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Michigan AG Should Consider Corporate Sentencing in Catholic Church Investigation

Veracity News
June 10, 2019

https://veracitynews.online/opinion-michigan-ag-should-consider-corporate-sentencing-in-catholic-church-investigation/

In the United States, the Catholic Church operates as a 501c(3) corporation. As such, sexual abuse perpetrated by priests and employees under its control can be legally attributed to the corporation.

The United States Sentencing Commission says corporations can be found guilty of crimes and tortuous acts in a court of law.

According to an overview of the organizational guidelines, criminal liability can attach to an organization “whenever an employee of the organization commits an act within the apparent scope of his or her employment, even if the employee acted directly contrary to company policy and instructions.”

It continues by saying “an entire organization, despite its best efforts to prevent wrongdoing in its ranks, can still be held criminally liable for any of its employees’ illegal actions.”

Intent is not needed to convict a corporation of a crime and the Catholic Church would not be able to remain silent behind fifth amendment protections.

If indicted and brought to trial, the Church would need to produce all policies, procedures, protections and actions that the Church and its employees have taken to prevent failures, both past and present.

This might include the repeated sexual abuse of children and adults as well as continued prohibited financial transactions.

If convicted, the courts would require the Catholic Church to change how she prevents organizational crime, to compensate victims, or face total asset forfeiture.

This tactic has been successfully used before in Minnesota.

In 2015, the Ramsey County Prosecutor, John Choi, indicted the corporation of the Archdiocese of St. Paul Minnesota with six counts which qualified as gross misdemeanors “to hold it criminally accountable for its failure to protect children.”

Ten days after the indictment, Archbishop John Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Piche resigned.

The resulting settlement provided new and necessary protections against sexual abuse as well as mandatory institutional oversight.

During a press conference in May, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said she had read written communications between high-level church personnel about where they would place priests who had abused minors, how to hide the abuse, and how much they would need to pay the families of minors in order to avoid law enforcement.

During that same press conference, Nessel said this corporate conduct has continued even after the Catholic Church policy reforms of 2002.

“I have seen communications, not only times when there’s discussions between higher-ups in various churches, where they discuss having found out, having discovered, that a priest was abusing a child, and then having the discussion be where should that priest go,” Nessel said.

“Not should we go to law enforcement, but what should we do with that priest where should we put him, so that he can still serve as a priest, but also how much should we, what kind of finances should we be putting together to pay off the family of this child in order to make certain that they don’t come forward?”

Nessel continued: “We’ve seen that over and over and over again and we’ve also seen it since 2002 by the way, when, allegedly the Church had made certain that that kind of conduct wasn’t happening anymore. That’s not been our experience. I’ve read the actual Non-Disclosure Agreements myself, personally, to say that they don’t exist, we confiscated those.”

You can watch that press conference for yourself by clicking here.

Rather than looking at the crisis in the Catholic Church as consisting of actions by individuals themselves, it’s also important to examine the corporate action as well.

Consider the policy, structure, systemic lack of oversight, and decisions made by the Catholic Church as a corporation, which directly contributes to a crisis.

Various press reports reveal that the Diocese of Lansing allowed at least eight priests to operate within the Catholic Church after being credibly accused of sexual abuse or misconduct.

These priests are: Joseph Aubin, William Auth, Timothy Crowley, Vincent DeLorenzo, Patrick Egan, Robert Gerl, Mark Inglot, and Mathew Joseph.

In each case, the priest was allowed to remain a priest or operate within the Catholic Church for their own private business purposes, according to sources close to the internal investigations.

One could argue that these eight priests should have been immediately removed from ministry for their conduct, if the evidence suggested.

In the case of Father Patrick Egan, he could have been removed from ministry as far back as 1989, when a 17 year-old reported allegations of sexual abuse.

The Diocese of Lansing waited until 2003, when the statute of limitations expired, to report the allegations to the Washtenaw County Prosecutors Office.

Egan was removed from his priestly faculties in September 2018.

In 2018, law enforcement officials seized personnel files from all seven dioceses across the state of Michigan.

The search and seizure resulted in two recent indictments against former Lansing priests Timothy Crowley and Vincent DeLorenzo.

Included in the indictments were charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, with allegations related specifically to forced or coerced sexual penetration of children.

Aside from sex crimes, the Diocese of Lansing is ripe with financial crime, according to reports.

In 2017, Father Jon Wehrle was indicted on six felony counts of embezzlement of $100,000 or more.

That same year, Father David Fisher was found to have stolen more than $450,000, however, the audit that found that discrepancy was only limited to the previous six years.

If the Diocese of Lansing had adopted a mandatory public financial and conduct policy, management review, periodic audits, encouraged whistle blowers (rather than threatened them), adopted a computer-based accounting system for all parishes, and had not provided unsecured gift loans to priests, Father Wehrle could not claim that three Bishops allowed him to direct more than $5,000,000 of Church funds into his private businesses and estate as a defense in court.

Unless the State of Michigan challenges the corporate system of the Church, the pattern is likely to repeat itself.

 

 

 

 

 




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