MILWAUKEE (WI)
SNAP Wisconsin
Bishop Sklba’s never ending excuses
21 years ago, article shows, treatment experts already discredited archdiocese claims about priest sex offender treatment
Statement by John Pilmaier, SNAP Wisconsin Director
CONTACT: 414.336.8575
With today’s devastating document release of thousands of pages of abuse related files, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and especially Bishop Richard Sklba—who was called by former Archbishop Weakland his “go to guy” on all sexual abuse cases—is making the preposterous claim that his actions of leaving and putting pedophile clergy in parishes and schools was done “in the context of the time.” Sklba specifically enjoys offloading his criminal responsibility for being Weakland’s second man to treatment “experts” who “advised” him at the time.
But in an open letter to Weakland in 1992 from the Division IV of the Wisconsin Psychological Association, the committee of state experts that work with sex offenders (read the full 1992 story below) clearly shows this is utterly false.
“Since the early 1970s, there has been a general recognition among psychologists that pedophilia is a treatable mental illness, but that offenders should not be placed in environments where they could continue to abuse children,” the head of the APA group wrote at the time. What Weakland and Sklba were doing was “like giving an alcoholic a job in a bar.”
Exactly.
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.