Pat Wattigny, a pedophile priest’s parole hearing on Thursday disclosed that his expulsion from ministry occurred only after he sent a second text to a kid, completed a psychiatric evaluation, and confessed to sexual abuse.
Pat Wattigny, the priest found guilty of child molestation in 2023, disclosed that Archbishop Gregory Aymond requested in February 2020 that he pledge not to send inappropriate text messages to a youngster while acting as chaplain at Pope John Paul High School in Slidell.
“The archbishop called me in February of 2020 and asked me if I had done this, and I said ‘yes, I had.’ He said ‘do you give me your word you would not do it again.’ I said ‘yes I would.’ I held to that for a little while and then I gave in during the pandemic, and I texted this person again,” Pat Wattigny said during his Thursday hearing.
Pat Wattigny said it was only after he texted the child a second time that Aymond sent him for a psychological evaluation.
During the evaluation, which included a polygraph test, Pat Wattigny admitted he had also molested a separate child years earlier.
Another of Pat Wattigny’s victims, Tim Gioe, testified at Thursday’s hearing: “This trauma isn’t behind me. It’s still with me. It affects how I parent my kids. It affects my marriage. It affects how safe I feel in the world.”
Fox 8 reached out to Aymond’s representatives for an interview, but they declined, saying Pat Wattigny revealed little and that Aymond addressed the case shortly after Pat Wattigny was removed from ministry.
They pointed to a YouTube video posted at the time, claiming Pat Wattigny had been immediately removed. But Pat Wattigny’s removal occurred only after he texted the child a second time, underwent the psychological evaluation and admitted molesting a child.
“In 2020, we received copies of text message between Pat Wattigny and a teenager,” Aymond said in the video. “Though not sexual in nature, our technology policy forbids this type of communication. This was addressed, and the text messages stopped.”
The archdiocese added that it was Aymond’s actions that prompted Pat Wattigny’s confession, removal and eventual conviction.
Letitia Peyton, the Louisiana contact for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and executive director of her own clergy sex abuse survivor support organization, TentMakers of Louisiana, began working as a survivors advocate after a priest molested her son. She condemned Aymond’s response to the messages and said it was wrong to simply ask Pat Wattigny to promise not to text the child inappropriately again.
“You can’t give the benefit of the doubt when a child could possibly be harmed for the rest of his entire life,” Peyton said. “There’s no benefit of the doubt, and there’s history to prove there should not be the benefit of the doubt.”
Peyton said Aymond’s alleged actions reflect what she described as a lack of transparency in the Catholic Church.
“Archbishop Aymond is probably riding those kinds of coattails where we have other bishops who are doing sort of the same thing by not being transparent, not being accountable and nothing’s really happening to them,” she said. “They’re being elevated.”
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