MINNESOTA
Indian Country Today Media Network
Stephanie Woodard
7/13/15
Law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates has released the names of seven priests and brothers whom a Catholic religious order agreed had been “credibly accused” of child sexual abuse. The disclosure results from a 2014 lawsuit brought in Minnesota against the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
The seven named are Michael Charland, Vincent Fitzgerald, Paul Kabat, Orville Lawrence Munie, Thomas Meyer, Robert Reitmeier and Emil Twardochleb. Some served in Native communities, including White Earth and Leech Lake, in Minnesota, and the Pine Ridge and Lake Traverse (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) reservations, in South Dakota. The law firm’s website details the men’s work histories and includes a map of their movements, as they were shuttled among parishes.
The suit was made possible by Minnesota’s Child Victims Act. Passed in May 2013, the law gave childhood-sexual-abuse survivors older than 24, the previous age limit, a three-year window during which to bring civil claims. That opportunity for most new claimants ends on May 25, 2016. In addition to those abused in Minnesota, Anderson associate Mike Finnegan said he believed Natives abused in other states by members of religious orders operating in Minnesota could also sue.
There’s a second, tighter time limit for survivors of abuse that took place within the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. That’s because the archdiocese has filed for bankruptcy, and the court has set a deadline of August 3, 2015, for claims against it.
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