TOLEDO (OH)
Toledo Blade
WEEKS after he was appointed Toledo police chief in June, 1956, Anthony A. Bosch got a respectful gift from fellow members of the local Knights of Columbus council - a specially designed solid-gold badge, emblazoned with his name and a three-quarter carat diamond. Three years later, the state council of the Catholic fraternal organization, of which he was an officer, gave him a new Cadillac.
These incidents help explain why Chief Bosch, a devout Catholic who headed the police department for 14 years, turned a blind official eye to continued sexual abuse of children by Toledo-area priests, as documented in a report Sunday by Blade reporters Mitch Weiss and Joe Mahr.
This was not, by any means, a policy of benign neglect, no matter how Chief Bosch, who died in 1982, may have rationalized it in his own mind. Rather than prosecuting criminal acts by priests, police and other civil authorities quietly and systematically shuffled aside cases of abuse, leaving them to be dealt with by the church.
The church hierarchy, in turn, did its utmost to keep the abuse quiet, usually by sending offenders away for "treatment" or - worse - transferring them to another, unsuspecting, parish, where they were free to molest more children.
As we know now, this conspiracy of silence only magnified, inflamed, and perpetuated a malevolent cycle of abuse, denial, and grudging acceptance of responsibility by the church for wrongdoing committed by its messengers of God.