 |
| U.S. Senator (R-Wisconsin), Ron Johnson Opposed Wisconsin Child Victims Bill giving legal protection against Predator Priests |
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) testified before the Wisconsin State Senate in 2010 against state legislation, the Child Victims Act, to eliminate the statute of limitations for sexual abuse crimes, making it easier for victims of sexual abuse to seek damages from the Catholic Church or any other culpable institution, Talking Points Memo, Dan Bice, Daily Kos, Uppity Wisconsin, and many other online journals reported.
In 2009, Johnson, a private citizen, also traveled from Oshkosh to Madison to deliver additional testimony opposing the Child Victims Act.
Johnson was successful in his efforts.
In Johnson ready now to recant his testimony?
Today would be a good time.
Not sure how often Johnson reads the New York Times, but today's report that "documents reveal that Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, as Milwaukee’s archbishop, moved to protect $57 million in church assets from sexual-abuse victims," is the kind of news that might result in a Johnson re-think.
And today, State Sen. Julie Lassa (D-Stevens Point) has reintroduced the Child Victims Act, noting that the "National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect estimates that only about 3 percent of child molesters are ever caught. That raises the specter of hundreds of pedophiles walking the streets of Wisconsin towns, safe in the knowledge that they are protected by the law from ever being held accountable for their crimes."
Whose side is Ron Johnson on?
His friends hide $57 million and he helps kill legislation that would offer a chance of some measure of healing for sexual assault victims.
From a policy perspective Johnson takes the side of the perpetrators, against the children.
With allies like Sen. Ron Johnson, the Vatican, Cardinal Dolan and the molesters must believe they are untouchable.
They are not.
That smoke wafting from the Vatican and Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan's New York plush offices today is not white smoke signaling the election of a new Pope.
This smoke is emitting from a smoking gun; or perhaps more justifiably described as a decades-long smoke screen the Catholic Church hierarchy has emitted to cover up the sexual abuse of its clergy against children.
Out of Milwaukee, we are treating to the news reported by Laurie Goodstein (NYT) that documents reveal Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, as Milwaukee’s archbishop, moved to protect $57 million in church assets from sexual-abuse victims. [See also Michael D'Antonio's and M.L. Johnson's reporting on the Catholic Church's shanda.]
Why should people traumatized for life by the Catholic Church hierarchy, with the complicity of the Vatican, be compensated?
It's called decency, a human trait apparently absent from Cardinal Dolan, regarded by some as a reformer—in Catholic Church holy nomenclature, this means a church official who has beseeched the hierarchy to stop shielding predatory priests, stop molesting children, but works against legislation stopping victims from receiving funds from the Church to help treat sexual trauma.
Not surprisingly, the Republican legislature didn't slip in the Child Sexual Abuse Victims Act into the state budget (lamely opposed by the Democratic Party). I guess sexual abuse victims don't make for sympathetic players in Scott Walker's Wisconsin. Open for business, and that includes you, sexual predators, just don't get caught and then you're home free.
Writes Goodstein:
But the documents lift the curtain on [Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan's] role as a workaday church functionary concerned with safeguarding assets, persuading abusive priests to leave voluntarily in exchange for continued stipends and benefits, and complying with Rome’s sluggish canonical procedures for dismissing uncooperative priests who he had long concluded were remorseless and a serious risk to children. In one case, the Vatican took five years to remove a convicted sex offender from the priesthood.Shocked by "true scandal?" No shit.
“As victims organize and become more public, the potential for true scandal is very real,” he wrote in such a request in 2003 to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican office charged with handling abuse cases until he became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.
Victims on Monday called for a federal investigation into the actions of Cardinal Dolan and his predecessors, but the cardinal sought to deflect criticism by saying in a statement Monday that he welcomed the release of the documents.
The current archbishop of Milwaukee, Jerome E. Listecki, had announced his decision to release the documents in April, one day before a judicial hearing. Lawyers for abuse victims had asked a judge to compel their release.
Archbishop Listecki released a letter last week warning Catholics in his archdiocese that the documents could shake their faith, and trying to explain the actions of church leaders while offering apologies to victims.
“Prepare to be shocked,” he wrote. “There are some graphic descriptions about the behavior of some of these priest offenders.”
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests '(SNAP) reaction is to seek the hidden $ millions and award the money to the 1,000s of victims.
New York Cardinal conspired with Vatican while in Milwaukee to transfer nearly $57 million into new corporation for the “protection” of funds “from any legal claim and liability”See Below for Ron Johnson Testifing Against Child Abuse Victims; Opposing Child Victims Act in Wisconsin
Milwaukee Archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in January 2011 not claiming Dolan’s transferred funds as assets.
Survivors asking US attorney to investigate Dolan for criminal charges of “fraudulent conveyance”
Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee) CONTACT: 414.429.7259
Click here for Dolan letter to Vatican.
No comments:
Post a Comment