MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News
Kyle Farris
Daily News
Crookston Bishop Michael Hoeppner, who spent 42 years as a priest in the Diocese of Winona, has been accused of covering up a decades-old case of child sexual abuse, and of blackmailing the accuser into keeping the claims to himself.
Hoeppner was named in a civil complaint filed Monday in Polk County district court.
Ronald Vasek, a longtime parishioner in the Crookston diocese and the father of one of the priests there, said he was abused by a diocesan priest in 1971, when he was 16, and that Hoeppner learned of this around 2010.
Vasek said Hoeppner discouraged him from sharing the allegations with anyone, and then used his family’s aspirations within the church — Vasek himself hoped to become a deacon — to force Vasek into silence.
“I felt like I had been abused all over again,” Vasek said at a news conference in Saint Paul on Tuesday. “To this day, I never have doubted one thing the Catholic church teaches …. But I saw nothing but immorality within our diocese — how things had been covered up for years and years. There could be other victims like me who have been silenced by the bishop or by anybody.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.