Gambling Las Vegas priest gets 3 years for embezzlement

LAS VEGAS -- Muffled sobs erupted Friday in a courtroom packed with supporters of a Roman Catholic priest who was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison and ordered to repay $650,000 he acknowledged embezzling from his northwest Las Vegas parish to support his gambling habit.

Monsignor Kevin McAuliffe, 59, stood straight and offered no reaction as U.S. District Judge James Mahan credited him for accepting responsibility for looting parish votive candle, prayer and gift shop funds for eight years, but faulted him for "hedging his bet" by blaming it on a gambling addiction.

"You abused a position of trust, Mr. McAuliffe," the judge said. He dispensed with any church title for the priest who hid a weakness for casinos and video poker from parishioners who know him as Father Kevin. "You betrayed people who depended on you."

McAuliffe offered a remorseful apology, saying he felt "guilt, shame and self-loathing," and noting that he had "rightly" lost his positions of authority in the church. He asked the judge for leniency so he could make restitution, help others with gambling addictions "and atone for what I have done."

Defense attorney Margaret Stanish asked the judge for probation so McAuliffe could continue getting counseling for his gambling addiction, keep practicing as a priest and pay restitution to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Summerlin. He won't get treatment in federal prison, Stanish said.

"Is it all about retribution?" she asked the judge. "This court has the ability to fashion a punishment that takes into account not only the offense but the individual. He would not be here but for a gambling addiction."

Stanish brought in Dr. Timothy Fong, a psychiatry professor and chief of the gambling studies program at the University of California, Los Angeles, to testify that McAuliffe's gambling compulsion amounted to "self-medication" by a man masking feelings of stress, depression, sadness, social anxiety and inadequacy.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Christina Brown characterized McAuliffe as an opportunist and thief who didn't exhaust his own savings before taking church cash to fund gambling, cars and travel. She accused him of grasping at gambling addiction as "a hollow excuse offered now, when he's desperate for leniency from the court."

The prosecutor derided Fong's diagnosis as unsupported by a single 21/2 hour interview with McAuliffe, several telephone calls with his defense attorney and a review of self-assessments that McAuliffe provided in sessions with other counselors at a gambling addiction clinic in Las Vegas. Treatment only began after FBI agents questioned him last May about missing church funds, she said.

And Brown pointed to counseling reports that she said suggested McAuliffe was focused more during therapy on his legal predicament than on getting help for a gambling addiction.

"He did do good," she said. "But he also stood before his congregation preaching about sin, lies, theft and greed ... all the while deceiving them."

The judge referred to a parish rift over McAuliffe's crime when he said he received approximately 100 letters of support through the priest's defense attorney. Mahan also made part of the court record a stack of letters parishioners sent straight to the court saying McAuliffe should be punished.

"I expect the church to forgive him, and the parishioners by and large to forgive him," Mahan said from the bench. "That's different than the justice system."