Bishop Finn Set for September Trial

News-Press
January 26, 2012

http://www.newspressnow.com/localnews/30307886/detail.html

A Missouri Catholic bishop will go to trial in September on a misdemeanor charge that he and the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese failed to report suspicions of child sexual abuse by a priest.

Bishop Robert Finn is scheduled to go to trial Sept. 24. A pretrial conference is scheduled before Jackson County Circuit Judge John Torrence on March 27.

The charges against Finn and the diocese stem from claims that the diocese waited five months before telling police about pornographic photos of children found on a priest's computer.

A computer technician found hundreds of "troubling images" on the Rev. Shawn Ratigan's computer in December 2010. Finn acknowledged that he knew of the photos in December, but didn't report them to police until May.