BishopAccountability.org
	Archbishop Warns Churches about Priest Ordered Freed By Jim Suhr Associated Press, carried in Belleville News-Democrat [St. Louis MO] May 9, 2005 ST. LOUIS - The head of the St. Louis area's Roman Catholics is warning certain churches about the possible release of an imprisoned former priest, saying the case "has raised grave concerns about possible acts of child sexual abuse which he may have committed." The man's attorney worries that his client, James Beine, may be "a sitting duck" targeted for violence once freed. Archbishop Raymond Burke last week sent letters to three St. Louis-area churches where Beine once served and asked priests to read them during Masses next weekend. The letters ask any possible Beine victims to come forward, archdiocese spokesman Jamie Allman said Monday. The letter also will be published in the St. Louis Review, the archdiocese's weekly newspaper. While calling the step "unusual," Allman said Burke "believes this was absolutely necessary." "The urgency's there," Allman said. "Abuse by priests has done irreparable and untold harm to the fabric of trust in the Catholic Church and the preponderance of really wonderful priests. There will never be a time the archbishop lets his guard down on these types of matters." Missouri's Supreme Court last Friday ordered Beine, 63, to be freed from prison on bond, 10 days after it threw out the former grade school counselor's convictions on charges that he exposed himself to boys in a school restroom. The state Department of Corrections is awaiting a formal order authorizing Beine's release from the Farmington Correctional Center, where the man also known as Mar James has been serving a 12-year sentence on the St. Louis convictions in 2003 before the high court intervened April 26. Beine's release on $5,000 bond was not expected until at least Tuesday, as Monday was a state holiday during which the paperwork could not be processed. The Supreme Court ordered that he remain in home confinement, though Beine's attorney, Lawrence Fleming, said his client - behind bars the past three years - has no home and could become "sort of a sitting duck for anybody who has an ax to grind or a perceived ax to grind" if forced to stay in one place. A U.S. appeals court already had thrown out Beine's federal conviction of possessing child pornography and the resulting prison sentence of nearly five years, ruling that investigators illegally seized key evidence. The state attorney general's office expects to meet Wednesday's deadline for asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to scrap Beine's conviction, spokesman Scott Holste said. In its 4-3 ruling last month, the Supreme Court ruled there was insufficient evidence to prove that Beine, a counselor at St. Louis' Patrick Henry Elementary School during the 2000-2001 school year, committed wrongdoing when he allegedly exposed himself while urinating in a school bathroom in front of three boys. In the ruling, special Judge Charles Blackmar called the statute unconstitutionally broad and "leaves adults in a state of uncertainty about how they may take care of their biological needs without danger of prosecution when a child is present in the same public restroom." In his letter to the three churches - St. Francis de Sales in St. Louis, St. Peter in St. Charles and St. Andrew in Lemay - Burke said he writes of Beine "with great sadness." "I offer my heartfelt apologies to any victim of James Beine," Burke wrote, urging "anyone who has been a victim of James Beine or of any other member of the clergy" to report the matter. St. Louis prosecutors - barred from retrying the thrown-out charges - have said they were deciding whether they could file additional charges related to three dozen complaints of sexual abuse their office fielded from Beine's years as a priest. Beine was dismissed from the priesthood in 1977 over allegations of sexual abuse, and in the mid-1990s St. Louis' archdiocese paid $110,000 to settle two lawsuits that alleged Beine sexually abused boys more than three decades earlier.