Ramsey County prosecutor: Priest abuse cases ‘just the beginning’

MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 03/01/2014

As part of its coverage of child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and elsewhere, the Pioneer Press talked with Ramsey County Attorney John Choi. The following reflects the interview, edited for space and clarity.

Q. What do you think your office will see in terms of future clergy sex abuse cases?

A. We’re aware of many cases that are coming to us from police. One may be imminent. From my perspective, this is just the beginning.

Q. Some have criticized your decision not to charge officials of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis with failure to meet mandatory reporter requirements in the Curtis Wehmeyer case. (Wehmeyer, formerly a priest at Blessed Sacrament in St. Paul, was sentenced last February to five years in prison for sexually abusing two young boys and possessing child pornography.) Can you give some context for that decision, and for your plans going forward?

A. That was the first case involving archdiocese officials that was presented to our office. But the overall investigation of sexual abuse in the archdiocese and how it’s been handled is going to take a really long time. In fact, if we’re talking about this issue a year from now, I won’t be surprised. It’s that big of a task to get through.

A police agency can’t just cut and paste what’s on the Internet or from a news publication and present that to us as evidence. They need to go out and independently seek that information from all these various sources and then try to make heads or tails of all of that — corroborate it, do what investigators do. We are involved with the police to advise them as they are doing their investigation.

The public has seen a lot of coverage of sexual abuse and the archdiocese in the media. I can totally understand the anger and the frustration and the shock of hearing about all of these horrible things that have been happening in the Catholic Church. I share all of that with the public. But I have to protect the process of how we get to certain decisions in the criminal justice system. It’s not about making a conclusion before we even gather evidence. I’m hoping we can give those investigators an opportunity to work and do what they need to do.

We’ve always said this: The facts will lead the way.

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.