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NFL emails reveal the extent of the Saints’ damage control for the clergy sexual abuse crisis

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NFL emails reveal the extent of the Saints’ damage control for the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

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Gayle Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans, speaks with Saints President Dennis Lauscha, right, and VP Greg Bensel, center, during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Los Angeles Clippers in New Orleans on Sunday, March 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton, file)

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On March 21, 2018, Gayle Benson, widow of NFL New Orleans Saints and NBA New Orleans Pelicans owner Tom Benson, walks down the steps to receive his casket from New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond for visitation at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File.)

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Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans listens to a question during a news conference at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ annual fall meeting in Baltimore on Tuesday, November 12, 2013. AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File.

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Gayle Benson, owner of the New Orleans Pelicans and the Saints, arrives at the NBA Pelicans basketball media day in New Orleans on Monday, September 26, 2022, alongside Vice President Greg Bensel. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton, file)

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Dennis Lauscha, president of the New Orleans Saints, attends the NFL football owners’ spring meetings on Tuesday, May 21, 2024, in Nashville, Tennessee. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File.)

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Former New Orleans district attorney Leon Cannizzaro, who will work for Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration, attends Landry’s inauguration ceremony at the State Capitol building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Sunday, January 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton, file)

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The New Orleans Saints’ fleur-de-lis logo is displayed on the 50-yard line of the field following an NFL preseason football game between the Saints and the Tennessee Titans on Sunday, August 25, 2024, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Tyler Kaufman, file)

 

NEW ORLEANS (AP)— As New Orleans church leaders braced for the consequences of publishing a list of predatory Catholic priests, they turned to an unlikely ally: the city’s NFL franchise.

The New Orleans Saints’ president and other top team officials then orchestrated a months-long crisis-communications blitz, according to hundreds of internal emails obtained by The Associated Press.

The records, previously hidden from public view, show that team executives played a larger role than previously thought in a public relations campaign to address the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The emails shed new light on the Saints’ foray into a contentious issue away from the football field, a behind-the-scenes effort spearheaded by the team’s devoutly Catholic owner, who has long had a close relationship with the city’s embattled archbishop.

They also demonstrated how various New Orleans institutions, from a sitting federal judge to the local media, rallied around church leaders during a critical period.

Among the key moments, according to the Saints’ own emails:

— Saints executives were so involved in the church’s damage control that a team spokesman informed his boss about a 2018 call with the city’s top prosecutor, hours before the church released a list of clergymen accused of abuse. According to the spokesperson, the call “allowed us to take certain people off” the list.

— Team officials were among the first people outside the church to see the list, a carefully curated but undercounted roster of suspected pedophiles. The release of those names prompted civil claims against the church and drew the attention of federal and state law enforcement.

— Dennis Lauscha, the team’s president, has drafted more than a dozen questions for Archbishop Gregory Aymond to answer when he appears before reporters.

— Greg Bensel, the Saints’ senior vice president of communications, provided Lauscha with behind-the-scenes updates on local media interviews, implying that church and team leaders were all working together. “He is doing well,” Bensel wrote as the archbishop assured reporters that the church was committed to resolving the crisis. “That is our message,” says Bensel, “that we will not stop here today.”

The emails obtained by the Associated Press sharply contradict the Saints’ assurances to fans about public relations guidance five years ago, when they claimed they had provided only “minimal” assistance to the church. The team went to court to keep internal emails private.

“This is disgusting,” said state Representative Mandie Landry (D-New Orleans). “As a New Orleans resident, taxpayer, and Catholic, I don’t understand why the Saints would go to such lengths to protect adult men who raped children. All of them should have been equally horrified by the allegations.

Last week, the Saints informed the Associated Press that the partnership was no longer in place. Attorneys for victims of a priest charged with raping an 8-year-old boy subpoenaed emails from a year-long period, ending in July 2019.

In a lengthy statement, the team criticised the media for using “leaked emails for the purpose of misconstruing a well-intended effort.”

“No member of the Saints organization condones or wants to cover up the abuse that occurred in the Archdiocese of New Orleans,” the team’s spokesperson stated. “That abuse occurred is a terrible fact.”

The team’s response did little to calm the rage of survivors of clergy sexual abuse. “We felt betrayed by the organization,” said Kevin Bourgeois, a former Saints season ticket holder who was abused by a priest during the 1980s. “It leads me to wonder what other secrets are being kept. I’m angry, hurt, and re-traumatized again.”

Emails reveal the extent of help

After the AP reported on the alliance in early 2020, Saints owner Gayle Benson denied that “associated with our organizations made recommendations or had input” on the list of pedophile priests.

The Saints reiterated their denial in a statement released Saturday, claiming that no Saints employees “had any responsibility for adding or removing any names from that list.” The team stated that no employees provided “any input, suggestions, or opinions as to who should be included or omitted from” the list.

Leon Cannizzaro, the district attorney at the time, denied any involvement in developing the credibly accused clergy list last week, echoing comments he made in 2020. He disclosed to the AP that he “absolutely had no involvement in removing any names from any list.” Cannizzaro said he didn’t understand why the Saints’ spokesman reported he was on a call about the list.

The emails, sent from Saints accounts, do not say which clergymen were removed from the list or why. The Saints’ involvement in the scandal has led to increased legal and financial consequences, potentially violating the NFL’s policy against conduct “detrimental to the league.”

A consolidation of New Orleans institutions

When asked if the league planned to investigate the team’s actions, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters Monday that Benson and Saints officials are “very involved in this community and they are great corporate citizens.”

“I’m confident that they are playing nothing more than a supportive role to help be more transparent,” Goodell said, citing ongoing state and federal investigations into the clergy abuse crisis.

Taken together, the emails show a convergence of several New Orleans institutions. U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey, who was copied on the Saints’ public relations efforts, encouraged Bensel from his personal email account, thanking the team’s spokesman “for the wonderful advice.” A newspaper editor also thanked Bensel for getting involved.

“You have hit all the points,” Zainey, a fellow Catholic, wrote in another email to Bensel, praising the Saints spokesman’s lengthy letter to local newspaper editors. “By his example and leadership, Archbishop Aymond, our shepherd, will continue to lead our Church in the right direction — helping us to learn and to rebuild from the mistakes of the past.”

Zainey overturned a Louisiana law that would have allowed victims to file civil claims regardless of when the alleged sex abuse occurred. The church strongly opposed this law. He declined to comment.

A watershed moment in the Catholic Church.

The list was a watershed moment in heavily Catholic New Orleans, a long-awaited apology to parishioners meant to usher in healing and local accountability. It occurred at a time when church leaders were attempting to maintain public trust — and financial support — as they dealt with generations of abuse and mounting litigation that eventually drove the Archdiocese of New Orleans into bankruptcy.

In 2020, more than 600 individuals filed a lawsuit alleging clergy abuse. The case has yielded a trove of still-secret church records allegedly documenting years of abuse claims and a pattern of church leaders transferring clergy without reporting their crimes to law enforcement.

While the list of accused priests has since expanded, an earlier AP investigation discovered that it lacked a number of clergy when it was first released.

The Associated Press identified 20 clergymen accused of child sexual abuse who were omitted from the New Orleans list, including two convicted of crimes.

The FBI and Louisiana State Police investigated New Orleans church leaders for shielding predatory priests based on the list.

Last spring, state police executed a broad search warrant at the Archdiocese of New Orleans, seizing records that included communications with the Vatican.

Since the Saints began assisting the archdiocese, at least seven current and former members of the local clergy have been charged with offenses ranging from rape to possession of child sexual abuse materials.

Public Relations Campaign

The extent of the abuse was largely unknown in 2018, when the Saints won nine straight games on their way to the NFC Championship. As the church prepared for a media onslaught, Bensel launched an aggressive public relations campaign in which he solicited favors, prepared talking points, and relied on long-time media contacts to help the church through a “soon-to-be-messy” period.

Far from freelancing, Bensel had the Saints’ support and blessing in what he dubbed a “Galileo moment,” implying that Aymond would be a trailblazer in releasing a credible list of accused clergy at a critical time for the church. In emails to editorial boards, he cautioned that “casting a critical eye” on the archbishop “is neither beneficial nor right.”

He urged the city’s newspapers to “work with” the church, noting that the Saints and New Orleans Pelicans — the city’s NBA team, which is also owned by Benson — had been successful in part because of their support.

“We did this because we had buy-in from you,” Bensel wrote to the editors of The Times-Picayune and New Orleans Advocate, “supporting our mission to be the best, to make New Orleans and everything within her bounds the best.”

“We are sitting on that opportunity now with the Archdiocese of New Orleans,” he told me. “We need to tell the story of how this Archbishop is leading us out of this mess.”

Saints have a close relationship with the Catholic Church.

Benson and the archbishop, Aymond, have been confidants for many years. The archbishop introduced Benson to her late husband, Tom Benson, who died in 2018, leaving his widow in charge of New Orleans’ NFL and NBA teams.

The Bensons Foundation has contributed tens of millions of dollars to the archdiocese and other Catholic causes. Along the way, Aymond has flown on the owner’s private jet and become almost a member of the team, frequently attending pregame Masses.

When the clergy abuse allegations escalated, Bensel, the Saints’ spokesman, used his contacts in the local media to help shape the story. He exchanged friendly emails with a Times-Picayune columnist who praised the archbishop for releasing the clergy list. He also requested that the newspaper’s leadership keep their communications “confidential, not for publication nor to share with others.”

His emails revealed that after Aymond privately complained to the publisher, The Advocate removed a notice from one online article encouraging victims of clergy abuse to contact them.

Kevin Hall, president and publisher of Georges Media, which owns the newspaper, stated that while the publication welcomes engagement from community leaders, such outreach “does not dilute our journalistic standards or keep us from pursuing the truth.”

“No one is given preferential treatment in our news coverage,” he stated. “Over the past six years, we have consistently published in-depth stories highlighting the ongoing serious issues surrounding the archdiocese sex abuse crisis, as well as investigative reports on this matter by WWL-TV and by The Associated Press.”

The Advocate’s reporting prompted Bensel to assist the church, according to the emails. He offered to “chat crisis communications” with church leaders after the newspaper exposed a scandal involving a disgraced deacon, George Brignac, who remained a lay minister even after the archdiocese settled claims he raped an 8-year-old altar boy.

“We have been through enough at Saints to be a help or sounding board,” said Bensel, “but I don’t want to overstep!”

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