SOUTH DAKOTA
Indian Country Today Media Network

By Stephanie WoodardJanuary 9, 2012

After dismissing multiple American Indian childhood-sexual-abuse lawsuits against the Catholic Church, the Supreme Court of South Dakota has allowed one suit to go forward. In the civil complaint—named R.B.O., after the initials of one of the eight Native Americans who brought it—the plaintiffs allege they were sexually molested and assaulted while minors at St. Joseph’s Indian Mission School, on the Lower Brule Indian Reservation, in South Dakota.

Defendants include the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls; the religious order Congregation of Priests of the Sacred Heart, which has long run St. Joseph’s; and several priests, brothers and nuns, who plaintiffs say worked at the school. Given the passage of time since the alleged assaults, several individual defendants have died; however, Father William Pitcavage, Father Thomas Lind and Brother Matthew Miles are still living.

The high court’s ruling affirmed…