NEBRASKA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Friday, Jan. 15, 2016
Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, SNAP outreach director (314-503-0003 cell, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org)
Nebraska Catholic officials are deceiving their flock about Bishop Robert Finn, the only prelate in the US to be criminally convicted for refusing to report child sex crimes to police. (Finn now works in Nebraska.)
It’s dreadfully disingenuous to claim, as Bishop James Conley and one of his spokesmen JD Flynn are doing, that “Finn’s offense was an administrative mistake.” It was not. It was a crime. There was a trial. Finn was found guilty. He was penalized.
It’s also disingenuous to claim, as Conley and Flynn are doing, that (Finn) failed to notify police immediately of (a now-convicted priest’s) behavior.” Finn never notified the police. (Months later, one of Finn’s underlings called the police.)
And, in fact, Finn kept information and suspicions about these heinous crimes from police for months.
Finn, in fact, did not “fail.” Time and time again, Finn made deliberate, self-serving decisions to protect himself, his reputation and his priest, instead of protecting his flock.
Failure suggests a good faith effort that went awry. Had Finn tried to call the police but misdialed, that would have been a failure. Had he mailed evidence to police but forgot to put a stamp on the envelope, that would have been a failure.
But Finn did not “fail” to call the police. He knowingly refused to do so, for months, and during those months, more child sex crimes were committed, more kids were hurt, more families were deceived and devastated.
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