Bill Donohue, judge & jury.
The Catholic League president’s latest defense of Bishop Finn outlandishly claims that “in an ideal world, there would have been no charges whatsoever: there was no complainant and no violation of law.” Of course, as Mark Silk points out, whether there is a complainant is irrelevant because Missouri law requires mandatory reporters such as Bishop Finn to inform civil authorities “immediately” when they have “reasonable cause to suspect that a child has been or may be subjected to abuse or neglect or observes a child being subjected to conditions or circumstances which would reasonably result in abuse or neglect.” A Jackson County grand jury believes Finn should have not have waited to inform the police about the lewd images of children that had been found in Fr. Shawn Ratigan’s possession. That’s why they’ve charged the bishop and the diocese with a class A misdemeanor of “failure of mandated reporter to report.”
Not that Donohue needs to wait for a jury to decide the case. No, he already knows Finn is “an innocent man.” You can tell he really means it because he flew to Missouri to stage a rally in support of Finn outside the offices of the Kansas City Star (Donohue is not the newspaper’s biggest fan). Apparently Donohue and the dozens gathered for the rally are not bothered by implications of Finn’s agreement with neighboring Clay County — a tacit admission that, nearly a decade after Dallas, the bishop still hadn’t been doing enough to keep kids safe.
Does Donohue even grasp the point of mandatory-reporting laws? Back to Mark Silk:
[Donohue apparently thinks] a mandatory reporter could only be charged with failure to report a suspicion of child abuse after an alleged victim has come forward, lodged a criminal complaint as well as informing the reporter, and the complaint has been determined to be true.
[...]
The whole point of a mandatory reporting law is to provide the authorities with information that enables them to prevent or put a stop to child abuse as soon as possible. If mandatory reporters cannot be prosecuted for failure to report reasonable suspicions unless an alleged perpetrator is actually found guilty, they will be under less pressure to call him to the attention of the authorities — and having failed to do so, will acquire an additional incentive to keep him from being brought to justice. That’s Donohue’s ideal world.
***
N.B.: What can be said of Donohue’s ugly jab at abuse-victims advocate David Clohessy? Donohue alleges that Clohessy “refused to call the police in the 1990s when he learned that his own brother was a child molester.” Donohue concludes, “It is Clohessy who belongs in jail.” There are bishops (like Archbishop Dolan and Cardinal O’Malley) who publicly endorse and may help to fund Donohue’s operation (who knows? Maybe Finn is one of them). Is this the sort of thing they want to be associated with?
Tags: Bill Donohue, Bishop Robert Finn, Sunglasses at night, The Justice League
In another thread, I noted a major problem in the Church is the focus on the institution and its protection and not on those to be served and their needs.
Donahue is a major example of this but his posture is only possible because so many Catholics, to some degree or other – includin gsome posters here – buy into that.
BTW I think it’s pitiful that Abp. Dolan is full of praise for him -speakls volumes about leadership in the AD of NY.
Donahue’s not the only one who has no need to wait for a jury to decide the case.
Thanks for this, Grant. At times, Bill Donohue seems to behave as a double-agent. The more he talks, the more he helps the cause of those who object to the US bishops’ continuing failure to weed out those bishops who have failed to control known pedophile priests. Many child rapes have occurred after local bishops already knew well of the pedophile priests’ dangerous disposition. This is inexcusable and , it seems, will only really change when some bishops are prosecuted and convicted, as will likely happen, possibly, for example, yet in Philly.
Bill’s endearing quality to me personally is that, by comparison, some think I am the calmer Irishman.
I’m confused. If the prosecutor has dropped the charges, why is it wrong to acknowledge that the Bishop is innocent?
Bender, it’s only in a courtroom that the rule of “innocent until proven guilty” applies. Those of us who are neither judge nor juror are perfectly free to draw our own conclusions when someone is accused of a crime — which is fortunate for the public weal, because otherwise police couldn’t make arrests.
Mark Proska, the charges have not been dropped. What you may be thinking of is that, in a different county, the prosecutor has agreed that if Bp. Finn meets with him each month for the next five years and discloses each month all issues that arise related to child abuse, he will not prosecute the Bishop after the end of the five years.
Tht does not have any effect on the charges already bought against the Bishop and the diocese.
‘Not that Donohue needs to wait for a jury to decide the case. No, he already knows Finn is “an innocent man.” ‘
My experience is that if you even try to imagine that Finn could produce arguments in defense of his not guilty plea you are denounced as a sycophantic shielder of abusers etc. The SNAP brigade certainly to not feel they need to wait for a jury to decide the case. No, they already knows Finn is “a guilty man.”
When a jury foreman says, “Guilty” he not only *says* something (that all the members of the jury agree that the defendant is guilty), but the foreman also *does* something. By the very saying of the word he causes the defendant to have a legal status which allows the state to suspend or eliminate certain rights so that the person can be punished or rehabilitated or whatever.
The whole process assumes that judgements have been made both by accusers and agents of the state that the accused is de facto guilty.
Philosophers call such dual uses of words “performative utterances”. They are utterances/symbols which both say and do something. Other examples are “I do” in a marriage ceremony and the signing of a name to a contract.
Donohue is in the gutter with his “ugly jab” at David Clohessy. Someone wrote me about responding, and I am torn at the insult to David, who has worked his heart out for decades to protect children. It is a very painful personal matter.
The story was covered back in 2002. http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/2002_3535996/brother-pitted-against-brother-over-sexual-abuse-a.html
Brother pitted against brother over sexual abuse allegations
SCOTT CHARTON Associated Press
COLUMBIA, Mo. – One brother is a priest. The other brother once sued the Catholic Church, alleging he was molested by his childhood priest, and is now director of a national support group for such victims.
The Rev. Kevin Clohessy and his brother, David, have been estranged since that 1991 lawsuit. But the divide has suddenly become sharper and more painful: The priest was publicly accused this week of molesting a male college student nearly a decade ago.
David Clohessy said he knew for years about the allegations and agonized over whether to report his brother to authorities.
He even contemplated distributing leaflets outside his brother’s church. But in the end, he did not go to the police.
“It will probably be a quandary until the day I die,” said David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which claims more than 3,500 members.
This week, the Jefferson City Diocese confirmed Kevin Clohessy was accused of sexual contact with an 18-year-old in 1993 while working at a Catholic student center at Northeast Missouri State University in Kirksville, which now is Truman State University…
David Clohessy, 45, said he found out about the allegations in the mid-1990s from an employee of the Jefferson City Diocese. Soon afterward in his activist role, he was called by the man his brother allegedly molested.
“The victim started the call by saying something like, `I was abused by somebody who you know,’ and the minute he said that, I suspected my brother because I knew Kevin had been removed from his work,” David Clohessy said Thursday.
He said he weighed “hundreds of times” whether to report his brother to police or abide by his support group’s philosophy that victims should be the whistle-blowers in order to heal themselves.
“I was very distraught for months, but I knew at that point that unless the victim was willing, there was nothing I could do,” David Clohessy said.
Several years ago, he called his brother “and I told him, `I know what you have done.’ ” He said they talked by phone several times in the next few months, David Clohessy hoping his brother would acknowledge his alleged behavior.
“Kevin would say he was in therapy and making progress but never would he say, `I crossed a boundary and did something inappropriate,’ ” David Clohessy said. “It was getting ugly and we stopped talking.”
He filed his lawsuit in 1991, alleging abuse by his boyhood pastor in Missouri. When David Clohessy told his brother about his lawsuit, “Kevin told me it was probably best we not talk for a while. He also told me he was abused” by the same pastor.
The lawsuit was dismissed in 1993 because the statute of limitations had run out. Diocese officials said the pastor resigned from the priesthood in 1992.
I agree Donohue goes too far in claiming Clohessy should be in jail, but one would think Clohessy would be more understanding and forgiving towards those who struggled as he did with reporting people one suspects of committing abuse.
Ann Oliver, to avoid possible confusion, the jury foreman you are talking about as announcing “guilty” is the foreman of the trial jury, not the foreman of the grand jury. The grand jury does not decide guilt or innocence but only if there there is “probable cause” to believe that the defendent may have committed a crime – and that the case should go forward to be trial. At this point, Bp. Finn is still entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Mr. Proska, Finn was responsible for Ratigan’s continued employment, had the pictures that got Ratigan arrested, had been informed years before that there was a serious problem, and was under obligation to report, yet he continued to keep him in positions where he had access to victims. That’s a whole different ballgame than reporting your brother, over whom you have no authority, years after the fact.
catarinasdaughter–
Is Clohessy not his brother’s keeper? Mind you, I”m not condemning him for not reporting his own brother–I just don’t understand his lack of empathy for others who chose as he did.
Mark,
“I just don’t understand his lack of empathy for others…”
Those others were not themselves survivors, coping with finding the courage to face a callous hierarchy, much less fellow Catholics who jeered and accused them of lying or simply looking for money. Those early days of reporting were their own nightmare.
“I agree Donohue goes too far in claiming Clohessy should be in jail…”
How kind.
I’m checking out of this thread.
John Hayes,
If you’re talking about “innocent” in a legal sense, then yes, one is innocent until proven “guilty”. We need also to remember that the legal use of “not guilty” does not mean “innocent” in the non-legal, ordinary sense of that word.
Judgments have to be made by those who have witnessed a crime or have other relevant knowledge, and there are no doubt times when one must judge someone “guilty” in the ordinary sense. E.g., unknown to your neighbor, you hear him saying “I’ve been plotting this for weeks” then see him pick up a gun and shoot his wife six times at close range.
If you heard and saw him do that, you’d be crazy to deny what you heard and saw unless you had reason to think that you are crazy.
The question is: how much evidence do we need to *fairly* make a judgment of guilt in the ordinary sense?
What I don’t get is Bill’s problem with there having been no complainant. Two possibilities come to mind, that child pornography is a “victimless crime” — it’s not, and neither Catholic morality nor the law sees it that way — or that you need a complainant to legitimate charges. There are any number of victims who cannot speak for themselves, and as someone who so strongly advocates for unborn children, for example, I’d think Bill would be more sensitive to those who cannot go to the police on their own. Weird logic.
Focus only on court-related issues and specifics of legal guilt or innocence is diversionary. A criminal conviction may disqualify a person for a position. Absence of a criminal conviction does not thereby become a determining positive qualifying factor. Judgments on positions large and small are made daily based on what is required and what is known about a person without the decision depending on convictions.
A primary question to be asked about Finn is whether he is qualified to hold the public position he has with its responsibility for people, assets, finances, and a school system, based on what we have heard from him, his chancery, his paid investigator, and civil authorities. His record in dealing with his abuse agreement of a few years ago is instructive. He has characterized his unsatisfactory response in the Ratigan matter, as have others. (The only one on earth with power over his Church appointment and removal continues to appear as uninterested as his fellow bishops.)
Allowing Donohue and others to divert attention to legalistic nitty-gritty away from the values, priorities, judgment, and governing performance Finn has demonstrated, with hazard to others, is unwarranted. Neither counties’ actions so far will remove him from office. Forgiveness, compassion, etc. can happen anywhere. In his declaration of war speech in 2009, Finn told the audience they were warriors. Maybe it is time for them to act.
http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/kansas-city-bishop-pro-lifers-we-are-war
As the news covers the growing sexual abuse of children isue(now at Syracuse U.) we hear more and more lawyerly commentary .
I’m confused why Mark is confused -it must be the lawyerly commentray and how it slants -just like Donahue.
I don’t blame Carolyn -common sense and experience will continue to be overidden in some quarters by the spin of the day.
As I said, the situation in LC (and Philly) is fetid.
Sorry, KC
Ann Oliver, I was responding to your 10:21 pm post which started “When a jury foreman says, “Guilty” he not only *says* something (that all the members of the jury agree that the defendant is guilty), but the foreman also *does* something.”
My real worry is that if Bp. Finn is found not guilty at the trial, people will say “see, there wasn’t anything to it. He did everything he was supposed to do.”
I have read pages 71 to 117 of he Independent Investigator’s report (the part on the Ratigan affair). It’s clear to me that Fr. Murphy and Bp.Finn did not handle this matter properly – they od not o wiat hey stołu have done.
Sorry. That got posted before i finished it
—they did not do what they should have done.
My hope is that Bp. Finn’s indictment and the surrounding publicity will convince other Bishops that it is too dangerous for them and for the church to try to hide situations like this in the future.
As I see Donohue, he seems to think that the only function of the police is to arrest criminals. Not so — the police are also responsible for *preventing* crimes. As Silk puts it, “The whole point of a mandatory reporting law is to provide the authorities with information that enables them to prevent or put a stop to child abuse as soon as possible.”
Again, “innocent until proven guilty” is a fair criterion in a court of law, but that criterion applied outside of courts would prevent anyone from ever making judgments about apparent guilt or evil intentions. To keep chanting piously “innocent until proven guilty” just licenses yo-yos like Donohue to sound virtuous when they are actually enabling criminals.
John Hayes –
You bring up another important point. If Finn is found innocent other bishops will be encouraged to flout the law, and the decision will confirm some people’s opinion that suspicion alone need not be reported.
But I do see practical problems about just which suspicious should be reported. For instance, should I report a neighbor who leers blatantly whenever he looks at a little boy? What if he never fails to hug them enthusiastically but only if their mothers are present? Some behavior really is ambiguous. Should we report it all?
Ann Olivier, the problem is not ambiguous behavior. McQueary at Penn State actually saw the rape of a child in progress and didn’t do what most of us think we would do, which is pull Sandusky off the kid, disable him temporarily with a well-place knee, and rush the child to the hospital. Instead he went home.
The book “Our Fathers” (about the Boston sex-abuse scandals) at the moment, recounts at least one incident of a boy whose rape in a rectory was witnessed by another priest. The witness did not stop the rapist and if he reported him to the bishop, no action was taken. Another priest who lived at the rectory opened the door and saw the perpetrator in flagrante, but never told anyone. Parents who were told unambiguously that “Father touched me” by their children complained to their bishops and were promised that Father would be taken care of–only to learn that Father had merely been moved to another parish.
There’s nothing ambiguous either about the Kansas City situation. A priest was in possession of child pornography, the bishop knew it–and he sat on the information for months instead of obeying the law.
It’s kind of unfortunate that Thomas Becket was ever canonized. He’s a saint because he defied his king over the right to discipline a wayward priest. Ever since, bishops have followed his example and demanded for themselves the right to “discipline” priests, which in practice has too often meant doing nothing. The United States is a religiously pluralistic democracy with a justice system that is not perfect but still better than that of an absolute monarchy. The bishops don’t have the luxury of thumbing their noses at the criminal justice system.
Angela –
In the same vein, the 1st Philadelphia Grand Jury (2001 jury, 2003 report, released in 2005) reported what it called “non-offenders” in one of its Findings:
(p.8): “Finding 10. Many non-offender priests have remained silent in the face of clear evidence that a brother priest is sexually molesting a minor, and in some cases have actually covered up the abuse. The Archbishop and his appointed administrative managers foster this silence in order to avoid scandal in the Church and do not encourage priests to report suspected abusers.”
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2003_09_25_First_Philadelphia_Grand_Jury_Report.pdf
It’s hard to tell what “many” means without further work, but, ten years ago in Philadelphia, more than officials and abusers were recognized as carrying out the coverup.
Didn’t the John jay report note the problem of interprotection (like thepolice blue line that closes ranks)?
Doesn’t Donahue contribute to that kind of thinking?
Bob N. —
Re thinking by Donohue, he was vigorously endorsed by Abp. Timothy Dolan in his blog (12/16/10): “Keep at it, Bill! We need you!”. The post was on “Why we need the Catholic League”. http://blog.archny.org/?p=931
Apb. Dolan thinks it’s alright to show Jesus’ bloody murdered corpse with nailsl through His hands and feet and a crown of thorns on His head, but it’s not alright to show ants crawling on His dead body? I ask: which would YOU prefer — being crucified or having ants all over you?
Some people look for insults.
Donohue is only a mouthpiece for the hierarchs to say all the things that they can’t say in public because it is too impolitic and crude.
The connection between Donohue and the hierarchs is very strong: When Donohue started out he even had an office at the NY chancellory.
Donohue is so convenient for the hierarchs to plant stories in the media replete with outrageous mischaracterizations from time to time and then the hierarchs don’t have to take responsibility for it.
Where does Donohue get his money to run his operation? The board for his front group, The Catholic League, is a who’s who of the Catholic reactionary right-wing. Donohue will never reveal his financial backers, but I would wager that church money and right-wing corporate money is laundered before it winds up in Donohue’s accounts.
The Vatican does not the interests of the people of Kansas City diocese at heart – I find it hard to believe that there will be any apostolic administrator.
Keeping a men like Finn in office as long as possible is part of their overall strategic plan for the church: Drive the thinking people away because it is then easier to bully and control the dwindling pew-Catholic that are left.
And, the hierarchs’ fat investment portfolio should tide them over for a century or two when the bones of their rape and sodomy victims, and their critics, will have turned to dust long ago, and no one will be around who could remember how corrupt the hierarchs really are [were?].
It’s happened before in church history. What is past is prologue!