Long-sealed records of 14 Catholic priests who worked in four high schools and 45 parishes across southern Minnesota were opened to public scrutiny Tuesday, revealing hundreds of documents indicating that the Diocese of Winona did not report claims of child sex abuse to law enforcement, did not remove offenders from ministry, and continued to financially support the priests even as the patterns of abuse became clear. The Winona Diocese anticipates eventual bankruptcy" as a result of that lawsuit and others being filed under the new Minnesota Child Victims Act. The 14 priests worked in all four high schools in the diocese. The files, including mental health reports on the priests and detailed complaints of sexual abuse, were made public as part of a groundbreaking lawsuit making its way through Ramsey District Court. "The files being released on each of these credibly accused offenders reflects not only their history of offenses, but how they have been handled by top officials over the years," said Jeff Anderson, the attorney for the lawsuit. "Every time we disclose the past, we make it less likely to be repeated in the future." The sexual abuse ranged from oral sex to fondling to rape, the documents showed. Emotional abuse often accompanied the physical abuse. For example, the Rev. Richard Hatch would force one of his boy victims to have oral sex and then make him go to confession and confess it as if he were the cause of it, documents showed. Like other dioceses, Winona kept the priests on the move, even after serious allegation of abuse.
Latest
Latest News
Each news summary is created according to strict standards. Here's how we do it.
Each summary is created using a consistent editorial procedure. The target length is approximately 16 lines of 11-point Arial text in a 650-pixel-wide column. Up to 25% of a summary may be set in bold to emphasize the most important ideas. Summaries are composed of verbatim excerpts presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original news source, with very minor editorial additions. Where material has been omitted between excerpts, the omission is indicated with ellipses (...). Any words added by an editor for clarity or context appear in [brackets]. Our original news editor was Fred Burks. Tod Fletcher edited most summaries from 2007 through 2014, and Mark Bailey has served as news editor since 2014.