New recordings raise questions about archbishop’s
response to accusations against VM Wheeler, attorney and
church benefactor
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(Yet another instance of what one of our posters recently
referred to as "misunderstandings about priests"...even
when they admit to what they've done...)
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More than 10 months after he pleaded guilty to child
molestation and after his victim received a substantial
financial settlement, the Roman Catholic archdiocese of
New Orleans has at last acknowledged that deacon VM
Wheeler was a credibly accused child molester.
Wheeler, a prominent attorney and church benefactor who
died this spring, was ordained in 2018 by the New Orleans
archbishop, Gregory Aymond. Over the next four years,
Wheeler would be accused of molesting a 12-year-old boy
in the early 2000s, suspended from ministry, arrested on
suspicion of raping the child, charged with aggravated
sexual battery, accused in a lawsuit of trying to pay the
victim $400,000 to stop working with police, and – in
December 2022 – plead guilty to indecent behavior with a
juvenile.
Still, Aymond would not make Wheeler the 78th cleric on
his archdiocese’s list of clergymen faced with credible
allegations of child molestation until this month, after
WWL-TV and the Guardian questioned his omission from the
roster in August and settlement of the victim’s civil
suit against Wheeler’s estate in September.
Now, the station and newspaper have obtained police
interviews and secret recordings that raise fresh
questions about why Wheeler wasn’t added to the list much
sooner, how the archbishop and other church leaders
handled repeated complaints against Wheeler, and why
prominent Catholics with close ties to Aymond were able
to try to intimidate a victim whose identity the church
was sworn to protect.
The new information starkly illustrates the pressure
those loyal to the church can exert on those speaking out
even when they are relatively well-heeled themselves –
and as the archdiocese continues to reel from a decades-
old clerical molestation scandal that forced it to file
for bankruptcy protection in 2020.
Recently, the victim disclosed his identity publicly to
the Guardian.
The victim is Mac McCall, 34, the child of Mary Lou
McCall, a former journalist and host of a Catholic
television show, and John Young, the ex-president of
Jefferson parish – a suburban New Orleans community – and
once a candidate for lieutenant governor of Louisiana.
In an interview with WWL-TV and the Guardian before
Wheeler’s name was added to the official list of credibly
accused abusers, McCall condemned the church for its
handling of the broader molestation crisis and his claim
against Wheeler in particular.
“They can’t even do something as simple as put somebody
on the list who admitted it,” he said.
After Wheeler took a plea deal in December 2022 to serve
five years’ probation for indecent behavior with a
juvenile, McCall tried to meet with Aymond to ask him to
add Wheeler’s name to the official abuse list. Clerical
molestation survivors often draw validation from seeing
their abusers’ names added to the list. And McCall had
told church officials that seeing Wheeler listed would
mean a lot to him.
McCall recorded audio of his visit to the archdiocese
offices. And in the recording, another priest once
accused of child molestation in since-dropped litigation,
John Asare-Dankwah, can be heard waiting for a scheduled
meeting with Aymond.
So the archdiocese’s attorney, Susan Zeringue, came out
to meet with McCall instead.
‘We don’t interfere’
When McCall asks Zeringue why Wheeler isn’t on the list,
Zeringue says the church “won’t act … until the final
criminal proceedings are done”.
When McCall says they are done, she asks if he has a
pending civil lawsuit against Wheeler. He says yes – and
she adds a new reason they can’t add Wheeler to the list.
“Because we don’t interfere with ongoing civil or
criminal litigation,” she says. “Whenever that’s going
on, we take a step back.”
However, in at least two other recent cases – with
Patrick Wattigny and Brian Highfill – Aymond added
priests to the list while criminal or civil cases were
pending against them.
In August, a church spokesperson gave WWL-TV yet another
reason Wheeler wasn’t added to the list: because the
abuse happened before his ordination. However, the second
priest on the original list, Paul Calamari, is on there
for alleged abuse in the 1970s, before his ordination in
1980.
Aymond’s statements to police authorities investigating
Wheeler in 2020 are also contradicted by McCall and his
family’s recollection of events.
McCall said he and his father first met with Aymond in
September 2018, less than three months after Wheeler was
ordained, to report that Wheeler had fondled McCall’s
genitals in a movie theater when he was 10 or 11.
He said Wheeler had threatened him to never come forward
and in 2018, McCall was still afraid to tell his father
or Aymond about the showers Wheeler took with him or the
sex acts Wheeler performed on him. He wouldn’t give those
full details until July 2020 – but he questioned why
Aymond did nothing to investigate his first complaint in
2018, which explicitly mentioned fondling.
In an interview recorded by police, McCall’s father tells
a similar story to detectives: that his son told Aymond
that Wheeler had touched his genitals and the archbishop
did not appear to think it rose to the level of abuse.
Young said: “I remember the archbishop mentioned it as
grooming activities,” which the church purports to
condemn but does not consider as fitting the definition
of abuse. Young added: “I thought it was a little more
than grooming.”
But in his own interview with detectives, Aymond had a
different recollection of the 2018 complaint.
“Not only did he say there was no sexual activity, abuse,
but it was also very clear that neither he nor his dad
wanted to participate in any kind of investigation,”
Aymond said on a recording of the conversation, which –
like the others – were obtained through a public records
request by Richard Windmann, president of the victims’
advocacy group Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, and
shared with WWL-TV and the Guardian.
In a statement to WWL-TV, Aymond said: “I told the
officers the truth as told to me by [McCall] in the
presence of his father, John Young.”
Asked by police if he believed McCall’s claim, Aymond
said he did – but with a caveat.
“However, now the story’s changed three times,” the
archbishop said. “So I’m not saying I don’t believe him,
but I also want to say, respectfully, that his past in
terms of drugs and alcohol and being in a psychiatric
hospital and all – which I didn’t know at the time – I
think that that plays into it.”
McCall has since said the archbishop’s comment about his
acknowledged past drug and alcohol abuse was like
“attacking somebody and then blaming them for the
injury”.
“A lot of victims and a lot of survivors have drug issues
because they’re trying to self-medicate because they were
abused,” he said.
An earlier warning
Meanwhile, McCall’s mother told investigators she had
gone to church authorities with concerns about Wheeler
long before all that.
Mary Lou McCall said Mac McCall’s older brother, Johnny,
got back from a ski trip to Utah in 2002 and reported
that Wheeler had made him sleep in the same bed with him.
She said she immediately reported her son’s statement to
the retired New Orleans archbishop Philip Hannan – with
whom she was making a documentary at the time – and Jim
Swiler, the head of the deacon-training program that
Wheeler aspired to join.
“I said: ‘He’s talking about becoming a deacon for this
archdiocese,’” Mary Lou McCall recalled in her recorded
interview with a detective investigating Wheeler. “‘And
if you all make him a deacon and he ends up abusing any
child, and now that you’ve heard my story – this is like
a warning. Then, it’s on you.’”
Hannan died in 2011. Swiler died in 2016.
Church law required them to record the complaint. But
years later, Aymond would insist that a complaint was
never made.
And in June 2018, Aymond ordained Wheeler a deacon.
Mary Lou McCall told police she confronted Aymond about
it, remarking: “I said, ‘There should be a record. And,
archbishop, if there isn’t a record, here’s where you’re
going to be in trouble.’”
Furthermore, when Mac McCall later went back to meet with
Aymond to fully disclose Wheeler’s abuse, he was supposed
to remain anonymous to people outside that room.
Soon, though, Young started hearing from some of the
powerful friends he had made in politics. The former
mayor of the New Orleans suburb Harahan, defense attorney
Vinny Mosca, called Young with legal advice.
“It would probably be in the best interests of the family
to resolve it on a civil basis as opposed to a criminal
basis,” Mosca – who has since died – said, according to
what Young told investigators.
Then, when Young called the prominent local businessman
and longtime political supporter Frank Stewart to wish
him a happy birthday, he got an earful about McCall’s
allegations of abuse.
“He said, ‘I’d like to talk to you – I can’t talk to you
right now, but I’m real disappointed about this Wheeler
thing,’” Young recalled. Young says he replied: “Frank,
that’s my son. I mean, what do you want me to say?”
Young added: “Apparently, he had been shown some things.
Now, what they were, I don’t know.”
Another local businessman, Danny Kingston, also made
contact. Young said Kingston’s aim was: “Just seeing if
there’s anything he could do to help – if there’s any way
to resolve this thing on a civil basis in terms of money,
that type of thing. No figures discussed.”
Kingston declined comment. Stewart did not respond to
messages.
In February 2021, months into the law enforcement
investigation of Wheeler, a church benefactor, Louie
Roussel, called McCall’s lawyer, Richard Trahant. McCall
said he understood that Roussel, the former owner of New
Orleans’s horse racing track, offered up to $400,000 “to
make it go away”.
‘Huge part of the problem’
When Roussel called back during a follow-up conversation
that was recorded, Trahant said: “It seems like Mr
Wheeler was offering money to have McCall stop
cooperating with the police. And that bothered me. And I
think it bothered you.”
Roussel said: “It bothered me tremendously. I didn’t
sleep last night. You know, I don’t want to be involved
with it.”
In his phone call with Trahant, Roussel acknowledged he
had already talked with Aymond about the case against
Wheeler.
“I called the archbishop and said, “What the problem is
here with Mr Wheeler?” Roussel recounted. “He said they
had received a complaint of some improper behavior and
that was it.”
Roussel has since denied that the payment was offered to
cut off McCall’s cooperation with law enforcement, which
would be illegal. He has said it was an offer to settle a
civil lawsuit before it was filed.
For his part, Aymond provided a statement to WWL-TV and
the Guardian denying he ever revealed anything about
McCall to anyone.
“I categorically deny revealing [McCall]’s identity to
anyone and have never and will never discuss the identity
of an abuse survivor with any third party.”
One more twist awaited McCall before everything was
resolved. Someone from Wheeler’s criminal defense team at
one point dropped off a packet on the doorstep of
Trahant’s office containing confidential medical records.
Those records were created during a 2010 stint that
McCall had in a drug addiction rehabilitation program.
Somehow, Wheeler had obtained them, and now he was
circulating them without having obtained a privacy
waiver.
They were “definitely using privileged information … to
try to keep me quiet”, McCall recently said.
“Intimidation.”
But McCall pressed his case with his parents at his side.
In December 2022, Wheeler pleaded guilty, was sentenced
to probation and was required to register as a sex
offender.
The sex offender registration infuriated Wheeler, and he
abruptly backed out of an agreement of more than $1m to
settle the civil lawsuit McCall filed against him.
Wheeler, however, died in April. And in September,
because the archdiocese’s bankruptcy filing didn’t shield
Wheeler, his estate paid out McCall’s settlement, which
is believed to be one of the largest involving abuse by a
Catholic clergyman serving the New Orleans area.
McCall, who now runs a physical and mental health fitness
program for schoolchildren, believes Wheeler’s addition
to the credibly accused clergy list was the last piece
missing from what he regards as total vindication for
himself. Yet he is appalled at everything he had to go
through to reach this juncture.
“It’s hard enough for the general population to accept
this is happening,” McCall said, alluding to the
skepticism that meets many clergy abuse survivors when
they come forward. “And then you have these elite people
stepping in to cover up, to pay off people. It’s not
right. It’s illegal and it’s a huge part of the problem.”
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