MINNEAPOLIS, (Reuters) – Prosecutors in Minnesota brought criminal charges yesterday against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, accusing it of failing to protect children from a priest who pleaded guilty in 2012 to sexual abuse.
Prosecutors found “a disturbing institutional and systemic pattern of behavior” over the course of decades at the highest level of leadership in the archdiocese, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said.
“The facts that we have gathered cannot be ignored, they cannot be dismissed and are, frankly, appalling,” Choi told a news conference. “And, more importantly, our community cannot allow them to be repeated.”
The charges against the archdiocese, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January, are the latest development in the child sexual abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church in many U.S. cities.
The archdiocese is charged with three misdemeanor counts of contributing to the need for protection or services for the minors who were the victims of the sexual abuse and three misdemeanor counts of contributing to the minors’ status as juvenile petty offenders or delinquency. The archdiocese also faces a related civil complaint.
