The recent Archdiocese of Los Angeles document dump continues to reveal more and more with every plunge into the pedo-priest pool, specifically with Orange County angles. But the latest one comes as an especially strange story: the tale of one Wallace J. Daley.
Daley had lawsuits against him settled in 2006, back when the LA Archdiocese settled a bunch of them for about $600 million, but his personnel file wasn't released until this year. It showed that the priest ministered at Our Lady of Guadalupe in SanTana in the mid-1970s…then disappeared into Baja.
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Like, seriously disappeared. Before the Diocese of Orange split off from the LA Archdiocese, Daley was listed in The Official Catholic Directory as being in charge of the small parish in the Delhi barrio. Upon the split, Daley wasn't listed anywhere in the 1977 edition…then pops up as “On duty outside the diocese,” which is where priests are placed when not ministering locally but frequently served as a euphemism for pedo-priests who were exiled to poorer parishes somewhere in the world. In Daley's case, his personnel files only say he was near El Rosario, which is about 200 miles from anywhere in Baja.
In 1988, Daley magically popped up for one year in Orange County–first, St. Joachim in Costa Mesa, then a brief stint at the Mission. Then, back to Baja until he passed away in 2000 (his victim wouldn't come forward until 2002). The mysterious disappearance seems veeeery similar to the case of Eleuterio Ramos, the worst-ever pedo-priest in Orange County history, who was scurried to a children's parish in Tijuana to make sure he wasn't arrested by the cops for molesting another boy. And actually, this long-term exile seems more similar to the case of Franklin Buckman, a priest who spent decades ministering at an Indian reservation in Oregon after the legal heat became too much.
Did the Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown ever disclose that Daley–one of his own priests–was accused of pedophilia? Is new Bishop Kevin Vann any good? Heckuva job, Brownie!
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