MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio
Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Jan 30, 2014
Attorney Jeff Anderson has filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis today on behalf of a victim of the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer. He claims in the suit that the archdiocese was negligent in allowing Wehmeyer access to children.
The victim he’s representing is one of the boys that Wehmeyer pleaded guilty to abusing, he said. Wehmeyer is serving a five-year prison sentence for sexually abusing two boys, ages 12 and 14, and possessing child pornography. Some of the abuse took place in a camper that the priest parked outside his church.
The lawsuit comes one day after Ramsey County Attorney John Choi declined to file charges against anyone at the archdiocese for failure to promptly report child sexual abuse. The law requires a priest to report suspected child abuse within 24 hours unless he learned the information as part of confession.
Soon after Choi announced his decision not to file charges, MPR News reported that Archbishop John Nienstedt signed a church document in June 2012 that said the archdiocese knew of the sexual abuse claims for two days before contacting police.
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