KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star
BY JUDY L. THOMASTHE KANSAS CITY STAR
10/07/2014
A Jackson County jury on Tuesday got a crash course on repressed memory as a sexual abuse lawsuit trial against the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph stretched through a seventh day.
The day saw occasional heated exchanges as attorneys challenged opposition witnesses.
The trial stems from a lawsuit filed by Jon David Couzens, a former altar boy who says that when he was a student at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary School in Independence in the early 1980s, the late Monsignor Thomas O’Brien sexually abused him. Couzens alleges that the diocese was told repeatedly that O’Brien was a danger to children but failed to prevent the abuse.
Couzens, 44, filed the lawsuit in 2011 after a longtime friend called and told him her daughter was possibly the victim of another priest. He said the phone call began unleashing the memories of his own abuse that he had repressed for decades.
The diocese contends that no credible evidence exists to prove Couzens’ allegations and argues that his claims of repressed memory are invalid. O’Brien, who has been the subject of dozens of sexual abuse lawsuits, died last year at age 87.
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