Survivor Advocacy Group Provides Catholic Church Whistleblower Materials for State Investigation into Abuse of Religious Leaders | To free

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Survivor advocacy group says they are turning around “thousands of pages” of documents to the state attorney general’s office regarding the cover-up of sexual abuse by leaders of the Catholic Church in Wisconsin.

Leaders of Nate’s Mission, a project of the Wisconsin-based national group Ending Clergy Abuse, delivered the documents to Attorney General Josh Kaul’s office on Tuesday.

The group says the new documents include personal records, insurance papers and internal lists of accused priests that contain “almost twice as many names as those made public”. The group also says they have minutes of meetings where church leaders discussed “tactics and strategies to evade prosecution and credibly transfer accused clergy to new parishes.”

Kaul launched a statewide investigation abused by clergy and religious leaders in Wisconsin last April. In October, the state Department of Justice had received nearly 180 reports abuse by religious leaders or mishandling of allegations of abuse by religious organizations.

The investigation was hampered by some Catholic dioceses unwilling to participate, with some leaders citing previous cases of sexual abuse have already been reviewed by the judicial authorities.

Peter Isely, director of Nate’s Mission, said the investigation has prompted whistleblowers from across the state to come to his organization over the past few weeks and months in an effort to help.

“This network of church whistleblowers that grew organically with the Attorney General’s investigation obtained this evidence. This is criminal evidence,” Isely said at a press conference at the Capitol in the state on Tuesday. “Attorney General Kaul has promised us that his investigation will investigate, investigate and bring to account to the citizens of this state the management practices, corporate policies and secretive policies that have allowed so many children to be abused and to spend so much money on the cover in this condition.”

Isely said some of the documents are evidence of a 2007 policy by the Diocese of Green Bay that Isely said led to the “systematic destruction of virtually all evidence of criminal behavior.” He said that by adopting a policy of disposing of the personal files of priests who are deceased or who have not served for 50 years, the leaders of the diocese destroyed the evidence that the victims could have used in lawsuits for fraud against the ‘church.

He also claimed that the policy outlined in the whistleblower documents should have been approved by the Diocesan Finance Council, a lay committee of which Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson was a member at the time.

“These whistleblowers want to give (the Attorney General) the evidence he needs to conduct this investigation, as the Attorney General has promised us, wherever it leads,” Isely said.

In a statement, Johnson said he shared “deep sympathy” for survivors of abuse and called the group’s claims about his knowledge of diocesan politics “baseless lies.”

“I categorically deny even having knowledge of the destruction of documents much less being ‘involved’ in their destruction,” Johnson said in the statement.

Johnson, who is not Catholic, said he was on the diocesan committee because of his support for Lourdes Academy, which his children attended.

Nate’s mission is named after Nate Lindstrom, who was sexually assaulted as a teenager by priests while attending Notre Dame Academy, part of the Diocese of Green Bay.

A statement from the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay said they were unaware of the contents of the documents given to the attorney general’s office and “reserved further comment at this time.”

“We would like to emphasize that the Diocese of Green Bay remains dedicated to protecting children and vulnerable adults,” a statement from a spokesperson for the diocese read. “The Diocese has, over the past decades, put in place a variety of tools to ensure the safety of every person in the Diocese, including background checks, rigorous training and education on a safe environment, mechanisms mandatory reporting and outreach to survivors of abuse.”

The statement said the diocese released a list of clergy with substantiated allegations of minor sexual abuse in January 2019 after undergoing an outside review of the records of all diocesan priests and deacons.

Sarah Pearson, deputy director of Nate’s Mission, said her organization continues to encourage survivors of abuse by religious leaders and those with knowledge of their coverage to come forward.

“As we have seen with the evidence we have tabled today, this is really just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more that is not known that needs to be demonstrated and explored in the future. “Attorney General’s investigation. So we’re going to do whatever we can to help with that,” Pearson said.

Kaul said in a statement Tuesday that the DOJ also continues to encourage anyone with information about abuse to come to its office.

“The goals of this independent review are to ensure that victim services are accessible to survivors, to end future instances of abuse and to obtain accountability where possible, and we are committed to following the facts wherever they lead,” Kaul said in the statement.

Reports can be submitted online at DOJ website or by calling 877.222.2620.

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