WISCONSIN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Tuesday December 17, 2013
Statement by Peter Isely of Milwaukee, SNAP Midwest Director, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 414-429-7259, peterisely@yahoo.com )
For at least three reasons, we believe that Fr. Doerfler should never have been promoted.
–In a March 2011 deposition in the case of serial Green Bay child molester Fr. Patrick Feeney, Doerfler, then chancellor and vicar general of the diocese, admitted under oath that in 2007 he deliberately and systematically destroyed nearly all records and documentation in church files of Green Bay clergy reported to the diocese to have sexually assaulted children. The shredding took place just after the Wisconsin State Supreme Court ruled that victims of childhood sexual abuse could file fraud suits against Catholic dioceses in the state for covering up for sexually abusive clerics like Feeney.
— The diocese of Green Bay, after years of public appeals, still refuses to release the names and offense histories of those clerics that have sexually assaulted children in the diocese, a total of at least 51, according to a 2004 national study released by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
–In his 2001 deposition Doerfler was specifically asked about clerics who abuse children in the Green Bay diocese are left hidden and unidentified, and simply quietly released back into the community without public notification.
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