Thursday, August 28, 2008

"Fraudulent Concealment": Belleville Diocese Pays

This is not (necessarily) going to make Abp. Dolan's day:

In a rare civil judgment against a US local church, an Illinois jury yesterday found the diocese of Belleville guilty of "fradulent concealment" of the records of an abusive priest, ordering the diocese to pay $5 million in damages to a survivor who claimed five years of abuse in the 1970s.

The jury found that the diocese had "fraudulently concealed" evidence that Kownacki, 73, of Dupo, was known by church leaders from reports as early as 1973 to be a violent rapist and child sex offender but kept reassigning him to parishes without warning the public.

Similar charges are being litigated in Milwaukee at this time.

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