More Of The Same (RC Church Cover-Up)

[dales]

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/14/141362441 ... t=1&f=1001

Bishop Charged For Not Alerting Police About Porn
by The Associated Press

October 14, 2011

Kansas City's Roman Catholic Bishop is facing a criminal charge for not telling police about child pornography that was found on a priest's computer.

Kansas City-St. Joseph Catholic Diocese Bishop Robert Finn pleaded not guilty Friday to a misdemeanor count of failing to report suspected child abuse. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said Finn had "reasonable cause" to suspect a child had been abused after learning of the images, and should have immediately alerted police according to state law.

The fact that this is a misdemeanor "should not diminish the seriousness of the charge," Baker said. "Now that the grand jury investigation has resulted in this indictment, my office will pursue this case vigorously because it is about protecting children. I want to ensure there are no future failures to report resulting in other unsuspecting victims."

Finn has acknowledged that he and other diocese officials knew for five months about hundreds of "disturbing" photos of children on a computer used by the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, but did not take the matter to police. The diocese also faces one count of failing to report suspected child abuse.

Finn has said that St. Patrick's School Principal Julie Hess raised concerns more than a year ago that Ratigan was behaving inappropriately around children, but that he did not read her written report until after Ratigan was charged with three state child pornography counts this spring. Ratigan has pleaded not guilty.

In a memo dated May 19, 2010, Hess wrote that several people had complained Ratigan was taking compromising pictures of young children and that he allowed them to sit on his lap and reach into his pocket for candy.

Hess at the time gave the report to Monsignor Robert Murphy, the diocese's vicar general, who spoke with Ratigan about setting boundaries with children and then gave Finn a verbal summary of the letter and his meeting with the priest.

Seven months later, a computer technician working on Ratigan's laptop found hundreds of what he called "disturbing" images of children, most of them fully clothed with the focus on their crotch areas, and a series of pictures of a 2- to 3-year-old girl with her genitals exposed.

The computer was turned over to the diocese, where officials examined the photos and reported them to Murphy but not to authorities, as required by Missouri's mandatory reporting law.

[Sean]

The problem is that these sick bastards do not see themselves an answerable to laws of man.

[rubato]

The problem is that these sick bastards do not see themselves an answerable to laws of man.

God wants them to protect pedophiles.


yrs,
rubato

[loCAtek]

Humans protect their own, no matter what position they hold.

Most child abuse occurs within the family; do most hear about it? No.

[dales]

HUH?

[Scooter]

It's yet another attempt at deflection to minimize the horror inflicted on children by child rapist priests.

[thestoat]

Isn't the church one big family?

[Gob]

It's yet another attempt atdeflection to minimize the horror inflicted on children by child rapist priests at getting attention by playing stupid..

Fixed that for you.

[loCAtek]

HUH?

Cover-ups occur because of the most basic human instinct to protect their own.

[dales]

HUH?

[The Hen]

Clergy protect their own. When a cleric is found diddling or raping a child, the other clerics will do their best to protect him.

Clergy apparently don't worry about the kids they fuck up, they just to make sure that no more of them are found guilty.

[rubato]

The way the Pope twitches and helps the coverup every time the scandal reaches Rome makes me wonder if he does not have a guilty conscience in this area. The current pontiff and perhaps the last one too. Its more difficult to call down the fire and brimstone on someone who has been sinning in your own favorite way; or the way you used to.

yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

I see the protection thing a bit differently.

It's not a matter of protecting their own; it's a matter of protecting Mother Church. Clerics have time and again thrown other clerics under the bus. They have done so, because the primary objective is not to protect other clerics -- to protect "their own" -- but to protect the institution.

An individual cleric is of no particular significance. The core objective is to protect the RCC itself from the scandals: The pedophile priests and the bishops who protected them -- although defenders of the RCC never want to talk about the cover-up; they assiduously deflect everything away from the RCC's institutional behavior and toward the assertedly aberrational behavior of individual clerics (and even hierarchs) -- can be sacrificed. What matters is that people not get the idea, evidence notwithstanding, that the RCC itself, as an institution, is up to its eyeballs in those scandals.

Over the decades, every Pope has been Pontius Pilate, sanctimoniously washing his hands while working diligently to shield the RCC fron the truth: Priestly pedophilia may or may not be aberrant, but the role of the hierarchy in covering it up must be kept secret at all costs.

[dgs49]

At this point, they are in a balancing act. They want to be perceived as coming clean, but there are a lot of specious accusations being thrown about - many of them about things that allegedly happened decades ago, and can't be proven or disproven other than by "he said/he said." So there is reluctance to bring EVERY allegation to the civil authorities.

We had a little nonsense scandal here in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago. A disgrundled would-be volunteer was turned away, then wrote on his blog (among other things) that the current Bishop of Pittsburgh tried to kiss him thirty years ago when he was a pastor.

It's so lame it almost rings true. If he wanted to slander the Bishop he almost surely would have accused him of something more significant. The accusation of something so silly becomes believable.

But should the Diocese "alert" the civil authorities that a possible boy-kisser is on the loose?

WTF?

[Scooter]

I think the vast majority of people would have been satisfied if they had at least reported all those cases where either or both parties ended up in a state of undress, but perhaps that's just me.

[dgs49]

Every CREDIBLE accusation should have been reported.

But keep in mind that every accuser has also had the criminal justice system as an option.

[Scooter]

Today, sure.

In an era when good Catholics did everything their priests and bishops told them to, because they spoke for God, not so much.

[Gob]

A senior Vatican cardinal has revealed how more than 4,000 cases of sex abuse by priests on children have been investigated during the last ten years.

The shock figure was announced by American cardinal Joseph William Levada as he opened a conference on the wide scale phenomenon which has rocked the Roman Catholic church with cases reported all over the world. Cardinal Levada, who is head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, described the figure as a 'dramatic increase' and came in the face of global indignation at the scale of the problem and which has forced Pope Benedict XVI to apologise for previous cases during papal visits as he meets victims.

However victim groups have hit and complained that it is nothing more than a 'public relations exercise' as the have not been invited and have again called on the Vatican to release its secret archive of documents which details thousands of cases and which it has so far refused to do.

Joelle Casteix, of support group SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), said: 'How many meetings will it take for Rome to learn that child sex abuse is a crime, predators must be made public and jailed and church officials who cover up molesters must be held accountable ? 'Even after years of promises, meetings and empty apologies, the Vatican cannot do the simplest, cheapest, and the most child-friendly action possible: make public decades of secret files on clergy sex offenders and enablers.' She also attacked Cardinal Levada and added: 'Conference leaders say the purpose of the event is to create guidelines on how to handle reports of childhood sexual abuse.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1ljrbMqxT

[Andrew D]

However victim groups have ... again called on the Vatican to release its secret archive of documents which details thousands of cases and which it has so far refused to do.

We should just take the Vatican's "secret archives". And everything else that the Vatican holds.

[rubato]

Throw the child-rapist asses out of the US and take all of their property to compensate victims!

Why do we continue to tolerate the most immoral organization in US history to continue?

They're worse than Al Capone.



yrs,
rubato