UNITED STATES
SNAP Wisconsin
CONTACT:
Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee):
414.429.7259
Widely acclaimed by critics across the United States, HBO will begin airing tonight Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s devastating and meticulously researched new film, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, documenting the sexual assault of at least 200 children at St. John’s School for the Deaf, operated by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and the decades long cover up of these crimes by church officials in Milwaukee and Rome, including the current Pope, Benedict XVI.
The film premieres tonight, February 4, 8:00 CST and will run through the month. It is also available on demand.
“Everyone needs to see this film but especially Catholics of the Milwaukee Archdiocese and most of all Archbishop Jerome Listecki and his 29 lawyers,” says Arthur Budzinski of West Allis, Wisconsin. Budzinski was sexually assaulted as a child by Fr. Lawrence Murphy who operated the boarding school. Budzinski is centrally featured in the film, along with several of his classmates. “Listecki,” continues Budzinski, “has done nothing but fight St. John’s victims and other victims of child sex assault by priests in Milwaukee Federal Bankruptcy Court, just as all the archbishops before him. After seeing this film, Milwaukee Catholics must tell him it’s time to stop.”
The Milwaukee Archdiocese filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2010 in order to resolve “all claims of sexual abuse by priests,” according to Listecki at the time. “But two years and 10 million dollars in lawyers’ fees later, Listecki has done nothing but shamelessly try to throw out of court every single case filed by Murphy’s deaf victims along with over 500 other victims,” according to Peter Isely, the longtime Midwest Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Isely, from Milwaukee, was interviewed for the film and is himself a childhood victim of a Wisconsin priest.
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