Three Priests Accused of Sex Abuse Served in LA Crosse Diocese Decades Ago

La Crosse Tribune
July 7, 2015

http://lacrossetribune.com/news/local/three-priests-accused-of-sex-abuse-served-in-la-crosse/article_07c541cc-b210-5ee3-85da-62b3614cebbc.html

The names of three priests who served in the La Crosse Diocese decades ago were among seven identified Tuesday as being credibly accused of sexual abuse, although none is alleged to have occurred in Wisconsin.

The priests were members of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and one now is a therapist in the Twin Cities suburb of Woodbury. Their names were announced during a press conference at the law offices of Jeff Anderson and Associates in St. Paul, Minn., as part of a settlement in a suit that a victim identified as Doe 30 filed against the order and the dioceses of Duluth and New Ulm, Minn.

They are:

Michael Charland, who was pastor of St. Thomas More Newman Center and director of Catholic Campus Ministry at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and pastor of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Big River in 1984. He left the order that year, the Vatican laicized him in 1989, and he now is a therapist in Woodbury.

Emil Twardochleb, who was pastor at St. Joseph Parish in Arkansaw in 1955, died in 1976.

Orville Munie, also pastor of St. Joseph in Arkansaw in 1963, died in 1993.

The order, based in Belleville, Ill., issued a statement Monday condemning sexual abuse and saying that it is “collaborating with the attorneys of victims as well as with civil and church authorities in order to bring healing to those who have suffered.”