KENTUCKY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
Posted by Barbara Dorris on June 11, 2012
It’s pretty clear that Owensboro Catholic officials have endangered kids – and broken the church’s abuse policy – for years, by hiding at least one credible child sex abuse allegation against a priest from parishioners and the public.
Last week, Fr. Louis Francis Piskula was arrested and charged with sodomy and child sexual abuse. The official statement released by the diocese admitted that Fr. Piskula “had not been in any ministerial assignment since 2002 in accordance with the policies enacted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”
In plain English, what this means is that Fr. Piskula had been secretly ousted from active parish ministry a decade ago because of a credible child sex abuse report.
Yet, as best we can tell, neither Owensboro Bishop William Medley, nor his predecessor Bishop John McRaith, nor any other current or former diocesan staffer ever disclosed this fact.
And their secrecy, we fear, may have enabled Fr. Piskula to molest again. We have no evidence of this, but the chances seem slim that a child molester kept “under the radar” for decades would assault a child in 1978 and never touch another kid again.
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