Ex-Conroe priest faces more charges

A grand jury has indicted aformer Conroe priest on three child sex abuse allegations, including a new charge stemming from a fourth accuser.

The Montgomery County grand jury on Thursday upheld two counts of indecency with a child from the arrest of Manuel La Rosa-Lopez last September. It added a new indecency charge based on an allegation detailed in a Harris County lawsuit in which he allegedly exposed himself to a boy in a confessional booth.

With two indictments already handed down in May, the priest now faces five criminal charges for abuse all alleged to have taken place at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Conroe. He was removed from ministry pending the criminal investigation.

The new indecency indictment comes as the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office continues its analysis of more than 16,000 documents seized from Sacred Heart, the archdiocese offices in downtown Houston, the Shalom Center clergy rehabilitation center in Splendora and St. John the Fisher in Richmond, where La Rosa-Lopez was most recently assigned. It is part of the growing sex abuse scandal to rock the diocese under Cardinal Daniel DiNardo.

DiNardo’s handling of the complaints — as well as more aimed at other clergy members — have contributed to intensified demands for him to step down from his top post with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The archdiocese referred questions about the indictment to La Rosa-Lopez’s lawyer, Wendell Odom, who did not return an email.

Amid the expanding priest probe, prosecutors requested medical records for the accuser behind the new charge from the Montrose Center, where he had been seeking counseling. The request for his records has since been sealed to keep his identity private.

He is the plaintiff in the civil lawsuit against the archdiocese and the Conroe parish. The suit alleges that in 2000 La Rosa-Lopez peppered the teen with “vulgar questions” as he was coming out as gay. The priest then opened the partition window of the confessional and exposed his genitals, according to court documents.

In April, a lawyer for the accuser said he had spoken to the Con-roe Police Department about his complaint.

The police investigation into La Rosa-Lopez began soon after the release of the sweeping Pennsylvania grand jury report in 2018. Two of the accusers — a man and a woman — whose complaints led to La Rosa-Lopez’s arrest cited increasing news coverage into the Catholic Church sex scandal as a motivation for coming forward.

A grand jury indicted the priest in May on charges in connection with the female accuser who said the priest groped her in the church kitchen.

The male accuser said La Rosa-Lopez “began touching him and making intimate gestures” in 1998, according to a sworn statement from detective Joe McGrew. The abuse escalated in October 2000 when the priest called him to his bedroom and showed him photos of half-naked men from a Catholic seminary, the detective wrote.

The boy tried to leave but the priest fondled him. The abuse stopped only when his sister “arrived to pick him up and blew her car horn in the parking lot,” McGrew continued.

The accuser no longer lives in Texas. He came forward with the allegation to his parish in Oregon in 2017 and was referred to Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston officials. He was flown to Houston a year later to meet with DiNardo, court documents show. The meeting happened on Aug. 8, about three weeks before La Rosa-Lopez was removed from ministry and a month before his arrest.

McGrew’s handling of the police investigation and the writing of four search warrant affidavits garnered him a letter of commendation in May from Conroe police Chief Jeff Christy.

“While still a new investigator, Detective McGrew was assigned to what many would call a ‘career case,’ ” the letter began. “Investigator McGrew found himself at the center of a national media attention related to the investigation of a local priest accused of molesting children nearly 20 years ago.”

“The case led him to serve search warrants in multiple jurisdictions, which revealed more allegations of abuse,” the letter continued.

The award did not elaborate on what additional allegations were exposed by McGrew’s probe.

A third accuser came forward last year to say La Rosa-Lopez was inappropriate with him in 1992 at St. Thomas More Catholic Church. At the time, La Rosa-Lopez was a seminarian and the accuser was an altar boy. The accusation has not resulted in criminal charges or a civil suit.

Michael Norris, the head of Houston’s chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests, said he hoped La Rosa-Lopez would consider a plea deal to prevent the accusers from reliving their abuse in a trial.

“If La Rosa-Lopez or the church had any heart at all, he would plead guilty and get this over with,” Norris said. “Let’s think about the welfare of those victims.”

The archdiocese identified La Rosa-Lopez in January as one of two priests under investigation for child sex abuse allegations. The other priest, John Keller, was removed from ministry at Prince of Peace Catholic Community and remains under investigation by the Houston Police Department. nicole.hensley@chron.com