Spotlight on abuse: Episcopal priest William Walter Elrod

In June 2011, a 57-year-old woman filed a lawsuit against the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane for sexual abuse when she was 13-14 years old at St. Paul’s School for Girls in Walla Walla, Washington. The suit identified Episcopal priest William Walter Elrod, chaplain and headmaster of the school from 1966 until its closing in 1968, as defendant. Elrod was a Virginia Theological Seminary graduate ordained to the priesthood in 1963. He retired in 1988 and died in 1993 in Tempe, Arizona, where he served at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona.