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	Abuse Survivors Group Protests Decision Not to Retry Priest By Patricia Montemurri Detroit Free Press [Detroit MI] April 6, 2006 http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20060406/NEWS11/60406014 National leaders of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests protested today outside the offices of Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, blasting her decision not to retry a Catholic priest on abuse charges after the Michigan Supreme Court overturned his conviction. Barbara Blaine of Chicago, a cofounder of the organization, and David Clohessy of St. Louis, its national director, said Worthy's decision could discourage other abuse victims from coming forward. "We want them to retry the case," Blaine said. Not doing so "just sends the wrong message to everyone involved," she said. Blaine noted that few priests ever were charged with crimes or spent time in jail, even after abuse was revealed, in part because victims were afraid to come forward or statutes of limitation prevented charges from being brought for long-ago crimes. On Tuesday, charges against the Rev. Edward Olszewski, a former Detroit priest, were dismissed in Wayne County Circuit Court after the Worthy's office decided not to seek a new trial. A December ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court overturned the priest's 2002 conviction for allegedly abusing a young teenager at St. Cecilia parish in Detroit in the 1970s, saying he was denied a fair trial because a juror did not reveal before being selected to hear the case that she had been sexually abused. Worthy's office said it did not seek a retrial because Olszewski already had served a three-year sentence of probation by the time the supreme court ruled. Olszewski moved to Florida in the late 1970s and has been barred from wearing a clerical collar or working publicly as a priest by the Archdiocese of Miami since Albert Green, a former Detroiter, made his allegations of abuse public in 2002. "The victim had his day in court and the priest had completed his sentence" by the time his conviction was overturned, Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for Worthy, said today. Miller said the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office has been in the forefront nationally in prosecuting such cases. In 2002, the office charged and convicted Olszewski and three other men who'd worked as priests in Michigan for long-ago abuse. Prosecutors were able to bring the cases to trial because the clock on the statute of limitation on sex crimes had stopped when the men moved out of state. "We'll continue to pursue very seriously any charges that are alleged against clergy members in an effort to try and prosecute them, " Miller said. Worthy was out of the office today, but Blaine and Clohessy and two other SNAP supporters delivered a letter to her office and met briefly with Nancy Diehl, chief of the Wayne County Prosecutor's Trial Division, who said she'd take their concerns to Worthy. Outside of work, Diehl serves on the Archdiocese of Detroit's Review Board, which makes recommendations to Cardinal Adam Maida about how to deal with predatory priests. She also has volunteered with the archdiocese to lead workshops for volunteers on how to be alert to signs of potential abuse. Detroit Catholic leaders say the church locally has reached out to victims, cooperated with law enforcement to remove predatory priests and trained 22,000 employees and volunteers on identifying abuse and maintaining safe environments, and plan to train another 6,000. Contact PATRICIA MONTEMURRI at 313-223-4538 or pmontemurri@freepress.com.
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