MINNESOTA/SOUTH DAKOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

[documents]

[with audio]

by Madeleine Baran, Minnesota Public Radio,
Tom Scheck, Minnesota Public Radio,
Sasha Aslanian, Minnesota Public Radio

November 11, 2013

One night on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota nearly four decades ago, a 36-year-old Roman Catholic priest asked a young boy to share his bed.

The boy was about 9 or 10 years old. As he climbed into bed, he asked the priest a question: Are you going to molest me, like my relative does when he asks me to spend the night?

The answer was yes.

What happened that night remained secret. The priest, the Rev. Clarence Vavra, stayed in ministry and served in 16 parishes in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis before retiring in 2003. He’s never been publicly identified as an abuser. There are no records of any police reports or lawsuits….