MADISON (WI)
The Cap Times
July 14, 2018
By Peter Isely and Sarah Pearson
[See the letter by Bishop Richard J. Sklba quoted in this column.]
Surely, if there is one axiom for public office and public service it is this: It’s not OK to be involved in covering up child sex crimes.
In defiance of this simple truth, Matt Flynn, Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin, has repeated and ramped up his defense of his work for 15 years while chief lawyer for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 1989-2004. Since early May, survivors of clergy sexual abuse, progressive women’s organizations, The Capital Times and Wisconsin Gazette editorial boards, two leading Democratic legislators and others have called on Flynn to withdraw from the race.
Here is why.
Ten-thousand pages of court-ordered released priest abuse files counter every public statement Flynn has made about his work and role. They show, beyond doubt, that he participated in reassigning sex offenders, secretly paid off child molesters through his law firm, actively intimidated survivors, ensured sex offenders were not reported to law enforcement and successfully argued for laws prohibiting survivors from suing the church.
Flynn has accused both the Republican and Democratic Party “elite” of engineering a well-crafted campaign against him. But the indictment against Flynn originates from only one source: the senior management of the archdiocese. The files show a secretive, tight, loyal inner circle engineering the operation. They had a lawyer on their team: Matt Flynn. He was not a befuddled and clueless outside counsel. He was an inside man: giving continual direction, sometimes orders, innovating and strategizing plans, devising means of public misdirection, attacking anyone who threatened to interrupt or reveal the cover up.
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