(citypages.com) Jeff Anderson, the St. Paul attorney who has cut a wide swath of controversy as he files lawsuits against alleged sexually abusive priests in the Catholic Church all over the world, has now trained his sites on the monks of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville.
On Tuesday he filed a lawsuit in Ramsey County District Court against St. John’s Preparatory School, the abbey, the Order of St. Benedict and Father Raymond Francisco Schulte, a former teacher and minister at the school.
According to the lawsuit, Schulte recruited and sexually abused two boys, one from North Carolina, one from Minnesota, before and while they were students at the school in the mid-1980s.
The lawsuit names Father Raymond Francisco Schulte as the abuser, and says he is currently an active Benedictine monk in Rome, giving tours. It also lists other priests in the order with alleged histories of sexual abuse, claims the school failed to protect the children from sexual abuse, and tied to sweep allegations of abuse under the rug.
The Washington Post recently profiled Anderson as an alcoholic-turned-workaholic who originally abandoned law school before finding his calling, notoriety and meal ticket as a pursuer of pedophile priests the world over.
His ultimate goal having filed a lawsuit against the Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican, he says: Put the Pope on the witness stand, under oath, for an honest accounting of what the Church knew, and how it dealt with — and concealed — priests and other officials it knew to be sexually abusing children.
Anderson also recently brought a lawsuit against the Breck School, accusing the administration there of knowing about, and failing to do anything about, alleged sexual abuse by former Minneapolis Parks Police Capt. William Jacobs.
Prosecutors in Hennepin County say that Jacobs molested at least 18 children from 1962-1980. He worked at Breck in 1972, where, according to Anderson, he molested a boy whom Anderson now represents.
The school’s headmaster at the time, John Littleford, told Fox 9 that he knew Jacobs represented a problem for the school and fired him as soon as school protocol allowed.
View Original Story: http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2010/05/jeff_anderson_t.php
Jeff Anderson targets St. John’s, monk in latest sex abuse lawsuit
By Hart Van Denburg, Tuesday, May. 18 2010 @ 1:20PM
