WGNNews.org Posted 8:00
P.M. : November 29, 2002
He served 30-day
sentence for sexual conduct charges
November 29, 2002
The Rev. Robert Burkholder, a retired
Catholic priest labeled by prosecutors as one of Michigan's
worst pedophiles, will be released today after spending
November behind bars
Burkholder served 30 days in jail after
pleading no contest to two second-degree criminal sexual
conduct charges
Burkholder, described as 83 by church
officials and listed as 86 by Wayne County prosecutors, has
been held in a segregated cell at the county's Dickerson
jail in Hamtramck. His visitors have included a brother, a
nephew and Joseph Maher, the Catholic businessman who has
founded a support group for priests accused of sexual abuse
and who says he will pick up Burkholder when the priest is
released.
After his ordination in 1947,
Burkholder worked at St. Augustine in Lenox, St. Mary in
Wayne, Nativity in Detroit, Holy Innocents in Roseville, St.
Michael in Livonia and St. Hugh in Southgate. The
archdiocese was aware as early as the late 1960s about
complaints alleging Burkholder had abused boys. In the
1970s, he was assigned away from parish work to serve mostly
as a hospital chaplain, including serving at the former
Sinai and Grace Northwest hospitals.
He retired in 1984 and was removed from
ministry by the archdiocese in 1993 as a result of sexual
misconduct complaints. He has admitted to molesting at least
a dozen boys
