Kansas City Bishop Makes Deal to Avoid More Criminal Charges By A. G. SULZBERGER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Penn State, The Roman Catholic Church, EVERYONE tries to keep folks "above the law" - like Bishops, Coaches, and Saint Joe Paterno -- from having to testify, under oath, in open court. These "pillars of the community" can make a deal to avoid more criminal charges, and meet privately with the District Attorney.

WHAT A SHAM!!

This from The New York Times. Please follow link to original
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Kansas City Bishop Makes Deal to Avoid More Criminal Charges
By A. G. SULZBERGER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN


KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In a deal to avoid a second round of criminal charges, a Roman Catholic bishop in Kansas City has agreed to meet monthly with a county prosecutor to detail every suspicious episode involving abuse of a child in his diocese for the next five years.

Bishop Robert W. Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph was indicted in October by a grand jury in neighboring Jackson County for failure to report suspected child abuse by a priest he supervised. He is the first American bishop to face indictment on charges of mishandling an abuse case.

The agreement announced on Tuesday between Bishop Finn and the prosecuting attorney of Clay County, Daniel White, leaves the bishop open to prosecution for misdemeanor charges for five years, if he does not continue to meet with the prosecutor and report all episodes.

Both cases relate to the bishop’s supervision of the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, who has been accused of taking pornographic photographs of young girls in local parishes and homes. The bishop learned of the pornographic photos last December after a technician fixing the priest’s computer expressed serious alarm, but the diocese did not turn them over to police until May. During that period more photographs of children were taken.

Mr. White said in an interview that the agreement would build accountability and protect children, saying that an investigation showed that “good people were having difficulty making good choices.”

“It cuts out the middleman,” he said. “He’s the bishop, I’m the prosecutor. We’re going to meet, he’s going to tell me what’s going on, and I’m going to decide whether to call law enforcement.”

Bishop Finn also agreed to visit all the parishes in Clay County, inform parishioners of how to report suspicious behavior and introduce them to diocesan officials in charge of child protection.

Bishop Finn, who had testified before the grand jury in Clay County, said in a statement, “I am grateful for this opportunity to resolve this matter and to further strengthen our diocesan commitment to the protection of children.

“The children of our community must be our first priority,” the bishop said. “Each deserves no more and no less. I stand ready to do all within my power not only to satisfy this agreement but also to ensure the welfare and safety of all children under our care.”

The case was taken up by grand juries in two counties because the diocese is headquartered in Jackson County, and the priest was alleged to have taken some of the pornographic pictures of children in Clay County.

This is not the first time the diocese agreed to extra safeguards aimed at ensuring that allegations of abuse did not go unreported. Some of those, which were put in place as part of a settlement with abuse victims in a previous case, were ignored in the case of Father Ratigan.

Mr. White, noting that he was Christian but not Catholic, said he believed the process would be more effective this time, emphasizing that he was independent from the diocese. He said he would not have agreed to the deal unless he thought that Bishop Finn would fulfill the agreement.

“After five years, if he does everything he’s supposed to do he avoids prosecution,” he said.

But victims’ advocates criticized the deal because it essentially allows Bishop Finn to avoid prosecution and relies on him to volunteer information to the prosecutor.

“There’s no one else that they would make this kind of a deal with but a bishop,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor of public law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, who has written about the church and child abuse cases. “There’s always all this maneuvering to avoid having bishops testify in child sex abuse cases, or in any case.”

A. G. Sulzberger reported from Kansas City, and Laurie Goodstein from New York.