KNOXVILLE (TN)
Knoxville News Sentinel [Knoxville TN]
December 19, 2025
By Tyler Whetstone
- A lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville has been dismissed at the request of the plaintiff due to health concerns.
- The lawsuit asserted the diocese mishandled a rape accusation against a seminarian and tried to discredit the accuser.
- Former Knoxville Bishop Richard Stika’s resignation in June 2023 followed multiple scandals, including his handling of the alleged rape.
The lawsuit that put an unwelcome spotlight on the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville and ultimately contributed to the departure of former Bishop Richard Stika has been dismissed at the request of the man who filed it.
Filed in 2022, the lawsuit asserted the diocese tried to discredit the man, identified by the pseudonym John Doe, and did not properly investigate his report that he was raped in 2019 by a seminarian who worked for the diocese and who was a favorite of Stika.
John Doe’s attorney, Patrick Thonson, told Knox News on Dec. 19 the decision had nothing to do with the merits of the case.
“He was not able to continue the litigation because of some serious health concerns,” he said. “Obviously, conducting a case of this type is stressful and retraumatizing … and he felt he wasn’t able to continue it.”
A spokesperson for the diocese could not immediately be reached for comment.
When reached by phone, Stika declined to comment before hanging up on a reporter. “No comment. I didn’t know. So, anyways, thanks for calling.”
Knox News independently confirmed Stika interfered with the diocese’s investigation into the alleged rape, engineering the firing of an independent investigator.
Stika admitted in a 2023 court filing that he told a room full of priests that John Doe was actually the predator, not the other way around. He also admitted to telling a separate group of priests that John Doe groomed the seminarian, who was from Poland, for sexual abuse.
Pope Francis accepted Stika’s request for retirement in June 2023 following multiple crippling scandals Stika created himself, including how he handled the alleged rape. Stika was a week shy of 66 years old when he submitted his retirement notice and said his retirement was health-related. Notably, bishops almost never leave before the mandatory retirement age of 75 years old, and even then the pope frequently allows them to stay on.
Stika left under a cloud of mismanagement accusations, two explosive lawsuits against the diocese that sullied diocesan leadership, and questions about his mentorship of the seminarian. At one point, Knox News reported, Stika told a priest he would resign before he’d allow the seminarian to be sent back to Poland.
The abuse occurred in 2019 when the plaintiff was a musician at The Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, according to the lawsuit, and when the former seminarian worked as an assistant to Stika, a job that involved travel to different parishes.
John Doe said he was subjected to a pattern of grooming and detailed an instance in 2019 where he said the seminarian raped him, according to the lawsuit.
Following subsequent instances of harassment, the seminarian wrote a letter to John Doe, according to the lawsuit. “And for what was wrong – I apologize with all my heart,” the letter read, according to the lawsuit.
In an unusual move, the diocese won a legal fight in 2023 requiring Doe to refile the lawsuit under his legal name, a request anti-abuse advocates called “heartless” and an attempt to intimidate John Doe.
Knox News continued to use the pseudonym as we do not name alleged victims of sexual abuse. Separately, Knox News never named the seminarian since he was never convicted of a crime.
Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter focused on accountability journalism. Email: tyler.whetstone@knoxnews.com; X: @tyler_whetstone.