MINNESOTA
Legal Examiner
Posted by Mike Bryant
February 4, 2014
It was interesting reading to see the Minneapolis Tribune and MPR’s coverage of the hearing that took place a week ago Friday concerning additional names to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Archdiocese of Winona lists As the Tribune reported:
The judge rejected an archdiocese proposal to first allow the church 30 days to investigate an abuse claim. The archdiocese is not a neutral party for evaluating whether a claim is true or false, Van de North said, noting that it has failed to report cases of abuse in the past.
Likewise, the archdiocese’s criteria for evaluating sexual misconduct can be “fuzzy,” he said. The archdiocese, for example, said it suspended two priests for “boundary issues” — Rev. Joseph Gallatin of the Church of St. Peter in Mendota and Rev. Mark Wehmann of St. Boniface Catholic Church in Minneapolis.
“One person’s boundary violation is another person’s sexual abuse,” said Van de North.
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.