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Ratigan Case Summary

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Background of the Case:
This case is about Rev. Shawn F. Ratigan, a 47-year old catholic priest at Kansas City-St. Joseph diocesan. He was convicted of making child pornography and was arrested on May 2011 and was imprisoned for 50 years in prison by Kansas City federal judge.

Ratigan’s Early Life:
Records says that Ratigan has graduated from Conception Seminary College in Missouri in 2000. He was worried about his graduation because he joined college after 12 years of completing his high school and later joined the conception board and then graduated from theological studies at Mundelein Seminary.
On June 4, 2004, he started his career as pastor at St. Thomas and was always actively participating in the events organized by the church. He …show more content…

Ms. Creech along with her supervisor prepared a report to Murphy stating their findings that only a few hundreds of photographs were downloaded from the internet and rest were taken with his camera. She has also attached the copies of few of the images that she has found in the laptop in her report. Murphy has contacted the legal counsel outside the Diocese and Kansas City police for an opinion on photographs that were found on Ratigan laptop and wanted to know whether those images constituted child pornography. The counsel opinion was that the images were not eligible to be considered as pornographic and the police officer Rick Smith who looked into the issue stated in his report that, he was informed by Murphy that there was only one nude photograph of a child and that to it belonged to Ratigan’s family member which was not a sexual pose. But Murphy denied his statement and said he doesn’t recall saying something like that to the officer.
On December 17, 2010, Ratigan did not report to the church and so the Officials of the church got worried and reported to police. Police found him unconscious in his garage while his motorcycle was running. Everyone thought that it was an accident but originally, he attempted suicide because his pornographic photographs came out. Someone has announced during the Sunday mass that Father Ratigan has met with an accident and everyone should pray for his recovery. When he survived, Bishop Finn has sent him to a psychiatrist

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