By Seamus McGraw
May 3, 2006
TOLEDO, Ohio (Crime Libarary) — For more than a decade, accused pedophile priest Chet Warren maintained a close relationship with a retired local schoolteacher and sometime private tutor. But despite the church's own findings that the disgraced cleric was a "known child molester" who was "in the residence while tutoring was taking place," little was done to limit his access to children.
Warren, now 78, could not immediately be reached for comment.
But according to interviews, documents and published reports, the disgraced cleric has been identified by several women since the mid-1980s as one of an apparent group of pedophile priests in the Toledo area who allegedly preyed on children, some as young as preschoolers, dating to the 1970s. In some of the most chilling accounts, Warren allegedly participated in bizarre Satanic rituals in which the predators were dressed as nuns, and, among other things, sexually penetrated their young victims, in some cases with crucifixes.
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Chet Warren |
Though Warren was never criminally charged in connection with the attacks, the allegations were considered credible enough that his own order, the Oblates of St. Francis, stripped him in 1993 of both his Roman collar and his clerical duties.
And yet, almost immediately, it seems, Warren again found himself in the company of children.
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