Trahant paid the fine after the Supreme Court declined to hear his case
On 6 November, the archdiocese of New Orleans added the late priest Paul Hart to its list of Catholic priests and deacons facing credible claims of clergy abuse while serving in the area, bringing the list to 106 names. The addition came after years of waiting, while the archdiocese continued implementing the terms of an agreement to settle the bankruptcy protection case it filed in 2020 amid the fallout of the Catholic church’s worldwide clergy abuse scandal. Attorney Richard Trahant, who spent years representing clergy abuse claimants whose cases became ensnared in the archdiocese’s bankruptcy and who was fined $400,000 after flagging Hart’s past to a New Orleans Catholic high school, said days later that the listing was worth the cost.
“This is the very definition of a Pyrrhic victory,” Trahant said, invoking a phrase for something achieved at a high cost. “Sure, it’s exoneration – yet only after I paid a fortune. But if the question is: was it worth it? The answer is yes, and I would do it again tomorrow.”
Paul Hart died in 2022. Before his death, Hart had admitted to church superiors that he had sexual contact with a 17-year-old girl he met through his role as a priest in the early 1990s. He dismissed news coverage of his admitted but largely unpunished misconduct as “bogus” and “made-up.”
In 2012, the girl reported Hart to the church and confessed to the behavior during a confidential internal investigation, according to hundreds of legal documents obtained and reviewed by the Guardian.
An advisory board working with then-Archbishop Gregory Aymond recommended removing Hart from public ministry, saying the case victimized someone who was considered a minor under canon — or church — law since 2002. Aymond allowed Hart to continue his ministry because in the early 1990s the age of consent under canon law was 16, while Louisiana law sets the age of consent at 17.
In 2017, Aymond appointed Hart as chaplain at Brother Martin, a New Orleans Catholic high school, after the school asked for one. Brother Martin is an all-boys’ school where there are activities that girls can participate in. Aymond wrote to Hart after the appointment: “Please know that I not only appreciate your ministry but will pray for you that God will use you to be a sign of pastoral care to our young people.”
Hart was still serving in that role toward the end of 2021, when Trahant became aware of his past. Trahant notified Brother Martin’s principal — coincidentally his cousin — that Hart had “a credible allegation from [his] past that involved a minor.” Trahant also emailed a journalist to keep Hart on his “radar,” but he would not elaborate, citing a bankruptcy court confidentiality order, according to legal documents stemming from the case.
Aymond and the archdiocese soon provided Brother Martin with the details of Hart’s past misconduct, and Hart retired in January 2022 — nine months before his death — after the school asked Aymond to remove him from its campus. The archdiocese insisted the priest had retired because of “struggles with treatment for brain cancer.” The same Guardian journalist had separately detailed the circumstances of Hart’s departure in an article for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, written using methods and sources independent of Trahant.
Meredith Grabill, the federal judge in charge of the archdiocese’s bankruptcy, later ruled that what Trahant had done set off a chain of events enough to constitute a confidentiality order violation. She fined him $400,000 — a sum that eventually grew by $60,000 because of interest — and expelled four of Trahant’s clients from a committee of clergy abuse survivors helping negotiate an archdiocesan bankruptcy settlement, contending that it would aid the group’s functioning.
Grabill acted despite a court investigation she had ordered having determined that Brother Martin got the specifics about what Hart had done from the archdiocese — not Trahant — according to documents obtained by the Guardian. Court investigators also conceded there was evidence supporting Trahant’s denial that he ever provided any confidential information to the journalist.
Trahant unsuccessfully appealed his fine up to the US Supreme Court. The court declined to hear his case in June, months after Aymond’s retirement as New Orleans archbishop, and Trahant paid the levy.
Aymond’s successor, Archbishop James Checchio, added 27 priests and deacons to the list on 6 November, calling the update a step toward “accountability and healing.” The archdiocese first released the list in 2018. The update carries out a key provision of an agreement announced in December 2025 that requires the archdiocese and its insurers to eventually pay $305m to hundreds of clergy abuse survivors to resolve the bankruptcy.
Hart’s name immediately leapt out at Trahant, he said. Trahant said he interpreted Hart’s inclusion on the list — together with a notation that three claims had been filed against him in the bankruptcy — as an admission that archdiocesan and court officials had mishandled his case. He called the listing perhaps the ultimate repudiation of one of Hart’s last known statements, in which Hart told bankruptcy court investigators that news media reporting on his departure from Brother Martin was “so bogus that it looked … almost made up.”
“He was lying,” Trahant said, adding that he is contemplating seeking further legal action out of principle to attempt to recoup his fine and the costs he incurred fighting it. “And … now they’ve admitted [it].”
The archdiocese said records associated with Hart and all others on the credibly accused list would be kept at a public archive hosted by Louisiana State University. Trahant said a release of Hart’s records would mean none of the information in them was ever confidential.
James Adams, one of the Trahant clients removed from the bankruptcy settlement committee, said Checchio could “truly” promote accountability by apologizing to the advocate and returning the fine money to him. “At least [now], everyone knows that we were wrongly removed,” Adams said. “The court sanctioned an innocent lawyer and his clients.”