5/18/06: UPDATE to "Fox Guarding the Henhouse"

+Today’s Cincinnati Enquirer carried the news that the Cincinnati Archdiocese’s reputedly homosexual Personnel Director, Vince Frasher, has now been charged with sexual abuse by Alex Henties, who, until July 2005, was the criminal-in-charge down at the Archdiocesan Criminal Background Check Department.

+In a related development, the 5/19 issue of The Catholic Telegraph, whose odor you may have detected in your mailbox this afternoon, carries a 5/11 letter from Vince Frasher – an attempt at damage control - to all the priests and deacons in the Archdiocese.

+In this letter, Frasher includes the following points:

• Henties was known to have a felony record at hiring, but the victim of the crime was Frasher himself, and Henties “made restitution.”
• Frasher hired Henties despite his background because “the archdiocese needed the work done, and [Henties] had the ability to do the job well.”
• Frasher made the hire because he believed in “repentance, forgiveness, and the ability to change.”
• Frasher had repeatedly attempted, over a period of years, to “help” Henties, ostensibly with his drug habit.
• Since 2003, “more than 350 individuals have been denied to work with children because of what the [background] checks turned up…”

+Pardon us for wondering, but:

• Were any of those 350 individuals given a second chance on the basis of “repentance, forgiveness, and the ability to change”?
• How did Frasher attempt to help Henties with his drug habit? Is Henties qualified to counsel drug addicts? What about the rest of Henties’ criminal record: menacing, theft and domestic violence?
• How is a person with a long rap sheet, who appears at a church food pantry demanding food, qualified to perform the highly sensitive duties involved in a background check?
• What kind of “restitution” was made by Henties to Frasher?

+And finally, rumors are flying that the Archdiocese has now filed for bankruptcy protection in federal bankruptcy court under Chapter 11A. In case you’re not familiar with Chapter 11A, that regulates MORAL bankruptcy.

+More as more develops…