MINNESOTA
Star Tribune
By Chao Xiong Star Tribune OCTOBER 21, 2015
John Doe 30 grew up in rural Minnesota the youngest of seven. He loved animals. He loved the Catholic Church.
But he didn’t fit in, his attorney Jeff Anderson said Wednesday, and he paid the price.
His brothers and classmates called him derogatory names because they thought he was effeminate.
The boy sought refuge at St. Thomas More parish in Lake Lillian, Minn. There, he met the Rev. James Vincent Fitzgerald, who took the boy, then 15, on a trip across the state in 1978 and sexually assaulted him while working for the Diocese of Duluth, Anderson told jurors.
“The evidence will show that [Doe 30] has lost his ability to trust …,” Anderson said in the opening statements of his civil case against the diocese, the first under the Minnesota Child Victims Act to go to trial. The 2013 law has allowed older claims of child sex abuse previously barred by statutes of limitations to have their day in court.
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