MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio
by Madeleine Baran, Minnesota Public Radio
October 29, 2013
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A Minnesota woman sued the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis Tuesday for allegedly failing to protect her from an abusive priest.
The woman said she was sexually abused by the Rev. Robert Thurner at St. Joseph Catholic Church in West St. Paul when she was seven to eight years old. She is not named in the complaint filed today in Ramsey County District Court.
Thurner retired in 1991 and could not be immediately reached for comment. In a 1991 deposition, Thurner said he touched the genitals of two underage teenage boys in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Today’s lawsuit, filed by St. Paul attorney Jeffrey Anderson, alleges that the archdiocese knew of Thurner’s abuse in 1982 but did not remove him from ministry.
Anderson filed lawsuits in 1991 and 1993 on behalf of two other people who accused Thurner of child sexual abuse, said Mike Finnegan, an attorney at Anderson’s law firm. Both cases resulted in settlements for undisclosed amounts of money.
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