AUSTIN (TX)
Texas Standard
August 27, 2018
By Joy Diaz
Plaintiffs in the case against priest Rudy Kos didn’t settle or sign nondisclosure agreements. That paved the way for more priest sex-abuse victims to come forward and seek justice.
Last week, a priest went missing from his Texas parish, and a U.S. cardinal missed his trip to Ireland with Pope Francis. Both have something to do with the latest revelations of pedophilia that continue to plague the Catholic Church. Over the years, some cases have gone to court but none has been as pivotal as the case that was tried in Dallas two decades ago.
Lawyer Windle Turley represented eight of the 11 plaintiffs in the case against priest Rudolph “Rudy” Kos.
Turley says Kos was allowed to go into the priesthood despite objections from the priest who ran his seminary. Kos went on to sexually abuse boys in several parishes in the Dallas area. His crimes included “grooming” boys from as young as age seven, and coercing them into performing various sexual acts. His abuse also involved plying the boys with alcohol and drugs. One boy committed suicide before the trial. Turley says he didn’t realize how damaging sexual abuse could be for a person, before he worked on this case.
“I wasn’t totally aware of how injurious sexual abuse is to an adolescent. It lasts, in most instances…for the rest of their life,” Turley says.
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