Priest who resigned amid abuse allegations dies in Las Vegas

A former Las Vegas priest who faced sexual assault charges in Missouri during the 1980s died Nov. 27 at the age of 71.

In 2011, the Rev. Bede Parry resigned as organist and choir director at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Las Vegas after a former choir boy filed a lawsuit in Missouri alleging the Roman Catholic monastery, Conception Abbey, kept secret the boy’s 1987 sexual assault by Parry, then a Catholic priest who directed the choir.

Parry had served at All Saints’ Episcopal Church since 2000. He resigned when his name surfaced in the lawsuit. Parry said he also asked the diocese to relieve him of his priest duties.

“I feel terrible for anybody that I’ve hurt,” he said after his resignation. “I feel terrible that my actions would cause a lawsuit to be filed against the abbey, and I feel terrible about letting down my friends and the diocese here.”

Parry did not deny the 1987 incident in Missouri and said the abbey sent him to New Mexico afterward for several months of treatment.

But Parry insisted that he had no other sexual incidents with minors since then, including during his time in Las Vegas.

The former choir boy, identified only as John Doe 181, was attending a summer choir camp in Missouri when the 1987 sexual assault occurred, the lawsuit alleged.

His parents confronted abbey officials after the assault and were told that Parry had a “mental breakdown” and would undergo treatment, the lawsuit said.

“In fact, Father Parry did not have a mental breakdown,” the lawsuit alleged. “Instead, Father Parry was a known serial child predator who had sexually abused numerous students before Father Parry sexually abused plaintiff.”

Parry admitted to abbey officials that he had other “inappropriate sexual relationships” between 1973 and 1979 while a monk at the monastery, the lawsuit alleged.

Contact reporter Steven Slivka at sslivka@reviewjournal.com. Follow @StevenSlivka on Twitter.