ARCHBISHOP ADMITS TRANSFERRING PRIEST (Unsealed records reveal Milwaukee sex ause case)

According to documents, which were unsealed this month, the Rev. William Effinger admitted to Archbishop Rembert Weakland in 1979 that he had molested at 13-year-old altar boy on Easter that year.  The archbishop, who established a model program for handling sexual abuse by clergy transferred the priest who was a known sex offender from one parish to another in 1979 and did not remove him until 1992.  Weakland, who heads the Milwaukee's Roman Catholic archdiocese, said in a sworn deposition that he didn't think it should be divulged to the new parish that the priest had molested two children in his previous assignment.  The altar boy, Joseph Cerniglia, now 36, said in an interview Friday that Effinger had invited him to stay overnight in the rectory so I wouldn't have to get up so early for the morning Mass.  Cerniglia said Effinger gave him a beer, said they would have to share the only bed, then began to molest him.

(Milwaukee, Wisconsin)