Prosser Enabled Sexual Predator, Possibly Violated State Law Himself

The Greater Wisconsin Committee has started running a commercial which points out a shortcoming of David Prosser when he was District Attorney for Outagamie County in the sense that he willfully failed to prosecute a priest accused of sexually assaulting children:



The reasons that Prosser had given for his negligence would be laughable if they weren't so sad and if the results weren't so grave.  One of the reasons that Prosser had given was that the accused priest was related to a star of the Lawrence Welk show:

Prosser even told the victims and their mother that he didn't want to prosecute the case because the priest's brother was a "celebrity" because he appeared on the Lawrence Welk TV show.

Given that Feeney’s brother, Joe Feeney, was a well-known tenor featured on the Lawrence Welk show, Prosser said a prosecution would attract a lot of media attention. “He said it would be very embarrassing,” said Troy Merryfield.~ Capital Times, 2/4/2008

In reality, Prosser just wanted the problem to go away, rather than deal with the horrid reality of what was happening. Or just as likely if not more so, he did not want to alienate his conservative base or take a chance of derailing his own political ambitions by going after a member of the clergy.

The truly horrific part of this sad saga is that because of Prosser's decision to do worse than nothing, but actually enable the priest, an untold number of other children were sexually assaulted by this monster.  By his willful failure to act in a responsible manner, Prosser is as guilty as the priest.

While Prosser might not be criminally subject to any charges of failure to protect, there is a possibility that Prosser did violate the law.  Wisconsin State Statute 48.981(2)(c) deals with mandated reporters and reads:

Any person not otherwise specified in par. (a) (b), or (bm), including an attorney, who has reason to suspect that a child has been abused or neglected or who has reason to believe that a child has been threatened with abuse or neglect and that abuse or neglect of the child will occur may report as provided in sub. (3)

Obviously, Prosser suspected that a child had been abused.  This is evidenced by the fact that he chose not to prosecute but instead contacted the Bishop and said that the priest should be moved to another parish to avoid prosecution:

David Prosser was more concerned about moving Feeney to another community than prosecuting him. 

It is clear from both Prosser’s statements about the case, and the letter from Bishop Wycislo, that both Prosser and Wycislo thought that the best course of action was for Feeney to be removed to a different parish rather than attempting to prosecute him for the sexual assaults.

D.A. Prosser said when his he raised concerns about Feeney’s conduct, [Bishop] Wycislo said he would "take care of it." "I assumed that when the Bishop said he would take care of it that he would remove this guy from the parish," Prosser said. ~Associated Press 5/18/2008 

[...] 

In 2008 Prosser said: “It was my demand that the priest would be removed from the parish, and if it wasn’t, if that didn't happen, I would be forced to prosecute.” ~WBAY-TV, 5/16/2008

Even though Prosser had obviously suspected that something had happened, but he never reported the abuse to the police or to the child welfare system.

In the sake of fairness and honesty, I do not know if this law was written in exactly this way at the time that Prosser chose to put his politics before the welfare of all those children, but I have to believe that some form of it did exist at the time.

But even if Prosser is technically not guilty of violating the letter of the law at the time, these actions alone violate everything a person responsible for upholding the law should do and are at best unethical.

By actively trying to help sweep these sexual assaults under the rug, Prosser enable the priest to go on for another 26 years and molest at least another dozen children, probably more. This willful failure to protect innocent children alone should bar him from holding a law license, much less having a seat on the highest court in the state.