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Wisconsin prosecutors arrest record nineteenth clergy child molester: Civil cases for institutional cover up continue to help bring criminal charges
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CONTACT
Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director, 414.429.7259
Waukesha County, Wisconsin, July 28, 2009 -- Waukesha County prosecutors are to be commended for joining the growing number of law enforcement officials in Wisconsin who are aggressively and expertly using a unique provision in the state’s child sex abuse laws to bring clergy and others who have raped and assaulted children to justice.
With the serial nature of many of these crimes, Wisconsin’s District Attorneys are demonstrating the three key elements they need to bring these cases forward: repeated public encouragement to victims and witnesses to go directly to the police and report the assault no matter when the crime occurred, the full application of the criminal statute, and allowing victims to file civil cases against the attacker and those who covered up the crime.
Last week, the Waukesha District Attorney filed charges against Fr. James R. Blume. Blume, investigators say, committed first degree sexual assault of a child while assigned to St. Luke’s Catholic Parish in Brookfield, a suburb of Milwaukee, in the late 1970’s.
Waukesha County officials are also currently prosecuting Ronald Schaefer, an Illinois Lutheran teacher and Chairman of the Board of Elders who sexually assaulted a grade school student in Menominee Falls in 1990 while teaching at a church run school.
Fr. Blume lives today in Florida and can no longer function as a Catholic priest. But evidence from two civil cases filed against the bishop and church officials in Fort Wayne, Indiana in the 1990’s were no doubt critical in bringing the charges against him. Evidence obtained from these civil cases show that Blume continued to assault children after leaving the Milwaukee Archdiocese. Knowing a pattern or history of committing child sex crimes is a major factor in bolstering a prosecutor’s resolve to bring these cases forward.
Fr. Blume makes a record nineteenth clergy person prosecuted in Wisconsin by way of the “fleeing sex offender” provision. The criminal statute on child sex abuse “freezes” or “tolls” if the offender leaves the state before the statute has expired. In 2007, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the provision as constitutional. Since then, DA’s in Milwaukee, Juneau, Barron, Walworth and now Waukesha County have all been successfully using it, making Wisconsin the nation’s leader in going after child predator clergy.
That’s good news for a state known for the opposite distinction. Wisconsin is the only state in the country where clergy molesters and their bishops cannot be brought to civil court for negligence because of a first amendment “ban” on such cases, the result of a truly bizarre set of court rulings from 15 years ago.
Fortunately, Blume’s civil cases were filed in Indiana, so the criminal evidence obtained in those cases could be made public and available for Wisconsin prosecutors. The same is true of many of the successful recent criminal cases in Wisconsin brought against fleeing clergy.
Imagine the criminal evidence that would surface if the ban on civil cases against clergy and other child molesters was eliminated in Wisconsin? That would happen if the Wisconsin Child Victims Act, which will be reintroduced soon in Madison, is made into law. Such a reform is long overdue. The bill would follow other states in eliminating the civil statute on child sex abuse and grandfather in those victimized as children in the past.
Victims, advocates, law enforcement and yes, common sense, has long maintained that most child sex abuse victims do not report the crime, if at all, until well into adulthood. The dynamics of child rape and sexual assault are steeped in secrecy, shame and social stigma. This is no doubt one reason why, as a Human Rights Watch study reported last year, less than one in ten child molesters are known to law enforcement officials in the United States.
Does it matter when a child was raped? Or does it matter that prosecutors be allowed to obtain the evidence, witnesses and proof to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the crime occurred?
There is no such thing as an “old” case of child rape as long as the predator is unaccountable, unrepentant and untreated. There are only “cold” cases waiting to be properly reported, investigated and adjudicated.
SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the nation’s oldest and largest self-help organization of clergy sex abuse survivors, founded in 1989 with over 8,000 member in 72 chapters (SNAPnetwork.org).
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