Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph to Pay for Failure to Report Abuse

KANSAS CITY (MO)
The New York Times

Documents via BishopAccountability.org:
Arbitrator’s Modified Final Award
Judge’s Order Sending the Complaint to Arbitration
Complaint, Including the Settlement Documents
Our nonmonetary feature with links to the KC nonmonetaries and other examples

By JULIE BOSMAN
JUNE 30, 2014

CHICAGO — A Roman Catholic diocese in Missouri has been ordered to pay $1.1 million to victims of sexual abuse for breaking its promises on improving the way it deals with abuse cases.

An arbitrator ruled that the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph is responsible for damages after concluding that, contrary to a prior agreement, it did not promptly report a priest who had taken hundreds of pornographic photographs of young girls, according to a filing in circuit court in Jackson County, Mo.

The case grew out of a $10 million settlement with abuse victims in 2008, under which the bishop, Robert Finn, promised that he would report those suspected of child abuse to law enforcement officials in the future. At the time, Bishop Finn said in a statement that he agreed to rules “that should assure our community, our congregation and our families that the diocese will continue in its exercise of vigilance and in its devotion to training and education so that we may be confident that there will never, ever be a repeat of the behaviors, the offenses or the claims that have been associated with this matter.”

But the 18-page court filing says that promise was violated in 2010 in the case of the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, a diocesan priest who was discovered with hundreds of photographs of girls, including so-called upskirt images, on his laptop. Although the presence of the computer images was reported to church officials, law enforcement authorities were not notified. …

But a prominent victims’ group said it was pleased that the church has been ordered to pay damages. David Clohessy, the national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, called the decision “significant.”

“It shows that even though the church hierarchy has dealt with this privately for centuries and publicly for decades, and even though all of America’s bishops pledged more than 12 years ago that they were going to reform,” Mr. Clohessy said, “this is a painful reminder that, in fact, there’s been painfully little reform.”

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