It’s good to see high-ranking church officials beginning to be held to account for their role in covering up the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic church.
Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn today became the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic official convicted during the church’s decades-long child sexual abuse scandal.
Following a short non-jury trial, Jackson County Circuit Court Judge John Torrence convicted Finn of one misdemeanor count of failing to report suspicions of child abuse but acquitted him on another count of failing to report.
Torrence sentenced Finn to two years of probation then suspended the sentence, meaning that if Finn completes the unsupervised probation without any new incidents happening, his criminal record will be expunged.
Finn had faced a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $1,000 fine on each charge. Prosecutors asked for two years of probation. Defense attorneys sought a suspended sentence.
Finn had faced a jury trial in about three weeks but agreed to a trial before just a judge, perhaps fearing harsher treatment at the hands of a jury. The news report gives the history of the case, which involves a priest in his diocese who has pleaded guilty to engaging in child pornography and is currently awaiting sentencing.
That’s not even a slap on the wrist.
So, all he got was a misdemeanor conviction, with no punishment at all, and even the record of the conviction disappears in two years, assuming he isn’t caught hiding more abuse of children in that time?
This is a good thing, how?
I think this is much more than a slap on the wrist. While under probation, if the bishop hears of any illegal act by any person under his authority he must immediately report it to the police. If he fails to do so, the judge can send him straight to jail, and he then gets a criminal record.
So for two years there can be no coverups, no moving accused priests to new assignments, no private ‘counseling’ of victims to get them to not press charges, or giving a church punishment without notifing secular authorities. I think that will be much harder on the bishop than sitting in a federal prison being treated as a martyr. Not just legalling harder, but imagine how galling this will be to a church leadership that considers itself above the law.
It would not surprise me if the bishop takes a 2 year leave of absence from his post, so that the church can put someone else in charge who can still flaunt the law.
If he fails to do so, the judge can send him straight to jail, and he then gets a criminal record.
If he was anyone else, especially someone who couldn’t afford a good lawyer, he’d already be in jail.
The light penalty clearly looks like special treatment. Plus, the term I read was ‘unsupervised probation’ which I’m assuming means no meetings with probation officers or other types of scrutiny, which would greatly reduce the chance of him getting caught doing anything wrong. Could someone explain what unsupervised probation means?
Here is an article that explains it.
It is undoubtedly a light sentence but it is still significant that a bishop was convicted at all. There was a time when high-ranking clergy would not even be questioned aggressively, let along indicted and prosecuted.
I cannot imagine that the church will let him return to being a bishop of a diocese with a conviction. I suspect that they will shift him to some administration role in the bureaucracy. But given the tone-deadness of the Vatican, they might think there is nothing wrong with him returning to his post.
Or the church could shuffle him around to put him in a place he isn’t likely to see any abuse.
That is, if there is such a place in the Catholic church.
The Usage Police are watching for those who flout the law!
Perhaps?
Rather, of a certainty.
Where, I wonder, is the armor of God that the faithful claim they are adorned with through faith? Where is the certainty, the security, the steadfastness that the mere acts of believing and confessing confer upon the humble supplicant?
That these qualities seem to be absent even in a person as well versed and exalted as a bishop (as a bishop!) is just one of the reasons that there are atheists.