret in Mississippi until 1992. Two of the boys and their mothers sued the priest and the diocese.īoth families eventually settled with the diocese the exact amount is protected by a confidentiality agreement. Joseph Romansky had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of harming a juvenile after four 13-year-olds from Holy Family Church on Cleveland's East Side accused him of giving them money for oral sex. No such courtesy was offered to the parish in Biloxi, Miss., that received another of Cleveland's abusive priests in 1989. In 1990, the Cleveland Diocese sent him to a parish in Amarillo, Texas, but diocesan officials say the bishop there was fully informed of the earlier Bruening allegations. Shortly thereafter, Bruening was reassigned to another Cleveland-area parish. On his departure, the Ascension School honored Bruening with a full-page tribute in the school yearbook. Berthiaume did not return phones calls seeking comment.īruening was quietly forced to resign as Ascension pastor in late 1984, after another parish family accused him of a pattern of child abuse covering the previous two decades. He now works at the Cenacle Retreat House in Warrenville, Ill. In a lawsuit filed last year, a former Ascension student accused Bruening and Berthiaume of teaming up to molest him in the school's shower over three years in the 1980s.īerthiaume left the diocese after the 1987 stories broke. Allen Bruening - who himself would become the target of several allegations that he sexually molested Catholic grade-school children during his 20-year stay in the Cleveland Diocese. James Quinn said at the time, that Berthiaume had been cured of his disease.īut it turned out that the hawk watching Berthiaume at Ascension was the Rev. He had already served six months in prison and was still on five years' probation.Ĭleveland Bishop Anthony Pilla declined to warn parishioners about the pedophile priest he had placed in their midst.īerthiaume had been "watched like a hawk" during his stay at Ascension Church, with no reports of illegal behavior - a strong indication, Auxiliary Bishop A. Gary Berthiaume, 1987's mystery priest, was assigned to Ascension Parish on Puritas Avenue in Cleveland's West Park neighborhood in 1979, after leaving the Diocese of Detroit.īerthiaume brought with him a felony conviction and two sexual-abuse lawsuits for fondling youths in Michigan. But not all of their new superiors were told of the allegations. All four of the priests whose alleged deviant behavior was made public in 1987 were later sent to new assignments, where some had easy access to children. In the 15 years since, substantially more has become known about the mystery priest - and about the cases of other alleged pedophile priests that flared up to embarrass the diocese in the months and years that followed. The story did not name the priest or his parish. ![]() Patrick's Day, 1987.Īn editorial in The Plain Dealer warned that a pedophile priest with a criminal past had been secretly employed the previous seven years in the Cleveland Diocese. One of the darkest chapters in the history of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland opened on the Sunday before St. McCarty and David Briggs, Plain Dealer, Diocese Confronted Clergy Abuse in 1987, by James F.
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