{"id":827952,"date":"2025-02-18T12:12:42","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T18:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/18\/nfl-emails-reveal-extent-of-saints-damage-control-for-clergy-sex-abuse-crisis\/"},"modified":"2025-02-18T12:12:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T18:12:42","slug":"nfl-emails-reveal-extent-of-saints-damage-control-for-clergy-sex-abuse-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/18\/nfl-emails-reveal-extent-of-saints-damage-control-for-clergy-sex-abuse-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL emails reveal extent of Saints\u2019 damage control for clergy sex abuse crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

NEW ORLEANS (AP) \u2014 As New Orleans church leaders braced for the fallout from publishing a list of predatory Catholic priests, they turned to an unlikely ally: the front office of the city\u2019s NFL franchise.<\/p>\n

What followed was a monthslong, crisis-communications blitz orchestrated by the New Orleans Saints\u2019 president and other top team officials, according to hundreds of internal emails obtained by The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

The records, which the Saints and church had long sought to keep out of public view, reveal team executives played a more extensive role than previously known<\/a> in a public relations campaign to mitigate fallout from the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The emails shed new light on the Saints\u2019 foray into a fraught topic far from the gridiron, a behind-the-scenes effort driven by the team\u2019s devoutly Catholic owner who has long enjoyed a close relationship with the city\u2019s embattled archbishop.<\/p>\n

They also showed how various New Orleans institutions \u2014 from a sitting federal judge to the local media \u2014 rallied around church leaders at a critical moment.<\/p>\n

Among the key moments, as revealed in the Saints\u2019 own emails:<\/p>\n

\u2014 Saints executives were so involved in the church\u2019s damage control that a team spokesman briefed his boss on a 2018 call with the city\u2019s top prosecutor hours before the church released a list of clergymen accused of abuse. The call, the spokesman said, \u201callowed us to take certain people off\u201d the list.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Team officials were among the first people outside the church to view that list, a carefully curated, yet undercounted roster of suspected pedophiles. The disclosure of those names invited civil claims against the church and drew attention from federal and state law enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u2014 The team\u2019s president, Dennis Lauscha, drafted more than a dozen questions that Archbishop Gregory Aymond should be prepared to answer as he faced reporters.<\/p>\n

\u2014 The Saints\u2019 senior vice president of communications, Greg Bensel, provided fly-on-the-wall updates to Lauscha about local media interviews, suggesting church and team leaders were all on the same team. \u201cHe is doing well,\u201d Bensel wrote as the archbishop told reporters the church was committed to addressing the crisis. \u201cThat is our message,\u201d Bensel added, \u201cthat we will not stop here today.\u201d<\/p>\n

The emails obtained by AP sharply undercut assurances the Saints gave fans about the public relations guidance five years ago when they asserted they had provided only \u201cminimal\u201d assistance to the church. The team went to court to keep its internal emails secret<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is disgusting,\u201d said state Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans. \u201cAs a New Orleans resident, taxpayer and Catholic, it doesn\u2019t make any sense to me why the Saints would go to these lengths to protect grown men who raped children. All of them should have been just as horrified at the allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Saints told AP last week that the partnership is a thing of the past. The emails cover a yearlong period ending in July 2019, when they were subpoenaed by attorneys for victims of a priest later charged with raping an 8-year-old boy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a lengthy statement, the team criticized the media for using \u201cleaked emails for the purpose of misconstruing a well-intended effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo member of the Saints organization condones or wants to cover up the abuse that occurred in the Archdiocese of New Orleans,\u201d the team said. \u201cThat abuse occurred is a terrible fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s response did little to quell the anger of survivors of clergy sexual abuse. \u201cWe felt betrayed by the organization,\u201d said Kevin Bourgeois, a former Saints season ticket holder who was abused by a priest in the 1980s. \u201cIt forces me to question what other secrets are being withheld. I\u2019m angry, hurt and re-traumatized again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emails reveal extent of help<\/p>\n

After the AP first reported on the alliance in early 2020, Saints owner Gayle Benson denied<\/a> that anyone \u201cassociated with our organizations made recommendations or had input\u201d on the list of pedophile priests.<\/p>\n

The Saints reiterated that denial in its statement Saturday, saying no Saints employees \u201chad any responsibility for adding or removing any names from that list.\u201d The team said that no employees offered \u201cany input, suggestions or opinions as to who should be included or omitted from\u201d the list.<\/p>\n

Leon Cannizzaro, the district attorney at the time, last week denied any role in shaping the credibly accused clergy list, echoing statements he made in 2020. He told AP he \u201cabsolutely had no involvement in removing any names from any list.\u201d Cannizzaro said he did not know why the Saints\u2019 spokesman would have reported he had been on a call related to the list.<\/p>\n

The emails, sent from Saints accounts, don\u2019t specify which clergymen were removed from the list or why. They raise fresh questions, however, about the Saints\u2019 role in a scandal that has taken on much larger legal and financial stakes<\/a> since the team waded into it, potentially in violation of the NFL\u2019s policy against conduct \u201cdetrimental to the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

A coalescing of New Orleans institutions <\/p>\n

Asked whether the league intended to investigate the team\u2019s actions, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters Monday that Benson and Saints\u2019 officials are \u201cvery involved in this community and they are great corporate citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m confident that they are playing nothing more than a supportive role to help be more transparent,\u201d Goodell said, while also acknowledging ongoing state and federal investigations of the clergy abuse crisis.<\/p>\n

Taken together, the emails portray a coalescing of several New Orleans institutions. U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey, who was copied by the Saints on the public relations efforts, cheered Bensel on from his personal email account, thanking the team\u2019s spokesman \u201cfor the wonderful advice.\u201d A newspaper editor similarly thanked Bensel for getting involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have hit all the points,\u201d Zainey, a fellow Catholic, wrote in another email to Bensel, praising a lengthy note the Saints spokesman sent to local newspaper editors. \u201cBy his example and leadership, Archbishop Aymond, our shepherd, will continue to lead our Church in the right direction \u2014 helping us to learn and to rebuild from the mistakes of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zainey later struck down<\/a> a Louisiana law, vigorously opposed by the church, that would have allowed victims to bring civil claims irrespective of how long ago the alleged sex abuse took place. He declined to comment.<\/p>\n

A watershed moment for the Catholic Church<\/p>\n

The list marked a watershed in heavily Catholic New Orleans \u2014 a long-awaited mea culpa to parishioners intended to usher in healing and local accountability. It came at a time when church leaders were seeking to retain public trust \u2014 and financial support \u2014 as they reckoned with generations of abuse and mounting litigation that eventually drove the Archdiocese of New Orleans into bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

That litigation<\/a>, filed in 2020, involves more than 600 people who say they were abused by clergy. The case has produced a trove of still-secret church records said to document years of abuse claims and a pattern of church leaders transferring clergy without reporting their crimes to law enforcement.<\/p>\n

While it has since expanded, the list of accused priests was missing a number of clergy when it was originally released, an earlier AP investigation found.<\/p>\n

The AP identified 20 clergymen<\/a> who had been accused in lawsuits or charged by law enforcement with child sexual abuse who were inexplicably omitted from the New Orleans list \u2014 including two who were charged and convicted of crimes.<\/p>\n

Still, the list has served as a roadmap for both the FBI and Louisiana State Police, which launched sweeping investigations<\/a> into New Orleans church leaders\u2019 shielding of predatory priests.<\/p>\n

Last spring, state police carried out a wide-ranging search warrant<\/a> at the Archdiocese of New Orleans, seizing records that include communications with the Vatican.<\/p>\n

Since the Saints began assisting the archdiocese, at least seven current and former members of the local clergy have been charged with crimes ranging from rape to possession of child sexual abuse material.<\/p>\n

Public relations campaign<\/p>\n

The extent of the abuse remained largely unknown in 2018, a year the Saints won nine consecutive games on the way to an NFC Championship appearance. As the church prepped for a media onslaught, Bensel carried out an aggressive public relations campaign in which he called in favors, prepared talking points and leaned on long-time media contacts to support the church through a \u201csoon-to-be-messy\u201d time.<\/p>\n

Far from freelancing, Bensel had the Saints\u2019 backing and blessing through what he called a \u201cGalileo moment,\u201d suggesting Aymond would be a trailblazer in releasing a credibly accused clergy list at a critical time for the church. In emails to editorial boards, he warned against \u201ccasting a critical eye\u201d on the archbishop \u201cis neither beneficial nor right.\u201d<\/p>\n

He urged the city\u2019s newspapers to \u201cwork with\u201d the church, reminding them the Saints and New Orleans Pelicans \u2014 the city\u2019s NBA team, also owned by Benson \u2014 had been successful thanks, in part, to their support.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did this because we had buy-in from YOU,\u201d Bensel wrote to the editors of The Times-Picayune and New Orleans Advocate, \u201csupporting our mission to be the best, to make New Orleans and everything within her bounds the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are sitting on that opportunity now with the Archdiocese of New Orleans,\u201d he added. \u201cWe need to tell the story of how this Archbishop is leading us out of this mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Close relationship between Saints and the Catholic Church<\/p>\n

Benson and Aymond, the archbishop, have been confidants for years. It was the archbishop who introduced Benson to her late husband, Tom Benson, who died in 2018, leaving his widow in control of New Orleans\u2019 NFL and NBA franchises.<\/p>\n

The Bensons\u2019 foundation has given tens of millions of dollars to the archdiocese and other Catholic causes. Along the way, Aymond has flown on the owner\u2019s private jet and become almost a part of the team, frequently celebrating pregame Masses.<\/p>\n

When the clergy abuse allegations came to a head, Bensel, the Saints\u2019 spokesman, worked his contacts in the local media to help shape the story. He had friendly email exchanges with a Times-Picayune columnist who praised the archbishop for releasing the clergy list. He also asked the newspaper\u2019s leadership to keep their communications \u201cconfidential, not for publication nor to share with others.\u201d<\/p>\n

His emails revealed that The Advocate \u2013 after Aymond privately complained to the publisher \u2014 removed a notice from one online article that had called for clergy abuse victims to reach out.<\/p>\n

Kevin Hall, president and publisher of Georges Media, which owns the newspaper, said the publication welcomes engagement from community leaders but that outreach \u201cdoes not dilute our journalistic standards or keep us from pursuing the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one gets preferential treatment in our coverage of the news,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cOver 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was The Advocate\u2019s reporting that prompted Bensel to help the church, the emails show. He first offered to \u201cchat crisis communications\u201d with church leaders after the newspaper exposed a scandal<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been through enough at Saints to be a help or sounding board,\u201d Bensel wrote, \u201cbut I don\u2019t want to overstep!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Brett Martel
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW ORLEANS (AP) \u2014 As New Orleans church leaders braced for the fallout from publishing a list of predatory Catholic priests, they turned to an unlikely ally: the front office of the city\u2019s NFL franchise. What followed was a monthslong, crisis-communications blitz orchestrated by the New Orleans Saints\u2019 president and other top team officials, according<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":827953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26419,216],"tags":[13295,5615],"class_list":{"0":"post-827952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-emails","8":"category-reveal","9":"tag-emails","10":"tag-reveal"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}