As bishops gather, prosecutors step up scrutiny of church
DETROIT — Hundreds of boxes. Millions of records. From Michigan to New Mexico this month, attorneys general are sifting through files on clergy sex abuse, seized through search warrants and subpoenas at dozens of archdioceses.
They’re looking to prosecute, and not just priests. If the boxes lining the hallways of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s offices contain enough evidence, she said, she is considering using state racketeering laws usually reserved for organized crime. Prosecutors in Michigan are even volunteering on weekends to get through all the documents as quickly as possible.
For decades, leaders of the Roman Catholic Church were largely left to police their own. But now, as American bishops gather for a conference to confront the reignited sexabuse crisis this week, they’re facing the most scrutiny ever from secular law enforcement.
A nationwide Associated Press query of more than 20 state and federal prosecutors last week found they are looking for legal means to hold higher ups in the church accountable for sex abuse. They have raided diocesan offices, subpoenaed files, set up victim tip lines and launched sweeping investigations into decades-old allegations. Thousands of people have called hotlines nationwide, and five priests have recently been arrested.
“Some of the things I’ve seen in the files makes your blood boil, to be honest with you,” Nessel said. “When you’re investigating gangs or the Mafia, we would call some of this conduct a criminal enterprise.”
If a prosecutor applies racketeering laws, also known as RICO, against church leaders, bishops and other church officials could face criminal consequences for enabling predator priests, experts say. Such a move by Michigan or one of the other law enforcement agencies would mark the first known time that actions by a diocese or church leader were branded a criminal enterprise akin to organized crime.
“That would be an important step because it would set the standard for pursuing justice in these cases,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and CEO of CHILD USA, a Philadelphia-based think tank that tracks statute of limitations reforms.
Monsignor G. Michael Bugarin, who handles sex abuse accusations for the Detroit Archdiocese, said they too are committed to ending abuse and cover-ups. Bugarin said they cooperate with law enforcement, and that won’t change if the attorney general is considering organized crime charges.
“The law is the law, so I think we just have to respect what the current law is,” he said.
Some defenders of the church bristle at the notion of increased legal action, saying the Catholic institution is being singled out by overzealous prosecutors. A spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not respond to requests for an interview Monday. A spokesperson for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops refused to comment on law enforcement investigations into specific dioceses across the country, instead referring all such inquiries to the dioceses themselves.
Seventeen years after U.S. bishops passed a “zero tolerance” policy against sexually abusive priests, they too are considering new measures for accountability over abuse. And last month Pope Francis issued a global order requiring all Catholic priests and nuns to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups to church authorities.
At the conference on Tuesday, Archbishop of Miami Thomas Wenski asked if a greater emphasis should be placed on swiftly reporting allegations to civil authorities.
“If this is something that’s criminal, isn’t the first response to the alleged victim to tell them, ‘this is a crime, call the authorities’?” Wenski asked. “Where we got into trouble before was, before reporting crimes we wanted to take it upon ourselves to determine whether there was a crime to report, and that’s not what we should be doing.”
In response, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, chair of the Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations Committee, said all bishops should follow the law in reporting crimes to authorities.
The meeting follows a grand jury report that documented decades of clergy abuse and cover-ups in Pennsylvania, which thrust the Catholic Church’s sex assault scandal back into the mainstream last fall and spurred prosecutors across the U.S. to launch investigations of their hometown dioceses.