NOTRE DAME (IN)
The Observer [Notre Dame IN]
September 29, 2025
Dear President Dowd and Members of the Board of Trustees,
I am writing in response to the University’s recent statement regarding the allegations of sexual misconduct against former Zahm Hall rector, Rev. Thomas King, C.S.C., who served from 1980 to 1997. While the decision to convene a special committee and launch an external investigation is a necessary first step, the language and posture of the University’s public statement fail to meet Notre Dame’s high standards of always doing “the right thing.”
I write not only as an alumnus but as a victim of sexual abuse that occurred my sophomore year at Notre Dame. This personal experience has made me an advocate for other survivors of abuse in the Catholic Church. As a victim and advocate, I believe that how Notre Dame mishandled King’s abuse of students is part of an institutional pattern of placing Notre Dame’s reputation above support of victims. One need only look at how the University merely apologized but did nothing else to help former student Mark Fuller (class of 1977) who was raped by the then rector of St. Edward’s Hall, the University’s refusal in 2018 to immediately revoke the honorary degree of serial child abuser Cardinal Theodore McCarrick or how it badly mishandled the tragic suicide of Saint Mary’s student Lizzy Seeberg, who died after she was sexually abused by a football player in 2010, to see this pattern quite clearly. President Dowd’s statement demonstrates that the University has yet to fully internalize the necessary lessons from its own history and the wider sex abuse crisis facing the Catholic world.
My primary concern with the University’s statement centers on how it repeatedly frames the victims’ experiences with terms of doubt, stating that some community members “may have suffered abuse” and referring to the events as “alleged conduct.” Frankly, this cautious, legalistic language is horribly outdated, and it echoes the strategies of denial employed by Catholic authorities before the 2002 Boston Globe revelations of widespread abuse in Boston, made infamous by the award-winning movie “Spotlight.”
Multiple victims of King have come forward already, with one Notre Dame alumnus alleging that the University “knew about the abuse as early as 1995/96.” If true, this raises the important question of why didn’t Notre Dame deal forthrightly with the University community in 1997 instead of allowing King to “retire” from his role as rector? Or, for that matter, why was King allowed to continue in other ministries after allegations against him were brought forward? Unfortunately, such was the larger pattern of the global Catholic Church, which was to shift abusive priests quietly from one assignment to another.
Furthermore, I take issue with the statement that, “Our hope is that this external investigation will provide those who may have been affected with the opportunity to be heard.” The opportunity “to be heard” is the bare minimum requirement for any investigation and is woefully insufficient given the gravity of the crimes committed. Victims do not need the University to grant them a platform to speak; they need the University to provide accountability, justice and compensation.
They, and the rest of the Notre Dame community, deserve a full, transparent report (similar to the Vatican’s McCarrick Report) of what went wrong, not just “the key findings.”
Real support for the students victimized by Father King involves a commitment to action beyond simply receiving testimony. It requires:
1. A clear statement that the University failed in its most important duty — ensuring the well-being of its students — during King’s tenure.
2. A commitment to understanding and disclosing how past abuse complaints were handled and why institutional systems failed to prevent serial abuse and, in King’s case, may have kept it under wraps for decades.
3. Implementing systemic safeguards that are both proactive and transparent. The University needs a complete paradigm shift in how it handles sexual abuse allegations on campus.
4. Doing justice to victims by appropriately compensating them for both the horrible pain caused by Father King as well as Notre Dame’s institutional failures to protect them.
William Kurtz
Class of 2006
Sept. 29
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.