Dallas police raided Dallas Catholic Diocese offices Wednesday morning after a detective said church officials had "thwarted" his investigations into allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

Detective David Clark wrote in a search warrant affidavit that he had uncovered new allegations against priests while the diocese hid past ones, turned over incomplete records and made it nearly impossible for police to determine whether accusers' claims had been fully examined. Clark also took the diocese to task for its recent transparency efforts, characterizing them as primarily a public-relations effort.

Dallas Bishop Edward J. Burns said at an afternoon news conference that the diocese had provided personnel files "for all the priests named in the warrant" and had been cooperating with the police requests.

Burns said that, throughout the "collaboration with the police, there are some who are not satisfied and want to look for themselves."

"We know we have given them the files," he said. "And so we say, 'By all means, look.'"

'Wholly appropriate'

Police investigators will do so. Officers, along with federal authorities, took files from the diocese's headquarters, a storage site and St. Cecilia, a Catholic church in Oak Cliff, where the priest who sparked the investigation previously served.

Police Maj. Max Geron, who oversees the special investigations division, called the raids "wholly appropriate" for the investigation.

Law enforcement officials raided Catholic Diocese of Dallas offices and facilities Wednesday. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Wednesday's raid is one of many such recent actions by law enforcement against the Catholic Church across the country. Authorities in at least a dozen states, including New York, New Jersey and Florida, have announced investigations into allegations of sex abuse by priests and cover-ups by church officials. And in November, prosecutors armed with a subpoena searched the offices of the Houston-Galveston Diocese, headed by Cardinal Daniel Dinardo, who also serves as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The Dallas Diocese, like other dioceses and religious orders, had promoted transparency measures in recent months as the Catholic Church locally and worldwide continues to deal with its sex abuse crisis and allegations of cover-ups. On Jan. 31, all Catholic dioceses in Texas — including Dallas — published lists of clergy members "credibly accused" of sexual abuse of minors since 1950.

Dallas Diocese officials said they had hired a team of former law enforcement investigators to comb through the diocese's files to compile its list of 31 names. Seventeen people on the list were dead. And most of the allegations had already been reported.

But since the police investigation into one of the diocese's priests began last fall, at least five new allegations of sexual abuse have surfaced within the Dallas Diocese, Geron said. The new accusations involve five priests already on the "credibly accused" list released by the diocese in January.

Paredes case

At the center of the affidavit is the August revelation that Edmundo Paredes, the longtime pastor at St. Cecilia, had been credibly accused of molesting three teenage boys in the parish over a decade ago. Diocese officials said Paredes also allegedly stole from the church.

The affidavit says the police investigation began Feb. 28, 2018, when Mary Edlund, then chancellor of the diocese, contacted the Dallas Police Department's Child Exploitation Unit about allegations made against Paredes.

Clark, the detective, wrote that the only reason Edlund contacted police was that the diocese knew the allegations would be made public and spark media attention. The affidavit alleges that Edlund told Clark "it would look better to say they contacted the police."

Police said the allegations against Paredes date back decades and had been known by church officials since at least 2006.

Edmundo Paredes, the longtime pastor at St. Cecilia Catholic Church, is accused of molesting teenage boys in the parish over a decade ago and stealing from the church. (Juan Garcia / The Dallas Morning News)

Detective David Clark says church officials have "thwarted" his investigations into allegations of sexual abuse by priests. (Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer)

According to the affidavit, Edlund told Clark that Paredes' file, which had been turned over to law enforcement, should contain information about 2006 meetings regarding the priest.

But, Clark wrote in the affidavit, the "file did not contain any information regarding the 2006 meeting between parishioners and Chancellor Edlund."

Edlund, who retired in September after 40 years with the diocese, did not respond to a request for comment.

Clark wrote that he reached out to the diocese's attorney Bill Sims, who told the detective that the diocese and victims who had come forward were in the "monetary settlement process." The attorney also told the detective "he believed the victims did not want to pursue criminal allegations," according to the affidavit.

The settlement details have been kept confidential.

The sexual abuse allegations against Paredes were made public in August. Burns, the Dallas bishop, told St. Cecilia parishioners that officials believed Paredes had fled to his native country, the Philippines.

In January, Dallas police — who assigned Clark to investigate sexual abuse allegations against clergy members in the city — issued an arrest warrant for the former Oak Cliff priest after a new accuser emerged.

Shortly afterward, the diocese released its list of "credibly accused" priests.

Burns said at the time that the list was part of an effort to be "accountable."

"The church of today has implemented reforms to safeguard those in our care," Burns said. "Going forward, we must remain vigilant. We cannot grow lukewarm."

Investigation spat

But police said the diocese didn't appear qualified to deal with the allegations.

According to Clark's affidavit, Edlund told police that the diocese's investigators came from the Kathleen McChesney Group — led by McChesney, a former FBI agent. The affidavit says "it is noteworthy [that] these investigators were initially hired to investigate financial improprieties involving the Diocese's priests, not sexual abuse allegations."

Dallas police said the McChesney Group reviewed the sexual abuse allegations only "out of convenience, given they were already hired and in place."

But Annette G. Taylor, a spokeswoman for the diocese, said that from the start, the diocesan investigators — former law enforcement officers — were looking into all clergy improprieties, including sexual abuse.

McChesney, who is based in California and previously led the U.S. Conference of Bishops' child and youth protection office, did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment Wednesday afternoon.

Clark wrote in the affidavit that he had been given only one name of a church investigator on the team and was "not aware of any experience" the investigator had "related to child abuse investigations." The affidavit says, "The identities of other investigators were never revealed to Dallas Police nor was their experience in child abuse investigations, if any."

Asked why the diocese wouldn't let police talk to the diocesan investigators, Burns said he didn't see any reason the police couldn't call the McChesney Group or vice versa.

A police car was parked outside St. Cecilia Catholic Church on Wednesday. (Dave Tarrant / Staff writer)

Burns and the Diocesan Review Board, made up of non-clergy professionals including law enforcement experts, were the final arbiters of what constituted a credible sexual abuse allegation, the affidavit says.

'Accusations were missing'

Police also said in the affidavit that they had asked for the names of the priests whose names surfaced during the diocese's investigation, but had been rebuffed and told that information was "privileged."

The affidavit says that police think more priests' files contain information "indicative of criminal behavior" but that it's unclear to police what the files say — and why they are being kept from law enforcement.

Files that police have seen also did not name victims or provide evidence that priests had been punished.

At the news conference, the bishop was asked if he was willing to share information on every single priest who has ever been flagged for a sexual abuse allegation, and not just the 31 on the list released in January.

"When asking for a specific file or a specific piece of information, I may not be able to talk about specifics," Burns said. "But I am able to talk about the spirit of this diocese being so very transparent."

Clark wrote that he repeatedly ran into missing information about the accused priests. Last October, he wrote, Barbara Landregan, diocesan director of the Safe Environment Program, reached out to him about allegations involving Richard Thomas Brown at Holy Family Catholic Church in Irving. Those allegations dated to the 1980s.

But Clark wrote that when he looked through Brown's 541-page personnel file, "accusations were missing."

It took three weeks for church officials to turn over 51 additional pages from the file. But, again, most of the documentation from a 2004 allegation was absent.

Clark did find in the file Brown's own admission that he had touched two juveniles — once when he was in Washington, D.C., and once in Irving in 1987. But the allegations involved far more than that, the police detective said.

Clark said the file identified the D.C. victim but not the girl from Irving. He said he asked the diocese's attorneys for help identifying her.

"The attorneys assured me all relevant information was in the file," Clark wrote, "and there was nothing else anywhere in the Diocese that would help identify the victim."

Clark wrote that on Feb. 19 of this year, he asked diocesan lawyer Robert Rogers for files concerning Brown's transfers. Rogers, the detective wrote, "stated my request was 'overly broad,' 'unnecessary,' and 'inappropriate.'"

Eventually, Clark wrote, he found Brown in Pecos, N.M., where the priest allegedly identified victims not contained in his personnel file.

"It should be noted," Clark wrote, "Brown has not been investigated or prosecuted for any of his acts of sexual abuse against children."

Law enforcement officials worked Wednesday at the offices of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Searching for answers

Clark also wrote that when he contacted other law-enforcement agencies across the country that worked on similar investigations based on search warrants, they all said the same thing: Dioceses willfully refused to turn over information.

According to the affidavit, police on Wednesday raided the Safesite document-storage facility because that's where the Diocese keeps its "old sexual abuse complaints."

The manager there told police that the storage unit contained about 700 boxes from the Dallas Diocese and that "some of the boxes contained" files on accused priests.

The police raid heartened advocates, who say the church still hasn't come completely clean. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, released a statement saying its members "applaud Texas law enforcement officials" for the raids.

"We are glad that police and prosecutors are taking the issue of clergy abuse in Texas seriously and are not just relying on the promises of church officials," SNAP's statement said.

The statement said the group hopes "this raid today sheds more light on the clergy abuse scandal as it relates to the Diocese of Dallas and will uncover the full truth of who knew what, when they knew it, and what steps church officials took in response to allegations of sexual abuse."