[Vision2020] Screw The Children, Twice

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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July 1, 2013
Dolan Sought to Protect Church Assets, Files Show By LAURIE
GOODSTEIN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/laurie_goodstein/index.html>

Files released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee on Monday
reveal that in 2007, Cardinal Timothy F. Dolan, then the archbishop there,
requested permission from the Vatican to move nearly $57 million into a
cemetery trust fund to protect the assets from victims of clergy sexual
abuse who were demanding compensation.

Cardinal Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, has emphatically denied
seeking to shield church funds as the archbishop of Milwaukee from 2002 to
2009. He reiterated in a statement Monday that these were “old and
discredited attacks.”

However, the files contain a 2007 letter to the Vatican in which he
explains that by transferring the assets, “I foresee an improved protection
of these funds from any legal claim and liability.” The Vatican approved
the request in five weeks, the files show.

The release of more than 6,000 pages of documents on Monday was hailed by
victims and their advocates as a vindication and a historic step toward
transparency and accountability. They were well aware that the archives
would bring unusually intense scrutiny to the country’s most high-profile
prelate, Cardinal Dolan, who as president of the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops and the archbishop of New York has sought to help the
church turn the corner on the era of scandal.

Cardinal Dolan has been regarded by many Catholics as part of the solution.
In public appearances, he has expressed personal outrage at the harm done
to children, apologized profusely and pledged to help the church and the
victims heal.

But the documents lift the curtain on his role as a workaday church
functionary concerned with safeguarding assets, persuading abusive priests
to leave voluntarily in exchange for continued stipends and benefits, and
complying with Rome’s sluggish canonical procedures for dismissing
uncooperative priests who he had long concluded were remorseless and a
serious risk to children. In one case, the Vatican took five years to
remove a convicted sex offender from the priesthood.

“As victims organize and become more public, the potential for true scandal
is very real,” he wrote in such a request in 2003 to Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican office charged with handling abuse cases
until he became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

Victims on Monday called for a federal investigation into the actions of
Cardinal Dolan and his predecessors, but the cardinal sought to deflect
criticism by saying in a statement <http://blog.archny.org/>Monday that he
welcomed the release of the documents.

The current archbishop of Milwaukee, Jerome E. Listecki, had announced his
decision to release the documents in April, one day before a judicial
hearing. Lawyers for abuse victims had asked a judge to compel their
release.

Archbishop Listecki released a
letter<http://www.archmil.org/Our-Faith/Blogs/Archbishop-Listecki/JEL-20130626.htm>last
week warning Catholics in his archdiocese that the documents could
shake their faith, and trying to explain the actions of church leaders
while offering apologies to victims.

“Prepare to be shocked,” he wrote. “There are some graphic descriptions
about the behavior of some of these priest offenders.”

The files include documents from the personnel files of 42 clergy offenders
with “substantiated” allegations, going back 80 years. (The names and
identifying features of victims were redacted.) Also included are the legal
depositions of Cardinal Dolan and another former Milwaukee archbishop,
Rembert Weakland, and a retired auxiliary bishop, Richard J. Sklba.

Milwaukee harbored some of the nation’s most notorious priest pedophiles,
including the Rev. Lawrence Murphy, whom a church therapist assessed as
having molested as many as 200 boys during his two and a half decades
teaching and leading St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wis.,
and Sigfried Widera, who faced 42 counts of child abuse in Wisconsin and
California. Father Murphy died in 1998, and Father Widera committed suicide
in Mexico in 2003.

In his letter, Archbishop Listecki said the documents showed that 22
priests were “reassigned to parish work after concerns about their behavior
were known to the archdiocese,” and that 8 of those “reoffended after being
reassigned.”

Advocates for abuse victims objected that the archdiocese did not release
the files of many others accused of abuse, including priests, deacons,
nuns, schoolteachers and choir directors. The files do not include any
known priest offenders who were members of religious orders (like the
Capuchins or Jesuits) who served in the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

“It’s still less than a complete disclosure, but it’s a giant step in the
right direction,” said Jeff Anderson, a lawyer for many of the alleged
victims. The documents were posted on both his Web
site<http://www.andersonadvocates.com/Archdiocese-of-Milwaukee-Documents.aspx>and
the
archdiocese <http://www.archmil.org/reorg/clergy-offenders-info.htm>’s, but
they were arranged differently to buttress each argument.

Cardinal Dolan was
deposed<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/nyregion/cardinal-dolan-deposition-in-milwaukee-archdiocese-scandal.html>about
his handling of abuse cases and the assets of the archdiocese in
February, just before he left for Rome for the conclave to elect a new
pope. The release of the documents is the byproduct of a bitter standoff in
bankruptcy court between the Milwaukee Archdiocese and 575 men and women
who have filed claims against it alleging that priests or other church
employees had sexually abused them.

The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2011, saying it was the best way to
compensate the victims and resolve the controversy. It became the eighth
Catholic diocese in the United States to do so. Since then, negotiations
between the two sides in Milwaukee have broken down: the church has argued
that about 400 of the 575 cases are invalid, while lawyers for the victims
have accused the church of hiding assets.

In January, the archdiocese said it had spent about $9 million in legal and
other fees in the bankruptcy process and was going broke.

In 2007, the year Cardinal Dolan asked to transfer the funds, the Wisconsin
Supreme Court issued a decision that in effect lifted an unusual law that
had long shielded the church from sexual abuse lawsuits. When he was later
accused of trying to shield church funds, Cardinal Dolan said on his blog
in New York <http://blog.archny.org/index.php/groundless-gossip/> that it
was “malarkey” and “groundless gossip.” Archbishop Listecki and former
Auxiliary Bishop Sklba invoked a theme that many other church officials
have used in the past to explain their conduct: that their missteps
reflected a broader lack of awareness about child sexual abuse in society.

Archbishop Listecki wrote that he did not want to make excuses, but that
church officials had relied on the advice of doctors and therapists who
were “seemingly more concerned about ‘Father’ than about the children.” He
said the documents would reveal “the progression and evolution of thinking
on this topic.”

However, the Rev. James Connell, a priest in the Milwaukee Archdiocese who
helped to form a group called Catholic Whistleblowers, said in an interview
that he did not find this claim credible.

“I was in high school in the 1950s,” he said, “and I learned about
statutory rape in high school. An adult having sexual activity with a minor
is a crime. We knew about it then, so you can’t claim that social thought
changed.”


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