MILWAUKEE (WI)
Urban Milwaukee
December 18, 2018
By Peter Isely .
This week the Midwest Province of the Jesuit order released a list of names of known clerical child sex offenders, including those who were working in Wisconsin.
The release of names comes after months of revelations throughout the United States related to the ongoing crisis of clergy sex abuse and cover up by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church – including its religious orders – who have remained for too long the hidden dimension of this still unfolding story.
This is only a list of names. Those names were compiled by the organization that was responsible for both the abuse and the cover up of child sex crimes. This list does not supply even the most basic information such as the assignment history of the offender or the date the allegation was received.
With every new “name dump” that has been occurring throughout the United States, there has been evidence from justice officials and victims’ organizations that these lists are not complete. Now that this latest list has been released, the attorney general in each state where Jesuits have had offenders should vet these lists for the public. In states where attorneys general have already begun such investigations, such as Illinois, dozens of names have been determined to have been left off lists released by church officials.
More importantly, each name of an offender priest should be accompanied by its church file, which will reveal how that case was handled by church officials. Those names — the names of religious order provincials and bishops who covered up these crimes — are as essential to a full accounting of these crimes as is the name of the offender.
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