Attorney alleges ex-Indiana priest molested at least dozen boys
http://www.wabashplaindealer.com/articles/2005/10/27/state_news/state3.txt
By The Associated Press
Thursday, October 27, 2005 12:46 AM EDT
INDIANAPOLIS
- An attorney for four men who have brought sexual abuse claims against
the Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis alleged Wednesday that it
repeatedly transferred an abusive priest to increasingly rural parishes
as accounts mounted of him molesting boys.
Attorney Patrick
Noaker said the priest in question, Harry E. Monroe, abused at least a
dozen boys in Indianapolis, Terre Haute and Perry County along the Ohio
River before the late Archbishop Edward T. O'Meara removed him from
ministry in 1984.
The
allegations, if true, amount to the largest individual case to come to
light so far in Indiana of church fathers repeatedly transferring a
priest known to have sexually molested children and not warning his new
parishioners of his proclivities.
Noaker on Tuesday filed two
new lawsuits accusing Monroe of sexually abusing two altar boys while
he was at the now-closed St. Catherine Parish on the south side of
Indianapolis in 1977 and 1978. The complaints also named the
archdiocese as a defendant and accuse it of negligence, fraud and other
charges for covering up his sexual molestation history from a previous
posting at St. Andrew Parish on the city's northeast side.
‘‘What's
tragic about this is they could have prevented this,'' Noaker said of
church leaders, none of whom are named in the lawsuits.
Neither an attorney for Monroe nor an archdiocese spokeswoman would comment on Noaker's allegations.
Noaker,
a Wakarusa, Ind., native now based in Minneapolis, portrayed Monroe as
a chronic child molester whose actions were known to his superiors in
the church at the time, more than 20 years ago.
Monroe was
ordained in 1974 and transferred among three parishes over the next two
years before church officials moved him out of Indianapolis to a
smaller city, Terre Haute, and then, after a year on leave, to an even
quieter assignment - a cluster of three parishes in the Perry County
towns of Tell City, Cannelton and Troy.
The greatest number of
boys might have been molested at the Terre Haute posting, St. Patrick
Parish, said Noaker, who represents scores of plaintiffs across the
country who have filed sexual abuse claims against the Catholic Church.
‘‘This
Monroe case is exactly the kind of case that you fear in this
community,'' Noaker said. ‘‘I'm telling you, the archdiocese knows of
at least six children that he molested down there.''
Susan
Borcherts, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said it had no comment on
Noaker's statements or the lawsuits. She said Monroe now lives in
Nashville, Tenn.
A Nashville telephone number listed for Harry
E. Monroe has been disconnected, and he could not be located for
comment Wednesday.
Brian Ciyou, an Indianapolis attorney
representing Monroe in the first two lawsuits, said he had no firsthand
knowledge of the allegations against his client. He also said he was
not at liberty to disclose Monroe's whereabouts.
In the first
two lawsuits against Monroe, a 40-year-old man now living out of state
alleges he was molested at St. Andrew Parish on the east side of
Indianapolis between 1975 and 1977 and a man in his 40s claims Monroe
abused him in 1977 at St. Catherine's.