Interesting Hearing About Diocese Lists

Recently, Diocese of Winona  and Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis went into court concerning the additions to their previously disclosed lists:

Diocese of Winona Release Their List of 14 Priests Accused of Sexually Abusing Minors

Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis Release Their List of 34 Priests Accused of Sexually Abusing Minors

The argument revolved around questions they seemed to have about what  needed to be added.  The suggestion being that they should be able to decide not to disclose names because they might cause problems with those who were named.   The Minneapolis Tribune reported:

Judge John Van de North also reiterated that the new list, which covers priests accused of abuse from 2004 to the present, would include all priests who faced accusations, not just those deemed “credibly accused” by the archdiocese. That was the ­standard for the first, older list of priests, released last month.

The ruling applies to both the Twin Cities archdiocese and the Winona diocese, which had been named in an abuse victim’s lawsuit that compelled the release of the lists.

The judge then gave them another month to produce the lists and set up a schedule where the Diocese had until the 10th to come with a disclosure plan.  The survivors were then given until 17th to respond to the plan.  The judge did suggest the addition of a neutral third party to determine what should be disclosed.

The reports seem to be that the court was clearly suspicious because of the historic hiding of information that has gone on with the Church, indicating that they shouldn’t be the decision makers on what is getting disclosed.   It will be interesting to see if this motion actually widened what they need to disclose as compared to if they had just followed the original plan.

The early names are now disclosed, there are more lists that exist in Minnesota, and there are many more names to find.

Abuse of children and the continued silence by the offenders needs to be prevented. If you suffered, saw, or suspected such events, it is important to know that there is help out there.