MONDAY,AUGUST 19,2002
NATION
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN - 21A
Priest in Virginia reinstated despite protest
The Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. — All five lay members of the Diocese of Richmond's sexual abuse panel have resigned after the reinstatement of a priest accused of abusing teenage boys in the 1970s.
The panel recommended in June that Rev. John E. Leonard be removed from duty and hospitalized for counseling. Bishop Walter F. Sullivan then cleared the priest of the allegations and returned him to his suburban parish.
Leonard, who was put on leave in May when the investigation began, denied the allegations.
Panel member Kathy Jones, who works for the state Department of Juvenile Justice, last week became the fifth member of the 10-person panel to resign. The other four stepped down during the past several weeks. The remaining panelists are priests or work for the Catholic diocese.
"I resigned because the process was not followed — the same reason
everyone else has given," Jones said Friday. She refused to discuss the case further.
Other former panelists said Sullivan did not follow procedures and they never received the investigative team's final report. Some also said they disagreed with the bishop's decision.
The investigative report concluded the accusers were believable, while Leonard's responses were not, according to The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Va., which obtained a copy.
"While the accusers/victims know each other and have spoken to each other, we do not believe they have fabricated any of these accusations," the report states. "They also indicate that there is a pattern of misbehavior here. This is not a one-time incident."
Four men accused Leonard of improper sexual behavior when he was principal of the St. John Vianney Seminary, a boys high school in Goochland County that closed in 1978. A fifth man told The Virginian-
Pilot this week that Leonard raped him while he was a student at the school in 1974.
Goochland County prosecutor Edward K. Carpenter began a criminal investigation Monday. The diocese plans to turn over all its investigative materials on Leonard, Apuzzo said.
Sullivan is on vacation and could not be reached for comment, the Rev, Pusquale J, Apuzzo, diocese representative, said Friday.
Leonard's lawyer, James C. Roberts, declined to comment Friday on the panel members' resignations. He previously has said he instructed the priest not to discuss the allegations.
In other developments:
A former altar boy sued the Boston archdiocese and a high-ranking official, Mignoror Michael Smith Foster, who he says molested him repeatedly 20 years ago. The lawsuit alleges church officials were negligent in their supervision.
Foster, judicial vicar and presiding judge of the archdiocese's Metropolitan Tribunal, remains at work, archdiocese spokeswoman Donna Morrissey said. She declined to comment on the allegations.
—The San Francisco arch迪есie placed a priest who serves as the police department's chaplain on leave while Child Protective Services investigates a complaint he molested two brothers 40 years ago.
Monsignor John P. Heaney, 74, has been department chaplain for 35 years.
"He has done nothing wrong," his attorney, Jim Collins, said.
In Illinois, Gov. George Ryan signed a law requiring clergy to report cases of child abuse to authorities. The law does not apply to information learned during religious activities, such as confession, which critics call a significant loophole.
The law adds elergy to the list of professions who must report suspected cases of abuse to the Department of Children and Family Services. Failure to report will be punishable by less than a year in jail.
Media can coexist with changing laws
The Associated Press
DAVIS, WVa. — Despite predictions to the contrary, newspapers can have a bright future as technology-driven information companies, a top industry executive told editors and publishers Friday.
Acknowledging "things are getting very strange out there" economically, W. Dean Singleton, vice chairman and chief executive of MediaNews Group, said, "It's time to charge, not retreat. ... I'm a believer that the payoff on the Web is there, it's just waiting for us to discover the right models.
"We are well-positioned as the cornerstone of media convergence when the chains of cross-ownership are released next year," he added, referring to expectations that the Federal Communications Commission will remove restrictions on joint ownership of broadcast and newspaper outlets.
"It is indeed a delicious irony that the oldest communications medium
is emerging as the most modern, most high-tech and most successful," Singleton said.
Some have predicted the Internet and the World Wide Web would undermine newspapers' future.
And Singleton said he once agreed with those who predicted the Internet would be a fad and have little long-term impact, but described himself as a "reformed skeptic."
"It all comes back to the power of our local connection," he told attendees at the annual convention of the West Virginia Press Association. "We're starting to understand that reading a newspaper and surfing the Web are not 'either-or' propositions."
Denver-based MediaNews is the seventh-largest newspaper group in the United States and owns the Charleston Daily Mail. Singleton also is chairman of the Newspaper Association of America and a member of The Associated Press board of directors.
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