Thomas Havel

San Jose Mercury News
Mountain View: Advocates for those molested by priests want psychiatrist out of El Camino Hospital
By Eric Kurhi
December 5, 2014

–Excerpt

Victim advocates Friday called for the ouster of a psychiatrist and former priest who has practiced at El Camino Hospital for decades, citing accusations that he had molested two teenage girls years ago.

In 1988 Dr. Thomas Havel, now 77, was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl whom he had counseled before coming to El Camino, beginning when she was 13 years old. That lawsuit was dismissed on the grounds that too much time had elapsed — the woman was 34 when she came forward.

And according to personnel files of priests and nuns suspected of sexually abusing children while working for the Los Angeles Archdiocese, Havel was accused in 2002 of molesting a girl between 1968 and 1973 while he was at a Pasadena parish. The files — which the Archdiocese released as part of a 2007 settlement that paid $660 million to more than 500 alleged victims — state that the Marianist Order settled that 2002 case and Havel petitioned to leave the priesthood in the late 1990s…