Sidebar: Disgraced priest wants to buy archdiocese property

By Mike Mosedale
Minnesota Lawyer
September 9, 2015

http://minnlawyer.com/2015/09/09/sidebar-disgraced-priest-wants-to-buy-archdiocese-property/

Priest convicted of abuse wants to buy Archdiocese HQ

MPR’s Madeleine Baran reports on a bizarre twist in the clergy abuse scandal/bankruptcy at the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis: a priest who was convicted of child sex abuse wants to buy the archdiocese’s 60,000 square foot chancery headquarters so he can turn it into “a healing center for abuse survivors.”

According to the story, the Rev. Gilbert Gustafson, who served six months in jail after pleading guilty to sexually abusing a boy in White Bear Lake in 1983, says he “feels called by God to minister to victims of abuse and that buying the chancery and converting it to a center that aids abuse victims is part of his ministry.”

“I get it. I’ve caused harm, and I engaged in behavior that is reprehensible, but I am not a monster,” Gustafson tells Baran. “It goes back to that line. I am not a monster. I have done monstrous things, but I am not a monster.”

David Clohessy, who heads the national Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is appalled.  “I think it’s the height of arrogance for a child molesting cleric to say, ‘I sexually assaulted kids but I can help sexually assaulted people heal from this,’” he told MPR.

Rodriguez attorneys question juror in bid for new trial

Speaking of sex crimes, that guy who propelled the post-2003 surge in the number of people civilly committed to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program wants his conviction overturned. Why? Because of alleged juror misconduct in the trial that landed him on death row.

In U.S. District Court of North Dakota this week, attorneys for Alfonso Rodriguez – who was convicted in the 2003 rape, kidnapping and murder of college student Dru Sjodin – and prosecutors commenced the evidentiary hearing by questioning a juror about the reasons she voted to convict, according to the report from the Dickinson Press. The story says details about the alleged misconduct remain murky because defense motions were filed under seal.

Report: There’s good money in jailing toddlers

Feeling good after the long holiday weekend? Here’s a depressing story from the Daily Beast, which asserts that the private prison chain, the Corrections Corporation of America, “has found that incarcerating infants, toddlers, children, and mothers—as long as they’re undocumented immigrants—is a great way to boost their revenue by upward of $49 million over the previous year.”

“In just one year, these investment companies have profited millions off of the illegal detention of children and babies fleeing unthinkable harm in Central America,” Bryan Johnson, an immigration attorney who has represented many of the woman and children detained at the CCA’s 2,200-bed South Texas Family Residential Center, tells The Daily Beast.  “Because these companies wanted a bigger quarterly dividend, dozens of children, including some of my clients, were denied medical treatment to such a shocking degree that their lives were put at imminent risk of death or serious bodily harm.”