MINNESOTA
Grand Forks Herald
By Sarah Volpenhein
CROOKSTON — Catholic diocese records previously under seal show a priest with a history of sexually abusing young girls served in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Crookston likely in the 1950s.
The Rev. Francis Schenk, former bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Duluth, wrote several letters in 1960 and 1961 saying the Rev. Charles Gormly, now deceased, had a history of molesting girls. The Duluth diocese admitted last December the allegations against Gormly are credible.
In a 1961 letter, Schenk wrote Gormly had a sexual disorder which “prompts him to molest small girls” and the “same pattern showed up” in the Catholic Diocese of Crookston, where Gormly served “for some time.”
The letters do not say when Gormly was a priest in the Crookston diocese, nor which parishes he served in. But Mike Finnegan, an attorney with Jeff Anderson and Associates, a law firm renowned for litigating cases involving clergy sex abuse, said he believes Gormly served in the Crookston diocese in the late 1950s.
Gormly was ordained a Catholic priest in 1935 in the Diocese of Cheyenne, Wyo., but left Wyoming in the mid 1940s, according to Jeff Anderson and Associates’ website.
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