MINNESOTA
National Catholic Reporter
Brian Roewe | May. 10, 2017
A deacon candidate for a rural Minnesota diocese sued his bishop this week on grounds of blackmail and coercion after the prelate allegedly threatened his ordination if he didn’t renounce a prior revelation of sexual abuse by the diocese’s former vicar general.
In the civil lawsuit filed May 8, Ronald Vasek alleges that Crookston, Minnesota, Bishop Michael Hoeppner in October 2015 coerced him into signing a letter that retracted his disclosure to the bishop approximately five years earlier that Msgr. Roger Grundhaus had sexually abused him on a trip to Ohio while a teenager in the 1970s.
The suit, which names Hoeppner and the Crookston diocese as defendants, requests a jury trial and seeks $50,000 plus court and other related fees. It charges Hoeppner with coercion — the first such count brought against a U.S. bishop, according to attorney Jeff Anderson — and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and brings against the small northwestern Minnesota diocese three counts of negligence and two counts of public nuisance.
At a press conference Tuesday at Anderson’s St. Paul offices, Vasek, 62, said the request from Hoeppner to renege his abuse accusation in a prepared letter came during a meeting on the back patio of the bishop’s residence. He arrived expecting to discuss his progress in the diaconate program but instead the conversation turned to Grundhaus.
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