MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
Statement by Frank Meuers of Plymouth, Twin Cities SNAP leader, 952-334-5180
We’re glad the Ramsey County Attorney can no longer ignore the large amount of data that has been made available from victims, survivors, and Ms. Jennifer Haselberger, a former archdiocesan employee. It shows the blatant, repeated cover up of crimes by archdiocesan officials, way beyond just the Fr. Curtis Wehmeyer case.
The demand for justice has finally overridden the ploy of secrecy, and now charges have at last been filed. We now ask anyone with any information about abuse or cover up to come forward at once. Please help facilitate this movement from silence to openness.
We urge prosecutors to ask church officials for their passports so there’s no chance they can flee overseas.
We dispute the notion that Catholic officials “turned a blind eye” to abuse. They did worse. They deliberately and repeatedly put and kept kids in harm’s way by valuing their reputations and comfort and devaluing boys and girls. They engaged in active wrongdoing, not passive wrongdoing. These are smart men with smart lawyers and smart PR advisors. These were – and continue to be – cover ups, not “mistakes” or “failures.”
We hope that individual church officials will be charged. Dozens of current and former Catholic staffers planned and participated in the cover up. So in that sense, it’s an institutional crime. But individual Catholic officials intentionally made these selfish choices. So individuals should be held responsible too. That’s the only real way to deter cover ups in the Catholic church in the present and future.
It’s good that the persistent cries of so very many abused people of this archdiocese are being hear. It will be better, however, when more charges are filed against individual church staff and a guilty verdict is issued against them.
Choi called the archdiocese claim to monitor problem priests “a sham.” So it the archdiocesan claim to “investigate” predator priests.
“We were falsely led to believe that the Archdiocese had an effective program in place” to monitor priests, Choi said. He’s one of tens of thousands who’ve been misled by Catholic officials.
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