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Jesuits settle Alaska sexual abuse
cases November 19, 2007
By Mary Pemberton
The Associated Press
ANCHORAGE — A Roman Catholic
religious order has agreed to pay $50 million to dozens of Alaska
Natives who were victims of sexual abuse by Jesuit priests, their
lawyer said Sunday.
The settlement with the Oregon
Province of the Society of Jesus is the largest one yet against a
Catholic religious order, Anchorage lawyer Ken Roosa said.
However the superior of the Oregon
Province called the announcement premature. The Oregon-based
province covers Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.
Roosa called the settlement “a
great day” for the victims in which the truth of what had occurred
over many years was recognized.
“These are people who were altar
boys and altar servers and altar girls,” Roosa said.
“These are people who tried to tell
their story and in many instances were beaten or told to shut up and
told, ‘How can you say such things about a man of God?’ ”
The settlement announcement is
premature because some issues need to be finalized, said the Very
Rev. John Whitney, provincial superior of the Oregon Province.
“When those issues are resolved, we
will be available for a more complete discussion of the matter,”
Whitney said in a prepared statement. He described the settlement
announcement as “premature and detrimental.”
Roosa said issues involving the
plaintiffs had been resolved. The only issues that remained were
with the religious order’s insurer, he said.
The sexual abuse involved 13 or 14
clerics and spanned nearly 30 years, from 1961 to 1987, Roosa said.
The ages of the children ranged
from 5 years old to teenagers.
Roosa said the victims are now in
their 30s, 40s and 50s.
In some villages, it is difficult
to find an adult who was not sexually violated by the priests, who
then used religion and their power to silence hundreds of children,
Roosa said.
“Despite all this, no Catholic
religious leader has yet to admit that problem priests were dumped
in Alaska. For our clients, this settlement represents a
long-overdue acknowledgment of the truth of their stories of abuse,
stories that until today were largely denied and belittled by
apologists for the abusers,” he said.
Dick Hansen, the lawyer
representing the religious order, did not immediately return a call
for comment.
Roosa said the Catholic Church
first was notified of the Alaska cases of abuse in 2002.
The cases include those involving
the Rev. James Poole, founder of Catholic radio station KNOM in
Nome.
Poole, who lives in an assisted
living facility in Spokane, worked in a number of towns and villages
in rural Alaska.
Roosa said the cases also involve
Joseph Lundowski, who died in 1993. Lundowski was a Trappist monk
who volunteered for the bishop of Fairbanks, Roosa said.
“He was a very prolific molester
and molested about 60 kids,” he said.
The cases do not include those
against the Diocese of Fairbanks, which owned and managed the
churches in the villages in rural Alaska where the Jesuit priests
were assigned.
Those 135 lawsuits have been
reduced to 10, and are expected to be mediated in December.
In February, an Oregon woman filed
a $5 million lawsuit against the Oregon Province claiming that she
was molested by two priests while she was a young girl.
The unidentified plaintiff accused
Poole and the late Rev. John Duffy of molesting her when she was 7
or 8 and a student at St. Mary of the Valley School in Beaverton.
Duffy died in 1992.
The lawsuit alleges that the
Jesuits became aware in about 1960 of Poole “behaving in a sexually
inappropriate manner” with minor girls at a boarding school in
Alaska and transferred him to Portland in 1964 with no apparent
restrictions on contact with minors or females and without telling
parents or parishioners of his past.
It said Poole was transferred to
Portland despite the religious order having “clear knowledge” that
he had a “deviant sexual interest in young girls.”
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