MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio
[with audio]
Guests
Madeleine Baran: Reporter, MPR News
Patrick Wall: Advocate, Jeff Anderson and Associates law firm
MPR News published a list Wednesday of 70 Catholic clergy in the Twin Cities archdiocese who have been accused or suspected of sexually abusing children. The list contains more names than the archdiocese had revealed publicly.
The material published Wednesday was the latest installment in a months-long investigation by MPR News, led by reporter Madeleine Baran.
Scroll down to read a response from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Baran and Patrick Wall, a victims’ advocate working on sexual abuse cases, joined The Daily Circuit Thursday to talk about the MPR series and the issues it raises. Highlights of their conversation:
Madeleine Baran, reporter, on the goal of her series:
“We’re not trying to say whether or not a priest is guilty. It’s not our job to say whether a crime has been committed. But what we did want to do is look at where there was information that there were allegations, that they were investigated by either the police or the archdiocese, or found in a court record or court exhibits – those were the cases we were interested in. … There are cases, a couple we report on, where the investigation by the archdiocese is fascinating in terms of the parameters they’re using. They’re basically looking at, ‘Can we substantiate this or not?’ In a lot of cases of child sexual abuse, whether it’s within the church or elsewhere, if someone comes forward decades later, there is not often direct evidence of that. It’s not like there’s a crime scene, video, or DNA, or fingerprints. So it’s a very difficult standard for these victims to meet when they come forward. What I found at least in the last 10 years is the archdiocese will say, ‘Go to the police.’ That’s their policy. And if the police determine that they can’t charge it, then that’s very important to the archdiocese. But it doesn’t really address this issue of whether or not the archdiocese should be concerned.”
Patrick Wall, former monk, on secret church records:
“The directives from Rome are very clear, both through motu proprio from the holy father and the code of canon law, that these documents are to be kept in perpetuity, especially the most important files, the files on the priests. And the idea behind that is that the next bishop who comes into office, the next vicar general who comes into office, can get a quick read as to what that priest was all about, and so they can have access to what that bishop at the time knew and what they decided to do on that particular issue. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Archdiocese of St. Paul, or Bogota, or Buenos Aires, it’s the same standard of how they keep records around the world. This is a management technique that Rome has developed over a couple of thousand years. … This is never to be accessible to the public. The code is very clear. That’s why they call this a secret archive. Only the bishop and the chancellor have access to this …. Under no circumstances ever are bishops to turn over documents to prosecutors and/or lawyers.”
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.