Back in 1990, when the group Omaha for Decency was fairly new and trying to increase membership, Daniel Sheehan (Omaha's Catholic Archbishop from 1969-1993) gave his support to the group's anti-porn campaign. Archbishop Sheehan wrote letters to local clergy urging them to become involved in Omaha for Decency's efforts to eliminate porn from the Omaha area. He wrote that porn needs to be eliminated because of the "evils" that it brings. (Omaha Catholic Voice, 3/9/1990 & 4/13/1990)
     This wasn't the first time the former archbishop endorsed Omaha anti-porn crusades. In the early 1970's, Sheehan expressed his support for former Omaha City Prosecutor Gary Buchino's prosecution of adult bookstores. (Omaha True Voice [prev. title of Catholic Voice], 6/29/1973) At this time Sheehan recommended using The Longford Report as a guide for fighting porn in Omaha. The Longford Report, published in 1972, was a British study which claimed that looking at porn can lead to child sex abuse, and therefore porn should be banned. The Longford Report also concluded that the best way to prevent kids from seeing porn is to ban it for everybody. (The claim that eliminating porn would reduce sex crimes is a myth, and is discussed on another section of this site.)
        After Sheehan's death in 2000, people came forward to report that a Catholic priest, Thomas Sellentin, had sexually abused them as kids. Sellentin admitted to the abuse and was removed from ministry. The abuse occurred in the 1970's and early 1980's. During that time Sheehan, as archbishop, had the responsibility of assigning Catholic priests, including Sellentin, to churches in his diocese. Priests and church members stated that former Archbishop Sheehan was told about Sellentin's multiple incidents of abuse (which occurred at various churches) at the times the abuse occurred. But the only thing former Archbishop Sheehan ever did after learning about each case of Sellentin's abuse was to repeatedly transfer Sellentin to other churches where Sellentin was obviously still allowed to work with kids.(Omaha World Herald, 4/8/2002, 4/9/2002, 4/10/2002)
        Former Archbishop Sheehan endorsed a pro-censorship study which claimed that looking at porn leads to child sex abuse and therefore should be banned. Yet Sheehan repeatedly and knowingly reassigned a child molesting priest to work at other churches without preventing that priest from working with kids, which is what allowed the molestation to continue. Obviously Sheehan was another Omaha censor who didn't practice what he preached. Sheehan even claimed that any priest involved in sexual misconduct would be permanently relieved of duties. (Omaha World Herald, 9/26/1992) This was obviously a lie.