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S u n d ay, d e c e m b e r 28, 2025
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Lafayette diocese faces more lawsuits At least 13 were filed in 2025 alleging sexual abuse
BY CLAIRE TAYLOR
Staff writer
STAFF PHOTO By DAVID GRUNFELD
Pedestrians walk under ‘Second Line in the Sky’ memorial banners along Bourbon Street. Following the deadly early morning tragedy on Jan. 1 in the French Quarter, city officials have increased the focus on public safety on the Bourbon corridor, including enhanced police presence, traffic restrictions and crowd-control measures.
Keeping Bourbon Street safe A year after New year’s attack, long-term security plans still unresolved
BY SOPHIE KASAKOVE Staff writer
At 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve at the foot of Bourbon Street, Joseph Hamilton III watched as a nightly routine played out. Four New Orleans police officers hopped out of a golf cart, forced 3-foot-tall steel barriers into their positions on the street, and sped off, their blue lights flashing to the next intersection. As he listened to a brass band on the corner of Iberville Street, Hamilton, a New Orleans resident, thought back to the vehicle attack a year ago
that killed 14 people, and the security failures that were revealed by it. “They should have been like that from day one,” he said, motioning to the blockades. Since the attack, public safety leaders in New Orleans have more or less echoed Hamilton’s sentiment. New Orleans’ homeland security director Collin Arnold and 8th District New Orleans Police Department Capt. Samuel Palumbo say that the barriers, along with others that fully close the street to traffic during special events and holidays, would help impede a similar attack. But officials
have also acknowledged flaws in the current system. For one, the barriers are time-consuming to set up and can withstand only low-speed crashes. They were also only intended to be a stopgap measure, and broader plans from a 43-page consulting report — calling for the installation of permanent barriers, potentially shutting down the famous strip to traffic and increasing law-enforcement coordination — haven’t yet materialized. French Quarter residents and busi-
ä See SAFE, page 11A
‘Part of me is still broken’
Families of attack victims reflect on what was lost that night BY MICHELLE HUNTER Staff writer
Landon Hunter stepped on the track for a meet on May 3 and his heart suddenly began to race. It wasn’t nerves troubling the seventh grader from the Lake Charles area, however, but a memory that he said replayed like a scene from a movie. A year earlier, at his firstever meet, Landon’s father, Reggie Hunter, had been front and center. He stood at the fence line, recording
video and cheering on his son’s track debut. Landon knew his father would be absent this time, but the 12-year-old couldn’t stop himself from scanning the crowd. “I went ahead and looked for him. He wasn’t where he was last time,” Landon said. Reggie Hunter, 37, was one of the 14 people killed Jan. 1 on Bourbon Street when an Islamic Stateinspired man plowed his pickup truck through the
STAFF PHOTO By LESLIE WESTBROOK
Landon Hunter, 12, holds a picture of his father, Reggie Hunter, on Friday at his home in Iowa, La. Reggie Hunter was among those killed in the New year’s Day Bourbon ä See FAMILIES, page 6A Street terror attack.
At least 13 lawsuits were filed in 2025, one as recently as Dec. 17, against the Catholic Diocese of Lafayette, alleging sexual abuse by priests and other employees against minors across Acadiana, bringing the total pending lawsuits filed since June 2024 to about 50. The Louisiana Supreme Court in June 2024 upheld a Louisiana law giving abuse survivors a threeyear window — until June 14, 2027 — to sue for damages. The Catholic Diocese of Lafayette had challenged a 2021 “look back” law, arguing in court that it violated due process rights. The Supreme Court disagreed, opening the door for victims to file lawsuits against the diocese, churches and others. The lawsuits filed in 2025 in the 15th Judicial District, which includes Lafayette, involve allegations of abuse at churches and schools in Church Point in Acadia Parish, Abbeville and Gueydan in Vermilion Parish, East Cameron in Cameron Parish, Grand Prairie in St. Landry Parish, Breaux Bridge in St. Martin Parish, Berwick in St. Mary Parish and New Iberia in Iberia Parish. One of the lawsuits was filed in August by Ken Seward of Virginia, the husband of a deceased victim who allegedly reported her abuse to diocesan leaders under three bishops. Instead of being fired, her alleged abuser was sent to counseling and later promoted to monsignor. The victim’s entire file with the diocese allegedly disappeared. Two of the most recent lawsuits allege abuse by former priest Gilbert Gauthe, a defrocked Acadiana clergyman who is believed to be the first priest in the country to be criminally indicted for sexually abusing hundreds of children. Gauthe pleaded guilty to molesting 34 children and was sentenced in 1985 to 20 years in prison. He was released after serving only 10 years and today lives in Dickinson, Texas, between Houston and Galveston. A May lawsuit alleges an altar boy at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in New Iberia in the 1970s was abused by the Rev. Ronald Layne Fontenot every time he attended church between 1975 and 1977. On one occasion, the victim alleges, he was brought to the bedroom of Gauthe at the church rectory, where he alleges he was raped. Court hearings are scheduled in several of the lawsuits in 2026. Seward’s lawsuit goes before 15th Judicial District Court Judge Thomas Duplantier in February. The diocese is attempting to dismiss the lawsuit because the victim is deceased, because the plaintiff has not produced a certificate
ä See LAWSUITS, page 6A
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Business ......................1E Deaths .........................3B Nation-World ................2A Classified .....................7D Living............................1D Opinion ........................4B Commentary ................5B Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C
101ST yEAR, NO. 181