Stakes are high for church as ‘failure to report’ case unfolds against Kansas City bishop

The charge is only a misdemeanor, but if prosecutors are able to win a conviction against Kansas City Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Finn, they could be opening up a whole new front in the national priest abuse crisis.

Finn is accused of violating Missouri’s mandatory reporter law by failing to tell state officials about hundreds of images of suspected child pornography found on the computer of a priest in his diocese.

Experts say a criminal conviction against Finn, the highest-ranking church official charged with shielding an abusive priest, could embolden prosecutors elsewhere to more aggressively pursue members of the church hierarchy who try to protect offending clergy.

“Cases can sit like land mines in files for a long time and suddenly come to light,” said Matthew Bunson, a senior fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and co-author of a book, “Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal.” ‘’Those cases may ultimately involve leaders in the church.”

Finn and the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph each were charged last year with one count of failing to report. The case involves the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, who remains jailed on state and federal charges accusing him of producing and possessing child pornography. Both have pleaded not guilty, and a judge is scheduled to hear multiple motions in the case Tuesday, including one to dismiss the charges.

“We do not believe that either the facts or the law support a finding of guilt on the misdemeanor charges, and we look forward to a just and fair resolution of them,” the diocese told The Associated Press in an e-mailed statement.

Finn has acknowledged being told in December 2010 about hundreds of photographs of young children found on Ratigan’s laptop computer. Many of the photos focused on the crotch areas of young children who are clothed, though one series showed the exposed genitals of a girl thought to be 3 or 4 years old.

The bishop also has acknowledged that a parish principal warned the diocese of suspicious behavior by Ratigan, including that he was taking compromising pictures of children and let them sit on his lap and reach into his pocket for candy. Those warnings occured more than six months before the photos were found.

Instead of ordering the photos to be turned over to police, or telling the Missouri Children’s Division about them, Finn sent Ratigan out of state for a psychiatric evaluation. When Ratigan returned to Missouri, Finn sent him to the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Eucharist, where he would say Mass for the sisters and be away from children.

Only after the church received reports that Ratigan had violated orders from the diocese to stay away from children did the diocese turn over to police last May a disk containing the photos from Ratigan’s computer.

“From the church’s perspective, having your bishop declared a criminal is a big deal, even if it’s only a misdemeanor,” said Douglas Laycock, a religious liberty specialist at the University of Virginia School of Law. “For them, it’s not about the fine, it’s about the statement being made.”

The maximum sentence for the crime is a $1,000 fine and one year in jail, but there’s little chance the bishop would be put behind bars. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said some people thought she shouldn’t have filed the charge against Finn, while others thought the charge should have been more serious.

“The prosecutor is not in the business of pleasing people,” she said.

Finn told a grand jury he thought Vicar General Robert Murphy was the diocese’s designated reporter. Murphy testified that even though he was head of a team formed to respond to claims of child sex abuse by priests, he had never been trained on being the mandatory reporter, nor officially assigned that duty.

Separation of church and state also is a significant issue for the church, Laycock said.

“Say a bishop has to report to police everything he knows about a priest under his supervision,” Laycock said. “If child abuse is involved, it may be a sensible and constitutional law. But it certainly intrudes on the supervisory relationship of a bishop and priest.”

Tuesday’s motions hearing comes a day after the trial begins in Philadelphia in a case involving Monsignor William Lynn, the first U.S. church official charged with child endangerment for keeping accused priests in the ministry.

Terry McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, which manages a public database of records on clergy abuse cases, said the two cases represent a shift toward holding the Catholic Church hierarchy legally accountable for failing to warn parents or police about abusive priests.

“There’s been a lot of attention directed against the Ratigans of the world, but not a lot of attention until recently on the Finns of the world,” McKiernan said. “That’s what makes the church very nervous. It will be devastating for the church if the attention is directed at people like that.”

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Philly monsignor seeks new jury after priest plea

A Roman Catholic church official facing a landmark child sex abuse trial wants a new jury seated because of publicity over a co-defendant’s last-minute guilty plea, his lawyers said Friday.

Monsignor William Lynn’s attorneys said Thursday’s plea from defrocked priest Edward Avery could influence jurors in the trial that’s scheduled to begin Monday.

Lynn, the former secretary for clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese, is the first U.S. church official ever charged with endangering children by failing to oust accused predators from the priesthood or report them to police.

The jury was seated early this month and advised not to read about the case. Jury selection took weeks given the sensitive sexual and religious issues involved.

Lynn’s lawyers said they’re loath to repeat the process, but they deem it necessary, given the extensive news coverage. The judge could question jurors Monday about what they’ve seen or read.

Avery, 69, entered a surprise plea Thursday, admitting he sexually assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy in a church sacristy in 1999. He was immediately sentenced to a negotiated 2 1/2 to five years in prison. Avery hasn’t agreed to cooperate in the case against Lynn and Avery, prosecutors said Friday.

The trial is expected to last several months as prosecutors detail abuse complaints against the Rev. James Brennan, Avery and 22 other priests. Lynn knew or should have known the men were dangerous and shouldn’t remain in parish work around children, prosecutors allege.

Lynn had reviewed secret archives at the archdiocese that held the sex abuse complaints and prepared a list of 37 accused priests still on the job in 1994. He argues that he gave the list to Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, but Bevilacqua had it shredded. Bevilacqua died in January, but his videotaped deposition could still be used at trial.

Lynn faces up to 28 years in prison if convicted of all counts.

Brennan, 48, is charged with raping a 14-year-old boy in 1996 during a sleepover at the priest’s apartment. Brennan was on leave from the church at the time. The boy told his parents the next day.

“Unfortunately, (his) parents, who viewed Fr. Brennan as both a close friend and a pillar of the community, accepted his version of events,” according to the grand jury report filed last year.

Brennan and Lynn have pleaded not guilty.

Avery’s victim told authorities he was raped at St. Jerome’s Parish in northeast Philadelphia by three men: Avery, the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and his sixth-grade teacher, Bernard Shero. The abuse started in 1999 and ended four years later. Defense lawyers have challenged the accuser’s credibility, noting his longtime drug addiction and criminal record.

The man’s civil lawyer wants an apology, given Avery’s plea.

“I’d like to see an apology now for the things that have been said about my client,” lawyer Slade McLaughlin told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Brennan had also been at St. Jerome’s, from 1997-98, although the abuse charged did not occur there.

Engelhardt and Shero are being tried later in the year, because they were not archdiocesan priests and didn’t report to Lynn.

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Retired priest pleads guilty to molesting boy at Costa Mesa church

A retired Roman Catholic priest from Orange County pleaded guilty Friday to sexually assaulting a boy in the 1990s, authorities said.

Denis Lyons, 78, of Seal Beach pleaded guilty to four felony counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14; the crimes took place between Jan. 1, 1992, and Dec. 1, 1995. Prosecutors said they expected Lyons to be sentenced May 25 to one year in jail and five years’ formal probation and be required to register as a sex offender for life.

Lyons was a priest at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Costa Mesa when the crimes occurred. Prosecutors said he assaulted the boy four times on church property when the boy was between the ages of 7 and 9.

Lyons was charged after the victim came forward in 2008. The retired cleric was arrested at Leisure World in Seal Beach as he played cards. That is same community where former priest and convicted child molester Michael Wempe also lived.

In 2003, Lyons was charged with molesting three boys between 1978 and 1981, also at St John. During that case, however, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a California law that allowed prosecution of older sexual abuse cases. The decision prevented the prosecution of crimes that occurred before 1988.

In 2009, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange settled a lawsuit brought by a 24-year-old man who said Lyons sexually abused him repeatedly when he was a second-grader at St. John the Baptist. The man also accused the diocese of conspiring to conceal the alleged sexual abuse.

A spokesman for the diocese said this week that Lyons was removed from ministry in 2002 and “was committed to a life of prayer and penance.”

In addition to being a priest at St. John, Lyons is known to have been assigned to St. Edward the Confessor Catholic Church in Dana Point and St. Mary’s by the Sea Catholic Church in Huntington Beach.

The diocese has paid more than $4 million to settle civil suits against the retired priest.

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Theology of priesthood behind sex abuse crisis

CLERICAL SEXUAL abuse is inevitable given the meaning system that is taught by the Catholic Church and to which many priests adhere.

Contradictions in that system lead to failure, increase shame and a way of living that encourages deviant behaviour.

This is the thesis of a revealing book on sexual abuse within the church by an Irish academic and therapist who interviewed, at length, nine priests and brothers convicted of child abuse, who counselled several other clerical abusers and who undertook extensive research on the issue for her book Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power and Organisational Culture. The author is Marie Keenan of the school of applied social science at UCD.

It is evident that the apostolic visitors – Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop Emeritus of Westminster, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston, Thomas Christopher Collins, Archbishop of Toronto and Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York – didn’t read the book or speak to Keenan while in Ireland.

Their report, published in summary form yesterday, might have been very different had they done so.

The culture inculcated in Catholic clergy is that they are separate from other human beings because of their special “calling” from God, because of their sole capacity to administer the sacraments, to turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, because of their power to forgive sin and administer the last rites.

From the moment of their ordination they are apart, apart in the minds of other convinced Catholics and apart in their own minds. And they are also celibate, because of that “calling”. Abjuring intimate sexual relations, sublimating their sexual urges and widely admired in the communities they inhabit on account of that sublimation.

Keenan says this theology of sacrifice eclipses all human considerations. She says her argument is not that clerical celibacy is the problem but a Catholic externally-imposed sexual ethic and a theology of priesthood that “problematises” the body and erotic sexual desire and emphasises chastity and purity, over a relational ethic (how as human beings we should treat each other).

She says this theology of sexuality contributes to self-hatred, shame and a sense of personal failure on the part of some priests.

This tension is often exacerbated by a sense of powerlessness on the part of many priests within a hierarchical, authoritarian church, subject to the authority of bishops or heads of religious orders, often allowing them with little sense of being in control of their own lives. And this is further added to by loneliness.

Some priests cope with this by easing off on the celibacy bit. Some ease off the celibacy bit with guilt, some with a sense of doing their best with their human frailties.

According to Keenan it is often the priests who aspire to priestly perfection and are hugely conflicted with the demands of such perfection that resort to child sexual abuse, usually, she says, not opportunistically, but consciously and deliberately over time. And this seems to be confirmed by other research.

Moreover, in many ways, the release of the confessional – the opportunity to dispel guilt in a secret ritual – compounds the problem. The “external” imposition (by the church) of the priestly ethic, rather than the cultivation of an internal ethic, also contributes to the propensity to abuse; for the construction of an internal ethic involves reflection on the impact of one’s conduct on the lives of others and that seems to have been missing in the make-up of many of the clerical abusers.

There is nothing at all of this in the report of the bachelor apostolic visitors, instead a recommendation that the culture of the seminary be intensified in the lives of aspirants for the priesthood. No acknowledgment is made of the tension inherent in the celibacy thing and the hypocrisies and traumas to which it gives rise.

In general there seems to be little interest in why this clerical abuse has occurred and what it is within the Catholic culture that has engendered it. The dismissive explanation that it is all due to the “flawed” personalities of the abusers ignores the cultural and formative factors that at least contributed to the phenomenon.

There is a further point which is also not addressed at all by the Catholic Church and it has to do with society’s treatment of the clerical perpetrators after they have served their sentences. They are rendered effectively homeless by a public rage directed at them, engendered largely by the media.

Our system of justice ordains that people who commit even the most heinous of crimes are brought before the courts, convicted, publicly shamed and then imprisoned, after which, that’s it. And yet, often in denial of their human rights, they remain hounded for the remainder of their days. Moreover, very often those who do the most vigorous hounding are those who speak most loudly that bit from what is known as “the Lord’s Prayer”: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

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