February 18, 2005

Personnel Bile No. 3: The Milwaukee Monster

CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

by GUSTAVO ARELLANO

Last week, lawyers in Milwaukee did what Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Lichtman has yet to do: release personnel files on child-raping priests who worked in the Diocese of Orange. The pederast in question is Siegfried Widera, who molested at least nine children while stationed at various Orange County parishes from 1977 to 1985.

What distinguishes Widera from the other pedo-priests in the Orange diocese roster of monsters is that diocesan officials irrefutably knew about Widera’s past. I mean, you can’t get more blatant than a 1973 conviction for sexual perversion, right? Or how about a 1976 note by Wisconsin officials that ended Widera’s probation? Or maybe Orange diocese officials got a clue after Archdiocese of Milwaukee Bishop William Cousins called Orange Bishop William Johnson and warned him that Widera had a "moral problem" with a boy, the moral problem being Widera fiddling the kid during a fishing trip?

To this day, Orange diocese officials insist that they didn’t know about Widera’s past when they accepted him from the Milwaukee Archdiocese in 1977. The following documents should end that little lie quick.

Posted by kshaw at February 18, 2005 10:25 AM