Sexual abuse survivors grill NFL amid New Orleans Saints church scandal Victim support groups call for investigation into whether Saints flouted NFL’s own commitments to prevent abuse.
Clergy sexual abuse survivor support groups have called on the National Football League to investigate whether leaders of the New Orleans Saints flouted the NFL’s goals by campaigning alongside the city’s Roman Catholic archdiocese to soften critical media coverage of how the church handled its clerical molestation scandal.
Yet emails first reported on Monday morning by the Guardian, its reporting partner WWL Louisiana, the Associated Press and the New York Times establish how the Saints – owned by the devout New Orleans Catholic Gayle Benson – and team executives were far more involved in helping its local archdiocese spin media coverage of the abuse scandal than the organizations had previously acknowledged.
At a media briefing on Monday afternoon six days before New Orleans hosts Super Bowl LIX, the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, hailed Benson and the Saints’ top brass as “great corporate citizens” when asked if the league would investigate the team’s use of its servers and logo in the emails with the church.
“The New Orleans Saints, the Catholic church, and every institution wielding influence over our communities must do more than protect their own reputations,” said a statement attributed to Letitia Peyton, the executive director of the clergy-abuse survivor support group TentMakers of Louisiana and the leader of Snap’s chapter in the state.
