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Catholic Diocese Sued by WV Attorney General for Knowingly Employing Pedophiles
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/19/catholic-diocese-sued-by-wv-attorney-general-for-knowingly-employing-pedophiles/
Catholic Diocese Sued by WV Attorney General for Knowingly Employing Pedophiles
By Hemant Mehta, March 19, 2019
At this point, it’s not entirely weird for a state’s attorney general to go after the Catholic Church for its role in child sexual abuse — it’s welcome — but what happened in West Virginia today is extraordinary.
Over the past several months, several Dioceses have publicly released information about priests who worked for them who were later credibly accused of sexual abuse. West Virginia began investigating the Church last fall, and in November, the Diocese released a list of 18 priests who were credibly accused of abuse between 1950 and 2018. They also published a list of 13 priests who were employed by the Diocese at some point but credibly accused of abuse in another state.
Good start, right?
Not when the state knows you’re still hiding something.
Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, has now filed a lawsuit against the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and Bishop Michael J. Bransfield alleging that the Diocese knew a priest was a child abuser but allowed him to work at a Catholic elementary school, in violation of the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act.The suit alleges that Father Patrick Condron admitted to sexually abusing a student, was sent to treatment and then got assigned to a local elementary school. Parents were not notified that the school “was employing a pedophile,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit names multiple priests who got jobs working with children in the Diocese even though Church officials knew exactly why they had been fired from their previous places of employment. In some cases, those predator priests went after children again.
Note: This is not a reference to acts of child abuse, and the subsequent coverups, that have been exposed in other towns, cities, states, or countries across the globe.