Skubick: AG Nessel Poised to Bring More Charges in Catholic Priest Abuse Investigations

WLNS-TV
September 30, 2020

https://www.wlns.com/news/michigan/skubick-ag-nessel-poised-to-bring-more-charges-in-catholic-priest-abuse-investigations/

LANSING, Mich (WLNS) – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is telling 6 News tonight she is getting closer to issuing more charges against Catholic priests and others in her continuing probe into sexual abuse in the church.

Almost two years ago the state attorney general launched an investigation into alleged sexual abuse in the Catholic church and she subpoenaed millions of documents from every diocese in the state.

As a result, the Lansing diocese published a list of 17 priests who allegedly were involved in 73 allegations of abuse of 66 boys and 4 girls.

The attorney general is poised to prosecute even more priests, perhaps a dozen or more.

“I don’t know if it will be that. there will be many but I wouldn’t rule that number out,” explained Nessel.

The attorney general reports that the number of prosecutions would be even higher if it were not for this painful reality.

“We have an investigation, we are ready to go to prosecution and then sometimes we’ll have a victim that will back out and decide that they don’t want to relive an experience from decades ago. So that happens to us quite a bit actually. But we continue to identify perpetrators for sexual abuse and we’ve unfortunately been able to identify many more new victims.”

The first charges were filed in November of 2019 and the new ones are close at hand, she reveals.

“There will definitely be more cases out of many investigations that have been performed that we’ve handled already and we will be making an announcement soon.”

The attorney general hopes to complete the investigation within the next six months or so.