KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star
By MARK MORRIS and JUDY L. THOMAS
The Kansas City Star
Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn today became the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic official convicted during the church’s decades-long child sexual abuse scandal.
Following a short non-jury trial, Jackson County Circuit Court Judge John Torrence convicted Finn of one misdemeanor count of failing to report suspicions of child abuse but acquitted him on another count. Though the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph also was to be tried Thursday on the same two counts, Torrence severed the cases shortly after the proceedings opened.
The charges stemmed from the church’s handling of the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, on whose laptop a diocesan vendor found hundreds of lewd photos of young girls in December 2010. Finn’s second-in-command at the diocese, Monsignor Robert Murphy, did not report the photographs to police for five months.
Finn is the first bishop in the country, and is believed to be one of only two bishops in the world, convicted of failing to report suspected child abuse. The other case happened in France.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.