Fr. Edmund Donkor-Baine found not guilty

A La Crosse County jury Tuesday acquitted a visiting Catholic priest of sexually assaulting a female parishioner in August 2009. The panel of 11 men and one woman deliberated four hours before finding the Rev. Edmund Donkor-Baine, 48, not guilty of misdemeanor fourth-degree sexual assault.

The priest’s supporters celebrated outside the courtroom with handshakes and praises to God.

“The system worked,” defense attorney Cheryl Gill said. “I feel a good man was accused unfairly, and it has totally changed his life. The accusations have gone worldwide.”

The 48-year-old woman, a devout Catholic and stay-at-home mother, testified Tuesday she called Donkor-Baine on Aug. 20, 2009, seeking support for her failing marriage and his advice on how to handle sexual urges.

The pair talked at a downtown coffee shop and drove through Riverside Park before parking her vehicle near the Diocese of La Crosse center, she said.

“He grabbed my hand and put it on his penis and then he took his hands and grabbed my breasts,” she told the jury.

She reported the incident to police in December after a diocese investigation found no supporting evidence.

Donkor-Baine, a Ghana resident in the U.S. for medical care, testified he offered to meet the woman at Sunday Mass but she insisted on seeing him that night.

She didn’t appear upset when she arrived at the diocese center, so Donkor-Baine handed her a prayer book and rosary and turned away, he said.

The priest testified she called him to her car and offered to take him to a property she owns in La Crescent, Minn. They settled on the coffee shop, where they discussed her marriage, though she never mentioned her sexual urges, he testified.

They were seated in her parked car when, Donkor-Baine said, she made sexual advances toward him.

“She told me that, ‘I have not met my desires,’” he testified.

He suggested a drive through Riverside Park to calm her, he said, adding she twice rubbed his thigh as they returned to the diocese center.

“I was not comfortable with that,” he said.

Under questioning by Gill, the woman admitted she went back to Donkor-Baine for that counseling session even though she thought he’d been sexually inappropriate at an earlier meeting. She also attended church where he helped deliver Mass the Sunday after the incident.

Gill said the behavior was more typical of a “woman rejected by her husband who sought attention elsewhere.”

But La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, in his closing statement, argued she had no motive to lie.

“Why would she have a reason to make up something against a church she adored?”

 La Crosse Tribune

Well it probably doesn't help her story if she was caught in a lie during the trial.  It's a bad day for those who hate the Catholic Church.  I wonder if there is a reason the Diocese looks to see if the allegations are credible before going to police....  and it turns out Archbishop Listecki was right to dismiss these charges. 

Here's a flashback from February 12 of this year

The woman reported the incident to diocese administrator Monsignor Richard Gilles in September and met with diocesan attorney Jim Birnbaum, according to the report. It’s unclear why she met with Gilles instead of then-Bishop Jerome Listecki, now archbishop of the Milwaukee diocese.

“He (Gilles) told me that Bishop Listecki takes these things very seriously and that he would file a report and give it to him,” the woman testified in January before a state Senate committee in Madison. “Now, if I were the bishop, I would have had me sitting in a chair the next day.”

The diocese did investigate the report, Birnbaum said. Donkor-Baine, a Ghana resident who came to the U.S. for medical care, denied the offense.

“Sufficient evidence did not exist to confirm the woman’s story,” Birnbaum said. “There were no other like or similar allegations ever made.”

A Dec. 22 letter from Listecki to the woman stated he “cannot conclusively determine what happened.”

Still, Donkor-Baine was ordered not to have contact with the woman or St. James parish, where he led Mass. Listecki also recommended she avoid Franciscan Skemp Healthcare and Viterbo University, where Donkor-Baine provided ministry services and occasionally led Mass.

“Basically, it was Bishop Listecki’s blow-off letter to me,” the woman testified at the Madison hearing, which Listecki attended.

The diocese’s spotty communication with the woman and lack of reprimand against Donkor-Baine led her to report the assault to law enforcement in December, reports stated. She thought the diocese hoped the accusations would disappear, according to reports.

The diocese disagrees with the woman’s statements, Birnbaum said, but he declined to elaborate with the ongoing criminal investigation.

Peter Isely, the Midwest director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said the woman approached the organization in November.

“I said, ‘Go to the DA. Go to the police,’” Isely said.

Donkor-Baine was arrested Jan. 25.

“I don’t know who to trust anymore,” the woman said in her testimony. “The people I thought I knew I guess I don’t really know anymore. And to have that rug ripped out from underneath you is unbelievable.”

 This woman sounds emotionally unstable to say the least.