KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star
BY JUDY L. THOMAS
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
09/30/2014
In 2011, Jon David Couzens got a frantic call from a longtime friend who told him that her daughter might be a victim of sexual abuse by a priest.
After the call, Angela Couzens told jurors in a Jackson County courtroom on Tuesday, her son went through an immediate transformation.
“He was curled up in a fetal position, unable to function,” she said, her voice wavering, and he stayed that way for about a month. “He was sobbing day and night whenever I saw him.”
Angela Couzens’ testimony came on the second day of a civil trial involving her son, who alleges that he suffered sexual abuse by Monsignor Thomas O’Brien three decades ago and that the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph was told repeatedly that O’Brien was a danger to children but failed to prevent the abuse.
The diocese contends that no credible evidence exists to prove those allegations and argues that Jon David Couzens’ claims of repressed memory are invalid.
The trial, in Jackson County Circuit Court in Independence, stems from a lawsuit filed by Couzens in 2011 shortly after the Rev. Shawn Ratigan was indicted on child pornography charges. Couzens alleges that O’Brien sexually abused him and three other youths in the early 1980s when they were serving as altar boys at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church in Independence.
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