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	Polish Priests Accused of Covering up Sexual Harassment The News March 11, 2008 http://www.polskieradio.pl/thenews/human-interest/?id=77765 Police from Szczecin, north-western Poland, are investigating allegations of sexual harassment of children by a priest and covered up by church officials for over 13 years. The prosecutor's office will interview the friar who wrote down the accounts of the victims, and then the victims themselves. Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported on events which happened at the beginning of the 1990s in a centre for delinquent youths and troublesome children in Szczecin, whose head at the time, Father Andrzej D., allegedly sexually harassed the boys under his charge. According to the report, the boys reported abuse to their tutors who informed Bishop Stanislaw Stefanek, responsible for education matters in the Szczecin archdiocese, in 1995. Stefanek did not deem their accounts credible and did not talk to any of the boys. The tutors subsequently contacted Stefanek's superior, Archbishop Marian Przykucki, who also refused to investigate the matter. He removed Father Andrzej from the centre, but put him in charge of catholic schools in Szczecin in the spring of 1996. The tutors, however, did not give up on the case. Their and the victims' accounts were written down by Friar Marcin Mogielski, whose supervisor forwarded them to the present archbishop of Szczecin, Zygmunt Kaminski, who only started investigating the matter when the tutors threatened to notify the prosecutor's office if he did not. The case was then passed over to the Episcopal court and Father Andrzej D. was removed from his position as supervisor of catholic schools in the region in spring 2007. Gazeta is now accusing church officials of covering up the issue and hushing up the tutors for 13 years. Smear campaign? When commenting on the alleged abuse in an interview for Polish Radio, deputy speaker of the Sejm, Poland's lower chamber of parliament, Stefan Niesiolowski said that if the allegations turn out to be true, the church should punish the perpetrators and apologize to the victims. But Niesiolowski stressed that Father Andrzej D. vehemently denies the charges. Niesiolowski concluded by saying that the report may be being used as a smear campaign by anti-church circles in Poland. Archbishop of Warsaw Kazimierz Nycz has published a statement in which he expressed hope that the matter is clarified without infringing on the dignity of any of the parties involved. This is not the first sex abuse scandal involving the church in Poland. Juliusz Paetz, archbishop of Poznan was found to be sexually harassing clergy. Paetz's supervisors ignored complaints filed against him. Archbishop Paetz denied the charges but stepped down soon afterwards. (mn)
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