Bishop Rick Stika is accused of defamation, and covering up sexual abuse, in the Diocese of Knoxville.

The Pillar has confirmed a recently-made allegation, that Bishop Rick Stika told priests a seminarian accused of sexually assaulting a parish organist had actually been victimized by the organist – essentially recasting the story so that the accused seminarian was the victim, rather than the alleged aggressor.

The allegation came in a lawsuit refiled last week, which charges that Stika impeded an investigation into the claim that former seminarian Wojciech Sobczuk sexually assaulted the lawsuit’s plaintiff, who worked as a musician at the Diocese of Knoxville’s cathedral.

The suit was initially filed in February 2022, but had to be refiled this month, after a court agreed last year with the Diocese of Knoxville’s argument that the plaintiff could not file the lawsuit using a pseudonym. Plaintiff’s attorney Patrick Thronson told The Pillar that his client…