Colorado — The Special Master's Reports (2019–2020)
Attorney General Phil Weiser commissioned Special Master Robert Troyer to review the files of all three Colorado Catholic dioceses. The 2019 report and 2020 supplement found at least 212 children abused by 52 diocesan priests, under a 'more likely than not' standard and with no subpoena power.
- Issuing office
- Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser; independent review by Special Master Robert Troyer
- Reports
- Report of October 22, 2019, and supplemental report of December 1, 2020
- Scope
- Colorado's three Catholic dioceses — Denver, Pueblo, Colorado Springs; diocesan priests only
- Headline figures
- 2019: at least 166 children abused by 43 priests. Cumulative after the 2020 supplement: 212 children, 52 priests
- Method
- Review of the dioceses' own files under a negotiated agreement — no subpoena power
- Posture
- "Substantiated" as the review's Agreement defines it: more likely than not
The Colorado review was not a grand-jury investigation and it was not a prosecution. Attorney General Phil Weiser commissioned an independent review by Special Master Robert Troyer of the files kept by all three Colorado Catholic dioceses — the Archdiocese of Denver and the Dioceses of Pueblo and Colorado Springs. Troyer issued a first report on October 22, 2019, and a supplemental report on December 1, 2020.
That method is the limit on everything that follows, and the reports state it themselves. The review ran under a comprehensive negotiated agreement — the Agreement — between the three dioceses and the Attorney General. It had no subpoena power at all and no other compulsory process. What it could examine was the information in the dioceses’ own files, together with interviews and follow-up investigation the Agreement allowed. If a report was made by phone or in person and was never documented, placed in a priest’s file, and kept there, the review did not see it.
What the reports found
The 2019 report found that at least 166 children were abused by 43 priests: in Denver, 127 children by 22 priests; in Pueblo, 36 children by 19 priests; and in Colorado Springs, 3 children by 2 priests. Of the 166 children, 97 were abused after the dioceses were already on notice that the priest was a sex abuser.
The supplemental report of December 1, 2020, added 46 more substantiated incidents and 9 newly identified priests. The cumulative total stated after the supplement is 212 children sexually abused by 52 diocesan priests.
Forty-nine priests are named in the two reports: 40 in headed incident reports in 2019, plus the 9 newly identified in 2020. The stated total of 52 reconciles with the 49 named if the three anonymized substantiated-misconduct priests — “Father E” in Colorado Springs and “Fathers F & G” in Pueblo — are counted in the reports’ totals. That reconciliation is a labeled hypothesis, documented in the research record; it is not asserted as proven. The three anonymized priests are excluded from this archive and are never de-anonymized here.
What "substantiated" means here. Under the Agreement, an incident was substantiated when the Special Master concluded "it is more likely than not that the child sex abuse incident occurred." That is the review's own definition, and it is the definition carried on the face of every entry sourced to these reports. The scope was likewise limited: substantiated incident reports cover diocesan priests only, and religious-order priests were outside the incident scope. Per-cleric information comes from diocesan files produced under the Agreement.
Checked and not carried
This page and its roster rest only on the two Special Master documents. Every name appearing in law-firm or advocacy lists was checked against both documents. A name that appears in neither document is not carried here on the strength of those lists.
One such name is addressed expressly because coverage of Colorado Springs often names him. The priest Manning appears nowhere in either Special Master document. He is an extern priest — a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis who served in Colorado Springs — and is therefore outside the reports’ diocesan-priest scope. The secondary record, the Colorado Springs Gazette in 2013, shows he was acquitted of the sexual-assault and child-pornography charges and convicted only of two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He has no entry in this archive.
In this archive
Denver’s names were already in the Directory from the Archdiocese of Denver’s own list. The remaining named men stand at Tier 2, sourced to the Special Master reports, with the “more likely than not” definition on the face of each entry.
Pueblo and Colorado Springs publish no diocesan lists. For those two dioceses, these reports are the only official roster.
For the nationwide record these findings belong to, see The Pattern.