A former Greenwood clergyman has been indicted for allegedly abusing students at a Catholic school where he worked during the 1990s.
West
Paul West, who has been living in Appleton, Wisconsin, has been charged with two counts of sexual battery and two counts of gratification of lust. He did not contest his extradition at an Aug. 17 hearing in Outagamie County, according to The Associated Press, and was transported this week to the Leflore County Jail, where he was being held Wednesday.
La Jarvis Love
Belenchia
The indictment against West, 60, was handed down in August by a Leflore County grand jury, said Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill. The case against West was presented by the Attorney General’s Office.
West has been accused of abusing brothers Joshua and Raphael Love and one of their cousins, La Jarvis Love, when the three were students at St. Francis of Assisi Elementary School while West, a former brother in the Franciscan order that runs the school, taught there and later served as principal.
West also has been charged in Wisconsin with second-degree sexual assault of a child, according to the AP.
The former St. Francis students, who were as young as 9 years old when the alleged abuse occurred, say they were sexually assaulted by West on school grounds and during school excursions to Wisconsin and New York. Joshua Love also said that he was molested by another Franciscan, Brother Donald Lucas, who died of an apparent suicide in 1999.
La Jarvis Love, now 37, said West’s arrest was a long time in coming.
“Paul West is a pervert. Paul West should have been locked up in 1998,” Love said.
He said he did not know until Wednesday that West was in the county jail.
“I’m happy, man,” Love said. “You’re getting a child molester off the street.”
Mark Belenchia, a survivor of Catholic clergy abuse and the state coordinator for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, had successfully lobbied Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who took office in January, to pursue the case against West.
“These men were brutally raped, and we got this guy arrested,” said Belenchia. “We did this with hard work and determination. We finally got someone down here in the Attorney General’s Office who jumped on it and got it done.”
Both West and Lucas appeared on a list released in 2019 by the Catholic Diocese of Jackson of clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse. West left Greenwood in November 1998 and the Franciscan community in 2002.
Belenchia, though, accused the diocese as well as West’s former religious order of trying to cover up the case, not only when it occurred but two decades later.
Belenchia said that church officials “plucked” West out of Greenwood, and a year later he was teaching at a Catholic school in Little Chute, Wisconsin, a village about 6 miles east of Appleton. In early 2019, Joshua Love and La Jarvis Love each received a $15,000 settlement from the Wisconsin-based religious order to which West and Lucas had belonged, the Franciscan Friars of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Province. Raphael Love, who is incarcerated, declined a settlement offer. He is serving two life sentences in a Tennessee prison for a double homicide he committed as a juvenile, according to the AP.
The settlements included non-disclosure clauses that violated a 2002 pledge by American Catholic bishops to eliminate them in settlements with survivors, unless specifically requested by victims. Religious orders such as the Franciscans, however, are not bound by the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which contains the provisions on nondisclosure agreements.
Joshua and La Jarvis Love filed a lawsuit in New York last November challenging the validity of the settlements. They said that the payouts were considerably lower than those given to other victims of Catholic sexual abuse. They accused church officials of taking advantage of them because they are Black and poor.
Neither of the men had counsel when they signed the settlement agreements.
“Me being a black man, I’m not being treated fair,” La Jarvis Love, a married father of four whose landscaping business has been sidelined by the coronavirus, said Wednesday. “I don’t have the assistance or proper help that I need.”
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson sent a letter in February to the U.S. Justice Department asking it to investigate the settlements.
The Rev. James Gannon, the leader of the Franciscan group who negotiated the settlements, has denied that racism or the Loves’ poverty were factors in the amount of money offered or the confidentiality agreements.
Following the news of West’s incarceration, Belenchia expressed his contempt for the Catholic Church and for West.
“This is a bad man that’s out there. I hope he gets every bit that he deserves.”
• Contact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com. Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
The original version of this article had incomplete information on the charges on which Paul West was indicted.
