MINNESOTA
Minnesota SNAP
For immediate release: Monday, Oct. 7
Statement by Bob Schwiderski of SNAP ( 952 471 3422, skibrs@q.com )
“There is no record of anyone contacting police. (Archbishop Harry) Flynn allowed (Fr. Jonathan) Shelley to return to ministry.” Those two damning sentences are from the latest disturbing Minnesota Public Radio report outlining the secretive, irresponsible and likely illegal way Twin Cities Catholic officials hid thousands of pornographic pictures on Fr. Jonathan Shelley’s computer.
Fr. Shelley’s computers should have been given to law enforcement at the first hint of sexual impropriety. But MPR reports that in 2004 “a private investigator that found that many of the depictions” on Fr. Shelley’s computer “could be considered borderline illegal, because of the youthful-looking male image.” That too should have prompted Catholic officials to give the computers to police.
But church officials again kept near-certain crimes secret. The computers were destroyed. And now, Fr. Shelley continues to walk free, a decade later.
According to MPR, in a memo, dated Jan. 27, 2013, Fr. Kevin McDonough, who headed the Church’s child-safety program, told (Archbishop) Nienstedt that at least four of the images were “’quite likely of minors.’”
What arrogance to assume that because you know church theology and music and history you’re somehow an unbiased authority on child pornography.
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