West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has filed a sexual misconduct lawsuit against the state’s Catholic Church and its former bishop, Michael J. Bransfield. The complaint alleges that Bransfield and the diocese knowingly employed abusive clergy and failed to conduct adequate background checks on those…
On November 29, 2018, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, released the names of 31 priests or deacons said to have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The dioceses reviewed more than 2,000 files containing tens of thousands of documents before releasing the…
West Virginia Catholic Bishop Michael J. Bransfield recently submitted his resignation to Pope Francis, who accepted the resignation and ordered an investigation into allegations the bishop sexually harassed adults. This follows in the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report identifying over 300 “predator priests”…