MINNESOTA
St. Cloud Times
David Unze, dunze@stcloudtimes.com April 12, 2016
Two lawsuits filed Tuesday name St. John’s Abbey’s former prior the Rev. Tom Andert as an abuser of two former students in the 1970s and early ’80s.
The lawsuits come after St. John’s Abbey and its review board previously cleared Andert by claiming the allegations against him were unsubstantiated. But the lawyer representing the men suing Andert said that abbey investigators never interviewed the victim in one of the lawsuits before declaring the allegations unsubstantiated.
Todd Belrose, who lives in Florida, identified himself as a victim of Andert’s and is suing the former prior, St. John’s Abbey, the Order of St. Benedict and St. John’s Prep School. A second lawsuit, filed by a victim identified as John Doe 324, names the same defendants.
One lawsuit accuses Andert of abuse in 1970 or 1971, while the other accuses him of abuse in 1979 or 1980. Both victims were 14 at the time and were students at the Prep School.
At a press conference Tuesday in St. Paul, Jeffrey Anderson mentioned a third victim of Andert’s, a student whom Anderson said was abused by Andert in the mid-1990s when Andert was the headmaster at the Prep School. Ben Spanier struggled with depression and unsuccessfully attempted suicide before killing himself last year, Anderson said.
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