SIOUX CITY (IA)
Associated Press
November 6, 2018
By Ryan J. Foley
An Iowa Roman Catholic diocese released a lengthy statement Tuesday about the revelation that it had covered up a priest’s sexual abuse of boys for decades and promised to identify all priests who have faced credible allegations.
The Diocese of Sioux City urged anyone who has ever been abused by one of its priests to report the misconduct. The diocese said it will use all information in its possession to create and publish a list of credibly accused priests, a step it had long resisted.
The diocese’s actions come in response to an investigation by the Associated Press, which last week broke the church’s 32-year silence on serial abuse by the Rev. Jerome Coyle.
The diocese said more disclosures of misconduct may be forthcoming.
Coyle admitted to then-Bishop Lawrence Soens in 1986 to having sexually abused 50 boys over a 20-year period. The diocese said that it should have notified parishes and asked victims to come forward back then, and apologized that its former leaders failed to do so. Instead, the diocese sent Coyle to a treatment center for accused priests in New Mexico, where he lived and worked as a civilian for decades.
The diocese said that its current leadership should have notified the public this summer when Coyle was placed at a retirement home near a Catholic school, which he moved out of last week following AP’s disclosure of his history. But the statement said that its bishop, R. Walker Nickless, “inherited many issues from the past,” including the challenge of finding housing for accused priests who were never charged and aren’t listed as sex offenders.
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