Patrick Wall

Patrick Wall

Advocacy Consultant

[email protected]

Wall

As priests, we were required to maintain absolute secrecy on what was happening. I view my current advocacy work – helping those abused by my former brothers – as a purer continuation of my previous vocation. After 35 years, the thing I am proudest of is that now a jury will now at least consider the possibility that a priest could have sexually assaulted a child.

Overview

Patrick J. Wall is a nationally recognized expert and advocate on the Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis and coverup. The first former American Roman Catholic priest and Benedictine Monk to work in a civil law firm on behalf of survivors of childhood sexual assault, over the past three decades he has consulted on more than 3,000 cases across the country.

Patrick’s role at Grant & Eisenhofer includes conducting survivor intake interviews, advising legal teams and attorney networks on church structures and case strategies, and otherwise drawing from his extensive experience within the Catholic church and its legal systems to help achieve justice for survivors. He is also conducting scholarship with the University of Toronto and New Mexico on the vast church archives that have now been uncovered through litigation and bankruptcy proceedings.

While serving in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Patrick held numerous roles, including tribunal judge, defender of the bond, advocate, faculty resident, associate pastor, parochial administrator, and member of the seminary sexual abuse response team and archdiocesan finance counsel. These positions afforded him rare, firsthand knowledge of parish operations, diocesan governance, canonical proceedings and the internal handling of abuse allegations.

Ultimately tasked with being a “fixer,” helping to make cases of sexual abuse go away, Patrick left the priesthood, realizing that abuse survivors could only find meaningful accountability and healing outside of the church hierarchy. After testifying before a grand jury in 2001, he began working with civil plaintiff law firms, deciding to dedicate his career to advocating for survivors through the civil justice system. Over the years, he has collaborated with numerous prosecutors, plaintiff attorneys and bankruptcy counsel nationwide.

Patrick co-authored the book, Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes. An Adjunct Instructor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law from 2017-2020, he also taught or lectured at the University of Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins University and California State University Fullerton. He has been profiled by numerous major national and international media outlets, including American Public Radio and CNN, and featured in documentary films such as Mea Maxima Culpa and Deliver Us from Evil. In addition, Patrick contributed to the development of an artificial intelligence research tool, focusing on identifying patterns in clerical abuse and institutional responses using large-scale archival data, through the Zero Abuse Project, where he served as a Master Inventor.

Areas of Focus

Criminal & Sexual Violence

Outside the Office

I suspect I am one of only a handful of Catholic priests that played college football. I still train and follow the sport, especially my alma mater St. John’s University in Collegeville,  MN.

Credentials

Education

  • Saint John's University (1993)
  • University of Wales, Cardiff / Prifysgol Caerdydd (LLM, Canon Law, 2007)