APPLETON (WI)
SNAP Wisconsin

Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director
CONTACT: 414.429.7259

It took a jury today in Appleton, Wisconsin barely four hours to conclude in a landmark decision that the bishops and senior managers of the diocese of Green Bay had committed fraud in concealing and transferring serial child sex predator, Fr. John Patrick Feeney. What is so significant about this decision is that the jury reached its conclusion even though the judge had severely limited the amount of evidence, including hundreds of pages of internal church files, that they could examine. If the jury had seen the totality of Feeney’s file they would likely have reached their decision in even less time.

This is the first trial against a diocese for sexually abusive clerics in state history. A pair of controversial state supreme court decisions in the mid 1990’s fully immunized the church from any…