Roman Catholic priest Paul Hart had admitted to inappropriate conduct with a teenage girl; been accused of rape by one woman, which he denied; and faced rumors of sexually harassing another when New Orleans’s archbishop assigned him to be a high school chaplain in 2017.
When an attorney representing survivors of a clergy abuse scandal that drove the city’s archdiocese into bankruptcy learned about Hart’s past, he took steps to get him removed from the Brother Martin high school, an all-boys institution that draws dance team members from a girls-only college preparatory school.
A federal judge presiding over the church’s bankruptcy fined the lawyer, Richard Trahant, more than $400,000.
Two higher courts have left that 2022 sanction in place. So now Trahant has asked the US supreme court – which includes a graduate of the girls’ preparatory school, Amy Coney Barrett – to provide him relief, contending he was not accorded his right to due process.
The judge punishing Trahant, Meredith Grabill, took the extraordinary measure of placing virtually the whole record concerning the sanction under seal.
But the Guardian has obtained the entire case file, thousands of pages long, through a public records request made with New Orleans state prosecutors who collected it while securing the guilty plea of another priest charged with rape and kidnapping.
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