For years the New Orleans Saints have worked to suppress information about its extraordinary relationship with the Catholic Church, and now everything is spilling out on the week the city is hosting the Super Bowl.
In a court battle that has lasted four years, previously unseen emails were made public between the Saints and the Archdiocese of New Orleans detailing extensive assistance given to the church by the NFL team. This included the Saints organization being instrumental in assisting the Archdiocese with public relations, organizing a strategy for damage control, as well as using its considerable sway to ensure names were left off a list released by the church of alleged abusers of children.
In 2018 a list of more than 50 clergy members “credibly accused” of sexual abuse was made public under the guise of transparency. The emails released Monday show that not only was this list incomplete, but key members of the Saints organization were given advance knowledge of the list — with an unnamed team spokesperson bragging on a conference call with the Archdiocese that he was able to speak to the city’s top prosecutor and was “allowed us to take certain people off” the list of criminally accused clergy members before the release of the names to the public.
Another email shows that Dennis Lauscha, president of the Saints and the New Orleans Pelicans, prepared a list of possible media questions for Archbishop Gregory Aymond — essentially serving as a damage control liaison between the Saints and the church.
On another occasion, Greg Bensel, the Saints’ senior vice president of communications, gave play-by-play updates to the church on how Archbishop Aymond was handling the local media. Saying he was “doing well,” while also suggesting that the Saints and the church were “on the same team” in shaping the message following the scandal.
At the time the Saints downplayed its relationship with the Archdiocese to the community, saying it only offered “minimal assistance,” but these emails show the team was intimately involved with the day-to-day operations of the media response, the spin, and controlling the news cycle after the list of alleged sexual abusers was released.
The Saints’ involvement with the Catholic church on the sexual abuse scandal began in 2018, when an alleged victim came forward saying he was regularly abused by Deacon George Brignac from 1978 to 1982. The man was given a $550,000 settlement, while an Associated Press report revealed that Brignac was allowed to continue serving as a lay minister despite being defrocked by the church in 1988 after a 7-year-old boy accused the deacon of fondling him. Brignac was arrested in 2019 for first-degree rape of the individual who was given the $550,000 settlement the year prior. As part of the arrest it was revealed that abuse of the man began when he was three years old.
Brignac died of cardiac arrest before trial, but the high-profile case led to the Catholic Church trying to reassure the people of New Orleans that they were cleaning up the church, hence publicly releasing the names of clergy members with credible sexual assault claims against them.
The Saints had been fighting in court since 2020 to suppress the release of the 286 documents showing correspondence between the team and the church, saying they were private and “not intended to be the fodder of the public.” In response the Associated Press worked to back its reporter Jim Mustain in making the emails public, citing that it was in the best interest of the community to understand how deep the relationship between the Saints and the Archdiocese was.
Now the documents are public it’s raising serious questions in the community about how the relationship was foundered, why an NFL team was so intimately involved in a sexual abuse scandal, as well as efforts to downplay the amount of assistance the Saints gave to the church.
“This is disgusting,” said state Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans. “As a New Orleans resident, taxpayer and Catholic, it doesn’t make any sense to me why the Saints would go to these lengths to protect grown men who raped children. All of them should have been just as horrified at the allegations.”
In response, the Saints are trying to distance themselves from the scandal, saying they severed ties with the Archdiocese of New Orleans in 2020. The team went on to blame the media for using “leaked emails for the purpose of misconstruing a well-intended effort.” However, that raises even more questions of why the organization felt it was a “well-intended effort” to help shape the media message of child sexual abuse, or why the team felt the need to play such an intimate role in what should have been a transparent dialogue between the church and people of New Orleans.
This is one of the most significant scandals to come from an NFL team in years, and the league will likely ignore or try to downplay it for as long as possible, especially during Super Bowl week. However, with the game taking place in New Orleans that may not be possible, and this could lead to a substantial investigation into the Saints’ dealings with the church, or whether owner Gail Benson was in breach of Article VIII, Section 6 of the NFL Constitution and Bylaws on conduct detrimental to the league, which reads:
The Commissioner is authorized, at the expense of the League, to hire legal counsel and take or adopt appropriate legal action or such other steps or procedures as he deems necessary and proper in the best interests of either the League or professional football, whenever any party or organization not a member of, employed by, or connected with the League or any member thereof is guilty of any conduct detrimental either to the League, its member clubs or employees, or to professional football.
Assisting to cover up sexual abuse would seemingly fit in this category.
