Jim Fitzpatrick: Child sexual abuse victims should be able to seek justice

MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News

By JIM FITZPATRICK Mahtomedi, Minn.

Throughout scripture God asks each of us to protect our children as they are to inherit God’s kingdom. In Psalm 127:3 we pray, “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord.” As a priest, I was responsible not only for sharing God’s word, but living it.

I was a priest at the Cathedral in Winona when parents from Caledonia, near my home town, came to tell me that Father Tom Adamson had abused their sons and as many as 17 boys within the two Caledonia parishes. I reported Father Adamson to the Bishop of Winona. Father Adamson was eventually moved from Caledonia, but I was shocked to learn he was assigned to a Catholic high school in Rochester. Eventually he was moved to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis where he served in several parishes and, in every instance, he continued his molestation.

This is just one example of many that illustrates the lengths some church, school and other youth serving organizations will go to hide or cover up abuse. Some institutions have shuffled child predators to other sites, even to other states to shield known abusers from legal action in order to protect the institutions’ reputations. Worse yet, some church leaders have used a pretense of providing for a victim while time passes and the statute of limitations for legal action will expire. This ensures they can never be held accountable for their employee’s actions. The latter is a tactic known to have been used within the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and made public by the recent $10 million settlement with two survivors of clergy sex abuse.

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