[Vision2020] Men of God? What a joke!

[Art Deco]

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September 7, 2012
Defying Canon and Civil Laws, Diocese Failed to Stop a Priest By LAURIE
GOODSTEIN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/laurie_goodstein/index.html>

On the surface, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan was just the kind of dynamic new
priest that any Roman Catholic bishop would have been happy to put in a
parish. He rode a motorcycle, organized summer mission trips to Guatemala
and joined Bishop Robert W. Finn and dozens of students on a bus trek to
Washington for the “March for Life,” a big annual anti-abortion rally.

But in December 2010, Bishop Finn got some disturbing news: Father Ratigan
had just tried to commit suicide by running his motorcycle in a closed
garage. The day before, a computer technician had discovered sexually
explicit photographs of young girls on Father Ratigan’s laptop, including
one of a toddler with her diaper pulled away to expose her genitals.

The decisions that Bishop Finn and his second-in-command in the Diocese of
Kansas City-St. Joseph <http://www.diocese-kcsj.org/>, Msgr. Robert Murphy,
made about Father Ratigan over the next five months ultimately led to the
conviction of the
bishop<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/us/kansas-city-bishop-convicted-of-shielding-pedophile-priest.html?hp>in
circuit court on Thursday on one misdemeanor count of failing to
report
suspected child abuse. It was the first time a Catholic bishop in the
United States had been held accountable in criminal court in the nearly
three decades since the priest sexual abuse scandals first came to light.

Both Bishop Finn and Monsignor Murphy, as ministers, were required by law
to report suspected child abuse to the civil authorities. But they were
also required to report under policies that the American bishops put in
place 10 years ago at the height of the scandal — policies that now hold
the force of canon law.

This is an account of how, as recently as 2011, in violation of both church
and civil laws, a bishop and church officials failed to stop a priest from
pursuing his obsession with taking pornographic photographs of young girls.
Eventually it was Monsignor Murphy, not Bishop Finn, who turned in Father
Ratigan.

The witnesses never told their stories in court. The verdict was decided by
a judge in a bench trial that lasted less than an hour and a half. But the
facts of the case are known and even agreed upon by both the prosecution
and the defense — summed up in a nine-page stipulation of testimony that
contained details about the case that were not public until they were
submitted to the judge on Thursday. Many details were also revealed in what
is known as the Graves report, an independent investigation commissioned by
the diocese last year and conducted by a former United States attorney,
Todd P. Graves.

“I truly regret, “ Bishop Finn said in court on Thursday, “and am sorry for
the hurt that these events have caused.”

The bishop had advance warning about Father Ratigan, well before
pornography was discovered on the priest’s laptop. Julie Hess, the
principal of the parochial school, next door to St. Patrick Parish where
Father Ratigan served, had sent a memorandum in May of 2010 to the diocese,
which said:

“Parents, staff members, and parishioners are discussing his actions and
whether or not he may be a child molester. They have researched pedophilia
on the Internet and took in sample articles with examples of how Father
Shawn’s actions fit the profile of a child predator.”

Children in the diocese’s schools are taught about appropriate boundaries
between adults and children in an abuse-prevention education program called
Circle of Grace. Ms. Hess said that while she was inclined to believe that
Father Ratigan’s behavior amounted to nothing more than “boundary
violations,” other adults were alarmed about specific events: Father
Ratigan had put a girl on his lap on a bus trip, attempted to “friend” an
eighth grader on Facebook, and had an inappropriate “peer to peer”
relationship with a fifth-grade girl. On a children’s group excursion to
Father Ratigan’s house, parents spotted hand towels shaped to look like
dolls’ clothes, and a pair of girls’ panties in a planter in his yard.

The bishop told Father Ratigan in June 2010 that “we have to take this
seriously.” But the testimony showed that the bishop, too, perceived the
concerns simply as “boundary issues.”

Nine days before Christmas, Father Ratigan took his sluggish laptop to Ken
Kes, a computer technician on contract with St. Patrick Parish, for
repairs. Mr. Kes was startled to find photographs of young girls’ torsos
and crotches. When he saw the one of the naked toddler, he took the laptop
to the parish’s deacon. Mr. Kes is described in the testimony as “being so
upset that his hands were shaking to the point he couldn’t open the
laptop.”

The deacon immediately took the laptop to Monsignor Murphy at the chancery
offices. He gave it to Julie Creech, a technology staff member at the
diocese. Ms. Creech found “hundreds of photographs,” according to the
testimony, many taken on playgrounds, under tables or in one case, while a
girl was sleeping. Many pictures did not show faces — only close-ups of
crotches. Ms. Creech wrote a report for her superiors noting that only four
or five of the hundreds of pictures appeared to have been downloaded from
the Internet: “the rest appeared to have been taken with a personal
camera.”

Nevertheless, even before getting the laptop, Monsignor Murphy had already
consulted with a Kansas City Police Department captain who served on the
diocese’s Independent Review Board. The Graves report said that the
captain, Rick Smith, recalled being told by Monsignor Murphy that the
diocese had found only one nude photograph, that it was of a member of
Father Ratigan’s family, and that it was not a sexual pose. Monsignor
Murphy said he did not remember telling the captain those things. Their
recollections also differed on what the captain had said about whether the
photograph constituted pornography.

The next day, Dec. 17, 2010, Father Ratigan attempted suicide. He left
messages apologizing to his family for “the harm caused to the children or
you.” When he survived, he was sent first to a hospital, and then to Dr.
Rick Fitzgibbons, a psychiatrist in Pennsylvania selected by Bishop Finn.
The bishop testified that he was told by the psychiatrist that Father
Ratigan was not a risk to children, and had been falsely accused by the
school principal.

During this period, two women on staff in diocesan headquarters were urging
their superiors to turn Father Ratigan in. Rebecca Summers, then the
director of communications, told Monsignor Murphy to call the police,
according to the testimony. And Julie Creech, the technology employee, said
in a deposition in a related civil suit that she went to see Bishop Finn in
his office to make sure he understood what she had seen on the laptop.

“I really got the feeling that maybe he didn’t understand,” Ms. Creech said
in the deposition. “I don’t think he saw what I saw.”

The bishop assigned Father Ratigan to serve as a chaplain to the Franciscan
Sisters of the Holy Eucharist, in Independence, Mo. He placed seven
restrictions on the priest, including not using computers and avoiding all
contact with children. But the bishop allowed him, on a “trial” basis, to
celebrate Mass for youth groups at the prayer center that the sisters ran.

Over the next five months, Father Ratigan, who is now 46 attended a
sixth-grader’s birthday party, co-celebrated a child’s confirmation,
communicated with children on his Facebook page, hosted an Easter egg hunt
and attended a parade, the testimony recounts. Invited to dinner at the
home of parishioners, he was caught taking photographs, under the table, up
their daughter’s skirt, according to a federal indictment of Father
Ratigan.

Neither the bishop nor any church official told church members or Father
Ratigan’s large extended family — which includes many children — that the
priest had been ordered to stay away from children, Darron Blankenship, a
brother-in-law of Father Ratigan and a police officer who has handled child
abuse cases, said in an interview on Friday.

“For somebody that was under restrictions, he had free rein,” Officer
Blankenship said. “He just went and did what he wanted.”

Some family members had heard that Father Ratigan’s laptop had contained
pornography, Officer Blankenship said, but they assumed it was adult
pornography taken off the Internet — upsetting but not surprising, they
thought, for a man who had become a priest and had to adjust to celibacy
later in life.

Bishop Finn and Monsignor Murphy learned about some of Father Ratigan’s
violations of his restrictions. “I will have to tell him,” Bishop Finn
wrote in an e-mail to the psychiatrist, “that he must not attend these
children’s gatherings, even if there are parents present. I had been very
clear about this with him already.”

The testimony filed in court on Thursday says that because the bishop
trusted Father Ratigan to respect the restrictions, he was never monitored
and the community was never informed.

On May 11, 2011, while Bishop Finn was out of town, Monsignor Murphy again
contacted Captain Smith at the Police Department and told him that the
diocese had indeed found not one, but hundreds of photographs of little
girls. A week later, Father Ratigan was arrested for possession of child
pornography<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/child_pornography/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.
He was convicted in August and is awaiting sentencing.

Bishop Finn and the diocese were indicted by a grand jury in October 2011.
Monsignor Murphy was given immunity for cooperating with the prosecution.
He testified that he turned Father Ratigan in because he had grown
concerned that he was truly a pedophile. The monsignor said that when the
bishop learned he had turned in Father Ratigan, “It seemed he was angry.”

After Father Ratigan was arrested, Bishop Finn met with his priests. Asked
why Father Ratigan was not removed earlier, the bishop replied, according
to the testimony, that he had wanted “to save Father Ratigan’s priesthood”
and that he had understood that Father Ratigan’s problem was “only
pornography.”


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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