Investigator Into Us Church Sex Abuse Quits

America's Catholic church, hoping to lay to rest a year-old scandal of sexual abuse by its clergy, faced fresh charges of cover-ups yesterday after the forced resignation of an outspoken investigator.

Frank Keating, who led a panel of lay Catholics investigating the abuse by priests, resigned on Monday after clashing publicly with the senior prelate in Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, over the refusal of church officials to turn over information on abusers.

The trigger for Mr Keating's departure was an interview to the Los Angeles Times last week in which he likened some bishops to the mafia, preserving the code of silence that allowed paedophile priests to go unpunished.

But his departure was viewed as a sign that Catholic bishops were not sincere about implementing the reforms promised a year ago when the church was shaken by revelations from dioceses across America.

The unfolding scandal exposed a uniform attitude to abuse from the church leadership, with paedophile priests escaping prosecution and being sheltered for years within Catholic institutions.

Campaigners for transparency within the church said Mr Keating's departure showed that little had changed.

"The resignation of Frank Keating is indicative of the fact that the review board is not truly independent and is under the control of the Catholic church," said Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer who has represented hundreds of victims of sexual abuse by clergy in Boston, where the pattern of abuse first became public.

"How can they morally lead with any credibility if they don't want to reveal the unfortunate, dirty little secrets they have?"

The Voice of the Faithful, a Catholic group which has tried to work within the church for reform, also expressed its fears. A statement from its president, Jim Post, called on Catholic bishops to cooperate fully with the review board, and to remember their commitment to "rid the church of the sins and crimes that caused and enabled this crisis".

The anger and distrust stirred by Mr Keating's resignation comes at another awkward moment for a church which has staggered from scandal to scandal. In Arizona, a former bishop who admitted to police that he allowed priests accused of abuse to work with children was arrested for fleeing the scene of a fatal accident.

Bishop Thomas O'Brien, 67, was driving one of two cars that struck and killed a pedestrian on Saturday night. He told the police he thought the damage to his windscreen had been caused by a rock, or that he might have hit a dog or cat. He would not have been charged had he notified police, but could now face eight years' jail.

Mr Keating's frustration had been building up for some time before the outburst that cost him his post. "To act like la cosa nostra and hide and suppress ... I think, is very unhealthy," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Eventually it will all come out."

Sixty-one of the 195 US dioceses had refused to produce information requested by the review board. But in the aftermath of the interview, the focus of the controversy in church circles became Mr Keating's intemperate remarks rather than the conduct of the church.

"My remarks, which some bishops found offensive, were deadly accurate," his resignation letter said. "I make no apology. To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away - that is the model of a criminal organisation, not my church."