Bishop charged in priest child-abuse case

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Kansas City's Catholic bishop was charged Friday with not telling police about child pornography found on a priest's computer, making him the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic official indicted on a charge of failing to protect children.

Kansas City-St. Joseph Catholic Diocese Bishop Robert Finn, the first U.S. bishop criminally charged with sheltering an abusive clergyman, pleaded not guilty to one misdemeanor count of failing to report suspected child abuse.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said Finn and his diocese, which also was charged with one count, had "reasonable cause" to suspect a child had been abused after learning of the images.

"I want to ensure there are no future failures to report resulting in other unsuspecting victims," Baker said.

Finn has acknowledged that he and other diocese officials knew for months about hundreds of "disturbing" images of children that were discovered on a priest's computer but did not report the matter to authorities or turn over the computer.

In a statement issued through the diocese, Finn denied any wrongdoing and said he had begun work to overhaul the diocese's reporting policies and act on key findings of a diocese-commissioned investigation into its handling of the case of the Rev. Shawn Ratigan.

Until Finn was indicted Friday, no U.S. Catholic bishop had been criminally charged over how he responded to abuse claims, although some bishops had struck deals with local authorities to avoid prosecution against their dioceses.

Finn acknowledged earlier this year that St. Patrick's School Principal Julie Hess had more than a year ago raised concerns that a priest was behaving inappropriately around children, but that he didn't read her written report until after Ratigan was charged with child pornography counts this spring. Ratigan has pleaded not guilty.

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

Seven months later, a computer technician working on Ratigan's laptop found hundreds of what he called "disturbing" images of children.