Sister Margaret update

Article published Friday, February 25, 2005

Judge keeps documents sealed for now in probe of nun's killing

The Rev. Gerald Robinson speaks with his attorney during the court hearing. ( THE BLADE/MADALYN RUGGiERO ) Zoom

By ROBIN ERB
BLADE STAFF WRITER

Documents supporting an unprecedented police search of Toledo Catholic Diocese files during the investigation into the 1980 murder of an elderly nun will remain temporarily sealed, despite the approval by the defendant in the case that they be released.

Dressed in his clerical collar, the Rev. Gerald Robinson, who is accused of strangling and stabbing Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, appeared briefly late yesterday before Lucas County Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas Osowik, who was to decide whether The Blade would be allowed access to search warrant affidavits signed by homicide investigators.

In soft-spoken, one-word answers, the 66-year-old priest said he had no objections to the release of the papers.

His appearance came after several hours of behind-closed-door arguments in the judge's chambers among prosecutors, Blade attorney Fritz Byers, and Thomas Pletz, attorney for the diocese.

The search of the downtown church headquarters in September marked one of the first times in the country a law enforcement agency has used a court order to search diocesan files.

Judge Osowik initially ruled The Blade could have the records under federal law, despite arguments from prosecutors that the documents should be shielded from public inspection and that their release could hinder the defendant's right to a fair trial.

"The government must show a compelling state interest" to keep the records sealed, Judge Osowik said. "I'm unable to find the government has met that threshold."

John Weglian, seated, and Brenda Majdalani, both of the Lucas County prosecutor's office, attend a hearing on The Blade's request for documents related to the murder investigation. ( THE BLADE/MADALYN RUGGIERO ) Zoom

As reporters, photographers, and cameramen looked on from the jury box, the judge added that staff in the court clerk's office were trying to locate the original documents to make copies of them.

But in a last-minute argument, assistant county prosecutor John Weglian said the papers were "investigatory work product" and protected by state law. He asked that prosecutors be given time to decide whether to appeal Judge Osowik's decision.

"Once they are released, there is no remedy to the state," he said.

Noting the time - it was about 4:15 p.m. - and the fact that the documents had not yet arrived in court, Judge Osowik agreed to hold the papers at least until Monday morning.

The decision came four days after a Blade story revealed the Sept. 15 and 17 searches of the Toledo Diocese offices as part of the investigation into Sister Margaret Ann Pahl's murder.

The unsolved case was reopened in 2003 after a 41-year-old woman asked the diocese to pay more than $50,000 for counseling she received after claiming she had been sexually assaulted by several priests.

Perhaps most startling in her allegations was that she said much of the abuse happened in ritualistic ceremonies attended by several priests, including Chet Warren, a former Oblates of St. Francis de Sales priest ousted from his order in 1993 after five other women accused him of sexual misconduct.

She also accused Father Robinson of assaulting her once. The priest's lawyer, Alan Konop, has declined to comment on the allegation, citing a gag order in the murder case.

The woman's accusations eventually reached the prosecutor's office, where cold case detectives recognized Father Robinson's name as that of a suspect from the unsolved murder of Sister Margaret Ann, 71, in the Mercy Hospital chapel 24 years earlier.

The police inquiry into the old murder case took a bizarre twist last year after detectives interviewed at least three other women who alleged ritual sex abuse by other priests.

Prosecutors said they decided to seek a judge's order for a search warrant in the murder investigation after they requested church records on Father Robinson, a longtime cleric, from the diocese, but received only a few personnel reports.

Armed with a search warrant, police and representatives from the Lucas County prosecutor's office walked into the diocese headquarters on Spielbusch Avenue on Sept. 15.

They were handed more than 100 documents bearing Father Robinson's name.

Two days later, they returned with another warrant - this time demanding access to the office of Father Michael Billian, the Episcopal vicar and the diocese's top administrator.

Though they didn't find more documents about Father Robinson, they found a file stamped "privileged" containing cases of child abuse, Mr. Pletz told The Blade recently. Prosecutors have said they didn't find any references to ritual abuse but would not reveal the contents of the records or why they did not seize them.

Mr. Pletz has said the diocese tried to cooperate with the prosecutor's office in turning over paperwork about abuse allegations.

Claudia Vercellotti, head of the Toledo chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said she was frustrated by yesterday's hearing in light of a pledge by Father Billian in 2002 to turn over clerical sexual abuse files to prosecutors and "do business in a very transparent way."

"If this is … transparent, I can't even imagine what a cover up would look like," she said.

The SNAP organization is expected to deliver a letter today to the prosecutor's office demanding that officials return to the diocese to seize the child-abuse records in Father Billian's office.

She said they could hold the key to whether the diocese engaged in a pattern of cover-up of sex abuse crimes by priests as alleged in more than a dozen lawsuits pending in Lucas County Common Pleas Court.