Fr. Rock James Badgerow
Included in the MI Attorney General’s 12/15/2025 Diocese of Grand Rapids Report. Accused in 1993 of sexually abusing a boy, age 15, when he was a freshman at Catholic Central High School. The alleged victim said that he was walking home from the school when Badgerow pulled over in his red jeep and offered him a ride home. The priest allegedly feigned car trouble, then took the boy into the school building and forcibly orally copulated him. Badgerow was at the time assigned to St. Thomas Parish and was known as “really young” and “modern.” Badgerow said he didn’t remember such an incident and that it may have been the young adult man he he had had a sexual encounter with at a rest stop. In 2004 a man told the Diocese that Badgerow had made sexual passes toward him at St. Patrick’s rectory. In 2018 a man reported that Badgerow had recently told him he was attracted to a tenth-grade boy at Sacred Heart Academy, saying, “the older I get the younger I like them. I can’t help myself.” Badgerow was removed from Sacred Heart but allowed to continue in ministry at St. Ann’s Home. He was granted senior priest status in 2023.
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