Seven more Jesuit priests accused of abuse had ties to St. Louis

St. Louis Post-Dispatch - 3/9/2019

March 09-- Mar. 9--ST. LOUIS -- Seven more Jesuit priests who worked in St. Louis have been identified as being credibly accused of sexual abuse, according to a list posted months ago by a Jesuit province but not publicized here until a survivors group outed the names on Friday.

Four of the priests were assigned to St. Louis University as recently as the 1970s, according to the Midwest Jesuit Province. One priest worked at Washington University in the late 1960s. Two, including one assigned to SLU, worked at St. Stanislaus Seminary in the 1940s. One of the priests, and a second convicted of abuse in Michigan, were patients at a Catholic treatment center in Dittmer as recently as 2012.

David Clohessy, spokesman for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, which pointed out the new information on Friday, said the Midwest Province should have published the information earlier.

"They tried to pull a fast one," Clohessy said at a press conference SNAP called on Friday in front of St. Francis Xavier "College" Church on Lindell Boulevard on the SLU campus.

The update brings the total number of credibly accused Jesuit priests with ties to St. Louis to 24. In early December, the St. Louis-based Central and Southern Province published a list that included 17 priests with ties to St. Louis.

The Jesuit provinces were among several Catholic institutions across the country that released lists naming priests credibly accused of sexual abuse in the wake of an explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report that documented decades of abuses and cover-ups involving hundreds of priests.

The seven names were included in the Midwest Province's original list, published Dec. 17. But it wasn't until the province updated the list with the priests' work histories on Dec. 21 that SNAP identified the ties to St. Louis.

The Midwest Province did not respond to multiple requests seeking comment.

Clohessy, an abuse survivor, said the publicization of the names might help families identify past abuse and address current problems.

"That is the first step toward healing," Clohessy said.

Two of the priests with local ties on the Midwest list were named in a 2003 federal lawsuit alleging abuse of students at church-run Native American boarding schools across the country.

One priest, James F. Gates, was accused by 15 women and one man of abusing them in the late 1960s and early 1970s while they were students at St. Mary's Mission and boarding school in Omak, Wash.

Another priest, Richard James Kurtz, was sentenced in Michigan to 12 years in prison in 2015 after he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a former student and transporting child porn to Chicago, according to the Detroit Free Press. He was on court-supervised probation at Vianney Renewal Center from 2010 to 2012 and has been in federal prison since 2014.

Four of the priests are dead. One is in federal prison. The allegations on the list date to 1955 and do not include St. Louis victims.

The Midwest Province list also named a priest, Bernard D. Fagan, as being a credibly accused priest with ties to the Missouri Province but did not show any work history in the state.

The Midwest Province includes four states bordering Missouri: Nebraska, Iowa, Kentucky and part of Illinois. Missouri and southwest Illinois are under the Central and Southern Province.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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