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	The Uninspiring King County Prosecutor's Race (IV) By Stefan Sharkansky Sound Politics October 24, 2007 http://soundpolitics.com/archives/009471.html Josh Feit alleged in last month's The Stranger that Dan Satterberg (as chief-of-staff to Prosecutor Norm Maleng in 2002) refused to investigate a child sex abuse and cover-up scandal at the local Catholic Archdiocese -- while concurrently advising the Archdiocese on how to respond to reports of abuse. The Stranger isn't always fair and accurate; on the other hand the story resonated with my own experiences with Satterberg. So I requested confirmation from both Satterberg and Feit's source, an attorney who represented victims of Archdiocese priests. I think Feit is essentially right on this one. Attorney Timothy Kosnoff has represented victims of priests in Seattle and elsewhere. He says he has seen, during legal discovery, significant evidence in sealed Archdiocese files about child abuse and cover-ups. When he asked the Prosecutor's office to authorize an inquiry to open the sealed files, Satterberg replied that he didn't have sufficient evidence to proceed: "No shit, Dan," Kosnoff says bitterly today. "You haven't found any evidence because you haven't issued a subpoena." Kosnoff complains that "clerics were able to skate through with settlements paid for by parishioners without ever being required to account for sodomizing children. King County should have been doing its job, and I hold Dan Satterberg responsible." To be fair to Satterberg, this happened in 2002 when Norm Maleng was Prosecutor. Maleng is the one who was ultimately responsible. On the other hand, Satterberg says that he and Maleng were "true partners", so he implicitly accepts shared responsibility for all of Maleng's decisions of the last several years. Satterberg e-mailed me: Tim Kosnoff's letter of 7 years ago demanding that the Prosecutor's office seize "files" from the church was answered in the following way. We have no evidence of criminal conduct to support a search warrant. If you have evidence of a crime that might justify some action, please bring it to us." He never did. His loud complaint now follows years of silence after we asked him to proffer some evidence. But Kosnoff told me he felt that Satterberg was hiding behind what he knew to be an impossible demand, i.e. that Kosnoff disclose evidence that he was forbidden to disclose by court order. He interpreted Maleng/Satterberg's reluctance to subpoena church records as "sacred cow syndrome" and fear of messing with "untouchable institutions", and felt that their actions did nothing but give cover to the church and "gave the public a false understanding". (which is eerily similar to how I've perceived their approach to complaints about King County government agencies). The other part of the story is that Satterberg was also serving as an advisor to the Archdiocese on dealing with new reports of abuse, and Kosnoff alleged this was a conflict of interest. Satterberg says that Feit didn't give him his due on this point: The Seattle Archdiocese has made sincere efforts to root out cases of sexual abuse within the clergy for at least the past 10 years. The purpose of my involvement was to help develop protocols for the Archbishop to follow when an allegation of sexual abuse came to his attention. In fresh cases we wanted to make sure law enforcement would maintain the element of surprise so we could consider all investigative avenues to gather evidence against the suspect, including "tipped receiver" methods where the victim calls the suspect while a detective listens in. This is a very effective method of gathering compelling evidence. We also want to seize computers before they have been cleansed or destroyed, so surprise is a key element for us. Sometimes employers tip off their employees by, for instance, putting them on leave THEN calling police. We developed a process where upon an allegation that our office would be alerted, that we would contact the appropriate police agency, interview the victim and develop an investigative plan quickly, and the Archdiocese would await our instructions. This happened recently with the priest on Mercer Island. While the investigation did not uncover criminal misconduct, we had a good process and plan in place to conduct the investigation, did so quickly, then allowed the Archbishop to take the action he felt proper, which was to remove the priest from the parish. It doesn't sound like a conflict if Satterberg's role was to help the Archdiocese develop a protocol that would assist investigations into new reports and didn't involve specific cases. In response to a recent Times article on this particular issue, Feit claimed:"Satterberg told me he did see specific cases."
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