MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio
Dan Kraker Duluth · Nov 16, 2015
For the first time, attorneys involved in sexual abuse cases against priests have released internal documents from the Diocese of Duluth.
The documents were exhibits in a recent civil lawsuit against the diocese in which a jury awarded nearly $8.2 million to a survivor of clergy sex abuse. They pertain to four priests who served in the Duluth diocese in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. All four have since died.
Attorney Michael Finnegan, who represents several plaintiffs in clergy sexual abuse cases, said they appear to show that the Duluth diocese was willing to give a second chance to clergy who had been sent to facilities that treat priests accused of sexual abuse.
“These documents alarm us,” Finnegan told reporters in Duluth, “and make us very, very concerned that there are a number of survivors in this community here, and in the communities of the Diocese of Duluth, that were hurt by these perpetrators.”
In one instance, a letter from Duluth Bishop Francis Schenk in July 1960 shows the diocese was willing to accept a priest named Charles Gormly after he spent time at Via Coeli in New Mexico. That facility, now known as The Servants of Paraclete, treated priests accused of sexual abuse. “I would like to give him one more chance,” Schenk wrote.
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