{"id":4483,"date":"2006-11-20T20:36:03","date_gmt":"2006-11-20T20:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/santa-rosa-reprieve.html"},"modified":"2006-11-20T20:36:03","modified_gmt":"2006-11-20T20:36:03","slug":"santa-rosa-reprieve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/santa-rosa-reprieve.html","title":{"rendered":"Santa Rosa Reprieve"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bishop will avoid charges<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
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Bishop Daniel Walsh of the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese will avoid criminal charges for delaying a report of suspected child sex abuse if he successfully completes a four-month counseling diversion program.<\/p>\n

Sonoma County District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua said Monday the decision to offer diversion in lieu of filing charges was in no way letting Walsh off the hook for failing to immediately report the actions of Francisco Xavier Ochoa, a Sonoma priest wanted on 10 felony counts of sexual molestation.<\/p>\n

Violation of the state\u2019s mandatory reporting law of suspected child abuse, a misdemeanor crime, carries a potential penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. But Passalacqua said that since Walsh has no prior criminal record, he is entitled to the diversion program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly hope that our decision involving Bishop Walsh will send a clear message to all mandated reporters of the importance of immediately reporting to law enforcement any child abuse or elderly abuse any injury of an assault,\u201d said Passalacqua.<\/p>\n

Walsh said Monday afternoon that diocese attorney Dan Galvin received a form, faxed from the District Attorney\u2019s Office, that details the diversion program. Galvin then informed Walsh of Passalacqua\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just pleased that finally a decision was made,\u201d said Walsh. \u201cI said from the very beginning I acknowledged my mistake. And I said I would abide by whatever the decision the district attorney rendered after his investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walsh has 21 days to formally agree to the diversion program, but he said Monday that he would complete the program.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

i<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bishop will avoid charges: Bishop Daniel Walsh of the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese will avoid criminal charges for delaying a report of suspected child sex abuse if he successfully completes a four-month counseling diversion program. Sonoma County District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua said Monday the decision to offer diversion in lieu of filing charges was in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSanta Rosa Reprieve - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/santa-rosa-reprieve.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Santa Rosa Reprieve - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bishop will avoid charges: Bishop Daniel Walsh of the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese will avoid criminal charges for delaying a report of suspected child sex abuse if he successfully completes a four-month counseling diversion program. Sonoma County District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua said Monday the decision to offer diversion in lieu of filing charges was in…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/santa-rosa-reprieve.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-11-20T20:36:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Santa Rosa Reprieve - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/santa-rosa-reprieve.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Santa Rosa Reprieve - Via Media","og_description":"Bishop will avoid charges: Bishop Daniel Walsh of the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese will avoid criminal charges for delaying a report of suspected child sex abuse if he successfully completes a four-month counseling diversion program. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}