LAS VEGAS (NV)
Mynews3
Reported by: Elizabeth Donatelli
Email: EDonatelli@Mynews3.com
LAS VEGAS (KSNV MyNews3) — The Franciscans have released the personnel file for a former Las Vegas Catholic friar after they settled a lawsuit in which he was accused of sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy.
Brother Thomas Thing’s personnel file begins as a psychological evaluation in 1978. It recommends therapy and says he fears his impulses are “dirty and destructive.” Yet he goes into the brotherhood and is in Las Vegas in the mid-1980s when he meets Tim Coonce at St. Christopher Catholic Elementary School, where the boy was in seventh grade and the alleged sexual abuse took place.
A quarter of a century later, Barbara Blaine — president of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests — and fellow victims and friends stood outside the Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas.
“We believe that he should not be any position of power or authority,” she said. “They did not warn anyone here in Las Vegas, and these parents trusted and allowed their son to be around Brother Thing, and the impact has been devastating for that boy.”
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