New Orleans priest accused of deaf-community abuse dies at 87

Archdiocese supported Howell for decades after learning of allegations

Gerard Joseph “Jerry” Howell, a New Orleans Roman Catholic priest whose serial sexual abuse of children in the city’s deaf community was known to the archdiocese for at least four decades without meaningful consequence, died on 8 September at age 87 after an apparent fall at his Texas senior living apartment, according to Austin police.

Officers responding to a welfare check at the senior community found Howell about 5 p.m. that afternoon. Local emergency medical personnel arrived to provide aid, but he stopped breathing and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The Austin medical examiner’s office was still working to determine the cause of death as of Tuesday, and police said the death was “not being investigated as a homicide.” A church spokesperson said the archdiocese learned of Howell’s death later that same week, and an archdiocese-managed webpage of dozens of priests and deacons who were removed from ministry for abuse of a minor was then quietly updated to list him as deceased. Efforts to contact Howell’s family for comment were not immediately successful.

The archdiocese of New Orleans provided support to Howell for 40 years after becoming aware of his serial child molestation, the Guardian and WWL Louisiana have reported. The church kept him in active ministry even after reporting him to law enforcement in 1980 and his public exposure by WWL Louisiana in 1992, and continued paying his retirement benefits — including living expenses, insurance, and a $650 monthly stipend — until a federal judge halted them in 2020.

Records obtained by the Guardian show that then-Archbishop Philip Hannan reported Howell to the devoutly Catholic district attorney, Harry Connick Sr, in 1980; Connick never charged Howell. Twelve years later, WWL Louisiana confronted Howell at his Texas home in 1992 and reported that the archdiocese was aware of many of his alleged child-abuse victims while refusing to remove him from active ministry.

Then-Archbishop Francis Schulte told Howell to “quit and get a job” after the 1992 WWL report. Howell appealed to Vatican leaders, who ordered Schulte to let him “continue as a priest with full financial benefits.”

Records show the archdiocese sent Howell for mental health treatment in 2010, where a psychologist diagnosed him as “high risk” and reported the church was aware of at least 24 child victims. The archdiocese nevertheless continued quietly supporting his retirement.

Those payments were stopped in 2020 when a federal bankruptcy court intervened after the archdiocese filed for protection amid the financial fallout of the worldwide Catholic clergy abuse scandal. The New Orleans archdiocese is among 44 U.S. Catholic religious institutions to have filed for bankruptcy protection in the course of that scandal, and among 29 to settle such a proceeding, according to information compiled by Penn State University’s law school.

Even the bankruptcy court’s cancellation did not fully cut Howell off from archdiocesan support. WWL and the Guardian reported that then-Archbishop Gregory Aymond wrote to a Vatican official in 2020 calling the bankruptcy court’s cancellation of Howell’s benefits — along with those of other archdiocesan clergy abusers — “unjust and painful.” The outlets also reported that Aymond directed Howell to seek aid from Men of Melchizedek, a non-profit dedicated to helping priests prohibited from ministering; the leader of that group had previously headed a separate organization shut down for misusing donations and misleading donors about its purpose. A spokesperson for the archdiocese said it never restarted Howell’s retirement benefits after the bankruptcy settlement. Aymond retired in February and was succeeded as New Orleans archbishop by James Checchio.

The archdiocese’s website discloses that Howell, ordained in 1964, was named as the offender in nine claims of sexually abusive or grooming behavior filed as part of the bankruptcy. Immediately before his death, that was the second most among eight living clergymen on the archdiocese’s list of those removed from ministry for abuse of a minor. About 740 clergy molestation claimants are dividing a $305 million settlement the archdiocese agreed to pay to resolve its bankruptcy protection case, with compensation amounts based on a rubric meant to assess factors such as the nature and duration of the abuse. As of the day after Howell’s death, 14 claimants had requested reconsideration of their allocated amounts and about 220 had indicated they would not contest them, according to a bankruptcy court filing on Monday. Many of those claimants name abusers whom the archdiocese has not included in its clergy removal list.

Howell’s late brother and fellow priest Rodney is also considered by church officials to be credibly accused of child molestation.

Kathleen Austin, one of Howell’s most outspoken survivors, said on Tuesday that it was a relief to learn of his death. “He will no longer be able to harm another innocent child,” Austin said. “I can now relax, not worrying about where he is [or] what he’s doing.” Austin said Howell’s apparently becoming one of the more than 43,000 people in the U.S. who die from falls annually on average was “a miserable way to go.” His death “puts me at rest,” she said, adding that when he meets “our maker” she hopes “his punishment far exceeds what he did to children while he was here on the planet.” Austin expressed empathy for relatives of Howell, who “had to live with two pedophile priests and the terror that … they inflicted.”

Howell’s abuse of Austin was among the clergy cases examined in the award-winning 2025 documentary film “God As My Witness,” directed by Lindsay Quinn Pitre and Michael Brandner Sr and recently available on streaming. The film, which scrutinizes the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy, features Austin recounting a meeting with Hannan about Howell’s abuse — during which she was directed to “kick him in the balls” the next time she saw him. Austin, who grew up with parents and a sister who were hearing impaired, told the filmmakers she was shocked by that guidance. “I remember looking at him thinking, ‘Really? This is how you handle this?’” Austin says in the film. “‘That’s not my job. This is your job.’”