Jennifer
Haselberger was five years into her "dream job" as a canon lawyer for
the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis when she alerted
law enforcement officials last spring to what she believed was child
pornography on a priest's discarded computer.
Haselberger
soon resigned, saying the church hierarchy ignored her entreaties to
notify civil authorities.
Today she is a central figure in an
investigation that has engulfed the archdiocese anew in the searing
issue of clergy sex abuse.
St. Paul police have
said they saw no child porn among the more than 2,000 images they
reviewed, leading a lawyer for the archdiocese to characterize
Haselberger as "imprudent and unsophisticated."
But those who know the 38-year-old whistleblower say she is anything but that. They describe Haselberger as savvy and fearless.
"Whoever
said that about her is either a barefaced liar or they've never met
Jennifer Haselberger. There's nothing unsophisticated about that woman
at all," said Larry Frost, a retired Army intelligence operative turned
lawyer who squared off with her in mediation over a client's employment
dispute with the church.
"My sense of her was, this was a solid, believing Catholic who had a moral compass."
Haselberger was traveling in Asia last week and unavailable for an interview.
People
who have known Haselberger since she was a teenager agree that she is a
formidable intellect. Some said they were not surprised that she became
the rare church insider to inspire a clergy misconduct investigation.
Although
Haselberger grew up in a family with deep roots in the church, her
father said she didn't show much interest in religion until after she
enrolled as an English major in what was then the College of St.
Catherine in St. Paul.
The Haselbergers belonged to
St. Odilia's parish in Shoreview. Two siblings of her mother, Joanne,
took religious vows.
The Rev. John Maslowski had been pastor of the
Church of St. Casimir in St. Paul, which ministered to local Polish
immigrants, but he died before Jennifer was born. Sister Mary Joanne
Maslowski, a member of the Felician Sisters in Chicago, maintained a
close relationship with the family.
Jennifer's
father, Ken Haselberger, said his family dressed up and attended St.
Odilia's every Sunday, then went out to breakfast.
But after Jennifer
was confirmed, he said, she declared that she'd had enough and was never
going to church again. "Of course, she kept going," he added.
Outspoken at St. Catherine's
Ken
Haselberger became estranged from his family for a number of years
after a bitter divorce in 1990, when Jennifer was a freshman at Mounds
View High School. He remembers her as "extremely bright -- always at the
top of her class kind of thing," and as a "tremendous athlete" who
competed in cross country, nordic skiing and track.
"She was very competitive and very hardworking, both in school and in athletics," her father said.
Haselberger's
sophomore year in college seems to mark a turning point for her. She
told a reporter for a campus newspaper in 2009 that she had been
counseled by Sister Ann Thomasine Sampson, then 82, that a person must
act on her beliefs.
Haselberger, opposed to the
death penalty, began writing to a death row inmate at the Louisiana
State Prison in Angola and eventually became his spiritual adviser and a
regular visitor to the prison.
Anne Maloney, an
outspoken Catholic feminist who heads the philosophy department at what
is now St. Catherine University, said she became Haselberger's mentor
after she added philosophy as a second major in her junior year.
"She was one of the smartest students I've ever had. The world was her oyster," Maloney recalled.
She
said Haselberger loved children and entered college wanting to be a
kindergarten teacher. Maloney and her husband, Stephen Heaney, a
philosophy professor at the University of St. Thomas, hired Haselberger
as a nanny for their children. "They adored her," Maloney said.
The
first inkling she got that Haselberger was a committed Catholic came in
the wake of a controversy that involved then-Archbishop Harry Flynn.
Though she says she has forgotten what it was about, a flurry of news
reports from the period say that he had initially agreed to say mass in
St. Paul for a meeting of a group opposed to abortion, but backed out
after learning that its founder had made what many considered
anti-Semitic statements.
Maloney was identified as a
Flynn supporter, and Haselberger told her that her grandmother
applauded her for supporting him. Shortly after that, Maloney said,
Haselberger asked for her counsel in restarting the Students for Life
club on campus.
Campus news reported tensions
between an abortion opposition group under Haselberger's leadership and
Women Oriented Women, a lesbian group, in 1999. Hasselberger, a senior,
jousted with critics in opinion pieces.
Maloney
said Haselberger was willing to take risks to get things done. She even
got Flynn to say mass at Our Lady of Victory Chapel on campus. "She was
fearless," Maloney said. "She knew what she believed."
Stephanie
Klenk, who worked in the alumnae office at the time, didn't share
Haselberger's views. But she remembers Haselberger as a well-spoken
"force on campus" who was "willing to go to the media at any point."
"On the one hand she was a pain, and on the other hand, we are very proud of her," Klenk said.
World travels
Haselberger
went on to get a doctorate in philosophy from the University of London,
then pursued more graduate work at the University of Leuven in Belgium.
Her father said she won an academic award there that came with some
money, and she used it to begin seeing the world. Her church biography
notes that she has lived in four countries, including China and Africa,
and has visited at least 50.
In 2002, while still
pursuing her doctorate, Haselberger wrote an article for the American
Feminist about systematic employment and education discrimination
against women in Canada, Europe, Asia, Russia and the U.S. She concluded
the article by noting that although the conditions in America differ
from those in places like Afghanistan, much work remains to be done.
She
went on to obtain a licentiate in canon law from Catholic University of
Leuven in Belgium. Her thesis was titled "Sources of legitimization of
the Rent-A-Priest movement. An examination into the issue of 'married'
priests administering the sacraments."
She stirred a minor controversy
by concluding that "the faithful have the right to approach 'suspended'
priests for the sacraments" and that so-called Rent-A-Priests were
acting within church law by ministering to them.
Scott
Bergstrom, a cousin who lives in Denver, said he saw her at a funeral
about that time. He recalled that she had developed "an acute interest
in women's and children's issues." She was trying to resolve feminism
with Catholicism, he said, "and that's a bit of an intellectual journey,
I think."
Bergstrom said his cousin could do it if anyone could.
"She
was a very tough girl growing up," he said. "Very strong, very willful.
And she seems to me the kind of person that would, if she were
confronted with a very difficult moral choice, she would have no
difficulty making the right decision regardless of its personal cost to
her own career."
Pursuing 'safe environment'
After
earning her degree in canon law, Haselberger went to work as chancellor
and director of the tribunal for the Diocese of Crookston, where she
also was director of "Safe Environment."
Bishop Victor H. Balke
appointed her to investigate allegations that a priest named Joseph
Palanivel Jeyapaul had sexually abused a girl. Haselberger concluded the
allegations had substance, and Jeyapaul returned to India before
criminal charges were filed in 2006.
He has denied the allegations and
had been in active ministry in India working with children for years,
according to reports. He was arrested in March 2012 and his extradition
is pending.
Haselberger went to work for the Fargo
diocese in 2006. She became the bishop's delegate in canon law -- a
position usually filled by priests or nuns -- in December 2007. She took
the same job in the Twin Cities in October 2008.
Two
years later, Haselberger spoke at St. Catherine University and told a
school publication that she'd made a big find in the archdiocese
archives -- an autographed photo of the novelist Oscar Wilde addressed
to Archbishop John Ireland.
Ireland met Wilde, an
Irish writer who was imprisoned on sodomy charges in the late 1800s,
while traveling after his retirement. Haselberger said she hung the
picture in her office.
Several years later she made
another discovery in a church vault while she was reviewing files on a
Mahtomedi priest seeking a new post. That's when she ran across the
alleged pornography that had been copied from one of the priest's
computers in 2004.
Haselberger tried to persuade her superiors to report
the matter to police, but they said the matter had been investigated
before and told her to return the materials to the vault.
Haselberger
reported the incident to the Ramsey County Attorney's office and
resigned in April, then spoke publicly about the issue with reporters
from Minnesota Public Radio.
St. Paul police initially had closed the
case without filing charges.
But they reopened it last week after the
matter became public and new evidence surfaced.
Prosecutors in Ramsey
and Washington counties say they will consider criminal charges if the
investigation warrants them.
"She has either done a
very stupid thing or a very brave thing, and I'd like to believe it's
the latter," said Steve Cribari, a law professor at the University of
Minnesota who is believed to be the first American lay person to obtain
his licentiate in canon law, in 1977.
But as a former federal public
defender, he cautioned that there are more allegations against priests
that are unfounded than one might think.
"We're in a
kind of reverse inquisition, aren't we, in a lot of this,'' Cribari
said. "If the hierarchy doesn't demonstrate it is pure, clean and
absolutely altruistically motivated, then we all ... vilify them. And
I'm not sure that's right," Cribari said. "This is still the United
States and you are still innocent until proven guilty in our courts."
'Set loose a ... lioness'
Ken
Haselberger said he patched things up with Jennifer after she returned
to the United States and agreed to talk so people would understand his
daughter's act of conscience.
When Jennifer went to
Crookston, he said, she was told to provide a safe environment for
parishioners, "which meant getting rid of priests that should not be
priests."
"So the archdiocese set loose a lion -- no, a lioness -- and trained her to do the job," he said.
In the end, he said, his daughter was torn between the church she loves and the job she loved.
"She
trained for this for so many years, and now she probably will never
have another job within the Catholic church," he said ruefully.