I must have been asleep at the switch on this story. I apologize. I honestly cannot keep up with these miscreants. Especially miscreants of the Catholic persuasion.
Father Shawn Ratigan liked to take pictures of children. He took them at every opportunity. Apparently, many of these photos were lewd or pornographic. Several of the photos were of the “up skirt” variety involving 12-year-old girls. Creepy, right? It gets worse though, his parish knew about the problems and did nothing for over a year.
The principal of a Catholic school warned a top official of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph more than a year ago that parents and teachers found the Rev. Shawn Ratigan’s behavior toward children troubling, including the hundreds of pictures the priest took.
When you add that to the fact that parish authorities knew about the images for six months before alerting authorities, well – it looks bad for everyone involved.
The parish authorities hid behind their legal counsel. Which is odd given the public push to out pedophile priests. Why would they delay reporting Ratigan? Why did they wait until others made the complaint?
“The very next day, we contacted a Kansas City, Missouri Police officer and described one of the more disturbing images,” Bishop Finn continued. “At the same time the diocese showed the images to legal counsel. In both instances we were told that, while very troubling, the photographs did not constitute child pornography as they did not depict sexual conduct or contact.”
It’s clear the process has no integrity. I have no idea how to fix this mess short of suing the Catholic church out of business and having the believers start over.
