A judge yesterday ordered the Roman Catholic Church to release thousands of pages of insurance records and confidential files related to a notorious case of sex abuse by a priest. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Lichtman ordered the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to make public 3,000 pages of insurance records and hundreds of pages from the disciplinary files of former priest Siegfried Widera.
Lichtman wrote that Widera's files prove that "priests with known sexual proclivities have been handed off from location to another without regard to the potential harm to the children of the Church."
The lead plaintiffs' attorney for more than 700 clergy abuse lawsuits pending in Southern California said the order would set a precedent for gaining access to the files of other priests, making it easier to determine when the church knew about molestation charges and how it responded.
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