WISCONSIN
WBAY
[with video]
At the end of the civil trial against the Green Bay Catholic Diocese, Troy and Todd Merryfield released letters they say their family received or their attorneys obtained from the diocese over the years.
They say the letters prove the diocese was aware of allegations surrounding Father John Patrick Feeney, who sexually abused the brothers in the 1970s but wasn’t convicted and defrocked until decades later.
After the parents of Troy and Todd Merryfield raised complaints about Father Feeney in August 1978, then-Bishop Aloysius Wycislo sent them a letter stating he “will be discussing the situation with our Personnel Board this Friday.”
Bishop Wycislo followed up with a letter two weeks later stating Father Feeney would stay at the Freedom parish, but would “begin an intensive counseling program regarding his personal problems.”
Then in a December 1978 letter to the diocese’s Personnel Board chairman, Bishop Wycislo writes, “I have just spent a half hour with the District Attorney for Outagamie County who presented me with evidence of a number of crimes of like sexual nature… that the Attorney feels are base enough for a court case against Father Feeney.”
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