St. Paul Police Ask for Possible Victims of Clergy Abuse to Come Forward

By Nicole Norfleet
Star Tribune
October 17, 2013

http://www.startribune.com/local/228235041.html

St. Paul police are asking for possible victims of clergy abuse to come forward and share their stories.

St. Paul police on Thursday asked any victims of clergy abuse to come forward while it continues to pursue its investigation into whether a Catholic priest downloaded child pornography.

Last week, the department announced that it had reopened the 2004 case in light of new information including an additional copy of the images that the Hugo parishioner who originally discovered the porn on the priest’s computer turned in as well as leaked internal church documents that described the images as “borderline illegal’’ and indicated that church officials were concerned about possible prosecution.

The renewed investigation follows allegations by former canonical chancellor, Jennifer Haselberger, who resigned in April, that the church hierarchy failed to report child endangerment and child pornography to law enforcement.

As of Wednesday, police hadn’t arrested anyone or forwarded the case to the county attorney’s office for possible charges.

The case had been idle since police reviewed three discs containing images from the priest’s hard drive and found no child porn. But the investigating officer noted in a report that the priest’s computer had been destroyed long before so that it couldn’t be certain that the discs reviewed by police contained the same content that was originally reviewed by a forensics expert hired by the archdiocese.