Former L.A. priest pleads guilty to molesting a child 20 years ago

George Miller, 70, faces up to three years in prison. He also admits to three other cases that he can't be charged with.

By Richard Winton
December 3, 2008

A former Los Angeles priest pleaded guilty Tuesday to molesting a young boy 20 years ago and admitted to three other cases that he cannot be charged with because of a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the district attorney's office announced.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Ann Marie Wise of the Sex Crimes Division said the admission by George Miller, 70, means that the three victims whose cases cannot be prosecuted will be allowed to address the court when he is sentenced Jan. 30 by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Cynthia Ulfig.

Miller, who has been free on bail since his arrest in July 2007, faces a three-year prison term, Wise said. He must serve at least 85% of that term before being eligible for parole consideration.

"No amount of prison time is sufficient for the crimes he has committed," Wise said.

The defendant was charged with molesting a boy that he met while assigned to the Guardian Angel Church in Pacoima. Authorities said Miller befriended the victim's mother and became a frequent guest at the family home.

He was charged with molesting the boy between March 1988 and March 1991.

In 2002, Miller was charged with molesting the victim's older brother and two other boys. But those charges were later dismissed after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the California law that had extended the statute of limitations on child molestation for decades-old sexual abuse.

The district attorney's office also had to dismiss more than a dozen other cases against priests or former priests accused of child molestation.

The new case against Miller was filed in July 2007 after the victim came forward. The defendant was charged with six molestation counts.

Miller pleaded guilty to a lewd act on a child under the age of 14. The remaining counts will be dismissed after Miller is formally sentenced.

Miller's victims were among the more than 500 civil plaintiffs who received a record $660-million settlement last year from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Miller's confidential church files are the subject of a more than four-year court battle involving the district attorney's office and the archdiocese. Church officials argued that their disclosure to a county grand jury would violate priest-bishop communications and priests' privacy rights.

The archdiocese yielded after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006 declined to hear an appeal.

Church officials said they got complaints about Miller in 1977 and 1989. In both cases, he denied wrongdoing.

In 1996, after Miller was accused of molesting a child, he was placed on leave. Church officials said Miller never returned to ministry and was reduced to lay status by the pope in May 2005.

Winton is a Times staff writer.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Times staff writer Duke Helfand contributed to this report.

AFGHANISTAN: Little support for victims of child sexual abuse

On 19 September 2007 seven young men gang-raped and tortured a 13-year-old girl in the northern province of Balkh

KABUL - Ten-year-old Sweeta still remembers the most painful moments of her life when a bulky 35-year-old man raped her in his office in the town of Sheberghan, Jowzjan Province, in northern Afghanistan.

"The three men in the car grabbed her and drove to an army barracks where the commander raped her in his office. She [Sweeta] was threatened that if she told anyone about the incident they would kill her parents."

At around 10am on 31 January 2008 a vehicle with the markings and number plate of the Afghan National Army (ANA) stopped near a water-point where Sweeta was filling her buckets, according to the Afghanistan Human Right Organisation (AHRO).

“The three men in the car grabbed her and drove to an army barracks where the commander raped her in his office,” said Lal Gul Lal, chairman of AHRO, who has provided legal support to the victim’s family.

The child was semi-conscious when the rapist dropped her home with some gifts, lying to her elder sister that she was hit by a car and was experiencing abdominal bleeding.

“She [Sweeta] was threatened that if she told anyone about the incident they would kill her parents,” Lal told IRIN in Kabul.

But it soon became clear that the girl had been raped, and this was later confirmed by local doctors.

For a whole week after the incident Sweeta’s father knocked on various government doors, trying to obtain justice, but only received verbal sympathy.

The situation changed when he approached AHRO and local and national media got wind of the story. Despite strong opposition from some influential figures, the rapist was arrested and brought to court in Kabul.

“Many cases are unreported”

Sweeta’s is not an isolated case: Some children are exploited for sexual purposes but their misery is rarely talked about in public.

“Many cases are unreported,” said Hangama Anwary, a commissioner for the rights of children with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).

At least 31 cases of child sexual abuse were registered by the AIHRC in 2007. So far this year only four cases have been reported, though it is estimated by the AIHRC and other human rights organisations, that there are hundreds of cases every year.

“Some parents think by reporting sex offences against their children they will only bring dishonour on their families,” Anwary said.

On 19 September 2007 seven young men gang-raped and tortured a 13-year-old girl in the northern province of Balkh, according to the two rights watchdogs, the AHRO and the AIHRC.

“A government official released all the accused rapists two days after they were apprehended, saying there was a lack of evidence,” said Lal of AHRO.

“The offenders are still at large and the victim is roaming around various government departments with her petition for justice,” he added.

According to Lal, many of those involved in sex offences are able to escape justice due to the weak rule of law and corruption among judges and government officials, and/or have the support of powerful militia leaders.

Link with human trafficking

However, some measures to tackle sexual offences against children have been taken: On 6 June a court in Takhar Province reportedly sentenced to death a man accused of raping and strangling to death a seven-year-old girl.

In early May, judges in Kandahar Province gave the death penalty to a man who reportedly raped and buried a six-year-old girl.

“Afghanistan is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude,” found the 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report of the US Department of State.

The report said Afghan children were trafficked internally and to regional countries for “commercial sexual exploitation, forced marriage to settle debts or disputes, forced begging, debt bondage [and] service as child soldiers”.

The AIHRC also said there were strong linkages between human trafficking and child sexual abuse. However, a major obstacle in tackling child trafficking is the lack of specific legal and judicial tools.

“Human trafficking has not been defined in our legal system so far,” the AIHRC’s Hangama Anawary told IRIN. “We also do not have legal clarity on issues related to child sexual abuse.”

Rights watchdogs have repeatedly called on the Afghan government to immediately enact a comprehensive anti-trafficking law and increase law enforcement efforts against human trafficking, particularly the trafficking of children.

No victim support

Although the man who raped Sweeta in Sheberghan has been sentenced to 15 years by a court in Kabul, her post-trauma suffering has not diminished - neither the government nor the rapist have paid any financial compensation to ease the victim family’s difficulties, and Sweeta has not received any rehabilitative and/or mental support to help her return to a normal life.

“The government does not run a formal victim support fund to assist victims like Sweeta,” Lal Gul Lal said.

Afghanistan’s legal system envisions individual compensatory mechanisms in which only offenders - not the government - must pay financial compensation to victims.

research shows that child molesters rarely serve `serious time'

By Richard P. Morin

Child molestation, like other capital offenses such as murder, carries a maximum sentence of life behind bars. But few people in Rhode Island charged with sexual crimes against children serve significant amounts of jail time, according to Ross Cheit, professor of political science and public policy.

An electronic analysis by Cheit of the outcomes for those charged with child molestation from 1985-1993 revealed that 70 percent of those found guilty did not serve jail time. "Most people think that if found guilty of a felony sex offense against a child you'll serve serious time, but that is rarely the case," said Cheit.

Past studies of people convicted of sexual crimes against children have shown that the average jail sentence is five to six years, a conclusion that Cheit says "is absolutely not true." Cheit contends that those studies are not comprehensive and therefore do not provide an accurate picture of punishment rates for those convicted of child molestation. For Cheit's analysis, "we said let's take a look at every person in a given year" who was charged with child molestation. "Other studies have only picked the worst cases," he noted.

In addition, past studies have been flawed, Cheit says, because they did not distinguish whether the individual was charged with multiple offenses. "The heaviest sentences went to those who had additional charges," he said. "In Rhode Island it appears that only first-degree child molestation cases [in which penetration occurs] are taken seriously."

Many child molestation cases are hidden from the public with the help, ironically, of the law. Rhode Island law requires all records involving cases of child molestation to be sealed. The law is intended to preserve victims' privacy, but it also has led to protection of criminals.

Cheit surveyed newspaper coverage of people charged with child molestation in Rhode Island. The study revealed that only a small percentage of people accused ever had their names published. Fewer articles detailed actual cases. "Most articles are about arrest and arraignment. Very few are about actual outcomes," Cheit said.

Because the laws are designed to protect the privacy of those involved in the cases, the media depend upon the police and state's attorney general's office for information. The attorney general's office seeks publicity for long-term punishments it secures for offenders, Cheit says. "They aren't going to call up and say, `We had two more probations today.' So what you get is coverage that leads people to believe that [defendants] who are convicted of child molestation are getting long sentences."

Cheit is not only challenging widely accepted beliefs about punishment for child abusers; he also is turning an analytical eye toward the reportage of sexual crimes against children in the United States.

"Some people cite numbers that indicate two-thirds of the sexual abuse cases are unfounded or two-thirds are false accusations," he said. Actually, two-thirds of the cases are unsubstantiated, "which means social workers thought the actual abuse happened, but don't think not enough proof," Cheit said.

A child's first complaint of child molestation often remains unsubstantiated, Cheit said, but later complaints are often substantiated. Therefore, if a social worker substantiates a child's third complaint, the public record of data would show two reports of unsubstantiated abuse, then a report of substantiated abuse. "I could say one claim is substantiated and you could say two-thirds are unsubstantiated," said Cheit. "So unless you count by child and not by charge, you are going to miss the problem entirely."

In addition, most studies of child abuse do not separate the charge by type: sexual, physical or neglect. "Most neglect cases go unsubstantiated, so this creates a false image that most sexual abuse accusations are false," he said. "But if you separate sexual abuse cases from all other forms of child abuse, two-thirds of the cases are substantiated."

Although most cases of child molestation have not received widespread media attention, the issue of repressed memory and child abuse has. And Cheit, having remembered his own abuse by a camp counselor only later in his adult life, believes too much emphasis has been placed on memory issues when discussing child abuse.

Cheit said he would like to see a change in state laws that provide a statute of limitation on the prosecution of cases of child sexual abuse. "I have found some instances where murder cases were brought to trial 44 years after the fact. ... Additionally, there are a number of states that have no statutes of limitation on such crimes as arson and misuse of public funds. All are capital offenses. Why should crimes committed against children have a statute of limitations?"

Some states do allow for criminal charges to be brought when an individual first remembers the crime. "But for most people it is not an issue of memory, but cognition and comprehension," said Cheit. "To take legal action [by age 18] is somewhat unrealistic. In many cases the person who has been violated is probably still living at home and financially dependent on the person who may have committed the crime. So let's be realistic. I think the first realistic opportunity this person has to bring charges is after they've left the home and college."

Cheit hopes that by bringing his research and his own experience with child abuse to the attention of the nation, sexual crimes against children can be dealt with more effectively.

"I'm willing to talk about things that are very unpleasant," he said. "But it needs to be discussed because much of what is being contributed comes from people who are concerned with false accusations. Meanwhile children continue to be abused and many criminals get away with it without serving any jail time."