What a better place to find evidence of concealing clerical child abuse but in a newly opened secret archive. Karen Liebreich began digging in a previously closed archive and recounts her findings in “Fallen Order”. Liebreich tells the sordid story of the Piarist Fathers origins and things not remembered.One of those things not remembered is how a child abuser rose to become the General Superior of the Order. This sounds like foder for the Darknet but the story illustrates how the cover up of child sexual abuse occurs in roman circles.Father Stefano Cherubini Sch.P. was a rich roma…
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An important lesson plan: our schools need to be safe for our children, not a safe haven for child predators. Bemidji School District was named in two lawsuits filed yesterday in Beltrami County on behalf of two more survivors who were sexually abused by former hockey coach and physical education teacher, John Wangberg, at Central Elementary School. We now represent five children who have filed lawsuits claiming the school was negligent in allowing Wangberg continued access to children despite receiving reports of inappropriate behavior with minors as early as 2008. Wangberg taught …
The old adage is that the Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned. While it is highly unlikely that a Roman emperor played a fiddle, the adage is a good description of how the Bishops and the last five Popes have neglected their duty of protecting children.What is burning?The Irish church my father showed me firsthand in the early 1980’s is simply gone.While prominent Catholics have withdrawn their support, the Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, John Nienstedt, has refused to speak. Nienstedt is silent regarding what he knew, what documents he has in the secret archives…
Today the Minnesota Supreme Court held in a four to one decision that clergy members will be held to the same standard of law as other professionals in the state, regardless of religion. In the case State v. Wenthe, a priest had an ongoing sexual relationship with an adult parishioner under the guise of counseling. As a result, the priest was convicted of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for violating Minnesota Statutes section 609.344, subd. 1(l)(i) which prohibits sexual conduct between a clergy member and a parishioner during a single meeting when the purpose of the meeting …
The news that two priests from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis are taking leaves of absence for “misconduct” is alarming. Rather than tell the public the truth about the reasons for removing the priests, the Archdiocese continues to tell half-truths. We are alarmed about an Archdiocese that continues to mislead, deny, and conceal important information from the public…
It’s Halloween and you should be scared in Minnesota. There are dozens of credibly accused clerical offenders of children whose names are only known to the Catholic bishops and kept secret. You don’t know who they are, and you don’t know where they are. What we do know is that they could harm our children and that the hierarchs in Minnesota from Duluth to St. Cloud to New Ulm, to Winona and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis know and have already determined the clerical offenders to be “credibly accused” of abuse of minors. But with only the desire to protect…
Doe 23 courageously filed suit today against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and Father Robert M. Thurner, who allegedly sexually abused Doe 23 in 1984-85 when she was a young girl and student at St. Joseph’s School in West St. Paul. Doe 23 likely would not have had to file this suit – would never have been molested by Thurner – had the Archdiocese’s hierarchy fulfilled its legal and moral obligations and reported Thurner’s prior admitted sexual abuse of another minor to law enforcement in 1982.The Archdiocese’s cover up of its priests’ sexual abuse of minors and other relat…
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, amid growing concerns of internal handling of clergy sexual abuse cases, responded to allegations of child pornography involving Father Jonathan Shelley by debating what constitutes the definition of child pornography. Below you will find a list of documents that contain conversations and correspondence between top church officials including Archbishop John Nienstedt, former Vicar General Peter Laird and canon lawyer and former chancellor for canonical affairs, Jennifer Haselberger. Also included is the police investigation of Fr. Jonathan…
It appears that former Pope Benedict has come out of retirement – donned another hat, as it were – as a revisionist historian. In his first published comments since resigning as pope in February, Benedict has denied that he tried to cover up the sexual abuse of children by priests. The denial grabs headlines because it comes from Benedict, but it’s really just another instance of the church hierarchy clumsily and cynically attempting to protect itself while callously hurting survivors. Benedict’s denial is part of a letter he wrote to an Italian author who wrote a book about problems in …
Today’s Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) story about the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ failure to protect its parishioners from one of its predator priests, Fr. Curtis Wehmeyer, needs to be read by everyone. The headline – “Archdiocese knew of priest’s sexual misbehavior, yet kept him in ministry” – itself tells the story. From there, the details of Archdiocesan self-preservation and negligence are infuriating. In 2012, Wehmeyer was convicted of criminal sexual conduct and possessing child pornography in connection with Wehmeyer’s sexual abuse of two boys, ages 12 and 14, in a camper …