My issue is, since when did it become a crime not to report a crime?
What has our country become?
Would a school principal or teacher or teacher’s aide be held to the same standard?
A doctor or psychiatrist must tell the police if a crime is being committed. I don’t know when that started. I would imagine the better part of 100 years.
Is it just this sect of Christianity or have others like Methodist, Evangelicals etc... been caught doing or watching or possessing this disgusting sin ? The Catholic Church (not the people) have always worried me. The power they held throughout history and whats left of it today, I believe, is corrupting.
The bishop was trying to protect an evil man:
Ratigan was charged in May with three state child pornography counts, and in June with 13 federal counts of producing, possessing and attempting to produce child porn. He has pleaded not guilty and remains jailed.
After receiving the principal’s concerns in 2010, Monsignor Robert Murphy, the diocese’s vicar general, spoke with Ratigan about setting boundaries with children. He then gave Finn a verbal summary of the concerns and his meeting with the priest.
Last December, a computer technician found on Ratigan’s laptop hundreds of what he called “disturbing” images of children, most of them fully clothed with the focus on their crotch areas, and a series of pictures of a 2- to 3-year-old girl with her genitals exposed.
Diocese officials reported the photos to Murphy, who did not report them to authorities and instead called a police captain who is a member of the diocese’s independent review board and described a single photo of a nude child that was not sexual in nature.
Without viewing the photo, the captain said he was advised that although such a picture might meet the definition of child pornography, it probably wouldn’t be investigated or prosecuted. It was not until this May that Murphy told police Ratigan’s laptop had contained hundreds of photos.
David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, on suggested Friday that other individuals should be charged along with Finn.
It’s the Missouri child abuse statute. Guy has a statutory duty to report child abuse he becomes aware of.
Am I in trouble now?
When you are in a position of authority; secular, religious or political- shielding a subordinate is a moral and oft legal offense.
This is not exclusive to the Catholic sect, but too often the network excused, covered and reassigned priests to obscure remote assignments rather than expose the sin.
Our country would be better if persons in authority did not cover ( and thereby excuse) felonies committed by their peers and subordinates.
IMHO.
We are all criminals now. It is only a matter of the degree of the perceived heinousness of the thought crime that matters.
Stoking much of the anger is the fact that only three years ago, Bishop Finn settled lawsuits with 47 plaintiffs in sexual abuse cases for $10 million and agreed to a long list of preventive measures, among them to report anyone suspected of being a pedophile immediately to law enforcement authorities.
It seems that this was part of a previous court order.
Actually, it is a crime. And a teacher or principle or therapist would be held to the same standard, pretty much anyone but a confessor or a lawyer. I’m a Catholic and live in KC but I think I would have voted to indict. It’s not heinous but did show poor judgment.
It is also a crime to think about a crime and a crime to think about thinking about a crime.
He knew for 5 months? He knew about the porn, how? Did he view it? Was he viewing it for those 5 months? Then he is indeed guilty of a crime.
Sort of like harboring a wanted criminal?
I would like to point out that there is something very wrong with a Diocese (or area of Church influence) that can allow Kathleen Sebelius to pretend she is a Catholic, and in which Planned Parenthood flourishes.
Why?Former Kansas attorney general Phill Kline found guilty of ‘ethical misconduct’
Planned Parenthood protected, children forgotten, the prosecutor prosecuted...
The testimony in this week’s trial revealed that the case began very simply: records from the state agency responsible for receiving child sex abuse reports seemed underreported. Officials with the Social and Rehabilitative Services (SRS) in 2003 told Kline that they had just over 1000 cases of child sex abuse reports for the whole state.
But there was a huge problem: SRS in Sedwick County, Kansas, reported they had just under twice that number of cases.
Kline’s chief investigator, Tom Williams, a former FBI agent with 31 years of experience (including the investigation of drugs, organized crime, white-collar crime, and public corruption) looked into the disparity. Judge Richard Anderson, Chief District Judge of Shawnee County, gave him a subpoena for SRS records.
He got just under 20,000 SRS reports of child sex abuse. After whittling them down, removing duplicates from several reporters of the same crime, Williams found 6,797 reports of child sex abuse in Kansas between 2001-2003, and more than 1800 reports of child sex abuse in Sedwick county.
But there are just four records in SRS showing reporting from abortion providers during that time. Kline’s office had KDHE subpoenaed by Judge Anderson in order to obtain the ID numbers for the reporting abortion providers. They discovered that out of the 166 cases of abortions on girls 14 years old and under, Comprehensive Health Planned Parenthood (CHPP) in Johnson County and George Tiller’s Women’s Health Care Services clinic had each reported just one case of child rape.
For Kline’s office, every one of those 166 cases - for just one year - represented 166 children who needed the help and intervention of the state against child sex abusers. But a case against child sex abusers can’t begin without names, and the only ones with the names were Planned Parenthood and George Tiller.
And that is where a straightforward case of law enforcement trying to save young girls from sexual predators goes awry.
So in Kansas City Kansas, a pro-life attorney general loses his right to practice law, due to the intervention of HHS' Sebelius, for going after Planned Parenthood because Planned Parenthood was hiding the rape of minors. Meanwhile, in Kansas City MO, an otherwise examplary bishop IS prosecuted for this porn case.
Sounds like damnable hypocrisy and double standards going on in Kansas City KS/Kansas City MO.
If Bishop Finn had just been covering up for Planned Parenthood, Sebelius would have directed the prosecutor to back off.
All this “what has our country become” on literally every single issue is a little tiring. There is no doubt the country has down a bad road on many issues.
This is not one of them. I mean we cannot live in complete lawlessness.
Most states have had laws for a couple decades now requiring people in official type positions such as doctors, teachers, etc. to promptly report any evidence they run across of any child abuse, not just the sexual variety.
I believe the rationale behind this, which is not totally unreasonable, is that an adult is capable of and responsible for reporting any abuse committed against him. A child often does not know how to report, or even that he has the right to do so. Certainly children deserve and should be given extra protection beyond that given to adults.
If we were to go by the media, the Catholic Church is the only entity to ever be involved with child porn. The Church wil always be a target. I’ll bet the Bishop got indicted only because the KC-Saint Joe Diocese is broke.
I just don’t believe most of the stories. Did it happen? Yes. On the scale the media likes to trumpet? No. Did the Church try and cover it up? Yes, but I believe that it was because they were as horrified and confounded asthe parishioners were. And they simply didn’t know better.
Now Priests are vetted like cops, and are trained in spotting this sort of thing. This guy sound like a rotten apple that slipped through.
Just my opinion..
If I ever run across cp on any computer at work, I will likely fire the individual responsible, but the absolute LAST thing I will EVER do is call the cops.
They do nothing but complicate and/or harm all parties/companies involved, regardless of whether they are innocent or guilty.