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  Jeffrey Anderson

Bismarck Tribune
November 7, 1994

Court cases already exist in North Dakota's eastern Catholic diocese. Jeffrey Anderson, a St. Paul, Minn., attorney specializing in civil actions involving sex abuse by priests, represents three plaintiffs suing the Catholic Diocese of Fargo, an Oriska church and the Rev. David Wild. In all three lawsuits, men accuse Wild of sexual misconduct when they were boys in the mid-1960s. After being put on administrative leave, Wild resigned in May 1992 from Holy Cross Church in West Fargo. He also served at St. Catherine's School in Valley City, St. Thomas Church in Buffalo and St. Bernard's Church in Oriska, where an alleged incident occurred in the rectory. People from the Bismarck diocese have sought Anderson's assistance in recent years, but he hasn't taken their cases. Anderson told the Tribune the cases have merit, but overwhelming demand for his services forces him to pick and choose. Other charges of sexual misconduct levied in April 1994 accuse the Rev. John Smythe, who served Catholic churches in Langdon and Ellendale between 1979 and 1983. Smythe now lives in Northern Ireland, where he was arrested to face charges of sexual misconduct there with a young person. In North Dakota, about half a dozen former altar servers allege Smythe engaged in improper conduct at St. Alphonsus Church in Langdon. In 1989, retired priest Julius J. Binder of Grand Forks, 76 at the time, pleaded guilty in Northeast Central District Court to felony gross sexual imposition with a 14-year-old boy in 1988. His one-year prison sentence was suspended.

 
 

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