A Priest, a Ranch, and los Muchachos: A Study of Race and Clerical Abuse from New Mexico

Father Ed Donelan came to New Mexico from Massachusetts. The priest worked as a chaplain at a facility for “juvenile delinquents,” and later ran a home for boys he called the Hacienda de los Muchachos. Donelan sexually abused youth at both facilities. This essay considers how Donelan leveraged New Mexico’s juvenile justice and habilitation systems, and racial inequities baked into them, to abuse young people. Within those systems, a Catholic culture of clericalism granted Donelan unlimited access to youth, and enabled him to move unchecked between spiritual and quasi-parental forms of authority. Donelan’s story shows that clericalism is not a one-size-fits-all problem; it manifests differently in relation to different communities. Here clericalism intersects with place-based power structures of race and colonialism to damage in locally specific ways. Donelan’s case demonstrates that scholars who study clerical sexual abuse need to pay attention not only to priests, but also to church and state institutions that rendered certain populations of children especially vulnerable to their bad actions.