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  Joliet Bishop Reported Admitting He Kept Four Serving As Priests

WBBM [Chicago IL]
February 4, 2006

http://www.wbbm780.com/pages/5925.php?

CHICAGO (AP) -- A Chicago newspaper reports that Joliet Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph Imesch admitted in a recently unsealed deposition that he allowed four men to continue serving as priests after receiving credible reports that they had been sexually abusive.

The Chicago Tribune said Saturday the 268-page deposition had been sealed, but a DuPage County judge opened it at the request of the newspaper and the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

One of the priests mentioned in the deposition was the Reverend Garry Berthiaume, with whom Imesch once worked in Michigan. Imesch said Berthiaume confided that he had sexually abused an altar boy, but said he felt no need to inform on Berthiaume.

Berthiaume was sentenced to prison in 1978, and Imesch hired him many years later to work at a Joliet-area retreat house.

 
 

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