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  Archdiocese Sued Again over 1970s Abuse Cases

By Derrick Nunnally
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel [Milwaukee WI]
March 3, 2005

The alleged 1970s child molestations by now-deceased Catholic priest Siegfried Widera have drawn a second lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee over its handling of the situation.

The new lawsuit was filed Thursday by two men who claim they were abused as boys between 1973 and 1976 by Widera, when he has assigned to St. Andrew Parish in Delavan. The suit claims that current Superior Diocese Bishop Raphael Fliss - then the Milwaukee Archdiocese secretary - knew that Widera, who had been convicted earlier in 1973 of "sexual perversion" involving a boy in Ozaukee County, had molested boys again but didn't tell police or parishioners. The civil fraud lawsuit for unspecified damages claims that had either man's family known then that Widera "was a danger to children," neither would have been in a position to be molested.

Widera committed suicide in 2004 by leaping out of a third-story window in Mexico as authorities drew closer to arresting him on 42 molestation counts. He was 62.

Internal archdiocese documents that came to light through a California civil case were filed with Thursday's lawsuit, as they had been with a similar lawsuit filed in February by another man who claimed Widera molested him as a boy in the 1970s. Handwritten and typed records include descriptions of Widera as "so good with the schoolchildren," as one woman wrote to the archdiocese, even as other records describe "a slip" Widera made in molesting another boy and the attempts to convince his mother not to involve police.

He was transferred to California in 1976 and drew molestation accusations there.

Archdiocese spokeswoman Kathleen Hohl replied to the lawsuit with a written statement saying the archdiocese now has strict policies in place to deal with allegations of clergy sexual abuse and immediately reports all such allegations "to the appropriate civil authorities."

 
 

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