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	Weakland Deposition Made Public By Marge Pitrof WUWM November 12, 2008 http://www.wuwm.com/programs/news/view_news.php?articleid=3936 Part of a videotaped deposition was made public in Milwaukee Wednesday, a deposition by former Catholic Archbishop Rembert Weakland. He was questioned under oath earlier this year, by an attorney representing seven people who claim they were assaulted by priests years ago. In the deposition, Weakland says he returned sexually abusive priests to active ministry without telling parish members, because he did not think they’d accept those clergy members otherwise. Peter Isely represents SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. He urged attorneys to make the deposition public, because he says the archdiocese has been publically questioning whether it can get a fair trial. “The archdiocese is making a public case right now, and it’s not being responded to. Their lawyers and the chancellor of the Archdiocese have put out a four page statement saying, we can’t get a fair trial, which is incidentally quite insulting I think to the people of this community, but we can’t get a fair trial because the individuals involved in these particular cases that have been filed, are all dead. And that’s simply not true. That is a lie, they’re not dead. Archbishop Weakland is alive. Bishop Sklba is currently still the bishop of Milwaukee, auxiliary bishop. He’s been involved in all these cases according to Archbishop Weakland. The vicar of priests, who from what the archbishop says, that was a key player in concealing this information, the vicar of priests are still around. So it’s simply not true. Two of the priests are, in these cases, two of the sex offenders are dead, one killed himself. But there are still two who are very much alive. So we just really felt that these misstatements by the archdiocese about this had to be responded to and the best proof is proof, so, Archbishop Weakland is very much alive and he’s here discussing and contradicting everything that basically the archdiocese is saying publically about these cases", Isely says. Jerry Topczewski is spokesman for the Milwaukee Archdiocese. He says former Archbishop Weakland knows only part of the story. “The challenge we face in dealing with cases of sexual abuse by clergy, is the fact that many of these circumstances date back 20, 30 even 40 years ago. So, Archbishop Weakland’s able to comment for himself about what he knew, but there are cases including the ones we’re involved with, that predate Archbishop Weakland’s time here. So not only is he able to comment on what he knew, but these cases also involve many other people. For example, Archbishop Cousins was involved in many of these cases; Archbishop Cousins is deceased. There were doctors involved, there were therapists involved in treatment of offenders, there were other auxiliary bishops, there were other priests who were involved in personnel matters. All of these people, most of them, are deceased. So it’s difficult then, to ascertain what they were thinking, how they made decisions, what the intent of those decisions was, so the real challenge is, we probably will never have a complete picture of what happened in these cases. And that’s really the challenge", Topczewski says. The seven fraud cases people have filed against it alleging sexual abuse by four priests are expected to go to court next spring or summer.
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