Roman Catholic priest Paul Hart had admitted to inappropriate conduct with a teenage girl; been accused of rape by one woman, which he denied; and faced rumors of sexually harassing another when New Orleans’s archbishop assigned him to be a high school chaplain in 2017.
When an attorney representing survivors of a clergy abuse scandal that drove the city’s archdiocese into bankruptcy learned about Hart’s past, he took steps to get him removed from the Brother Martin high school, an all-boys institution that draws dance team members from a girls-only college preparatory school.
