KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
by Joshua J. McElwee on May. 07, 2012 NCR Today
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Bishop Robert Finn, the first bishop to be criminally charged in the decades-long clergy sex abuse crisis, may face another charge of failure to report suspected child abuse when he stands trial in September.
Prosecutors in Jackson County, Mo., who charged Finn and his Kansas City-St.Joseph, Mo., diocese each with one count of failure to report suspected child abuse last October, have filed a request for separate second charges against both, The Kansas City Star reports this afternoon.
According to the Star report, prosecutors have also requested access to a “secret archive” of documents detailing the diocese’s responses to child abuse allegations both before and after Finn began serving in Kansas City in May 2004 as a coadjutor bishop.
According to the Star:
The proposed new charges, which Jackson County Circuit Judge John Torrence still must approve, would add an additional count of failure to report suspicions of child abuse to those that Finn and the diocese already face.
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