Fr. Michael F. Hale

Included in the MI A.G.’s 10/2022 report as the subject of the sexual abuse of minors. Hale’s personnel file shows an incident in his car in 1955 with a boy, age 15, who was hitchhiking, and mentions his “old problem.” In 1956 two teenage boys at a Hancock parish told a priest that Hale took them and other boys on boat rides, gave them beer and sexually propositioned one of them multiple times. He also is said to have given boys alcohol in the rectory. Hale was sent to the Servants of the Paraclete in NM in 1956 then reassigned to a Caspian parish. Accused by 1968 of “sexual impropriety” with a boy at a Trenary church. He was then assigned as pastor of a Hubbel parish. In 1972 the father of a boy told Bishop Salatka that Hale had taken “liberties” with his son and that he should stop taking young boys to his camp. In 2004 a man reported that Hale had sexually abused him as a teenager. The same year, accused priest Joseph Carne said that he had been abused by Hale, leading to “lifelong troubles.” Another man came forward in 2007, alleging abuse as a boy by Hale. Hale died in 1975. He appears to have remained in active ministry until his death.