MILWAUKEE — The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin denied Attorney General Josh Kaul‘s petition to reopen the Archdiocese of Milwaukee‘s chapter 11 bankruptcy case. The case has been closed since June of 2016.
In the court filing, the attorney general also requested access to “hard copies of all Claims of Abuse Survivors” as part of its Clergy and Faith Leader Abuse Initiative, which was launched in 2021. If granted, the State said it may use the information in these filings “for investigative leads, such as determining the identity of
an unidentified abuser”; “to help evaluate commitments made by the Archdiocese in its bankruptcy plan”; and to “inform the content of the Initiative’s final report”.
The Archdiocese argued that “Abuse Survivors filed the sealed proofs of claim at issue after the court ordered that they be received and maintained in the strictest confidence, under permanent seal”.
The court found that even ignoring the logistics for both providing notices to the abuse survivors to unseal their information, the burden of work to court staff to review and secure the information would be “unusually and exceedingly heavy one, and for the reasons that follow, the State does not come close to carrying that burden”.
The judge ruled that “the State’s requests are improper and, as discussed above, unsupported by the law or the facts, or both, so the court will not grant them”, ordering that the request is denied, noting that it was “improperly filed” and “denied on its merits”.
“We are thankful for Judge Halfenger’s ruling because a breach of confidentiality like that would have been devastating to abuse survivors who see this case as closed, and want their claim kept under seal by the court,” said Frank LoCoco, attorney representing the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.