Pedophilia in the Cleveland area

8. Pedophilia in the Cleveland area 

"In Shaker Heights, our good citizens (doctors, lawyers, dentists) have formed a little club - they're having sex with children." - quote from Talk Radio 

Diocese confronted clergy abuse in 1987 
03/10/02 James F. McCarty and David Briggs Plain Dealer Reporters 
One of the darkest chapters in the history of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland opened on the Sunday before St. Patrick's Day, 1987. 
An 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. The story did not name the priest or his parishIn 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. 
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. But not all of their new superiors were told of the allegations. 
The Rev. 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. 
Berthiaume brought with him a felony conviction and two sexual-abuse lawsuits for fondling youths in Michigan. He had already served six months in prison and was still on five years' probation. 
Cleveland Bishop Anthony Pilla declined to warn parishioners about the pedophile priest he had placed in their midst. 
Berthiaume had been "watched like a hawk" during his stay at Ascension Church, with no reports of illegal behavior - a strong indication, Auxiliary Bishop A. James Quinn said at the time, that Berthiaume had been cured of his disease. 
But it turned out that the hawk watching Berthiaume at Ascension was the Rev. 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. 
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. 
Berthiaume left the diocese after the 1987 stories broke. He now works at the Cenacle Retreat House in Warrenville, Ill. Berthiaume did not return phones calls seeking comment. 
Bruening 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.http://www.cleveland.com/abuse/index.ssf?/abuse/more/10157562251923437.html