Dallas-area priest who allegedly sexually abused as many as 50 children is arrested
A 78-year-old priest who admitted to sexually abusing as many as 50 children during his time in the Catholic Diocese of Dallas was arrested in Missouri on Wednesday in connection to allegations from the 1980s and ‘90s, according to court records and media reports.
Richard Thomas Brown was charged Tuesday with aggravated sexual assault of a child in connection with an alleged incident on July 5, 1989, Star-Telegram media partner WFAA-TV reported. He’s accused of molesting a girl he met at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church in Plano, according to an arrest warrant affidavit WFAA obtained on Thursday.
The victim told police Brown abused her between 1989 and 1996, from the time she was 6 years old until she was 14, the warrant says.
In a statement on its website, the Diocese of Dallas said, “It is our prayer that the arrest of Richard Brown will provide an opportunity for the legal system to address the accusations against him. The Diocese stripped Richard Brown of his public ministry decades ago and he has been officially laicized.”
Brown was one of five priests at the center of a Dallas police investigation last summer into alleged sexual misconduct within the diocese. The other priests who were investigated are Edmundo Paredes, Alejandro Buitrago, William Joseph Hughes Jr. and Jeremy Myers.
Brown’s the first to be arrested.
Officers searched the diocese in May 2019 as part of the investigation into the five priests, and the search warrant — obtained by the Star-Telegram — lays out the allegations against the men, including Brown.
The warrant says Brown is accused of using his role as a faith leader to become close with families and molest several young children. Additionally, leadership within the diocese was aware of the allegations against Brown and transferred him to different churches instead of reporting him, according to the search warrant.
Brown was one of 31 Catholic clergymen named by the diocese in January 2019 as being credibly accused of sexual assault.
“As early as December of 2018, Bishop Burns and the Diocese of Dallas provided DPD with documents and files on Richard Brown in advance of the January 31, 2019 release of names of those credibly accused from 1950 to present,” the diocese said in its statement. “In a letter to police in September of 2019 the Diocese of Dallas expressed concern and the hope that he would be arrested.”
More allegations
In October 2018, a Dallas police detective in the Child Exploitation Unit heard from a woman who reported her niece had been sexually assaulted by Brown during the 1980s, the search warrant states. The niece reportedly knew Brown from Irving’s Holy Family Catholic Church, where Brown took an interest in her and took her back to the church offices and his residence.
She said he would touch her sexually and force her to touch him sexually, according to the warrant. This happened over the course of several months, the victim told police, when she would attend church with her aunt.
After receiving this report, police reviewed Brown’s file with the diocese and found he had admitted to “touching” two juveniles, the warrant states. One of these incidents occurred in Washington, D.C., in 1980, and the other occurred in Irving in 1987.
In both cases, Brown is accused of becoming close with a family outside of church and using that position to sexually abuse their children, according to the warrant.
With the Irving case, the mother didn’t want to pursue charges but she didn’t want Brown to continue serving as a priest at the church, the warrant states. Brown was then reportedly transferred to St. Philip the Apostle, a parish that also had a school on its grounds.
Father John Bell of the diocese learned about incidents where Brown admitted to becoming aroused from juvenile females sitting on his lap, according to the warrant. It was recommended Brown receive therapy for the next several years as he remained in a controlled setting.
In 2002, the diocese received a letter from a family with four daughters in Illinois saying Brown had befriended them and sexually abused their girls, the warrant states. He was accused of inappropriate touching.
He also admitted to sexually abusing the daughter of a woman who worked in an office where he worked, according to the warrant. And he told the family about the allegations against him from the ‘80s and ‘90s and confessed to sexually abusing as many as 50 children in the diocese from 1980 through 1994, the warrant says.
Brown was removed from the priesthood in 2002.
When a Dallas detective interviewed Brown in New Mexico in May 2019, he admitted what he told the family in Illinois was true, according to the warrant. He also revealed the identity of a victim at St. Mark Parish, where he was a priest from 1989 to 1993.
At the time the search warrant was written, Brown had not been prosecuted for any of his allegations of sexual abuse against children.
This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 12:00 PM.
