MINNESOTA
dotCommonweal
[with video]
Grant Gallicho
On April 2, Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis was deposed by attorney Jeff Anderson as part of a lawsuit filed by a man who claims he was molested by a priest in the 1970s. The plaintiff alleges that the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, along with the Diocese of Winona, created a public nuisance by failing to disclose information about clerics accused of sexual abuse. At a press conference this afternoon, Anderson released a slightly redacted transcript of the deposition. The archdiocese posted the transcript and full video to its website, noting that Anderson did not ask any questions about the abuse allegations that occasioned the deposition.
The wide-ranging and often contentious conversation reveals an archbishop who felt comfortable delegating authority to deal with the abuse crisis–even though he’s “a hands-on person”–and who still believes that he and his delegates have done a good job handling the problem. According to Nienstedt’s sworn testimony, one of those delegates recommended that conversations regarding accused priests shouldn’t be put in writing because they could be discovered in litigation.
“You followed his advice, didn’t you?” Anderson asked the archbishop.
“In terms of?”
“Not putting things into writing.”
“Yes,” Nienstedt replied.
The man who offered that advice, according to Nienstedt, is Fr. Kevin McDonough. He served as vicar general under the previous archbishop, Harry Flynn, and then as “delegate for safe environment” under Nienstedt. Last week, a task force created by Nienstedt to investigate diocesan abuse procedures sharply criticized McDonough for mishandling reports of clergy misdonfuct.
McDonough features in two troubling cases brought to light after Nienstedt’s former top canon lawyer, Jennifer Haselberger, went to the police and the press with her concerns about how the archdiocese had handled them. In one case, McDonough objected to the archdiocesan review board’s recommendation to warn a parish staff that their new pastor had a history of sexual misconduct (with adults), which included allegedly propositioning a nineteen and twenty-year-old at a bookstore, trying to pick up teenagers at gas station, driving drunk, and being spotted by a cop cruising for sex. That priest–and he is still a priest–is Fr. Curtis Wehmeyer. He’s in jail for molesting children and possessing child pornography. Among his victims were the children of a parish employee.
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