(MPR) St. John’s Abbey on Monday released the names of 18 current and former monks who “likely have offended against minors.”
The list includes nine monks living at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., under “supervised safety plans,” the abbey said. Seven monks on the list are dead; two are no longer monks and no longer are connected to abbey leaders, who said they were releasing the names voluntarily.
“This list reflects our best efforts to identify those who likely have offended against minors,” an abbey spokesman said in a statement.
“That task often is complicated by the passage of time, the deaths of some of those involved and sometimes incomplete accounts of the past,” the spokesman said. “Even so, we are including all 18 names to provide as complete of a list as we can to acknowledge the pain suffered by victims. This list underscores our commitment to being transparent in our policies and procedures for dealing with allegations of abuse.”
Most of the names have been made public previously. They include several where abbey officials said they decided to include the name of the monk despite the lack of corroborating evidence.
Releasing the names is a big step forward, said Jeffrey Anderson, a St. Paul attorney who’s sued the abbey and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis over allegations of clergy sexual abuse.
“This disclosure helps us, and the survivors, come together because we all want the same thing: for kids to be protected and the truth to be known,” Anderson said in a statement.
The St. John’s disclosure comes on the same day lawyers in Duluth sought the release of a list of priests accused of sexual abuse, and four days after the nearby Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis released a list of 34 priests, 30 of whom, it says, sexually abused children between 1950 and 2013 — on the order of a Ramsey County judge. Three of the men on the St. John’s list are also on the list released Thursday by the Twin Cities archdiocese.
Here is the list published Monday by the abbey:
• Michael Bik
• Richard Eckroth
• Thomas Gillespie
• Brennan Maiers (More on Maiers.)
• Finian McDonald
• Dunstan Moorse
• James Phillips
• Francisco Schulte
• Allen Tarlton
• Andre Bennett (Deceased)
• Robert Blumeyer (Deceased)
• Cosmas Dahlheimer (Deceased. More on Dalheimer.)
• Francis Hoefgen (No longer a monk at St. John’s. More on Hoefgen.)
• Othmar Hohmann (Deceased)
• Dominic Keller (Deceased)
• John Kelly (No longer a monk of St. John’s)
• Pirmin Wendt (Deceased)
• Bruce Wollmering (Deceased)
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St. John’s Abbey releases list of 18 monks accused of abuse
Minnesota Public Radio
December 9, 2013
