MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Parents of man who committed suicide over alleged abuse sue St. Louis Archdiocese
By Tim Townsend ttownsend@post-dispatch.com 314-340-82215
The parents of a man from Florissant who committed suicide in 2009 sued the St. Louis Archdiocese Thursday claiming their son’s death was the result of sexual and emotional abuse by a Roman Catholic priest at Kenrick Glennon Seminary in Shrewsbury.
The lawsuit filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court says Bryan Kuchar, who was suspended by the archdiocese in 2002 and defrocked by the Vatican in 2006, molested the plaintiffs’ son at the seminary’s overnight camp between 1999 and 2002. The boy — known in court documents as John Doe SON — was between 12 and 14 at the time.
In 2003 Kuchar was found guilty of molesting a 14-year-old boy eight years earlier, when the priest was serving at Assumption Catholic Church in south St. Louis County. He was sentenced to three consecutive one-year terms in the St. Louis County Jail.
A spokeswoman for the archdiocese, Angela Shelton, said officials there had “not been served a copy of this lawsuit involving Kuchar, and we do not comment on pending litigation.”
David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said there had been perhaps “a couple dozen” lawsuits across the country over the last decade in which the plaintiffs blamed a loved one’s suicide on clergy sexual abuse.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.