MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 09/10/2014
David Swinarski was 12 when his parish priest in Red Wing, Minn., invited him to dinner and a performance of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” in Minneapolis.
The Rev. Larry R. Johnson had met the Swinarski family shortly after arriving at St. Joseph parish in July 1992, and David’s parents were suspicious almost immediately about the attention Johnson showed him.
Dee Swinarski “felt this request carried inappropriate sexual overtones,” according to a lawsuit.
She reported her concerns to church deacon and custodian Jerry Elsen. Elsen passed that information to William Fallon, then chancellor for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
A spokesman for the archdiocese said officials there had never received a report of sexual abuse of a child by Johnson and never investigated. The spokesman would not say whether Johnson had been investigated for misconduct or boundary violations, saying the archdiocese did not have Johnson’s permission to disclose that information.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.