Bishop Robert Finn charged with not alerting police on child porn

A Kansas City Catholic bishop was indicted on Friday on claims that he failed to inform authorities about pornographic images that were discovered on a computer belonging to a priest who is under investigation on child porn charges.

A grand jury indicted Bishop Robert Finn and the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph on the class A misdemeanor, which carries up to a year in jail and a fine of $1,000 for Finn if he is convicted.

Authorities said between December 16 and May 11 of this year, the 58-year-old bishop “had reasonable cause to suspect a child may be subjected to abuse” by Father Shawn Ratigan, a priest from Independence, Missouri, who was indicted in August on 13 counts related to child pornography.

This indictment makes Finn the first U.S. bishop criminally charged on allegations of sheltering an abusive clergyman.

The bishop denied any wrongdoing in a statement that was released through the diocese.  Finn said he had begun work to overhaul the diocese’s reporting policies and act on the key findings of a diocese-commissioned investigation into its handling of Rev. Ratigan’s case.

Hundreds of photographs, including one of a naked child’s vagina and ones focusing on the crotch area of children, were discovered on Father Ratigan’s computer.

Authorities were alerted to Rev. Ratigan’s child abuse after a computer technician working on his laptop found hundreds of disturbing images of children on his hard drive.

The technician turned to computer over to the diocese, where church officials examined the photos and reported them to Monsignor Robert Murphy, who called a police captain who is a member of the diocese’s independent review board and described a single photo of a nude child that was not sexual in nature.

Reports say without reviewing the photo, the captain, who was identified as Rick Smith, advised Murphy that although the picture might meet the definition of child pornography, it probably would not be investigated or prosecuted.

The images were eventually downloaded onto a flash drive and the computer was turned over to Ratigan’s brother, who destroyed it.

Smith said he was shocked to find out that there were hundreds of images of children on Ratigan’s computer, rather than a single image.

Several months before the technician made the discovery, the principal at St. Patrick’s School, Julie Hess, had notified Finn that people were complaining about pictures that the priest was taking of children.

In a memo dated May 19, 2010, Hess wrote that several people had complained that Ratigan was taking compromising pictures of young children and that he allowed them to sit on his lap and reach into his pocket for candy.

Finn had passed the complaint over to Murphy, who is the diocese’s vicar general, and Murphy told authorities that he spoke with Ratigan about setting boundaries with children.

It is unclear whether Smith will be disciplined for advising Murphy without actually seeing the photo.