MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio – Betrayed by Silence
[with audio]
Story by Madeleine Baran · Produced by Sasha Aslanian · July 14, 2014
For decades, the archbishops who led the Catholic archdiocese in the Twin Cities maintained that they were doing everything they could to protect children from priests who wanted to rape them.
Reporters picked up those assurances and repeated them without question. Police and prosecutors took the assurances at face value. Parents believed the assurances and trusted priests with their children.
But the assurances were a lie, and the archbishops knew it. Three of them — John Roach, Harry Flynn (pictured above) and John Nienstedt — participated in a cover-up that pitted the finances and power of the church against the victims who dared to come forward and tell their stories.
The radio documentary above draws on dozens of interviews, thousands of never-before-published documents and insider accounts to explain how and why powerful men protected priests who abused children.
The deception began in southern Louisiana, where Flynn arrived in 1986 as bishop of the Diocese of Lafayette. He was there to fix the first national clergy sexual abuse scandal in the U.S. Catholic Church. Flynn pledged to protect children and restore the faith of parishioners. In fact, he rarely met with victims, and used attorneys to fight victims in court and protect the financial assets of the church.
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