MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
Star Tribune
March 5, 2019
By Mary Lynn Smith
As a Catholic priest, Thomas Adamson won the trust of the boys he coached and others he came to know in the parishes he served from southern Minnesota to the Twin Cities.
But by the time he was ousted from the ministry after more than 25 years, he admitted to molesting 10 boys and was accused of sexually abusing dozens more.
It was the cases against Adamson that soon exposed a sex abuse scandal involving hundreds of priests, even more victims and a coverup by the church.
Removed from ministry in 1985 and the priesthood in 2009, he lived out his final days in Rochester. He died last week at age 85.
“Even though he has passed, there’s a legacy of pain and sorrow,” said Twin Cities attorney Jeff Anderson.
Anderson began to uncover the sex abuse scandal when he filed suit on behalf of one of Adamson’s victims, “John Doe 1,” in 1983.
His parents came to Anderson in 1982 after learning their son had been raped by Adamson years before. They went to the archdiocese but were ignored, Anderson said. The parents were bewildered and heartbroken.
After Anderson filed suit against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, other suits followed.
“I pulled on the string and the scandal and coverup unraveled,” he said Tuesday. “It was the beginning of a revelation of the peril that priests posed that Adamson was emblematic of — and of the practice employed by the bishops in concealing it.”
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