MINNESOTA
Fox 9
[with video]
ST. PAUL, Minn. (KMSP) – Last December, St John’s Abbey disclosed the names of 18 clerics who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse. Now, the personal files of 5 of those men are public — revealing what church officials knew and when.
St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson released roughly 450 pages that document the history of five St. John’s monks who have worked in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis accused of sexually abusing children.
“You know, he’d bring me places I’d never been before — nice restaurants,” Lloyd Van Vleet recalled.
With a devout mother and absent father, Van Vleet says he was about 14 years old when Father Robert Blumeyer — who was a priest in Wayzata at the time — began abusing him, and it went on for years.
“It stole my childhood,” he said. “I quit doing everything I liked to do. I quit playing baseball; I quit collecting — everything I did changed.”
Blumeyer is one of the 5 priests who were removed from ministry and sent to St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn. — along with:
Robert Blumeyer
Cosmas Dahlheimer
Thomas Gillespie
Francis Hoefgen
Brennan Maiers
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