MINNESOTA
Post Bulletin
Kay Fate, kfate@postbulletin.com May 9, 2017
ST. PAUL — A former vicar general for the Diocese of Winona is expected to be named today as a defendant in a lawsuit that alleges he suppressed a report of child sexual abuse.
Michael Joseph Hoeppner, 67, now the Bishop of the Diocese of Crookston, is the first bishop in the United States to be individually sued for coercion, said Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul attorney who’s represented hundreds of survivors of clergy abuse.
Hoeppner was vicar general at Winona from about 1998 until being named bishop at Crookston in 2007, church records show.
The survivor, who was participating in a program to become a deacon in the Catholic Church, allegedly told Hoeppner in 2010 that he’d been sexually assaulted in about 1971 by Roger Grundhaus, who was vicar general at the diocese at the time.
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