(SC Times) A news conference has been scheduled for this afternoon to announce the settlement of lawsuits brought by nine victims against St. John’s Abbey, St. John’s Preparatory School, the Order of St. Benedict and 11 individual clergy defendants.
Jeff Anderson, the attorney representing the victims, announced the news conference in a news release this morning. The news conference will be at 1 p.m. at Anderson’s St. Paul law office.
The settlement includes several “non-monetary child protection disclosure issues” that includes public disclosure of previously unnamed “predator priests,” according to the news release.
Anderson has represented numerous clergy sex abuse victims and has filed several lawsuits against St. John’s Abbey and the Order of St. Benedict. In May 2010, Anderson filed suit alleging a cover-up of sexual abuse by the Rev. Raymond Francisco Schulte and alleged that Schulte had abused a boy in the mid-1980s.
In December 2009 he filed a suit alleging fraud by the order for allowing a monk to continue interacting with students after they received an allegation of sexual misconduct against former monk Bruce Wollmering. That lawsuit accused the school and abbey of knowing as early as the mid-1960s that Wollmering had been “sexually inappropriate” with a child. The lawsuit accuses the abbey and order of concealing the allegations against Wollmering. Wollmering was a counselor and psychology professor at St. John’s who died in February at the age of 68. Schulte remains at the abbey, according to the most recent information provided by the abbey.
Lawsuit settlements reached with St. John’s Abbey, 11 clergy
St. Cloud Times
March 28, 2011
