JOLIET (IL)
Daily Southtown
Thursday, February 23, 2006
On Aug. 11, 2005, Joliet Bishop Joseph Imesch answered questions for five hours about how he and other Catholic Church officials handled reports of priests engaging in sexual misconduct with minors.
A judge's ruling in February made a 247-page transcript of the deposition available to the public.
Imesch was questioned by Minneapolis attorney Jeff Anderson, who has sued more than half the nation's dioceses on behalf of clergy abuse victims.
Anderson questioned Imesch about the Rev. Gary Berthiaume, who served at the same parish as Imesch in the Archdiocese of Detroit. In 1977,
Berthiaume was convicted of sexually abusing a young boy, then later transferred to the Cleveland Diocese before being accepted by Imesch into the Joliet Diocese in 1987.