KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star
BY MARY SANCHEZ
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
07/23/2014
A gray-haired woman tilted her head, a hand held cupped to her ear, listening intently as the judge grilled attorneys representing the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese.
The former teacher liked what she heard from Jackson County Judge Bryan Round on Wednesday. He seemed to understand. To grasp why she and about a dozen others attended the hearing to determine if a breach-of-contract ruling ordering the diocese to pay a $1.1 million award will stand.
It’s for the children. To ensure that the diocese will continue to do whatever is within its power to protect children from sexual abuse.
From 1956 to 1995 Marie Mentrup taught at St. Gabriel Archangel School. Among her former eighth-grade students was a boy who later accused a priest of molesting him as a child. She said she knew other victims too. But that student, who died nearly two years ago, was among the plaintiffs in the diocese’s 2008 $10 million settlement to resolve such civil suits.
“It hasn’t stopped,” Mentrup said, alluding to how this wound up back in the courts.
The largest indicator that the diocese failed to live up to its obligations from the settlement is the 2011 conviction of former priest Shawn Ratigan for child pornography. And the deplorable ways the diocese failed to follow up on what turned out to be credible questions about Ratigan’s behavior around children.
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