MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio
Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Apr 15, 2014
Poor oversight and flawed policies are among the serious shortcomings inside the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis that opened the door “for some priests to harm children,” a panel ordered by the archbishop concluded Monday.
“Behavioral warning signs were minimized or inappropriately rationalized,” the panel said, adding the archdiocese also has a “confusing and inadequate” system to report complaints of sexual abuse of children.
The report by the Safe Environment and Ministerial Standards Task Force calls for criminal background checks of priests at least every six years and an anonymous hotline for complaints. The hotline would forward allegations of child sexual abuse to the head of the archdiocese’s child safety programs.
The task force did not criticize anyone by name or hold any church official responsible for the clergy sexual abuse crisis. It did not recommend any punishment for bishops or other senior officials who covered up abuse allegations. And, although it called for transparency, it urged that some information on abusive priests be kept private.
The report provides a list of 32 people interviewed by the task force, including Archbishop John Nienstedt and former archbishop Harry Flynn. The task force tried to interview Nienstedt’s former deputy, but the archdiocese wrongly claimed it didn’t know how to locate him, the report said. No victims of clergy sexual abuse or their family members are included on the list.
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