KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
by Joshua J. McElwee on May. 16, 2012 NCR Today
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The lawyer representing the priest at the center of the first criminal trial of a bishop in the decades-long clergy sexual abuse crisis has requested the priest’s federal trial be delayed.
The priest, Fr. Shawn Ratigan, is charged with 13 federal felony counts relating to the possession and production of child pornography.
Ratigan’s bishop, Robert W. Finn, and his diocese, that of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., face separate criminal trials in a local jurisdiction on charges of suspicion of child abuse, stemming from questions surrounding when they reported Ratigan to police.
The motion for a continuance, filed in federal court today and first reported by The Kansas City Star, would delay Ratigan’s trial from June until Aug. 27. Assistant Federal Public Defender Robert Kuchar says in the filing that he only recently received some 1,000 pages of material from prosecutors and needs time to study it.
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