MINNESOTA
The Free Press
Dan Nienaber
dnienaber@mankatofreepress.com
An Irish priest sent to the United States in 1981 to be treated for pedophilia by the Roman Catholic Church is being accused of sexually assaulting teenage boys in southern Minnesota during his brief time at a church in Henderson.
The allegations of one of those victims, identified as John Doe 103, are included in a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the Diocese of New Ulm. The lawsuit claims Francis Markey, who died last year while awaiting trial in Ireland for raping a 15-year-old boy in 1968, sexually assaulted the Henderson area victim in 1982 while temporarily serving at a church there.
Markey was 84 when he died, which means he would have been about 54 when he was in Minnesota.
Pat Noaker, the Minnetonka attorney who filed the lawsuit, said the victim reported the sexual assaults to him about three years ago. A lawsuit couldn’t be filed then because the incident was too old for Minnesota’s statute of limitations laws at the time. Those laws were eased when the state Legislature passed the Child Victims Act earlier this year.
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