Catholic Diocese of Superior Releases List of Abusive Priests
SUPERIOR Wisc. — The Catholic Diocese of Superior’s director of administrative services Dan Blake, says this is the first time it’s released information on abuse by members of the clergy. “It was time to take responsibility for the past and have a chance to start fresh” Blake said.
He went on to say there are 23 priests and other clergy members listed as abusers by the Diocese. Those listed, in the words of the Diocese, “have “had a substantial allegation of sexual abuses of minors.” At least 17 people on the list have died and 3 others have been, or are now, incarcerated.
The investigation by the church lasted more than a year says Blake. “Bishop Powers was installed in 2016. This has been on his to-do list. There’s been a lot of obstacles, we spent a lot of money on an outside professional, a former FBI investigator to go through our files. We’ve worked with volunteer lay people to go through the files to make sure there’s no insider trading, no cover-up, no sweeping under the carpet. This has been a painful, thorough process. We’re proud to be publicly presenting the list and we’re tremendously humbled and apologetic to the victims of the past.”
The time frame for the abuses is quite extensive, with some dating back to the 1940’s but the vast majority occurring in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Blake says this report is probably several years overdue. W outlined the process undertaken by the Diocese. ”This has probably been several years overdue, but it’s a lot of work to go through all the history of priest personnel files, find the ones that had abuse reports, follow up investigate and making sure it met the legal standards to be fair to both the victims and the accused and then make the list public. So, it’s been years in coming, the purpose is to come clean. Like I say acknowledge and apologize and hope that we can be partners in healing.”
The Diocese of Superior and the Catholic Church say steps have been taken to keep abuse from happening in the future. Blake says “The main thing is criminal background checks for all adult staff and volunteers that are going to have any contact with children and safe environment training. A lot of training on recognizing abuse, recognizing grooming behaviors, making sure we do everything in our powers to prevent any other abuse from happening.”
There have been questions about the timing of this release coming just before a long holiday weekend, but Blanks says the timing was simply an attempt by the Diocese to get the information out before the end of its year, which is this Saturday.
