Plantiffs’ attorneys expect numbers to go up …

MONTANA
Billings Gazette

Plantiffs’ attorneys expect numbers to go up in Great Falls-Billings diocese sex abuse lawsuits

By Susan Olp

The number of plaintiffs in two sexual abuse lawsuits filed against the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings has increased to 50, and lawyers in both suits predict that figure will grow.

Both civil suits have been filed in Cascade County District Court in Great Falls, home of the Roman Catholic Diocese, which had jurisdiction over the churches and the clergy named in the suits.

One lawsuit was filed by the Morales Law Office in Missoula and the Tamaki Law Offices in Yakima, Wash., in June 2012. It was filed on behalf of a Northern Cheyenne woman in her 60s who said she was repeatedly molested and raped as a young girl by the Rev. Emmett Hoffmann, longtime priest at St. Labre Mission School in Ashland. The Order of Friars Minor, Capuchin, to which Hoffmann belonged, also was named as a defendant.

The attorneys filed a second amended complaint in February 2013, which boosted the number of plaintiffs to six women and 11 men who claimed they had been sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests and nuns in central and Eastern Montana. The abuse was said to have taken place from as early as 1943, and included schools, missions, homes and churches in Ashland, Hays, St. Xavier and Harlem.

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