MINNESOTA
Star Tribune
Article by: DAN BROWNING, KEVIN GILES and KEVIN DUCHSCHERE , Star Tribune staff writers Updated: October 4, 2013
An attorney for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis said Friday that neither police investigators nor a computer forensics expert found evidence to support allegations by a former archdiocesan employee that one of its priests had viewed child pornography on his computer.
Tom Wieser, an attorney for the archdiocese, said some “false inferences” have been drawn from police reports that seem to imply that child pornography was found on the priest’s old hard drive.
The St. Paul police, Ramsey County and Washington County all indicated they would consider new investigations should evidence supporting the allegation — which surfaced anew Thursday — prove compelling. Meanwhile, the Hugo resident who first discovered pornography on the computer and reported it nearly a decade ago said he had kept a copy of what he found and provided it to police.
The former archdiocese employee, Jennifer Haselberger, 38, said in a deposition last month that she resigned from her job as chancellor for canonical affairs because top church officials failed to pursue her allegations last fall. Haselberger said child pornography had been copied from the priest’s old hard drive and stored on discs in a vault.
In a deposition for an unrelated case last month, Haselberger said that she reported the allegations to authorities and quit. She could not be reached for comment Friday and her attorney did not respond to messages.
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