Tom Heinen, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s full-time religion reporter since 1997, quickly alerted Editor Marty Kaiser after getting a tip on May 13 about a blockbuster settlement between Archbishop Rembert Weakland and an unnamed man. Heinen knew it would be a race to break the story because his source told him that other newsrooms were hot on the trail.
What Heinen didn’t know was that the Journal Sentinel already had a copy of Weakland’s 1980 letter to Paul Marcoux. Reliable sources tell Milwaukee Magazine that JS reporter Marie Rohde had the letter since 1992, when she was religion reporter for The Milwaukee Journal. Inexplicably, Heinen first learned of the letter only after he got the settlement tip. “Yeah, I cover religion and it had not been called to my attention,” admits Heinen. “It might have caused me to see the archbishop in a different light.”
These and other troubling revelations raise questions about how the Journal Sentinel has handled its local religion coverage, similar to questions about its complacent coverage of institutions like county government. Of course, ABC news won the sprint for the explosive Weakland scoop, airing an interview with Marcoux during “Good Morning America” May 23. Top JS reporters came oh so close to breaking the story, and even staunch critics like WTMJ-AM’s Charlie Sykes praised the paper for holding its coverage until it had a copy of the $450,000 settlement. Since Rohde got the letter a decade ago, however, religion coverage by Milwaukee daily newspapers has been uneven at best, conflicted at worst.
By all accounts, Rohde is a tenacious investigator who shook up Weakland and the Milwaukee archdiocese with her reporting on pedophile priests for The Journal in the early 1990s. However, the powerful archdiocese pressured editors to yank Rohde from the beat, and the newspaper reportedly stunted her coverage.
When The Journal merged with the Sentinel in 1995, editors further diminished religion coverage by giving the beat to soft-feature writer Jo Sandin, a deeply religious Sunday school teacher and wife of a Lutheran minister. Sandin – who hadn’t even applied for the job – asked for reassignment in 1997, and Kaiser handed the beat to Heinen. A longtime Eucharistic minister who gives communion as a layman at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Milwaukee, Heinen was on the beat in 1998 when Weakland approved the whopping settlement with Marcoux.
Kaiser denies that his religion reporters’ active involvement in their churches has posed a conflict and sent the wrong message. “I’m not going to ask people to give up their religious beliefs,” Kaiser says flatly.
As for the Weakland letter, Kaiser argues it was not newsworthy until word of a financial settlement. Perhaps, but the letter did provide a major clue to finding Marcoux, it established an intimate and financial link between Marcoux and Weakland and it played a major role in the settlement. “Letter seen as crucial to settlement,” the JS itself barked in a May 24 headline. When did Kaiser learn of Weakland’s letter? “Probably a long time ago,” he says vaguely. Why wasn’t Heinen informed? Kaiser: “I don’t know why he wasn’t told.…”
In an interview, Rohde neither confirmed nor denied that she got the letter in 1992. “There are some things I’m just not going to get into,” she says. Who else knew about the letter? “There were people who knew about it here,” she concedes. Did she investigate the letter or look for Marcoux before this May? Rohde: “There were efforts to talk to this guy for a long time.”
After the Journal Sentinel finally got its settlement tip, Kaiser assigned Rohde and a crack team of reporters to chase down leads. Still stinging from being scooped on the pension and caucus stories, the paper let readers know it was well aware of the settlement before ABC aired its report.
In a self-serving move, the newspaper used its May 23 profile of Marcoux as a forum to, in effect, blame him for its lost scoop. Writing that he “reneged” on a promise to meet a reporter and provide a copy of the settlement, Marcoux was portrayed as “an unemployed houseguest who vacillates quickly in conversation” and “sometimes exaggerates.” To some, the profile smacked of sour grapes and was a withering attack on the credibility of an alleged victim of abuse. Clearly, it helped fuel the widespread perception that Marcoux is a crooked extortionist and Weakland the real victim.
Patricia Marchant, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse and a respected Milwaukee psychotherapist who counsels other survivors, says she has worked extensively with JS reporters and is “very pleased with their overall coverage.” While she believes the relationship between Weakland and Marcoux was “consensual,” she strongly condemns the newspaper’s “brutal” treatment of Marcoux. Marchant points out that Weakland was the archbishop and Marcoux an aspiring priest who wanted to join the seminary at the time of their relationship. “It’s an abuse of power because Weakland was in that power position. It’s comparable to sexual harassment,” explains Marchant. “Blaming the victim is a massive mistake. I don’t think it’s about sex; it’s abuse of power.”
Interestingly, Weakland’s public apology supports Marchant’s contention. “I acknowledge and fully accept my responsibility for the inappropriate nature of my relationship with Mr. Paul Marcoux,” Weakland said. “I have come to see and understand the way in which the power of the Roman collar can work in such relationships and, even more so, a bishop’s miter.”
Heinen, despite being left out of the loop for so long, passionately defends his newspaper’s coverage. Says Heinen: “It’s a very sensitive and difficult story. It is a sad story. Almost all of the people working on it are Catholics. We didn’t pull any punches on it.”
