MINNESOTA
The Journal
November 19, 2013
By Kevin Sweeney – Journal Editor , The Journal
NEW ULM – The Diocese of New Ulm has been named as a defendant in a second lawsuit that accuses the diocese of failing to protect parishioners from sexual abuse from a priest that it should have known was a sexual predator.
The lawsuit was filed in Ramsey County Monday on behalf of a defendant identified as John Doe 107, now an adult residing in Colorado. The suit names the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of New Ulm.
The lawsuit claims the plaintiff was sexually abused by the Rev. William J. Marks, who was a priest in the two dioceses from 1948 to 1979. Marks, who died in November 1979, was assigned to parishes including St. Dionysus in Tyler, St. John’s Catholic Church in Hector, and St. Clotilde in Green Valley. All were located within the Archdiocese until 1959, when the Diocese of New Ulm was formed.
The suit alleges that the plaintiff was abused by Fr. Marks from 1957 to 1960, when he was 10 to 14 years old and served as an altar boy at St. John’s in Hector. The plaintiff said Marks would hug the boy hard, and slide his hands into and over the boy’s pants, usually before and after mass when the boy was changing into or out of his altar boy robes.
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