At St. Patrick's church in Manchester NH, just before Christmas in 1995, a woman was sexually assaulted by a priest during confession, while her daughters knelt in a nearby pew. Diocesan files document the attack, its causes, and its callous aftermath. These diocesan documents, which were released by the New Hampshire Attorney General in March 2003, offer a unique case study of the international trade in accused priests. We provide a narrative of the case, followed by a complete table of links to the file.

Anthony Hilary		Bishop Tharmaraj		Bishop O'Neil		Nicholas Rogers		Msgr. Christian

Rev. Anthony M. Hilary was sent from India to the United States in June 1995 by Bishop Leon A. Tharmaraj, who gave the priest a clean bill of health. But a whistleblowing priest named Rev. Benjamin Sebastian wrote to the Manchester diocese and told them that Hilary was a violent alcoholic who had abused girls in the Indian diocese of Kottar. Despite that letter and a second warning, Hilary immediately found a place with Rev. Nicholas Rogers of St. Patrick's in Manchester, although an alert female administrator questioned Hilary's status in a note to the chancellor. While the bishops of Kottar and Manchester debated the priest's fate by mail and fax for six months, Hilary said Mass, heard confessions, and sexually assaulted a woman—hardly more than a mile from the Manchester bishop's own office.

When the Indian bishop was confronted with the whistleblower's report shortly after Hilary's arrival in Manchester, he readily admitted that Hilary was an alcoholic with a history of sexual abuse. But he reversed himself after Hilary complained, explaining confidentially, when Bishop O'Neil confronted him, that the first letter was a personal report, while the second was forced upon him by his own administration. Meanwhile Bishop O'Neil and his chancellor, Msgr. Francis J. Christian, played their own cynical game, pretending to Hilary that an oversupply of priests prevented them from assigning him to a parish. When Hilary condemned their "non-helping attitude" (mailing his complaint in a St. Patrick's rectory envelope), Christian smoothly congratulated him on his vindication by Tharmaraj and renewed the disingenuous offer of a parish assignment "if you can find a pastor."

While Bishop Tharmaraj lied to Bishop O'Neil and Msgr. Christian lied to Hilary, the priest continued to work at St. Patrick's—using the confessional to scout for victims, as O'Neil himself later observed. The victim he selected has left an account of the attack that is also a poignant record of her faith, in stark contrast to the bishops' machinations. When Bishop O'Neil forwarded her letter to Bishop Tharmaraj on the day after Christmas, he wrote two cover letters. One told the Indian bishop that "given those [earlier] allegations, ... it is all the more likely that the complainant's story is absolutely true." But he sent the woman a copy of a different cover letter, in which he never mentioned that Hilary had offended before, or that the Manchester bishop and his monsignor had known Hilary's history before the Indian priest even arrived in the woman's parish. He thus absolved himself and his monsignor of any blame in the case, and deprived the victim of the knowledge she needed.

Bishop Tharmaraj wrote that he "was very sorry at the whole episode," but also observed that Hilary considered the abuse charge "a gross exaggeration of a farewell gesture of hugging." Tharmaraj promised to keep the victim "in my prayers." Then he and Rev. Anthony M. Hilary moved on together. They are now the patron and bursar of a technical college in India, which proudly displays their photographs on its home page:

The Anthony Muthu Hilary File

Note from BishopAccountability.org: The Kotar bishop described an accusation against Hilary as "proved," and Bishop O'Neil called the Manchester victim's account "likely" to be "absolutely true." But we remind our readers that in the U.S. courts, an accused person is innocent until proven guilty. The victim did not press charges. As Bishop O'Neil wrote to Bishop Tharmaraj, "because of her love for the Church and the priesthood, [she] is content in knowing that I am writing to you about this matter and that you will give it your every consideration."