The archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis discovered in 1966 that a Minnesota priest was engaging in sexual contact with boys, but the priest was still assigned to four more parishes over the next 25 years, according to information made public Wednesday by St. Paul attorney Jeffrey Anderson. The accused priest, John Brown, 92, who retired in 1991, said in an interview at his assisted-living apartment in Maplewood that he “very, very vaguely” recalls fondling some boys in a locker room. He was asked if he was sorry. “I have to be sorry,” he said. “Wouldn’t anybody be sorry?” Anderson held …
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Campaigners have called on Pope Francis, who was elected in March, to make tackling the issue of sexually abusive priests an urgent priority of his papacy. The UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child released its demands for information from the Holy See on Tuesday. The committee said that “in the light of the recognition by the Holy See of sexual violence against children committed by members of the clergy, brothers and nuns in numerous countries around the world, and given the scale of the abuses”, the Vatican should provide detailed information on all cases of child sexual abuse c…
BOSTON, Philadelphia, Los Angeles. The archdioceses change but the overarching story line doesn’t, and last week Milwaukee had a turn in the spotlight, with the release of roughly 6,000 pages of records detailing decades of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests there, a sweeping, searing encyclopedia of crime and insufficient punishment. But the words I keep marveling at aren’t from that wretched trove. They’re from an open letter that Jerome Listecki, the archbishop of Milwaukee, wrote to Catholics just before the documents came out. “Prepare to be shocked,” he said. What a q…
MILWAUKEE — As more victims of clergy sex abuse came forward, then-Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan oversaw a plan to pay some abusers to leave the priesthood after writing to Vatican officials with increasing frustration and concern, warning them about the potential for scandal if they did not defrock problem priests, according to documents released Monday. Dolan’s correspondence with Vatican officials and priests accused of sexual abuse was included in about 6,000 pages of documents the Archdiocese of Milwaukee released Monday as part of a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court with…
(St. Paul, MN) – Jeff Anderson, an attorney for hundreds of survivors of sexual abuse in the Milwaukee Archdiocese bankruptcy case said information in the thousands of documents released in the case today contain “revealing and rev…
Duluth, MN (NNCNOW.com) – A man, who claims as a child, he was sexually abused by a priest, has filed suit against the Catholic Diocese of Duluth, under Minnesota’s new Child Victims Act. Michael DeRoche says he was abused by Father John Nicholson, who has since died.He was abused when he attended St. Rose in Proctor between the ages of 9 and 10. The lawsuit claims the Diocese knew, or should have known, that Nicholson was a danger to children and should have stepped in to protect his victims. In a written statement the Diocese said, “It deeply regrets any long-lasting and devastating effec…
News ReleaseJune 26, 2013 Lawsuit says former St. Rose parish priest in Proctor was child sex abuserArizona man seeks to have Court order the Diocese of Duluth to release the names of the 17 priests the Diocese knows were accused of sexually molesting minors New Minnesota Child Victims Act allows victim to file lawsuit for abuse committed when he was a child in Proctor (Duluth & Brainerd, MN) – Attorneys for a 55-year-old Arizona man filed a lawsuit in St. Louis County today claiming that beginning in the early 1960s officials of the Diocese of Duluth knew a parish priest assigned…
CROOKSTON, Minn. — A lawsuit filed by Saint Paul attorney Jeff Anderson in Crookston Monday morning charges The Diocese of Crookston, the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts and the Servants of the Paraclete group with a dozen counts of nuisance and negligence in their handling of former Priest James Porter. Porter admitted or was linked to the abuse of more than 100 young boys and girls, dating back to the 1950’s. This lawsuit involves the case of a unnamed Minnesota woman, now in her 50’s, who alleges that Porter, who died in 2005, molested her while he was a priest at St. Phillips parish…
During private encounters away from church, a Colorado Springs priest allegedly lavished attention on a 15-year-old altar boy – showering him with gifts and supplying him with booze, pot and cigarettes. But according to the Rev. Charles Robert Manning’s one-time assistant, all that attention came with a price. “He told me there were three things he wanted to do before he died: To kiss me, to see me naked and to have sex with me,” the former altar boy, now 18, told a jury Monday in recounting an alcohol-fueled day in the fall of 2011 in which he said Manning, 78, crossed all three wishes from…
CROOKSTON, Minn. — A Minnesota woman filed suit Thursday in state district court in Crookston alleging negligence by the Catholic Diocese of Crookston by allowing the late James Porter to serve as a priest in Bemidji 44 years ago when she says he sexually assaulted her many times in her home and in the church. The lawsuit, citing damages to “Doe 4”of more than the statutory minimum of $50,000, also claims a Massachusetts diocese and a former New Mexico Catholic treatment center for priests, were negligent in allowing Porter to move to Minnesota. Porter was removed from the priesthood…
(St. Paul, MN) – A Minnesota man will get a chance at justice due to the Child Victims Act, recently passed by the legislature allowing survivors of child sexual abuse to hold their abuser and any institution that allowed the abuse to happen, accountable in court. “The Child Victims Act passed into law now gives this survivor a chance for hope, healing, and an opportunity to help protect others” said attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents Plaintiff John Doe 150. Since filing the first civil lawsuit involving Fr. Stitts in the early 1990s, Anderson has represented numerous survivors of sexual abuse by Stitts.
Survivors of child molestation would have more time to file lawsuits against institutions that employed their abusers under a proposal making its way through the California Legislature. Currently, most victims can file lawsuits against religious or civic institutions that employed their abusers until they turn age 26. But a court ruling prevented such suits by people who turned 26 before 2003 and discovered between 2005 and 2011 that the molestation caused injury or trauma. The legislation by state Sen. James Beall Jr. (D-San Jose) would extend the statute of limitations for those victims. …
In what’s being touted as a first-of-its-kind voluntary airing of a Catholic religious order’s culpability in the church’s sexual abuse crisis, a branch of the Capuchin Franciscans on Tuesday issued an independent auditrecounting its own history of sexual abuse of young people and coverups that spanned decades. The audit was commissioned last June by the 10-state St. Joseph Province of the Capuchin Order, which has several ministries in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. It lists 23 current, former and deceased friars with confirmed allegations of sexual abuse of minors, many of them occurring in Wisco…
This week in Geneva, the United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of the Child is hearing closed-door testimony about official Catholicism’s compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. One of almost 200 signatories to the convention, the Holy See (the formal name of the Vatican state) is fifteen years late in delivering a report describing whether it has acted to “protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence” as the convention requires. Victims of sexually abusive priests, their advocates, various American grand juries, Irish government investigators and t…