Judge Orders Kansas City Diocese to Turn Over Intrenal Sex Abuse Documents

Less than a week after the first member of the Catholic Church hierarchy was convicted of felony child endangerment  in Philadelphia a judge in Missouri has ordered the Kansas City diocese to turn over internal reports and documents concerning sexual predatory priests.  It is a likely safe bet to assume that as in Philadelphia internal diocese documents will confirm that bishops and their henchmen covered up for and enabled predator priests to prey on additional children and youths.   The truth is that the Catholic Church hierarchy is a disgusting cesspool that needs to be cleansed all the way to the throne of St. Peter.  If you or I had done a fraction of the things done by the hierarchy to protect child rapists, we'd be in prison currently.  Deference and special privileges for the Catholic hierarchy need to end now once and for all.  Here are highlights from the San Francisco Chronicle on developments in Kansas City:

The Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph has to provide prosecutors with information about the diocese's investigation into past reports of priests accused of abusing children, a Jackson County judge has ruled.

Jackson County Circuit Judge John M. Torrence, who is overseeing a case against Bishop Robert Finn and the diocese, also said in a ruling Wednesday that the diocese must turn over documents from the independent investigation into the case of the Rev. Shawn Ratigan that the diocese commissioned.

Ratigan has pleaded not guilty to state and federal child pornography charges and remains jailed.  Finn and the diocese are charged with misdemeanor failure to report suspected abuse to the state after learning of suspected child pornography on Ratigan's computer. Finn has acknowledged learning about the photos in December 2010, six months before Ratigan was arrested. The trial is scheduled for September.

[A]ttorneys for the diocese countered that records of interviews by U.S. Attorney Todd Graves' law firm are protected by attorney-client privilege. The judge disagreed, however, saying the diocese publicly announced Graves was conducting the 2011 investigation and said that it would issue a public report when the investigation was concluded.

"The attorney-client privilege does not apply to communications intended to be disclosed to third parties or those which are in fact disclosed," Torrence said in his ruling.

Torrence also said that while information about the diocese's investigations into alleged misconduct regarding five other priests is relevant to the state's current case, the information could not be photocopied and must be returned to the diocese's lawyers within 10 days of the case being completed, The Kansas City Star reported

As I said, all bets are that a pattern of cover up and protection of child molesters will be confirmed by the documents to be turned over to the Court.  Sadly, until every bishop/cardinal in every diocese across the nation (actually, across the globe) is forced to turn over such internal documents, we will never know the full magnitude of the moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy.