KANSAS CITY (KS)
Kansas City Star [Kansas City MO]
October 25, 2026
By Judy L. Thomas
The television ad begins with a dark video of an empty swing and the faint sound of children’s voices in the background, then shifts to footage of vacant pews inside a church.
After that comes an image of Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach.
“They were children, sexually abused by Catholic clergy in Kansas,” a voice says. “One hundred eighty-eight suspected predators, and Kris Kobach has a file with their names. But he won’t release the list, covering up for clergy alleged to have committed rape and sexual battery.”
“Many may still live in Kansas,” continues the 30-second ad paid for by the Kansas Values Institute, “but you’d never know if one lives next door, because of Kris Kobach. Survivors deserve justice. Kansas deserves the truth. Tell Kobach, prosecute the abusers.”
Clergy sex abuse has become a heated issue in the Kansas attorney general race, with victim advocates and Kobach opponents accusing him of protecting predators in his handling of a multi-year investigation involving Kansas’ Catholic dioceses.
Democratic challenger Chris Mann is among those calling for the release of the names of the suspected abusers identified in the investigation.
“Our children deserve to be protected from abusers whether at school, at home, or in houses of worship,” Mann said. “We must hold predators accountable.”
In February 2019, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation announced that it had opened an investigation into reports of sexual abuse in the four Roman Catholic dioceses in Kansas. The investigation later expanded to include the Society of St. Pius X, a breakaway Catholic group known for its traditional Latin Mass, with a large branch in St. Marys.
In January 2023, on his last business day in office, outgoing Attorney General Derek Schmidt released a 21-page summary report of the KBI’s investigation, saying it had identified 188 clergy members suspected of committing criminal acts. The crimes included aggravated criminal sodomy, rape, aggravated indecent liberties with a child and aggravated sexual battery.
The Attorney General’s Office referred 30 cases involving 14 priests to prosecutors, but said no criminal charges were filed because in most cases the statute of limitations on the crimes had expired.
The investigation spanned claims from 1950 to 2022 and identified 400 victims, but did not name the accused clergy members.
Advocates push for release of names
Shortly after Kobach took office, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, along with other victim advocates and some lawmakers, called on him to release the identities of the clergy so parents could protect their children.
A spokesperson said at the time that Kobach’s team was “reviewing the work that was done” under Schmidt and the KBI.
“My opponent has refused to release the names of these Catholic clergy members, despite clear statutory allowances to do so,” Mann told The Star on Thursday. “I am disappointed by my opponent’s refusal to provide these names or answer survivors’ questions surrounding his decisions. Victims and survivors deserve transparency and justice.”
Danedri Herbert, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office, said it would be unethical to release the names of those who hadn’t been charged.
“Mr. Mann demands that the names of those investigated be released,” she said Saturday in a written response to The Star. “It is a basic principle of prosecutorial ethics that you don’t publicize the name of someone unless you are going to charge them. Prosecutors should never drag someone’s name and reputation through the mud when there’s not enough evidence to charge them. It would likely constitute defamation.”
Herbert said the decision on whether to prosecute wasn’t up to the attorney general.
“Under Kansas law, the attorney general doesn’t have original prosecutorial jurisdiction in assault and rape cases,” she said. “The decision to prosecute is entirely the county’s. If they decide to prosecute, they can ask the AG for help or they can ask the office to take over. But the decision is theirs under Kansas law.”
Kobach talked about the critical TV ad this month on The John Whitmer Show, a conservative Wichita-based radio talk show. Whitmer is a former state representative and current chairman of the Sedgwick County Republican Party.
“The ad is so outrageous,” Kobach said. “In the ad, he claims that I’m sheltering Catholic priests who’ve been raping children. The fact of the matter is this: all these false ads always take a tiny, tiny kernel of something that happened, and then they turn it into something false.”
Kobach said the KBI conducted an exhaustive investigation “into all of the allegations of any possibility of a Catholic priest abusing any person in Kansas, and they presented this investigation of multiple people … “
He said he immediately gave the information to county prosecutors.
“We looked at the investigations and we saw that there really wasn’t that much evidence,” he said. “But we turned it over to the counties and said, ‘If you want to prosecute, you may do so.’ Not a single one of the relevant counties prosecuted.
“So the ad makes it seem like I declined to prosecute. No, the very competent district attorneys, like Sedgwick County’s and the others around the state, said, ‘No. There’s not enough evidence here.'”
As for refusing to release the names of priests who were suspected of sexual abuse, Kobach said, “We have a tradition and an ethical obligation as attorneys that we don’t release the names of somebody who’s innocent, somebody who we cannot charge.”
“You know, we have this thing in America called ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ and you don’t drag someone’s name through the mud and defame them unless you’re willing to bring charges against them. So that’s the gist of the ad — that I’m refusing to prosecute child rapists and I’m refusing to release the names when, in fact, the decision to make — the decision that was made not to prosecute was made by the county attorneys correctly, and you don’t release the names if you’re not willing to prosecute.”
Need ‘clear communication and transparency’
Mann disagreed with Kobach’s explanation.
“Kansas has a discretionary release of criminal information law,” he said. “Law enforcement can release criminal information, including names, but they can also exclude it based on factors. The problem right now, though, is we’re simply not getting information at all.
“We deserve to know why the AG is not releasing names. They owe us an explanation as to why they’re not. We deserve to know why charges aren’t being brought. We deserve more than silence.”
Mann said there needs to be clear communication and transparency from Kobach’s office.
“The AG’s office should be communicating constantly with the victims and should be transparent with the community,” he said, “so that we know if there’s a danger that still exists.”
Kobach’s office also has been quiet on the KBI’s investigation of the Society of St. Pius X. When the report on the state’s Catholic dioceses was released in 2023, the KBI said the investigation into the Society of St. Pius X remained ongoing.
In July, the KBI told The Star that the SSPX investigations had concluded and it was awaiting charging decisions from the Attorney General’s Office.
When asked last week for an update, Herbert said Saturday that “the investigation is still pending.”
The lack of action has infuriated abuse survivors and their advocates.
“Voices of victims are being silenced by the Pollyannas, platitudes and euphemisms of those in power,” said Kansas City attorney Rebecca Randles, who has represented hundreds of sex abuse victims. “While giving lip service to how awful sexual abuse is, nothing is actually being done to give voice and justice to victims.”
The KBI examined more than 40,000 pages of documents, Randles said, that “have been sanitized into a 21-page ‘executive summary’ that allows that 188 priests had credible allegations of sexual abuse against them in the state of Kansas.”
“But not one prosecutor,” she said, “and certainly not the attorney general, has done anything to bring the priests to justice or reign in an authority system that transferred and hid them for decades.”
Meanwhile, Kobach has been highlighting his work on digital child safety, including consumer protection lawsuits against major social media platforms.
On Oct. 14, he filed a 72-page lawsuit against OpenAI, saying it was deceiving Kansans about the safety of ChatGPT, which was putting the safety of vulnerable people, including children, at risk.
Last month, Kobach announced that the state had reached a $10 million settlement with Roblox, an interactive gaming platform, that requires the company to implement online child-safety reforms. And in August, the AG’s office announced a multistate agreement with social media giant Meta to implement safety features designed to protect children on Instagram and Facebook. Kansas will receive more than $134 million under the agreement.
Other states have released names
While Kobach has declined to release the names of priests, attorneys general in other states have made them public.
Pennsylvania led the way in 2018, when the Attorney General’s Office released a statewide grand jury investigation that identified 301 Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 children. The shocking report also revealed efforts by church leaders to conceal abuse.
Other states used the Pennsylvania report as a model for their investigations.
In 2023, the Illinois attorney general released a detailed report that identified 451 Catholic priests and religious brothers who the investigation found had abused at least 1,997 children across the state’s six Catholic dioceses. The report also discussed how church leaders handled the allegations.
In March, Rhode Island’s attorney general released a report identifying 75 credibly accused clergy with connections to the Diocese of Providence. Investigators examined allegations involving more than 300 victims spanning from 1950 through 2011. The report included individual summaries of the clergy members. As a direct result of the investigation, criminal charges for child sexual abuse were filed against four current and former priests.
In 2019, Missouri’s then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt — a Republican now serving in the U.S. Senate — released a 329-page report of his office’s examination of the personnel records of more than 2,000 priests in the state’s four dioceses dating back to 1945.
The report included credible allegations of 163 instances of sexual abuse or misconduct by Catholic diocesan priests and deacons against minors. Though the report contained descriptions of each case, it did not name the clergy.
Crimes Against Children Unit
Mann, a former police officer and prosecutor, said that if elected, he would create a Crimes Against Children Unit within the Attorney General’s Office to assist local agencies in prosecutions of complex cases involving children.
“There’s already a Child Victims Unit in the KBI,” he said in an interview. “We need to have a partner in the AG’s office. They have some prosecutors in major crimes, but they don’t have a specific unit that’s dedicated to this.”
Attorneys who deal with child victims require specialized knowledge and training, Mann said.
“The statutes are more intricate, and the case matter overall is more difficult to handle,” he said. “It’s a different set of skills than a general criminal prosecutor. And we need that to help agencies across the state, and that’s what it comes down to, is these local agencies just don’t have that expertise all the time, and we need to help provide that.”
Mann said he’s visited about 70 of the state’s counties during his campaign, talking to law enforcement and prosecutors.
“They all need more resources, especially in rural communities,” he said. “One of the most interesting statistics that I heard is that 70% of all law enforcement agencies in Kansas have 10 or fewer officers, and over half of those have five or fewer.”
Prosecutors are in such short supply, he said, that some counties share with other counties.
“And it’s just so resource-intensive to do these,” he said, referring to cases involving children. “Which is sometimes why they don’t always happen. We don’t have original jurisdiction in these cases, but if we say we’re willing to come in and prosecute this, nine times out of 10, they’re going to say, ‘Please do.'”
Herbert said a special unit to handle crimes against children is unnecessary. The office’s criminal division prosecutes sexual crimes against children, she said.
“There is no need to create a special division for it when it would all be done by the criminal division anyway,” she said. “Chris Mann apparently does not understand that the Attorney General does not have original jurisdiction to prosecute these crimes. In every single case, we have to be invited by the relevant county, and when the county invites us to do so, we handle the case.”