MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star
BY JUDY L. THOMAS
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
09/23/2014
Jury selection is to begin Thursday in a sexual abuse lawsuit filed against the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph by a former altar boy.
If the case goes to trial without a settlement, it will be the first lawsuit alleging sexual abuse of a minor by a priest to go before a jury in the Kansas City area.
The lawsuit, filed in 2011 by Jon David Couzens, alleges that the diocese intentionally failed to supervise a priest who repeatedly abused Couzens three decades ago.
Couzens alleges that Monsignor Thomas J. O’Brien sexually abused Couzens and three other youths in the early 1980s when they were altar boys at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Independence.
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