MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
POSTED BY BARBARA DORRIS ON OCTOBER 25, 2013
That’s how one of the most heroic whistleblowers in Catholic history describes her efforts to expose predators and protect kids.
“I didn’t do enough.”
What haunting words. That must send a chill up the spine of anyone who works – or worked – for any Catholic entity in Minnesota.
That’s what Jennifer Haselberger told the Associated Press the other day.
[ABC News]
Haselberger was, for years, a high ranking archdiocesan chancery office staffer in the Twin Cities.
When she saw that her church colleagues and supervisors were ignoring or hiding evidence of possible crimes by predatory priests (including Fr. Jon Shelley and Fr. Curtis Wehmeyer), she spoke up and stepped down.
She’s done more to expose continuing clergy sex cirmes and cover ups than perhaps any Catholic employee since Fr. Thomas Doyle.
Even so, she now feels like she “didn’t do enough.”
Imagine how her former peers – in the chancery office, in parishes, in parochial schools – will feel years from now when the teacher or seminarian or nun or priest or brother who they suspected might have acted inappropriately with a child is arrested for child sex crimes (like Fr. Wehmeyer was) or for adult sex crimes (like Fr. Mark Huberty was) or found guilty in court (like Fr. Robert Kapoun was) or suspended (like Fr. Michael Keating was).
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