CBSEveningNews
Published on Jul 1, 2013
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is involved in 45 cases involving sexual abuse by priests. An attorney for abuse victims in the case claims then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan shuffled funds to protect them from abuse claims. Dean Reynolds reports.
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Then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan tried to protect money from claims, records show
Associated Press
Archbishop
Timothy Dolan, seen in this 2009 file photo, listens as the Apostolic
letter is read by the Vatican's ambassador to the United States during
his installation Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.
Milwaukee Archdiocese releases thousands of pages from priest sex abuse files
By
Annysa Johnson of the
Journal Sentinel
July 2, 2013
Archdiocese Bankruptcy
The
Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which faces more than a dozen civil
fraud lawsuits over its handling of clergy sex abuse cases, filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January. As the case proceeds, we'll
have updates, analysis, documents and more.
Four
years before the Archdiocese of Milwaukee filed for bankruptcy,
then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan sought Vatican approval to move nearly $57
million in cemetery funds off the archdiocese's books and into a trust
to help protect them "from any legal claim or liability," according to
documents made public Monday.
In the decades before Dolan — now
cardinal of New York — arrived in 2002, church leaders, including
now-retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland, routinely moved pedophile
priests from one parish or school to the next, shielding them from
criminal charges, the records show.
And when they did try to
dismiss sex abusers from the priesthood, Dolan and Weakland were met by a
Vatican bureaucracy that moved at a glacial pace, causing the process
to slog on sometimes for years.
One case, involving the
now-defrocked Father John O'Brien, dragged on for five years, even
though O'Brien was convicted of fourth-degree sexual assault of a
teenage boy and had sought his own dismissal. At one point a Vatican
official wrote to Dolan saying he could not turn the case over to Pope
Benedict XVI for a final decision without "an admission of guilt and a
sincere expression of remorse."
How Dolan — now considered one of
the world's most influential Catholic prelates — and his predecessors
responded to the sexual abuse crisis in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee is
laid out in thousands of pages of documents made public Monday as part
of the archdiocese's bankruptcy proceedings.
They offer, at times
in disturbing detail, an unprecedented look at how the Catholic Church's
global sex abuse crisis played out in the parishes, schools and other
ministries in southeastern Wisconsin. Some of the information has
previously been reported, including revelations that Milwaukee bishops,
like their colleagues around the country, routinely moved priests
without divulging that they were a danger to children.
But the
vast majority of the 6,000 pages of documents are being seen for the
first time. They include parts of priests' personnel files;
correspondence between the Milwaukee archdiocese and the Vatican; and
depositions of Dolan, Weakland and other church officials, and one
notorious sex offender, since defrocked.
"The revelations are
shameful and shocking," said Minnesota attorney Jeffrey Anderson, who
represents most of the 575 men and women who filed claims in the
bankruptcy alleging they were sexually abused by priests, nuns, teachers
and others associated with the Milwaukee archdiocese.
Anderson
accused local bishops, including Dolan, of worrying more about the
church's reputation than the care of victims, and of perpetuating a
culture of secrecy that has been seen in dioceses around the country for
decades.
They "deny, minimize, blame," Anderson said.
Dolan
issued a statement saying he welcomed the release of his deposition. He
derided allegations that he shifted money into the cemetery trust to
shield it in case of a bankruptcy filing and paid abusive priests to
quietly go away as "old and discredited attacks."
According to the
documents, Dolan paid $20,000 to abusive priests who agreed not to
fight their dismissal from the priesthood. But records show the practice
dated to at least 1995, seven years before he arrived in Milwaukee.
Critics
have characterized the payments as payoffs or bonuses to sex abusers.
But Dolan said in his statement Monday that canon law requires dioceses
to provide "basic support like health care and room and board" for
priests until they have moved on.
"Responding to victim-survivors,
taking action against priest-abusers, and working to implement policies
to protect children, were some of the most difficult, challenging, and
moving events of the 6½ years that I served as Archbishop of Milwaukee,"
Dolan said in the statement.
Officials with the Milwaukee
archdiocese did not respond to email and telephone requests for comment.
But Archbishop Jerome Listecki issued a letter to Catholics last week,
saying he hoped the documents would "aid abuse survivors, families, and
others in understanding the past, reviewing the present and allowing the
Church in southeastern Wisconsin to continue moving forward."
Read More Here
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Records: Archbishop paid problem priests to leave
By M.L. JOHNSON, Associated Press
Updated 4:16 am, Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Attorney
Jeff Anderson makes available in St. Paul, Minn., on Monday, July 1,
2013, close to 6,000 pages of documents related to child sex abuse by
priests in Wisconsin. The documents were made public for the first time
as part of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee's bankruptcy proceedings.
MANDATORY CREDIT; ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS OUT; MAGS OUT; TWIN CITIES TV
OUT Photo: The Star Tribune, Richard Sennott
MILWAUKEE
(AP) — The archbishop of Milwaukee wrote a letter in 2003 to the
Vatican office overseeing clergy sex abuse cases begging it to remove a
priest who had repeatedly abused children, showed no remorse and at
least once engaged in sexual activity with a young boy, the child's
mother and her female friend.
The archdiocese provided the priest
with counseling and alcohol abuse treatment, limited his job
assignments, eventually ordering him to stop dressing as a priest and
barring him from seminary buildings. It only received more reports
of abuse.
In 2003, nearly 40 years after some of the earliest reported abuse took place, New York Cardinal
Timothy Dolan, who was then archbishop of Milwaukee, sought permission to have the priest,
Daniel Budzynski,
officially defrocked. Despite the egregiousness of the priest's crimes,
the Vatican office in charge of sex abuse cases, then led by Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, the future
Pope Benedict XVI, took more than a year to formally dismiss him.
The
correspondence was made public Monday along with thousands of pages of
other documents detailing sex abuse by dozens of priests in the
archdiocese covering southeastern Wisconsin. The documents were released
as part of a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court between the
archdiocese and victims suing it for fraud. Victims have accused the
archdiocese of transferring abusive priests to new churches without
warning parishioners and covering up their crimes for decades.
The
Budzynski case was among at least a half-dozen Dolan inherited when he
took over the archdiocese in 2002 amid the growing clergy abuse scandal.
It shows some of the difficulty church leaders had in dealing with
serial molesters and a church bureaucracy that in many cases sat on
pleas for priests' removal for years.
While other church leaders, including Dolan's predecessor, Archbishop
Rembert Weakland,
have acknowledged they didn't immediately grasp the extent of the
problem, Dolan appears to have quickly determined a crisis was in the
making. He moved to push out problem priests, even paying them to leave
the priesthood, and later acted to protect church assets by transferring
$57 million from a cemetery fund into a trust as the archdiocese moved
toward bankruptcy.
Victims have accused Dolan of caring more for
the church's well-being than theirs, but his letters, such as the one to
Ratzinger seeking to defrock Budzynski, show an understanding of the
damage done to children.
Read More Here
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Archbishop Timothy Dolan Purposely Shuttled 57 Million Dollars Away From Sex Abuse Victims
He Viewed The Victims As A Major Inconvenience
A
portion of the proceeds from this article will be donated to SNAP-the
Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests. Please share this article
on your social networks.
Breaking news out of Milwaukee today
as thousands of pages of documents have been released from the Catholic
Archdiocese there. The papers show that Archbishop Timothy Dolan
bribed priests to keep them quiet about the child sex abuse scandal,
purposely shuttled nearly 57 million dollars out of the Milwaukee
Archdiocese before it declared bankruptcy in an attempt to avoid paying
settlements to victims, and was far more concerned with accused priests’
well-being and comfort than with the victims themselves. The papers,
published on the Archdiocese website as well as on the website of
victims’ lawyers, detail depositions, personnel files and court papers
in relation to 42 separate child sexual abuse cases.
In
preparation of the publication of the documents, Archbishop Jerome E.
Listecki of Milwaukee wrote a letter to his congregation, attempting to
explain how the church has had to undergo an “arc of understanding” to
comprehend the fact that molesting children is a criminal act. In one
paragraph, he says “The arc of understanding sexual abuse of a minor
progressed from being seen as a moral failing and sin that needed
personal resolve and spiritual direction; to a psychological deficiency
that required therapy and could be cured; to issues of addiction
requiring more extensive therapy and restrictions on ministry; to
recognition of the long-term effects of abuse and the need to hold the
perpetrator accountable for this criminal activity.”
While most
would say that sexual abuse of a minor would automatically be considered
a criminal act for which the perpetrator should be held accountable,
the church seems to have taken nearly 80 years coming to that
conclusion. Owning up to the mistakes, Listecki said, took a long time
because the church only realized that having sex with children was wrong
when they looked back upon their actions. “Acknowledging our past…
includes facing up to mistakes that were made, even if some of those
mistakes become apparent only in hindsight” he writes.
Whereas the
vast majority of the population does not feel that child molestation is
difficult to equate with criminality, Archbishop Listecki seems to feel
otherwise. In his letter he reflects back on how some of the documents
show that parents didn’t want the police to be involved, and that some
of them were more concerned for “Father” than for their own children. He
goes on to say “I do not offer this as an excuse, but rather, as
examples of the complexity of the topic and the context in which
decisions were made.”
Contrary to what Archbishop Listecki states, most would say that handling child molestation is
not complex.
It’s actually very simple. The majority of first responders would
probably pick up the phone and dial 911. But the responders were
“ill-equipped” and “didn’t understand” he says. He tells his
congregation to “prepare to be shocked” about the documents that were to
be published.
Read More Here
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Archbishop
Silvano Tomasi, (R), Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy
See to the Office of the United Nations in Geneva, and Vincenzo Buonomo,
(L), of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See prior to the UN
torture committee hearing on the Vatican, at the headquarters of the
office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Palais Wilson,
in Geneva, Switzerland. Photograph: Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA
