MINNESOTA
KARE
DULUTH, Minn. – In a historic move, a Ramsey County jury returned an $8.1 million verdict in a case of alleged sexual abuse by priests from the Diocese of Duluth.
The case is the first to be tried under the Minnesota Child Victims Act, a 2013 law that lifts the statutes of limitation for victims to file suit in decades-old abuse.
Fifty-two-year-old Bill Weis filed a lawsuit in 2014 claiming he was sexually abused for two weeks in the 1970s by Father J. Vincent Fitzgerald, a now-deceased priest from the Diocese of Duluth. The abuse happened at St. Catherine’s Church in Squaw Lake, Minn. — a parish of the Diocese.
The jury found the Diocese 60 percent at fault, while the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the religious order to which Fitzgerald belonged, was 40 percent at fault. The $8 million verdict was awarded for Weis’ pain, suffering, loss of earnings and medical suffering.
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