MILWAUKEE — At least one more priest’s personnel file will be made public as the Archdiocese of Milwaukee wraps up its investigations of sexual abuse claims filed in federal bankruptcy court, the archdiocese’s spokesman said. The archdiocese released personnel files for 42 priests on July 1 as part of a deal with sexual abuse victims suing it for fraud. Some victims have criticized the church for not releasing more records. Archdiocese spokesman Jerry Topczewski said this week that another priest’s file has been given to the archdiocese’s attorneys, who will work with victims’ attorneys to…
News
Five more former Yeshiva University High students have stepped forward to say they were molested by staffers at the prestigious Jewish institution — just days after 19 other alumni filed a bombshell $380 million lawsuit that claims the school had covered up decades of sexual and physical abuse. Attorney J. Michael Reck said he has been unable to reach a suitable settlement with Yeshiva University officials and that he is preparing to file a lawsuit on behalf of the five men. “Institutions like Yeshiva University failed to put the safety of children ahead of their reputations,” Reck said….
FARIBAULT, Minn. (AP) — A former Shattuck-St. Mary’s teacher pleaded guilty Friday to sexually abusing six students at the Faribault boarding school more than a decade ago. Rice County District Judge Christine Long accepted the plea from Lynn Seibel on Friday, Minnesota Public Radio reported (http://bit.ly/1aA3lOb ). “This is something I am not proud about,” Seibel said. “I apologize to my family and everyone involved. I’m very, very sorry.” The 71-year-old entered the plea more than a year after police opened an investigation into his alleged sexual contact with students. Seibel was charge…
Six more people have come forward with accusations against Yeshiva University, days after 19 former high school students filed a $380 million suit charging that Y.U. covered up decades of physical and sexual abuse. Mike Reck, an attorney representing the six, said his clients are disappointed they have been unable to reach a settlement with Y.U. and are poised to file lawsuits. If the impasse continues, “the survivors have no choice but to avail themselves of the court system,” said Reck, an attorney with the New York office of Jeff Anderson and Associates, a Minnesota firm that spec…
The archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis discovered in 1966 that a Minnesota priest was engaging in sexual contact with boys, but the priest was still assigned to four more parishes over the next 25 years, according to information made public Wednesday by St. Paul attorney Jeffrey Anderson. The accused priest, John Brown, 92, who retired in 1991, said in an interview at his assisted-living apartment in Maplewood that he “very, very vaguely” recalls fondling some boys in a locker room. He was asked if he was sorry. “I have to be sorry,” he said. “Wouldn’t anybody be sorry?” Anderson held …
Campaigners have called on Pope Francis, who was elected in March, to make tackling the issue of sexually abusive priests an urgent priority of his papacy. The UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child released its demands for information from the Holy See on Tuesday. The committee said that “in the light of the recognition by the Holy See of sexual violence against children committed by members of the clergy, brothers and nuns in numerous countries around the world, and given the scale of the abuses”, the Vatican should provide detailed information on all cases of child sexual abuse c…
BOSTON, Philadelphia, Los Angeles. The archdioceses change but the overarching story line doesn’t, and last week Milwaukee had a turn in the spotlight, with the release of roughly 6,000 pages of records detailing decades of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests there, a sweeping, searing encyclopedia of crime and insufficient punishment. But the words I keep marveling at aren’t from that wretched trove. They’re from an open letter that Jerome Listecki, the archbishop of Milwaukee, wrote to Catholics just before the documents came out. “Prepare to be shocked,” he said. What a q…
MILWAUKEE — As more victims of clergy sex abuse came forward, then-Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan oversaw a plan to pay some abusers to leave the priesthood after writing to Vatican officials with increasing frustration and concern, warning them about the potential for scandal if they did not defrock problem priests, according to documents released Monday. Dolan’s correspondence with Vatican officials and priests accused of sexual abuse was included in about 6,000 pages of documents the Archdiocese of Milwaukee released Monday as part of a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court with…
(St. Paul, MN) – Jeff Anderson, an attorney for hundreds of survivors of sexual abuse in the Milwaukee Archdiocese bankruptcy case said information in the thousands of documents released in the case today contain “revealing and rev…