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Prominent Milwaukee Pediatrician Identified As Child Sex Offender in Boy Scout’s ‘perversion Files’

SNAP Wisconsin
September 17, 2012

http://03409bc.netsolhost.com/snapwisconsin/2012/09/17/prominent-milwaukee-pediatrician-identified-as-child-sex-offender-in-boy-scouts-perversion-files/

SNAPwisconsin.com

Prominent Milwaukee pediatrician identified as child sex offender in Boy Scout’s ‘perversion files’

Dr. Thomas Kowalski worked with children in community for 45 years

SNAP urges Milwaukee County D.A. to investigate

CONTACT: Peter Isely SNAP Midwest Director, 414.429.7259, John Pilmaier SNAP Wisconsin Director, 414.336.8575

Dr. Thomas Kowalski, a highly prominent Milwaukee physician who specializes in pediatrics, neonatal, and adolescent medicine and who worked as a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin for over 35 years has been identified as a child sex offender in secret files maintained by the Boy Scouts of America as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Kowalski, who was a volunteer camp doctor for the Milwaukee County Council of Boy Scouts, identifies himself in his online professional profile as “semi-retired” but “looking for part time or consulting work” with children and adolescents.

Kowalski’s Boy Scout file was obtained by the Times in a court ordered release of 1,600 secret documents maintained in what Boy Scout officials dubbed the “Perversion Files”. The files detail hundreds of child sexual assaults known by scouting officials but kept from the public and often the police.

According to Kowalski’s file he admitted to Scout leaders that he masturbated while fondling two children at a Wisconsin summer camp in Forest County in 1987. In a series of internal documents the Milwaukee County Council Executive of the Boy Scouts, James L. Roberts, indicates that it was his intention to keep Kowalski’s child sex assaults “confidential” and hidden from public view and banned him from the organization.

According to the documents, the assaults were reported to the Forest County Sheriff’s Department, the Department of Social Services and to the District Attorney who declined to prosecute. Scout records reveal that the D.A. formally notified the Board of Medical Examiners of Kowalski’s actions and agreed that if Kowalski completed psychological counseling and received appropriate peer review no charges would be filed. Also aware of Kowalski’s behavior was the publisher of a Milwaukee newspaper who sat on the Scouting board and communicated his desire to keep the information from his newspaper’s editors.

“Although the Boy Scouts and others think that Kowalski is so serious a risk to children that he is permanently banned from scouting, they apparently are not that concerned that he is a pediatrician with daily, intimate access to children and their bodies” says Peter Isely, the Midwest Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), whose organization has worked for decades to expose similar patterns of cover up and secrecy in the Roman Catholic Church and other religious organizations. “As Kowalski admitted to the Times,” continues Isely, “if his crimes had been known by the public—meaning especially the parents of his child patients— he would never have been able to practice as a pediatrician”.

Wisconsin SNAP Director John Pilmaier elaborates: “It appears that the entire child protection system failed in its most important duty which is to protect vulnerable children from harm. According to these documents the Sheriff’s department, the Department of Social Services, the District Attorney, and the Board of Medical Examiners were all aware that Kowalski had sexually assaulted children and yet he remains to this day a licensed physician in the state of Wisconsin”.

Kowalski continued working with youth for at least 14 years after his admission to Scouting authorities. He left Children’s Hospital in 2002 to work at Marquette University’s Student Health Service and the Greenfield Health Department. Kowalski has also served as a foreign missionary since 1994 with the “Volunteer Missionary Movement” and has made multiple trips to Guatemala.

In an e-mail sent late this afternoon to Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, local SNAP officials are asking for an investigation to determine how an admitted child sex offender who committed crimes in the course of his professional duties could continue to work with children for decades and to determine if additional crimes were committed.

SNAP is also asking the District Attorney to urge the Milwaukee County Council of the Boy Scouts of America, now the Three Harbors Council, to immediately release the names and histories of all known child sex predators that have either worked for or volunteered in their organization.

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 23 years and have more than 10,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our national website is SNAPnetwork.org.

 

 

 

 

 




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