UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org – Assignment Record
Summary of Case: A priest of the California province of the Jesuit order, Lindner is accused of the sexual abuse of at least 12 children, ages 4-11, male and female. His accusers include his own sister, three nieces and a nephew. His abusive behavior is said to have first been discovered when he was a 10 year-old boy, in the 1950s, when his mother walked in on him molesting his 5 year-old sister. The Jesuits claim to have first learned of Lindner’s alleged behavior in 1992 when Lindner’s brother reported to them that Lindner had sexually abused his daughters. Lindner was sent for a psychiatric evaluation, the Jesuits deemed the allegations to be not credible, and he was put back in ministry. In 1997 Lindner was removed from ministry and sent to treatment after a man told the Jesuits that he and his brother were sexually assaulted by Lindner in the 1975, when the boys were 7 and 4 years old. Lindner is said to have sodomized them, forced them to perform oral sex on each other, and to have threatened them. Lindner has denied all accusations. In May 2010 the man who accused him of sexually assaulting him and his little brother in 1975 physically assaulted him at a Jesuit retirement center in Los Gatos, CA, where Lindner was living. The man was arrested and is scheduled for trial in June 2012.
Ordained: 1976
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