FOSTORIA (OH)
The News-Messenger
November 16, 2018
By David Yonke
At their meeting in Baltimore this week, America’s Catholic bishops decided to delay a proposed vote on dealing with clerical sexual abuse.
The delay did not surprise Riley Kinn, a 51-year-old Fostoria man who said he has been trying for two years to talk to Toledo Bishop Daniel Thomas about allegations that a priest sexually abused him when he was a child.
“All I am asking is for Bishop Thomas to sit down with me for a short while and listen,” said Kinn. “This is bigger than just one child being victimized. They say they want other victims to come forward, but why would they come forward if no one in the church will even listen to them?”
Thomas oversees the Toledo Catholic Diocese, which has more than 320,000 members in 19 counties across Northwest Ohio including Sandusky and Ottawa counties.
Seeks review board meeting
In addition to seeking a meeting with Thomas, Kinn has repeatedly asked for an opportunity to present his case in person before the Diocesan Review Board, a panel that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops established in all American dioceses after the clerical sexual abuse scandal erupted in Boston in 2002 and then spread across the nation and world.
The review boards are tasked with evaluating allegations of abuse by priests and determining whether the charges are credible.
“I call them a few times every week and ask for a meeting,” Kinn said. “I leave messages saying the same thing on their voicemail and they never return my calls. I say, ‘I’d like you to call me back. I’d like to ask some questions. I’d like to meet with you or at least talk to you by telephone’. They never return my calls.”
The voicemail routine has almost become a joke, Kinn said with a shrug, but he is deadly serious about his allegations that a priest in the Toledo diocese, the Rev. Joseph Schmelzer, molested and raped him when Kinn was 13 years old.
Schmelzer was removed from public ministry on Feb. 19, 2007 by then-Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair, after the review board deemed that allegations of abuse made by other accusers were credible.
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