DAVENPORT (IA)
Quad-City Times
Brian Wellner
A priest exonerated by the Vatican of child molestation charges said his diocese should release all names of priests accused of sexually abusing children, regardless of whether their charges were dropped.
The Rev. Drake Shafer spoke Thursday both as a former vicar general once accused of abusing a teenager in the 1970s and as a victim himself of a sex abuse crime he said happened more than 50 years ago when he was a minor.
His alleged abuser was a priest.
“I can certainly understand why victims want the names to be presented,” said Shafer, pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Long Grove. “And I can personally understand it, as a victim.”
A judge’s recent ruling allows the Diocese of Davenport, which is coming out of bankruptcy over the clergy sex abuse scandal, to withhold the names of 18 priests whose accusers received financial settlements.
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