Michigan: 5 former priests accused of criminal sexual behavior



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Four of the men were arrested Thursday in various parts of the country. Michigan will request the extradition of a fifth of India, said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.

"In this case, some clergy who were feeding young children and vulnerable adults were sadly hidden in plain sight, claiming to comfort their parishioners, hear their confessions and take advantage of their faith and faith. Authority, "said Nessel. said at a press conference in Lansing on Friday.

"And today, we are beginning to hold this clergy to account."

Nessel's office investigated allegations of sexual abuse by clergy in the seven Catholic dioceses of the state. In October, Michigan police seized hundreds of thousands of pages from church offices.

Nessel's office said it was investigating 400 information received since the beginning of the year on the clergy abuse hotline from his office and had asked the dioceses to suspend their own procedures of internal control until the end of the investigation.

"Almost all of these charges are the direct result of calls on our phone line, but they were later corroborated by files seized in dioceses last fall, followed by multiple interviews with victims," ​​said Nessel in a statement.

The Michigan inquiry into sexual abuse by clerics in the Catholic Church is complemented by a federal inquiry and similar investigations in at least 12 other states and in the District of Columbia.

The investigations follow a damning report released by a grand jury in Pennsylvania last August, accusing more than 300 "predatory priests" of having sexually abused more than 1,000 children in six dioceses since 1947. The vast majority of cases occurred before the Catholic bishops in the United States instituted new protocols on child safety.

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