Victims Agree with Judge Kelley's Ruling: Bankruptcy Court No Place for Sex Crimes Investigation

By John Pilmaier
Snapwisconsin.com
March 1, 2012

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Victims agree with Judge Kelley's ruling: bankruptcy court no place for sex crimes investigation

Some of Kelley's comments, however, demonstrate exactly why the Attorney General—not the archdiocese–must conduct full investigation

Court does not dispute figures that at least 8,000 criminal acts are alleged in filings, with at least 100 unidentified offenders

Judge Susan V. Kelley denied a motion today in Federal Bankruptcy Court filed on behalf of archbishop Jerome Listecki, which would have allowed the archdiocese to submit to the Attorney General of Wisconsin a "statistical analysis" of the thousands of child sex crimes found within claims submitted to the court by victims of child rape and sexual assault. Judge Kelley emphasized that the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding is intended to provide the debtor, the archdiocese of Milwaukee, the opportunity to file a plan of reorganization, not a venue for the investigation of criminal child sex crimes.

In courtroom comments, however, Judge Kelley remarked several times that based upon the claims she has reviewed there was not, in her opinion as a bankruptcy judge, a current "public safety crisis".

Kelley did not dispute that the claims include at least 8,000 acts of alleged criminal sexual acts against children and, even more significantly, that there are at least 100 alleged offenders who are not named on the archdiocese "official" list of 43 abusive priests. Even Listecki, in his blog this week, concedes that "some new names of diocesan priests did surface in the claims process".

If there are priests in ministry who may have raped or sexually assaulted children in the past, and today have access to children and families: that is a public safety "crisis".

Significantly, Listecki has not addressed an even greater problem than these diocesan priests: religious order clerics. These clerics constitute the majority of priests living and working in the archdiocese. Listecki refuses to identify offenders from these orders or vet the procedures used by their superiors to remove them from ministry. Until he does so, how can he assure the public that all credibly accused child abusing clerics have been removed from parishes, schools, and neighborhoods?

Experts tell us that child sex abuse is the most underreported crime in the United States, with an annual reporting rate of under 10 percent. This means that most offenders, and most offenses, are never reported to authorities. When victims do come forward, studies show, it often takes years, if not decades. And sex predators can assault, on average, 130 to 150 children over the course of a lifetime.

How can the revelation that there are dozens of previously unidentified, unprosecuted child sex offenders not be a cause for legitimate concern?

And Judge Kelley said nothing about the other crisis which is emerging in bankruptcy court, one contained in yet unsealed tens of thousands of internal church documents: the crisis of church leadership. Many of the very same individuals who oversaw the supervision, and transfer into unsuspecting parishes and schools, of known clerical child sex offenders, still remain in senior management positions at the archdiocese, while others have been allowed to retire with ecclesiastical honors, their comfort and pensions untouched.

Kelley, as a bankruptcy judge, of course, is not expected to be in a position to evaluate the meaning and importance of these thousands of child sex crimes. She is not a criminal judge and has likely not spent a single day of her judicial career investigating and studying the behavior and actions of child sex predators. That is exactly why SNAP, legislators, and others are urging the Attorney General's Office to fully investigate the claims now in court, and any other criminal evidence in possession by the archdiocese, whenever the assaults occurred, and whoever committed them or covered them up.

It is Wisconsin's top state law enforcement officer–not a chapter 11 judge–who needs to render a fully informed opinion on what kind of threat these newly unnamed offenders pose.