Bishop Indicted For Failing to Report Abuse

From the NY Times:

By A. G. SULZBERGER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A bishop in the Roman Catholic Church has been indicted for failure to report suspected child abuse, the first time in the 25-year history of the church’s sex abuse scandals that the leader of an American diocese has been held criminally liable for the behavior of a priest he supervised.

The indictment of the bishop, Robert W. Finn, and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph by a county grand jury was announced on Friday. Each was charged with one misdemeanor count involving a priest accused of taking pornographic photographs of girls as recently as this year. They pleaded not guilty.

The case caused an uproar among Catholics in Kansas City this year when Bishop Finn acknowledged that he knew of the photographs last December but did not turn them over to the police until May. During that time, the priest, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, is said to have continued to attend church events with children, and took lewd photographs of another young girl.

A decade ago the American bishops pledged to report suspected abusers to law enforcement authorities — a policy also recommended last year by the Vatican. Bishop Finn himself had made such a promise three years ago as part of a $10 million legal settlement with abuse victims in Kansas City.

I assume–I hope!–anyone who visits this site frequently would agree that any person who sexually abuses a child deserves to be arrested. But furthermore, any priest or pastor, for any reason, in any position of authority, who has used their influence in any way, to sexually abuse a child should also be arrested and put away for a very long time.

But just as guilty are those who have sat by–and apparently still do–and created an environment which facilitates child sexual predators, and have said nothing–nothing!–when those who were weaker in their congregations were being preyed upon and sexually molested.

They are just as responsible for these crimes. Sickening. To see a child being abused and not say something, or to send a priest somewhere else so he could do it again. Just utterly depraved.

Protect the children; indict anyone involved in abusing them. Pretty simple.

Read the whole article HERE.