Ruling Expected Next Week in Case against Bishop
By Mark Morris
A Jackson County judge said Tuesday that he would rule by the end of next week on whether to dismiss charges against Bishop Robert Finn and the Catholic diocese Finn leads. Judge John Torrence made the announcement after hearing about two hours of arguments from prosecutors and defense lawyers. “This is an unusual set of circumstances,” Torrence said. “The waters are difficult to navigate.” The judge gave the lawyers no clear direction as to how he would rule. The misdemeanor charges allege that Finn and the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph failed for five months to report suspected child abuse related to the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, a priest now facing federal child pornography charges. Missouri’s reporting laws require a range of professionals, including ministers, to report child abuse suspicions within 24 hours. Finn, the diocese and Ratigan all have pleaded not guilty. Ratigan is scheduled for a federal trial in June, while the failure-to-report cases are expected to go to a jury in September. Finn attended the hearing but did not speak and offered no comment to reporters as he left the courthouse. Gerald Handley, his lead counsel, said afterward that the bishop was in “good spirits” after the session. Tuesday’s hearing gave lawyers on both sides their first opportunity to argue their cases in person and before a judge. In mid-February, lawyers representing Finn and the diocese filed motions asking Torrence to dismiss the charges on a variety of issues. Barring that, defense lawyers also asked that the cases against Finn and the diocese be heard at separate trials, rather than jointly. The most contentious question was whether Finn had a legal duty to report Ratigan. His lawyers argued that the diocese had adopted a clear policy designating a response team headed by Finn’s top clerical deputy, Vicar General Robert Murphy, as the body responsible for notifying civil authorities about suspected child abuse within church institutions. Because the diocese had a “designated reporter” responsible for making such calls, Finn’s legal duty to report had been “extinguished,” the lawyers contended. J.R. Hobbs, a lawyer representing the bishop, took the judge through a detailed legal analysis of the state reporting law and the diocese’s ethics and sexual abuse policies. “Bishop Finn had no statutory duty to report because Bishop Finn is not the diocese’s designated agent,” Hobbs said. Prosecutors countered that pretrial dismissal was improper because a jury needed to decide the facts of whether Murphy’s team was the designated reporter. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker repeated grand jury testimony in which Murphy acknowledged that he knew little about such issues. When asked if the diocese had a designated agent for reporting suspected child abuse, Murphy is said to have responded, “Not that I’m aware of.” Baker also argued that Finn took over managing Ratigan soon after Murphy learned about photographs of young girls on the priest’s laptop. Finn, Baker contended, found a doctor to evaluate Ratigan, formulated a list of conditions to which the priest had to conform and was responsible for enforcing consequences for any violations of those conditions. Policy, Baker said, can not be a shield against practice. “There were policies in place, but you cannot rely on policy now when it did not work when it mattered the most,” Baker said. The sides also debated whether to have separate or joint trials. Hobbs pointed Torrence to more than 20 conversations between witnesses in the case to which Finn was not a party and had no knowledge. If information from those discussions came into evidence, Hobbs said he would be obligated to constantly object at trial and ask that the judge read a statement to jurors, asking them to use such evidence only in determining the diocese’s guilt, and not Finn’s. That would interrupt the flow of the trial and could work against his client’s interests, Hobbs said. Lawyer Tom Bath, who represents the diocese, also urged Torrence to separate the trials. “There can be no question that the fairest way to try the defendants is separately,” Bath said. Assistant Jackson County Prosecutor Tricia Lacey, however, said separate trials would be wasted effort because the evidence against both the diocese and the bishop is the same. “It is not a complicated case,” Lacey said. The hearing also gave a brief preview of a coming evidence battle. Bath suggested that the defense could move to suppress testimony from the parents of girls whom Ratigan allegedly photographed. Lacey reacted sharply to any suggestion that the case lacked victims. “There are victims in this case,” she said. “We have parents of children who were photographed who will testify.” Immediately after the Ratigan scandal became public in May, Finn issued several public apologies for his handling of the matter. Since the state grand jury indicted him in October, his public remarks have been more guarded. In a recent column in the diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Key, Finn acknowledged, obliquely, that the Ratigan scandal has been difficult. “Thanks be to God and the good work of everyone, there were many good things that have happened here the last seven years,” Finn wrote. “Of course there have been and remain challenges — the most obvious are those of the last ten months.” Finn is the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States to face criminal prosecution related to the church’s child sexual-abuse scandal. He is not, however, the first church supervisor to face criminal charges. Testimony opened in Pennsylvania this week in the case against Monsignor William Lynn, formerly secretary of clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Lynn supervised more than 800 priests from 1992 to 2004. Prosecutors have alleged that Lynn kept dangerous priests in parish work around children to protect the church’s reputation and avoid scandal. They say the church kept secret files dating to 1948 that show a long-standing conspiracy to doubt sex-abuse victims and protect priests. The Associated Press contributed to this article. To reach Mark Morris, call 816-234-4310 or send email to mmorris@kcstar.com
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