MINNESOTA
MinnPost
By Brian Lambert | 10/04/13
Worse and worse … . Today Madeleine Baran and Mike Cronin at MPR report: “Upset that her superiors had refused to take action, a former church official reported to police that leaders of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis had kept secret for eight years images of pornography — some of it appearing to show children — belonging to one of its priests. Jennifer Haselberger, the archdiocese’s former chancellor for canonical affairs, marched the images she’d found into the offices of one church leader after another in May 2012. But none responded. The last straw for Haselberger came after she provided Archbishop John Nienstedt with copies of some of the images she had discovered in the archdiocese’s files on the Rev. Jonathan Shelley, 52. She said the photos appeared to show boys performing oral sex. The Rev. Peter Laird, the archdiocese’s vicar general at the time, Nienstedt’s deputy, ordered her to hand over the pornographic images.”
In the Strib story on the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt’s “top lieutenant,” Jeff Strickler writes: “St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson, a leading plaintiffs’ lawyer in pursuing cases against the archdiocese over child abuse, said the police report implies that the archdiocese destroyed evidence. The police report says that the archdiocese seized the evidence about the child pornography and kept it in a vault. When another diocesan official, Jennifer Haselberger, discovered the evidence, [the Rev. Peter] Laird told her to put it back in the vault, she told police. Haselberger, who has since resigned, brought the matter to police attention. When the police went to the vault, the evidence of child pornography that they were told would be there was missing. … The pornography allegations made public Thursday date to 2003. But most of the police report focuses on events that have taken place in the last few months after officers were contacted by Haselberger.”
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