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	Kansas City Bishop Makes Deal to Avoid More Criminal Charges By A. G. Sulzberger and Laurie Goodstein Ocala.com November 15, 2011 http://www.ocala.com/article/20111115/ZNYT02/111153015 KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In a deal to avoid a second round of criminal charges, a Roman Catholic bishop in Kansas City has agreed to meet monthly with a county prosecutor to detail every suspicious episode involving abuse of a child in his diocese for the next five years. The bishop, Robert W. Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, was indicted in October by a grand jury in Jackson County for failure to report a priest accused of taking pornographic pictures of girls. Bishop Finn is the first American prelate to face indictment on charges of mishandling an abuse case. The agreement announced on Tuesday between Bishop Finn and the prosecuting attorney of neighboring Clay County, Daniel White, leaves the bishop open to prosecution for misdemeanor charges for five years, if he does not continue to meet with the prosecutor and report all episodes. But victims' advocates criticized the deal as cozy and ineffectual, compared with previous agreements between bishops and prosecutors. The investigations in Kansas City stem from the bishop's supervision of the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, who has been accused of taking photographs of the crotches of girls as young as 6 in local parishes and homes over many years. The bishop learned of the photos last December after a technician fixing the priest's computer expressed serious alarm, but the diocese did not turn them over to the police until May. In that period, Father Ratigan is accused of taking more lewd photographs of girls at places including a church-sponsored Easter egg hunt. Mr. White said in an interview that the agreement would build accountability and protect children, saying that a four-month grand jury investigation showed that "good people were having difficulty making good choices." "It cuts out the middleman," he said. "He's the bishop; I'm the prosecutor. We're going to meet, he's going to tell me what's going on, and I'm going to decide whether to call law enforcement." Bishop Finn also agreed to visit all the parishes in Clay County, inform parishioners of how to report suspicious behavior and introduce them to diocesan officials in charge of child protection. The bishop, who testified before the grand jury in Clay County, said in a statement, "I am grateful for this opportunity to resolve this matter and to further strengthen our diocesan commitment to the protection of children." "The children of our community must be our first priority," he added. "Each deserves no more and no less." Catholic bishops and dioceses have cut deals before to avoid prosecution: in Cincinnati; Manchester, N.H.; Phoenix; Santa Rosa, Calif.; and Boston, according to BishopAccountability.org, a victims' advocacy group that tracks abuse cases. Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the group, said the most effective agreement was in Manchester, where the attorney general sent auditors into the diocese annually for five years to inspect records and interview personnel. Information the auditors found about abusers was released to the public. "New Hampshire is heads and shoulders above the others because it forced public disclosure," Ms. Doyle said. "The attorney general didn't rely on the diocese to do it." Mr. White, the Clay County prosecutor, said the information that Bishop Finn shared with him would typically remain private unless it rose to the level of a case that could be prosecuted. The agreement, he said, was significantly more onerous than if the bishop had been prosecuted for a misdemeanor, which Mr. White likened to "a slap on the wrist." The Kansas City case was taken up by grand juries in two counties because the diocese is based in Jackson County, and the priest was accused of taking some of the pornographic pictures in Clay County. This is not the first time the diocese agreed to extra safeguards intended to ensure that allegations of abuse did not go unreported. Some of those, which were put in place as part of a settlement with abuse victims in 2008, were ignored in the case of Father Ratigan, according to an investigation commissioned by the diocese this year. Mr. White, noting that he was Christian but not Catholic, said he believed that the process would be more effective this time. He said he would not have agreed to the deal unless he thought that Bishop Finn would fulfill it. But the deal was unpopular with victims and their advocates. Standing outside diocesan headquarters downtown here, four protesters who described themselves as victims of sexual abuse by clergy members insisted that only a court trial would reveal the truth and deter future cover-ups. They said Bishop Finn had received a "free pass." "It's going to be awfully hard to get him out of here," said David L. Biersmith, regional director of Voice of the Faithful, who said two of his children were abused by a priest. "It may never happen."
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