Category Archives: New Orleans Saints

Sexual abuse survivors grill NFL amid New Orleans Saints church scandal

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Victim support groups call for investigation into whether Saints flouted NFL’s own commitments to prevent abuse

Clergy sexual abuse survivor support groups have called on the National Football League to investigate whether leaders of the New Orleans Saints flouted the NFL’s goals by campaigning alongside the city’s Roman Catholic archdiocese to soften critical media coverage of how the church handled its clerical molestation scandal.

A statement from the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (Snap) pointed out how the NFL’s website expresses a commitment to “addressing and preventing domestic violence and sexual assault”. Yet emails first reported on Monday morning by the Guardian, its reporting partner WWL Louisiana, the Associated Press and the New York Times establish how the Saints – owned by the devout New Orleans Catholic Gayle Benson – and team executives were far more involved in helping its local archdiocese spin media coverage of the abuse scandal than the organizations had previously acknowledged.

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‘Shame on them’: anger and dismay from survivors over Saints clergy-abuse emails

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Clergy abuse survivors and their supporters express pain over sports officials’ efforts to soften coverage of scandal

Survivors of Catholic clergy abuse and their supporters expressed disgust, pain and disbelief after the Guardian and WWL Louisiana’s investigation on Monday into hundreds of emails showing officials with the NFL’s Saints and NBA’s Pelicans aided New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese efforts to soften critical media coverage about the church’s management of a clerical molestation scandal.

Richard Windmann said it was “disturbing” to see the emails mention his decision to go public about his abuse as a child at the hands of a priest and janitor at Jesuit high school in New Orleans in the 1970s.

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New Orleans Saints and NFL donate $1m to victims of terror attack

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Team and the NFL will donate to victims of attack on New Year’s Day that left 14 people dead and 35 others injured

The New Orleans Saints and the National Football League in which they compete have pledged to donate $1m to the victims of the Bourbon Street terror attack on New Year’s Day that left 14 people dead and 35 others injured.

In a press release issued on Saturday, the Saints and their owner, Gayle Benson, who pledged $500,000, said: “Our community has experienced an unimaginable tragedy and our collective hearts are broken as we mourn for the victims and survivors of the New Year’s Day terror attack in New Orleans.

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Death, guns and ‘corrupt cop’ claims: saga that gripped New Orleans reaches its end

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The verdict in the manslaughter trial over the 2016 death of Saints star Will Smith brings to a close a turbulent eight years of legal wrangling

Ever since the New Orleans tow-truck company owner Cardell Hayes shot the retired local pro-football champion Will Smith to death and wounded the former athlete’s wife on a city street late on the night of 9 April 2016, people on all sides of the case have made it as complicated as possible in their fight for what they consider to be justice.

It is a case that has gripped south-eastern Louisiana – where football players are huge celebrities – and also involved dark, if unsupported, allegations of another deep south staple: police corruption. Competing theories and narratives have vied for supremacy, with almost as many different ideas of what happened as people willing to voice them.

Ramon Antonio Vargas covered the New Orleans Saints in 2013 and 2014 at the New Orleans Advocate and also covered the case of Hayes and Smith before joining the Guardian in 2022.

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US Defense Sec’y Mattis: Syria still has chemical weapons

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The White House budget director says money for the wall President Donald Trump wants to build along the U.S. border with Mexico must be part of the massive spending bill Congress is preparing. The White House budget director says money for the wall President Donald Trump wants to build along the U.S. border with Mexico must be part of the massive spending bill Congress is preparing.

Sharper’s lawyers: Plea terms not adequately explained

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A federal judge did not adequately explain the terms and consequences of a plea agreement resulting in an 18-year federal prison sentence on drug and sexual assault charges for disgraced former NFL star Darren Sharper, lawyers for Sharper said in appeal briefs filed Friday. Sharper pleaded guilty or no-contest to rape or related charges in four states where women accused him of drugging then assaulting them.

Floods, riots and budgets: A look at 2016’s biggest stories

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It was a year of protracted budget negotiations for a cash-strapped state, headline-grabbing shootings of two ex-NFL players, widespread protests on the streets of the capitol and flooding - lots of flooding. As 2016 comes to a close, The Associated Press looks back at the year's biggest stories: - A SAINTS' SHOOTING: On April 9 an altercation in New Orleans between two drivers quickly spun out of control and former Saints star Will Smith was shot and killed.