{"id":4071,"date":"2011-06-07T20:40:45","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T03:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/?p=4071"},"modified":"2011-09-14T20:31:23","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T03:31:23","slug":"lawsuit-details-abuse-of-altar-boy-by-former-st-johns-abbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/lawsuit-details-abuse-of-altar-boy-by-former-st-johns-abbot\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit details abuse of altar boy by former St. John’s abbot"},"content":{"rendered":"

A.W. Richard Sipe, a former monk at St. John\u2019s who has worked on numerous cases of clergy sex abuse nationwide, said at a news conference Tuesday that he spoke to the man who is alleging the abuse and that there were \u201cfour to 12 other students\u201d who were friends of the man who also had been sexually abused at St. Anselm\u2019s.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lawsuit details abuse of altar boy by former St. John’s abbot<\/strong><\/p>\n

(St. Cloud Times) ST. PAUL \u2014 St. John\u2019s Abbey\u2019s former abbot Timothy Kelly once was heralded as the founder of a St. John\u2019s-based institute to address clergy sexual abuse. He now is on the list of Abbey monks accused of sexual misconduct.<\/p>\n

A New York man filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court accusing Kelly of sexually abusing the man when he was a teenage altar boy at St. Anselm\u2019s Church in the Bronx, where Kelly served as associate pastor in the late 1960s.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit alleges the Abbey and Order of St. Benedict are negligent for the abuse it accuses Kelly of perpetrating. It claims the statute of limitations has not expired because St. John\u2019s systematically covered up abuse and the plaintiff did not discover the \u201cfraudulent concealment\u201d until recently.<\/p>\n

The abuse, according to the lawsuit, happened after the boy revealed what he believed were sinful acts of a sexual nature to Kelly in the confessional.<\/p>\n

Kelly became a monk at St. John\u2019s in 1955, and was ordained a priest in 1961. He held several teaching or pastoral positions there, across the country and abroad before returning to St. John\u2019s. Kelly was abbot from 1992-2000 and died in late 2010 after being diagnosed with cancer. He was credited with cofounding Interfaith Sexual Trauma Institute in 1993.<\/p>\n

The abbey issued a statement Tuesday in which it said it was \u201csaddened and shocked\u201d to learn of allegations of sexual abuse against Kelly. The abbey has begun an investigation of the accusation, the statement read.<\/p>\n

Mike Ford, the St. Cloud-based attorney who represents the Order of St. Benedict, said Tuesday that the Abbey learned of the allegation against Kelly for the first time this week.<\/p>\n

A.W. Richard Sipe, a former monk at St. John\u2019s who has worked on numerous cases of clergy sex abuse nationwide, said at a news conference Tuesday that he spoke to the man who is alleging the abuse and that there were \u201cfour to 12 other students\u201d who were friends of the man who also had been sexually abused at St. Anselm\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Sipe said he sent a letter to Abbot John Klassen in November informing the abbey about the allegations against Kelly involving the man who is identified in court papers as John Doe 174. Neither Sipe nor the victim heard back from the abbey, Sipe said.<\/p>\n

Attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents clergy sex abuse victims, questioned why Kelly\u2019s name wasn\u2019t included on a list of Abbey monks with credible allegations against them when the Abbey released such a list in March as part of a settlement of several other cases. He challenged them to release all the names but said he was skeptical that would happen. He said it was likely that more victims will come forward and identify Kelly as a perpetrator. <\/p>\n

Anderson, Sipe and Patrick Wall, another former St. John\u2019s monk, on Tuesday decried the \u201cculture of secrecy\u201d that pervades St. John\u2019s Abbey. It\u2019s a defined culture that turns a blind eye to the fact that monks are sexually active and that allowing sex can lead to the abuse of children, Sipe said. Wall, who went on to become a canon lawyer after leaving the Abbey and who also has been involved in clergy sex abuse cases nationwide, said the lawsuit will lead to more about what happens behind the closed abbey doors. <\/p>\n

The lawsuit means that \u201cwe get to look at this culture of secrecy\u201d and see how St. John\u2019s and its monks operated here and in the places around the world where the monks serve, Wall said. He described Kelly as being \u201ccompletely unresponsive to complaints of sexual abuse\u201d even though publicly he \u201cput on a good face\u201d as abbot. \u201cPrivately, he didn\u2019t care,\u201d Wall said. \u201cHe honestly didn\u2019t care. That\u2019s what hurt the most.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sipe said his experience as a consultant in the mid-1990s with ISTI ended badly when Kelly ignored sexual abuse allegations or dismissed others and then accused Sipe of trying to manipulate him. ISTI faded into nothing and has been disbanded since 2002. Sipe said it was a \u201ccover up\u201d from the day it began. After Tuesday\u2019s news conference he spoke of the \u201cgreat sadness\u201d he felt in coming back to Minnesota to discuss Kelly and the lawsuit. \u201cThis was the most difficult trip I\u2019ve ever made back to Minnesota,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Read Original Article\u00a0Here<\/a><\/p>\n

Lawsuit details abuse of altar boy by former St. John’s abbot
\nSt. Cloud Times
\nDavid Unze
\nJune 7, 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A.W. Richard Sipe, a former monk at St. John\u2019s who has worked on numerous cases of clergy sex abuse nationwide, said at a news conference Tuesday that he spoke to the man who is alleging the abuse and that there … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,225,37,10,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jeff-anderson","category-michael-ford","category-patrick-wall","category-aw-richard-sipe","category-timothy-kelly","wp-image-borders"],"views":1513,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4071"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4073,"href":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions\/4073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}