Over 500 Sex Abuse Claims, a Record Number, Filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court against Milwaukee Archdiocese

SNAP Wisconsin
February 2, 2012

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Nine months ago, in solemn tones, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki announced he was seeking Federal bankruptcy protection for the archdiocese because of fraud cases filed against church officials for concealing and transferring known child sex offender clergy.

The archdiocese’s books were in the black. There were no trial dates set. There were no judgments pending.

In essence, Listecki was conceding that a jury of his peers–any jury–would find the archdiocese guilty of widespread and systematic corporate fraud.

In doing so, Listecki also made a dramatic and personal public appeal to every single person raped, sexually assaulted or abused by a priest or employee operating or working in the archdiocese to come forward and file a claim with the bankruptcy court as means of achieving a “final resolution” to the clergy abuse and cover up crisis.

In response to their archbishop’s direct appeal, over 500 victim/survivors of sexual violence have petitioned the federal court in Milwaukee for some measure of justice, the largest number of such victims in any single diocesan court filing in US history.

Astonishingly, in a complete reversal of everything that he has been saying for nine months, and on the very day that the filing for claims has closed, it has been learned that Listecki has instructed his lawyers to ask federal judge Susan V. Kelley to eliminate well over 90 percent of the claims filed.

Kelley will hear the arguments by the archdiocese to bar all of these claims based upon a state civil—not federal bankruptcy—statute on February 9th. According to archdiocesan spokesman Jerry Topczewski, the archbishop wants hundreds of victims thrown out of court “whether or not” the sexual assaults reported in a claim “happened or not.” So, according to the archdiocese, if you were raped or sexually assaulted by a priest, and if this felony crime was fraudulently covered up, and if you filed a claim in federal court exactly as your archbishop asked you to do, it simply, in their exact words, “does not matter.”

This latest legal attack against will rightfully be experienced by victims and their families as being once again misled and betrayed by the hierarchy of the church and the archdiocese of Milwaukee. What else are they to conclude?

But denying hundreds of victims claims is not just about withholding from the vast majority of victims some measure of personal restitution.

The record number of claims which have been filed with the federal court over the past nine months are, if fact, direct reports and criminal evidence concerning dozens of previously unidentified sexual predators who have worked, or are working, in the archdiocese of Milwaukee.

If Listecki gets his way next Thursday and over 500 legitimate victim claims are thrown out, then the archdiocese will be under no court or public scrutiny to ensure that these new reports are properly investigated and these offenders removed from work in the archdiocese and elsewhere and publically identified to the community.

For that urgent public and child safety reason alone, let’s hope and pray that Listecki’s cynical double speak strategy—of telling the community one thing while he instructs his lawyers to do the opposite—fails.